No crying in bouldering!

Here's something I didn't mention in my SavvyTokyo story about rock climbing in Tokyo: I cried the last time I took a class. Considering the length of time I've been climbing, my progress is slow. Very slow. I'm still afraid of heights – I often come back down just because I'm uncomfortably far from the ground. The mechanics of climbing aren't obvious to me. So much of it is about shifting your center of mass a little bit or making subtle, coordinated adjustments. Sometimes I hit on the right combination and go "A-ha! That's it!" but I can rarely reproduce what it was that worked. I attended the free Ladies' Dojo at b-pump in Akihabara a few times with two friends. When I say we were the worst in the class, I am not being modest. Empirical evidence supports me on this. The teacher sets up a course by marking the rocks you're to use in the problem with holographic tape. Then, everyone takes a turn trying to go up the route. That day, nobody got it on the first go-round, but about half the people had reached the goal by the second turn. By the third, almost everyone had made it close to the top. Everyone except my friends and me. The wall kept pushing me off. Where other people seemed to be covered in velcro, I was climbing like the rocks were coated in oil. It was embarrassing. The teacher was supportive and gave me specific tips, but I couldn't get anywhere with it. I only felt worse when she chirped, "Okay, that's close! All you have to do is...." The final time I slipped off on an early move, I slunk back to my seat looking at the mat and felt my eyes stinging as much as the skin on my palms. I wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand to avoid smearing chalk dust in them. I hated that everyone else could do it and I couldn't. I hated that I'd been messing around with this sport off and on since college and had gained no appreciable skills. And of course I hated that I was upset about it. This was supposed to be fun!
Usually it is fun. That's why I keep going back. I went home after the class and ordered a climbing book on Amazon.