Hitching Rides with Buddha: A Journey Across Japan (50 page)

Takayuki Ideta, I realized, was a perfectly normal Japanese man. He had a wife, two kids, a house, a car. He wore a necktie and he liked baseball. “You are normal,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Average.”

“Yes?”

“You are the first normal, average person who has picked me up.”

This bothered him. “Well, I suppose I am normal—but I’m not so average.” And for the rest of the trip he wore a slightly furrowed brow.

Highway 5 is a magnificent road to travel along. It skirts the edge of Uchiura Bay, and we could see right across its cold, clear waters.

Bamboo grass, thick and leafy—shaggy, really—had choked out other plants. It was everywhere. It overran abandoned farms and spilled over the edge of the road. It grew in trellises up telephone wires and it hung in vines around the poles. In southern Hokkaido, land is not so much cleared as it is wrestled free from bamboo grass. It was like a plague of crabgrass. It was
Day of the Triffids
in slow motion.

I couldn’t get used to the sense of size. Everything seemed wide and open and thin on the ground. There was breathing space, elbow room, a landscape to look
through
. Nothing cramped the view, and the sky was grand and theatrical. The air seemed cleaner, too—alpine, chilled. If Hokkaido were a bottle, it would have cold condensation running down the sides.

Communities were spaced out along the bay like a supply line, small towns hugging the shore. On an island without typhoons, the homes of Hokkaido were built up against the sea. In Kyushu, they would have been washed away.

An American flag snapped in the wind as we passed through Yukumo, and I had trouble remembering where we were; my frame of reference kept slipping. The notes I took read like a drive through the foothills of my youth:
birch trees, red barns, round silos, rolling pastures, ranch-houses, chicken coops
. Men in baggy jeans. Farmers driving tractors down the road, holding up traffic. I felt right at home.

At Lake Tōya, behind a rim of mountains, there was a stark reminder that I was still in Japan, that I was still on an archipelago formed like molten pewter along a soldering joint, islands on the borders of tectonic plates: here at Lake Tōya were two very dramatic, very active volcanoes. They rose up in hammerheads, they grumbled and complained, and occasionally they coughed—deep, wet chest coughs. In 1977, Usuzan, the larger of the two, erupted, destroying a cable car and showering the lake, the valley, and the town with pyroclastic loam. The water went sludgy for weeks and volcanic mud washed up along the shore.

The smaller of the two volcanoes, Shōwa-shinzan, first sputtered out of a farmer’s field back in 1943. The steaming, bubbling hole grew and grew, burning off the fields and forcing the people in the
area to retreat. Today it stands at 402 metres. The lake itself is in a crater formed by a prehistoric volcanic eruption. Tōya was shrouded in mist the day I came through.

“It is a cold country,” said Takayuki. “But the people are warm. I have two children, Masahiro and Satoshi, and I am glad that they will grow up in Hokkaido. It is freer. Cleaner.”

We went west into the highlands, where the fields lay fallow, spread out like squares of textiles: rough canvas, unironed cotton, thick felt. Farmhouses were set high on hillocks and in among groves of trees. Takayuki was in no particular hurry to get to Sapporo, and he drove me from farm to farm, carefully pointing out which were the horses and which were the cows. “Cow,” he would say. “Cow. Cow. Horse.”

Then, rising up from the flatlands was Mount Yōtei, the Northern Fuji. The peak disappeared into the overcast sky.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, and Takayuki smiled. “The Northern Fuji,” he said, more to himself than to me.

There are countless such “Fujis” across Japan, and I have seen easily half a dozen of them, so many in fact that I once referred, in jest, to Minamata City’s small hill, Nakaoyama, as “the Minamata Fuji.” I was taken aback when my friends took me seriously. “Yes,” said one. “The Minamata Fuji. I suppose it is.” Very little irony in Japan.

Of the various Fujis I have seen, the only one which lived up to its name was the verdant, perfect cone of Mount Kaimon in southern Kagoshima. The peak of Mount Kaimon rises up, green against the sea, lush and perfectly symmetrical—and quite unlike the
real
Mount Fuji, which is in essence a large scrap pile of volcanic scree. The real Fuji, with the traffic clattering by and the disgrace of factories cluttered around her hem, is dreary. Mount Fuji looks better the farther away you go. From a train, say, or, even better, on a postcard. From an airplane, it is positively stunning. (Mind you, I may be biased. I slogged my way up Mount Fuji in a fog bank, and the view from the top was about the same as you’d get if you stuffed your head in a sack of flour.)

We stopped for some of Mount Yōtei’s health-restoring waters, available in conveniently priced bottles marked “health-restoring water,” and Takayuki filled his tank with gasoline.

I made a feeble I’ll-pay type of gesture (hands patting pockets as though searching for a wallet), but my offer was generously declined. And a good thing, too. In Japan, you might as well be filling your tank with cognac or fine perfume for the amount of money you are paying.

We came down onto the central plains, and the city of Sapporo glowed gold in the distance.

9

S
APPORO IS
T
OKYO
N
ORTH
, a vast, glittering love affair in the heart of Hokkaido. Sapporo is where all roads lead. I arrived at dusk and checked into the Washington Hotel, into a room without a window, and then hit the streets. I was elated. A new night, a different city. It reminded me of an axiom that Jim Drawbell, a friend of the family, used to live by:
If you are in an interesting area, in a place you have never been before, and you have twenty bucks in your pocket—you own the world
.

Night is good to Sapporo. The glass buildings shimmer, the crowds flutter past, and neon spills out in pools of light. The city has 1.7 million people in it, yet it doesn’t feel crowded in the least. The streets are wide and straight; the addresses are logical—a rarity in Japan—and the main boulevard evokes images of Buenos Aires, Dallas, Houston, Calgary. Anywhere but here.

There is a reason for this. The city was laid out by an American architect. Sapporo is as American as Hakodate is Russian; there are touches everywhere, from the spacious layout to the height of the buildings, from the gaudy Pachinko USA to the splashy Hollywood Shop (“USA Movie Character Goods”), from the glass and steel to the kids with Stars ’n’ Stripes tote bags.

Which makes it odd, yet inevitable, that Sapporo’s most highly touted symbol would be a small clocktower, tucked in behind modern structures. It is the city’s only surviving example of Russian architecture. I walked out to see this landmark, was suitably underwhelmed, and then retraced my steps back to the city’s nefarious Susukino District.

Susukino is one of Japan’s largest, liveliest nightlife zones. A mix of family entertainment, teenage game centres, rowdy pubs,
overpriced discos, and sanitized brothels, it is all things to all people. I couldn’t afford another night on the town—either financially or physically—but I could wander at will and marvel once again at the vitality of the Japanese urban night. And with my senses still humming, I returned to the windowless rooms of my hotel.

That night, I dreamt of Buddha.

He was standing beside the highway and he was holding up a sign. It read:
Hello, everybody. I am the Buddha. Please don’t kill me
. Then, just when I reached him, he drove off in a small Toyota car.

There is a Zen saying: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” This is why I gave up on Zen. It was simply too provocative a statement, one that seemed painfully contrived, like replying to the question “What is the Buddha?” with the answer “Dried dung.” (An actual exchange between Zen monks.)

If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him
. Reams of commentary have been written about this statement, much of it of the esoteric angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin variety. Endless interpretations are possible. Semantics are dissected. Debates are waged. It is argued that the Buddha is not a real person but a state of mind, a catalyst to Enlightenment. If you think you have met the Buddha, you haven’t. The Buddha you can see is not the real Buddha; it is an illusion. Destroy it. Other interpretations have been less esoteric: It
is
the Buddha you meet on the road, and he
must
be killed. Why? Because you have to move beyond the realm of opposites, beyond Thou and I, beyond subject and object. Beyond even the Buddha.

One thing that has always puzzled me about Zen, and indeed most Eastern paths to enlightenment, is that it always ends up back where it started. The boy searches for his ox. He finds it. The world disappears … and then he returns to the market, to the everyday. If Zen Buddhism is about the everyday, why depart in the first place? Why not simply enjoy the flow of characters who enter and depart, the moments that come and go?

If life is an illusion, maybe the illusion is not all that bad. Maybe the illusion
is
life. Maybe the solution is not breaking through, but pulling back, learning to embrace the illusion, learning to accept the transient world around us, learning to live among mirages.

If you meet the Buddha on the road, do not kill him. Hold out your thumb. Who knows, he might just offer you a ride.

10

S
APPORO CONSIDERS ITSELF
one of the “Three Great Brewery Cities in the World,” the other two being Milwaukee and Munich. You know it’s true because the Hokkaido Tourist Board said so, and why would they lie?

Central Japan may be the land of saké, and southern Japan the birthplace of shōchō, but in the heart of Hokkaido it is beer that reigns supreme. The Sapporo Brewery, established in 1876, is the oldest in Japan. They produce a light blond lager that sparkles in the mouth and reconfirms my belief in God. Even better, the brewery gives free samples when you take a tour. Free tour. Free beer. Which is to say, I decided in the interest of cultural appreciation to visit the site.

I didn’t understand a damn thing. There were no English explanations and I tagged along with a handful of visiting Tokyoites who had the annoying habit of saying “Is that so?” every time the guide opened her mouth. “Good afternoon, my name is Ariko.” “Is that so?”

I didn’t know, or want to know, the Japanese words for yeast, barley, malt, or fermentation. All I wanted was the free samples, and sure enough, once we had toured the historic red-brick building, we were seated in a hall and given a selection of beer to taste. “Excellent!” said I. “Enlightening!”

So good was the beer—and Japan makes some of the best lagers—I decided to take another tour. And another, by which time it was becoming very familiar. Same swollen copper vats, same long hallways, same tour guide, same nods, same
So desu ka?’s
And more beer. It was wonderful. So wonderful, I decided to go through a fourth time. But there was no one else in line, and when the guide saw me staggering up, she gave me a wry half-smile and said, “You again?”

“Is very interesting,” I replied, trying not to wobble too much.

She cast a scolding look at me, the type women reserve for men who think they are being awfully clever but aren’t. She was dressed in a trim red blazer and a stewardess-type hat, but she wasn’t giggly or girlie at all. Her smile was ruthlessly intelligent. “Do you really want to take the tour again?” she said. “Is that really why you keep coming back?”

“Well,” I said, “we could skip the tour.”

She looked down at her wristwatch. “Let’s just walk through it,” she said. “We can talk.”

I ended up spending most of the afternoon with her. She thought I kept going through the tour because I had a crush on her, and I was careful not to inform her otherwise. “I get off in twenty minutes,” she said. “Meet me at the main gate.”

Now, I would like to say Ariko and I drove through Sapporo in a sports car with the wild wind in our hair, spilling champagne and laughing with carefree abandon, before retiring to my hotel room (which had somehow sprouted both a view and a canopy bed) to make mad, passionate love for hours. But we didn’t. What we did do was go for coffee. And we talked late into the night, sharing small confidences and comparing the separate tangents of our lives. She had been to Australia, had seen every Audrey Hepburn movie ever made—twice—and she enjoyed being a tour guide. She didn’t love it, but it was all right. “You do get tired of beer after a while,” she said, a statement beyond my frame of reference, akin to getting tired of air.

Ariko had a single dimple, which only appeared when she frowned or when she sat back to consider something. She was, of course, beautiful. But one gets so used to seeing beautiful women in Japan that it hardly seems notable after a while. A female friend of mine made a similar observation about California, of all places, where she got so used to seeing tanned, trim, tousle-haired men that after a while they hardly registered. Ariko looked me over and said she liked my eyes, about the only good feature I have. “Blue,” she said, “like ice.”

I always find it odd when other people find me exotic. It is a strange world indeed. I went back to my room in a very cheerful mood, singing my new theme song, “A Hitchhiker on the Road to Love” (Bobby Curtola, circa 1959).

My burgeoning idyll with Ariko seemed destined to turn into something more—until reality in all its pustule-pocked, wart-infested, joy-destroying majesty came bursting back on the scene. Ariko and I promised to meet again the next day (she invited me to her apartment to hear recordings of Ainu music, and needless to say I suddenly became
very
interested in Ainu music), but my time was running out as quickly as sand through a glass. Back in the real world, the
non
-travel world, I was caught up in this odd arrangement whereby I agreed to spend all day doing things that were unbearably dull and monotonous for which I was compensated financially, much in the manner of a sea lion being rewarded with a halibut. Perhaps you’ve heard of this concept; it’s called a “job.” I have never really grasped the logic behind the system, but I did know that losing one’s “job” could have dire consequences in the food and shelter departments. I had already used up my paid holidays at this point, and most of my sick days, and I had even cancelled two weeks of company classes. When I called my supervisor from Sapporo, hoping to extend my furlough just a few more days—in the interests of a brewing romance, so to speak—the reception was chilled, to say the least. I practically got frostbite of the ear from the receiver. “One week,” I was told. “One week, and if you are not back at your desk we will have to”—and here is where it got scary—“reconsider our options.” When a Japanese company says they are going to reconsider their options, the only thing you can do is fall to your knees and beg for mercy and forgiveness.