Hokkaido Highway Blues

Japan because I am at heart an animist; inanimate objects are subject to curses, punishment, exhortations, abuse. Certainly my backpack and rain poncho were inhabited by kami—stupid kami, true—but kami nonetheless.)
    The next ride was with a young mother who was studying English conversation. She smiled shyly, so shyly my heart melted into a puddle-size pool of butter. It was already getting dark with intimations of night when I crawled in, and I was shocked to discover that her two children were in the backseat: a toddler in a safety seat and a two-year-old beside her. The lady drove me all the way to the Aomori ferry terminal, more than an hour out of her way and despite my pleas to the contrary. “You don’t have to do this, really.”
    “No, no,” she said (in Japanese). “I want to practice my English” (again in Japanese). “And anyway you looked so sad out there by the side of the road” (still in Japanese). Then, with her smile showing a hint of pride, she said, “This is the first time I have ever picked up a hitchhiker.”
    “Can I give you some advice then?”
    “Yes?”
    “Don’t.”
    She didn’t understand.
    “Don’t pick up hitchhikers,“ I said. “Not late in the day when you have your children in the car.”
    “But you looked so—’’
    “Don’t,” I said.
    She nodded. “I see.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “But it’s not a good idea.”
    “I understand. Thank you.” Her voice was almost a whisper at this point. I had taken the fun out of her adventure. “It’s just that you looked so sad beside the road, and I have always wanted to travel, to speak English.” And for a moment I thought she might start to cry.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “But you really shouldn’t.”
    “I understand,” she said. “I was foolish. I am—I am always acting foolish.” She didn’t say another word, except good-bye.
     

18
     
    THE NIGHT FERRY was not leaving for several hours. I left my backpack at the dock and hiked into town, across the Aomori Bay Bridge, over the train tracks and into the city center. Aomori City, seen from atop a windy bridge suspended in space, is a remarkable sight, an arrangement of geometric shapes—circles, squares, triangles—that gave the city one of those rarest of things in Japan: a distinct skyline. Repeated throughout it, from the glass triangle ASPAM building to the spans of the bridge itself, is the shape of the letter A. A as in apple. A as in Aomori.
    From such abstract heights, I descended into the city itself through a shantytown of corrugated metal shacks near the port. Aomori City is a sack-cloth-and-ashes sort of place, a point in transit rather than a destination. From a distance, geometric. But up close and in your face, it is faded and falling down.
    I eventually found the central avenue and was intrigued to see two Japanese Jehovah’s Witnesses standing by the corner, impassively, as people swept by. They were holding out Japanese-language versions of the Watchtower in the time-honored style of Witnesses the world over. I stopped to chat, but they had that glassy opaque look of the firmly converted, so I wandered off. (It’s a sad day indeed when even the Jehovah’s Witnesses won’t talk to you.)
    With another hour to kill, I stopped in at a second-story bakery/coffee shop beside a wooden Shinto shrine just off the main street. It was called the Red Apple Café, and the décor was very Japanese. Which is to say, it was a hodgepodge of French chalet, Swiss Alpine, and generic American styles. Lots of dark wood and bright lights. You know, Japanese.
    I had a cup of coffee and a piece of apple pie. You have to eat apple pie in Aomori; it’s like haggis in Glasgow, fish and chips in Liverpool, or Rice-a-Roni in San Francisco. The lady of the shop was a pink-faced, smiling woman who was tickled even pinker when I ordered in Japanese.
    “Your Japanese is very good,” she said.
    “Thank you.”
    “And I think you understand the True Heart of Japan.”
    “Thanks.”
    “And you are very fat.”
    “Ah, thanks.”
    “And your nose. It is very big.”
    “Listen. You can stop with the compliments any time.”
    And for the record, let me state once and for all that I am not fat. I’m hearty in a solid, robust sort of way, like a rugby player. Really.
     
    * * *
     
    The ferry to Hokkaido was a floating hotel with potted plants and polished mirrors. It foghorned its way out of Aomori harbor, past the gray silhouettes of trawlers