Front Page
News
Opinion
A & E
Features
Sex
Campus Maps
Archive
Staff
Contact
Scott McCulloch Ebbtide Distribution Manager It was an idea I had turned over in my head again and again. Was it possible to spend the summer traveling in Japan without blowing thousands of dollars I didn't have? Flipping through even the most budget-minded, shoestring guidebooks provided no consolation. My worst fears were confirmed in indelible ink by the hallowed travel writers of Lonely Planet; page after page of $200 train rides and $80 'budget' hotels.
Then it came to me. I would do something that was so frowned upon in my family that my mother never even told me not to do it when she was telling me all the other things I should never do. I would spend 2 months hitchhiking in Japan! I had heard that Japan had at least a few campgrounds, so if I could occasionally talk a driver into giving me a lift to one, I would save some yen that way, too. Perhaps, I could pitch my tent on private property if I asked the owner nicely? If bad came to worst, how uncomfortable could a Japanese jail be, anyway? I replaced some of my camping gear, listened to a few Japanese language tapes, assured sensitive family members that hitching abroad was much safer than they thought it was, (was it?) and bought my airline ticket. I arrived in Tokyo on July 28. Yoshihiro, a traveler I had met a few years before in Europe, told me I could crash at his 200 square ft. downtown apartment for as long as I wanted. When I told him about my plan, he smiled, shook his head, and told me it was the kind of thing that only a 'gaijin' would try. But would I have any luck? "I have no idea. Nobody does that here." After a week in the overcrowded, cacophonous, neon-lit capital of Japan, I caught a local train headed for Hokkaido.
Looking back now, I can't believe that I was concerned about getting ripped off in Japan. By the end of my trip, I would leave my pack unattended for hours in train stations without thinking twice. About 30 hours later, I collapsed onto the platform of Hakodate station on the southernmost tip of the northernmost island in Japan: Hokkaido. I would spend the next five weeks hitching to every corner of the North Island. My original concerns about the uncertainties and possible dangers of hitching turned out to be completely unwarranted. I ate better, slept better, and was taken care of better in those two months than I have ever been in my life. The Japanese show a tremendous amount of patience when dealing with 'gaijin' who don't know their way around the sometimes bewildering complexities of Japanese manners. My ignorance and resulting social faux pas never caused any serious offence... or at least none that I could detect! I also found that my lack of conversational Japanese, while many times certainly very frustrating, was actually a source of amusement. My fumblings provided a built-in time killer on long rides as we tried to communicate complex ideas in the few words we had in common. The diversity of the people that picked me up was amazing. I soon learned to leave my thumb out for every vehicle, no matter how unlikely it looked.
There is something about a foreigner standing by the side of the road that evokes much curiosity and, perhaps, some sympathy from the Japanese. I didn't have to wait long for rides. Sometimes after a drop-off, the next car would pick me up! Occasionally, I would end up waiting more than 30 minutes for a ride, and I would have to give some thought to tactics. This consisted of wearing something bright, smiling as much as my facial muscles would allow for extended periods of time, and trying to give each car a little bow as it went past. I would estimate that at least 50% of my lifts were people who circled back after passing me by, so giving every person a good impression was crucial. Naturally, hitchhiking necessitates a change in the way a person thinks about the purpose of traveling, as well as time and destination. As a hitcher, one truly is a secondary thought.
Luckily, that is impossible when hitching. There is a cliché about the trip being more important than the destination when traveling. Maybe that saying came about due to the burden of expectation, which can sap a destination of all possibility and romance. Hitching restores the mystery of both the trip and the destination. As far as money is concerned, I didn't spend the entire $2,000 I allotted myself for the trip. My eating and drinking expenses stayed at a minimum since every night brought me to a new campground, new neighbors, and a new lavish barbecue, to which I was inevitably invited, overstocked as they always were with freshly caught seafood, grilled rice balls, and buckets filled with Sapporo beer. Ah, the monotonous gluttony of the open road! Oh, and I never saw the inside of that jail. Perhaps next time I'll meet a cop at a barbecue who can give me a tour. © 2002 Shoreline Community College™ |
