Hitching Rides with Buddha: A Journey Across Japan (21 page)

We passed through a cloudburst of petals and for one freefall moment it really did feel like I was surfing across Japan on a wave of flowers. “You have come at just the right time,” said Mr. Kato. “The sakura in the Matsuyama area come sooner than elsewhere in Shikoku, and today they are at their peak. There was a special bulletin on the news announcing this.”

I loved that. A special bulletin for flowers.

Mr. Kato, meanwhile, wanted to give credit to some of the lesser-noticed flowers we passed. “Do you see those roadside fields?” he asked. “Do you see the wildflowers? We call them
nano-hana
. They grow throughout this area. You know, I often stop to gather some for my wife.”

I was touched by this, and I almost leaned over and gave him an “aw shucks” sort of punch on the shoulder, when he explained: “Those flowers are delicious. My wife fries them in oil. Wonderful.” He smiled and then, seeing a somewhat disturbed look on my face, hastily added “Of course, we put salt on them before we eat them.”

Of course.

Mr. Kato was only going as far as Tōya City, but we had already passed it, skirting the southern edge. “I’ll take you through the next town,” he said, and on we drove, captives of momentum.

Finally, east of Komatsu Town, he pulled into a highway rest centre, one of those vast parking lots anchored by a restaurant. What followed was truly embarrassing. Mr. Kato, suddenly shy in a crowd, tried to arrange a ride for me against my repeated protests. We walked through the parking lot, past row after row of cars, until he found one with Osaka licence plates. (Although I wasn’t going to Osaka, it was in the direction I was headed.) He then approached a surly father and his burly son (Surly and Burly). The man muttered “No” without even looking up from his newspaper, and his son stared at us with thick lids and a bland bovine expression. Making elaborate, bowing apologies, Mr. Kato backed away and then, under his breath, muttered, “Osaka.” He next approached a startled older man coming out from the washroom, but as Mr. Kato explained the situation—“He has come all the way from America looking for a ride”—the old gentleman’s eyes filled with fear and I declined on his behalf.

After lengthy negotiations between myself and Mr. Kato, and assurances on my part that I
would
call him if I got stranded (Matsuyama was only a two-hour round-trip drive away, he said, and he would gladly come and fetch me), Mr. Kato finally agreed to stop helping me. It was a very Japanese moment: one person coaxing and convincing another person
not
to take care of him.

Mr. Kato had telephones to sell. I had strangers to waylay. So I took my pack from his car and said goodbye.

“You’ll like Hokkaido,” he said. “I worked in Hokkaido one summer when I was a student.”

“What about the people?”

“Very friendly. You know what they say: cold weather, warm hearts.”

15

A
SERIES
of frustratingly short rides took me deep into urban clutter. The sun was searing hot and the bone-rattling traffic that rumbled past sent fibreglass slivers through my nerves. Transport trucks screamed by like shrieking Luftwaffe dive bombers in tight formation. Not a cherry blossom in sight, save for the plastic flowers adorning a pachinko parlour across the road.

A pickup truck screeched to a stop and a well-rounded man in a sallow T-shirt waved me in frantically. It was as though he were in the middle of a bank heist.
“C’mon! C’mon!
Get in get in get in!” He was wearing a floppy cotton hat that somehow, over the course of time, had lost the usual attributes of shape, form, and colour. His face was wild and slovenly, with a grey-stubble grizzle that was halfway to becoming a beard. I hesitated, then thought, what the hell, and leapt in. He pulled away before I had time to shut the door. The tires squealed as he swerved into traffic and then, immediately, pulled over. He ground his brakes to a halt and leapt out, leaving me—once again—alone in a truck with the keys in the ignition and the motor running. The truck stank of fish. There was fishing gear and oily paraphernalia strewn around the back, and I sat sweltering in heat, praying he was buying me something cold to drink. He wasn’t.

“Where are you going?” he asked, breathlessly, as he jumped back in. “Hang on!” He changed lanes and then, having seen the error in his ways, immediately changed back again. We careened through the streets, dodging pedestrians and passing on single lanes—and single lanes are very narrow in Japan.

“D’you fish?” he asked. “Fishing. Ever done it?”

He came within a heartbeat of sideswiping a bent-backed old lady, but she proved remarkably spry and managed to get away. The traffic increased, the lanes narrowed even more. He leaned forward in anticipation, taking every opportunity to pass and cursing the very notion of traffic lights. He looked a lot like Zatōichi, the Blind Swordsman, a popular television character. Drove like him, too.

We went around a corner on what felt like two wheels and then, having seen someone he knew in the truck ahead, he leaned on his horn and came roaring to a stop. He leapt out and, as I watched from my seat, had a very animated discussion with the driver of the truck in front of us, with much laughter and many sweeping hand gestures. Where I was, I didn’t know. I sat there, patient as a stone Buddha, for almost twenty minutes as a dusty, neurotic fly buzzed against the windshield. After half an hour of this, I quietly gathered my pack and slipped out. He never noticed me leave, and as I walked through the streets of Komatsu it dawned on me that I was once again lost. A tiny vegetable-shop lady came out from behind her modest display of produce to point me in the right direction, back toward the main highway—where I had been an hour earlier. I was hiking out, head down and cursing, when a vehicle came screeching to a halt beside me. “There you are!” It was Zatōichi, the Blind Swordsman. “Why did you leave?” he said, somewhat huffily. “Get in, you are going the wrong way.”

Once again we plunged into Komatsu City, but this time we didn’t stop. We went up, then down, then right, then left, then this-away, then that-away, and then who-the-hell-knows where. It was like he was trying to shake someone who was tailing him. Perhaps he
was
in the middle of a bank robbery. Whatever the reason, we eventually ended up heading north, without much in the way of conversation. He pushed his floppy hat back on his head and hunched even farther forward, as though willing the vehicle on. He squinted into the distance and then—“
Over there!”
he cried.

We slowed down and coasted toward it: an expressway on-ramp. Damn. I was trying to avoid expressways. Expressways are fast and precise, and they cut straight through the countryside. Too fast, too easy. If I was going to take expressways the entire way, I might as well have taken the Bullet Train. “I was hoping to stay on the highway,” I said as he stopped. The ride ended on the same rushed
incomprehension it had started on. I got out. The Blind Swordsman roared off in a cloud of blue exhaust, and I was alone beside a wide but empty road.

In front of me lay one of those crisp cloverleaf intersections that look terribly efficient on a map, or from the air, but are mind-boggling when approached on ground level. I tried to figure out which lane went where, but it was hopeless; the intersection swirled up in arcs of concrete like an Escher drawing, like a Moebius strip, like, well, like an expressway interchange. With a noble sigh, I began the long walk up one of the ramps.

I usually avoided expressways, but at this point I had spent the better part of the day covering less than twenty kilometres and I just wanted to put some ground between me and Komatsu. In the expressway above me, hidden from view, was the constant buzz and zip of traffic, clipping along at a hundred kilometres an hour—a far cry from the usual slow go of Japan’s sideroads. I was taking the easy way, true, but having survived an encounter with Zatōichi, I felt I deserved a break.

Halfway up the expressway ramp, a sports car came whipping around the corner and
right the fuck at me!
I flattened myself against the guardrail and the car flew past, with the driver and me exchanging looks of mutual panic. I fled back down the ramp, with my heart pounding away in rehearsal for the sort of clutch-and-grasp attack that I suspect will eventually do me in. My knees were still wobbly when I emerged back on the street below.

The sports car was waiting for me at the bottom. I expected to be yelled at, and I deserved to be, but the man was more worried about my safety—if not my sanity.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

My rescuer’s name was Yukio Yanagida, and he was a snappy dresser: dark shades, red tie. His business card had an English translation, which read simply, “President.” I thought this was great.
President
.

President Yukio was in his mid-forties, but he wore the years well. He had immaculately tousled hair and a face that creased in all the right ways when he smiled. He ran his own import-export shop and much about him exuded the flair of the entrepreneur. No salaryman, our Yukio.

He was equally impressed with my own business card from Nexus Computers, though teaching English conversation didn’t seem quite on par with being President.

Having exchanged cards and congratulated ourselves on not having killed me, we decided to tackle the expressway again. Yukio drove me around to the main, multi-lane on-ramp and, with the keys in the ignition and the car running, he said, “Wait here.” Then: “Oldies?”

“Pardon?”

“Oldies?” He popped a cassette into his deck and I found myself serenaded by a heart-rending rendition of “Puppy Love” as written and performed by fellow-Canadian Paul Anka. Yukio strode out, into the middle of traffic, and began flagging down vehicles. He would check their licence plates as they approached, to make sure they were from the next prefecture—no point hitching a short hop—and then raise a hand in an almost imperious manner. As I watched Yukio, I took an immediate and deep liking to the man. He had swagger and confidence to spare, as though he had every right in the world to be stopping vehicles on a national expressway on my behalf. I may be reaching for hyperbole, but at moments like these I see flashes of that old samurai spirit, one of bluster and cocky self-assuredness.

Meanwhile, the car stereo was oozing Golden Oldies, and it struck me again to wonder why it is the Japanese have such a deep affection for the song “Diana.” In Japan, “Diana” is inescapable. You hear it everywhere, from karaoke clubs to car radios. It is—and this has been scientifically proven—the most rhythmically annoying song in the history of the world. The first line alone contains what surely must be the most backhanded compliment ever given:
“I’m so young and you’re so old …”
One of the only things that keeps me on track morally is the knowledge that, if I end up condemned to eternal damnation, the deejays in Hell will be playing “Diana” over and over and over again. That alone is enough to keep me on the straight and narrow.

Fortunately, it took only “Puppy Love,” “Diana,” and half of “Put Your Head on My Shoulder” for Yukio to arrange a ride for me. Even then, the damage was done; the tunes had infected my brain like a virus and I spent the rest of the day humming Paul Anka songs to myself.

The driver whom Yukio had bullied into giving me a lift was a gangly young man in a company jacket and thick Coke-bottle glasses. He
had a few post-pubescent hairs sprouting from his chin and his lips were severely chapped. His name was Ryuo Wakabayashi and he was utterly confused about what was going on. Yukio had demanded to know where he was going, and as soon as Ryuo answered, he waved me out from hiding. (Yukio would have made an excellent highwayman.
Stand and deliver!)
Of all the people I met along the way, President Yukio was the one I wished I had spent more time with.

The silence in the car after Yukio left and as Ryuo stared at me was vacuumesque. “Hi,” I said.

“Your friend?” asked Ryuo, pointing toward the spot by the road where Yukio’s car had once been.

“Is that what
he
said?” I asked.

Ryuo nodded.

“Well, then,” I said. “I guess it’s true.”

Ryuo quietly put his car into drive and pulled out onto the expressway.

16

I
HAD PLANNED
on taking the expressway until we got to open country and then to get back on the secondary highways, but open country eluded us. We came into Kawanoe City, and Kawanoe was one extended stretch of Ugly, crowded in between sea and mountain, and we sailed by, above and beyond.

Ryuo had the brusque manners that innately shy people sometimes assume to cover their shyness. Still, he was genuinely pleased when I told him that, at age twenty, he was the youngest driver I had travelled with so far. He was from Osaka and he taught me some of the city’s vernacular, which is often described as “Japan’s answer to Cockney.” I didn’t quite understand what Ryuo did. He was a technician of some sort, but it must have been fairly specialized because he had driven all the way from Osaka, across Shikoku, just to do one hour’s work. He was now on his way home and wouldn’t be back until well after dark. It was a hell of a way to spend the day.

To our left was the Inland Sea, a place that has come to symbolize a loss of innocence to the Japanese. The name conjures up images of hidden islands and lake-calm waters, but in fact much of it has been despoiled by industrialization and shipping lanes. The metal intestines of factories clogged the valleys and a grey pall hung in the air. For the record: I have no patience with people who complain about the sight of factories, as though factories were some kind of sin against humanity. (Where do these people think all of their stuff comes from? Do they think we pluck their toasters and Walkmans fresh from the vine?) But it does seem sad when a landscape as beautiful as that of the Inland Sea is choked with
death-grey concrete and oily industries. It was like putting a civic dump in a national park.

The expressway twisted and writhed to offer us various angles of the Inland Sea, but all I saw was urban desolation. We plunged into one tunnel after another, and when we emerged we faced the same intestinal tubings of factories and refineries. The cities were a jumble of faded wood, pale concrete, and countless coats of paint.