A year or so ago, I remember having one of those dreams where I kept waking up over and over, each time eventually realizing I was still dreaming. It was so disturbing that when I finally woke up for real, I remained firmly unconvinced that the dream had actually ended.

And so now as I begin preparations for leaving Japan, I at last understand the look on Simon's face when I met him last year and Angie prepared to take his place as his teaching successor. He wore a quiet, dazed expression as he helped unpack our belongings (mostly his old furniture, some of which he himself had inherited from his predecessor two years prior). He answered politely but distantly Angie's questions about the job, his opinions,and his experiences in Japan.

Simon smiled. "It was. . . indescribable," he struggled to reply. "I can't believe it's all about to end." And in all likelihood, it probably wasn't until long after his plane home to England had landed that the reality of his having left Japan sank in.

I now face the same prospect: going home, escaping Oz, wrapping up a year of outrageous and inexplicable cultural experiences into a neat little package, tossing it into a suitcase and hitching a flight back to the U.S. But this wasn't just summer camp or a quick Tour of the Mysterious Orient. The strange waking dream that is life in Japan lasted so long, made such an impression, that I cannot simply shake it off and move on.

When I was younger, I entertained notions of one day becoming an astronaut. Even up through graduate school last year, I daydreamed of seeing the Earth from afar or of walking around on the surface of Mars. I am forever cured of these dreams, however. On July 27, 2003, Angie called me from her hotel in Tokyo, having just arrived in Japan one day before I was scheduled to get there myself.

I answered the phone groggily, it being 4:30 a.m. where I was. "Hello? Angie, is that you?" And what followed sounded a lot like her voice, but my realization of where she was calling from, combined with my drowsiness, understandably altered the conversation somewhat:

"HE-LloooOO. . . ChrIS. . . IT is Me I HaVE LAN-ded. . . Lis-TEN closeLY as I HAVE an impor-TANT MES-sage from the FU-turE. . . when youR FLIGHt aRrives yoU muST CaLL Me aT oNCE so wE cAN mAKe pLAns to meET. . . do you UNDERstand whAT I have just ToLd you?"

I scratched my head and blinked in bewilderment. Apparently my wife was calling from the moon. And more alarming, it appeared in just a few hours I was headed to the same place as her.

Arriving in Tokyo began a blurry, surreal existence that has completely spanned these past ten months. I can't read road signs, restaurant menus or ATM instructions. When I try to speak, only unintelligible nonsense flies out of my mouth, leaving bystanders scratching their heads in puzzlement. People come and go in my life and I only barely understand why. I am treated like a celebrity and a rock star by some, yet met with suspicion or even derision by others. But no one treats me just normally, because my very presence here in this strangest of lands is not the norm.

One glance at my face tells people I am an out-of-place curiosity. But practically everyone here bends over backwards to guide me, assist me, look after me, and ultimately help me with what they see as my final, impending goal: to get safely back to my home country. And along the way, there have been too many people to thank and not enough time to thank them as my time in Japan hurtles toward completion. My flight is booked, arrangements have been made. All that remains is for me to smile, bow a lot, exchange addresses and goodbye presents, and sadly face the obvious truth, that I will only really ever understand a fraction of what I saw and experienced here.

Despite all the English conversation classes, the outings with Japanese friends and countless exchanges with locals, the closest I've felt to bonding with the Japanese was actually those times when I wasn't even speaking to them at all: curled up in a dimly lit room, tossing back drinks and taking turns belting out karaoke tunes.

For here was a strange and distant glimpse through the telescope of the life I'd known back on Earth: songs I recognized, and loud at that. But halfway through my raspy rendition of House of the Rising Sun, I notice the lyrics on the screen aren't quite right. Then I realize I can't understand the fancy remote control. Or read the songlists. But I know that even though my Japanese friends probably don't understand half the words I'm singing, nor I the words to their selections, I'm going to keep on performing, singing and dancing, working and teaching, wondering and blundering and tripping and slipping and waving to the schoolchildren on the bus and eating raw squid without a fuss and not understanding why these visions grow dim, and finding myself at home, awake again.

"It's not fun," Bill Murray tries to explain of Japan to his stateside wife, in Lost in Translation. "It's just really, really different."