Hokkaido Highway Blues

neighborhoods that date back to the days of the Tokugawa shoguns. And after Fukui City, the people of Kanazawa were down-right hospitable. The whole time I was in Kanazawa not a single person attempted to spit in my coffee.
    But where were the cherry blossoms? I saw a few scraggly flowers here and there, nothing to pen a haiku over. I went to Kenroku Gardens, across from the solitary castle gate, and searched for sakura but found none. The Cherry Blossom Front had not yet arrived. A somber-looking newsman pointed to a satellite map of Japan and explained that in Kanazawa the sakura were only at eight percent blossom, a full thirty-four percent less than last year. Or maybe it was the other way round. Anyway, he was very concerned about this and, to prove it, the television station showed an assortment of maps covered with contour lines and whorls and complicated grids, as if to say, “We paid a lot for these maps, so you’re damn well going see every one of them.”
    I tried very hard to like Kanazawa, but I was impatient. I kicked about for a couple of days. I ate at some wonderfully snooty restaurants where thin fish was arranged in papery’ designs and the waitresses moved about in a delicate kimono shuffle. These restaurants were the very antithesis of the red-lantern dives I usually frequent. In Kanazawa, the restaurants exuded a certain high-class ambience. They also cost an arm and a leg, but were worth every limb if you ask me. Anyway, I was getting a little tired of scuzzy joints and I enjoyed the chance to try some of Japan’s more unusual offerings. I even considered eating fugu, the poison puffer fish that can kill you if not prepared properly. Still, you never know when you’ll run into a Japanese fugu chef whose home was destroyed during the war, so I gave it a pass.
    I played, halfheartedly, at being a tourist. I read several pamphlets yet retained very little, other than the fact that Kanazawa was—and here I quote for accuracy—“old.” I wandered through a dozen temples strung out along the city’s many Temple Rows, where I took heaps of confusing slides that my family and friends have come to hate with a passion. (“This is Daimon Temple. It was—wait, no. This is Jomon Temple and it was built—wait a sec, sorry, this one is Daimon, the slides before were of Jomon—shall I go back?” Family members: “No! No!”)
    One did stand out: the infamous Ninja Temple, built in 1659 or 1643 depending on which guidebook was consulted. What a great place: A labyrinth of narrow corridors and sudden large rooms with unusually high ceilings (the better to do chanbara in), it was riddled with secret tunnels and hidden passageways. It even had a creepy suicide-room with, appropriately enough, no exit.
    By now I had checked off most of the sites in the guidebooks, except of course the museums. Kanazawa is infested with them, all with heavy, yawn-inducing names: the Prefectural Museum of Traditional Culture, the Cultural Museum of Prefectural History, the Traditional Museum of Cultural Crafts, the Craft Museum of Historical History.... I’m proud to say I didn’t go to a single one. I have a theory about museums: they suck. People say they like museums, but they are lying. What they are really thinking about is, What’s for dinner? and When will this be over? You don’t enjoy a museum, you lump it, like cough medicine or opera. The only compliment I will accept about a museum, and only a particularly good museum, is that it is not as boring as most.
    I stopped going on field trips when I was twelve, and now that I’m a grown-up I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to. I don’t have to eat Brussels sprouts, study algebra, dance for Grandma, or raise my hand when I have to pee. And I sure as heck don’t have to go to museums. You can say what you want about my lack of culture, but stick with me and I can guarantee you, I won’t drag you through any museum that doesn’t feature giant stone vaginas. How many can promise you that?
    Not that I wasn’t dying for some diversion. After endless, interchangeable days that featured me keeping myself company by not going to museums, I was getting a little stir crazy I was bored. I was restless. I began asking strangers if they wanted to practice speaking English with me. I started sitting up at the front of the bus and talking to the driver. I even considered opening my Japanese language books; that’s how desperate I was for something to