Hokkaido Highway Blues

stopped to look. “This is my favorite place in the park. That lantern is my favorite view. Do you see how it is? Half in the water and half out. When you look at it, what do you see?”
    I hate these kinds of questions. I always come off sounding stupid. ‘Ah, wabi-sabi?“ I guessed.
    She was kind enough to pretend I was kidding. “No, really, what do you see?”
    “Japan?” (Always a good second choice. Japan is a common theme in Japan.)
    “Yes,” said Chiemi. “That lantern is like Japan. Halfway between Asia. Halfway between the West. One foot in the past, one foot in the present. Now, does it look stable?”
    “No,” I said. “It looks like it might topple over any minute.”
    She nodded. “That lantern was built two hundred years ago. And it’s still standing.” A single cherry blossom fell into the water, lightly, in a ring of circles.
    Ayané picked up a pebble and showed it to us. We all agreed it was the most amazing thing, a pebble, and right here in the middle of a park. Who would have guessed it?
    Once Ayané had hurried off on another spontaneous but very serious scientific quest, I turned to Chiemi. “Tell me about Arabia,” I said. “What’s this I hear about you and Peter O’Toole?”
    She blushed, ever so slightly. “Yoshihiro said to you?”
    “Yup.”
    “That was a long time ago.”
    Chiemi loved Arabia from afar. She loved it because it was so different from Japan: arid where Japan was lush, nomadic where Japan was agricultural, dangerous where Japan was safe. Arabia was passionate; Japan, reserved. Arabia was united by Islamic monotheism. Japan was polytheistic. Arabia was stark, Japan was subdued.
    Chiemi knew the names and tribes of the Sahara, she knew which way to circle the pillar in Mecca, she knew the title of Mohammed’s wife, and the five creeds of Islam. She knew everything about it except how it tasted, how it smelled, what it felt like. It was an unfinished landscape because she had not entered it. Until she did, it would always be unfinished.
    I had been to Arabia only nominally: a two-hour stopover in Dubai, but this alone was enough to incite Chiemi.
    “What was it like?” she said. “Was it hot? Did they wear traditional dress?”
    “Well, I only saw the airport. Lots of people in Arabian dress, armed soldiers, flowery writing—can you read it?”
    She nodded. “What else?”
    I had such a paltry story to tell. “Some women in veils. Lots of Mercedes. That’s about it.”
    But it was enough; Chiemi smiled deeply to herself. Every story of Arabia seemed to corroborate its existence, proved it was real, separate from any dream. We walked on, trailing behind Ayané’s meandering route through the park. Ayané seemed inordinately interested in pebbles. She gets it from her mother.
    After the bentō lunch had been tidily consumed and the dishes just as tidily put away, and after the cherry blossoms had been dutifully admired, Chiemi turned to me and said, “Is Japan still exotic to you?”
    “It used to be.” I remembered the geisha disappearing. “There are moments still.”
    “How long will you stay?”
    “In Kanazawa?”
    “In Japan.”
    I laughed. “Until they kick me out.”
     

11
     
    THE GUIDEBOOK I was using spent less than a page on hitchhiking (about as much space as it dedicated to Japanese toilets), and the little that it had was wrong. The authors advised hitchhiking at the entrance ramps of freeways. Which I did. Which is how I got arrested.
    The only time I had ever had a run-in with the law was when I was fourteen and I spray-painted grad 79 slogans across a rival junior-high school—a Catholic school no less, which means serious time in Purgatory once this is over. Since then, I have been a scrupulously law-abiding citizen. I even turned down marijuana proffered at rock concerts, which not only got me labeled King Dweeb Forever, but also greatly reduced my enjoyment of the music presented (Das Vömit-Burger and the Highly Annoyed Power Tools).
    I have this vestigial respect for policemen; I tend to call them “sir” a lot and I almost never jaywalk unless it’s an emergency, or no one is watching. In Japan, I am even more respectful. Japanese police have frightening powers, no one having the courage to tell them that Japan’s feudal age has ended and that Japan is now a democracy (of sorts). When I was taken in for a genuine Japanese police interrogation I was quivering like a sack o’ cellulite and ready to confess to