Hokkaido Highway Blues

countryside up along the Sakura-sanri highway, where the cherry blossoms blanketed the road. “I haven’t had time to attend a single hanami party,” he said, which I found odd until I realized that, as a self-employed businessman, he would be outside the company cocoon. It struck me as a sad price to pay.
    We passed through a cloudburst of petals and for one freefall moment it really did feel like I was surfing across Japan on a wave of flowers. “You have come at just the right time,” said Mr. Kato. “The sakura in the Matsuyama area come sooner than elsewhere in Shikoku, and today they are at their peak. There was a special bulletin on the news announcing this.”
    I loved that. A special bulletin for flowers.
    Mr. Kato, meanwhile, wanted to give credit to some of the lesser-noticed flowers we passed. “Do you see those roadside fields?” he asked. “Do you see the wildflowers? We call them nano-hana. They grow throughout this area. You know, I often stop to gather some for my wife.”
    I was touched by this, and I almost leaned over and gave him an “aw shucks” sort of punch on the shoulder, when he explained: “Those flowers are delicious. My wife fries them in oil. Wonderful.” He smiled and then, seeing a somewhat disturbed look on my face, hastily added. “Of course, we put salt on them before we eat them.”
    Of course.
    Mr. Kato was only going as far as Tōya City, but he had already passed it, skirting the southern edge. “I’ll take you through the next town,” he said, and on we drove, captives of momentum.
    Finally, east of Komatsu Town, he pulled into a highway rest center, one of those vast parking lots anchored by a restaurant. What followed was truly embarrassing. Mr. Kato, suddenly shy in a crowd, tried to arrange a ride for me against my repeated protests. We walked through the parking lot, past row after row of cars until he found one with Osaka license plates. (Although I wasn’t going to Osaka, it was in the direction I was headed.) He then approached a surly father and his burly son (Surly and Burly). The man muttered “no” without even looking up from his newspaper, and his son stared at us with thick lids and a bland bovine expression. Making elaborate, bowing apologies, Mr. Kato backed away and then, under his breath, muttered, “Osaka.” He next approached a startled older man coming out from the washroom, but as Mr. Kato explained the situation—“He has come all the way from America looking for a ride”—the old gentleman’s eyes filled with fear and I declined on his behalf.
    After lengthy negotiations between myself and Mr. Kato, and assurances on my part that I would call him if I got stranded (Matsuyama was only a two-hour round-trip drive away, he said, and he would gladly come and fetch me), Mr. Kato finally agreed to stop helping me. It was a very Japanese moment: one person coaxing and convincing another person not to take care of him.
    Mr. Kato had telephones to sell. I had strangers to waylay. So I took my pack from his car and said good-bye.
    “You’ll like Hokkaido,” he said. “I worked in Hokkaido one summer when I was a student.”
    “What about the people?”
    “Very friendly. You know what they say: cold weather, warm hearts.”
     

14
     
    A SERIES OF frustratingly short rides took me deep into urban clutter. The sun was scalding and the bone-rattling traffic that rumbled past sent fiberglass slivers through my nerves. Transport trucks screamed by like shrieking Luftwaffe dive bombers in tight formation. Not a cherry blossom in sight, save for the plastic flowers adorning a pachinko parlor across the highway.
    A pickup truck screeched to a stop and a well-rounded man in a sallow T-shirt waved me in frantically. It was as though he were in the middle of a bank heist. “C’mon! C’mon! Get in get in get in!” He was wearing a floppy cotton hat that somehow, over the course of time, had lost the usual attributes of shape, form, and color. His face was wild and slovenly, with a gray-stubble grizzle that was halfway to becoming a beard. I hesitated, then thought, what the hell, and leapt in. He pulled away before I had time to shut the door. The tires squealed as he swerved into traffic and then, immediately, pulled over. He ground his brakes to a halt and leapt out, leaving me—once again—alone in a truck with the keys in the ignition and the motor running. The truck stank of fish. There was fishing gear and oily paraphernalia