Hokkaido Highway Blues

living on the Amakusa Islands, I once spent an evening tramping about my neighbor’s place with my camera and tripod, looking for the perfect sunset shot. I carefully avoided stepping on any of the rows of rice stalks, but I left footprints all over the place. The man was enraged when he came out the next day. Police were called in. They measured the footprints, concluded that the culprit had to be the local Bigfoot foreigner and, when they found mud on the shoes in the entranceway of my house, the case was closed. I was taken down to make a formal apology to the man. It was, I later learned, like jumping someone’s fence and then tracking mud all over his patio.
    You can walk across rice fields, but only along the raised earth dividers that separate the paddies. These access strips are sort of “neutral territory,” but they are also very slippery and hard to negotiate with a poorly arranged, sadistically heavy backpack on your shoulders. W^hich is why I chose to follow a side road through the fields instead.
    Unfortunately, as I soon discovered, it was one of those roads that seems to have no sense of direction, no purpose in life, no reason to exist. It didn’t connect anything with anything, it just sort of meandered around like a slack-brained teenager in a shopping mall. It headed for the mountains, but then turned and took a leisurely detour through some overgrown grassy fields, then it found a small stream and followed that for awhile, just for something to do. It leapt across the stream on a small bridge and loped alongside the other bank before petering out in an open field, as though tired of life itself.
    I had walked for over an hour and still I was in the middle of a vast, lazy flatland. Fuming and snorting, I set off overland, walking along the balance-beam dikes that separated the rice paddies, careful not to step on the rice fields themselves. And I saw a snake. Of course. Right on my path. And when I tried to run away, I slipped off the dike and ended up with one leg in mud up to my knee and a shoe that would squish and smell of compost for days. All in all, not a good way to spend an afternoon.
    When I finally made it to the highway, the sky had begun to darken with clouds. Visions of Fukui dancing in my head, I began frantically waving my thumb at anything with wheels—and I was promptly picked up by a UFO. Well, I don’t know for certain it was a UFO, but it looked like one. It had throbbing purple running boards, a neon license plate, and tinted glass. It was more than a van, it was a Love Hotel on wheels. The driver was a wiry young man with tight-permed hair and wraparound sunglasses. Beside him was his girlfriend, a chubby-faced young lady with short hair, tinted orange. (Blond dyes don’t take with Japanese hair, something that Japanese woman refuse to accept.)
    Grateful to escape the pending storm, I crawled into the back where the only place to sit was a plush velvet bed, beside which—this is true—there was a statuette of a nude cherub. I looked up to confirm, and yes, in true Love Hotel fashion, there was a mirrored ceiling. Hot damn. Japanese swingers. Finally!
    The young man chewed a toothpick thoughtfully but didn’t speak. His girlfriend, however, was bubbly with excitement. She turned right around and smiled at me with deep red lipstick. I smiled back in that suave and debonair manner that has made me famous on four continents. Unfortunately, she showed a little too much interest in me and, within twenty minutes, I was back on the side of the road. No explanations were given; the man simply pulled over. His girlfriend became pouty and, crossing her arms, settled in for a good long sulk. At first I assumed they let me out because they themselves were turning off, but no, their van disappeared down the road straight ahead, exactly where I was going. It was the oddest encounter of my entire trip.
    I stood there pondering this when it began to rain. Great spiteful bullets from Heaven, and me on an open road. It was Fukui all over again.
    Swearing and kicking at my pack, I managed to wrestle my rain poncho from the secret compartment it had scurried into. I pulled the plastic poncho around me and buttoned up to the chin just as the rain stopped and the sun burst back on stage like an actress looking for an ovation. This was followed by a new round of profanities as I launched into more of my ravings, yanking the poncho off and trampling it underfoot. (Perhaps I belong in