Hokkaido Highway Blues

well?”
    “No. I’m going to walk it—backwards.”
    There was a pause. “Really?”
    “No.”
    “I see. So that was a joke?”
    “A kind of joke.“
    “I see.”
    The reporter, packing up his briefcase and putting away his camera, happened to remark, in an offhand way, “Really, Cape Sōya isn’t the end of Japan at all.”
    I looked at him. “Sure it is.”
    “It’s the northernmost point in Hokkaido ,” he said. “But the islands of Rishiri and Rebun—you can see them from across the peninsula—those are the real northernmost points of Japan. Ta!“ And off he went, leaving me with my stomach tied up in knots.
    How could this be? I opened my map and checked. It was hard to say, but these two islands, one round and one long, certainly looked to be a nudge farther north that Cape Sōya. Everything came crashing down around me. It still wasn’t over.
    I ran to the terminal and managed to catch the last ferry out. If I could get to the northernmost tip of Rebun, I could say to myself, “There, I’ve done it. I have been to the end of Okinawa and I have been to the tip of Rebun Island. It’s over. I’m done. Done with Japan.”
    It was only then, as the ferry moved slowly out of port, that I realized what I had been searching for: a reason to leave.
    By the time we reached Rishiri Island, the decision had been made. I had only one more trip to make, to Rebun, and that would be it. I would close a chapter in my life. This hadn’t been a trip of discovery, it had been a journey of farewell. It was a sad and liberating thought.
     

 
     

20
     
    THE FERRY ENDED its run at Rishiri Island. To get to Rebun, I would have to take another boat, two days later.
    Rishiri is a Matterhorn dropped into a northern sea. It rises up directly from the water like a jagged bone, and the peak looked sharp enough to draw blood. I checked into the Green Hill Hostel, a large building shielded from the sea by a dramatic rise of land that swept up and then dropped suddenly into the water. The cliffs were filled with the cries of nesting seabirds. It reminded me of Cape Sata. It looked... it looked like Scotland.
    And I thought to myself: It is a sign that you have been traveling too long when everything reminds you of someplace else.
    A road ran along Rishiri’s edge, turning around the central peak of the mountain. I decided to hitch it, completing another small circle, but after one hour and only a single, short-hop ride, I returned to the hostel and rented a bicycle.
    I rode out through towns as sad and silent as graveyards. Windows were boarded up, yards were neglected, entire villages abandoned. There were no sakura, no tumbling blossoms—only the froth of sea spume that blew up across the road, spindrift flowers as insubstantial as any sakura.
    It took me all afternoon and well into the evening to circumnavigate Rishiri. On the far side of the island, I stopped at a shop where the packages were covered in dust and the shelves were half empty. The lady who tended to me was very thin. She had bruises on her face, and she said she hadn’t been off the island in years. She looked at me as though from across barbed wire, and when she handed me my change her fingers touched mine and I wanted to pull her in and say, “Join me! This is why I have come here, this was my purpose all along, to save you, to save me.” But the moment had passed, a sword swung through mist, leaving swirls and silence and little else—changing nothing. I got back on my bicycle and rode wobbly away, a ridiculous figure.
    At night, the hostel was cavernous and cold, filled with long hallways and sheets of ice and closets that contained entire winters. Only a small heater warmed my room, and I spent the evening huddled in front of it. For supper, I walked into town to the only shop I could find open. A gaunt man fed me plates of fried rice and watched me as I sat, crouched over my meal.
    An old lady whispered that there might not be any sakura at all this year. “The flowers may die on the branch,” she said, smiling softly.
    Everyone agreed it had been a very long winter.
     
    * * *
     
    That night, a storm rattled the windows. By morning it had turned into snow, by afternoon a blizzard. By evening it was making news channels across Japan.
    Rebun Island disappeared like a whale into the fog, and the ferries across were canceled. I tried to get back to the mainland but I missed the last ferry out. The next day everything was canceled.