If you were here I wouldn't feel so bad because we'd have been talking over the past couple of weeks, when I wasn't angsty. As it is, I feel like I'm a bit of a downer, only talking to you when there's a snarfy feeling in the back of my skull.

The problem is that I feel incompetent here all the time. Next week is my kendo level test. Today was a trial run. I made so many mistakes that the sensei stopped counting. I still don't understand half the directions. I got there late because I got lost, asked directions from an old woman, and ended up getting on the wrong bus. Downer.

The evening after that was pretty great, though. A performing group called the Young Americans had a show tonight. The first half is a medley of "American culture" things (90's hip hop, Shenandoah, swing, blues, etc.) and the second half was a children's program. It was super cute. I . . . well, I should describe it. And I could. But the back of my skull is snarfy so many I actually can't just now.

And after, my kendo sensei took me out for soba. We managed a mangled but fairly uninterrupted conversation for the whole meal. Which was delicious.

I'm listening to the soundtrack to Hairspray and feeling intense nostalgia waves. One of my favorite roommates was crazy about that movie. Gosh I miss him. And the others we shared the house with. And so many other things. Grease. (The movie.) Being good at things.

Look, I know this passes. Being here is a good thing. I want to be doing what I'm doing, difficult as it is. But tonight, there's snarf and I can't think and . . . other emo things.

You know, I'm kind of glad you're not here tonight. I'd be grumpy company.

If you were here tonight, I'd tell you about how I went to the Mormon chapel today. We'd sit on the bed, I think, because there are a few days of clutter everywhere else and it's cozy up here. We could watch everything like lords of it all. Lords of the grocery bags and discarded jackets.

I found the chapel with the little map that the elders gave me some months ago—I think I mentioned it. On the way there I asked a woman about the correct train stop to get off at, and later a man about a park where I could eat my bakery-bought lunch. I understood half the words. That was enough though. I got off at the correct and tiny station in a depressing area of Atsugi where there was a factory smell and a lot of concrete and wires and cars. I found a garbage-strewn set of benches and a little shrine by the river and ate my lunch there.

I was anxious but not freaking out when I passed the chapel the first time. It sort of pops out at you with sudden white largeness. A spiral staircase, half of the first floor given over to parking, a couple of people walking out. I walked past them and past the Create drugstore across the street. (This is when I found the park and ate my curry roll, my tiny pizza, and my doughnut.)

I felt light and fizzy when I walked back and in. I lingered in the empty little front room and looked at a display of different language editions of the Book of Mormon. '80s era posters in English. Ads for the English classes the elders teach.

Up the stairs. They were narrowish, just enough room for a person going one way to pass a person going the other way. At the top, a Japanese woman saw me and said "Hello" in English. I tried to ask for the meeting schedule in Japanese, and she asked what meeting, and I had no idea how to say "sacrament meeting" and she didn't switch to English, so "Hello" was probably the extent of her abilities in that regard. She said there was a meeting going on then and held open a door right there in the narrow hallway and ushered me in.

This was at two thirty or three, by the way. "Baptism," I said to myself when I saw a little Latin American kid at the front and his family up there too and not exactly a full house in the rest of the folding chairs. Bingo. I sat down right by the door I'd come in and listened to the little guy thank everyone for coming. Someone in the column of chairs next to me went up to the front and told the elders I was there and they came back by me, smiling huge. I bet I made their day.

Are you from England? I'm guessing you're a member. How long have you been here?

American, actually, from California. Yeah, haven't come for a long time though. About nine months.

He gave me the schedule for the meetings. The bishop spoke a little. We sang "I Am A Child Of God" in Japanese and it felt warm in my head and then a prayer, a few more pleasantries, and I left.

"See you next week" he said, and maybe he will, I dunno. It felt good to sit there. It was familiar and comforting and I didn't feel suffocated. It was interesting to see how much I could understand. It was a baptism, though, and I arrived close to the end. Two of the three people I heard speak were adorable and Latin and simple and children. There was a lot of space. There was no sacrament ritual.

If you were here, I don't know if you'd ask why I'm going or not, but I ask myself. Answer: Mormonism is part of my heritage. I don't really want to cut it out of my life. Pain aside.

I imagine you'd raise an eyebrow if you were here, but maybe you wouldn't be surprised. Now I need to turn on the heat and wash the spoon I ate mango yogurt with earlier and brush my teeth and sleep. School starts again in a couple of days. I'd get up and we'd hug, if you were here.

After boxing this evening I ran into the Mormon missionaries. This was the third time since coming to Japan and the first of those three times when I wasn't running to catch a train. They were in my train station's bakery, which was where I wanted to buy dinner. (Curry rolls.)

Long story short: When they gave me a little map to the church I felt wanted by a decent looking American man within a couple of years of my age, which was strange and wonderful and then depressing. I miss tall, clean-cut white boys. Missionaries are even better because they come in pairs and without women. No offense, women. Unfortunately, they don't want me to come to their church because they like me; they want me to come because they believe a theology that I don't.

Gosh I felt sad after that. Not too sad—boxing endorphins—but sad. Probably I'll never stop being sad, at least a little, not about these particular men but about the Mormon life I didn't lead. Like the best storybooks, that Mormon life was so beautiful that it hurts that I can't believe it's true.

I'm pretty sure I'll visit the church sometime soon, maybe even this weekend. I'm such a sucker.


**********

There were cutie-patootie eight year olds at the boxing gym today. They asked me my name, and where I was from, and how old I was. One kept going "Pchiew!" and fake punching toward me. One kept showing off on the climbing rope, calling me over to make sure I was watching.