I woke up at 5am and realized I had been dreaming in Japanese. This had also happened a few times when I was in Japan. I would wake up and find a particular Japanese phrase repeating in my mind over and over again. This time, I remember the dream more vividly. I was in some sort of underground tunnel, and I wanted to get back to the surface, but I wasn’t sure if I needed to pay first before I left (like in the subway). I was trying to figure out how to ask someone this, and I came up with “Sumimasen, harawanakereba ikemasen ka?” (Excuse, do I need to pay?) This phrase kept repeating in my mind as I woke up from my dream. I’ve only been home for one day, and it seems my brain still thinks I’m in Japan.
I think the reason I had these dreams is because all day I would struggle mentally with the language – I would listen to people’s conversations on the subway and try to understand them, I’d read street signs and practice my katakana and kanji, and I’d talk with my homestay family in Japanese. I just read a Slate article that said that worrying and thinking about certain problems during the day increases your likelihood of dreaming about them. Furthermore, dreaming about these problems increases your chances of solving them. Supposedly, the scientist August Kekule dreamt of a snake eating its own tail before he hypothesized that the molecule benzene has a ring structure.
I wonder if dreaming in Japanese has also helped my language ability. In any case, it was somehow fun to wake up this morning and be thinking in Japanese, and it was a pleasant reminder of my trip.
