Hokkaido Highway Blues

true (non) identity? Should I let the Mayor of Ipponmatsu continue to believe he was sharing his car with a celebrity, or should I bare my soul and admit that I had gained a two-hour ride to Uwajima, with beverages and a scenic side trip included, all under false pretenses?
    I cleared my throat. “Before I sign this, I should tell you something. I’m not exactly a soccer player.”
    “You are one of the coaches?”
    “Not exactly.”
    “Oh. You are a manager then? Or a trainer?”
    “No. I’m a hitchhiker.”
    It was his turn to be confused. “A hitchhiker?”
    “I’ve come from Cape Sata and I’m going to Cape Sōya. I’ve never played organized soccer in my life, I’ve never been to your town, and I don’t know who the Grampus Eight are. But I’m sure they are a fine team and I am very happy for you.”
    “I see.”
    A horrible silence descended. I wished I was back at the Lost Intersection of Shikoku. A desert island, my dentist’s, Pittsburgh—anything would have been better than this.
    “Do you still want me to sign your notebook?”
    “No,” he said. “That won’t be necessary.” And for a moment I thought he was going to ask for his beer back.
    The ride into Uwajima was the longest of my life. Mr. Yamagawa dropped me off at the train station, which I took as a hint of sorts, and my profuse thank-yous and apologies didn’t seem to ease what was clearly a betrayal of sorts.
    “Good luck,” he said. “Please come to my town anytime.” But I don’t think he really meant it.
    The mystery remains. Who was I supposed to have been? Was there actually someone out there as stubby and out-of-shape as I, making a living at soccer? Or is it just that we Westerners all look the same? Honestly, my physique is about as athletic as Yogi the Bear’s. Although I prefer to think of myself as “big-boned,” especially around the waist, the Japanese have no compunction about calling me fat. “My, you sure are fat, aren’t you!” They come right out and say this to me, just like that. Once, when I was attempting to charm a hostess in a night club, she smiled at me during a lull in the conversation and said, seductively, “How did you ever get so fat?” It kind of spoiled the mood.
    If nothing else, that ride to Uwajima was the first and will probably be the only time in my life that I have been mistaken for a professional athlete. I just wish a beautiful woman and not a middle-aged mayor had made the mistake. Had a single female asked for my autograph, I would have signed it with a flourish and perhaps even thrown in some celebrity soccer anecdotes as well. Life can be so cruel.
     

3
     
    THE CREATION MYTH of Shintoism begins not with an apple, shamed nudity, and original sin. It begins with the drunken, fumbling incest of the god Izanagi and the goddess Izanami, a pair of siblings who brought the first humans into existence not from clay and rib bone, but in the good old-fashioned way: they got drunk and jumped in the sack. From this came several thousand children, most of whom became gods as well; but a select few became Japanese.
    As a folk religion, Shinto has a lusty enough history, replete with sex shrines, fertility rites, naked festivals, and rituals suspiciously similar to orgies. Most of that has since been cleaned up, alas, and only a few sex shrines remain. I choose the term carefully. To call them “fertility shrines” is too limiting; these shrines encompass all aspects of couplings, both human and supernatural. The sex shrines that have managed to survive various waves of puritanism in Japanese history have lost much of their original sensuality and are now treated more as titillating curiosities than as living religious sites. But they are not abandoned. Nothing historical is ever completely discarded in Japan, it is just added on to, like another layer of papier-mâché.
    At Taga Shrine in Uwajima, the main object of veneration—or envy, as the case may be—is an enormous battering ram of a phallus. This massive, veined wooden penis is more than mere wishful thinking on the part of the Japanese; it is a bona fide cultural icon. As in, “Hey, get a load of that cultural icon.”
    Demure Japanese women, dressed in Western fashions and carrying Chanel bags, come to Taga Shrine to pray before the phallus. They pray for easy childbirth and good health, and it isn’t in the least bit incongruous. Japan has a way of transcending incongruities. This easy eclecticism is one of