get my kicks in this floating world

Today (Thursday), more rain. Wanted to see more in Tokyo, ened up hitting a lovely garden, and then the Zen temple that holds the grave of the famous 47 ronin. Even today, centuries later, on a rainy weekday (though a Golden Week holiday), saw a Japanese man show up to make an offering of incense.

But finally the rain got the better of me, and I decided to give up on Tokyo and catch the shinkansen for Osaka. Small adventure en route, as vending machine on the train ate my 1000 yen bill, a bit of a hassle to get a refund. (Indeed, since it didn't get sorted out until the end of my ride, it ended up feeling like a Tokyo vs. Osaka thing, "proper procedure" vs. the merchant's rule of customer satisfaction.)

Washed up and changed into dry clothes, and headed out to Slices for dinner, then the Cellar, where by complete coincidence I found the Amemura Folk Jamboree wrapping ujp. This is an open mic sort of event that I played when I wa here five years ago, and the gentleman who runs it is a karateka who met Kaicho Nakamura decades ago and remaims impressed by him. He actually rememeber me and, with the owner of the place translating, we renewed our acquaintance.

At Cinquecento now...amazing how easily we can fall back into old patterns. It's been four or five years since I've been in Osaka. yet my first night back I've hit three of my old haunts and felt comfortabl at each. Thinking that there's a track my life could hop onto, where I do the expat thing and just up and move over here, saying to hell with all the bullshit in my personal life of the past few months; but knowing also that "a darkness in the heart cannot be cured by moving the body from place to place", and feeling that there's work I need to do in Baltimore.

But still, for now, I'm in a great bar in a great city, still basking in the glow of a great weekend. (And, now that things are going well, in the glow of knowing that, yeah, I helped save a life. "Big damn heroes, sir.") So I think it wil be a few of these 500 yen martinis before I stumble back the the hotel room. Even as I recognize that there's a stress-relief, safety-valve aspect to it...do I have to come halfway around the world to let off steam now? Has it come to that? Considerations for later. Plus an astrologer friend told me I need to live it up while I'm over here...I don't believe in astrology, as Jim Morrison once said, I think it's a bunch of bujllshit, but I tell you this: I want to have my kicks before the whe shithouse goes up in flames, here in this floating world.