This is actually Part 3, but since the first two parts are so short and incohorent, I didn’t feel like including them.
My family, Jeidai and her family and I were all transported to some kind of alternate world, kind of like the Spirit World in Spirited Away, set in Edo Japan. We were given some sort of mission that involved a hotel/restaurant we would be staying at.
The hotel was pretty small actually, about the size of a small two-story American home (and was laid out like one). It also didn’t get many guests, as we were the only ones staying there at the time.
There was the living room/dining room downstairs, and the kitchen. Upstairs were the bedrooms, where the hotel guests stayed. I wondered if that was all the space they had, how could they be a hotel/restaurant?
Well, even if they were a little lacking in space, I found out one thing they weren’t lacking: toilets (plumbing in Edo Japan! I like that :D). The upstairs had one/two bathrooms (the only one/two in the entire house), but every other bedroom I looked in had a toilet. Ooh, there’s a toilet! There’s a toilet, there’s a toilet, there’s a toilet, there’s TWO toilets…!
(one of the larger bathrooms had TWO toilets right next to other. So when one toilet is occupied, you can always use the one next to it! And privacy? Fark privacy!)
When dinner came around, the restaurant guests started pouring in. I thought while standing at the top of the stairs with the siblings/cousins ‘Ohh, this is so cool! A lot of people are coming over for dinner, and we’re the only ones staying the night here!’ (or something along the lines of that).
Then I got tired, and it was time to go to bed. But the restaurant was still open, and people were still having dinner. I opened the door of our room, and found restaurant guests in there, eating dinner at the table. Huh?
Apparently, when the restaurant guests are over, the hotel rooms become those booth-looking things in some traditional Japanese restaurants. The hotel guests would have to wait until they leave if they wanted to go to sleep.
But wait, what about the living room/dining room? I wondered. I ran to the top of the stairs that overlooked the living room/dining room, and saw that it was in use. It was being occupied by a large, high-class party. Apparently, the living room/dining room was reserved for rich/high class people.
I stayed a little longer, thinking ‘so THAT’S how the wealthy in Edo Japan ate.’ Each person lay down while eating. Not like how the Romans ate (which was on their sides), but on their stomaches.
And that’s all I really remember. I think I woke up at this moment.
[Edit: Feb. 10, 2008, 12:36am] Speaking of two-toileted restrooms, there’s a restroom at my (ex-)college’s Art Complex like that. No one really seems to mind the strangeness of it.