1. We don't normally use stop, shelter and station with taxi. In both American and British English, taxi stand tends to be used. In British English we also say taxi rank.
   With trains, we usually say train station.

2. We can say a close friend or, possibly, a near friend but we don't talk about distant friends. For people we know that aren't particularly close friends we might say an acquaintance, a casual acquaintance or a friend of mine.

3. Although it is common to say Merry Christmas, we don't say Merry Birthday or Merry New Year.

   Note:
   The word merry means happy and cheerful. One very useful expression which we often hear in conversation is the more the merrier as in Please bring lots of friends to the party next week. You know what they say - the more the merrier.

4. In English we don't say heavy illness, we say serious illness. However, we do say heavy cold.

Further Comments

If students ask me "You can say Merry Christmas, why can't you say Merry Birthday?" or "In Japanese we say omoi byoki, why can't you say heavy illness in English?" the only explanation I can give is "Well, we don't say it that way in English. Those particular words just don't go together."

The question of which words go together in a language is called COLLOCATION. We can say that distant collocates with relative but it doesn't collocate with friend; heavy collocates with cold but it doesn't collocate with illness; Merry collocates with Christmas but it doesn't collocate with birthday.

English collocations are often different from Japanese collocations. Here are some simple examples:

• うそをつく 　＝　tell a lie.　
• 文句を言う　＝　make a complaint.
• 夢を見る  　＝　have a dream.
• 太い声    　＝　a deep voice.

Collocations are important and I will be talking about them again during the next few weeks. If you can become more aware of English collocations and start collecting them, they will really help to enrich your English.