All of my dreams upon returning from Japan have been set in Japan. The one that follows on this page took place on the fifth day after my return. With the exception of the content of the dinner conversation, all of the people populating my dreams have spoken Japanese. As I build this page it is now the nineteenth day since my return, and to my recollection I have not yet had a dream in English. As long as that seems to be the case I am journaling as often as I can.

The location feels like Warren, PA and looks like a warren. Specifically there are features of the west end of Warren and the refinery. There is a labyrinth of pipes and industrial conveyances, as well as alley ways and dead ends. All of this feels like it has some useful purpose, but it is mostly unknown to me. There are tanks, and pipes, and gauges to be read by people with clip boards. This apparatus fills one side of a valley, bordered by a mountain on the far side and a river on the near side. Now I am walking on the dike that separates the river from the industrial network and I am with my student who I visited in Japan.

We are climbing over obstacles and into the apparatus, looking for a way across. I don't know why I have to cross and I don't care why, I just know that I have to. He keeps running into dead ends but I know the way. I am casual enough that I spend time looking at things, trying to make out the purpose of pipes, and tanks, and boilers.

He ends up having to climb up difficult obstacles only to find that they go nowhere.

This feels like Japan in every way. The workers are uniformed and uniform. They wear the same thing, they do the same things, they work in unison, they are clean. They are Japanese sararimen (company men). The apparatus has grown up purposefully among a network of alleys in a Japanese neighborhood. The language is Japanese, but the people are gracious and try to communicate with me as I find my way.

I am confident. I intuitively know the way. My student and I part ways, I don't remember where. He just keeps running into obstacles and won't listen or follow while I make my way through this complex to the other side: to a neighborhood that now has no hint of the former labyrinth and which seems to be transitioning into the hill or mountain.

It is night now but everything is lit ambiently, as if from unseen streetlights or lanterns. There is a breeze and the trees which line the street are moving and casting dynamic shadows. The streets are lined with shops that are dark and dwellings which are either winding down for the day or already in the mode of evening. Yet people are on the sidewalks and in the alleys moving with purpose to their destinations. I have small encounters with them as I move with purpose to my destination, maybe just a nod or a word.

I have dinner with a friend who initially is faceless. We are in a warehouse that has been refurbished into a place to dine. Here there is some hint of the industrial complex from before: open metal rafters which have been painted and are clean, a wooden shop floor which is now clean and heavily shellacked, and intimate lighting which reveals these details. The rapport with my friend is warm and purposeful. There is an agenda to cover: the sharing of souvenirs in businesslike fashion as if to be gotten out of the way, followed by an accounting of happenings and assessment of their significance.

As dinner unfolds, wait staff come and go without any recognizable interaction. They do their jobs matter of factly. There is the buzz of activity in the background but all the focus is on our interaction.

My friend feels like a close friend who is like another self. It is a man as I tell of my trip and the adventures that unfolded in Japan, as if that place and those adventures are right outside the restaurant. He has strong male features: muscular face, sweeping but combed hair, square jaw; almost a caricature of a man, and probably one whose manliness is so overt as would ordinarily make me feel uncomfortable. Everyone in the restaurant is non-Japanese and look nordic or european.

The conversation feels almost clinical with the telling of accomplishments and their larger implications. The friend with whom I am dining now has a face and is identifiable in every way as Kathy down to the funky earrings and hand-dyed self-made dress. Connections are made between the happenings in Japan and therapeutic goals. There is a momentum to the conversation as one insight after another is shared and examined. One victory after another is acknowledged. There is talk at the end of the cost of things: the sumptuous dinner, our time together. She matter of factly tells me that I am to pay for all this, and I already have. As we get up to leave there is a feeling of accomplishment and self-congratulation, as if we are proud of what we have done and that something significant is done.

We part. As I make my way out onto and through the streets it is still night, breezy, the air warm, and I am still comfortable. But I have the sense that I am now looking over my shoulder a little. It is as if the same purposeful people out on the street have lost some innocence, that they are a little more suspicious or fearful, that the edges of a former idealism have been sanded away. It feels like there is something more in the air, that the breeze carries something now.

It is an overcast day now and I have walked up the hill and am to be given a tour of an active mine. The supervisors and the mine workers are all Japanese again: orderly, working in unison, trying to communicate with me as necessary. I'm now touring a mine operation as if doing an inspection. I'm being treated as if I'm to do a review.

The area is a hub of activity, but different from the apparatus I encountered before, though they seem related. There are conveyor belts and rock crushers and narrow gauge rails into the mountain. They are hauling some sort of ore out of the ground. They are moving raw materials with all manner of conveyance. Whereas everything before was clean and tidy, much of the machinery is worn by use and even rusty in places. There is discarded metal and weeds alongside the rails. The workers are dusty.

I'm being shown around in a narrow gauge rail car with a brakeman. There is a sense of hurry as if it is the end of the day and we have to return to the gravel entrance of the site. I am in a little ore car with room only for me, and I'm on a metal trestle that is sloped to return me home. As I pick up speed I realize that the metal supports and rails are gone and that I am flying through the air. I can look back and see where the rails raggedly break off mid air. Workers are on the ground running back to the entrance as if there is an emergency. I get that feeling of dread in a dream like I am falling and about to die, but instead the car feels supported. Even though I'm hurtling through the air it is as if there are still rails and that I am being guided safely to my destination. Now I see ragged rails rising up from the ground to meet my car and reconnect me with the network on the ground. I ease to a stop and get out with ease.

I have gone back to the shukubo (temple lodging) where I am staying. My mom and dad are there, but I'm not sure why. They look like they have their own plans and we're not really interacting. Seiji, my host in Shigisan, is my host in this shukubo. The lodging is on the side of the hill and follows its contours; so there are odd steps here and there, hallways which run along the flat parts of the hills, and an occasional devotional niche. The layout is clean and lit ambiently, even at night. It looks more like the shukubo in Koya with clear-grained wood and no ornamentation.

I walk out of the lodging and now it is bright outside. The hillside appears to be undergoing some sort of reclamation project after having been mined. The contours are man-made and there is new uncut grass growing everywhere. There are bugs flying around and it is warm, like in a summer meadow. There are intricate mechanisms of purification in the contours of the hills: pipes into the ground and clean white tanks next to them. Something in the ground is being collected for purification or disposal.

Once again it feels like I am inspecting the operation with these Japanese supervisors in neat uniforms: hardhats, white shirts, and navy blue pants. Some are wearing watches and have pocket protectors. I understand little of what they are saying but they are treating me like I have to approve what they are doing. We are walking all over the hillside inspecting these tanks. They have clipboards and are writing down things in response to what I say.

There is a sense from the look of things and from the processes that are taking place that the land is being returned to a sense of beauty.