Conversation Bus conductor and driver Okutama, Tokyo
This video shows a conversation between crew members on a bus connecting Okutama, Tokyo, and Higashi Nippara, where the Nippara limestone caves are located.
The Tokyo dialect has been easily confused with standard Japanese and is no longer understood, but this is a conversation between a bus conductor and a driver who speaks a little Tama dialect among them. The accent is quite small, so it is easy to understand. What is characteristic is not so much the words but the NOMEKKOI (smooth) groove.
The characteristic of this style is a shift to laughter that comes from a sense of resignation in the face of failure or a deadlocked situation. It may be hard to imagine, but there is a difference between the Tama area and the downtown area of Edo, which is said to be more quarrelsome, even in the same Tokyo area.
It may be difficult to understand when looking at the Tama area today, but I, COTA, feel from talking with my grandfather that considerable hardships, including the GOMONSO case, gave birth to this kind of climate of “laughter and self-mockery from resignation (resignation)”.
The Nippara Kaido on which the buses run is also a narrow section (narrow road), and there are many places where it is difficult for vehicles to pass each other. In this video, we set up guides in such places, and when buses pass by, they stop the cars and let them through while communicating with each other via walkie-talkie. You can see what happens when things go wrong in the scene at the beginning of this video.
Even this modern road is quite decent, and its steepness is no exaggeration to call it Tibetan, as the road has been rebuilt many times due to repeated collapses. The repeated improvements seem to have been confirmed up to the present old old old old old old road (the old road before the opening of the tunnel broadcast on the bus is the 6th phase road). It can be imagined that the residents of Nippara village used to take the tough road to Okutama station everyday to go to school or to go shopping.
When you think about it, you can see that even buses running in this narrow section have become quite comfortable.
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