ROAD TRIP 1990–1992
May 1991. Long before GPS, smartphones, and navigation apps, a road trip began with nothing more than a paper map. This is the story of the first morning, driving from Sacramento to Emeryville. Along the way were homemade rice-ball survival tactics, a vintage Volkswagen Bus packed with carefree college students, giant Ro-Ro ships carrying Japanese cars across the Pacific, and a highway numbering system so logical that getting lost seemed almost impossible.
The sun was still low in the sky, but it was one of those flawless California mornings without a single cloud overhead. In the parking lot of my apartment in Sacramento, I started the engine of a car whose roof still carried traces of the night’s dew. An unnecessarily large ice chest occupied the luggage area, while a well-worn Road Atlas rested on the passenger seat. There was no GPS, no navigation system, and certainly no smartphone. The only thing I could rely on was a folded paper map covered with years of creases.
That morning marked the beginning of a road trip across the American West. There was no detailed itinerary and no fixed destination beyond a general direction. The road ahead would eventually lead deep into the American West, but at that moment I had little idea where the journey might ultimately take me. Hearing the sound of the engine, the apartment manager came outside to see me off. “Drive safely. Have fun,” she said with a smile before disappearing back inside.
Operation Rice Ball
The trip came with a strategy. I called it “Operation Rice Ball.” Packed into the car was an unusual collection of equipment: inexpensive California-grown Calrose rice, an aging Panasonic rice cooker, soy sauce, and sheets of seaweed. As long as electricity and water were available, I could make rice balls anywhere.
The greatest enemy of a long-distance road trip is not fuel, nor is it tire wear. It is food expenses. America may be a nation built on hamburgers, but surviving on burgers every day felt like a threat to my Japanese identity. My solution was simple. Cook rice, shape it into balls, wrap it with seaweed brushed lightly with soy sauce, and continue driving. To most Americans, these dark round objects probably looked like cannonballs or homemade explosives. To a Japanese traveler, however, they were the ultimate survival weapon: onigiri.
First, I Wanted to See the Ocean
Sacramento sits in California’s vast inland valley. Summers are brutally hot, often climbing above 40°C (104°F), but the dry air makes the heat surprisingly tolerable compared with Japan. More importantly, there is no ocean. That alone determined the first objective of the trip.
I wanted to see the Pacific.
My destination was California Route 1, the legendary highway that follows the Pacific coastline. During Japan’s bubble-economy years, the road appeared constantly in automobile commercials. Sports cars glided along cliffs above the ocean while sunsets stretched endlessly across the horizon. Ocean winds swept through open windows. Like many Japanese car enthusiasts of the era, I had spent years imagining what it would be like to drive that road myself.
Today, portions of Highway 1 remain closed because of landslides, and some sections still await full restoration. Looking back now, I often find myself thinking the same thing: I am grateful I had the opportunity to drive the route all the way to Los Angeles in 1991.
A Vintage Volkswagen Bus
After leaving the apartment, I joined Interstate 5 and briefly headed north before reaching downtown Sacramento, where I merged onto Interstate 80 and turned west toward San Francisco. America’s Interstate Highway System follows a remarkably logical numbering scheme. Odd-numbered routes generally run north and south, while even-numbered routes run east and west. The eight lanes of Interstate 5 eventually narrowed to six, yet the highway still stretched ahead like an endless concrete runway disappearing toward the Bay Area.
Beyond Sacramento’s flat agricultural landscape, the college town of Davis came into view. Somewhere along the way, a vintage Volkswagen Bus overtook me, trailing a cloud of white smoke behind it. It was a nostalgic Volkswagen Type 2, the very vehicle that had become a symbol of surf culture and freedom across California. Inside, college-aged passengers were packed shoulder to shoulder, laughing, drinking beer, and enjoying what looked like a perfect weekend. When our eyes met, several of them waved enthusiastically and shouted greetings through open windows.
It was exactly the kind of American scene I had imagined before arriving in the United States.
To someone who had only recently come from Japan, it felt less like everyday life and more like a scene from a movie. At the same time, another thought crossed my mind. Would I ever become part of this world myself? The California morning felt impossibly wide, and I was still standing at the very beginning of the journey. Long after the Volkswagen disappeared into the distance, its laughter and trail of white smoke seemed to linger above the highway.
From Interstate 80 to Interstate 880
The road carried me past Nut Tree Airport, one of my favorite small airfields, and through the town of Vacaville. Before long, I reached the bridge spanning the Carquinez Strait. From the bridge, I noticed what appeared to be enormous buildings floating on the water. Giant names such as MAZDA and TOYOTA were painted across their sides. At first glance, they looked like warehouses adrift at sea.
A closer look revealed what they really were: massive Ro-Ro ships transporting automobiles across the Pacific. During those years, Japan led the world in trade surpluses, and these floating giants carried an endless stream of new and used vehicles destined for North America. Seeing them pass beneath the bridge was a reminder that the Pacific was not merely an ocean separating two countries. It was also a highway of commerce connecting them.
After crossing the strait, I continued west with San Francisco Bay visible to my right. Eventually I passed through Emeryville, home to the western terminus of Amtrak’s California Zephyr, one of America’s great transcontinental passenger trains. It was here that Interstate 80 gave way to Interstate 880.
Rather than crossing directly into San Francisco, I chose to remain on the East Bay side and continue south. The plan was to cross the bay later via the San Mateo–Hayward Bridge. As the highway curved toward San Jose, endless rows of shipping containers stretched across the Port of Oakland to my right, creating a landscape that felt almost industrial in scale. Most visitors remembered San Francisco for its hills, cable cars, and the Golden Gate Bridge. What fascinated me, however, was the machinery that kept the region moving.
How Did We Travel Without GPS?
America’s Interstate Highway System follows a remarkably consistent logic. When Interstate 80 becomes Interstate 880, the additional digit is not arbitrary. It indicates an auxiliary route connected to the parent highway. The first digit carries meaning as well. Even-numbered prefixes generally identify bypasses or loop routes serving major metropolitan areas, while odd-numbered prefixes often designate spur routes leading directly into city centers. The numbering system itself grows larger from south to north and from west to east.
The result is a road network that is surprisingly easy to understand.
Once you become familiar with the pattern, relationships between highways begin to reveal themselves without constantly consulting a map. The numbers themselves become a form of navigation.
Today, drivers rarely think about such things. Navigation apps effortlessly guide them from one destination to another, calculating routes in seconds and correcting mistakes before they happen. Back then, things were very different. A folded road atlas occupied the passenger seat while highway signs and route numbers provided the only guidance available. It felt less like reading a map and more like allowing the roads themselves to explain where they wanted to take you.
In the end, I spent an entire week on the road without getting lost once. The credit did not belong to my driving skills. It belonged to the system itself. Long before GPS, smartphones, and digital navigation, America had already built a road network that was remarkably simple, surprisingly intuitive, and extraordinarily effective. For someone arriving from overseas, it was difficult not to admire the elegance of it.
The car continued south.
Across the water, the San Francisco Peninsula was beginning to emerge on the horizon. The morning sun reflected off the bay, turning the surface into a sheet of silver. Somewhere beyond that distant shoreline, new landscapes, unfamiliar towns, and unexpected experiences were waiting.
At the time, I had no way of knowing it.
I did not yet realize that the places I was about to discover would remain with me for the rest of my life.