Anecdote 2012-09
As a child, Kojima liked being at school when it rained. The curtain of bad weather made the building feel isolated, but beneath the fluorescent lights and surrounded by teachers and friends he did not feel lonely; he imagined the school as a spaceship in the darkness. During typhoons he fantasized that only the children in his grade were drifting and could create their own world and rules, apart from the world the adults had prepared.
Source
VIZ Media — The Creative Gene; official English translation, 2012-09 (Part one, essay on The Drifting Classroom). View source ↗