Hokkaido Highway Blues

population had headed out on caravan, leaving signs creaking in the wind and televisions flickering behind curtained windows.
    This wasn’t a town, this was the Mary Celeste. For some reason, we were speaking in whispers.
    A jogger suddenly appeared and sprinted past, down the blue-dusk streets of Ishikari, knees chopping the air, arms keeping time like a metronome. On the back of his jacket, in sharp, stylized letters, was the message JAPAN OLYMPIC SKI TEAM.
    To my horror, Mr. Tawaraya drove up beside him, rolled down the window, and—as we crept slowly alongside—tried to speak to the man. “Excuse me, but my friend is looking for a room and I was wondering—”
    The jogger was immediately pissed off. “Don’t know,” he said as he tried desperately not to lose his rhythm.
    “Yes,” said Mr. Tawaraya. “But you see, we were—”
    “I don’t know,” said the exasperated young man—who did indeed look very Olympian, I must say
    “Well,” said Mr. Tawaraya, as we continued to drive slowly alongside him. “We thought maybe you lived in the area and—”
    “Sapporo,” said the man, breathing harder, jogging faster. “Came from Sapporo.”
    “You don’t say? You ran all the way from Sapporo, imagine that. Well, sorry to bother you. Please do your best.“ We accelerated away from him, but it was too late, the runner faltered and lost his stride. I looked back and saw him walking in a circle, hands on his hips, cursing.
    The incident reminded me, oddly enough, of my grandmother, a wonderful old dear who passed away during my first year in Japan. One of my strongest memories of her involves hitchhiking. I was fourteen years old and Grandma was taking me down to see a chiropractor in the town of Peace River. (I had buggered up my neck by catching an unannounced football with the back of my head.) You have to understand that this stretch of northern Canadian highway is nothing but trees, mosquitoes, muskeg, and moose. It is as wild as the Alaskan Highway, but with less traffic. As we drove down a steep hill, there, beside the road was a hitchhiker, a long-haired, headbanded young man with a guitar slung over his back. This in itself was not remarkable. The North is scattered with the remains of romantic cretins who think they can hitch north and live off the land. It is a one-sided romance, alas, because the North doesn’t exactly love them back with the same simpleminded sincerity. Those hippies who managed to survive usually left bitter and disappointed; there is nothing Rousseauin or utopian about the North.
    This young man waved his thumb, and to my utter and profound amazement, Grandma pulled over. Grandma never stopped for hitchhikers. Yet here she was signaling right and turning onto the side of the road—slowly. Grandma needed at least a quarter mile any time she wanted to come to a complete stop; she tended to eschew brakes and simply let air resistance and dwindling momentum do the trick. If there was the slightest downhill curve, you could be coasting for hours, if not days. For a teenager like myself, this was a painful thing to experience. One of my long-standing dreams was to attach a parachute-brake, like the kind they put on dragsters, to the back of Grandma’s ‘72 Ford Falcon. “Need to stop, Grandma? No problem.” Whoommp!
    Anyway, by the time Grandma did finally, slowly, creakingly come to a halt, the young hitchhiker was barely a dot in the distance. I looked back and saw him running toward us, overjoyed, his guitar bouncing on his back and his long blond hair flapping.
    “Wow, Grandma. You stopped for a hitchhiker.”
    “Well,” she said. “Normally I wouldn’t. But it is getting late and I don’t like to see a young lady out on the road after dark. It isn’t safe.”
    “Woman? That isn’t a woman.”
    “It isn’t?”
    “No, it’s a hippie.”
    “Oh, well. I didn’t realize.” And then—so help me God —she pulled away just as the hitchhiker, panting and grinning, arrived at the side of the car. He was reaching for the handle and we looked at each other as we slid apart. His smile stayed frozen on his face, but his eyes were filled with incomprehension. I gave him a sympathetic “Sorry, but what can I do?” sort of shrug as Grandma and I left him behind.
    In the distance we could see him screaming and shouting and flinging his jacket about and kicking up gravel and giving us the finger.
    “Look at that,” said Grandma with a tut. “It’s just as