Hokkaido Highway Blues

to come to our dormitory because he overworked so much.” Yoshi laughed; overwork is somewhat endearing to the Japanese. “I love science fiction. Do you know Japanese animation?”
    “Sure, I think it’s great,” I lied.
    He brightened at this. “Really? How about Godzilla? Do you know Godzilla?”
    Do I know Godzilla? The conversation shifted into high gear. We exchanged monster tales with that same breathless excitement sports fans get when they discuss their favorite teams, agreeing incessantly and interrupting each other’s stories. “Mothra! Did you see the time—”
    “Yes, when Space Godzilla—”
    “Right, and Monster Mogira!” At one point we even sang the “Gamora Monster Theme Song” (“Gamora is friend to all the children”), for which we received a hearty round of applause from the other teachers.
    “What’s the deal with Gamora?” I wanted to know. ”A giant turtle that flies through the air by spinning like a Frisbee. Who could navigate like that? And after you land, you’d be too dizzy to fight.”
    On and on it went. I’ll spare you the details. Except one: did you know Godzilla can fly? It’s true. He fires a blast of energy from his mouth and projects himself backward through space, a method only slightly less stupid than Gamora’s. (Come to think of it, I’ve had morning breath that probably could have achieved the same effect.) Oh yes, one more detail I learned from Yoshi: the name Godzilla has no connection to the word God , that is simply a misrendering of it in English. In Japanese his name is Gojira, from the Japanese words for “whale” (kujira) and “gorilla” (gorilla), making him a Gorilla-Whale. Isn’t that just the most fascinating thing?
    “My wife scolds me,” Yoshi said. “She scolds me because I buy my daughter Godzilla toys. But Ayané-chan likes them. She sleeps with Meca-Godzilla just like it’s a teddy bear. I don’t know. Maybe I should get her some dolls.”
    “Stick with Godzilla,” I said. “How many dolls have saved the universe, beaten up Mothra, and knocked over Tokyo Tower? Godzilla makes a much better role model.”
    “You should meet my wife,” he said. “She speaks English better than I. She studied Arabic in university. That is how she learned English.”
    “She learned English by studying Arabic?”
    “At that time there was no Arabic-Japanese dictionary. First, she had to learn English. Then she translated everything from Arabic to English to Japanese.”
    “So why bother?”
    “It is a long story,” he said. “When she was young she saw Lawrence of Arabia. The film, do you know? It moved her very much. Her dream was to visit the Sahara some day, to see the pyramids, the Nile, and—how do you say it, like a temple, but Islam?”
    “Mosque?”
    “Yes, to see the mosques and caravans... It was her dream.”
    The past tense was revealing. “She never went?”
    “No,” he said, his voice as soft as a sigh. “She never went. Maybe someday.” Dreams. In Japan the word carries with it the nuance of illusion. To admit something is your dream is almost to admit that it is unattainable. Motorcycles across a continent. Housewives who dream of caravans. Outsiders who dream of stepping inside. Japan is filled with such dreams; dreams pervade it like the countless deities that inhabit every mountain, every rock, every island in every bay. They dwell in homes. Altars are built to hold them, they are appeased with small offerings, they are as intangible as mist, as unavoidable as air. Dreams deferred. One of the Japanese ideals is self-sacrifice, and the first thing sacrificed is usually one’s half-secret, intensely personal, unattainable dream. I remember a graffiti message on a temple wall, one of the first Japanese sentences I ever deciphered: Japan is a nation powered largely by sighs.
    Yoshi looked up at the blossoms above us. “We grow,” he said. “We grow and we compromise.” Then, after a pause, “I love my family. Japanese people are shy to admit such a thing. We think that if you say it, it loses some of its truth. But I don’t think so. I love my family, but someday I will drive across America in my motorcycle.”
    “And your wife?”
    “She will travel with caravans. Someday.”
    Someday. I used to think that in Japan “someday” meant “someday soon,” or “eventually,” but I was wrong. In Japan, someday does not exist in the future, it exists in an entirely different sphere of existence. It