Hitching Rides with Buddha Paperback by Will Ferguson

Product Details

• Publisher: Vintage Canada (2006-08-08)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 432 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780676976991
• Item Weight: 340.2 grams
• Dimensions: 7.94 x 5.21 x 1.07 cm

Originally published as Hokkaido Highway Blues, with limited distribution in Canada, Will Ferguson’s classic book about Japan, for all fans of the bestselling Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw.

With the same fervour they have for outlandish game shows and tiny gadgets, the Japanese go nuts each spring when the cherry blossoms sweep from island to island towards the country’s northerly tip. Will Ferguson was celebrating the event in the standard fashion. And after way too much sake he announced he would be the first person in recorded history to follow the blossom’s progress end to end. To make it a challenge worth doing, he’d hitchhike all the way: relying on the kindness of some very weird and wonderful strangers.

Mixing his penchant for biting observation with wicked humour, Ferguson starts at the southernmost tip of Cape Sata and heads north for distant Hokkaido. Whether he is doing the forbidden and not knowing it, or holding "conversations by non sequitur," it is a journey full of misadventures and revelations. The resulting travelogue is one of the funniest and most illuminating books ever written about Japan.


To make matters worse, I decided to hitchhike. Striking a heroic stance, I declared my intention to my Japanese friends to become the first person ever to hitchhike the length of Japan, end-to-end, cape-to-cape, sea-to-sea. This did not impress them as much as I had hoped.

“Why would you want to do that?” they asked, genuinely puzzled. “There is no reason to hitchhike. That’s why we built the Bullet Train.”

Others worried about my safety. “But,” I would argue, “Japan is a very safe country, is it not?”

“Oh, yes. Very safe. Safest in the world.”

“So why shouldn’t I hitchhike?”

“Because Japan is dangerous.”

And so on.

Now, I will admit that mooching rides across Japan is not a major achievement—I mean, it’s not like I paddled up the Amazon or discovered insulin or anything—but I am the first person ever to do this, so allow me my hubris.

When I left my home in Minamata City aboard a southbound train, I felt suitably bold with my backpack and muscular thumb.

“I’m going to hitchhike the length of Japan,” I told the man beside me.

He smiled and nodded.

“I’m going to follow the cherry blossoms.”

He nodded.

“All the way to Russia,” I said.

He smiled again, and soon after changed seats.
—from Hitching Rides with Buddha

About the Author

WILL FERGUSON is one of Canada’s bestselling authors and has been published in 26 languages and 33 countries around the world. He spent five years in Asia, based in Japan, and travelled to Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea, and China. He is the author of Beyond Belfast, which charts a 560-mile walk across Northern Ireland in the rain, and Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw, about a three-year journey across Canada. His first book, Why I Hate Canadians was a bestseller and established him as an iconoclastic writer; How to Be a Canadian, co-authored with his brother Ian, was a Globe and Mail bestseller for over eighty weeks. His work has twice been nominated for an IMPAC Dublin Award. A three-time winner of the Leacock Medal for Humour, his most recent novel, The Finder, won the Arthur Ellis Award for Crime Fiction. He lives in Calgary with his wife Terumi, and their two sons.