I had the most amazing dream last night.
I was back in Japan, somehow in the dream part of the JET program meant that we got our successor’s flat (my flat a couple of years ago) for a weeks holiday after we’d left. My family were there and I was going to show them round again. We were in the BOE sorting out paperwork and I was working out where to go (I took them to Kyoto last time, Dad would be interested in Hiroshima but I think the rest of us would prefer Miyajima or the northern parts of Japan). Then Dad got angry because the last day we would be there, Monday we couldn’t have the flat. I very calmly explained that we wouldn’t need the flat then because the night before we would fly out from Narita we’d be taking a hotel in Tokyo in anycase. Then I took them for a walk around the Ogino (local department store/mall).
The Ogino was filled with random English people which annoyed Mum because she kept wanting to say things that other people wouldn’t understand and they would. In the middle of what is really the gap between the Ogino and the Apita (the two department stores next to each other) was a massive room, kind of like a school sports hall. Inside it was something called ‘the spinning thing’ (who says I have no imagination!?!) which a man said was from the South which I took to mean South East Asia. It was this huge wooden and rope construction that looked like a cross between a windmill and ships rigging. It revolved in all different sorts of directions and the different levels constantly slid over one another slightly changing the plane they rested in. Lots and lots of children were climbing all over it in a sort of competition to reach the top. When one did the spinning thing kind of collapsed a little and they all got off it to reset it and start again with all the adults standing on the floor of the ‘sports hall’ watching. I was a little worried by the way they would slide their heads up through squares of rope that marked the different sections that slid randomly as I feared they may guillotine themselves, but they never did and I wasn’t especially worried, just concerned.
Then I noticed that a large, thick rope was attached to the very top and it swung a little, thinking it would be fun to swing across from here to there I did so, and the rope kept going because the spinning thing kept spinning around, so I swung all around the room, from ceiling to floor and again and again until I decided to get off, which I did by slowly swinging in to the spinning thing and slowly stumbling to a stop up against it. It was WONDERFUL.
Like I said, it was an amazing dream.