Peace

I've felt an unbelievable peace these last few days as I seek to live my life in this new way (see last post). Despite circumstances being much the same, these have been some of my most mentally-stable days in Japan since coming here.

At church, I managed to fool the Japanese congregation (3 people tonight) into believing I was keeping pace with the conversation. In actuality, I understood almost nothing because they were talking in "Japan-speed" (which is somewhere right around ludicrous speed). However, they think I speak and understand a lot more Japanese than I really do, because I've gotten used to using a really important part of the language: fillers. Primarily, I use "anno" and "eeto," which are both the Japanese equivalent of "umm." Since I use those in my speech (often), they seem to assume that I'm totally fluent and are surprised when they are reminded that I really have no idea of what's going on around me.