Nebraska

Just a brief note to explain the flurry of posts tonight. Blame it all on Nebraska - or on not going to Nebraska.

8:30 PM. My daughter fell asleep a bit early and I faced a weighty moral dilemma. Go to Nebraska or stay home and blog. The answer was clear.

I first visited Nebraska bar in the musicians' nexus of Koenji/Nakano in Tokyo about 13 years back. I had come to live in Tokyo just a few months before and all was still new and fresh to me. Two respected long-time martial artists were heading back to the US for a month and were apparently desperate, for they asked me to house-sit for them.
If I knew then what I know now...I would have quit all work and spent 24 hours a day in their vast library of budo-related books and videos.
Well, I did soak in a bit. And one night went out for drinks and more drinks and somewhere along the way stumbled into a now-defunct okonomiyaki eatery where somebody's grandmother regaled me with drunken tales of hardship in the post-War years (the area around Nakano station was completely flattened in one bombing raid, thus accounting for the unusual presence of straight streets in Tokyo) as I scribbled notes inside the cover of a Milan Kundera novel. And somewhere else along the way I stumbled into a tiny bar with about 7 stools called Nebraska. A haven for rock musicians after their live performances, it grabbed me right away and I had a wonderful night in that smoky den named after my home state.

And couldn't find it the next night. Or for the next year or so. But one night, on a lark, I determined to wander that area until I found it. I started out at the apartment where I had house-sat, and walked an ever-larger circle, backing up whenever I hit a dead end but leaving no street unwalked. It took a while, but I did manage to rediscover it, and have been back many times since. But I didn't make it tonight, and that's why I have been blogging like I haven't blogged since I was in Beijing.