Today is the day I go to the theater. I had sent a list of things I wanted to do in Georgia to a girl I had met on Tinder the day before. I had always wanted to go to the theater, and to my surprise, her father is the lead actor in the play and her mother is a stage actress, so she invited me to the premiere before the show opens. I had never been so lucky. I was so excited that even though I was spending lonely nights every day, luck would come to me by chance like this.

Dealing with work revisions before going to the theater

Today was still very busy and I had to do work, so first I went to Mapshalia for lunch. Oshakli, cutlets and water. It was very delicious. I couldn’t eat everything. Then I went to a coffee shop where I had to deal with the revision of the project. The staff at the coffee shop was nice and kind and gave me a points card. I was working on the terrace there for a long time, and it smelled so bad because the person next to me was a heavy smoker.

The smoke kept coming toward me while I was dealing with the correction, and it was extremely annoying. I looked to the side and saw an old lady and her brother, who looked like a mother and son. Both of them started smoking again as soon as they finished their cigarettes. I felt really bad. I remembered that when I was in high school, I used to think about what I would ask for if I could make one wish come true, and one of the top ones was to “erase the existence of cigarettes from the world”. So I couldn’t stand the smell, so I decided to go home and work until 6:30 p.m., the time of the meeting. Then I worked until the last minute, brushed my teeth, changed my clothes into formal attire, and off we went.

Go to the theater in the center of Tbilisi!

Now I’m finally going to meet the girl for the first time and watch a performance at the theater with her. I thought to myself, “This is a pretty good experience, because experiences like this don’t come along very often.” I walked around smiling naturally and creating an atmosphere. There was no need to try hard, but I still wanted to smile and be seen as someone who was easy to relate to. And so I walked to the theater.

We were originally supposed to meet at the train station, but apparently traffic was going to make her late, so we decided to meet directly at the venue. So I walked to the theater. The theater was in one of the buildings on the usual street, so it was quite close. When I arrived at the theater, there were many people waiting happily outside. They were smoking in groups and talking happily.

I was alone, so I felt lonely again. But I guess that’s just the way it is. About 10 minutes before the show, a girl who looked like Nata arrived.

Finally meet Nata! My heart is pounding!

So we finally met! At first, we shook hands. It felt very strange to greet each other with a handshake, because hugs are the norm. Apparently, Nata also said that it was very awkward, which is understandable since we were going to the theater together for the first time. But I was trying to understand each other, like, “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine!” She was trying to understand each other. I thought she was very shy, more so than I had expected.

Title of today’s performance

She said that she is actually small and 19 years old and will turn 20 on Nov. 30, despite her cosplay and unique image on Instagram. She said something like that. Then she showed me around the venue. She was there with her mother and brother, so she introduced me to her mother. It was a strange feeling. We were going to see the show together, so I wondered if her mom would think that we were going on a date now. She didn’t seem even a little bit interested in me. She just nodded her head and that’s it. She was kind of indifferent, but on the contrary, I was glad she left us alone. There was no pressure. It’s totally different between Japan and other countries I realized again.

Finally, Georgia’s performance begins. I am excited!

The theater had a very Georgian architecture. Nata was standing next to me translating the performance in Georgian, but I couldn’t understand anything. First of all, the sound was too loud and I wanted to concentrate on the play, so I thought it would be more valuable to understand and explore what a Georgian play was about rather than the story.

But Nata did a very thorough job of translating. I really appreciated it. The theater was the first half and the second half, an hour and a half each. So, 3 hours in total. This is crazy long.

I still felt sleepy and closed my eyes halfway through watching the performance, but since I was invited to the premiere, I did my best to see it through to the end. However, one thing I couldn’t understand was what they were saying, and their acting was very unique. I had no idea what they were doing or what the story line was.

There was a very constant sad sound and it was like a woman and a man talking to each other. I had no idea why they were there, why they kept throwing trash, why they were constantly pedaling their bicycles, or anything like that.

Georgia’s performance were unique, too quirky. Sometimes it was comedy, sometimes sorrow, sometimes irony. It seemed to be a mixture of all of those things, and Nata explained it to me in detail during the intermission. I really appreciated it. I was so grateful to her for explaining in such detail. However, I could not understand what she was saying at all. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand English, it was just that I didn’t understand why she was saying that. It was like that.

But it was a great experience. After the play, the finale. Everyone came out and the audience shouted “bravo” at the end! The audience shouted. And the actors were in high spirits, all holding hands and bowing. I thought it was really amazing to think that the main actor was Nata’s father who invited me to this event.

After the theater, we walk around town together

Then Nata bought cigarettes at the store in front of the theater. She told me that in Georgia, people start smoking when they are 15 years old, and the reason is because everyone around them is smoking. It was too much. Of course, it may be illegal to smoke at the age of 15, but the police don’t control it. She also talked about drugs. She said that heroin, marijuana, MDMA, and other drugs are easily available, and that marijuana is smoked when one is in a bad state of mind, and heroin is the same. But heroin is not so addictive. Still, I was really surprised.

Most of her classmates knew how to get drugs. In Japan, I had been exposed to the stereotype that drugs are weapons of destruction that can end one’s life, and that the police will catch you! But if you look at it from a broader perspective, from an international standard, I don’t think it’s that bad when it comes to Marijuana.

Of course, I don’t smoke, but I thought it was strange that people overreacted so much, or that drugs = bad people. I am still brainwashed by Japanese stereotypes, so I need to do something about it. I have to understand and have my own ideas based on solid, scientific evidence. I think this is really important. I thought I should have a broader viewpoint and be more open-minded.

Find a Yakitori Restaurant

Nata and I decided to walk around and get something to eat somewhere after 10pm. I heard that there is an alcohol called Cha Cha in Georgia, and since I had never had it, I thought I would like to drink it. But I was told that it was only available in bars in Georgia, and there were none nearby. So we ended up going to a donut shop or a sushi restaurant. Not sushi, though. Nata and I talked about Japan while we were there, and Nata, who seems to be studying Japanese in school, asked me if what she was learning was true in Japan.

I realize that what is taught in different countries is messed up

Is it true that “there are heaters at bus stops?” And, “Is it true that students who don’t want to get a job deliberately delay it for a year?” No, it’s not true. I told her that it is the opposite. We talked about all kinds of things. “Why did you come to Georgia?” Of course I was asked.

So we ended up at a sushi restaurant. I ordered the roll set. She invited me for free, so I decided to treat her to sushi this time. But she didn’t seem too hungry, so we decided to buy drinks and eat the roll set together. She is a vegetarian, so she can’t eat animal products, so I had to buy the rolls that had plants in them, i.e., seaweed. So we ate them out.

I never run out of things to talk about with Nata, we have a lot of great things to talk about!

We had a really interesting conversation there. It was hard to believe that it was our first meeting.

First, a story about dogs. There are so many stray dogs in Georgia, but they have patches on their ears, and it seems that those dogs have been vaccinated against rabies and other diseases. I thought it was amazing that the government controls stray dogs. I told her that in Japan, stray dogs are rarely seen, and if found, they are killed at public health centers. So, compared to Japan, they are more tolerant. I thought that Japan should be like Georgia and give free vaccines to dogs and let them roam free. I thought, “Why don’t we have to kill every stray dog in Japan?”

I also wondered why there are so many Siberian Huskies among stray dogs. I didn’t know this, but apparently there used to be a lot of Siberian Huskies in the wild, but when families got tired of living with them, they abandoned their dogs one after another.

She wants to study robotics and we shared our college values. She loves math and physics, but she said she really enjoys physics because you can derive an answer from a formula and then go back to it, whereas in math you can only do a calculation from a definition and then get the answer and not the other way around. She was originally going to go to college, but there was no department she wanted to enter in Georgia, and even if there was one, it was very high level, so she took it as a test and got in. She started studying one day before and got in just by doing her normal routine.

I felt that she was going to be like Elon Musk. Moreover, she had never studied English before and was just hearing everything by ear, but now she has C1 level English skills, which was really amazing. It was totally different from what I thought.

It is interesting that none of her stories are what I expected

She is an ENTP and a thinker, so she can’t stop researching what she is interested in, and she can’t sleep because of it. She also said that when she went to college, she had to cram for subjects she wasn’t interested in, which she thought was different from what she wanted to do, so she quit right away. So, she wants to go to a foreign university in the future, and she is applying for it. She said something like that.

I was really impressed. I wanted to support her as much as I could.

She thought Japan was the cutting edge of robotics and wanted to study in Japan. But I was thinking in my mind that that is not true. I told her in a roundabout way that it would be very difficult if she stayed in Japan because she is very creative and revolutionary, thinking about the unthinkable, and that she would be crushed if she stayed in Japan. But that’s sad but true. In my opinion, if you want to be extraordinary, USA is the best place to be.

I really think that about the value of college as well. In my opinion, a university is “a place where interesting people gather in a concentrated area, make connections, and eventually, if they are lucky, become friends to do business or create something together.”

Because if it’s something you want to learn, the fastest way is to learn it on your own.

She is very knowledgeable about physics, and even though she is not studying physics in college at the age of 19, and she was lucky enough to get into a high-level university now after only one day of study, and she quit right away and is now attending a Japanese language school, she would tell me that her favorite theorem is ~~, and she would tell me the formula for calculating it, like it is ~~.

Also discusses whether time machines can actually be built

So I was getting smarter and smarter. I also learned about universal gravitation, that gravity is actually very weak, and that electromagnetic waves and vibrations are more interesting than gravity, and that neutrons have a very high mass. In addition, to build a time machine, it is not as simple as just going faster than the speed of light. We both agreed that we need to understand the definition of time in a more complex, multidimensional, quantum-mechanical way and think around it. Besides, I think that aliens living in the 4th or 5th dimension may be here right now. We can’t see them, but they are in parallel worlds, and we are afraid of them because they would suddenly go down a dimension and be discovered by humans. We discussed the possibility that this is why they are always trying to keep a close eye on their dimensionality.

We also talked about “What If the Atom Bomb Falls?”

Then, how to protect yourself from radiation and nuclear weapons. First, don’t look at the light. Turn your back and close your eyes. Then, take shelter in a building with thick concrete as much as possible. I also learned how gamma rays can cause cancer if they hit you, and how to measure the time between the light and the sound of a nuclear bomb to know how far away it is. So I was soon talking about how, for example, if it was 3 seconds, it would be 720 meters or something like that. It was really fun. She was especially interested in quantum mechanics and the nuclear field.

She told me that MRI can divide a body into sections and look inside by fixing hydrogen and rotating the spins. She talked about such things with great interest.

I am very interested in nuclear physics, so I kept talking about it. She told me that to protect ourselves from radiation, I should wrap myself in concrete, water, cellophane, and film. That’s what I was talking about.

We went to the theater, but we talked 1% about the theater and 99% about science

When I told her that I wanted to do research on dreams, she said that it sounded really interesting! She also said that she was very interested in research connecting the brain and robots, and I thought that we were really the same. I could not have met such a student at my university. At my university, the tuition fee is 1.6 million yen for one year, but most of the students around me are boring people who play video games and talk trash like “I hate this stupid part-time job,” etc. I felt again that many students from overseas are quintessential and really have a sense of self.

People like Nata are truly valuable students, and if there is anything I can do for her, I would like to do something for her. We also talked about dreams. I also told her about my dreams and about my kinbaku.

I told her that I had been in bondage several times at night, and I wondered if there really were demons in my life. I was wondering if there really is a demon. But she said that although she was in kinbaku, when she got out of it and looked at her hands, she always had her middle finger up. This made me laugh. I have also been in kinbaku several times, and it was commonly when I was tired. But it really seemed like the kinbaku was real, and I couldn’t stop feeling that someone was definitely there. So we talked about how strange this really was. There are countless strange things in the world. Is this due to the influence of our ancestors? I told her that this is a very strange thing.

She said that since our ancestors have been around for thousands of years and myths exist, of course strange things can happen, and that there is no doubt that there are forces at work that cannot be imagined by science. We also said that if we realize that we are dreaming in a dream, we should try not to get excited, because if we do, we will wake up. Of course, we always realize that we are dreaming when we feel scared, but since dreams are created in our minds, we kept talking about how interesting it is that there are so many mysteries.

Time has flown and it’s already 1:00 a.m

In no time, it was 1:00 AM and it was really cold outside, so we decided it was time to go home. So she called a cab and we gave one last hug.

We agreed to go out for drinks next time. So we said bye-bye. We really enjoyed each other.

I was so happy to meet such a friend who I had never met before and who spent most of the time talking about physics, chemistry, and other sciences, even going deeper and talking about formulas and such. I thought this is exactly what communication is all about.