Toreba no Toraba: Lessons of an Olympic Driver

Based on the Daily Sports Column (Japanese) / トレバーの虎場（デイリースポーツ）から

“You’d be perfect for the job. Why don’t you look into it?”

My wife’s friend not only made the suggestion but also set me up with an interview to be a driver for a certain media outlet during the Tokyo 2020 (2021?) Olympics. Being the laid-back person that I am, I was simply taking the opportunity placed before me, without really thinking it through. It’s the story of my life, really. Don’t overthink anything. Just try it and see how it turns out. Everything will be fine.

Haven’t been to Tokyo in 10+ years? Never driven there? Don’t have a place to stay? Don’t even particularly care about the Olympic Games? Opposed to Tokyo’s bid back in 2013? Opposed to Tokyo’s insistence on moving forward with the games amidst a pandemic? Meh, trivial details that will sort themselves out after you get there. Just go, have fun, schmooze with the media. You might even run into an athlete or some other famous person.

And so, with my wife’s blessing (insistence that I do this, really), I left for Tokyo roughly a week before the Opening Ceremony. And I am now done with the job, and have begun processing what it has meant to me, and what I can learn from the experience. Here’s what I’ve got so far.

1) Being away from family for long stretches sucks. I have a ton of respect for people who work long distances from loved ones for extended periods of time. This includes some of our own Hanshin Tigers imports, many of whom have left family behind in the Western Hemisphere and have struggled to connect with them these past two seasons. I can also understand much better why Justin Smoak (Giants), Ernesto Mejia (Lions) and Stefen Romero (Buffaloes) have requested their unconditional release so they could go back home to be husbands and fathers again. No amount of money is worth being apart from family for so long. (And I’ve only been asked to do it for THREE WEEKS. AND I’m still in the same time zone as my family!) So on a cultural note, I understand that Japanese employees do a lot of business trips, some of which are fairly lengthy. I get that, and can see that they are sacrificing for their family’s well-being. It also puts a lot of strain and stress on their wives, no doubt. OK, but what I will NEVER get is the 単身赴任 (tanshinfunin = unaccompanied job transfer) system that has men living halfway across the nation from their families for YEARS at a time. I could never do it.

2) Tokyo is not to be taken lightly. I am driving a car with important passengers in the largest city in the world. That means roads are abundant, turns are confusing, and traffic can be quite bad. I don’t care if you have the best GPS in the world in your dashboard… you will get confused, and you will be unable to make some lane changes and turns that you need to make. You cannot assume, just because you have technology, that you will be able to peacefully navigate a metropolis that is hosting the largest event of the year. (Yes, the pandemic has meant WAY fewer vehicles and people on the streets, and for that, I am thankful, in a weird kind of way.) Still. I will never overestimate my driving skills again. Ever.

3) English is almighty. So as I said, I was a driver for the media at the Olympics. All of my clients speak English. Every fellow driver, regardless of their home country, speaks English. And there were tons of backgrounds: Canada, USA, Australia, Ireland, the Philippines, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, Argentina, Japan, and more. From day to day, though, I heard very little Japanese spoken. In fact, befriending the Swiss driver meant that I heard (and spoke) more French than I did Japanese! That part of the job was really fun. But I will also say that doing this job made me feel like I was overseas, and not in Japan… and since I have not left this island in three years now, it has been really refreshing. All that to say, I have found new meaning in my day job (teaching English to Japanese students). If they ever want to properly experience the world, even international events within Japan, they will need more than their native tongue!

4) The Hanshin Tigers will always make you friends. Always. Though I was in Tokyo, I bravely rocked various Tigers gear, especially the fan vest I received last summer. It really came in handy! Obviously, it kept me a few degrees cooler than everyone else who was melting in the heat, but it did more than that. I got a lot of comments from people about it. The Kumamoto cop who was patrolling near the Olympic Stadium. A Kyoto native who is living in Colombia and working for their media in Tokyo. A former manager of the Yokohama DeNA Baystars who hails from Venezuela but is now a Japanese citizen. Wait, what? Yes, him. Alex “Ramichan” Ramirez. One day as I was walking to my vehicle to start a driving assignment, I saw a rather buff man walking with his assistant. Our eyes met, and I gasped behind my mask. He pointed to my vest and said, “I like your Hanshin Tigers.” Flustered and excited, all I could say was, “And I like your YouTube channel, sir!” He was heading in the opposite direction, so our encounter ended just like that. No autograph, no photo. Sorry. But I did get his attention on social media.

So yeah, I wouldn’t say that Hanshin Tigers made me a celebrity friend, but he has called me “my friend” on social media, and when we talked on the phone a few days ago, he made suggestions that we collaborate on things in the future. That would never have happened if I had been wearing my regular street clothes.

What an Olympics it was. My experience is so insignificant in the eyes of the world, and my part in these games has gone completely unnoticed. But it has changed me in several ways… and also kept me the same in others. I will always rock Hanshin gear, no matter where I go. I won’t overthink it… I’ll just keep sporting it and seeing how it turns out. Everything will be fine.