If you were here, I might not feel like I've just done something very wrong. Maybe I would.

The first thing is this: I've lived in Japan for a year and a half and in this particular apartment for eleven months, which apart from my parents' house makes it the residence I've lived in the longest. But when four students on bicycles yelled "Haro misuta Peri!" across the street at me and I yelled "Hello!" back, a little old woman at the bus stop in front of me noted it and asked as I passed "Are you a teacher?"

(But in Japanese.)

And I said yes, and we conversed for a few minutes with me feeling a rising sense of panic the entire time. I ended the conversation at the first possible opportunity by edging away and finally just nodding and turning my back. And this was not a conversation that was dragging on and on—it was perfectly brief, and she looked terribly nice, like what my grandmother would look like if she had been Asian and not had a stroke when I was three. Nevertheless I ran from it like that time when a stranger pulled over to the curb and asked my seven-year-old friend and I to come over to the car so he could "ask us a question."

(Found out later he was my friend's uncle and was looking for the house we were playing in front of. Still freaked me out. Why couldn't he just ask from where he was?)

Why? I don't know. I'm hypothesizing that it has something to do with how in this country and this town in particular I am a cross between a washed-up celebrity and a circus attraction, or how my job is to speak about mundane things in the simplest terms possible  in front of generally unimpressed twelve-year-olds. I feel like my situation here has been training me to believe that human contact is onerous and difficult. I mean, moreso than it was in the states. I feel like it's starving any outgoing impulse I might once have had.

***

Today I finished reading The House of Mirth, by Evelyn Waugh. It was a cross between Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, and The Great Gatsby. Overall I give it a 7/10, but there were some excellent phrases, like this:

Some men are strong enough to be good by themselves, but I needed the help of your belief in me. Perhaps I might have resisted a great temptation, but the little ones would have pulled me down. And then I remembered--I remembered your saying that such a life could never satisfy me; and I was ashamed to admit to myself that it could.

(Originally the second word was "women." Judge me if you will.)

The little ones would have pulled me down. I was ashamed to admit to myself that it could. God that's beautiful.

***

I chatted my angst to my sister not long ago and she said that no, really, it'll be worth it. You're growing in ways you can't know yet.

***

The feeling of wrongness comes I think from seeing this change in me. I'm not a person who shrinks from grandmas . . . but I did. I'm a fairly strong conversationalist . . . but not here. The person I'm seeing myself become is in many ways great and overall I'm happy with him, but this weakness and fear feels both wrong and inescapable. I hope but am not convinced that it's a fluke of circumstance.