Hokkaido Highway Blues: Hitchhiking Japan

For three years after making his rash statement - that he would hitch-hike the length of Japan, from Cape Sata to Cape Soya - it hung over him, a burden. Will Ferguson had been at a Faculty Cherry Blossom Viewing party, and was at the time burdened by too much saki, but was embracing the Japanese obsession with Sakura, or cherry blossom. Annually the blooming of the cherry trees sweeps up the country from south to north, and Ferguson decided to make a pilgrimage of it, travelling with the blossom front as it made it way north, travelling the back-roads, thumbing his way.

And so he bit the bullet, and prepared for his journey. Having taught English for five years he had grasped the basics of Japanese - well enough to be able to communicate:

I speak Japanese the way a bear dances. It's not that the bear dances well that impresses people, it's the fact the bear dances at all.

“Cow sex,” said Tomio, his eyes shining with glee. [...]“Are you a doctor?” I asked. “An animal doctor?”“Oh, no.” He brushed this aside with a show of modesty.“But you help animals have babies?”“Yes, Yes. Cows. Sex. Babies.”He was an artificial inseminator. “My cows,” he said, pointing to one herd, and then another. I almost wept for joy. “Do you have any children of your own?” I asked.“Oh, yes. I have three.”“And you, Ah, had them naturally?He laughed uproariously over this. “Of course, of course.”

gaijan

“Are you dangerous?”“What?”“I said, Are you dangerous?”I wasn't sure I heard her correctly. “Who? me? No, I'm not dangerous at all.”“You promise?”“Sure.”“All right, then,” she said. “You can get in.”And that was how I met the unsinkable, irrepressible, wholly undeniable Kikumi Otsugi, a woman who believed in bad men, but not bad dishonest men. I had given her my word of honor that I would not harm her, and she was satisfied.”