They're itchy all over your skin and every few seconds another one falls from your hair. You huff in reverse to get them out of your nose. You can smell, everywhere, the aftermath of burning.
***
I'm waiting for an email from an FBI agent. Honest truth. I'm looking at post-Japan careers, and it turns out that a friend of a friend of a friend is a recruiter for them. At BYU there was an FBI recruiting seminar once, and it sounded interesting to me then, but they don't hire anyone who isn't at least twenty-three, and since I was only nineteen at the time (I graduated at twenty) I didn't think about it seriously.
So there's that.
Staying here is also an option, one that's becoming more attractive as I get the language kind of down and make a few more social ties. Possibly staying here-here, in the same city, or possibly moving to Yokohama to work in the branch office. I'm getting pretty comfortable here, so if they could just up my pay by half I think I'd be sold. (Sold on one more year, that is.)
Passing my kendo test last weekend went a long way toward making me feel at home here, I think. And last night, sparring at the boxing gym, I also felt like I belonged. (I hit a personal record for continuous jump rope time, among other things.) As nice as it was to live in the US, I was too worried about money or school or Mormonism or The Gay to feel that belonging most of the time, so even with the language barrier, what I'm feeling here is valuable.
I've been able to keep in touch with many of my friends, mostly through letters, some through Facebook. We keep each other posted, we talk about curiosities and boys and jobs and hobbies. My model for letter writing has always been Pride and Prejudice. I think I'm coming into it more.
I wrote another several pages of novel the other day.
***
Things you burn: flags; corpses; phoenixes; fields; houses; fuses; forests; incense; evidence.
