Hokkaido Highway Blues

Drawbell, a friend of the family, used to live by: If you are in an interesting area, in a place you have never been before, and you have twenty bucks in your pocket—you own the world.
    Night is good to Sapporo. The glass buildings shimmer, the crowds flutter past, and neon spills out in pools of light. The city has 1.7 million people in it, yet it doesn’t feel crowded in the least. The streets are wide and straight; the addresses are logical—a rarity in Japan—and the main boulevard evokes images of Buenos Aires, Dallas, Houston, Calgary. Anywhere but here.
    There is a reason for this. The city was laid out by an American architect. Sapporo is as American as Hakodate is Russian; there are touches everywhere, from the spacious layout to the height of the buildings, from the gaudy Pachinko USA to the splashy Hollywood Shop (“USA Movie Character Goods”), from the glass and steel to the kids with Stars ‘n’ Stripes tote bags.
    Which makes it odd, yet inevitable, that Sapporo’s most highly touted symbol would be a small clocktower, tucked in behind modern structures. It is the city’s only surviving example of Russian architecture. I walked out to see this landmark, was suitably underwhelmed, and then retraced my steps back to the city’s nefarious Susukino District.
    Susukino is one of Japan’s largest, liveliest nightlife zones. A mix of family entertainment, teenage game centers, rowdy pubs, overpriced discos, and sanitized brothels, it is all things to all people. I couldn’t afford another night on the town—either financially or physically—but I could wander at will and marvel once again at the vitality of the Japanese urban night. And with my senses still humming, I returned to the windowless rooms of my hotel.
    That night, I dreamt about the Buddha.
    He was standing beside the highway and he was holding up a sign. It read: Hello, everybody. I am the Buddha. Please don’t kill me. Then, just when I reached him, he drove off in a small Toyota car.
    There is a Zen saying: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” This is why I gave up on Zen. It was simply too provocative a statement, one that seemed painfully contrived, like answering the question “What is the Buddha?” with the answer “Dried dung.” (An actual exchange between Zen monks.)
    If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. Reams of commentary have been written about this statement, much of it of the esoteric angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin variety. Endless interpretations are possible. Semantics are dissected. Debates are waged. It is argued that the Buddha is not a real person but a state of mind, a catalyst to Enlightenment. If you think you have met the Buddha, you haven’t. The Buddha you can see is not the real Buddha; it is an illusion. Destroy it. Other interpretations have been less esoteric: It is the Buddha you meet on the road, and he must be killed. Why? Because you have to move beyond the realm of opposites, beyond Thou and I, beyond subject and object. Beyond even the Buddha.
    One thing that has always puzzled me about Zen, and indeed, most Eastern paths to enlightenment, is that they always end up back where they started. The boy searches for his ox. He finds it. The world dissolves... and then he returns to the market, to the everyday. If Zen Buddhism is about the everyday, why depart in the first place? Why not simply enjoy the flow of characters who enter and depart, the moments that come and go.
    If life is an illusion, maybe the illusion is not all that bad. Maybe the illusion is life. Maybe the solution is not breaking through, but pulling back, learning to embrace the illusion, learning to accept the transient world around us, learning to live among mirages. If that is the case, then Zen is a complete waste of time.
    If you meet the Buddha on the road, do not kill him. Hold out your thumb. Who knows, he might just offer you a ride.
     

10
     
    SAPPORO CONSIDERS ITSELF one of the “Three Great Brewery Cities in the World,” the other two being Milwaukee and Munich. You know it’s true because the Hokkaido Tourist Board said so, and why would they lie?
    Central Japan may be the land of saké, and southern Japan the land of shōchū, but in the heart of Hokkaido it is beer that reigns supreme. The Sapporo Brewery, established in 1876, is the oldest in Japan. They produce a light blond lager that sparkles in the mouth and reconfirms my belief in God. Even better, the brewery gives free samples