The Best Travel Writing 2011 - James O'Reilly [43]
While on break from my studies, I had decided to hit the road, hitchhiking solo across the country to mix with the Japanese. But it was slow going, as rides were scarce, some cars stopping only to take pictures of the funny foreigner on the highway.
The prior night, I hitchhiked as far as the Okayama train station, hoping to sleep in the terminal to stay out of the rain. But an insular gang of homeless Japanese men kicked me from my space next to the pornography vending machine. The only other dry, unoccupied spot I could find was a phone booth.
I worried about my reception in Hiroshima. I planned to visit the ruins of the nuclear blast, to experience how the city had been reborn in the generations after the war. But I wasn’t sure if the natives were friendly. I hoped my pathos would be my protection. Perhaps a skinny, soggy, solo nineteen-year-old would pose no lingering threat to the locals.
After a full day waiting by the roadside, I met a trucker who drove me the rest of the way to Hiroshima station. I exited the truck into growing darkness. The neon signs above dingy alleyway storefronts gave the derelicts and street vendors an ominous red glow. They alternately stared at me and ignored my presence. It was time to look for lodging, and I knew the station held no hope for me.
My guidebook mentioned a youth hostel in the hills above town. I cut through alleyways, empty noodle stalls, and gravel parks, but the twisting dead ending, unsigned roads kept bringing me back to the station. Already 10 P.M., with no sign of the hostel, my back twinged at the thought of another night in a phone booth. I shivered in my still damp clothes, scanning trees for rain cover.
I stopped in a convenience store to buy a candy bar for dinner and vainly asked for directions. Exiting the shop, I nearly collided with a thick elderly woman carrying a heavy sack. She turned her head up to stare directly into my face, her punch-permed hair jiggling as she looked me up and down. With her large cloth bag, flowered smock, and solid posture, she looked like the Japanese wife of Santa Claus.
“You!” she barked in English, “You! Where you go?” She leaned forward, head practically touching my chest, eyes squinting, lips pursed.
“I go Youth Hostel. Yoooos Hostelu,” I added, trying the Japanese pronunciation of the English word.
“No Yoos Hostelu. No!” She crossed her arms to make an “X” shape, like a basketball referee signaling a flagrant foul.
I wasn’t sure if this meant I shouldn’t go there, or I couldn’t go there. Did it exist at all, or was I just hopelessly lost?
“Yoos Hostel full! All full! No room!” She took a step back and put her hands on her hips, daring me to contradict her. My face must have dropped, realizing my plight.
“You stay my house! House!” She shouted, laughing and slapping her thigh at this apparent witticism. “You! Wait! Here!” She pointed at a spot underneath a street light. “Car come. You wait.” She picked up her sack and walked away, looking back once to make sure I had obeyed orders.
About ten minutes later, a rusting brown Toyota compact car rolled to a stop in front of me. The head of a wizened old man barely poked above the dashboard. When he saw me, he smiled and began nodding vigorously, waving his bony hand downwards to indicate I should come.
“House?” he asked me.
“Um, yes, house.”
He cackled with glee, repeating “house,” his head bowing so deep with laughter that I could no longer see it through the window. He popped up to say, “Yes, yes, you come house. Very good. We are friends. Friends!” He thrust his thin hand toward me, causing me to self-consciously flinch, imagining a karate attack from an ancient master. I sheepishly shook his offered hand, and hopped in the car.
We drove to a trash-strewn gravel parking lot behind a two-story concrete bunker of an apartment complex. It looked like a parking garage invaded