Hitchhiking never crossed my mind as a way to travel in the UK. Too dangerous, I told myself. Too much chance of meeting a pub bore who would pick you up only in order to secure a captive audience for his fascinating stories about the anomalies of European farm subsidies or the gauge specifications of Welsh model railways. In Japan, though, these worries seem less pressing; hitchhiking is a good way to meet people, and pub bores can be easily put off by pretending a total ignorance of the Japanese language. This, combined with the astronomical cost of Japanese train travel renders hitchhiking a good idea again. Add to that the presence of ninety-six sake breweries clustered on the other side of the prefectural border in Niigata, and suddenly a plan formed in my mind about how best to spend the three day weekend.  
New friends!

The plan was as follows. Go to a big road, hold out a sign for Niigata, and try to get to as many breweries as possible, spending the weekend in a light and pleasant alcoholic fug. Recruiting Toyama`s best dressed man, Ally Lomas, to join me in the endeavour, we set out from Uozu City on a cloudy but mercifully dry Saturday morning.
We stood at the side of Route 8, pasted our biggest smiles to our faces, and held out our sign, its clumsy characters daubed with a fat red marker pen.
Our first ride came in the shape of Oshida san’s (below) pick up truck, which he invited us to ride in the back of.

This is illegal, but he was a snowboarder ...