I remembered a dream
I really enjoy remembering dreams, but it's an experience that only happens once or twice a year. For some reason I remember just a few foggy details of one that ended shortly before I ran to my computer to write it up.
My cousin Ryan, my mom, and my aunt Jodi were all visiting Japan, and we must have been in Kiryu City. As were debating between going to a pizza place and an izakaya (居酒屋, i.e. a Japanese-style pub), one of Ryan's friends in Japan called him to tell him that he absolutely had to go see the rock at Fūgetsudō (風月洞, a popular bar in downtown Kiryu that I sometimes frequent*) before the sunset was over. For "rock," he chose the word iwa (岩), which denotes a large, craggy rock somewhere inbetween a stone and a boulder, and if somebody were to tell me in real life that I had to go see the rock at someplace or other, I would have no idea what he meant. However, because I was in control of the dream, I understood that he wanted to go see a rock garden (which doesn't actually exist at said bar, but that's what dreaming's about I guess). I knew of a pizza place right nearby there, but my mom and aunt were tired so they decided to stay back while Ryan and I made a trip downtown. We arrived at the restaurant, but all of a sudden it wasn't just the two of us; two friends had materialized out of nowhere, but in typical dream fashion, my brain just went with it. It was some special night where customers could play vintage video games for free, and since Ryan and I played a lot of video games growing up together, we were excited. To my left, I heard somebody say "wan shang hao" (晚上好), Mandarin for "good evening." I was surprised at this as I only have seen or met about 5 Chinese or Taiwanese nationals since moving here. Looking up, I realized that there were a few people from my Chinese class last year, Xiao Ma and Xiao Ge, as well as one of my classmates from Hawaii while I was studying abroad in Kobe a few years ago, Jax. I think I woke up right after that, which is a shame because it was an interesting dream, but then again if I had slept through to the end, I probably wouldn't have remembered it.
Regarding the asterisk way back there, maybe it's just me, but I just realized what an interesting phrase "sometimes frequent" is. I guess "often frequent" is even more cool since in another sense often means the same thing as frequent. I bet it could be a good cryptic crossword puzzle clue, except I can't seem to think of a single word that has the same meaning.
In the previous entry I had said something about not writing for an audience, which is turning out not to be as true as I imagined. I guess the very nature of publishing a journal on the internet makes it very difficult to avoid explaining things. Allow me to revise that statement to say that I will not be writing only for an audience. I just wanted to say that I don't intend to make this a showy blog.
Speaking of other blogs, I remembered that LiveJournalers let their readers the song they happen to be listening to, their current mood, the weather, and other such details. I felt jealous for a brief moment before I realized that I am almost always listening to Daft Punk or John Mayer, my mood falls in between mildly happy and moderately blue, and it's always either bloody cold and windy or bloody hot and humid in Kiryu (I have yet to experience the latter but I'm told it's pretty harsh). Now that I've gotten that off my back, I am no longer jealous! And I have saved myself some mouseclicks two birds with one stone. (^o^)
Yesterday work went as usual. There is a woman I work with (I'll call her Mrs. X) who seems to enjoy tormenting me. She has done some really nice things for me as well, but for one reason or another she will strategically pick a time when nobody from my section is around, and they lay into me for not doing some vague task she never asked me to do, or for not having a calculator, or any number of petty things. I think she would actually be a good senpai (先輩, one's elder at a work or a school who helps train the newbies) if she were not so incredibly condescending all the time. I have been slugging away at my company for over six months now, fighting through my linguistic and logistical challenges, but I never received any formal training. I was handed a packet of data about where our foreign factories are, the mission statement of the purchasing department, and so forth. I don't think my company was wrong for neglecting this; in fact, I think it was probably a necessary evil. There are so many minute details that I probably wouldn't have been able to remember them right away. However, I would expect veteran employees to understand that the American guy who's never studied business is bound not to understand certain things, and to explain them when they surface. Everybody but Mrs. X does this to some degree or another. Some go out of their way and are really nice about it, showing me multiple examples, and others just give me the answer I'm looking for and dismiss me - I'm fine with both. But Mrs. X twists everything around and mocks me for asking such a stupid question. She does this really mean laugh (I suspect she may not realize she is doing this) and asks me why I would ask her such a thing. Statistically speaking, she then tells me that she is disappointed in me and wishes I would think more carefully before asking her the next time. I could go on and on about how miserable I am sometimes having to sit next to her, but there are four more months of internship to go, and I'm sure she'll surface in future entries.
After work, I taught my weekly English lesson, for which I had a lot of good ideas thanks to Anna's suggestions. However, only two students showed up, so we reviewed what we had done a few weeks before. After that, I hung out with my usual crowd, Taka and Aki, along with my friend Hide, who is Taka's cousin. I brought my Stratocaster over and played a few songs for them, and then we went to a pub called Yōrō no Taki for some food and drinks. Soon after we walked in, about 15 younger women came in as a group. A few minutes later, I hear "Jeremy, Jeremy!" coming from one of them. I didn't recognize her at first but went over to say hello, and it turned out that they were teachers at the local nursury school I used to volunteer at, Hirosawa Hoikuen (広沢保育園). I was sort of impressed that one of the women had remembered my name, because I hadn't directly worked with her at all.
I got to thinking about the name of the pub last night and decided to look into it. The kanji for the pub is written 養老乃瀧, and I didn't understand the meaning until today. Evidently 養老 (Yōrō) means old age, 乃 is a way of writting the possessive particle no (の), and which is usually written in hiragana (one of the two syllabaries of Japanese), and 瀧 is a more complicated form of the character 滝, "waterfall." I googled it and found that the origin of the name comes from a Japanese fairy tale about a woodcutter who ventures further than he normally does into the mountains in search of firewood. He comes across a beautiful waterfall, and falls into the water as he tries to get a closer look. He loses consciousness for a while, but when he regains his senses, he realizes that it was sake! Somebody told this tale to the emperor of of Mino no Kuni.* The emperor praised the story highly and decided to go and see the waterfall himself (on which the story was based). The water was said to be a sort of fountain of youth, and after having a drink, the emperor declared that he indeed felt youthful. As an imperial gift to all his subjects over 80, he even renamed the era - so 717 in the Western calendar is Yōrō 1 in Japanese. The story was later written translated into English and published as "The Enchanted Waterfall," as part of a set of ancient Japanese fairy tales which featured color woodblock prints on washi (和紙, traditional Japanese paper). The series created a stir in Europe, where French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese versions were also published.
*Mino no Kuni (美濃の国): an ancient kingdom that along Hida no Kuni (飛騨の国) formed present-day Gifu Prefecture (岐阜県).
Google is the most wonderful thing. I would never have had the ambition to go to the library and do all that research, but I was able to throw it together from about eight Japanese and two English sites. I'm not all that particularly interested in Japanese folklore, but I enjoy puzzles a lot. I think that's why I enjoy life halfway across the world...it's not always happy but it's incredibly interesting much of the time. Things that seem really insignificant on the surface (like the name of a pub near my apartment) can lead to really fascinating stories with just a little bit of gumshoe spirit. Also, Google runs the Blogger service I am using to publish the text you are reading. They have incredibly tasty, healthy food (very often vegan) in their main office...I want to work there so badly...
More to write, but it's time for lunch. Maybe I'll try to write again later today if time permits.
My cousin Ryan, my mom, and my aunt Jodi were all visiting Japan, and we must have been in Kiryu City. As were debating between going to a pizza place and an izakaya (居酒屋, i.e. a Japanese-style pub), one of Ryan's friends in Japan called him to tell him that he absolutely had to go see the rock at Fūgetsudō (風月洞, a popular bar in downtown Kiryu that I sometimes frequent*) before the sunset was over. For "rock," he chose the word iwa (岩), which denotes a large, craggy rock somewhere inbetween a stone and a boulder, and if somebody were to tell me in real life that I had to go see the rock at someplace or other, I would have no idea what he meant. However, because I was in control of the dream, I understood that he wanted to go see a rock garden (which doesn't actually exist at said bar, but that's what dreaming's about I guess). I knew of a pizza place right nearby there, but my mom and aunt were tired so they decided to stay back while Ryan and I made a trip downtown. We arrived at the restaurant, but all of a sudden it wasn't just the two of us; two friends had materialized out of nowhere, but in typical dream fashion, my brain just went with it. It was some special night where customers could play vintage video games for free, and since Ryan and I played a lot of video games growing up together, we were excited. To my left, I heard somebody say "wan shang hao" (晚上好), Mandarin for "good evening." I was surprised at this as I only have seen or met about 5 Chinese or Taiwanese nationals since moving here. Looking up, I realized that there were a few people from my Chinese class last year, Xiao Ma and Xiao Ge, as well as one of my classmates from Hawaii while I was studying abroad in Kobe a few years ago, Jax. I think I woke up right after that, which is a shame because it was an interesting dream, but then again if I had slept through to the end, I probably wouldn't have remembered it.
Regarding the asterisk way back there, maybe it's just me, but I just realized what an interesting phrase "sometimes frequent" is. I guess "often frequent" is even more cool since in another sense often means the same thing as frequent. I bet it could be a good cryptic crossword puzzle clue, except I can't seem to think of a single word that has the same meaning.
In the previous entry I had said something about not writing for an audience, which is turning out not to be as true as I imagined. I guess the very nature of publishing a journal on the internet makes it very difficult to avoid explaining things. Allow me to revise that statement to say that I will not be writing only for an audience. I just wanted to say that I don't intend to make this a showy blog.
Speaking of other blogs, I remembered that LiveJournalers let their readers the song they happen to be listening to, their current mood, the weather, and other such details. I felt jealous for a brief moment before I realized that I am almost always listening to Daft Punk or John Mayer, my mood falls in between mildly happy and moderately blue, and it's always either bloody cold and windy or bloody hot and humid in Kiryu (I have yet to experience the latter but I'm told it's pretty harsh). Now that I've gotten that off my back, I am no longer jealous! And I have saved myself some mouseclicks two birds with one stone. (^o^)
Yesterday work went as usual. There is a woman I work with (I'll call her Mrs. X) who seems to enjoy tormenting me. She has done some really nice things for me as well, but for one reason or another she will strategically pick a time when nobody from my section is around, and they lay into me for not doing some vague task she never asked me to do, or for not having a calculator, or any number of petty things. I think she would actually be a good senpai (先輩, one's elder at a work or a school who helps train the newbies) if she were not so incredibly condescending all the time. I have been slugging away at my company for over six months now, fighting through my linguistic and logistical challenges, but I never received any formal training. I was handed a packet of data about where our foreign factories are, the mission statement of the purchasing department, and so forth. I don't think my company was wrong for neglecting this; in fact, I think it was probably a necessary evil. There are so many minute details that I probably wouldn't have been able to remember them right away. However, I would expect veteran employees to understand that the American guy who's never studied business is bound not to understand certain things, and to explain them when they surface. Everybody but Mrs. X does this to some degree or another. Some go out of their way and are really nice about it, showing me multiple examples, and others just give me the answer I'm looking for and dismiss me - I'm fine with both. But Mrs. X twists everything around and mocks me for asking such a stupid question. She does this really mean laugh (I suspect she may not realize she is doing this) and asks me why I would ask her such a thing. Statistically speaking, she then tells me that she is disappointed in me and wishes I would think more carefully before asking her the next time. I could go on and on about how miserable I am sometimes having to sit next to her, but there are four more months of internship to go, and I'm sure she'll surface in future entries.
After work, I taught my weekly English lesson, for which I had a lot of good ideas thanks to Anna's suggestions. However, only two students showed up, so we reviewed what we had done a few weeks before. After that, I hung out with my usual crowd, Taka and Aki, along with my friend Hide, who is Taka's cousin. I brought my Stratocaster over and played a few songs for them, and then we went to a pub called Yōrō no Taki for some food and drinks. Soon after we walked in, about 15 younger women came in as a group. A few minutes later, I hear "Jeremy, Jeremy!" coming from one of them. I didn't recognize her at first but went over to say hello, and it turned out that they were teachers at the local nursury school I used to volunteer at, Hirosawa Hoikuen (広沢保育園). I was sort of impressed that one of the women had remembered my name, because I hadn't directly worked with her at all.
I got to thinking about the name of the pub last night and decided to look into it. The kanji for the pub is written 養老乃瀧, and I didn't understand the meaning until today. Evidently 養老 (Yōrō) means old age, 乃 is a way of writting the possessive particle no (の), and which is usually written in hiragana (one of the two syllabaries of Japanese), and 瀧 is a more complicated form of the character 滝, "waterfall." I googled it and found that the origin of the name comes from a Japanese fairy tale about a woodcutter who ventures further than he normally does into the mountains in search of firewood. He comes across a beautiful waterfall, and falls into the water as he tries to get a closer look. He loses consciousness for a while, but when he regains his senses, he realizes that it was sake! Somebody told this tale to the emperor of of Mino no Kuni.* The emperor praised the story highly and decided to go and see the waterfall himself (on which the story was based). The water was said to be a sort of fountain of youth, and after having a drink, the emperor declared that he indeed felt youthful. As an imperial gift to all his subjects over 80, he even renamed the era - so 717 in the Western calendar is Yōrō 1 in Japanese. The story was later written translated into English and published as "The Enchanted Waterfall," as part of a set of ancient Japanese fairy tales which featured color woodblock prints on washi (和紙, traditional Japanese paper). The series created a stir in Europe, where French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese versions were also published.
*Mino no Kuni (美濃の国): an ancient kingdom that along Hida no Kuni (飛騨の国) formed present-day Gifu Prefecture (岐阜県).
Google is the most wonderful thing. I would never have had the ambition to go to the library and do all that research, but I was able to throw it together from about eight Japanese and two English sites. I'm not all that particularly interested in Japanese folklore, but I enjoy puzzles a lot. I think that's why I enjoy life halfway across the world...it's not always happy but it's incredibly interesting much of the time. Things that seem really insignificant on the surface (like the name of a pub near my apartment) can lead to really fascinating stories with just a little bit of gumshoe spirit. Also, Google runs the Blogger service I am using to publish the text you are reading. They have incredibly tasty, healthy food (very often vegan) in their main office...I want to work there so badly...
More to write, but it's time for lunch. Maybe I'll try to write again later today if time permits.
posted by jeremy at 8:46 AM
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