Hokkaido Highway Blues
me out of the city and onto open highway. And once we were rolling down the highway, he decided that what I really wanted to see was the construction site where he and Koba-chan were currently working. The site turned out to be a sprawling, four-story home on the edge of a rice field. The building was just a skeleton of two-by-fours, but the heavy roof was already in place (Japanese carpenters work from the top down). They pulled off the road, pointed proudly at the company logo on the large scrap containers parked out front, and insisted I climb the scaffolding with them.
The scaffolding was a rickety structure of bamboo and planks lashed together without nails, which only added to the medieval atmosphere as Hisao and Koba-chan scaled it in their baggy pants and cotton shirts, folded and tied like yukatas. Hisao’s cloven-toed work boots heightened the effect. Koba-chan, meanwhile, was wearing pink plastic slippers (taken from one of last night’s serving girls, by accident apparently). The slippers were several sizes too small but, even with these impediments, Koba-chan managed to scamper out across the building’s frame, four stories high. He was surprisingly nimble, with only a beer and a cigarette to balance him and pink plastic slippers to supply a grip. He stood out there, teetering in the air, while I stood on the scaffolding—well, clung to it really.
“You ever get scared?” I shouted.
“Nah.” (He was young and not yet aware of his own tenuous mortality.) “Why don’t you come out?” he said, waving for me to join him on the narrow rafters. I declined. He persisted.
Hisao declined as well. “Too drunk to stand,” he said. “Might fall.” The air was blowing through and around the building’s frames, carrying with it the smell of woodshavings and dust. I looked down to the foundation and imagined myself splatting against the cement like a bug against a windshield. Then, because I am a male and very stupid, I decided to join Koba-chan on the crossbeams. I walked out, high-wire fashion, and posed, hands on hips, as I scanned the construction site. There was nothing between me and a drop of certain death except air and attitude. “Very good,” I said. “Very good.” But my voice was wavering and my knees started to buckle, so I retreated to the scaffolding, feeling exhilarated, manly, and foolish (not an uncommon combination of emotions).
“Anybody ever fall?” I asked, once we were back on solid ground.
“Once,” said Koba-chan. “On another site. My first week on the job. I saw a man slip and fall. Did you know,” he asked with genuine fascination, “that the human body—it bounces.“ Then, mustering all of the bravado inherent in being nineteen, he said. “We can’t fear death!”
Hisao, feeling chastised by this, said glumly, “I had too much to drink. I could have fallen.”
It was sad really that the most sensible person there was also the drunkest.
* * *
When I told Koba-chan and Hisao that I was following the cherry blossoms across Japan, they didn’t call me sissy boy and give me a wedgie or a head-lock noogie. “Cherry blossoms,” they said. “Good idea.” These two ruffians, these two hard-drinking, girl-chasing, rowdy boys took my quest for flowers very seriously.
“The cherry blossoms have been late this year,” said Koba-chan with a solemn nod. Hisao concurred. “It has been terrible. We haven’t gone cherry blossom viewing even once.”
So they decided to find me some sakura. There had to be a tree somewhere that had started to bloom. They took me first to the castle grounds of Shibata, the next city down the road, but there were no flowers there, not even a hint of pink, so instead, following a wild tip from Hisao, Koba-chan drove farther inland, into the hills to a temple that Hisao remembered from his youth. “My dad used to bring us here.”
And sure enough, there in the temple yard was a spindly tree adorned with flowers. Koba-chan and Hisao stood beside it, proudly, and urged me to capture the moment on film. They were so pleased with themselves that I didn’t have the heart to say no. I snapped several slides of them clowning around and clamoring about the tree, until, finally, I had to say something.
I cleared my throat. ‘Ah, guys? That’s actually a plum tree.”
They stopped cold in mid-clamor. “Can’t be,” they said. But it was. A lady of the temple came out, all smiles and politeness, to ask us to stop
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