Hitching Rides with Buddha: A Journey Across Japan (30 page)

Like every hotel in Japan, it was ridiculously overstaffed. Entire fleets of doormen circled the lobby, searching desperately for something to do. They were trying to look busy so that the manager wouldn’t notice he had fourteen people to open two doors and empty
three ashtrays. Then again, this hotel probably had fourteen managers as well. Heck, it even had escalator girls. That’s right,
escalator
girls. They stand beside the hotel escalators all day long and bow to every honourable guest who passes by.

I went up to the front desk where a man in a blazer had the comical idea that I would be willing to pay two hundred and fifty dollars for a single room. “I don’t want the President’s Suite. A single room will suffice.” But the man at the desk persisted in his humour and I left. On the way out, I counted the number of bows I triggered: seven. Seven different people bowed and thanked me, and I hadn’t spent one dime in the place. Had I actually rented a room, would they have prostrated themselves before me and offered to shine my shoes with their neckties? Japanese service can be so overbearing.

I wandered away from the bright lights and big-city atmosphere of downtown Kanazawa—a city the Japanese routinely refer to as “quaint” and “traditional”—and found a room a few blocks back in a charming concrete-and-concrete arrangement. It was called a business hotel, but the sign out front didn’t say what kind of business. My guess would be cockroach exterminators. A steal at sixty dollars a night. And boy, didn’t I get my money’s worth. Every room in the hotel was provided with the following: a bed.

When I asked for a wake-up call the man handed me one of those big wind-up alarm clocks that no one has used since the forties. When I asked him for a towel, he charged me extra. I was going to ask for the time, but I wasn’t sure I could afford it.

Once I got up to my room on the fourteenth floor—and I wasn’t at all worried about being caught in a firetrap, no sir—I realized that I didn’t really need the alarm clock. I had asked for it out of habit. My plan was to spend a couple of days in Kanazawa; for the first time in almost a week, I wouldn’t be hitting the road at dawn. I could sleep in. In fact, I could go out all night and not have to worry. So off I went, having wrung out my jeans and dried my hair and splashed myself generously with aftershave, to prowl the mean streets of Kanazawa. Many hours later, I crawled back into bed, reeking of cigarette smoke and stale beer, just before sunrise—only to be woken from my pre-REM slumber not half an hour later by someone pounding on my door. It was the night clerk; he had noticed that I hadn’t come down and was worried I had overslept. I couldn’t even tell him
to piss off and get lost. I had to get up and
thank
this man for disturbing me. He was just being concerned. “Thank you,” I croaked.

At least I was in Japan, so I didn’t have to tip him. All I had to do was leave large satchels full of cash with the hotel management when I checked out. This is to save us the embarrassment of evaluating service with anything as crass as money. Instead of something as vulgar and unbecoming as a tip, Japanese businesses prefer to slip in an automatic service charge of, oh, about seven hundred percent I would imagine, which is a small price to pay for such a face-saving device.

10

K
ANAZAWA IS
an old castle town renowned for its old streets, old buildings, old pleasure quarters, an old villa, an old garden, and an old theatre. It is a very old city, except for the parts that aren’t. All that was missing was the actual castle. Only the rear gate remained, imposing even in its quixotic lack of mission. The fortress it once guarded had long been lost to time and city planning.

I was disappointed with Kanazawa. I’m not sure why. It was a prosperous city, and I didn’t begrudge the town its success, yet Kanazawa is quaint only if you are approaching it from Tokyo or Osaka. After the side roads of Shikoku and the fishing villages of Kyushu, Kanazawa felt too big, too congested, and—more importantly—too expensive. It was also the halfway mark of my journey and I had expected to enter the city triumphantly, amid cheering crowds and confetti. Instead, I had staggered in, exhausted and whimpering, and racked with a persistent cough and a lingering guilt. I hadn’t been this tired or numb since my visit to the Uwajima sex shrine.

Beyond the generic Japanese-city look of its downtown (also known as “Really Big White Boxes Arranged in Confusing Patterns”) much of Kanazawa is surprisingly well preserved, with neighbourhoods that date back to the days of the Tokugawa shōguns. And after Fukui City, the people of Kanazawa were downright hospitable. The whole time I was in Kanazawa not a single person attempted to spit in my coffee.

But where were the cherry blossoms? I saw a few scraggly flowers here and there, nothing to pen a haiku over. I went to Kenroku Gardens, across from the solitary castle gate, and searched for sakura but found none. The Cherry Blossom Front had not yet
arrived. A sombre-looking newsman pointed to a satellite map of Japan and explained that in Kanazawa the sakura were only at eight percent blossom, a full thirty-four percent less than last year. Or maybe it was the other way round. Anyway, he was very concerned about this and, to prove it, the television station showed an assortment of maps covered with contour lines and whorls and complicated grids, as if to say, “We paid a lot for these maps, so you’re damn well going to see every one of them.”

I tried very hard to like Kanazawa, but I was impatient. I kicked about for a couple of days. I ate at some wonderfully snooty restaurants where thin fish was arranged in papery designs and the waitresses moved about in a delicate kimono shuffle. These restaurants were the very antithesis of the red-lantern dives I usually frequent. In Kanazawa, the restaurants exuded a certain high-class ambience. They also cost an arm and a leg, but were worth every limb if you ask me. Anyway, I was getting a little tired of scuzzy joints and I enjoyed the chance to try some of Japan’s more unusual offerings. I even considered eating
fugu
, the poison puffer fish that can kill you if not prepared properly. Still, you never know when you’ll run into a Japanese fugu chef whose home was destroyed during the war, so I gave it a pass.

I played, half-heartedly, at being a tourist. I read several pamphlets yet retained very little, other than the fact that Kanazawa was—and here I quote for accuracy—“old.” I wandered through a dozen temples strung out along the city’s many Temple Rows, where I took heaps of confusing slides that my family and friends have come to hate with a passion. (“This is Daimon Temple. It was—wait, no. This is Jomon Temple and it was built—wait a sec, sorry,
this
one is Daimon, the slides before were of Jomon—shall I go back?” Family members: “No! No!”)

One did stand out: the infamous Ninja Temple, built in 1659 or 1643 depending on which guidebook was consulted. What a great place: A labyrinth of narrow corridors and sudden large rooms with unusually high ceilings (the better to do chanbara in), it was riddled with secret tunnels and hidden passageways. It even had a creepy suicide-room with, appropriately enough, no exit.

By now I had checked off most of the sites in the guidebooks, except of course the museums. Kanazawa is infested with them, all with heavy, yawn-inducing names: the Prefectural Museum of
Traditional Culture, the Cultural Museum of Prefectural History, the Traditional Museum of Cultural Crafts, the Craft Museum of Historical History … I’m proud to say I didn’t go to a single one. I have a theory about museums: they suck. People
say
they like museums, but they are lying. What they are really thinking about is, What’s for dinner? and When will this be over? You don’t enjoy a museum, you lump it, like cough medicine or opera. The only compliment I will accept about a museum, and only a particularly good museum, is that it is not as boring as most.

I stopped going on field trips when I was twelve, and now that I’m a grown-up I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to. I don’t have to eat Brussels sprouts, study algebra, dance for Grandma, or raise my hand when I have to pee. And I sure as heck don’t have to go to museums. You can say what you want about my lack of culture, but stick with me and I can guarantee you, I won’t drag you through any museum that doesn’t feature giant stone vaginas. How many can promise you that?

Not that I wasn’t dying for some diversion. After endless, interchangeable days that featured me keeping myself company by not going to museums, I was getting a little stir crazy. I was bored. I was restless. I began asking strangers if they wanted to practise speaking English with me. I started sitting up at the front of the bus and talking to the driver. I even considered opening my Japanese language textbooks; that’s how desperate I was for something to do.

And then it arrived: the Sakura Zensen, up from the south like a tidal wave. Trees came alive. The streets frothed with colour and the tile rooftops of Kanazawa were buoyant, adrift on pink and white. The tsunami of spring, a typhoon of flowers. Suddenly Kanazawa didn’t seem so bad.

Vignette: I am walking through Kanazawa’s ancient pleasure quarters when I see a geisha, wrapped in a silk kimono, just as she disappears through a doorway framed in cherry-blossom pink. A single-frame motion picture, a ukiyoe print—there, and gone.

Geisha still exist in small elite numbers. They study art, music, conversation, and lovemaking. They are not prostitutes. Even the highest-class Monte Carlo call-girl would pale in poise and pride beside a Japanese geisha. Although many geisha are now aging dragons, the one I caught a glimpse of was as beautiful as porcelain.
I wanted to follow her into that shadow world, through the gate, down the lane of cherry trees, to where her wealthy patrons awaited her arrival. But I didn’t feel quite like getting the shit kicked out of me just then, so I left my vision as it was, untouched and unspoiled.
Geisha passing, early spring
—another uncompleted haiku by Will Ferguson.

11

I
RETURNED
to Kenroku Gardens in the evening. Everything had changed. Crowds of revellers had staked out their trees. People were singing and laughing and tumbling together under overhangs of blossoms. I wandered among the celebrations, uplifted. “Come! Come!” Hands waved me toward their circle, if only as an honourary, temporary member. Men, faces pink, pranced about with neckties around their foreheads. Women egged them on, clapping hands in time and all but yelling, “Take it off! Take it all off!”

Then, from out of the tumult, an English voice. “Excuse me please, are you from America?”

It was an elfin man, a few years older than I, dressed in a corduroy jacket and a conspiratorial smile. He was wearing his necktie half undone, clearly the mark of a rebel. And so he proved to be.

His name was Mr. Nakamura, thankfully not related to the one I had coerced into driving me to Kanazawa. Nakamura Two was an English teacher at a local high school, and he and the other teachers were having their annual Cherry Blossom Viewing Party.

I was invited over to meet Mr. Nakamura’s circle of teachers, and I kept having these ambivalent flashbacks to my own tour of duty as a high-school teacher. Any minute I expected the
kōchō sensei
(like a principal, but with more power) to break into a long, ponderous speech exhorting the students to be ambitious and international and so on. But Mr. Nakamura’s colleagues were a relaxed bunch, and they welcomed me under their tree without a single speech.

“My name is Yoshihiro,” said Mr. Nakamura. “Please call me Yoshi. You are from Canada? I was there once, in my college days. I went by train through the Rocky Mountains. You know,” his voice
dropped, “my dream is to ride a motorcycle across North America, to see the Grand Canyon, the open sky.”

I liked Yoshi. He had a soft, almost soothing voice and he spoke as though he were confiding in me at all times, as though everything he said was a secret and I was his accomplice.

He showed me a picture in his wallet. “This is my little girl, Ayané. She’s three years old. Very cute. And this is my beautiful wife.” He held the photo out for me to see. “I became a teacher by accident,” he said. “I wanted to marry my wife, but at that time I had no steady job and I was sleeping on the floor of different friends’ apartments. It was very fun at the time. I had only my motorcycle and a beard. Well, kind of a beard. My wife thought I looked like an adventurer, but her family was dubious. They wanted me to have a good job. In Japan, being a teacher is a very respected job, and I enjoy English, so I became a teacher.”

Yoshihiro was originally from Kumamoto City in Kyushu, and his wife was from the Amakusa Islands, where I used to live. It really is a small world: Yoshihiro had once taught English at Amakusa Nishi High School, where I too had worked. This common set of reference points created an instant and durable camaraderie.

He tipped back his beer and, as I refilled it, he said, “My real dream was to be an animator. You know, for Japanese television. In Japan, this is a high-pressure job. My college friend drew animation for the television series
Dragonball Z
. Three times an ambulance had to come to our dormitory because he overworked so much.” Yoshi laughed; overwork is somewhat endearing to the Japanese. “I love science fiction. Do you know Japanese animation?”

“Sure, I think it’s great,” I lied.

He brightened at this. “Really? How about Godzilla? Do you know Godzilla?”

Do I know Godzilla?
The conversation shifted into high gear. We exchanged monster tales with that same breathless excitement sports fans get when they discuss their favourite teams, agreeing incessantly and interrupting each other’s stories. “Mothra! Did you see the time—” “Yes, when Space Godzilla—” “Right, and Monster Mogira!” At one point we even sang the “Gamora Monster Theme Song”
(“Gamora is friend to all the children”)
, for which we received a hearty round of applause from the other teachers.

“What’s the deal with Gamora?” I wanted to know. “A giant turtle that flies through the air by spinning like a Frisbee. Who could navigate like that? And after you land, you’d be too dizzy to fight.”