Hokkaido Highway Blues

creatures of folklore in Japan: raccoon-dogs with huge bellies and gigantic testicles who roam the forests drinking saké and trying to seduce young maidens by passing themselves off as noblemen.
    The boys laughed and laughed, the daughter giggled behind her hand, and Mr. Migita eyed me warily from the rearview mirror. Hidenori then asked me with grave sincerity, ‘Are you really a tanuki?“ His older brother biffed him one on the head. “You idiot, of course he’s not a tanuki! He’s an American.” And everyone laughed some more, as the little guy rubbed his head and grinned sheepishly.
    “Do you know how tanuki make music?” I asked them.
    “Sure!” they yelled. “They use their stomachs like a drum!” Hidenori then proceed to show me how by punching himself repeatedly in the stomach. “Very good,” I said, but he kept on going.
    “Ah, that’s fine,” I said. “You can stop anytime.” He continued pummeling himself in the stomach even as his eyes watered. “Come on,” I said, and then, slipping into English, “I get the picture, kid. ”
    His eyes widened with an audible boing. “English! You speak English! Say something, say something in English.”
    “Wayne Newton is the Antichrist.”
    “Wow! What does that mean?”
    “It’s a poem. Kind of a haiku.”
    When we reached the coastal highway, Mr. Migita pulled over and told me to wait in the car. (You could tell he was a real Papa; he talked to me the same way he addressed his five-year-old.) He made a call from a pay phone and when he returned he said, “I told my wife we’d be late. We’re going to Sata.”
    The kids cheered and the three of us in the back did the Wave. Mr. Migita then told his daughter to change seats and he moved me up front. I had been promoted.
    The highway twisted from one hairpin to another and there I was, sitting right up front like a big person. I swung my feet and watched the palm trees and villages spin by. There are no roads in Sata, just corners joined together. The corners kept coming and coming, and I began to get queasy. I could feel my stomach percolating—never a pleasant sensation—and soon I was threatening to erupt, volcanolike, across Mr. Migita’s dashboard. Even in my stupor I realized that throwing up on your host was a bad way to start a relationship, and I fought hard to keep my lunch (pork and rice with a raw egg) from making an unexpected encore. We came to the parking lot just in time, and I bolted from the car and bent over, gulping down fresh air and trying not to faint. The littlest boy came up and punched me in the stomach. “You’re not a tanuki!” he said.
    “I’ll kill you, you little shit.”
    “Hey,” he called to his dad, “he’s talking poetry again!”
    When my inner ear had stopped spinning like a gyroscope and my stomach had ceased its amusing Spasm Dance, I joined the others at the tunnel. Mr. Migita had paid my entrance fee and there was no way I could talk him out of it.
    “You are my guest,“ he said.
    No, I am a freeloader hitching a ride. “Thank you,” I said, as I accepted his generosity.
    I did manage to decline the squid, however, even though Migita’s daughter offered me her last tentacle. Standing at the top of the observation deck overlooking Cape Sata, I told her and her brothers about the mythical, faraway land of Ka-Na-Da, where children didn’t have to go to school on Saturday or wear uniforms or even actually learn anything, and they sighed with understandable envy.
    “Do you have a gun?” the youngest asked, and his older brother, Toshiya, immediately chimed in, “Yes, did you ever shoot anybody?”
    “No,” I said. “Only evil Americans shoot people. In Ka-Na-Da everyone lives in peace and harmony.”
    It sure is great being a Canadian. You get to share the material benefits of living next door to the United States, yet at the same time you get to act smug and haughty and morally superior. You just can’t beat that kind of irresponsibility.
    “Tell us more about Ka-Na-Da,” said the children, and I obliged.
    It was almost dusk when we left Sata. The sun was throwing long shadows across the road, and Mr. Migita had decided that I should come back to Kanoya City and have supper with him and his family. He pulled over to stock up on beer, and while he was gone his daughter leaned up and whispered in my ear, in English so soft I almost missed it, “My name is Kayoko. I am fine. And you?”
    She then leaned back in her seat,