I dreamt last night I was back in Japan. I was walking through the middle of some outdoor festival, perhaps hanami, when I saw some young people sitting in a circle between the festival lights that hung low from the trees, in between the rows of food stalls from where the delicious smells of barbequeing squid and the cries of the vendors (irashaimase!) emitted. In that group I thought I recognized some of my former students, and told you so, hurrying to see them again. In my dream Japanese i asked them how they fared, and told them how happy I was to see them again. My successor, whom I had mistaken for another student, introduced herself and some of her friends who were visiting from the states, and then we all played some silly games, which they allowed me to blunder through, laughing playfully at my incomprehension but never letting me win.

But all this was as an aside to the real activity of my dream, which was the simple perception of the festival and its many sensory pleasures. The warm air filled with the wafting sweet odors of corn, mochi, and bean paste filling, with yakisoba and ika, with ten thousand strange delights. The yellow haze of the low watt bulbs that hung from every branch and all the stall awnings. The murmer and buzz from the passing crowds mixed and muffled in the sultry, indolent night air. All these together concatenate to make a dream within a dream, a hazy intoxication of the senses.