I was in a bookstore of sorts. it was sectioned off and has reading rooms
with pale veneered benches and standalone closets. there were either
whiteboards or chalkboards near or around the benches. the closets opened
up and they had shallow drawers in the lower part. there were beige
carepets and not many people.

I was there with three other people. we were looking at one of the closets.
a blind man came through. he had this funky device that was like a cane
except it was telescoping to about 20 feet. it had two handles and at the
end that telescoped a flexible disk. he used it to scope out the entire
layout of the room in short order. the cane thing was noisy and annoying.
he moved around the room quickly and had many near misses with the benches
and whiteboards. and us. finally we started talking to him. he had only
recently gone blind and was looking for a closet space.

we looked in the closet space and although it appeared empty examining the
drawers showed it to be in use. a couple other closet spaces were the same.
not knowing what to do, we left.

we (me and the three people with me) found ourselves outside, in a suburb of
Tokyo, I think. well we were in Japan, and weren't really sure where we were,
but I thought in the dream maybe it was a suburb of Tokyo. one of thg guys with
me was from Japan and was showing us around, but was reticent on where we were.
we walked across an overpass, and there was a construction zone to our left.
some kids were playing a game with paper airplanes in the construction zone.
I remembered this from a previous trip to Japan, vaguely, and thought that
meant I was in the smae place. except that previous trip was many years
before, and it was ridiculous to think a construction zone had persisted for
that long.

we were hungry and so decided to do what everyone would want to do when
visiting Japan: go to a Chinese-food restaurant. there was a main drag
a block or two down and perpendicular to the street with the overpass.
if we went there then directly across our side of the street (walking on the
left, *with* traffic) was a nice one, kinda dark inside. we went there
to eat.

inside we met up with my mom. she was in a bad way, so to speak. some
health problem was causing her to lose her eyesight and her teeth.
eyesight-wise she had the same problem as the man in the bookstore with the
telescoping cane. her teeth though, were turning black and falling out.
it was not really comfortable to see. she seemed OK with it, sort of like a
zen attitude of this is my lot in life. however seeing it scared me. while
we watched her teeth got worse.

after this things got jumbled and I woke up. for a while, thinking about it,
I was a little confused about the relationship between my mom in the dream
and teh man in the bookstore - did one morph into the other, like people do
in dreams, or were these two separate people? I couldn't figure it out,
although nothing happened in the dream to indicate they were the same
people.