Hokkaido Highway Blues

the fields. I hiked back into town, down to Ogi Port. The only business open was an agricultural co-op, but they had a coffee shop upstairs, so I sat, sipping sludge, and watched the sun break across the bay. I had arrived one step ahead of the tour buses. The town was apparently overrun at the peak season, but here in early spring, without so much as a whisper of cherry blossoms on the wind, I was the only visitor in sight.
    “Next week, very busy,” said the man behind the counter. “This week— nothing.”
    “Well, I’m here,” I said brightly, but it didn’t seem to console him.
    Ogi Port is famous for the washtub tarai-bune boats of folk legend. These large wooden tubs, steered as they are by shifting your weight and churning the water with a single oar, are almost impossible to manage, yet the elderly ladies in their bright-sashed peasant kimonos and bonnetlike hats were having no trouble at all. The washtub boats, meant for gathering seaweed and shells, are still in use farther along the cape, but here in Ogi the tradition is kept alive primarily as a folk attraction—a sort of living theater staged for spectators. By making a small donation, you can even try your hand at it, which I did, with the tub tilted over ridiculously to my side and the sweet little lady—her smile decidedly strained—giving me doomed advice on how to shift my weight and wield the oar. We ended up (here’s a surprise) turning in circles. My shoulder was soon aching and I was feeling vaguely dizzy. The lady, her face hidden by her wide-brimmed straw hat, giggled and giggled. What I failed to achieve by sheer will and muscle, she deftly did with rhythm, taking over control and skimming us back to shore (we had spun dangerously far out to sea under my tutelage). It was a dance form, really, a swaying of semicircles acting against each other, motion through misdirection.
    When we got back, another lady came bumping up to the dock and called over to me, laughingly. “She is a terrible teacher! I can teach you much better.” And so off I went again, around and around and around and around and around and around. “Jōzu desu ne!” she cried. My arm socket was throbbing by now, and my knees were drunk on the motion, so once again I handed over control to a lady three times my age and half my height. A dozen other washtubs were waiting at the pier when we returned, and everyone agreed I was the best rower they had had all day. This buoyed my spirits slightly until I realized, as I walked wobbly away, that I was—so far—the only rower that day.
     
    * * *
     
    I was heading north on the road out of Ogi, past an automobile graveyard, when—flying around the corner—came a bright white car. As soon as the driver saw me, the vehicle came to a skidding, spontaneous stop. I didn’t even have my thumb out.
    “Hey, man!” A voice called out to me in what can only be described as California-cool, “I remember you from the ferryboat!”
    It was the same carload of energy I had seen the night before, the one that had raced the ferry and won. The driver was a tanned young Japanese man. He was wearing an earring, mirrored sunglasses, and a fluorescent orange T-shirt. Beside him was his girlfriend, an American, with tumble-brown hair and beautiful features. In the backseat, even more youthful good looks: a Japanese woman they called Abo, and beside her, sprawled out in heavy slumber, an athletic and drowsy young man named Say Ya. (At least, that was how it sounded.) I wedged into the backseat, disturbing Say Ya, who woke up, eyed me with foggy resentment, and immediately lolled back to sleep.
    “My name is Atsushi,” said the driver and obvious leader of the group. He turned around to shake my hand and insisted that everyone in the car do likewise. Say Ya was less than enthusiastic, waking long enough to offer a limp palm before rolling over, knees and arms forming a rubbery tangle, face into the backseat.
    “He likes you,” said Atsushi. ‘As for me, atsui —that means ‘hot.’ So you can call me Hot Sushi, if you like. All my friends do.”
    I was flattered that he had automatically included me in their circle, but his girlfriend Michelle was obviously not so immediately inclined. It would take her a long time to warm to me, which puzzled Hot Sushi because he had assumed—since Michelle and I were both North Americans—that there would be some kind of instant rapport between us. There wasn’t. Ironically, Westerners are