Hokkaido Highway Blues

car. And that was my whole sordid tale.
    The older officer leaned back in his chair, and for the first time he smiled at me. He seemed genuinely amused with my story. “You came out to the road because you saw us coming?”
    “That’s right.”
    “And when did you realize that we were in fact the police?”
    “When you turned on your flashing lights.”
    “You tried to hitch a ride with the Japanese police on a national expressway?”
    “Yes.”
    It was all he could do not to slap his desk and laugh out loud. His mouth twitched with suppressed laughter.
    “Ah, yes. Well—” He started to giggle and tried to stop himself. He wiped his eyes. “Well,” he said. “This time I—I’ll just give you a warning but don’t— don’t do it again, okay?“
    I thought back to when I crossed Japan from the Inland Sea to the Bridge of Heaven via expressways and considered confessing to that as well, but fortunately a few extra brain cells kicked in just about then and I kept my mouth shut.
    “Foreign Registration Card!” said Squeaky Voice.
    I didn’t have my passport but I did have the abovementioned FRC (a.k.a. the Gaijin Card). In Japan, foreign residents have to submit to being fingerprinted and registered and must carry their I.D. cards with them at all times. It stops just short of having our ears tagged. It is nothing short of bureaucratically entrenched racism, institutionalized xenophobia, etcetera, etcetera. But I kind of like my Gaijin Card. It makes me feel like an emigré in a spy movie, stopped at border patrols and mulled over by security men who eye you suspiciously and say things like, “Your papers are not in order,” in deep Slavic accents. Not that this has ever happened. This was the first time that any Japanese policemen had ever asked to see my card. I was delighted.
    The older officer typed out an arrest report and asked me to sign it. When I pulled out an inkan instead, he raised an eyebrow. The Japanese do not sign things. When they formalize agreements, cash checks, draw up contracts, or hand in office reports, they use inkans, little sticks with their names carved on one end. They use these to stamp their imprint on the paper in red ink. Some are made of cut stone, or even ivory, but most inkans are plain bamboo. I love my inkan. It makes me feel like a medieval lord, sealing letters with a signet. I wish I could get my inkan put onto a ring that I could press into red wax. It feels so aristocratic. Gentlemen, my personal seal!
    Many Westerners had their names put in simple phonetic kana, but mine was in genuine Chinese hieroglyphics and it drew a crowd. Officers came over and tried to decipher it. My inkan was designed by one of the clerks at my first high school, using symbols that roughly corresponded to the syllables in my name. I had my heart set on using Fugu-san (Mr. Blowfish) for “Ferguson,“ but my supervisor thought it undignified for a teacher. Instead, I ended up with an inkan that combines the initial kanji characters in Fu ji, A so (from Mount Aso, a volcano in Kumamoto ), ga (me), and son (village), making it Fuji-Aso-Me-Village, or Fu-a-ga-son. As the officers unraveled its meaning and made the connection to “Ferguson,“ they laughed approvingly and congratulated me. Then they remembered I was this dangerous, foreign-type criminal and they clammed up and returned to their desks.
    Old Tired Guy let me finish my cookie and tea and then he and his annoying partner drove me down the highway to the next exit. It was the first and I hope the last time that I have ever been in the back of a patrol car. They dropped me off on a secondary road and, with a pair of curt bows and one last ridiculous glare from prepubescent Patrolman Bone Head, I was once again a free man.
    And then it hit me, in a rush of pride, a thought so large I could not contain it: I had hitched a ride with the Japanese Highway Patrol! Possibly the first person in history to have pulled it off and gotten out alive.
    Consider the facts: I thumbed down a police car, they gave me some tea and we chatted for awhile, and then they drove me ten miles down the road in the direction I was going and said good-bye. If that wasn’t hitchhiking, what was? Had they thought about it, they would have dropped me off right back where I started, but they didn’t. In fact, they broke the law. They stopped for a hitchhiker. I win! I win!
    I was planning on using my copy of the arrest report in wastepaper basketball,