Hokkaido Highway Blues

idea to verbally abuse the person who has rescued you. It might even be considered rude. To tell the truth, as soon as the adrenaline subsided, I was overcome with guilt.
    “Say,” I said, suddenly cheery, “it sure is rainy tonight.”
    The poor man eyed me fearfully as one might well eye a mood-swinging lunatic. I introduced myself, he did the same.
    “Shoichi Nakamura,” I repeated. “Swell name, that. It means ‘middle village,’ right? My name means ‘son of Fergus,’ but who Fergus was I couldn’t tell you. Somebody’s father, I suppose, ha ha, just a little joke there. It sure is rainy, isn’t it?”
    Shoichi nodded and smiled as though speared in the stomach. A few minutes later he turned on the radio.
    The familiar having failed me, I switched to ultra-polite Japanese. ‘And may I ask what you do for a living?”
    “I work for Nexus,” he said. “We make computers.”
    “You work for Nexus? No kidding? Me too!“ But he clearly did not believe me, and the conversation drowned in its own bad beginnings. We arrived in Kanazawa City, hours later, after enduring the sluggish ordeal of a traffic jam and a harrowing glimpse of a four-car wreck. It was almost midnight. By now my guilt had reached pathological levels and I was trying anything, even money, to convince him I wasn’t really such a bad person.
    “Let me give you something for gas,” I said, offering him roughly a hundred zillion dollars’ worth of yen.
    “No, no,” he said. “You are my guest. It is my”—and here his voice caught in his throat—“pleasure.”
    In a way, I envy Catholics. I’m not sure I understand the details, but from what I gather, if you’re Catholic you just go into a closet and mumble your sins to a priest, he gives you some punitive tongue-twisters, and all is forgiven. Then you go out and find some more sins to commit. It seems very circular and holistic. Protestants, however, are stuck with their guilt, forever, and if you happen to be Presbyterian , well forget it, you might as well just go shoot yourself.
    “Fukui is very beautiful,” I said, flip-flopping like a politician on a campaign trail. “Lovely prefecture.”
    “Yes,” he said, “but the people are not kind.” Ouch. Talk about twisting the blade.
    “Oh, that, I was just kidding. Listen, why don’t we go out for supper? I’ll treat.”
    “Thank you,” he said, “but I have to get back to Fukui City, my friends are waiting for me.”
    “Your friends are waiting for you?”
    “Yes, I was on my way to a good-bye party for one of my coworkers. He was transferred today.”
    “You mean, you weren’t on your way to Kanazawa?”
    “No, I was just going around the corner.”
    I began frantically rummaging in my wallet for more money. “Please. Here, for your troubles,“ I said, pressing fistfuls of cash at him, but it was no use. He wouldn’t accept any of it, and I just wanted to crawl under a petri dish and die like the piece of primordial slime I was. This wasn’t hitchhiking. This was bullying. I had browbeaten my way to Kanazawa and all my talk of Zen and the Art of Hitchhiking and traveling with the Japanese and not among them, came back at me with unusual clarity.
    “You are very kind,” I said. “Very kind. You are a kind man.” I repeated this like a mantra every few seconds until we arrived at Kanazawa Station.
    “Enjoy your stay in Kanazawa,” he said.
    Fat chance. “Listen,” I said, “give me your address and I’ll send you something, a present, some money, just to thank you.”
    “No,” he said. “That isn’t necessary.”
    You son of a bitch. “Well, thanks again for the ride. I really appreciate it.”
    And off he drove, leaving me with several large burdens, only one of which was my backpack.
     
    * * *
     
    Kanazawa Station was ringed with bright neon signs and massive, contemporary slabs of hotel. You know the kind; they have names like The Hyatt Royal Regent Davenport Imperial Overpriced Inn, and are lit up at night as though they were the Parthenon itself and not simply a large filing cabinet for humans. I wandered into one such hotel. It was decorated according to standard middle class notions of upper class décor: glass chandeliers, leather couches, paisley carpets, superfluous lamps, and lots of brass and mirrors.
    Like every hotel in Japan, it was ridiculously overstaffed. Entire fleets of doormen circled the lobby, searching desperately for something to do. They were trying to look