Hitching Rides with Buddha: A Journey Across Japan

by Ferguson, Will

  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” i
s 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.

  Here and there, a small village would appear, an idyll, terraced and interwoven with the land, quiet and doomed.

  At Zentsūji City the mountains sweep up from the plains. The expressway cuts through them with an Xacto-knife disregard for topography. And then Takamatsu appears.

  We had travelled across the spine of Shikoku on nothing but small talk and silence. In sheer distance, it was the longest ride of my trip and also the most uneventful. I arrived at the ferry port in Takamatsu thoroughly relaxed.

  “Have you seen the castle?” asked Ryuo.

  I hadn’t. I didn’t realize Takamatsu City even had a castle. Ryuo walked me over; it was beside the train station, facing the sea. All that remained was the moat and some lumpy earthworks, now turned into a municipal park, but Ryuo was not discouraged by any of this.

  “The castle stood right here,” he said, pointing toward open sky. “Here is the main tower”—he gestured to more thin air. “Here is the central gate. Here are the sentry posts.” It was like looking at Wonder Woman’s glass airplane. “And here”—a sweep of his hand—“the guard towers. It was a busy place, lots of activity, lots of excitement.” His hands moved quickly now, drawing shapes and conjuring up crowds of people. “Very hectic. It was an important castle.”

  I looked at the air. “It’s very impressive,” I said.

  “Thank you,” and he smiled for the first time.

  One moves through ghosts in Japan, and the past is always there—it is just a matter of learning to see the invisible.

  “Here was the courtyard. Here the promenade. Beautiful women, samurai, nobles, merchants.” He stepped back and admired the scene. He then shook my hand and said, simply, “Osaka.” He had to get going.

  The sun was slipping into the sea like an ingot into water, and I half expected to see steam rise up. Ryuo turned to me and said, “Are you sure you don’t want to come with me to Osaka instead? I’m going right past the Naruto Whirlpools. You’d like them. They’re the biggest whirlpools in the world.”

  It was tempting, but I had other circles to explore. He thanked me for the company and I thanked him for the ride, and he left me there, beside an imaginary castle, with the commotion of generations turning around me.

  They were a long time dissolving.

  17

  THERE ARE MORE than seven hundred and fifty inhabited islands scattered in clusters across the Inland Sea. Shōdo is the second largest. The ferry moved through the falling dusk and arrived at the island as if by stealth, sliding in along the pier. The wind was cool and wet and filled with the thick smells of the sea and the night.

  Tonoshō Town, where the ferry docked, was made of silhouettes. The few people I saw on the streets were hurrying home like Albanians trying to make a curfew.

  I knew I wanted to get to Uchinomi, on the other side of the mountain where a youth hostel was located, but night was falling fast. As I stood there mulling over my options, a bus pulled up across the street. I ran over and asked the driver how I would get to Uchinomi. “That’s where I’m going,” he said. “I’m leaving in two minutes.”

  When a Japanese bus driver says he is leaving in two minutes, he means he is leaving in two minutes. Not two and a half. Not one minute, fifty seconds; he means two minutes.

  With a bus departure imminent, I faced a sudden moral dilemma. When I first set out from Cape Sata, I was determined to rely solely on the kindness of strangers. Other than ferries, which are unavoidable, I was adamant that I would take no longdistance public transportation whatsoever. I considered this a heroic vow. It certainly sounded good back in my apartment in Minamata City. But here, faced with the seductive ease of hopping on a bus—and the difficulty of ever catching a ride after dark—I had three possible courses of action: I could (a) jump on the bus, feel guilty about it, and then rationalize my actions later, or (b) stoically refuse and strike out on my own, or (c) I could take the bus—but not tell anyone. After all, there were no witnesses. Later, I could claim I was picked up by a pair of beautiful Japanese girls in a red Corvette. Who could say what really happened on a certain night in Tonoshō Town on the island of Shōdo in the middle of the Inland Sea?

  In the end, I decided to act with integrity. I let the bus leave without me and I struck off on my own.
Fortunately, I was soon picked up by Zen Zen Chigau and Uso Bakkari, a pair of gorgeous Japanese ladies in leather miniskirts who pulled up in a red Corvette and cooed, “Come with us, little traveller boy,” and I was on my way to Uchinomi. They dropped me off at the hostel—right in front of a bus stop, coincidentally—and sped off into the night. “Thank you!” I called out as they disappeared into the dark.

  The youth hostel was spacious and well lit—and as crisp and clean as a hotel. But it was still a hostel, with all that that implies: petty rules, communal quarters, despotic regulations. I believe that one of the signs of maturity is a dislike of youth hostels. When I was nineteen, I loved the rapport and collective energy. At twenty-five, I was starting to find it all very annoying. And now that I’d entered my thirties, it was all I could do not to go around arbitrarily slapping people in the head.

  My roommates at the Shōdo hostel were no more enamoured of me than I was of them. They had piled their bags on the one remaining bunk bed—mine—and had to quickly reorganize when I came in. They were motorcycle enthusiasts and they had the evil aura of early risers about them. Young people in Japan, even in youth hostels, are generally considerate—no one will be smoking hashish in your room or blasting your bones with boom-box noise—but they are notorious for getting up way too early even while on holiday. Especially while on holiday.

  Uncomfortable in the room, I hung around the hostel lobby instead. I was feeling alone and unconnected, and I longed to hear a familiar voice. So I decided to call Terumi.

  I first met Terumi back in Minamata through a mutual friend, a fellow overpaid-expatriate named Kirsten Olson. Kirsten staged a dinner party with the explicit purpose of setting up Terumi with a Japanese teacher who lived next door. But the young bachelor went home early and Terumi ended up with me instead, which is to say, she came home with a booby prize of sorts. Terumi and I had only been together for a few months.