Writings:2008 NaNoWriMo novel, Dreams

table and kangaroo girl

8:01pm JST Saturday 1 November 2008 (day 14101)

Had a chance to get a used table from a friend, so I solicited the help of some friends to help me move it. Richard (Kiwi) was helping move it when I arrived (late) with my group, and he was upset. I placed my hand on his chest and made eye contact with him for a few minutes as he changed from hot and sweaty to normal; emotionally angry to spiritually enlightened; and from Richard the Kiwi to Kim Sawyer, my warrior brother.

I then apologized to the group for making them wait again, thanked them for their help, and suggested that if we get just one person on each corner of the table, we could lift it easily, or two smaller people on each corner, and a girl went to the opposite end and just picked it up, "or one strong person to just get the other end," and we started to carry it.

She wasn't as strong as I thought and she struggled a bit to carry it; I considered asking for help again from the group, but didn't.

- - - -

Riding in a train along a river, there were plenty of people on it, but no windows to keep us all inside. We could see down the cliff into the river, and I noted with some curiosity (and excitement) that PB was sailing along the river. It looked really far away; farther away than the river itself (or the river must be really wide?)

The train driver announced something about waterfalls that I didn't understand, and then suddenly I couldn't see PB, because the river was right up at our level; because I had been looking back at the ship, I didn't see the water falls! The train turned to cross the higher elevation river, so we could see the water flowing off to the right of the train, off the face of the cliff.

Rolling across some islands in the water, we went by a family of kangaroos, one of whom was a really cute blonde girl with kangaroo body (a centauroo?), who waved to the train as we passed by. She saw how the train had no sides, so she suggested helpfully: "be careful!" as we passed by, even though normally she would just wave like a character in a theme park.

I said I was being careful, but then noted another equally cute woman on the train, just in front of me; under the guise of being helpful, I scooped my arm around her waist to ensure she said on the train.

As we progressed, I wondered if it was appropriate to have my arm around her, but she didn't seem to mind, so I just stayed there. Nice.

Arrived a a party, someone announced we could see PB, which was parked in the river, visible from an onsen. I was all excited like, "really? where? where?" because it was my first time in this area.

A guy pointed and was like, "roughly that way," pointing up a hill, so I started out, taking a dirt road that led roughly that way. He was like, "no nononono," as if I should have known better.

And I was like, "fahkoff, so show me," and he proceeded to walk straight down the little slope to go up the hill. I realized I had forgotten my camera in my haste to follow, but he had one in his pocket and threw it back to me. We were soon climbing up a rickety ladder with a goat standing on it. He made it past the goat, and I made it past the goat more quickly, and then past my friend. As we arrived at the top of the ladder, I realized we were in the onsen area, with two naked old Japanese men standing in the water up to their knees, looking at us as if we might be invading their space.

We remained quiet, to support the atmosphere, but then everything changed when I saw the ship. She was there, just beyond the onsen, chillin' in a nub of the river fed by the onsen runoff. The onsen remained, and a dinner party appeared around it, complete with cocktail dresses and a grand piano. I started taking pictures, but couldn't get very good shots, so I started running as I kicked off my shoes behind the grand piano and arrived on the other side of the ship, where I called to the driver (the ship was just a speed boat now), asking him to turn sideways so I could see the PB logo.

He did, and I took pictures, listening to the sound of the click to know it had taken. The lighting was low, so I tried to keep the PB logo in place in the viewfinder as the light meter ticked up from 0.00 to 10.00 in about 2 seconds. I wasn't able to hold it quite correctly, but a few times I got some nearly crisp shots of the ship. I knew there should be a way to set the flash correctly, but didn't know how to do it.

school

3:05pm JST Sunday 2 November 2008 (day 14102)

Classes continue as always. In gymnastics I wanted to add a new part to my routine, a double back layout. While I wore the safety harness, I was able to do the trick no problem, but it seemed to hold me down from doing it to my full ability. So when we took off the harness I launched way up into the air and overrotated so that I landed wrongly, like banged my butt and back and head, similar to my skating accident, but this time I maintained consciousness, and all my vital fluids, so that's a bonus. However, I stretched something in my spine, so our instructor suggested I find a yoga class to help it recover nicely.

Loads of homework in dj class; we are supposed to memorize the sounds on all the records in the station. I think it would be better to just download an imprint of them so we can actually see the sounds but the instructor was like, "back in my day we didn't have imprints blah blah," so if I do use that method, I better make sure I can still answer the questions in the way *he* wants them to be answered.

Blah.

Natalie the yogi

8:05pm JST Sunday 2 November 2008 (day 14102)

Overheard a woman talking on her cell phone as we walked out of the school into the U-turn pickup area. She said she was meeting Natalie, so I asked if she was meeting Natalie Ferris.

The woman didn't know her Natalie's last name, but I didn't give up there. I askd about the nature of their meeting. "What does Natalie like to do?" I asked. "My Natalie likes salsa," I offered, after hearing they were going to meet for yoga. "I guess we know different Natalies."

I kept hanging around, though, basically wanting to expand my people skills. I asked how they had met, but I don't remember the answer. Her Natalie arrived in the area and called to complete the visual connection.

We saw her on the other side of the U-turn, and walked over to meet her. After they said HI, I was like, "HI; I'm Rob," and "I was wondering if I could join, if that would be okay."

Natalie asked her two students what they thought, and when they said it would be okay, I asked how much she would charge for one lesson. Natalie said, "ten dollars, so I guess that's 1000 yen." Ah; she hasn't been in Tokyo very long.

I said, "excellent; I'd like to join," and as a joke, I gave her 1000 Vietnamese dong. None of them noticed, but the original woman I had met said, "it's actually 10,000 yen."

Natalie put the 1000 dong in her wallet, and I was like, "wha?" in my mind, and then said, "Okay wait; I have a little problem." I first turned to Natalie, "you said 1000 yen, and as a joke I gave you 1000 dong. I figured the others would notice immediately and then I'd give you the correct amount."

I then turned to Natalie and the original woman. "But she says now that it's 10,000 yen, and I must admit that at this time I choose not to pay that much for a lesson, but I would like your card, so I can pay that much in the future."

flying away from the bombs and into Sarah

6:25am JST Thursday 6 November 2008 (day 14106)

With some rebels from some arm in a field in a neighborhood, chilling on a picknic bench, one of them fired a missile from our location to a location on the other side of the houses from us. A big arc of smoke showed exactly the trail of the missle, but when it detonated, destroying all the area over there, no one knew it came from our group, except for our bosses who kept telling us (Jei) not to do that. He replied each time that he understood, and then immediately did it again.

They radioed him again and he said it was an accident. This time we saw the victims: some dark skinned guy with full beard and no shirt ran out of his house and yelled toward the fire fighters to spray him with their hoses to douse him so the imminent explosion wouldn't kill him.

They sprayed his front side, and he turned around and they sprayed his back. He ran out of the scene and then we saw the explosion from afar, brighter than the first time. ONe of the guys commented, "was that a 50 megaton?" And Jei goes "yeah."

I decided I didn't want to be near these guys anymore, so I started to leave. They were like, "where you going?" cause we were trapped inside this cafeteria sized room. I was like, "I can fly," and I flew up toward the ceiling (where I had to be careful of some high tension wires) and they were all, "whoah! he can fly! he can fly!" and they were thinking I must have some secret occult powers that they wanted. I had no plans to give them any such power, so I blassted out through the brick wall of the auditorium and basically went horizontally through the building, smashing through wall after wall.

I noted with some curiosity that I normally flew vertically through floor-ceiling after floor-ceiling. I was having a bit of trouble getting my full flying power to come, so I remained fairly affected by gravity, and ended up in a room on the far side of the building.

I thought, "I'll say in here where I'll have just three crumbs of food," but was a bit surprised/happy to see there were actually three hamburgers in the room, discarded yet intact on the floor. I explored around the room a bit and noted a propane stove was left burning, and another open flame was in the corner of the room. I turned off the flame in the sink, and noted its nozzle protective grill was still red hot.

Around that time, Sarah from OZ came into the room and started fighting/wrestling with me, as we both knew the red hot item could be used as a weapon. I was surprised by her strength, but then I did something caressing, and had a little fondle and sucked gently on her nipple. She relented and we began to kiss and make out.

Forgetting Names

5:13am JST Monday 10 November 2008 (day 14110)

Arrived at a partyand a woman was like, "do you remember my name?" and I immediately said, "Ebe!" and she was like, "nooo!" so I go, "Yuki! Yoko! Miki!" and she was like, "it's Yuko...." so I was like, "Yuko!" but she was unimpressed.

A bit later, another girl was like, "do you remember my name?" and I go, "Yoko! Miki! Yuko! Yuki!" and she's like, "It's Ebe." and I was like, "I said Ebe first a while ago for Yuko, [if that counts for anything]," but it didn't.

There was some discussion about why who remembers what names, and I told my version. I was like,

1. "First, I'm a visual learner. If I just hear someone's name, I'm very likely to forget it in two seconds unless I visually spell it in my mind, or carefully learn the kanji.

2. "Second, when I talk to people, I'm shy, and I don't look at their face. I'm like, "this spot on the ground looks pretty good; I'll just look at it." And this is even more pronounced with Japanese culture. We're not supposed to make eye contact. If she's an おばさん then I look so far away that I'm like, this," and turned my head to look the opposite direction, "oh hello, nice to meet you!" as I waved in the direction of my invisible granny. The girls laughed, so I knew they could relate.

3. "Third, and this is part of Japanese culture, Japanese don't tend to individualize themselves. When every guy has short spikey hair, and every woman has shoulder length dyed brown hair, and everyone is like, "I'm an office worker," and, "I like sleeping in my free time," how am I to make a file in my brain? "I'll just file this one in 'expensive hair tired worker,' It's not helpful when everyone is in the same file!"

I wondered about taking pictures of everyone, and really trying to make an effort at remembering names. When I was first advising in YRUU, I would spend hours poring over the mugbooks, carefully remembering all the youths' names. I could usually end up remembering most of the major cities / churches, and some addresses.

Perhaps U-cow's site could be useful in this regard.