Dartboard

The next series of pictures are…you guessed it—hitchhiking from Nagasaki to Nagoya. I wasn’t sure how hitching with three people would go. Two’s perfect because you can both squeeze into the back seat of any car, but three means you usually need the front seat too. Only single drivers could pick us up and not too surprisingly only men picked us up. But we got from Western Kyushu to Kyoto in only two days and we never waited too long for a ride. It was cheap too!

On the ferry from Narao to Nagasaki. Leaving the islands behind!

Visiting Nagasaki’s Peach Park. This is the epicenter.

The famous statue—I think I’ve posted a picture of him before.

From Nagasaki to Isahaya: Mr. Komeima in a white van picked us up and apologized for the lack of AC, but we were grateful for the ride! It’s not always easy hitching out of a city!

From Isahaya to Fukuoka: Mr. Tomisaki seemed pretty upset when he picked us up and was very excited about having company for his long drive home. A real estate agent who drove around all day looking at five properties in Nagasaki and Sage prefectures, all of which were “unsuccessful.” We cheered him up in the car (hopefully) and then he took us to his favorite Chinese restaurant in Fukuoka for dinner.

We stayed the night with Shimose-san in Fukuoka. Peter was also there, preparing for his bike ride around Asia next month.

Hitching on the highway in Fukuoka. “Please, please, please!”

Fukuoka to Kitakyushu: Hiroki took us from Fukuoka to Mekari, just before the bridge crossing over to Honshu. He was an interior salesman with a 4 month old child. Pretty quiet ‘cause I can’t remember too much about him.

Mekari to Yamaguchi: Yasu, a young college student who drove much too fast for the amount of time his hands were off the wheel, picked us up for a short ride to Mito in Yamaguchi-ken. He was wearing an (oh, so sexy towel) around his head, and seemed really, really nervous to have me sitting in his passenger seat. He loved fishing.

Mito to just outside Kyoto: Ikuo!! He was the greatest! He picked us up (or rather succumbed to our pleas) after we begged him to take us where ever he was going as he was coming out of a rest station store! Hitching was rough that day! The elevator repairman had to shift around everything in his car to accommodate us, but as we got to know each other in the car, we really hit it off! He had two business meetings on his way home (in Okayama) in Hiroshima and …, but he canceled them so we could get home faster! I felt really guilty, but he was so happy to do it for us. Joelle said, “No really, we don’t want elevators to go unrepaired because of us!” But he insisted on rescheduling his appointments for Friday!

Then we relaxed and ate lunch together in Hiroshima at his favorite okonomiyaki place!

Okonomiyaki is so good when there aren’t octopus tentacles in it!

While he was taking care of something in Hiroshima another man from the company took us down to the Atomic Bomb Memorial Peace Park.

Hiroshima is a beautiful city. I could see myself living here.

Then Ikuo wanted to know where we were staying for the night. I told him we didn’t really know yet. We had tents though… Ikuo called his wife and the conversation (the side I heard, anyway) went something like this:

I’m bringin’ home three foreigners tonight!
(pause…)
Foreigners…
(pause…)
Three. One man, two women.
(pause…)
I picked them up. They were hitch-hiking.
(pause…)
Yeah, hitch-hikers. I picked them up.
(pause…)
No, no. They’re gunna stay with us tonight!
(pause…)
Where? In our house!
(pause…)
It’ll be fine. Put the man upstairs and the two women downstairs in the TV room.
(long pause…)
No, no it’s fine. I’ll take them to Osaka in the morning.
(pause…)
It’s okay!
(pause…)
It’ll be fine. See you soon, honey!

The phone rang several more times and he explained how this random-foreigners-staying-in-our-house-thing would work to his wife. When we met her she was very, very sweet though. We all went out to yakiniku together and tried to go to bed early ‘cause we had to leave the house at 5:00 the next morning!

That’s his car—a California Highway Patrol Car! Incredible, isn’t it? He had it shipped over. He explained it to me while we were in his company car, but I thought he meant like he had a model of a HPC car—not a REAL one! I loved his D.A.R.E. shirt too! Steven and I WERE the Drug Free Class of 2000, yo! (No comments on how successful that was!) He got his off E-Bay.

The next morning Ikuo dropped us off at a rest stop somewhere between Osaka and Kyoto before he went on his elevator repair rounds. He was the best hitchee ever! I didn’t even mention how he sang karaoke to us in the car!

Somewhere outside Kyoto to somewhere in Shiga prefecture: Mr. Hashimoto picked us up thanks only to Steven. It was really hot and we were having a hard time getting a ride, Joelle and I took to sitting in the shade in a clump of grass near the rest stop exit, but Steven held the whiteboard pleading “名古屋” and waved cars down like none other! We eventually changed that to “京都” a much closer destination, and it worked! Hashimoto-san was on his way back from taking his Sri Lankan friend to the airport when he picked us up—was obviously still in the “tour guide mode” because he offered to take us to Kyoto’s Golden Pavillion. I’d wanted to see that for a long time!

Have to prove I didn’t just download that picture off the internet and stick it on my blog! We WERE there!

Then we had some lunch together.

And he dropped us off at a rest station somewhere in Shiga prefecture where he assumed we could easily get a car to Nagoya.

Shiga to Nagoya: Asono offered us our second ride in a police car. He picked us up and drove us (very speedily) to Nagoya. The first time I heard his sirens behind us I thought, “Is hitch-hiking illegal?” but it was HIS car. The car we were IN! It really surprised me. We unsuspectingly entered an undercover highway patrol car, and Asono had all the undercover highway patrol officer behaviors to accompany the ride. Although he AND the car retired 10 years ago, it was still pimped out with flashing lights and sirens—and constantly used to pass cars that wouldn’t pull out of the fast lane… or make Joelle scream “whee” in the backseat!

You wouldn’t have known would you? It looks like a normal car to me, but when you look behind the grill there are police lights!

Asono stopped and bought us drinks (okay, I had ice cream, of course!).

I can’t remember what Steven is offering Asono here, but he didn’t want it!

Asono was actually our last driver ‘cause we decided to do mainly public transportation after that. We spent two nights in Nagoya and one day at the World EXPO before heading up to Fuji-san. Pictures from the EXPO next!

Love, Sierra

P.S. If I just spent the last 6 hours writing on my blog and reading can I still call this a successful day at work? … I got through the day—that’s successful enough for me!