Hokkaido Highway Blues

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    And then it arrived: the Sakura Zensen, up from the south like a tidal wave. Trees came alive. The streets frothed with color and the tile rooftops of Kanazawa were buoyant, adrift on pink and white. The tsunami of spring, a typhoon of flowers. Suddenly Kanazawa didn’t seem so bad.
    Vignette: I am walking through Kanazawa’s ancient pleasure quarters when I see a geisha, wrapped in a silk kimono, just as she disappears through a doorway framed in cherry-blossom pink. A single-frame motion picture, a ukiyoe print—there, and gone.
    Geisha still exist in small elite numbers. They study art, music, conversation, and lovemaking. They are not prostitutes. Even the highest-class Monte Carlo callgirl would pale in poise and pride beside a Japanese geisha. Although many geisha are now aging dragons, the one I caught a glimpse of was as beautiful as porcelain. I wanted to follow her into that shadow world, through the gate, down the lane of cherry tress, to where her wealthy patrons awaited her arrival. But I didn’t feel quite like getting the shit kicked out of me just then, so I left my vision as it was, untouched and unspoiled. Geisha passing, early spring —another uncompleted haiku by Will Ferguson.
     

9
     
    I RETURNED TO Kenroku Gardens in the evening. Everything had changed. Crowds of revelers had staked out their trees. People were singing and laughing and tumbling together under overhangs of blossoms. I wandered among the celebrations, uplifted. “Come! Come!” Hands waved me toward their circle, if only as an honorary, temporary member. Men, faces pink, pranced about with neckties around their foreheads. Women egged them on, clapping hands in time and all but yelling, “Take it off! Take it all off!”
    Then, from out of the tumult, an English voice. “Excuse me please, are you from America?”
    It was an elfin man, a few years older than I, dressed in a corduroy jacket and a conspiratorial smile. He was wearing his necktie half undone, clearly the mark of a rebel. And so he proved to be.
    His name was Mr. Nakamura, thankfully not related to the one I had coerced into driving me to Kanazawa. Nakamura Two was an English teacher at a local high school, and he and the other teachers were having their annual Cherry Blossom Viewing Party.
    I was invited over to meet Mr. Nakamura’s circle of teachers, and I kept having these ambivalent flashbacks to my own tour of duty as a high-school teacher. Any minute I expected the kōchō sensei (like a principal, but with more power) to break into a long ponderous speech exhorting the students to be ambitious and international and so on. But Mr. Nakamura’s colleagues were a relaxed bunch, and they welcomed me under their tree without a single speech.
    “My name is Yoshihiro,” said Mr. Nakamura. “Please call me Yoshi. You are from Canada? I was there once, in my college days. I went by train through the Rocky Mountains. You know,” his voice dropped, “my dream is to ride a motorcycle across North America, to see the Grand Canyon, the open sky.”
    I liked Yoshi. He had a soft, almost soothing voice and he spoke as though he were confiding in me at all times, as though everything he said was a secret and I was his accomplice.
    He showed me a picture in his wallet. “This is my little girl, Ayané. She’s three years old. Very cute. And this is my beautiful wife.” He held the photo out for me to see. “I became a teacher by accident,” he said. “I wanted to marry my wife, but at that time I had no steady job and I was sleeping on the floor of different friends’ apartments. It was very fun at the time. I had only my motorcycle and a beard. Well, kind of a beard. My wife thought I looked like an adventurer, but her family was dubious. They wanted me to have a good job. In Japan, being a teacher is a very respected job and I enjoy English, so I became a teacher.“
    Yoshihiro was originally from Kumamoto City in Kyushu, and his wife was from the Amakusa Islands, where I used to live. It really is a small world; Yoshihiro had once taught English at Amakusa Nishi High School, where I, too, had worked. This common set of reference points created an instant and durable camaraderie.
    He tipped back his beer and, as I refilled it, he said, “My real dream was to be an animator. You know, for Japanese television. In Japan, this is a high-pressure job. My college friend drew animation for the television series Dragonbalt Z. Three times an ambulance had