Hokkaido Highway Blues

the edge of narrow bays, where the coast doubled back on itself and the shoreline rippled in folds along the sea. In the small city of Obama, even in the chill and mud, spring was slowly seeping in; brown was transmuting into green.
    “Obama is a little Kyoto,” said Ōishi. “There is history everywhere.” He took me to a few spots, showed me some historic markers and then—just when I thought he was about to say good-bye—he turned back onto the highway. “I’ll take you just a little farther down the road,” he said.
    Outside of Obama we passed a beautiful old farmhouse that was sinking into a slow, dignified decay, the thatched roof the color of altar dust. More farmhouses appeared, packed tightly together. The fields came right up to their front doors, and I wondered how it felt to be hemmed in like that, facing thick lush harvests, dusty autumn stubble, wet spring mud. I wondered how that affects your world view.
    They called this side of Honshu the “Back of Japan.“ It was the weatherbeaten face of Nippon. Old wood, old tiles, old dreams.
    Faint wisps of mist hung in the air. We were running one step ahead of the rain; behind us, clouds had begun to collapse. Caught in the momentum, Ōishi ended up driving me all the way to Tsuruga City, over an hour out of his way. The sky had been threatening rain the entire way, but once Ōishi dropped me off and drove back down the road, the darkness receded. Through the clouds shone a clean blue sky. Like Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Ōishi had brought the storm with him.
    Later, back in Minamata, one of the teachers I used to work with was disturbed by my meeting with Ōishi. “The children of the original Ōishi were killed by the Shōgun to prevent further vendettas. It was standard practice to wipe out your enemy’s entire family line. I don’t see how the man you met could have possibly been a direct descendent of the Ōishi. He was either pulling your leg—or he was a ghost.”
    “But I have his business card,” I said, brandishing it triumphantly. “How many ghosts carry these?”
    “In Japan,” the teacher assured me, “even ghosts carry business cards.”
     

6
     
    THEY DROVE BY twice to check me out. They were laughing each time, and I wasn’t in a good mood.
    Like so many pairs of friends, one was short and talkative and the other was big and good-natured. Ren and Stimpy. Timon and Pumba. “Hey, you! Where you going?“ It was the little one. He was calling from the passenger window of a white rent-a-car. I was across a very busy intersection from them.
    “North,” I said curtly. “I’m going north.”
    “North! North? Where north?” they were laughing it up at my expense.
    “Just north.”
    They had a quick huddle. “Okay,” they said. “You can come with us, but you have to help us meet girls.”
    Their names were Makoto (Mac) and Tomoyuki (Tom) and they were cruising the backroads of Japan. “We came all the way from Hokkaido,” said Mac, as I lifted my backpack into their trunk. “We’ve been driving the coast. We were going south, but we can take you north. We don’t care. We have no schedule. We’re free!”
    “Free,” echoed Tom, the bigger, quieter one.
    “Look at that!” said Mac, stepping back and pointing as though he had just now noticed it. “Hokkaido license plates! Take a picture. You can show it to your friends back in Kyushu. They’ll be amazed.” 4
    “Tunes,” said Li’l Mac as I climbed into the backseat. “What kind of tunes do you like?”
    They scanned the radio until they found something loud and cacophonous and then plied me with drinks and snacks until they had thoroughly won me over. Tsugaru City dissolved into rice paddies, wet and newly planted, and the rice paddies dissolved into mountains. Somewhere along the way we passed the Statue of Liberty holding a banana.
    Mac had been to America and his English was good, but idiosyncratic. “Florida was hot excellent. They had alligator crossing signs down on the highways. Crazy wild. And in Denver I show up and they have a stock car rally. It was just chance. Luck. I love cars. I drove in the States at one hundred kilometers an hour. Excellent.” He swept back his hair. It was parted down the middle and flipped up in pop idol waves that kept getting in the way whenever he turned his head.
    The road banked from turn to turn and each vista became more dramatic. But Mac and Tom didn’t want to talk about scenery, or even cars. They