While in Osaka Aya and I went to Dialogue in the Dark. This experience is designed for those with sight to feel what it might be like to be blind. In this case I was especially apprehensive because we were in a small group of Japanese people and all directions would be given in Japanese, but overall the experience went ok.
We entered a dimly lit room where a blind man was waiting to speak to us. As he dimmed the lights he explained how he would guide us and gave us white walking sticks to feel our way around. There were 5 of us excluding the guide and after a few minutes we entered the dark room. Here we had to move to take our shoes off and give up our walking sticks. That was hard enough, not to bump into people, not to trip, but then we entered, "the house". At this point we had to make our way down a stair way and out into a yard where there was a hammock. Some of us got in the hammock. Then we had to come back up the stairs to the porch where we had a tea and sweet. After this we made our way back to the front door and got our shoes and sticks back.
This whole time I kept thinking, how are they going to fill the hour and half that this is supposed to last, but it took us so long to do anything that the time just flew by. I was pretty impressed by the experience, it was really difficult to get around as each step was taken with doubt. I suppose if you are in a familiar place you can move around pretty freely because you get to know how far apart everything is, but if you are not familiar it is pretty scary. This led me to some other questions like, how do you pour tea in the dark without over filling the cup? How does one get dressed in the morning? Most importantly, how do you know when to stop wiping?
We entered a dimly lit room where a blind man was waiting to speak to us. As he dimmed the lights he explained how he would guide us and gave us white walking sticks to feel our way around. There were 5 of us excluding the guide and after a few minutes we entered the dark room. Here we had to move to take our shoes off and give up our walking sticks. That was hard enough, not to bump into people, not to trip, but then we entered, "the house". At this point we had to make our way down a stair way and out into a yard where there was a hammock. Some of us got in the hammock. Then we had to come back up the stairs to the porch where we had a tea and sweet. After this we made our way back to the front door and got our shoes and sticks back.
This whole time I kept thinking, how are they going to fill the hour and half that this is supposed to last, but it took us so long to do anything that the time just flew by. I was pretty impressed by the experience, it was really difficult to get around as each step was taken with doubt. I suppose if you are in a familiar place you can move around pretty freely because you get to know how far apart everything is, but if you are not familiar it is pretty scary. This led me to some other questions like, how do you pour tea in the dark without over filling the cup? How does one get dressed in the morning? Most importantly, how do you know when to stop wiping?
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