It's quite cold in Ōsaka. I've forgotten to go out with my jacket on a number of nights now and I've regretted it. The wind rips through gaps in buildings, flat out across plazas and tumbling over the Hanshin Loop outside my door. I'm safe in my room; the wind slams into my door and explodes in all directions, diffused and halted. I'm warm in here.

I'm in Japan until tomorrow. At 6:50P local time tomorrow I leave from HND. At 6:50P they're playing the music for me. I will see the walls shake. They're kicking me square in the chest while I sit on the ledge. They'll kick me so hard my chair and I will tumble down, down, down into the icy bath made for me before I dipped into this dream. I'll wake up on the other side at 9:51P, at RDU, on the same Saturday night I left behind. They are doing it against my wishes. I am bound to the chair. They are telling me my time's up.

I was in Japan too earlier this year on honeymoon with my husband. I showed my parents the country then, as well, after our honeymoon week. The days of the trip coincided with the Spring. Cherry blossoms, interview season, start of a new semester, this sort of thing. I didn't know what I was getting in to at the time I came here first, many years ago. I was struck by the beauty of the country drenched in pale pink, falling petals. That was the first few days of my months studying at Sophia University, cherry blossom season in late March.

Spring is a special time of year, here, for me, for that reason. Visiting in the Spring earlier this year, it was beautiful to watch those flowers bloom again. Though You Can Never Go Home Again, it was beautiful to visit.

But today, this is my first time visiting the country in the Fall. I made the excuse to visit with friends who have planned the trip since at least 2 years prior. I knew how chaotic it would be, and it is, but I wanted to come back anyway. Among us physically there are 16. It is often hard to find room for 16. Karaoke has been the most accomodating. If you haven't done Japanese karaoke and are in country with a few friends, you should.

Rather than planned group activities it's more common for us to self-organize in much smaller groups: Fushimi Inari Taisha at night, arcade for a few hours, Nijō Castle, Den-den Town etc.

Despite being here with so many friends, I split off to get lost and to check off my own small list quite often. There was a temple where a famous double-suicide Chikamatsu play 心中天網島 (The Love Suicides at Amijima) concludes, 大長寺, which was turned into a private garden after it was bought out in the early 20th century. The temple still exists down the road. I visited both. The only thing noting the play and the pact that inspired it is a small burial mound to Jihei and Kōharu and a plastic sign screwed into the wall on the front of the current temple grounds. The garden says nothing about it being the former temple grounds.

And I got so distracted on the way there. Taking pictures of the fiery fall cherry and sweetgum trees along the bank of the Ōkawa where the two dragged themselves to their death in the early morning of some October 1720 day. This year the roses in the garden along the bank were in full bloom and the leaves on the cherry trees had already turned a beautiful fiery red.

As for the whole trip, we roughly spent the first week in Tōkyō and the second in Ōsaka / Kyōto. An intermission in Atami between the two. Despite this part of the country being much more historic, I'm much more of a Tōkyō boy myself, and have been ever since I knew of Tōkyō.

Tōkyō aside, the ryokan in Atami was amazing. Atami itself is not remarkable as a town today but it's a very convenient destination between Kantō and Kansai regions. Polite people too. A slow coastal town with some diving and fishing and hospitality.

The onsen in our ryokan, with water trucked in daily, was painfully hot. I braved it for 15 minutes. Then, sweating and bare, I emerged from the cauldron and retired to our 12-tatami, 5-boy room.

In the ryokan we slept on the floor in large blankets. The kind thick enough to keep you warm on a cold fall night, thick enough to muffle snoring or soft crying. Eventually I fell asleep, deep, deep, deep into a dream.

Dream lover until then
I'll go to sleep and I dream again
That's the only thing to do
Till all my lover's dreams come true