Hokkaido Highway Blues

come to Japan, this is where they would have stayed.
    A woman showed me to my room, where a lumpy futon awaited my arrival. The sheets, I suppose, had once been white. The wallpaper too. Perhaps. But everything had soured, faded, and turned to this: the yellow of cigarette-stained fingers, the yellow of that one little mutant toenail that grows as hard as a claw. The walls themselves sagged, as much from ennui as from age, and I dropped my bag on the floor in defeat.
    The lady smiled at me. “The best room in the house,” she said.
     

16
     
    HIROSAKI HAS THE only extant castle in northern Japan and the only one with its original walls still intact. It is also, and here I quote the official tourist brochure, “One of the Three Best Cherry Blossom Viewing Spots in Japan.” Unlike most castle towns, in Hirosaki the castle does not dominate the skyline but exists, almost shyly, in a forest park, tucked out of sight. The original castle, built in 1611, had towered above the plains, but it was (surprise, surprise) struck by lightning, and a much smaller, scaled-down version was erected in its stead. The present castle dates from 1810. It doesn’t exactly soar, so much as it huddles, three stories high and perched on the corner of the castle wall, teetering above the moat and looking more like a watchtower than a main keep.
    Spring had arrived in Hirosaki in full force. There are more than five thousand cherry trees on the grounds of Hirosaki Castle, an embarrassment of riches that seems almost baroque when at full bloom. I didn’t so much enter the grounds as I swam in, through the sakura, which hung in garlands. In the park, the streetlamps glowed within fountains of flowers, and crowds swirled by, hurrying to parties.
    A few blossoms had already begun to scatter, falling like faint snow into the castle moat, blowing across the footbridge and stone paths. They had barely arrived and already they were leaving. Sakura, scientists insist, are scentless. Or at least very nearly scentless. A single flower has a pale perfume that is so slight it cannot be detected by the average human sense. But a thousand blossoms, bursting with color and tumbling on the wind, do have a scent, faint perhaps, but unmistakable.
    Sakura also have a sound all their own—the late night revelries of hanami parties. More than two million people visit Hirosaki Castle during the city’s Cherry Blossom Festival and tonight it seemed as though every one of them were on hand. The castle grounds were alive with motion. Noisy. Celebratory. A circle of office workers waved me in with much fanfare, and when I told them I had been traveling with the Cherry Blossom Front, a voice yelled out, “It’s an omen! A good omen!” They asked me to present a toast to the sakura, and a ceramic cup quickly appeared and was ferried across to me. Warm saké was sloshed into it and the voices rose in laughter and mock solemnity. ‘A toast, a toast to the flowers! To your journey!”
    My entire trip seemed to pivot on this moment.
    “Tell us about your journey!” they cried. What could I say? That it seemed like a good idea at the time? That the flowers were sadder the longer I spent with them? That I had met dozens of strangers, made dozens of friends, and was still hopelessly alone? That I didn’t really know what I was doing, or whether there was any point to it? There was so much to say, and yet, there was nothing much to say. I raised my cup. They strained forward to hear what I would offer. “To the cherry blossoms,” I said. “May we never understand them.”
    This was taken as a fine bit of insight and the crowd burst into rowdy applause. “Kampai!” they shouted, and just then a wind stirred the branches, softly scattering blossoms across the crowds. More applause, and I was just about to put the cup to my lips when I noticed that a single flower had dropped into my saké. It floated there a moment, and I was about to fish it out when the man next to me raised a hand and the crowd quieted down. “It is a sign,” he said. “A lucky sign. Surely that is from the gods.” There was good-natured laughter at this, but no one dared out-and-out deny it either. After all, what if it was from the gods, what then? “Drink it!” said a voice somewhere in the circle. “Yes,” said another. “You must. Drink it, drink the flower.”
    I looked down and considered this small act of communion I was being asked to perform. Then, with a flourish, I