So some introductory notes before I actually start, note that the first part of this will not be completely set on dreams, but the main parts of this story definitely will. So here I go. About 14 years ago, when I was 10 years old I had an odd obsession with anime, and I don't mean just stupid bullshit like Naruto or Bleach, not mainstream stuff, but I mean ALL kinds of anime, computers were dinosaurs back then so I mostly read manga, and when I was able to get my hands on it I read for hours, I mean hours. This didn't stop either, on into my teen years "around 13 years old and up" I still loved anime. and no I wasn't one of those awkward annoying obsessive freaks who spoke about it to everyone I knew, infact I kept it a secret from everyone I knew except my dad and mom. I was in essence a closet otaku. Around when I turned 15 I grew very very oddly close to anime, I really know this sounds weird, but I think I fell in love with the very general thought of it, I listened to its music, bought it's merchandise, watched it's shows, read it's manga, and even today, I work in Japan producing small time anime and major manga series. But it's not just about what I did with it all, it's about the deep attachment I felt to it, I can think back to a time when I was infatuated with anime, and the feelings that come out of those thoughts are very strikingly similar to those of ex's I fell in love with, and even similar to my girlfriend of three years today. "Just for some backstory, I've lived in Japan for 4 years, and my girlfriend is Japanese, we live in the Chiba prefecture." So going back to when I was 15, is when I started having these really weird dreams, first they were short, and very hard to remember, but after a couple of weeks I started remembering more, and really deep emotions were coming out of these dreams. These dreams all started to connect, characters within them were recurring and the so called "plot" of each dream made sense and connected with the other dreams. I started becoming completely aware I was in these dreams, and I was truly more fascinated, even happy, because these dreams.. were anime. Yeah, kinda weird, but it was the most beautiful "Art" I had ever seen, go search up "five centimeters per second" it looks a bit like that. I'll get more in depth to specific dreams later, but things started getting weird. Like I said I started feeling very deep, real emotions that would haunt me during my waking hours, anime that I watched felt like it wasn't enough to satisfy my need to experience it, only my dreams kept me happy. Then something really fucking weird happened, a friend, a figment of my imagination and I were having a conversation within this dream, we were indeed in Japan and were going by bullet train to Hokkaido. "btw, I remember very vivid things, and when my dreams ended I would search up things I had no idea about before, like Hokkaido, I had no idea what it was before I had my dream, but in it I knew it was the northernmost prefecture of Japan, I searched it up online when I woke up, and sure enough it was true." Anyway, my friend and I were talking about our three day vacation up to Sapporo (A city in Hokkaido) and I'll explain how time works later in these dreams. It was just a casual conversation, everything was so happy, people milled about on the train around us, scenery whizzed by at unimaginable speeds out the window (bullet trains are fast). He told me in Japanese "which I knew back then, my father had businesses in Japan and taught me at a young age" He suddenly got really serious, my friend, his eyes looked almost convicting and he looked scared himself, he just said "We are not on Earth" then he looked down "but this is real." I didn't really know If I wanted to be happy, but more than ever I didn't want to believe him, so almost unhesitantly I blurted out "No it's not." Then he got mad, maybe I'll start using names, their actual names. That'd be better. Isao was his name, Isao got mad, he looked at me and started raising his voice he said things like, then how is this so real compared to every other dream you've ever had?! He started to speak louder and people on the train started to look so i cut in. I asked him "then what's my name?" (keep in mind this is all in japanese, and this isn't EXACTLY how the conversation went, which is to be expected). Anyways I said "then what's my real name?" he of course responded with Yuu, which was my name in my dreams (I'll get more into that later). I laughed in his face, saying thats not my real name, (It is Andrew). So then Isao grabbed my shoulder and looked almost hurt and said "I do know your real name, the one you hold here, he looked me dead serious in the eyes, it sent shivers down my back, "Yuu" he said. Then he turned around and laughed looking at the afternoon sun, which was the only thing not moving at lightspeed out the window, he said if he knew my real name, that would make him a part of my imagination, and it made so much sense that it creeped me out. Isao turned around and asked me something that made me really think, it was pretty confusing. (I'll start putting our conversations in quotes, to make it easier to read. it's getting confusing writing this without them) So he asked "Yuu, where do you think your really from?" he seemed truly interested, and that's one of the things that creeped me out about that place, that dream, is that everything had just as much depth as real life, even every single "person" I met. I couldn't answer Isao by the way, and before I even tried to he interrupted my thoughts saying "I remember you, you've been my friend forever, and here you are talking about this dream bullshit." That struck me in a weird way too, because in the waking hours my mom called me insane when I tried to explain weird things like these to her. So i refrained from doing so, well, in my sleeping hours, "people" from my dreams called me insane as well. Acting as if I had been there the whole time. The only person that didn't have memories of me in those dreams, was, me. I only remember just getting into them. I may stop typing soon, but before I go for the day, I have a couple things left to explain because I know this is extremely confusing. These dreams, and reality, started getting really REALLY mixed together, I started forgetting the fine line between the two. and the dream would only end, when I went to sleep in it, and EVERY time I went to sleep in this place, I would wake up in the same dream, not the same dream as in it repeats over and over, but the same as in the same place, people, and every single thing connected together, it became almost a second life. Isao, is of course not the only person in this dream, there are many more, and many more events that happened that I'll get into, and I've gotten nowhere near the weirdest parts, some of you will believe this insanity, others won't I'm simply relaying my past, give comments, maybe relate, maybe give helping words, thanks for the read, I'll post tommorow before work. I'm on Asahi, which is a special Japanese internet service which isn't only in english but I can also connect to United States servers, so I think it's nighttime over there? Anyway, talk tomorrow, maybe I'll get some responses.