Hokkaido Highway Blues

car was waiting for me at the bottom. I expected to be yelled at, and I deserved to be, but the man was more worried about my safety—if not my sanity.
    “Are you okay?” he asked.
    My rescuer’s name was Yukio Yanagida, and he was a snappy dresser: dark shades, red tie. His business card had an English translation, which read simply, “President.” I thought this was great. President.
    President Yukio was in his mid-forties, but he wore the years well. He had immaculately tousled hair and a face that creased in all the right ways when he smiled. He ran his own import-export shop and much about him exuded the flair of the entrepreneur. No salaryman, our Yukio.
    He was equally impressed with my own business card from Nexus Computers, though teaching English conversation didn’t seem quite on par with being President.
    Having exchanged cards and congratulated ourselves on not having killed me, we decided to tackle the expressway again. Yukio drove me around to the main, multilane on-ramp and, with the keys in the ignition and the car running, he said, “Wait here.” Then: “Oldies?”
    “Pardon?”
    “Oldies?” He popped a cassette into his deck and I found myself serenaded by a heart-rending rendition of “Puppy Love” as written and performed by fellow-Canadian Paul Anka. Yukio strode out, into the middle of traffic, and began flagging down vehicles. He would check their license plates as they approached, to make sure they were from the next prefecture—no point hitching a short hop—and then raise a hand in an almost imperious manner. As I watched Yukio, I took an immediate and deep liking to the man. He had swagger and confidence to spare, as though he had every right in the world to be stopping vehicles on a national expressway on my behalf. I may be reaching for hyperbole, but at moments like these I see flashes of that old samurai spirit, one of bluster and cocky self-assuredness.
    Meanwhile, the car stereo was oozing Golden Oldies, and it struck me again to wonder why it is the Japanese have such a deep affection for the song “Diana.” In Japan, “Diana” is inescapable. You hear it everywhere, from karaoke clubs to car radios. It is—and this has been scientifically proven—the most rhythmically annoying song in the history of the world. The first line alone contains what surely must be the most backhanded compliment ever given: “I’m so young and you’re so old ...” One of the only things that keeps me on track morally is the knowledge that, if I end up condemned to eternal damnation, the deejays in Hell will be playing “Diana” over and over and over again. That alone is enough to keep me on the straight and narrow.
    Fortunately, it took only “Puppy Love,”
    “Diana,” and half of “Put Your Head on My Shoulder” for Yukio to arrange a ride for me. Even then, the damage was done; the tunes had infected my brain like a virus and I spent the rest of the day humming Paul Anka songs to myself.
    The driver that Yukio had bullied into giving me a lift was a gangly young man in a company jacket and thick Coke-bottle glasses. He had a few postpubescent hairs sprouting from his chin and his lips were severely chapped. His name was Ryuo Wakabayashi and he was utterly confused about what was going on. Yukio had demanded to know where he was going and, as soon as Ryuo answered, he waved me out from hiding. (Yukio would have made an excellent highwayman. Stand and deliver!) Of all the people I met along the way, President Yukio was the one I wished I had spent more time with.
    The silence in the car after Yukio left and as Ryuo stared at me was vacuumesque. “Hi,“ I said.
    “Your friend?” asked Ryuo, pointing toward the spot by the road where Yukio’s car had once been.
    “Is that what he said?” I asked.
    Ryuo nodded. “Well, then,” I said. “I guess it’s true.”
    Ryuo quietly put his car into drive and pulled out onto the expressway.
     

15
     
    I PLANNED ON taking the expressway until we got to open country and then to get back on the secondary highways, but open country eluded us. We came into Kawanoe City and Kawanoe was one extended stretch of Ugly, crowded in between sea and mountain, and we sailed by, above and beyond.
    Ryuo had the brusque manners that innately shy people sometimes assume to cover their shyness. Still, he was genuinely pleased when I told him that, at age twenty, he was the youngest driver I had traveled with so far. He was from Osaka and