Hopefully the beach you wind up camping out at is like this one
With the humid summer weather slowly fading into temperatures fit for humans to move around in, it’s finally approaching the time of the year when couples young and old will be taking advantage of the cheaper highway tolls and getting out on the road. Which means plenty of ride opportunities for the adventurous hitchhiker to see the undiscovered country. Here are a few things to keep in mind if you should choose to go the road (more or) less traveled.
The first rule in hitchhiking is that there are no rules. Approaching the road with a concrete set of values is the same as being a rigid oak tree during a typhoon: you end up lying prone and wet on the side of the road (Bring a poncho, just in case).
Two: the successful hitchhiker may need to reinvent him or herself with each prospective driver, assuming you can speak their language. The first thought being the purest, usually works best. Try portraying: Aloha-shirt clad tourist, journalist, expectant father (women may want to reconsider this option), wandering priest, rich candy bar magnate (pass out snickers here), drunken government consultant, wayward fiance trying to reunite with soon-to-be-betrothed, yakuza-hunted whistle-blower, and almost boring by comparison, a photographer (though all of these at one time were likely true). This again depends on your ability to communicate, so cultivating imaginative gestures cannot be underestimated. Carry lots of candy too.
Three: act the fool. It’s a playful game for you and an exciting new adventure for your chauffeur, who will be telling this around the water cooler (or teapot) for years to come. I suggest alternatively smiling, whistling, making faces at the kids, bowing, tap-dancing (perhaps oddly or not, this has always gotten me a ride very quickly, maybe because I look more like I have Parkinson’s disease than just being a weird American…), anything short of taking off your clothes or cursing the majority of passing vehicles who will not only not stop for you, but likely wouldn’t even help an old woman if she fell in the street. Shaving helps.
Four: heading out of the cities is always more of a challenge than getting back. basically everyone is going toward Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto/Nagoya/Sapporo, but almost never are they heading to where you are planning. Above all, be patient. You will get a ride. Using the multitudinous Parking Areas located alongside the national highway system is the fastest way to move. Be sure to have cardboard, thick black markers and an atlas on you at all times. Some swear by “日本語OK!” (Can Speak Japanese) in big black lettering while other prefer to state some kind of destination, i.e. “北方向” (Northbound). Either way you may have to change plans on the spur of the moment, so be fluid. The bypass is always another (though slower and often jammed with traffic) option to get out in to the hard to reach countryside. For info on how to legally get on the Parking Areas, send me an email.
Five: in the event of being stranded (though that is the goal, there is a gray area between being nicely stranded within easy reach of a convenience store, which means you’re ten minutes away from another ride, and being dropped off by a wacky tourist on a lonely road at dusk, i.e. screwed), unsure or feeling at all like this road is not the way you need to be going, make for the nearest convenience store, which are the lifeblood of the successful hitchhiker. Above all keep hydrated, keep the blood flowing, keep moving, it’ll keep you warm in winter and breezy in summer.
Six: start early. Hitching after dark is difficult and dangerous. Plus the likelihood that a generous family or some rave-bound hottie will pick you up and offer you comfort, food and shelter for the night significantly drops alongside the setting sun. Northern countries in the summertime do not have this problem. In Japan, where at the summer solstice daylight peaks at 7:45pm, your last ride should be no later than 6 or 7. All that considered, your chances of being picked up by some friendly neighborhood Yakuza do increase the darker it gets, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on how many fingers you have. You may want to spread out your sleeping bag on any beach or patch of grass you find and hunker down with some local rice wine for the night.
Buddha says, From here carry a flashlight & a flask
Overall, hitchhiking is a pretty solitary pursuit, some would even say boring. You get used to being alone, walking down roads you have no idea of where they end, talking to yourself, drinking, urinating, bathing in public. It’s a strange kind of amusement. One night on the pacific coast of Shizuoka while drinking a bottle of Bass Ale (somehow cheaper than the domestic brands) on the corner of the main square after a long day of hitching, I overheard:
Three old men shuffling by half-soused, pointing to a coffee can on the bench next to me, “See, Shimizu’s a good town. They have ashtrays for the people.” General nodding (Um Um…) and agreement from the other two.
From an old couple passing the opposite way carrying plastic grocery bags and the man nodding in my direction says to the woman: “So, those kind of people live here too?”
“Huh?”
Either he meant people who drink beer outside the station at 9pm on Thursday nights or white guys in their 30s, although both are not out of the question. So starved as I for any kind of human interaction my mind immediately jumped to possible alternatives I’ve heard mentioned previously:
- Handsome, gay Italian ex-pats.
- Goatee dye models
- Anyone with one extremely unruly and overly long eyebrow hair that has a habit of creeping down and playing footsie with the eyelashes.
- People who sit on benches adjacent to unsuccessful fortune tellers (automatically bad for business, but shouldn’t he have known that?).
- Nighttime readers of Salman Rushdie (The Moor’s Last Sigh).
- Guys who at some point ponder masturbation as the high point (dinner’s dessert if you will) of the evening, then reconsider, citing public exposure ordinances, only to flip flop (at least) one more time if only because the thought of getting sand everywhere is a turn off, then thinking that this might actually be kind of sexy, gritty maybe, but passing out in the sand before getting anything done.
I am a documentary and portrait photographer, specializing in a raw approach to shooting everything under the sun. Though I travel abroad often, I am currently based in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, and am available for assignments throughout North America and beyond.
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All content © 2012 by Manny Santiago Photography