小諸 · ただいま、おかえり · the Zu village that stayed
Komoro, Nagano — ZuCity Japan, the Zu village that stayed. Tadaima, okaeri: I'm home, welcome home.
Fifteen minutes from Komoro Station with a gig bag on my back, up the old post road where the carts rolled four hundred years. Yoramachi — the street that gives good — three old houses and a door, and the door already knew the words before I knocked.
Tadaima, okaeri — I'm home, welcome home — ただいま、おかえり — a little town of many, under the mountain. Zuzalu was a spring in Montenegro; Komoro is the village that stayed. It isn't a stage, it's a circle on the floor, and the floor is here. (×2)
Asama breathes smoke in the morning and the valley holds its breath, Karuizawa twenty minutes down the line, Tokyo ninety more. Coffee on the Hokkoku Kaidō, the volcano in the window — a popup city that forgot to pop back down.
Saturday the third of October, a waning moon lit on the left, MIMI BAR on one side, 333 across the street. Colorfly on the decks, the whole town walking back and forth — save the plant, jam, keep dancing, 小諸の夜, butterflies and love.
(repeat)
The Kala bag hung by the little stage under the disco ball, and when the DJ stopped the ukuleles didn't. Circles running past midnight into the mountain quiet, in Komoro the instruments stopped being guests — they became furniture of the heart.
Red bag burnable, blue bag landfill, paper bag for the scraps that turn to soil, green for the plastics, the cans and bottles clean. District number one, third Sunday at CleanHill — we learned the five-bag law, and taught it, as a way of saying thank you.
Two hundred people on an Adriatic bay in twenty-twenty-three, and the seed blew east until it landed on the Hokkoku Kaidō. Let a thousand societies bloom — this one has a mailbox and a mountain, and a friend named Kiba who said: stay as long as you like.
(repeat)
From Komoro to Tsumagoi, the burn and the leave-no-trace, then Narita at seven, CA3780, Shenzhen by night. The first thing I sang in the harbor was the anthem from the spring — Komoro, you are the verse between Zuzalu and the sea.
Tadaima, okaeri — I'm home, welcome home — a little town of many, under the mountain. Zuzalu was a spring in Montenegro; Komoro is the village that stayed. It isn't a stage, it's a circle on the floor — sì hǎi wéi jiā, and 小諸 is home too. I love you. I won't forget. Alohana. 🌺
ただいま tadaima = "I'm home" · おかえり okaeri = "welcome home" — the two words every Japanese door says to each other. Read character by character, 小諸 is "the little town of many" (a reading of the characters, not an official etymology). Written at Shaka's ask: "look back and make a ShanHaiWoo anthem and a Komoro anthem, all ʻohana as the writer."