Jess's Midnight Dream Theatre Part ??
I had a really weird dream last night (and yes, I realize how many of my entries start with that line). Anyway, apparantly, a group of kids from my various classes were on this day trip to Tokyo...which isn't too bad for people who live on the east coast of Honshu, but for people who live on the opposite side of the world, it's a bit of a stretch. So my mom is chaperoning for some reason, and we all get in a car and start driving out to the country because we'd already seen everything we were going to in the city before I'd joined the dream. So we start driving and I notice that we're on the right side of the road, and comment on this to the driver, who informs me that we're in the uber gaijin part of Tokyo, where they even let you drive on the wrong side of the road to feel at home. How polite and thoughtful of them. I take this time to look out the window at all the sights to see, except it doesn't look like Tokyo so much as Boston, except that there's a strange lack of highrises which both cities sport. I suppose this makes sense, as I've never been to the great Eastern Capital, and only know what it looks like from pictures and movies. It's fun to note that my subconscious did bother to include the diagonal crosswalks. That just amuses my Ego for some reason. And probably my Id too.
Leaving "Tokyo", we instantly hit forested highway that bore a suspicious resemblence to driving in New Jersey. Also, we're going to have to suspend belief here for a minute, and assume that the sprawling suburban area around Tokyo no longer exists and there's Northeastern American foliage carpeting the Kanto Plain. Yeah. Back to the narrative, we're driving in our little van and we pass a huge shrine thing, which I suppose was my mind attempting to gain some sort of semblence of accuracy. Good job. We stop for hirogohan at this little roadside convention building, which is bland and windowless on the inside. While there, I notice Mom smoking a cigarette and ask her when she started smoking again. Why I said again I don't know either, because my mother never smoked, and gets sick at the smell of it. She says that she's really stressed and needs it, which is true considering the rough couple of months she's had lately. I'm really worried about this new smoking development, but then something happened and I woke up.
Here begins my second dream, which was really cool, because it was all in Japanese. I'm on a plane to Tokyo, to visit this pen pal I had in the dream named Yoshimi. In her last letter, she told me that I could come stay with her and her family for a few months over the summer. I'm just out of college at this point, and my Japanese has apparantly gotten much better, yet I'm still feeling apprehensive on the plane and wondering what I'm doing flying to the other side of the world by myself to a country I don't know too much about, that has thousands of years of history and an impossibly subtle set of complex social rules, especially to a city that houses 12 million people, all of which look vastly different from me. While at the same time terrifying, it's also an exhilarating feeling that really makes me want to travel. I must be shaking or something, because the Japanese guy next to me asks if I'm okay, and if I've even been to Japan before. I answer no, that this is my first time, and I'm a little worried. We introduce ourselves; his name is Ooda (at least not Tanaka or Ito) and informs me that he has a daughter about my age who has just gone to England to study abroad. Ooda then comments on how well I speak Japanese, which embarrasses me and I tell him that I'm not that fluent yet. He laughs at that and says something about how most foreigners don't even bother to learn any Japanese outside of what they can pick up from popular media, and that lots of Japanese people are the same way about America. That's about where I woke up.
Man, I really want to go to Japan. Not just because it's a country that fascinates me, but also because I love to travel and haven't gotten to do much of it during my life thus far. Japan would be great because it's as far away from America (both geographically, and to a lesser extent, culturally) as you can get. I think that would be so exciting and fun. Sure, it wouldn't be easy, and I'd have to rely on my own wits and knowledge of the language and culture I have to survive, but like I've said several times in the past, it's shock treatment like that that I need to grow as a person.
Alright, I'm done rambling.
Leaving "Tokyo", we instantly hit forested highway that bore a suspicious resemblence to driving in New Jersey. Also, we're going to have to suspend belief here for a minute, and assume that the sprawling suburban area around Tokyo no longer exists and there's Northeastern American foliage carpeting the Kanto Plain. Yeah. Back to the narrative, we're driving in our little van and we pass a huge shrine thing, which I suppose was my mind attempting to gain some sort of semblence of accuracy. Good job. We stop for hirogohan at this little roadside convention building, which is bland and windowless on the inside. While there, I notice Mom smoking a cigarette and ask her when she started smoking again. Why I said again I don't know either, because my mother never smoked, and gets sick at the smell of it. She says that she's really stressed and needs it, which is true considering the rough couple of months she's had lately. I'm really worried about this new smoking development, but then something happened and I woke up.
Here begins my second dream, which was really cool, because it was all in Japanese. I'm on a plane to Tokyo, to visit this pen pal I had in the dream named Yoshimi. In her last letter, she told me that I could come stay with her and her family for a few months over the summer. I'm just out of college at this point, and my Japanese has apparantly gotten much better, yet I'm still feeling apprehensive on the plane and wondering what I'm doing flying to the other side of the world by myself to a country I don't know too much about, that has thousands of years of history and an impossibly subtle set of complex social rules, especially to a city that houses 12 million people, all of which look vastly different from me. While at the same time terrifying, it's also an exhilarating feeling that really makes me want to travel. I must be shaking or something, because the Japanese guy next to me asks if I'm okay, and if I've even been to Japan before. I answer no, that this is my first time, and I'm a little worried. We introduce ourselves; his name is Ooda (at least not Tanaka or Ito) and informs me that he has a daughter about my age who has just gone to England to study abroad. Ooda then comments on how well I speak Japanese, which embarrasses me and I tell him that I'm not that fluent yet. He laughs at that and says something about how most foreigners don't even bother to learn any Japanese outside of what they can pick up from popular media, and that lots of Japanese people are the same way about America. That's about where I woke up.
Man, I really want to go to Japan. Not just because it's a country that fascinates me, but also because I love to travel and haven't gotten to do much of it during my life thus far. Japan would be great because it's as far away from America (both geographically, and to a lesser extent, culturally) as you can get. I think that would be so exciting and fun. Sure, it wouldn't be easy, and I'd have to rely on my own wits and knowledge of the language and culture I have to survive, but like I've said several times in the past, it's shock treatment like that that I need to grow as a person.
Alright, I'm done rambling.