I just happened to be back on the east coast a while back. I was tryin to make me a buck like everybody else. Well, I'll be damned if times didn't get hard. I got tired o roamin, bummin around, so I started thumbin my way to my old hometown.

No I didn't. Sorry, I'm listening to Phantom 309. "At the wheel sat a big man. " I love that line, and "...pushed her ahead in all four gears and man that dashboard was all lit up like a Madam Larouche pinball game", and how he smokes Vice Roys. Sorry. I'll be with you in a minute...

OK. So what's happening? Went to a big festival yesterday, called Danjiri Matsuri. You've heard me complaining about the narrow streets and how a blind woman with two kids and somebody on a bike and a dump truck can all share a 3 meter-wide alley. And me on my bike. Anyways, this here festival involves, well, hold on. I should also explain that each town is divided into several wards, or ku as they call 'em in these parts, and that these here ku is divided into smaller precincts called machi. So like I was sayin. In this festival they get themselves some big kinda mobile shrines/parade floats and some of the tough guys climb up on em and bangs they drums and clangs some kinda gongs and what they got, some flutes, maybe. Some other things what cause lots of noise to wake the dead. And then a whole bunch of the folks grab hold of some big ropes and , "Hora! Sora!", they pull these big floats with reckless abandon through these streets, in a Pampelonian manner with the onlookers sometimes becoming getters-out-of-the-wayers. Which I was on several occasions. And these Shrines weighing some several tons and all intricately carved with many faces of I don't know some gods or spirits, not bodhisattvas since it's all shinto you know. With several folks on top, appointed cheerleaders they jump on the roofs and wave their fans, goading the great engine of the masses pulling. Sometimes these massive things would be just a thunderin towards each other like big juggernauts of wood and flesh and the clanging of the bells and the bangin of the drums a rolling thundering storm of true chaos they are and how could they miss not to hit each other and a massive collision? But they do, as they crash into buildings along the way and take out some tiles and window shades and what not, or phone poles, or bystanders like I said.

Quite a thing to see.

And then that night the local team, the Hanshin Tigers, won the pennant. And there was much rejoicing. Everyone sang their song, and many devoted fans ran to the Dotonburi bridge, which if you come see me you'll see, and jumped into its polluted waters despite the local constables efforts to contain their enthusiasms. Tigers enthusiasm here is close to religion. I crossed the Dotonburi bridge while the game was on, and many fans were there already, like mendicants waiting for judgement day. Delivered at last in the seventh inning, they washed their sins away and were born again from the greasy filmed and rusty bottomed river of the Dotonburi.

I like football better.

And now for some Nick Cave.
papa wont leave you, henry.