The Hippy

I was on my way to Kyoto to play at some the Saint Patrick's day events. They like me down there. NIce people. Last year, I got to hang out with Lafcadio Hearn's great grandson and great-great grandson at last year's event. Kyoto is a very cultural place, full of fine temples, foreign artists and good German beer.

This guy had a chomage - one of the traditional Japanese style haircuts that he explained were very popular until the Meiji era. Japanese men use to tie their hair up in a ponytail. Men wearing ponytails give me the image either of a man trying to stay young beyond his time or else a mark of actually being cool. Recently, for Japanese men, I've found them to be cool. There's a guy in the computer department at my university who actually talks some sense at meetings. To me, in Japanese university culture, that equals 'cool'.

The taxi driver was 63 and he wore his chomage as a sign of an earlier time in his life. I asked him what work he had done before his current job. He said that he'd never really been into work and had been a hippy for years.

He had spent one and a half years travelling around Europe in his twenties, hitching rides and smoking hashish. He was in Spain during the time of Franco when trouble would descend if three people gathered together to chat. It was obviously a good time for couples. Franco made life hell for the Spanish but didn't really bother the foreigners and the drugs there were almost as good as Morocco.

He slept out on a lot of park benches and railway stations. 'Hippy', he was called in the early 1970's. 'Homeless' is what he would be called today. The image of an old man sleeping on a park bench definitely doesn't call to mind images of flower power and free love.

When he came back to Japan, he spent another three and a half years hippying around. When it got cold, he'd head down to Okinawa and then in the summer, he escaped the heat by hitching up to Hokkaido.

He says he's going back. I asked him when, so he decided on the spot that next year was a good time. He doesn't have to give up any job as he's a free-lance taxidriver. Once they have their freelance license, they have it for life. So, it's back to Morocco that he's heading.

Maybe it's true that it's always possible to go back.