I Think I Probably Came From Another World

[94] This happened quite a long time ago, so please assume my memory of the details and conversations might be mistaken or embellished.

• [95] Sounds exciting.

[97] This is a story from when I was in elementary school. It was the last summer before moving on to the next stage of school, and I was enjoying it to the fullest with four friends. A, B, C, D, and I had been close friends for a long time, and even though we went to different schools, we often hung out together on days off. That day, the five of us were catching insects and playing tag. As the sun began to set and we started heading home, A spoke up. “Hey, wanna go to XX tonight?” XX was a kind of shrine, but the entity enshrined there was a malevolent deity, something close to an evil spirit. Customs vary by region, but that day was the last day of what’s known as Bon, the day when spirits return to the other world.

• “Bon” is a Japanese Buddhist custom where ancestral spirits are welcomed, honored, and sent off during the summer. The last day is considered the day the spirits return to the afterlife.*

[99] My parents were strict, and I was also a coward, so I really didn’t want to go to a place like that. But I hated the thought of being laughed at, and before I knew it, I’d agreed to the late-night rendezvous. That night, I waited for my family to fall asleep, grabbed a light, and slipped out of the house. I think it was around 2 AM. I remember how the familiar streets looked eerily different. Eventually, I reached the meeting spot. We waited for a while, but D never showed up. We all laughed, saying, “He’s such a chicken.” Honestly, I was incredibly scared too.

[100] I would have been terrified alone, but being with friends eased that feeling somewhat. Still, when we arrived at XX, I broke out in a cold sweat. It was a place adults always told us “absolutely never go near,” and we never actually did. In that eerie place, A opened his mouth. “Hey, I know about the △△.” I felt everyone freeze for a moment. △△ is a word, or rather an act, that means something like breaking a seal, if that makes sense.

• [101] That sounds scary.

[102] “I’m thinking of trying it.” B and C nodded at A’s words. It was obvious they were reluctant, but they couldn’t seem to say no. When their eyes turned to me, I felt I had no choice but to nod as well. The procedure wasn’t that difficult. At XX, there were three goshintai (I’m not sure if that’s the right term). You had to walk around them twice in a figure-eight pattern continuously. After that, you circle the main hall-like building counter-clockwise four times. I remember it being quite a distance. Then, sprinkle salt around the goshintai? Circle the main hall clockwise once. Sprinkle salt in front of the main hall’s front door, push the door (it should open), and proceed inside, being careful not to step on the salt.

• “Goshintai” in Shinto shrines are objects believed to house a deity. They can be various things like mirrors, swords, stones, or even entire mountains.*
• “Sprinkling salt” is a practice in Japanese Shinto and folk beliefs, as salt is believed to have the power to purify and ward off impurities, used in rituals and daily purification.*

• [103] Whoa… that sounds like a really bad idea…

[104] Apparently, the door is usually shut tight. And indeed, when we first pushed it, it didn’t budge at all. But after completing the ritual, when we pushed again, the door swung open. I wasn’t just in a cold sweat anymore; I was on the verge of tears. I think B and C felt the same. Only A seemed gleeful as he tried to head deeper inside. But we couldn’t see anything. Even though there were windows? or something, there was absolutely no light beyond the open door. This is bad, my instincts screamed warning bells. Ignoring them, A stepped forward. The moment he did, he vanished. Not like disappearing into the darkness, I intuitively knew he was gone. B and C panicked, turned, and ran, but after a momentary, piercing scream, the next second, an eerie silence fell as if nothing had happened.

[105] I was in a total panic. I screamed A’s, B’s, and C’s names, but no one answered. Even in my panic, a part of my brain was strangely calm. If I turn back, something will kill me. The next moment, I was chasing after A.

• [106] Yeah.

[107] When I came to my senses, I was in the mountains. (XX itself was located in the mountains, come to think of it.) I didn’t stop to think if such a space could even exist beyond the main hall. I just kept running blindly, thinking I’d be killed if I stopped. And in the midst of it, I fell off a cliff and lost consciousness.

[108] I woke up in a hospital bed. I heard much later that a passing hiker or someone had helped transport me. I’d never been hospitalized before, but I felt relieved to be in a familiar place, though that relief was short-lived. Doctors and nurses came in soon after, and then my parents arrived. They spoke an unknown language, and they were strangers.

[109] So, to be precise, I didn’t recognize them as my parents at that time. But during my hospital stay, I gradually figured out that these people were apparently my parents, and that they couldn’t understand a word I said. At the time, I thought it was probably temporary shock and that I’d get better soon. In fact, as an elementary schooler, having such an experience felt slightly cool. But no matter how much time passed, my language and memories didn’t return. I tried asking about A and the others in my incomprehensible words, but of course, they didn’t understand. When I asked about XX, they just tilted their heads as if they had no idea what I was talking about.

[110] Around this point, I finally realized something was wrong with this place. However, unlike typical isekai stories, I wasn’t excessively restrained or subjected to human experiments. It was more like I was treated as a poor child who had lost their memory. Naturally, I panicked. Not that panicking would help, but I desperately tried to make them understand who I was, but again, they couldn’t understand me. After some tests, I was sent home. To an unfamiliar house.

• [111] Huh.

[112] I found myself crying. It’s terrifying, right? An unfamiliar language, unknown people, house, land. Anyone would cry if suddenly brought to a place like this. For a while, I just cried all day. I didn’t leave the house. I was scared that going outside would just reinforce the fact that “this is a place I don’t know.” My parents? didn’t try to force me out either.

[114] After that, I stayed shut in at home for about three months. There was still a big CRT television, and I spent my days watching it. Living with the people who seemed to be my parents and a younger sister and brother, I gradually started to understand their language. Eventually, I started going to school too. Sometime later, I looked through a childhood photo album, and sure enough, I was in the pictures. I laughed and asked my father, “Is this me?” He laughed back, “Who else would it be?” Honestly, I couldn’t laugh.

[115] Quite a few years have passed since then. I have no problems with the language, I graduated from university, got a girlfriend, and now I’m married and have a daughter. In fact, the language I used to speak back then is fading away. For a while, I searched for similar foreign languages, but I couldn’t find any among those I looked into. There are no issues with my koseki (family register), and my family treats me as their son who just lost his language for a time. Sometimes I even wonder if my old memories are the ones that are wrong, but when I ask my family, they confirm that I definitely used to speak an unknown language. I don’t know what’s real anymore. But, if someone ever finds themselves in an unknown world and discovers a forbidden place, maybe doing the same thing could bring them back. By the way, I’ve never seen A again. Nor the other two.

• “Koseki” is the Japanese family registry system, a legal system that records and certifies individuals’ births, deaths, marriages, parentage, etc., on a family unit basis.*

• [116] So you mean you came from another world?

[117] >>116 I don’t know. Maybe the most realistic explanation is that I hit my head while playing in the mountains. However, the hometown in my memory is a rural place in the mountains, but my current family home is in a reasonably urban area. This could just be faulty memory too, though.

• [118] That’s really interesting.
• [119] Please write down any words or sentences you remember from the language back then.

[120] Ikuna kumu aru ha nariina. It means something like, “I came from that town.” It’s a bit difficult to write out in Japanese phonetics. The “ku” in “ikuna” is pronounced like a small “kku”.

• [121] >>120 Was the writing system alphabetic? Or was it a unique script?

[123] >>121 I couldn’t understand Japanese at all back then. There was something like an alphabet, but I think it was slightly different. However, maybe I hadn’t properly learned it yet, so I don’t know the specifics.

[122] Kauna ai eruuna ha nerui. This means something like, “This is 2channel.” More accurately, “This is 2’s bulletin board.”

• “2channel” (Ni-channel) is a massive, highly anonymous collection of electronic bulletin boards that originated in Japan. It hosts forums (threads) on a wide variety of topics.*

[124] I have work tomorrow, so if you have any more questions, I’ll answer what I can tomorrow. This isn’t really something I can talk about with many people, so I feel a bit better getting it off my chest.

• [125] Glad I got to hear it. Good night.
• [145] Was it an SOV or SVO language?

[184] >>145 I think it would be SVO.

• [156] Nice, this sense of excitement. I believe parallel worlds exist, so it’s fun, but if there’s no physical evidence like bringing something back from the other world, I tend to think it might be some kind of illness. There’s even something called Alice in Wonderland syndrome. Of course, the most likely possibility is that it’s a made-up story (a lie).

[184] >>156 Yeah, I myself consider possibilities like hitting my head. I’ve forgotten quite a lot considering the amount of time I supposedly spent there. The idea that it never existed in the first place is probably a valid theory.

• [163] There are common tropes in these other-world stories, right? I’m particularly interested in the idea that the other world knows more about travel between worlds, has organizations dealing with it, and maybe even established methods for such travel. Yet, they seem reluctant to send people back and try to silence them about the existence of other worlds. If this is true, what could be their purpose?

[184] >>163 As far as I know, there were no such organizations. Of course, I was just a child, so I can’t deny that I might simply have been unaware.

• [213] Finally caught up.

[215] >>91 What should I talk about?

• [216] I’d like to hear anything you can remember about the world you were in before.

[217] I’ll try to write something after work.

• [218] Looking forward to it.
• [219] Waiting.
• [227] This is gonna be fun.

[229] Work’s not ending, so this will be brief and maybe jumpy. Things I remember, or rather differences: The previous? world had much more greenery, and the air was cleaner. Over here, the smell of the air (probably exhaust fumes etc.) really bothered me for a while. Doesn’t bother me now, though. I don’t know if they had the exact same things, but they used something like clean energy. The education system was 6-4-3-3, I believe. Elementary school 6 years, middle school 4 years (this was compulsory education), high school equivalent was 3 years, mostly focused on general education like here, I think. The final university equivalent was for specialized courses; engineering, agriculture, and jujutsu (sorcery/shamanism) were popular among kids.

• [230] Sounds nice. I wish I could go to another world too.
• [232] Here we go!

[233] I wrote jujutsu, but it wasn’t like magic in the typical sense. Think more along the lines of prayers, fortune-telling, knowledge of medicinal herbs. You couldn’t cast spells or fly, obviously. But since internal medicine wasn’t as developed as here, they were respected people. Maybe ‘thoughts’ are an extension of ‘wishing’ or ‘focusing intent,’ but apparently, some people could foresee things to some extent or cast curses. A day was 20 hours long. Though I don’t know if it’s the same length as an hour here. A month had 35 days, and there were 12 months. It might depend on the region, but where I lived, a year went Summer -> Winter -> Summer -> Winter. There were brief Spring and Autumn-like seasons in between.

• [234] >>233 I’ve read about the seasons being Summer, Winter, Summer, Winter, and the different day length on a matome site before. I think it was a story about someone who lived there for a long time, learned the language, and occasionally slipped back here. I seem to recall the plants being distinctive.

• A “matome site” is a type of website commonly found on the Japanese internet that collects, edits, and publishes information or posts from electronic bulletin boards on specific themes.*

[235] >>234 Really? Plants were very common. The medicinal herbs used by the shamans, and agriculture was thriving too. Kids’ games included something like a mix between cricket and triangle base ball, which used plant fruits or something. Thinking back, playing with food? seems wrong, though.

[236] Given the presence of shamans, religion seemed quite prevalent. Plant worship (like Yaoyorozu no kami) was probably the most common. A strange point was that there were quite a few places enshrining? evil spirits. However, access was normally forbidden, only shamans or village chiefs and other limited people could enter. That said, they weren’t fenced off, so you could enter if you really wanted to. There might have been cult-like groups, but I don’t really know. There might have been religious wars, but I never heard of any in my region. I think there was a strong mutual understanding of different faiths. I remember my parents chatting amicably with people from other places about their respective beliefs at home.

• “Yaoyorozu no kami” is a concept in Shinto, representing the polytheistic belief that deities reside in all natural objects and phenomena. It literally means “eight million gods.”*

[237] Come to think of it, there were no earthquakes. At least not where I lived. So when I experienced my first earthquake here, I was incredibly surprised. The village had a meeting hall and school near the village chief’s house, and other people built their homes at various distances from there. Maybe similar to how old European towns were centered around a church? The spacing was much wider, though, so there were no situations like opening your window and seeing your childhood friend next door changing. Nights were dark. Lighting technology existed, but it was common practice to use minimal light at night and enjoy the stars, darkness, and silence. Though, as a kid, it was scary without a moderate amount of light and sound.

• [238] Huh. Interesting.

[239] Even kids rode something like scooters. No license was needed. Kind of like bicycles, I guess. Marriage was allowed from age 15 for both men and women. My parents said they married at 16. Compared to here, I think even young parents were quite mature and responsible. My parents were extremely strict. Taking care of children wasn’t just the family’s job, but the whole village’s responsibility. Just like old-fashioned Japan. I’ve just jotted down things randomly, but some memories might be mixed with my experiences here. It was over 20 years ago, after all.

• [241] >>239 Somehow, the other world you were in sounds like a more ideal world.

[243] >>241 The grass is always greener on the other side, you know (lol). Life over there was probably more relaxed, but this world is far more convenient. Maybe a child’s perspective is different from an adult’s, though.

• [245] >>243 I think that very convenience has created this hectic world where speed is everything. But I agree about the grass being greener (lol).

[246] >>244 Food wasn’t that different, I think. Maybe fewer fish since we weren’t near the sea. But what we ate was different. The staple food, if I had to compare, was probably closest to corn.

• [247] There are quite a few people with similar experiences, huh.

[248] Speaking of food, animal husbandry wasn’t very common. It was mostly hunting. The main targets were deer-like animals. And birds, maybe. It was the kind of environment where you’d normally encounter wild animals walking in the mountains. Because of that, many people were also killed by animals. Or rather, people who were presumed to have been killed and never returned. They were said to have been “taken by the gods.”

• [250] Whoa! Writing something intense this late at night! There was a thread before about a parallel world where psychics had power greater than armies, but that world ended up destroyed.**

[251] >>250 Unfortunately, there were no psychic powers or magic. Unless you call jujutsu magic.

[253] Looking back like this, memories really do fade over time. I’m happy with my life now, but if I could go back to the past, I’d like to try.

• [257] >>91 Thank you. Hunting means each family butchered and ate animals? That’s amazing. Your parents there married at 16, right? Did your parents here also marry young? By the way, how old was your mother here when you were born? Also, you mentioned the language was SOV? Do you remember the shape of the letters? If you remember any characters, could you upload a handwritten drawing… preferably with translations like in an English textbook?
• [259] Have you gone to bed already? What about clothing? Was it like old Japanese clothes, or perhaps ethnic costumes like Mongolian ones?
• [260] >>259 Oh! I’m curious about that too. And what about the buildings? Were they different from here, or similar? Exciting!
• [261] >>91 You came here, right?

[262] My parents here married at 26 and 23. They were strangers to me, so I think the differences between there and here go beyond just the environment. As for clothes, the most basic outfit was a single piece of cloth (or something like it) with a hole in the middle, worn by slipping it over the head and tying it around the waist with a cord. Sometimes people wore cloth wrapped underneath, or pants or skirt-like garments. There wasn’t much sense of shame about being seen, so outfits were often quite loose. Formal wear resembled an Ao Dai, I think.

[263] Houses were often made of grass, wood, and stone. It’s probably hard to imagine, but the ecology and processing techniques were different, so even grass alone provided sufficient strength. There were carpenters, so to speak, but the whole village often pitched in to build. I remember helping carry things sometimes. For the script, please wait a moment, I’ll try to remember.

• [264] Did the houses resemble Japanese houses? Or more Western-style?

[311] >>264 If I had to say, maybe European style. Depending on the location, some were built with wood frames, so some looked like something from an undeveloped area too.

• [268] >>262 So their formal wear looked like this [referring to Ao Dai]? And casual wear was like this [referring to image]? By the way, this is clothing from the Jomon period.

• The “Jomon period” is a prehistoric era in Japan (approx. 16,000 – 3,000 years ago), characterized by pottery use and a hunter-gatherer culture.*

[295] >>268 Not quite that primitive (lol). Casual wear was rough, while formal wear favored emphasizing the physique. I really can’t remember much, so just two examples. The top one (starting with the triangle-like shape) means “I am from Arusuaru.” The bottom one means something like “Good morning.” These are the hiragana-like characters. There are kanji-equivalent characters too, but I could barely write them at that stage. Oral communication was more central than written text.

• “Hiragana,” “Kanji,” and “Katakana” are the main writing systems used for Japanese. Kanji are logographic characters derived from Chinese; Hiragana and Katakana are phonetic syllabaries developed in Japan based on Kanji. The narrator is comparing the writing system of his previous world to these.*

• [296] >>295 How many hiragana-like characters are there in total? And in that drawing, how many characters does each phrase represent?

[297] >>296 Altogether, maybe around 140. The top one is 7 characters, the bottom is 8. I feel like there might be spelling mistakes, but don’t worry about it.

• [298] >>297 Whoa! That’s a lot (lol). It looks like 6 characters on top and 7 on the bottom to me (lol).
• [301] Could you write the pronunciation of the characters you just wrote using Romaji?

• “Romaji” refers to the method of writing Japanese pronunciation using the Latin alphabet (Roman letters). Here, the user is asking the narrator to represent the pronunciation of his world’s language using the alphabet.*

[302] icknabi(i)naalsuearlphkamgelzemmna… Hmm, that doesn’t seem quite right (lol).

• [304] >>302 The pronunciation seems difficult (lol). Comparing life there and here, which was better?

[312] >>304 Probably here. I feel nostalgic for it, but I only lived there as a child, so I think it’s not much different from when old guys say “the old days were better.” Though during my adolescence, I did think the other world was better (lol).

• [305] >>302 How would you read it using Katakana?

[306] Ikunabiina Arusuarufu Kamugeruzemunna. The detailed pronunciation is different, but it’s roughly like this. Arusuaru is the village name. The exact translation is “I am Arusuaru.” There’s a way to say “person from Arusuaru,” but I couldn’t remember the characters. Furthermore, you’re supposed to include the region name, like saying Nagoya “of Aichi Prefecture.”

• [307] The language is too difficult. By the way, when you were found, what did the >>91 of this world tell their parents they were going to do? You were found in the mountains, but your current home is urban, right? Is it far from your house?

[308] >>307 I don’t want to give too many details that could identify the location, but apparently, it was indeed a mountain. It’s an urban area with mountains relatively nearby.

[386] I checked with my parents, and they said my clothes were the same as when I left home. I wasn’t wearing strange clothes, nor were any found lying around, they think. However, it’s a fact that I was speaking an unknown language. At first, they thought it was due to hitting my head or something, and since I gradually started speaking Japanese, they didn’t worry too much, thinking it was temporary. Well, they worried enough to take me to the hospital, apparently. Also, they said I used to perform some kind of prayer before meals. These are the points my parents remembered. My own memory is getting hazy too, so unless it was something really striking, it seems difficult to get more details from my parents.

**[387] Although hazy, I have memories of my childhood (over there). On the other hand, I also have memories from here. But I have doubts about whether the timing is correct (like thinking a memory is from age 10 when it was actually age 12). There’s also the possibility that my memories have been supplemented by stories from people around me and photo albums. So, what I was vaguely thinking about over the weekend is: **

・ The possibility that I fabricated the other world due to some illness or the aftereffects of hitting my head.
・ The possibility that the other world actually existed, and I came here.
・ The possibility that I existed in both worlds simultaneously (like the person mentioned earlier in this thread).

These are the possibilities I can think of, and now that my memory is unreliable, I feel I couldn’t deny it if someone told me the first possibility is the most likely.

• [388] >>387 Even if you see yourself in albums from this world from when you were kindergarten age, do you have absolutely no memory of ever being here during that time?

[389] >>388 I do have memories. But I don’t know if they are things I actually experienced, or if they were constructed as memories from the “back when you were…” stories told by my parents and grandparents. However, when I try to recall early childhood memories, most of what comes to mind is still from the other world, I think.

• [390] >>389 Realistically speaking, it seems plausible that you had an accident while playing in the mountains, suffered brain damage causing memory loss of everything before that, and the strange things (weird characters, incomprehensible language, common in dreams) were just a bizarre dream you had while unconscious. But if your parents and siblings acknowledge it normally, and you appear together in old albums, then it suggests you definitely existed concurrently in this world too… It’s complicated…

[394] >>390 Thinking normally, the most likely scenario is that hitting my head caused a temporary abnormality, and I’ve actually been living normally in this world all along, right? (lol).