Hokkaido Highway Blues

the bay like a supply line, small towns hugging the shore. On an island without typhoons, the homes of Hokkaido were built up against the sea. In Kyushu, they would have been washed away.
    An American flag snapped in the wind as we passed through Yukumo, and I had trouble remembering where we were; my frame of reference kept slipping. The notes I took read like a drive through the foothills of my youth: birch trees, red barns, round silos, rolling pastures, ranch-houses, chicken coops. Men in baggy jeans. Farmers driving tractors down the road, holding up traffic. I felt right at home.
     
    * * *
     
    At Lake Tōya, behind a rim of mountains, there was a stark reminder that I was still in Japan, that I was still on an archipelago formed like molten pewter along a soldering joint, islands formed along the split between tectonic plates: here at Lake Tōya were two very dramatic, very active volcanoes. They rose up in hammerheads, they grumbled and complained and occasionally they coughed—deep, wet chest coughs. In 1977, Usuzan, the larger of the two, erupted, destroying a cable car and showering the lake, the valley, and the town with pyroclastic loam. The water went sludgy for weeks and volcanic mud washed up along the shore.
    The smaller of the two volcanoes, Shōwa-shinzan, first sputtered out of a farmer’s field back in 1943. The steaming, bubbling hole grew and grew, burning off the fields and forcing the people in the area to retreat. Today it stands at 402 meters. The lake itself is in a crater formed by a prehistoric volcanic eruption. Tōya was shrouded in mist the day I came through.
    “It is a cold country,” said Takayuki. “But the people are warm. I have two children, Mashiro and Sadoshi, and I am glad that they will grow up in Hokkaido. It is freer. Cleaner.”
    We went west into the highlands, where the fields lay fallow, spread out like squares of textiles: rough canvas, unironed cotton, thick felt. Farmhouses were set high on hillocks and in among groves of trees. Takayuki was in no particular hurry to get to Sapporo, and he drove me from farm to farm carefully pointing out which were the horses and which were the cows. “Cow,” he would say. “Cow. Cow. Horse.”
    Then, rising up from the flatlands was Mount Yōtei, the Northern Fuji. The peak disappeared into the overcast sky.
    “It’s beautiful,” I said, and Takayuki smiled with a certain misplaced pride. “The Northern Fuji,” he said, more to himself than to me.
    There are countless such “Fujis” across Japan, and I have seen easily half a dozen of them, so many in fact that I once referred, in jest, to Minamata City’s small hill, Nakaoyama, as “the Minamata Fuji.” I was taken aback when my friends took me seriously. “Yes,” said one. “The Minamata Fuji. I suppose it is.” Very little irony in Japan.
    Of the various Fujis I have seen, the only one which lived up to its name was the verdant, perfect cone of Mount Kaimon in southern Kagoshima. The peak of Mount Kaimon rises up, green against the sea, lush and perfectly symmetrical—and quite unlike the real Mount Fuji, which is in essence a large scrap pile of volcanic scree. The real Fuji, with the traffic clattering by and the disgrace of factories cluttered around her hem, is dreary Mount Fuji looks better the farther away you go. From a train, say, or even better, on a postcard. From an airplane, it is positively stunning. (Mind you, I may be biased. I slogged my way up Mount Fuji in a fog bank, and the view from the top was about the same as you’d get if you stuffed your head in a sack of flour.)
    We stopped for some of Mount Yōtei’s health-restoring waters, available in conveniently priced bottles marked “health-restoring water,” and Takayuki filled his tank with gasoline.
    I made a feeble I’ll-pay type of gesture (hands patting pockets as though searching for a wallet), but my offer was generously declined. And a good thing, too. In Japan, you might as well be filling your tank with cognac or fine perfume for the amount of money you are paying.
    We came down onto the central plains, and the city of Sapporo glowed gold in the distance.
     

9
     
    SAPPORO IS TOKYO North, a vast, glittering love affair in the heart of Hokkaido. Sapporo is where all roads lead. I arrived at dusk and checked into the Washington Hotel, into a room without a window, and then hit the streets. I was elated. A new night, a different city. It reminded me of an axiom that Jim