Hokkaido Highway Blues

are on a highway, snakes get flattened by traffic and you have only to worry about the occasional head-on collision, which—although statistically more of a danger—is nowhere as frightening as the thought of a snake slithering up your pants leg. In most areas of Japan, it is the dreaded mamushi you have to watch out for. The other snakes—and there are lots of them—are not dangerous in the least, unless you count fear-induced coronaries. When I asked my fellow teachers how you can tell whether or not a snake is poisonous, they said, easy, just look for small brown circles the size and shape of five-yen coins. I thanked them for the tip and filed it away under “Utterly Useless Information.” If they think I am going to get close enough to a snake to be able to recognize pocket change, they have vastly underestimated the power of my phobia.
    With my heart still throbbing in my ears, I made my way back to the beach, and boy! wasn’t I glad to see the Professor and his wife, and boy! wasn’t I interested in what they were doing. “So what are you up to? Collecting monkey poop! Fascinating!” And I stuck to them like glue until the boat returned and took us back to shore.
    The Professor and his wife were staying at a hotel farther south, at Cape Toi. To my surprise, they invited me along, though how much of it was simply a sense of duty was hard to say. “You will like Cape Toi,” said his wife. “There is a nice view and a lighthouse, and there are wild horses there.”
    The wild horses of Cape Toi are free-ranging ponies that have grown so tame they eat out of your hand. I remembered Mr. Migita’s parting advice (“Make sure you see the horses of Hokkaido!”) and it struck me as odd that he found the domestic animals of Japan’s far north exotic, while in his own backyard there were semiferal ponies. I suppose it has to do with the way that familiarity breeds myopia; the people who live around Mount Fuji barely notice it anymore. Distance has its own allure—this is what draws the traveler, magnetlike, toward the horizon, and the very, fact that Hokkaido is at the other end of Japan from Kyushu must have captivated Mr. Migita.
    I had never been to Cape Toi, and I was tempted. Maybe pitch my tent on the grassy highlands. But no, it would have involved too much backtracking. Cape Toi was halfway to Kanoya, and I think Mr. Migita would have been disappointed if I had shown up at his door again, my journey having been one from Cape Sata and then back to Cape Sata. This is the problem with destinations, they take over. They preclude a good deal of serendipity. They override everything. Far from being some free-flowing vagabond-type traveler, I was in fact being very linear. My route sliced Japan down the center. It was almost a straight line. End to End. Cape to Cape. There was something very obsessive about it, but I didn’t have the courage to shake myself from my plans, and I said no to the Professor’s offer.
    They drove away, relieved to have disentangled themselves from being responsible for me, and I sat on the beach and watched the sky darken.
     

10
     
    DUSK FELL AS imperceptibly as dust. The fishermen slipped away, the small fading lights of their boats ineffably sad. As the land cooled, the sea winds began. A moon, half-full, took possession of the sky and, one by one, stars appeared, first Venus and then, slowly, scattered constellations. A single tall palm tree swayed sleepily on the wind like a servant’s fan.
    I didn’t bother with a tent. The sky was clear and I had noticed a small torii gate earlier, marking a path that would lead to a hilltop shrine that could serve as an impromptu shelter, should the rain begin to fall. I had shared a roof with the gods before, and they were always quite accommodating—too accommodating at times. Once, in an Okinawan cloudburst, I sought refuge under a small shrine only to discover that every mosquito, frog, centipede, and lizard within a ten-mile radius had a similar idea. It was a regular creepy-crawly jamboree under there. Surrounded by this annoyance of creatures, I took a long time getting to sleep. Then, just as I was drifting off, a thought occurred to me: I wonder if snakes mind the rain? And that was it. I spent the rest of the night in rigid, wide-awake terror, listening to every snap and rustle.
    Kojima’s beach, fortunately, was far from any viper-infested undergrowth, and I unrolled my sleeping bag without fear. The moon gave the