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Hitchhiking in Japan

On my second trip to Japan, I was only stopping over for three weeks on my way to Taiwan. Since my plane ticket to Taipei already had a stopover in Tokyo included, and since I was told by my travel agent that I could break up the flight so that I could stay in Japan as long as I wanted, I decided a quick visit to Fukuoka to see my homestay family would be nice. The only problem is that I didn't really have the money to take the trains or a plane to Fukuoka and back, so I decided my only choice was to hitchhike. Unfortunately, I left the US 6 hours after I finished my final exams for the spring semester here at school, and I hadn't slept for two days because I procrastinated too long on getting all my final work finished. I figured this would be great because it would allow me to sleep on the airplane and avoid serious jetlag after arriving in Japan. This didn't happen, however, as I had some really obnoxious fellow sitting beside me and I just couldn't get comfortable in my seat. I had never hitchhiked before, but I was determined to try it despite how tired I was upon arriving at Narita airport in Tokyo. I went to the travel information desk and asked the best way to get a ride onto the main cross-country highway, which is pretty much the only place possible to hitchhike in Japan. They told me to go ask people in the parking garage who were leaving, since most of them would naturally be driving into Tokyo. I went and asked around a bit, but I was so tired that I quickly gave up and realized it would be worth the money at that point to just take a plane to Fukuoka. However, I promised myself that if I took the plane there, I absolutely, positively had to hitchhike back to Tokyo.

So I went to Fukuoka and spent almost three weeks hanging out with old friends and my homestay family, then a few days before my plane was to leave for Taipei I began my first ever hitchhiking adventure. I really didn't know what I was doing, and none of my Japanese friends could give me suggestions because they had never tried it before. In fact, hitchhiking is almost unheard of in Japan, and on the rare chance you do spot someone doing it over there, it's most likely to be a foreigner. I knew the basic method, which simply requires that you get onto the main highway and get rides from one rest area to another, eventually making your way to your destination, or as close as the main highway will take you. However, the cross-country highway in Japan isn't like those in the States where there are entrance and exit ramps connected to a feeder road all along the highway. The main cross-country highway in Japan doesn't have a feeder road, and since it is a toll road (with tolls costing an immense amount of money), exits and entrances come along only every 15 miles or so. This makes getting onto the highway the only hard part about hitchhiking in Japan. Since people traveling long distances don't want to have to exit, pay extra tolls, and drive several miles to the nearest town every time they need gas, food, or a toilet break, there are "parking areas" with food shops, restrooms, and gas stations all along the way. These rest areas are essential to the hitchhiker, as they provide a place to switch from one ride to the next. So the basic rule is to wait at the exit of the parking area and as cars leave to get back on the highway you stick out your thumb (or do anything else to somehow let them know you need a ride, since the thumb thing isn't completely universal just yet).

My first attempt So I set on my way, lugging along my backpack, large Adidas bag, and my laptop case. I was fortunate enough to have a friend willing to take me to the first rest area outside Fukuoka to get me started, as it would have been very difficult to get on the highway otherwise. I originally made a sign with Tokyo written in Japanese on one side, and Osaka written on the other side. I stood at the exit for about an hour holding this sign up, but everyone looked at me as they drove out, nodding their heads as they passed me by. It took me a while to realize this wasn't because they didn't want to give me a ride (well, I'm sure there were plenty of those people too), but because they figured I wanted a ride all the way to Tokyo or Osaka and they weren't going that far. So I abandoned the sign idea and just held out my trusty ol' thumb. Within 5 minutes I had my first ride, and the journey was underway. I only got as far as southern Kitakyushu on this first ride, which was about 3 rest areas up from where I started, Still trying but I figured that would probably be how I would have to make the entire trip. Besides, I figured it would be more exciting going a few stops at a time and getting to meet more people than riding with the same people the entire way, which would certainly get boring after you run out of things to say. My second ride was with some wild teenager from Fukuoka with long, bleached hair and a car smaller than my Ford Festiva. He was quite talkative and seemed pretty nice, but we didn't talk very long because he only took me as far as the rest stop right before the bridge that passes from the island of Kyushu over to the main island, Honshu. Here I took a beautiful picture of the bridge and the strait that separates the two islands. Next I got a ride with a nice couple in their 50s Frustrated who were on their way home to Yamaguchi prefecture after a day of mountain climbing in Kyushu. They were very pleasant to speak with, and for the hour or two I was in their car we never ran out of things to talk about. They dropped me off right before their exit to get home, and there a young businessman gave me a ride into Hiroshima prefecture. He let me out about 30 miles before the city of Hiroshima, and almost immediately after he left, an older couple in a nice Toyota stopped and rolled down their window, a look of concern on their face. I asked my usual question "How far are you going?" in Japanese, and for some reason they were shocked to discover that I could speak Japanese. They agreed to give me a ride to the other side of Hiroshima, and after getting in and talking to them a bit I discovered Using the trusty ol' thumb they had stopped because they thought something bad had happened and I needed help. The reason they looked so worried when they pulled up was that they thought I wouldn't be able to speak Japanese and they didn't know much English. Also, they had a son my age, and they figured they would want someone to help him if he were in a similar situation. They couldn't believe it when I told them I was hitchhiking for fun and to save money for my trip to Taiwan. They were incredibly nice to me, and when I got out of the car they helped me with my bags and the wife handed me ¥3000, the equivalent of US$30. I refused to take it, explaining I had sufficient funds for my trip. She insisted several times, and finally I had no choice but to accept. I felt bad, but I had been perfectly clear about why I was hitchhiking and how I didn't need any money and they still decided to give me the money. I think I just reminded her a lot of her own son, and she really wanted to make sure I was going to be okay. The money did come in handy, as I arrived in Tokyo one day earlier than I was expecting and needed the money for an extra night in the hostel where I stayed.

A typical rest stop The place this couple let me out was a bit smaller than the other stops I had switched rides at, and for about 30 minutes nobody would stop for me. There were an unusually large number of freight trucks coming through this rest stop, and I figured they would have been great rides because they would be traveling long distances and probably be able to take me further than just a few rest stops. However, up to that point not a single trucker had given me a ride, and none of them at this truck stop wanted to give me a ride either. Finally, one of the trucks pulled up next to me and opened the door. I stepped up into the cab to find a guy who couldn't have been more than 8 years older than me. View from a rest stop I asked how far he was going, and he told me Okayama, which was in the next prefecture and quite a good way down the road. He looked eager to have a riding companion, as he was alone, and so I grabbed my bags and jumped in the truck. We had plenty to talk about, and the guy seemed pretty cool. We talked about America and how we both thought certain aspects of American society were stupid and how the way young Japanese worshiped these aspects were even stupider. Along the way he told me he was only making a half-hour stop in Okayama to unload some stuff and then he had to continue on to Kobe, the city destroyed by the Hanshin earthquake back in 1994. He offered to take me all the way to Kobe with him if I didn't mind waiting while he unloaded his truck, and since I found him to be quite conversational, and since Kobe was the halfway point of my trip, I gladly accepted.

A nice bridge I learned all about truckers in Japan from this guy. Evidently, if you work for the right company, you can make pretty good money driving a truck over there. He claimed to be doing very well financially, even though that meant he had to drive back and forth between Hiroshima and Kobe six days a week! He only slept about 5 hours a night, and to keep from falling asleep while driving, he only ate very small meals. I asked if the money was worth it, considering he had to work such rough hours and had to be alone most of the day, but he claimed it wasn't so bad. It turned out he was trying to make enough money by the time he was 30 to take over some sort of family business, but he really didn't give too many details about it. The Kyushu Strait He had a big interest in the Phillipines, where he had been on vacation several times and pretty much worked for his lodging. I had such a good time talking to this guy that we arrived in Kobe before I knew it. I reluctantly said goodbye and headed into the rest stop restaurant for some yummy curry. By the time I finished eating, it was almost midnight and I was really afraid I might not be able to get a ride out of there at that time and end up having to sleep on a bench there. I went outside and sat down in front of a small statue for a few minutes, watching some Japanese kid a bit younger than me walking up to people and asking for something. I wondered what he was up to, as I didn't expect to find any Japanese hitchhikers on my trip. I approached him and asked what he was up to, and sure enough he was hitchhiking also. He was 18 years old and appeared nice enough to me, and since we were both going to Tokyo we agreed to try and find a ride together. His technique wasn't to wait at the exit; rather, he ran up to a truck or large vehicle as soon as they parked and asked them for a ride. I felt awkward doing this, but as my chances of getting a ride at the exit weren't looking too good, I followed his lead. Fifteen minutes later he came back and told me he found a ride, but the guy was only going to let one person in the vehicle with him, so we split up.

The Kyushu Strait I was a little upset that I had competition now, especially since not too many people come through the rest stops that late at night anyway, and I was really worried that I would have to wait there until morning. Still, I went ahead and dragged my bags over to the exit area and stood in front of the gas station, putting on my saddest, most helpless face on the rare occasion a car actually passed by. An hour passed, and I was about ready to just drag my bags back over to the bench by the statue and call it a night. However, a women in her 40s driving all alone pulled up behind me in the gas station. I guess she watched my attempts to lure passing cars to my aid and felt sorry for me, because as she was pulling out she rolled down her window and waited for me to run over there. I asked how far she was going, and to my surprise she said Tokyo. I then obviously asked for a ride, and much to my surprise she said yes. I jumped up and down a few times and did my best to calm down before I scared her away. I just couldn't believe that a woman traveling alone would stop and let a complete stranger get in the car with her, much less a foreigner. I realize the Japanese are kind of naive about crime because it's almost nonexistent in Japan, but I just figured she was being a bit too ridiculous. Not that I was upset with her for stopping. She actually saved me a night sleeping outside on a hard bench with my backpack as a pillow.

The woman was quite entertaining and definitely wasn't your typical Japanese. She was a bit homely and seemed rather independent, two characteristics that had evidently kept her from finding a Japanese husband up to that point in her life. She had spent the past 10 or so years of her life working for a computer company in Hiroshima and making pretty good money, but was tired of the hectic lifestyle and wanted to do her own thing. Her parents lived in Ibaraki prefecture, about an hour north of Tokyo, which is why she was headed in that direction. I don't remember exactly what kind of work she was aiming to do at that point, but she wanted to do it somewhere close to her parents. I also didn't understand why she was driving instead of flying, considering it was just as cheap if not cheaper to take a plane to Tokyo than the national highway. That's actually when she explained about quitting her computer job the day before on a whim, packing everything she had in the trunk of her car (actually her parents' car, which is why she was driving instead of flying), and driving all night to her parents' house to live with them while she searched for a new beginning. I was rather surprised when she told me that she was bringing all of her personal belongings with her, considering we were in a normal-sized 4-door sedan, there was nothing in the back seat, and all my stuff had fit in the trunk without any maneuvering. In other words, she had a suitcase or two and a few random things thrown in her trunk, meaning she had either left a lot of stuff behind or she just lived a very simple life. I was guessing the latter of these two things. So I was on my way to a new country and culture in Taiwan, and she was on her way to a new life near Tokyo. We were the perfect travel companions.

It wasn't until about an hour after I got in the car with this woman that I discovered she was born and raised in Fukuoka. I was very happy to know this, as I was much more comfortable speaking Japanese in Hakata-ben, the Fukuoka dialect, than in the standard hyoujungo, the Tokyo dialect that is taught in all the Japanese textbooks. This made our conversation even more enjoyable, and we talked all about Fukuoka and the places we liked and how it had changed in the past decade. However, talking about Fukuoka, or any other topic for that matter, can only last for so long before both people in the conversation have to actually make an effort to think of things to say about it. Seeing as how we had many hours of road ahead of us, and as I wasn't about to fall asleep because she looked like she could doze off at any moment, we thought up some silly word games to play. The only one that really lasted longer than 10 minutes without the both of us getting pretty bored was the spelling game where you have to come up with a word that starts with the same letter the word of the last person ended on. Since this game wouldn't work too well with Japanese words, which even when romanized only contain about 13 consonants, we played with English words. Even though most Japanese have a decent English vocabulary, I figured I would whup her within the first 10 minutes because you can't use a word more than once. Much to my surprise, and maybe even to her own, the game drew on for nearly an hour, and at that point neither of us could remember which words had already been used. Many times she said a word I didn't understand, but she could always spell it out and almost always it was a real word. This was because she had seen these words in a book or something and looked up the meaning and remembered the spelling, but never learned how to properly pronounce. This is actually one of the main problems with the Japanese learning English, which is understandable considering the Japanese language is very simple to pronounce.

After our silly little spelling game came to an end, we were hard pressed for entertainment. I was actually worried about this aspect of riding in one car too long, especially in a car with two exhausted occupants. It was about 3 AM at this point, and we still had at least a good 5 hours of driving just to reach the outskirts of the great Japanese metropolis. That's when she began to lose it, slowly but surely. It started by just running over the median between lanes, or maybe crossing over the outside line every once in a while. I didn't worry too much, as I was focusing all my energy on just staying awake. However, I did ask her at that point if she had made any special preparations for driving all night, like sleeping really late the night before or taking a nap during the afternoon. She told me she hadn't, waking up at 7 AM that morning and packing all her stuff up, then waiting until night to depart to avoid traffic. She seemed convinced in her head that she could do it just fine, although her body wasn't reassuring me to any extent. At this point I became a bit worried, and her swerving became more erratic. Pretty soon we would be in one lane for a few minutes, and then before we knew it we would be in the next lane almost rubbing up against the barrier. It's a good thing there weren't many cars on the road. At that point I went ahead and spoke up:

"Hey woman, you're falling asleep. That can't be good."

"I'm not falling asleep, I was just resting my eyes you silly boy."

"Well, in my country, resting your eyes while you drive is kind of dangerous. Maybe I should drive for a while and then you can rest your eyes without having to worry about running your car into a barrier."

"Are you crazy? We Japanese drive on the left side of the road. You stupid Americans drive on the right side of the road. And the steering wheel is on the opposite side of the car. You can't possibly drive here. You'll get us both killed."

"Well, your eye-resting trick there isn't going to do us much better. Besides, it's not like I'm going to drive on the wrong side of the road when there is a big concrete barrier separating us from oncoming traffic."

"Well, this is true, and all this eye-resting is actually making me a bit tired. But have you ever driven in Japan before."

"But of course," I replied truthfully, remembering the time I drove my friend's car from Saga Prefecture to Fukuoka Prefecture.

"How many times?"

"Oh, let me think now... well, plenty of times. I can't even count there were so many times," I said, lying out my butt unless you count all the times I parked the car for my homestay sister.

"What about a license... do you have a drivers license boy?"

"Sure I do. You wanna see it. It's got a really good picture of me on it."

"Hey stupid, that's your US license. Do you have an international drivers license?"

"Oh, you want one of them, huh? Those things are so overrated you know... they gave one to my friend and he's legally blind, only has one arm, has bad hearing, and doesn't floss his teeth."

"Yeah, but do YOU have one?"

"Well, actually, no. You see..."

"Shut up kid, you ain't driving my car without an international drivers license. So don't even try to pull a fast one on me."

"You know, I sure could use one of those McDonald's Big Macs right now."

"Yeah, that and a big cup of Joe"

"It's a damn shame they don't put McDonald's along the national highway here in Japan, huh."

"Yeah, a real cryin' shame. Oh well, let's just stop at this rest stop up here and pump our veins full of caffeine. We'll get us some juicy Big Macs when we get to Tokyo."

"Ok lady."

So I didn't get to drive at that point, but at least we were stopping for caffeine, which I hoped would keep her eyes from doing too much more resting. They also had food inside the store, so we got us some noodles and two hot cans of coffee each from the vending machine. I went with the Wonda brand coffee, just because they had a nice picture of Tiger Woods on the front of their cans. I figured if this stuff helped Tiger hit a little white ball 300 yards, the least it could do for me was keep me up a few more hours. I was wrong. About 45 minutes after getting back on the road, I began to fall asleep again. I guess the lady I was with drank the Wonda coffee too at the rest stop, because at about the same time I started dozing off, she started swerving all over the road again. Again, I raised my voice in concern:

"You're still resting your eyes there I see."

"Yeah, what's it to you? You try driving all night from Hiroshima to Tokyo."

"Well, I do recall offering."

"Shut up boy! I told you - no license, no drive."

"Ok lady."

Again, my offer was shot down. So I made every effort I could to keep her awake, although after awhile I just couldn't stay awake myself and she looked to be struggling as well. So we pulled over at another rest stop, where again massive amounts of caffeine were emptied into our bodies. We agreed that we should just stay there for a bit and recover, but while I was out taking a few pictures of a small lake behind the rest stop, she passed out. I came back to find her head resting on the top edge of the steering wheel and drool dangling from the bottom edge. Just then I saw the young guy I met back in Kobe, my only competition throughout the trip. I was actually rather surprised he had made it as far as me, considering I didn't have to change cars along the way. Then again, when you consider he had a head start out of Kobe and he probably didn't have drivers who needed to stop every hour for a caffeine refill, it's really not all that surprising I met up with him there. He explained in a rather bragging tone how he had made it there from Kobe by changing trucks only twice. I just chuckled to myself, thinking how jealous he would be if I told him that I had made it there without having to change cars, and without having to squeeze into the back of a tiny truck cabin with two nasty truckers. Then I turned and saw the lady I was riding with drooling all over herself and I suddenly wasn't so proud of my accomplishment anymore.

View from a rest stop I waited about 20 minutes before waking the poor woman up, and again I offered to drive but she insisted that she was fine after taking a little nap. We got back on the road, but it wasn't even 10 minutes before she almost took out a car in the adjacent lane. I insisted at that point that she let me drive, as I wasn't even sleepy anymore, and she finally relented, pulling into the next rest area and handing me the keys. She didn't even bother to stay awake and make sure I really could drive okay, she just plopped herself down in the passenger seat and went straight to sleep. I got on the road and started driving, and the only problem I experienced before reaching Tokyo was turning on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal, On the way to Tokyo as they were on opposite sides from cars in normal countries where they don't drive on the wrong side of the road. My Chinese teacher in Taiwan told me later that summer that the reason the Japanese drove on the left side of the road dates back to their samurai heritage. In ancient days, the samurai wore their swords across their midsections with the end of the blade hanging out to the left. Walking in the tightly-packed markets of the big cities and small rural towns, this caused quite a problem if all the samurai walked on the right side of the pathway, as their swords would often strike in the middle and the shame of it all would force them to commit seppuku, the traditional Japanese ceremony of suicide where the dishonored samurai slits his own belly open and his pal slices off his head (ok, so I'm kidding about the suicide part, but I'm serious about the part with them knocking their swords together... I mean, it really does make sense if you think about it).

The outskirts of Tokyo in rush hour Tokyo was insane. I couldn't believe this woman was letting some complete stranger, who also happened to be from another country and a culture much different from her own, drive her car across Japan. What amazed me even more, however, is that she was letting me drive through Tokyo, which has to be one of the hardest cities to navigate in the world, next to maybe Taipei or Shanghai. On top of all that, I was driving on the wrong side of the road, which I barely had experience doing on a small highway near Fukuoka. And of all the times to reach the outskirts of this massive city, it just had to be at 8 AM, right in the middle of the angry snarl of rush hour. I figured it was just rotten luck, but then I realized maybe it was best having to drive through rush hour, because then at least I could just crawl at a leisurely pace through the city and not have to make my way through the great spaghetti-works of interconnected, high-rise speedways at a normal speed. This little plan of mine worked for about the first 10 miles or so, but once I got into the main part of the city, all hell broke loose. Traffic inside Tokyo Despite being packed, the traffic picked up speed at this point and the next thing I knew I was zooming in and out of turns, rising up and shooting back down sections of highway that rose as high as adjacent buildings, and praying to God not to allow me to cause some 50-car wreck that they would still be clearing up by the time I would be arriving in Taiwan. At the same time, all the crazy maneuvering I had to do was kind of exciting, and I really don't think I've ever had so much fun driving anywhere here in the US in my entire life (except for maybe the time I drove a go-kart off one of those little pay-to-ride go-kart tracks into a crowd of people because I forgot to push the brakes). I remember later that night when I checked into a hostel and had a beer with some other foreigners, they went on and on about how they had rented a car that day and drove around Tokyo during the afternoon for an hour. They thought it was the coolest and bravest thing they had ever done in their lives. I asked them if they had ventured onto any of the highways, and the girl who was doing most of the talking just looked at me and said "Buddy, are you crazy?" I thought about that to myself for a second, then gave her a big grin and nodded my head. "Yes, as a matter of fact I am."

I'm sure you are all wondering what became of the dear woman who gave me the ride to Tokyo. Well, after I navigated through the fierce traffic and was about halfway through Tokyo, she woke up and told me if I got us to the northwest side of Tokyo alive, we could stop and eat breakfast together and then go on our separate ways. I somehow managed not to get us killed, and as we got near the Ueno area of Tokyo, we exited the highway and found a nice little restaurant. We ate our food and talked about what a fun trip it was, and when the check came I insisted that she let me pay as a token of my gratitude to her. She of course refused several times, but finally gave in and we were on our way. She waited while I called one of my Japanese friends who happened to be in Tokyo at that time looking for a job. She agreed to meet me at Ueno station, and the lady who had already brought me all the way to Tokyo was nice enough to give me a ride over to the station. We exchanged addresses and wished each other luck in our new endeavors before she drove off into the sunset (actually it was the middle of the day), never to be heard from again by her new friend.

So that's my exciting hitchhike story. It really is quite easy to hitchhike in Japan, despite the fact that it isn't very common at all over there. You are bound to meet some unusual and quite possibly crazy people along the way, but in Japan, that's usually not such a bad thing. I do recommend that you speak a decent amount of Japanese, as most people who stop to pick you up probably won't speak enough English to last more than 2 minutes in a conversation, and things can get pretty boring if you can't converse with your new friends. Otherwise, if you are going to try it, don't be shy; get out there and stick your thumb or some other eye-catching part of your body up in the air and let those Japanese know you want a ride. It's free, it's fun, and best of all, it's the safest place in the world to do it!

*The pictures included in the story are just random pictures I took along the way, although I unfortunately didn't take any pictures of the people who gave me rides. Also, you can click on the images to see the full-size picture.