This morning I received a phone call from the maintenance company. They asked me to schedule for switching from the swamp cooler to the heater.

I was not sure if I should switch it or not. In these past several years, I never used the heater in my house. My body can be adjusted for cold weather. I am fine with low temperature. I cannot stand for the high temperature and heat. I do need a cooler rather than a heater. From my experiences for these years, I was almost ready to turn down the offer to switch from a cooler to a heater.

But I heard a tiny voice. It said “wait!” I thought I should do some research before I turn down the offer.

According to some research, I found some web articles saying that this winter (specifically from November 2017 to March 2018) in this area will get colder than normal. It even says we might have snow more than before.

This news made me happy. I love cold weather and snow. So, I guess I should go ahead switch to a heater for this winter.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

I woke up earlier than usual this morning. I intentionally woke up early with using the alarm clock. I quickly got ready to go. My daughter jumped up with me and she also quickly got ready to do. Off we went. We took off to the grocery stores for a chocolate hunting.

Today is the following morning of Halloween night. Traditionally this morning is a good day for chocolate hunting. Most stores try to get rid of Halloween candies as soon as possible. They price them down to 50% off.

Last year when I went to the stores after I dropped my daughter off at school, the sale candies were all gone. So, this year, I tried earlier time than last year.

Regardless of our efforts however, by the time when we got to the store, most of good and popular candies were all gone. They had some sale candies available but they were not our favorites. We went to the other store, but the situation was the same.

We came back home without any trophies. Oh well. Maybe it was a good thing. We can stay healthy without a whole bunch of unnecessary chocolate intake anyway.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

Today is Halloween day. Every year, the temperature finally starts dropping from this day. This morning when I went outside with a T-shirt and short pants, I felt cold. I can finally change my clothes into long sleeves and long pants.

I am glad that we are finally entering in our very short winter. I remember in February and March, the temperature starts getting high and high again, so our winter will last only for 3 months to the maximum. And our winter seldom brings us snow to play with. 

Whenever winter comes, I think of one thing. December is important for me. I moved in America in December at my age of 38. On next year, at my age of 39, our daughter was born.

In this December in 2017, I will celebrate of my 10th year living in this country. My husband and I have been praying and wishing for leaving this area to move to other place. On this land, I always feel I don’t fit in to the land and the local people.  I feel isolated. Therefore, we want to move to the place where the land energy matches to our energy. To the place where we can meet the right people and we can feel home with those people.

It might be this December when we finally hear a good news about moving.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

One of my acquaintances invited me to a gathering and I attended to it without thinking anything.

It was in fact a trap.

At first, it was fun. I enjoyed meeting new people and getting to know each other, up to a certain point.

The certain point started from the time when the host of the gathering, approached to me. She started talking about her religion. She kept on and on to try to persuade me to go to her church and agree with her religion. I didn’t want to start arguing with her, so I made my efforts on changing the subject and topic of the conversation. Somehow somewhat, I escaped from her and went to other area where I ended up talking to a newly met person.

There, she started talking about her church and her religion. Finally I noticed this gathering was for the people who go to the same church. I was the only one outsider who does not go to their church.

Then again, the host approached to me. This time she accompanied with her son. She whispered something to her son, and her son tried to hand me a bunch of pamphlets of their belief and religion. I gently but firmly rejected to receive them. The host obviously showed her anger in her face toward my rejection.

I had to make up some excuses to leave the place. I came back home exhausted.

I am fine with different religions and different ways of thinking, unless they force me theirs to me. I don’t like people who believe their religion and their belief were the only right one. They refuse the other way of belief. Their way of missionaries or propagating their religion was wrong.

For those people, please know I have my own belief. I cannot change my belief at any costs. I know you are the same way too. I respect your free will to believe whatever you feel it right. I never force my belief onto you, because I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. So, please why don’t we respect each other? I don’t force mine and you don’t force yours.  

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

Nowadays people visit me in my dream. They are real. I have been brushing up this gift lately.

Here is one example.

Recently, one of my acquaintances visited me in my dream. He showed me his empty handed. I asked him what it meant to him. He said empty hands represented that he was stress free. Empty hands also represented that he was ready to receive whatever he needed. He said he was very happy for his current situation. He showed me his big smile. I gave him back my big smile.

Then I woke up.

I had been busy on catching up my daily life for a while. Today I finally had time to contact him. Although I knew he was doing just fine, I thought I should contact him anyway to say hi. So I did.

In his reply, he said he left his former job in July and now he is back to the job on his own. He sounds like he has been pretty well. I also liked the part he commented about his appreciation to his wife. He said his wife has been very supportive for his transition.

I was very happy to know of his transition and his current happy status. And I was also happy to know that my dream was true about him.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

Have you ever heard of a 100-yen shop in Japan? Throughout Japan, we have stores called “100-yen shop”. The shop has a whole bunch of helpful goods. And, they are all 100-yen. It is approximately 1 US dollar.

Recently Japanese television company makes a regular program. The program brings the 100-yen shop goods to all over the world and introduce them to many people. Since I don’t live in japan, I am with other foreigners. I am surprised and amazed at most of their items

I have heard many Japanese people saying they feel so blessed to be born as Japanese. I am definitely with them. If I could, I am willing to be any kinds of help to pass down Japanese great wisdom to our next generations.

I have still been searching the reasons why I moved to America. One of the reason is to appreciate for being Japanese. When I lived in Japan, everything I received from my parents and ancestors came so natural to me, and that was why I took them for granted. Once I moved to America, I have started seeing the true value of Japanese. 

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

In this morning’s dream, my family spirits kept on showing me several sceneries that I went through in my younger days. They showed me a scenery from my perspective at first. Then, my conscious left away from the experience, and observed the same scenery from somebody’s point of view. After they repeated this process, I finally got it. They wanted to teach me the importance of the balance between subjectivity and objectivity.

When I experience an event in the first place, I can feel my emotion toward the event. The emotion can be hurtful to go through. The emotion comes directly because I see the event from only one direction. It is a narrow vision.

On the other hand, when I see the event from somebody’s perspective; aka objectively, the vision gets wide. Observing the event does not accompany with any emotions anymore, because the event is just an event to teach me something.

It is a great skill to see an event from subjectively and objectively. If I can fully master this skill, I can always enjoy experiencing the direct emotion, then right after that, I can learn the lessons from the experience.

It might sound difficult, but I think it is possible to master it. It is just a skill. We need to practice this over and over again by being alert of this skill.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

This morning a Kappa visited me in my dream. In my dream, I was not so surprised at Kappa. He said something to me and I nodded to it. I understood the message from Kappa. Unfortunately, when I woke up, I didn’t remember the message. The only image that I remembered clearly was the details of the appearance of Kappa. It was beautiful. It was shining with happy and satisfactory energy.

Kappa is described as an imaginary monster or a river sprite. To me personally, I don’t have any bad image of Kappa. To me, Kappa is a water spirit with a childlike pure heart. To me, Kappa and a frog are similar. They both can live both on land and in water. They need water energy for their living. Water represents moisture in air. At the same time, water represents spirituality.

In this sense, I am more like Kappa and a frog. I live in the dry area where is away from water energy. After I enjoyed staying with the water energy in Japan, a part of myself is missing the water energy.

Kappa came in to tell me that I need the both aspects balanced out in my life. While living in the physical world which is dry, I do need the water energy at the same amount. So that my life and the surrounding environment have both balanced out. The dryness and the humidity balanced out in the physical world, and logical sense and spirituality balanced out as well. Maybe that is the message to me from this dream.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

Starting from the beginning of this month, October 2017, one of my old Japanese friends showed up in front of me as a vision. She passed away in 2012. She projected the scenery when I noticed of her being passed away. I regretted that I didn’t contact her until her death. I should have contacted her. I should have kept in touch with her. I wanted to listen to her and comfort her when she was in physical pain at her last months and days.

There is one American friend whom I met in January 2016. We became friends instantly and started seeing each other frequently. However, after July 4th cerebration of last year, we had stopped contacting each other. We haven’t argued nor fought. Nothing happened between us. For some reasons, when I met this American friend, I instantly thought of my late Japanese friend. I felt they are spiritually connected. They do share some aspects in common, in their personalities.

I felt my late Japanese friend came to me was because she wanted me to reconnect with my American friend. Maybe she needed somebody whom she could trust to express her feelings. Maybe she has been having tough days.

Following the advice from my late Japanese friend, the other day, I contacted my American friend. And today, I reconnected with her.

We went to hiking to the place where we used to go together. While we were catching up each other for our missing months and days, she shed tears. She needed somebody whom she could trust to speak up her feelings. I listened to her, encouraged her, and praised her for her efforts.

By the time when we were heading back home after our three hours walking and chatting, she looked like happier than in the morning. I was glad that I could be there for her.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

This morning’s dream was not fun to watch. I was working for a big corporation at a higher position. I was one of the management group. People envied me for my high rank and high salary. One day, when I went to the office, everything was changed. The people were different, and the office layout was different. I finally noticed the company name at the entrance was different from mine. Then my cell phone rang. It was from my supervisor. He was mad at me for not being at the new office. I told him nobody told me anything about moving. I didn’t know where the new office was located. He didn’t believe me and fired me from the position and hung up the phone.

Then I woke up. I still vividly remembered all the details. Although all the characters in my dreams were the local people whom I knew in this land; America, I went through the similar event in Japan. 

For a while after I woke up, I was filled with anger. Why the supervisor fired me without giving me another chance? I knew the reason why nobody told me about the moving of the office. It was because of their jealous toward me.  In the corporation, nobody could built trust between workers. Nobody could talk anything from our heart. Everybody was enemy to one another. When one worker is fired, that means one spot becomes available. It was a very sad environment. Everybody was suffered from the old concept that we had to keep on going upward in the hierarchical rank to be successful and to make money. The old concept told us that we have to keep winning in the competition. 

Then, I started calming myself down. It was a past. I am not in the environment anymore. I am not in the midst of competition world anymore. I am away from the business world. I am living my life peacefully. I am comfortably going downstream. I am loving the current environment where I am.

This realization reminded me of the Japanese movie Oriteyuku Ikikata (2009) (降りてゆく生き方). I haven’t watched this movie yet because this movie is not available in DVD or television program. I have read the concept of this movie, and I am interested in watching it. I hope someday I will have an opportunity. From watching some summarized versioned of short videos and reading the introduction story, I think this movie encourages Japanese people to live with our truth. The truth is that we are not here to join into the competition world. We are not here to hurt somebody. We are here to regain true ourselves. Our soul shines when we make others happy. Our soul shines when we follow our true inner voice. That kind of lifestyle looks like going downstream. And it is good and true for our soul.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪