Hokkaido Highway Blues

package of Calpis to my friend Calvin Climie, an Ottawa-based animator, along with the note: “What a brilliant move, Cal! Marketing your own urine! You’ll make a fortune. As long as you have access to tap water, the supply will never dry up.”)
    A lady friend of mine from Britain once showed me the tiny instruction pamphlet that came with a box of Japanese feminine hygiene products. The instructions were in Japanese, but even here the company had thought it necessary to jazz things up a bit with a display of English. At the top of the page was the stirring motto: Let’s All Enjoy Tampon Life!
    Harder to understand are the bizarre English slogans of American companies operating in Japan: I feel Coke! Speak Lark! (a cigarette company) and I am Slims! (Virginia Slims). I was bothered by this—after all, you’d think that if anyone would get it right it would be American companies—but then, one day, I realized that these slogans were not aimed at me, but at Japanese consumers. And Japanese consumers have all studied basic English and they can
    remember and recognize beginner phrases such as “I feel__,” “I speak__” and “I am__” That the actual slogans used make little sense is not important. They instill a sense of cool cosmopolitan awareness in the consumer and in the product. Once I realized what they were doing, these oddball phrases seemed less like a joke and more like a brilliant marketing ploy. This is also why so many mottoes use the command phrase “Let’s all enjoy_” and variations of it. This is not because it is common English (how often do you ever use the phrase “let’s all enjoy” in a normal English conversation?), but because it is common textbook English, in much the same way that “This is a pen!” is such a popular English greeting in Japan.
    Entire books have been written about Japanese-English. Some of it is bizarre, some of it is almost logical in a nonlinear, Japanese sort of way, and a few are even poetic. I met an American fellow once whose greatest treasure was a small antique tea box. On the back, in English, was a list of the benefits to be gained from a cup. The list was as follows:
     
    The Advantage of Tea
    (A) on auxiliary the memory of writingses-say
    (B) in increasing the prevailness of poetry
    (C) For lossing the fret of mind
    (D) By Assisting the discourse of gentility.
    (E) With refreshing the spirit of heart
    (F) On Digesting the prevention of stomach
    (G) To growing the sperm of body
    (H) In exempting the sadness of lone,
    (I) For Driving the evilness of lone
     
    Naturally, I immediately tried to buy the tea box from the American, but he wouldn’t relent, no matter how much yen I waved in his face. It was a beautiful box as well, decorated in dragons and faded gold kanji and elaborate patterns. It still had the faint scent of tea. And who among us, in drinking a cup of Japanese tea, has not felt an increase in the prevailness of poetry? Or the prevention of stomach? And who, in turn, has not sensed the sadness of lone being exempted?
     

8
     
    ILEFT NIIGATA on a suitably gray morning, the overcast skies anthropomorphi-cally reflecting my own sour mood. Tallying up the hotel bill, the fire-belly Korean fare, and an ill-advised hostess-bar foray, I had managed to spend over two hundred dollars in one night—none of which involved getting naked. I had a sore butt as well, and so I should; I had been screwed royally by Niigata.
    It was a muggy, cinderblock-and-concrete sort of day, the type that seems to move at half speed and double humidity. The morning traffic began suddenly, coming around the corner like the start of the Indy 500. But fortunately a small pickup truck plucked me out of harm’s way just a moment before the tsunami of traffic would have engulfed me. “Thanks,” I said. The driver yawned at me.
    He was a very tired, very frazzled, very fatigued-looking fisherman who kept threatening to fall asleep at the wheel as we drove out of the city. His head bobbed slowly down, his chin sagging toward his chest, and then, with a startled jerk, he was upright, gripping the steering wheel with excessive force and peering intently at the road ahead. So, as you can imagine, I talked a lot during the ride. “Boy that Niigata! Some city, eh?!” Fisherman: “Hm? Oh, yeah, ‘s great.” Then his eyelids would start to droop and my voice would become even more desperately cheerful. “How about those fish! I bet you catch a lot of fish! Tell me