Hitch Hiking to Nagano

Yesterday I hitch hiked to Nagano! I was terrified before I left that I wouldn't have the nerve, that noone would pick me up or that I would get stuck on the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere. None of these things happened! In fact I had lots of luck.

I got up really early after a late night of checking and rechecking maps after getting back late from drinking and eating with friends in Koenji (missed the last train and had to get a taxi part of the way home). I caught the train out to Tsurese as instructed by wikitravel's hitch hiking in Japan page and then got the bus to the Saitama Central Hospital. It was easy to find the service entrance to the Expressway Service Area nearby and I walked past the security gate without a glance. Once inside I pulled myself together mentally and then went out to the on-ramp, stood in a safe place next to the traffic and put out my thumb! I held up a sign saying `I can speak Japanese` once again following the wikitravel page advice and within a few minutes I got my first ride.

Mr Watanabe, a painter by trade, was making his way to Niigata but when he asked me where I was going he actually completely changed his route to drop me off in Nagano. I didn't fully realise this til we were on our way or I might have insisted he not do so but as it was he seemed happy, I was very happy and apart from the strong smell of paint fumes I had a comfortable ride to Nagano. Mr Watanabe was very friendly and conversational. I only understood about half of what he said but when I didn't understand a simple `is that so` seemed to do the trick. He told me a lot about his life over the 3-4 hours we spent together and I came to like him very much. He insisted I have his orange juice which was lovely and cold in the hot, steamy weather. Mr Watanabe told me he actually has very few Japanese friends and that most of his friends are foreigners. He goes to Myanmar every year to visit a Burmese friends who used to live in Japan. He was very critical of the Japanese culture of working all the time and claimed that in all of Asia only Japanese were stupid enough to work all day outside even when the sun was very hot. As a painter he works six days a week in order to make enough money to get by but he didn't sound too happy about it and at the age of 72 it's no wonder.

When we got to the Service Area just before Nagano Mr Watanabe dropped me off. I am sure he would have happily taken me into the town but Japan's expressways are toll roads and in leaving the expressway early he would have incurred much more fees to get to his final destination. He was going to Niigata to visit his parents' grave and to leave an offering for each of them of a bottle of sake. He invited me to have a cup of coffee with him at the Service Area, which he paid for, and he then proceeded to tell me the most interesting things so far.　He told me that as a child he remembered the American war planes dropping bombs, looking like fireworks in the night sky. He told me of his elder brothers, all three of whom had gone off to the war never to return home. I asked him if he was afraid when the air raids were going on but he said that it was a different sort of feeling and that he had been hiding in a hole under the temple with his parents at the time. This is the first time since I have been in Japan that someone has brought up the war and certainly there own experience of it. I was very grateful to Mr Watanabe not only for giving me a lift but for sharing so much of himself with a perfect stranger.

Once Mr Watanabe had left I had something to eat and went back out to the on ramp to try and get my next lift. I was only a few kilometres from the Nagano exit so I was worried that noone would be exiting there after stopping at Matsushiro Service Area, why wouldn't they just keep going? There were far fewer cars than at the Saitama Service Area I got my first lift at and noone seemed to be stopping to ask me where I was going. Eventually a bunch of young people in a minivan pulled over and asked me where I was going but when I told them, Hakuba, they laughed and told me that I was on the wrong side. I didn't really believe them but given my luck so far I decided to have a look. I wandered around until I found a back way into the other service area and walked around trying to work out where it was. I decided that I was in fact, right in the first place when an older gentlemen asked me in English where I was from. We spoke for a bit and I told him where I was going and what I was doing. As it turns out they were on their way back from the very place and I had been at the right service area the first time. We talked for a bit and then I walked back around the back and back to my post. A few cars passed and then one headed straight at me, stopped and a young man asked me where I was going. I said Nagano and he said OK and I got in. As it turns out they were just driving around for the fun of it and didn't have any particular goal in mind.

My internet is about to run out so for now, this is all, to be continued.