What a weekend!

Friday, Atsuta shrine, home to one of the Imperial relics, the sword supposedly passed down from the first Emperor. The shop there was selling shinzens and many many of us bought one for our dojos. I also got some hama-ya, the arrow talismans that I learned about on my first trip here. I got to explain them (and the little bit I know about Shinto) to other Seido members - Kyoshi Akira overheard and said I should be getting paid as tour guide.

Then a shopping trip to the Osu neighborhood. There was a big temple there, the Osu Kannon temple - Shingon, very fancy and ornate, not really to my taste but nice to stop by. Chanted a few rounds of the ten line Kannon Sutra to say hello. Had a good shopping expedition, including a nice scroll painting of Daruma - getting that and the shinzen home will be tricky, think I'll ship them.

The best, though, was a guy I saw in a "bazaar" in the shotengai. A pile of old stereos, a wall about fifteen feet long hung thick with cables and wires and tools, and in the middle of it, an old Japanese gentleman, balding, in tacky sports coat, hunched over a circuit board with soldering iron or files, restoring old electronics gear. a denki Buddha of sorts.

Went out with some of the crew from South Africa that evening, some Indian food and a walk on, the streets, falling in love with beautiful Japanese girls.

Saturday, kata competition. There was a great opening with a local matsuri dance team. I judged in the morning, then competed in the "master's" division in the afternoon. A fantastic dinner party, then when I got back to the hotel I ended up going out with the British contingent to the pub for a beer.

Saturday, kumite. Did my match - didn't win but I gave my opponent a match, which is the goal. Long closing with taiko drumming by a local kids team, demonstrations by the kids group and some of the black belts, speeches by Kaicho and by Kyoshi Akira and Jun Shihan Toshi. A nice closing party, another beer at the pub. Got back to the hotel and packed my bags.

On the bus back from Eiheiji now. Went out to see some spectacular cliffs at Tojinbo - apparently there are only three sites like in in the world, an underground bubble of basalt exposed by erosion on the coastline. I was able to climb down and tag the water - I've touched both sides of the Pacific.

(Domo arigato Mr. Roboto - we just passed another of the robotic flagmen we've been seeing at construction sites. They have become today's hit with the tour group.)

Then off to Eiheiji, the Zen temple founded by Dogen. Unfortunately we didn't have much time there, a brief zazen session, and all the mandatory photo-taking, only had less than a hour to walk the grounds. Still, lovely. Managed to hike about halfway up the side of the hill facing the temple, a very nice view.

During meditation I here the floor squeak under the steps of the monk wielding the "correction stick" - a reminder that he is just as human as I. Equally empty, equally to be loved, equally a coming Buddha.

So the Capsule Inn in Akihabara wasn't a bad place to sleep. It gave me
just about as much room as my backpacking tent. Just a little hard not to
get woken up when neighbor's alarms started going off.

Got to check my luggage there while I wandered today, around Akihabara a
little (bought a microSD card for the Centro), over to Shibuya station to
see the famous Hachiko statue, then over to the Imperial Palace to wander
the east garden (the only part open to the public, most of the time). Nice
garden and all, might be more impressive in the spring, but one noteworthy
thing was a pair of prune trees in bloom, with other trees bare or turning
behind them. Hope a good photo of that willl come out.

Though the water is muddy, the lotus still blossoms. And it would probably
kill the lotus if you tried to sieve the mud from the water. Accept, and
let it settle.

Which reminds me, tomorrow, Eiheiji. Should be pretty cool, big-time Zen
temple. They've even arranged the option of a zazen session, of course I'm
going to go (though my legs may be pretty damn sore after all the walking
today).

On the plane to Tokyo, closing in now on Narita. Flew out of BWI to Detroit, going from there far far north scraping the ice cap on the arc to Japan. The view out the window...I always try for a window seat

My plane reading - Windblown World, Kerouac's journals. God how it blows on the embers of my writing fire! Blaze forth! I shall be writing on trains and in bars this trip.

Just a week and a day until I head back for Japan, for the Seido Aichi tournament and for a few days of sightseeing and cultural investigation (including the bars of Osaka...) Got a few more things to do, lining up hotel rooms and renting a phone, figuring out what to pack. (I'm thinking about getting a big new backpack and taking that instead of a suitcase. Need to plan it out a bit more though.)

I found out that there's a new requirement for gaijin entering the country to be photographed and fingerprinted. The video put together by the Japanese equivalent of Homeland Security is a notable example of so-stupid-its-funny, as the proper Nihonjin lady explains to overacting slow-witten gaijin how the new measures make them safer.

Hopefully this week I'll get the house cleaned up, papers sorted and the like, so I don't return to a total mess.

exercise: freewrite on the phrase "flowing through me like broken glass"

and I have heard it said the in the days of American slavery, the child of the cook would be the food taster for the master of the house, because the slaves would often put ground glass in the food of their enslavers

flowing through me like broken glass

glass in the water, invisible, sharper-edged than steel when jagged, smoother than skin when whole

flowing through me like broken glass

a cutting river, internal sandblasting. I grind the glass and return it to sand.

Blogging from the new toy again, my Palm Centro. Kind of wild to be able to access the full internet on a pocketsize portable - Wikipedia and Google in my pocket. I can even ssh into work. (Not that I'd want to do a lot of work typing on this tiny keyboard, but for emergency access, rock on.)

Julie called this evening. the band and poets she had scheduled to play at Load of Fun had to cancel. So a couple of us Zeldaeans filled in with some poetry and music - Julie, Mike, Robin, and I had a nice little circle o' poetry.

I'm posting this from the tiny tiny keyboard of my new Palm Centro. Just got it today - so far, so good. I've installed an ssh client and am now seeing what I can do with the web browser.

If you're considering buying a Centro - or any Sprint service - you ought to Google for "Sprint SERO" to find out about a great deal.

An eventful week...Wednesday, Halloween, I played a happy hour gig at Leadbetter's. Good crowd for the holiday (Fells Point buzzes for Halloween) and I actually made decent money, almost $80 between tip and my share of the take from the bar. Not enough that I'm going to quit the day job, but $80 for four hours - $20 an hour - is respectable. I'd play more often if I could get gigs that paid like that, sure.

Hung out afterward for the night shift, crowded but generally having a good time enjoying the musical stylings of Johnny Smooth...until, during a break in his set, I made my way up front for some fresh air and looked outside, to see a pushing match, a fight brewing, in front of the Admiral's Cup a few doors down.

I told the guy on the door to call 911, and ran over to break things up. Yelling "Break it up! Break it up! Cops are on the way!", I did my best to cool things down, stepping between any pair who looked in conflict. It was impossible to figure out who was pissed with whom about what; but for that minute of two, my job was just to act as a sort of "anti-catalyst", preventing violent reactions.

At the BARC benefit at 2640 now, Mongoloidian Glow on the stage. Zelda's will be in a while, but I came down early, got some food at The Yabba Pot and then came over to give BARC a few bucks and support the AR cause a little.

Wednesday we had a planning meeting here for the Water For the Well benefit next weekend. I'm excited that Jeff, my uncle, is going to be on the bill - first time we've performed together. Afterward I caught (most of) a Halloween music and spoken-word show at the Metro Gallery.

Thursday, I played the Fell's Point Musician's Showcase at Leadbetters, got a good response to my hour. It was the first time I'd played there since I got back to the U.S.; I'll be back for the happy hour gig on Halloween.

Friday, our Samhain circle got rained out - we decided to move the date so we could still do it outside, rather than moving it indoors. So I got to go to the show at Kiss Cafe that Kelly put together. Saw Chris and Wes there, in one of those Smalltimore moments.

Yesterday, promotions at the dojo, a long day. Then went out to see Telesma play at the Metro Gallery, good show as always.

Zelda's Inferno writing exercise: write a poem from a wordlist, generated from the theme "renaissance festival":

unicycle, plague, corset, beer, joust, serf, glimmer, awkward, wench, pine, pirate, armor, rouge, constricting

sometimes I feel the constrictions
of my created self
that fiction that defines my character
that places awkwardly-drawn boundaries around
what I say and do

a plague of personalities
an armoring identity

A poem for Allison Fisher:

somebody tell me
what is the statute of limitations on grief?

my high school reunion, hoping to see an old friend a bright shining soul
seeing instead her name on a memorial list
dead of breast cancer, nine years ago

so somebody tell me
what is the statute of limitations on grief?

can I still grieve at news almost a decade old?
at learning that a light I thought was out there brightening the world
had long fallen dark?