It’s a pretty well-known fact that I have ridiculous dreams. Like, they could be movies, but the audience would leave halfway through because they didn’t understand it.
Background: A couple of years I lived in Japan for 4 months. Ever since I came back, I randomly have dreams that I am back in Japan. And the weird thing about these dreams is that when I’m dreaming it really feels like it’s real.
So, the dream last night: I took a group of my students to Japan for a week. That should have been the first clue I was dreaming. How on earth would I be expected to take a group of students to a foreign country on my own? Anyway, here’s the really strange thing about this dream. In the dream my memories of Japan were based on previous Japan dreams and not my actual memories of the real experience. And I was flipping out. First the hotel we were staying at (which has evolved over time to represent my real-life apartment in Japan) was not what it used to be. It was janky. And there was this really scary dog that kept chasing us around the property. My students were grumpy. It was raining which was a bummer because I wanted to take them to my favorite place to eat (dream-favorite that is). Finally it stopped raining and I went to take them to this place. Now this place has evolved over time as well. I think it’s kind of a mish-mash of all my favorite real-life places. Anyway we get there, and most of the buildings had turned to piles of dirt. People were looting. It was chaos. The only Japanese word I could remember was “ie” (no) and yelled it at this guy who was trying to sell us something but wouldn’t leave it alone. (It was like a combination of some of my experiences in China and the Philippines that I never experienced in Japan). Eventually I wandered into this empty field, I didn’t know where my students were, and it was incredibly dark. I laid down on a patch of some kind of clover/moss hybrid. At this point everything was so different that I was like, this must be a dream. Weird thing was when I realized it was a dream I thought the real me was sleeping by myself in some hotel room. So I laid down on the grass closing my eyes and trying to force myself to wake up. Apparently that doesn’t work if you don’t actually know where your real self is. I was saved by the alarm clock.
This dream had to have happened within the span of an hour (that whole idea of dreaming in real time? Yeah, I’m proof that that’s not fact).
So, any dream interpreters out there? Cuz I am at a total loss of what this dream could possibly mean.
What’s really funny is I have these Japan dreams increasingly when I’m not thinking about anything related to Japan at all.
What a strange place my mind must be.
Fighting Labels 
