Anthony Bourdain is in Osaka right now on "No Reservations"--- and watching the O-bon festival. It's a lovely episode--- colours and lights, a sombre beauty.

Someone--- maybe the Vanished DRL ---told me once that there were Osaka girls and Tokyo girls, and the division was as clear as ever Yankees and Red Sox or Westwood and Upper West Side. I'm a De Guzman of Hokkaido--- being an Ezo kid puts you outside that choice. But...I must ask Cynthia Gralla which she is. The Small Pika I know is an Osaka girl at heart.

Go, Hanshin Tigers! The Small Pika is a Hanshin Tigers fan. That's her idea of fun: watching the Tigers at an Osaka pub, drinking Asahi and scarfing down takoyaki--- fried octopus dumplings. Anthony Bourdain is at a takoyaki shop, an issen-yoshoku now. I do need to be there.

Osaka... I suppose I can always re-read "The Makioka Sisters". Cynthia Gralla says there should be Nagoya novels. It's down in Aichi Prefecture--- way south for my tastes. The Tokugawa still own a family museum there--- I'd like to see that. But I am an Ezo boy--- miso-flavoured ramen at stalls in Sapporo at midnight, the Five Points Fortress in Hakodate. After all, the De Guzmans have been on Hokkaido since ever the first armed settlers of the Kakizaki clan came to the Wajinchi. The Wajinchi...isn't it the same thing as the Anglo-Norman Pale in late-medieval Ireland or the Kurland littoral?

Watching Anthony Bourdain eat at Osaka street stalls... sigh. I had kebabs at lunch today, but I may have to go out and find unagi rolls at lunch tomorrow...or drive for sushi tomorrow night.

The streets just up the hill from my flat are still part of a virtual Los Angeles. This morning there were film-school girls in hoodies and tattoos helping set up huge fans and laying huge colour-coded power cables along the curb. This evening on the way home I stood in a small knot of people on the corner and watched a scene shot. The street was covered in fake ash and grey muck studded with debris. Junked cars with California plates were there on the street, smoldering. Marines in desert camo and body armour were running along the sidewalks firing M-4 carbines at the invading aliens. A Marine squad dashed up into a small house, shooting through the shattered door. There was a 105mm howitzer down at one of the government parking lots. Elsewhere in town, a whole swath of one main boulevard was blocked off for bigger battle scenes involving helicopters and armoured vehicles. A friend who's working as an extra-- one of the Marines ---tells me that the streets here in my neighbourhood are standing in for Lincoln Heights in Los Angeles. I can still see lights flashing out past the interstate tonight. I do like this--- living next to other worlds and other Stories playing out.