In my dream, I am in the basement of the house in northern Utah where I grew up. I have some homework from a Japanese language class--a short story titled "Kushikino" (which is the name of a small town in southern/western Japan--the characters in the name mean "skewer", "tree", and "field"). The photocopy that was given to me is not particularly high quality, and I am concerned that because I can't see it well, I won't be able to read well in class.As I'm thinking about the town of Kushikino, I find myself on a train from Kagoshima (a large city whose name means "fawn island") to Kushikino. We reach the Kushikino station, I hear the familiar voice saying "Kushikino desu" ("This is Kushikino"), but for some reason I don't get off. The train starts going again, and I think that I should have gotten off while I had the chance.

A stop or two later, I do get off, but that also seems like a mistake, because I'm in an even smaller town now. I decide to try to get to Sendai (a small town...by Japanese standards at least...whose name means "river home" or "inside the river"--much of the town is located at a sharp bend in a river). At Sendai, I have some small hope of running into someone I know, or finding the church I attended when I was a missionary there, though in my dream I don't remember where it is. I seem to remember having heard that the church had moved out of its old building and into a new one. (In fact, the church I was visualizing was the one in Nagasaki ("long peninsula"), not the one in Sendai. I have heard that the one in Nagasaki moved after outgrowing the old church building, but am not sure whether I've heard the same of the one in Sendai).

In trying to get to Sendai, I somehow end up on a sort of train, but later it is more like an amusement park ride. The "train" is going through an elementary school playground, and I end up with one of the children in the same seat as me. The "train" is going higher into the air, and I hold onto the child to ensure that she won't fall out. Then a teacher comes and scolds me for endangering the child by carrying her up that high, and makes me let her down (which is done a little precariously because we're up a little ways). A few more teachers or administrators come over. One asks me what my affiliation with the school is, and I say I have none--I'm just passing through. They then escort me off the school property and tell me never to come back. As we're going, one explains that the reason they couldn't stop the "train" (to make it easier to get the child down) is that their control mechanism is broken.