Hokkaido Highway Blues

artillery. The drumming builds up, in waves, a hailstorm of drummers—relentless—reckless— unchained—and it rolls across the audience in volleys and echoes back again. The largest of the drums, the Odai-ko, weighs more than half a ton and is wheeled out like a creaking god at the climax of the performance. It is large enough, as they say, for a man to drown in. The drummer stands, stripped to loincloth and headband, his back knotted in exertion and— wielding drumsticks the size of baseball bats—he pounds out a punishing rhythm, a deep reverberating boom-boom-boom that rattles the rib cage and alters the heartbeat.
     
    * * *
     
    After a demonstration of drumming at the town’s public hall, I walked through a deep blue evening in Ryōtsu. The hammering heartbeat of the drums echoed in my chest all through the night.
    I took a room in a ramshackle harborside inn, where I had to wrangle with the lady of the establishment for half an hour before she would consent to renting to a foreigner. She tried to tell me she was “all full,” a common-enough ruse pulled on foreigners in Japan, but an easy one to disprove. The entranceways of Japanese inns are where customers shoes are stored, and if an inn truly is filled up, the entrance should be stuffed with shelves of shoes. In this case there was not a single pair in storage. When I pointed this out she changed tack, saying that I would have to sleep on a futon and as an American I would be more comfortable on a bed in a hotel.
    It was aggravating, trying to convince this lady to take my money, and in the end I had to resort to what I call my “cousin routine.” Whenever Japanese innkeepers are reluctant to rent me a room—they are afraid of misunderstandings, improper taking of baths, sudden violent murders; all understandable fears—I simply introduce myself in the following way;
     
    “Hello, I am the cousin of [INSERT TOWN NAME HERE]’s foreign English teacher.”
     
    As a former exchange teacher myself, I can attest to the fact that Japanese schools are simply crawling with foreigners. Virtually every high school and most junior highs have a token gaijin on staff—be he or she from Australia, America, New Zealand, Britain, Ireland, or Canada. We called ourselves GODS, that is, “Gaijins On Display,” and we were looked upon by townspeople with a mix of apprehension and affection. GODS are highly visible, and everyone in town, even if they have never been formally introduced, will know of them. So when I came up against a wall of Japanese xenophobia, I simply stepped inside the circle. As the cousin of the local GOD, everything changes. Often, the innkeeper’s children will materialize upon hearing this. “You are Smith-sensei’s cousin?” they ask excitedly. “Yes, yes!” I assure them. “Good old Smith, how is he/she doing anyway?”
    This may seem devious and rotten and dishonest (because it is), but look at it this way: Not once have I abused my position. Several times, especially when things were going really super, I had been tempted to skip out and leave the bill on Smith’s tab, but every time I have resisted the urge. After all, I may be a Travel Weasel, but I’m not some common grifter.
     

6
     
    FROM THE TRADITIONS of Sado, dry with dust, to the high-powered hormonal shine of latter-day technology. From the sublime to the ridiculous. From the tatterdemalion towns and fallen-away fields of Sado to the slick velocity of a jet foil hovercraft. I loved it.
    The jet foil rides up on blades that cut across the water, slicing through like a razor. The ship had pretensions of flight—and indeed, riding the Sado Island jet foil was as close as you could come to flying without actually leaving the water. A voice asked us to fasten our seatbelts prior to departure, there was a bowel-shaking rumble from the depths and then, well, hell, we hit warp three and screamed toward shore like a villain in a James Bond movie. Waves rose up to stop us, but we crashed through. Across the horizon, another storm was growing, the sky bruise-blue and roiling in with biblical wrath. What did I care, I was riding a jet foil. Ten million dollars’ worth of yen for what? So we can fly a little faster, soar a little higher, and feel that extra squirt of adrenaline light up our synapses. It was well worth it.
    “Jet foil, number one,” said the man next to me with a smug smile. He was some sexless salaryman intent on starting a conversation. His necktie