In a sake and sakura fueled euphoria, former ALT, Will Ferguson, swore to his coworkers that he would one day hitchhike the entirety of Japan in pursuit of the cherry blossoms.  Unfortunately, everyone around him remembered this unwise oath and reminded him about it for three years until he finally decided to do it.  He wrote his memoirs of the trip in Hitching Rides With Buddha.

Will Ferguson was determined to hitchhike from Cape Sata, Kyushu, to Cape Soya,, Hokkaido, following the blossom season north. He would be mirroring the path of his hero, the hiker Alan Booth, author of Roads to Sata.  It proved to be a more difficult, lengthy, and expensive journey than he ever imagined.

Some of his travel tales are inherent to traveling anywhere, getting lost, getting arrested, marooned by poor weather, ineffable loneliness, fleeting friends and enemies, an unnatural fears of snakes; but much of it is distinctly Japan.  Where else is the traditional greeting for a Gaijin-san something so nearly as annoying as “Harro! Zis is a ben!”? Ferguson gets sucked into enkais of drunk salary men he had nothing to do with, and cannot escape.  He encounters a ghost with a business card. He tries the Japanese national pastime of reading standing up with a magazine teaching English pornographic phrases of questionable utility.

By hitchhiking he sees strangely intimate snippets of people’s lives.  He rides with a konyaku farmer and a pachinko company man.  Occasionally, families invite him into their homes.  He hears the nightmarish confessions of a Japanese POW and fawns over his little Godzilla loving granddaughter.

I do not known if this book would be so delightful to someone who has not lived in Japan.  Actually, it seems like a bunch of inside jokes for gaijin most of the time.  At the very least, Will Ferguson’s book is just so easy to sympathize with as a resident gaijin.  His introspective interpretations of his experience provide insight into the joys and frustrations of a foreigner.  He is alternately welcomed with smiles and insulted with aggression as he makes his way up the country.  One moment someone compliments his Japanese and tells him how much he understands Japan and the next moment someone is telling him how inferior he is because he is not Japanese.  He knows the outsider is always an outsider and no outsider can ever understand the hypocrisy of Japan.

Will Ferguson set out to follow the cherry blossoms, but they cannot keep up with him.  He is pulled along by the unstoppable momentum of the traveler, to the end of Japan, even past Hokkaido.  He is in a race with his money and his vacation days.  In the end, his journey sees less cherry blossoms and more strange towns and strange people.