In fact, everything was "Art" to me now, even the scraps of paper I would find in the gutter. Wonderfully incomprehensible, yet beautiful in their mysterious glimpses into a world that existed just beyond my grasp.

I could live and play in the Japanese world, but never comprehend it in the same way the Japanese could. The cultural divide was too sharp, the gulf between histories too wide, the ocean of meaning too deep for me to fathom.

This was as it should be, I know, but the yearning to understand could not be dimmed. I wanted to lose myself in this alternate universe, to vanish from western civilization like a puff of wind.

There seemed to be so much more to offer my soul here then at home, save for my wife and kids.