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.

Today I feel failure.

My Japanese failure started when I went to the mormon chapel for the second week running. I arrived ten minutes early (as opposed to last weeks' twenty minutes late) and there was a guy standing in the hall. He started chatting at me and I had no idea what he was saying. No. Clue. I eventually made out that he had shared his name with me(don't know if I can say I forgot it since I didn't really understand it in the first place)and was asking for mine; that he had invited me to an as yet unplanned YSA activity in February (more confusing because it's apparently just SA here, even though this guy turned out to be 27); and (most awkwardly) that he was thanking me for accompanying the elders on a dinner meeting with an investigator last week.

Is that what that was? Whoops.

I didn't know how to assure him that it was not my intention to help convert anyone, so I just said "It was fun."

I understood maybe thirty percent of the first two talks (female speakers who gestured and spoke kinda slow) and ten percent of the last one (a male speaker who did not speak slowly or gesture at all). They were all on the word of wisdom, which was ironic because I enjoyed a cup of coffee with a friend on Friday day, a beer and a mixed drink with a friend on Friday night, and a cup of tea with a friend on Saturday. Still, I like the spirit of health consciousness behind the topic.

I left quickly after the meeting ended, and as soon as I rounded the corner I was asking myself why I'd gone at all.

• Sacrament meeting reminds me of my family. We sang "In Our Lovely Deseret" as the closing song, which in addition to being hilariously fast when you're reading the lyrics in Japanese script was my family's FHE theme song, sung at least twice a month for most of my childhood.
• There's a feeling of community there that I haven't felt anywhere else. Everyone (or the adults at least) is there because they want to be there. There's no pressure to learn, no tests or paychecks involved.
• It's safe. I can't really fail at mormonism, at least not the unorthodox way I'm engaging with it.
• Being there helps me see that I'm not spiritually battered guy I used to be. Where once I got panic attacks, now I have peace.
• The missionaries are thrilled to have me there. I feel like I'm making their day.
• The missionaries are there. This one I feel is dangerous. As lovely as it is to sit next to an American guy my age, to sing together and whisper occasional commentary back and forth, he's a missionary for a church I don't believe in. Our interaction is wholly dependent on my participation in the Mormon church. 

I don't regret going. I felt warm and fuzzy and special there. But I wonder if it isn't unsustainable, like drug happiness. The next few weeks will make it clear, I think. If it's the novelty, that'll wear off. Sometime the elders will bring more people to church and I'll sit by myself, or they'll get transferred out, or I don't know.  I awkwardly imagine what the conversation will be like if they try to get me to be more active than I want to be and it isn't pretty, full of righteous gay pity-party indignation. If I keep it up, I imagine someone will get close to the topic eventually and that will be messy. But for now, I don't regret going.

Oh yeah, this was about failure. After failing to understand Japanese there, I went to an extra kendo practice that my coach had set up for me because of the impending grade level tests. He doesn't speak English, so I failed Japanese some more with him. I also failed at politeness (arrived a few minutes late) remembering the forms (there are ten, and the names and steps are all new Japanese vocabulary), and, pleasing my Japanese teacher, who was there to translate and who ended the evening with the comment "Sometimes I forget how much you don't know," which I suppose might not have been intended as an insult but which still hurt because sometimes I forget too but not today.

But this is all angsty. To be honest, now that I'm a little removed from the events of the day and I can just think about them, it's been a pretty good day. I enjoyed the Mormon church and the train ride to and from. I chatted for a few minutes with my mom (who does not know about my chapel visits because I don't want her to get her hopes up), I enjoyed some lovely bakery snacks, and I finally got a written copy of the kendo form names so I can practice them. I didn't have to teach any classes. I slept in. I read some Michael Creighton and washed things.

I guess the angst is there because I feel like something's missing, and the whole Mormon-elder complex is similar to the missing thing but not it. That and the Japanese and the kendo all together feel like failure, even though on the whole today was good.

Anyway. If you were here I'd probably punch you in the shoulder and then act like I didn't do anything. Just to see what you'd do.

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.

Every Saturday I dread going to kendo. It looms at the end of my day, full of misunderstandings and sweat.

I usually end up going anyway, for various reasons. Sometimes it's because I told my Japanese teacher I would definitely see here there. Sometimes it's because I asked the assistant teacher to make a list of kendo terms for me to study and I already ducked out so I'd feel like a real heel if I did it again. Sometimes it's because I spent far too much money on the armor to let it sit in my closet in it's useless shiny immaculateness.

I never regret going. I feel elated at the end, and for the rest of the evening, and sometimes into the next day. Today I understood another word that the teacher used. ("Twist." I understood this because last week we taught "What's the matter? I have a fever/cold/sore throat" and the teacher wanted to also teach "I hurt my shoulder" and "I twisted my ankle," even though I don't think these things really go together in a grammar sort of way and it sort of confused the students.) I got that list of kendo terms from the assistant teacher, and, bonus, my Japanese teacher's mother was there again. She was there for the first time just after I started, about five months ago. She was extremely impressed by how much Japanese I can speak now, and even though it's not much and the Japanese are infamous for overpraising foreigners' language and chopstick skills, I was thrilled.

I don't know why that doesn't turn it into something I look forward to, but it doesn't. Probably it would be easier if I didn't still have those two herniated disks in my spine, but those bad boys will need surgery--and incidentally, now that I have decent health insurance and a job that pays pretty well for a single guy, I'm looking in to that again. From what I've read recently, the corrective surgeries have advanced enough that they don't carry six-month-bedrest price tags anymore.

Probably it would also be easier if I understood more of what people were saying, but duh.

I dunno.

Anyway. I climbed a mountain yesterday. I'm pretty beat. Tomorrow will be a hurts-so-good day all over me. I'm doin' okay.