Standing by the side of Route 1, I have the same problem I always have -- how to smile cheerfully when there's nothing in particular to smile about. But smile I must. I concentrate on stretching the corners of my mouth and revealing my teeth. Then I make a fist of my left hand, poke out my thumb and raise my arm. I am hitchhiking.

I think about how the night before I had invented a new drinking game. The barman, a slow learner, had ended up unconscious on the floor and I had laughingly helped myself to vodka. But somehow it doesn't seem funny anymore. Instead it makes me feel rather bad as another inconsequential chimera of victory fades. And still that smile eludes me.

Cars stream past, and my cheeks begin to ache from the effort of holding my grinning idiot pose. But then I begin to feel fine. The day is bright. I know that soon I will be on my way. On my right is Mt. Fuji and, at the end of the road lies Shimoda. Now I smile.

Before long I catch a driver. Imagine an indomitable middle-aged shopper who shoves you from your seat. Switch scenes to a small hot car. She talks and smokes rapidly, and keenly tells me about all her dealings with foreigners. The stories pour out. About her friend who adopted a Vietnamese girl ... a Chinese boy who visited her daughter's school ... the cousin married to a Frenchman ...

It seems that I am indebted to the Frenchman. She tells me that it is because of him that she wants to be kind to foreigners.

Route 1 is slow, but I am in no hurry, and I am under the romantic (and false) impression that it is the modern Tokaido immortalized by the artist Hiroshige. The road is dull here--shops, houses, traffic lights. The shops get bigger, the houses fewer and the traffic lights more frequent. The shops get smaller again and the traffic lights further apart. We are out of Mishima.

She is still talking in an unstoppable torrent. Finally, as she pauses to light a cigarette, I ask her "Didn't you say you lived in Mishima?" "Oh yes, but I am driving you to Atami now. It's not far and I'm not busy."

In Atami, the road splits. One branch will take me to Tokyo. The other is the road to Shimoda. This is the end of the line for my talkative chauffeur, and I get out.

The road starts with a small climb. I do it on foot. A short wait and I am in an imported German car with the boss, the employee and the employee's son. I talk to the boy first. He is 17, his hair the color of milky tea. He talks shyly about how he was forced to change high schools last year after punching a teacher. His eyes search my face for signs of condemnation or approval. I give him neither. The boss sticks up for him. "Some people deserve things,'' he says so vaguely that it is clear he knows nothing about the incident.

Looking out the window, I see a small, flattish island just three miles or so out. They tell me it's called Hatsushima. I tell them about England and the predictably switches to Charles and Diana. "Who committed adultery first?'' they ask. I try to explain the concept of a mismatch. They are not impressed. "So, what is wrong?" they ask. Strangely, I'd never thought about it.

They're not going far. Nor are the next couple who pick me up. I am with them for long enough, however, to be driven miles off the road I am hitching. Am I annoyed or excited? A short suspension bridge bucks, slapping the soles of my feet 30 meters above a frothy white inlet. I take some photos and I am myself the object of some interest. I am in a good mood.

Then I walk for three kilometers, thumbing desperately. Time for an old trick. I fix my eyes on the passenger as the car approaches, switching the "smile and a thumb" to the "hands clasped together in prayer" stance.

It works! Five minutes and I'm back to the main road and at a perfect hitching spot. It's long and straight, but here my troubles begin, as mountains threaten to engorge the sun. One hundred cars go past. One hundred stupid boys driving a hundred stupid girls. The girls' mouths open in either amazement or laughter. I swear I can read their lips, "Look! a hitchhiker."

Hitching in Europe, we resent being ignored. Now I long for invisibility as I reflect on the indignity of being laughed at, at being typical gaijin entertainment fodder. "If you don't want to pick me up that's fine, just don't laugh!" But they do. Cursing, I laugh too. No prize in hitchhiking for scowling.

The 101st couple lift me. "Where are you going?'' they ask. "That way,'' I point. "What about you?" "We're just driving. Get in,'' they urge. Another charming and sexy girl with another boring boy. I toy with explaining the concept of mismatch again, but I think better of it. They drop me off not far from Shimoda. I momentarily envy him as they drive off.

One more ride takes me to Shimoda. He is bachelor fishmonger. There are lots of them in Shimoda, I discover. "You're the first hitchhiker I've picked up," he volunteers. "There have been a few over the years, mostly Westerners. Some of them didn't speak a word of Japanese.''

I'm always interested to hear about other hitchers. I've never seen another one in Japan. Young Japanese often tell me "I've picked you up because no one else will. You see there's no hitchhiking in Japan.'' Older people, mid-30s and over, tell me "People used to hitch, but they don't now." I wonder why.

The road home begins outside an out-of-town onsen where I have sat too long in water that's too hot. This makes me feel like an imbecile, but the air is cold and fresh, and I set off. My thumb is thrust out as I walk backwards along a tiny road.

I'm driven to the station again. Countless times, merely assuming I'm lost, people have offered to drive me to the station. I always refuse. "Leave me somewhere on this road," was one of my first Japanese sentences. But today, my head dulled from immersion in steam, I end up pretending to be grateful. I look at the fare list and the people hurrying, tripping over their bags of Izu rice crackers or Shimoda pickles, or whatever, for the next express to Tokyo. "Let them,'' I think. The road is all mine.

I am lucky. It isn't far from the station to the road. Even so, it is late afternoon when I start hitching. Hopefully I'll make it back to Atami before dark and then get a lift to Odawara or, if I'm in luck, Yokohama.

Reality. Fifteen minutes pass, then thirty. Though it is still light, the sun weakens. Eventually a man in a camper-van full of family comes back for me. I squeeze in and he promises to drive me as far as Ito, halfway up the peninsula.

A car passes and I just feel like poking out my tongue. I resist the temptation and instead I nod, as if to say, "That's okay, I like you anyway." Sometimes they come back, and if they don't, I bet they feel rotten.

Suddenly he is not going to Ito. Instead he will take the kids to a turtle aquarium. He offers to take me too, but I decline. So he drops me off outside a convenience store. I get a lift immediately.

The car is spacious and sober and stops 100 meters past me. Grabbing my bag, I chase after it. They must be the oldest couple who have ever given me a lift--and the wealthiest. Her hobby is speaking English, so we talk in English. Perhaps half of the people who pick me up automatically assume I can't speak Japanese, the other half that I can. Doubtless there are many people who don't stop because they fear we won't be able to communicate. Once I tried hitching whilst gripping a sign advertising the reassuring words "I can speak Japanese." I swear I could read their lips as they went by saying "You won't believe this, but there's a foreigner standing by the road showing off."

In the car they assume I can't understand and converse freely in Japanese. I eavesdrop for a while before I begin to feel dishonest. I decide to give them a hint. "Why don't you drop me off in Atami?'' I suggest in English while they are discussing where to drop me. They are going to Atami, so they agree. But they fail to connect our conversations. Then we discuss how hitchhiking may be dangerous. "I'm very brave aren't I? for hitchhiking," I venture. "No," she says. "We're the brave ones.'' I think about it for moment and realize she is right.

We hit two miles of traffic. Suddenly we have turned off the coast road and are soaring into the mountains. "We're still taking you to Atami--it's just that the expressway will be faster," she reassures me. The word "expressway" here means toll road. The Atami skyline, carved and crafted onto the mountains that occupy the center ground of the peninsula, must be 90 kilometers long, twice the length of the coastal road. On another occasion, I have hitched this road and the views of Fuji and Ashinoko are amazing. In spring the trees lining the road burst into pink and it is beautiful.

After dark on a winter evening, when you are tired and want to get to Atami, this road's innumerable hairpin curves become merely nauseating. No one is dipping their headlights, and, as we rise and roll, white light from the car behind sears into my eyes. The road seems endless as little white posts picked out by our headlights dictate our next swing, left or right, continually pulling us one way, then yanking us the other. An hour later I am praying for the road to climb down into Atami, but every descent becomes a false dawn as we begin to re-ascend. The night view of Mishima, used to decorate telephone cards and tourist brochures, merely disheartens me further. What am I doing this far above sea level?

I don't tell them I feel carsick. Once before, on another trip, a freshly licensed youth, all excited at the challenge of taking a mountain road at top speed, had given me mad visions of crashing. So I faked retching sounds as a device to get him to slow down. Horrified at the threat to his car, he'd dropped me off instead. I cannot get out of the car this time, so I occasionally open a conversation to take my mind off the nausea, killing the conversation when the feeling is too much.

When we finally reach Atami, I fall out of the car punch-drunk. Barely remembering to thank them, I walk away from it, gulping in the refreshing air.

There is more hitching to be done. The road to Tokyo is bordered by hard, smooth mountain walls. There's no straight to stand on, no light to stand under and no shoulder to pull a car into. Still dizzy, but reluctant to give up, I give it 15 minutes of disgusted effort in front of a miserable bus stop. I walk back to town, and to the train station.

On the train on the way back home I remember how, as a 16-year-old, I misunderstood a scene from the film Tampopo that I thought suggested hitching was an everyday form of travel in Japan. Thinking back, I suppose that's how it all started. So why carry on? I like to travel alone, but I like to meet people on the way. It's a waste to go somewhere and not to talk to any new people, someone from a new place.

I suppose it's vaguely anti-capitalist or anti-modern to refuse to pay for express trains to rush you in to some resort, and rush you back to work to pay for it. Who wants to feel like they're on a conveyor belt. Hitching, I remember every ride. However short the lift, or however slow I moved, I felt it was a privilege to meet the people, just for a while, and travel the road together.