Everything we learn about our sensory systems suggests that we construct all we experience, from the most improbable dreams to the blue of the sky. And everything we learn about the world out there on the other side of our senses suggests that it is nothing like anything we hold familiar. In the terra nova of quantum physics and cognitive science, what do our common notions of real and unreal mean? Are our folk beliefs and customs any less foreign than those of another country? Can we any more explain our way of thinking than we can that of another culture’s – even though we are prepared to die trying to enforce it?

A feeling of not knowing Japan has contaminated my every certainty.

After feeling like this for several days I conclude that if I lose touch with reality, I have really lost touch with nothing at all. Unfortunately, this does not improve my sense of well-being. If I have created a space for myself here, it echoes with a maddening cacophony. Instead of feeling loosened, I feel I am fraying at the edges. If I must live in a dream, then why not the familiar one that everyone approves of? It is perverse and self-destructive to insist on another.

The solution is as clear as it is unexpected. I need a different dream. I must rewrite the proper dream one character at a time, and that means leaving Japan. There is a limit to how much one can say with a single brush-stroke. If I press on here I will soon over-write myself or run dry. At times, the brush must be lifted from the paper, refreshed and reformed if necessary, and placed down on a new sheet.

I call everyone to say goodbye.

Akiko is stiffly formal, but cheerful. She wishes me bon voyage.

Miho laughs that in all the time I’ve been in Japan we have only ever managed to talk on the phone, and hopes to see me again in Sydney, or maybe in the air.

Satomi jokes and teases, and says she looks forward to my next visit.

I even call Kayo (though she doesn’t answer and I resort to a left message).

I leave Emi to last. It is very difficult. She is rendered almost speechless by my news. Her voice is tiny, quavering. I feel I am hurting her for purely selfish reasons. I wish I could be there to somehow soften the hurt with a touch, but perhaps that might just make it worse. I simply don’t know what to do with Emi. She reminds me that it will soon be St Valentine’s Day. We talk emptily about what we might do in the future, promise to speak again soon, and that is it.

That is it.

After all, what more can I do in Japan? The only plausible answer to that question is: submerge, get work and become an inhabitant, not a traveller; the object, not the subject.

But it is more than that. Despite all my efforts the understated aesthetic of Zen, shibui, has eluded me, and instead I have created a palimpsest, written over and over so many times until everything seems to have been blurred by cross-hatching. Instead of an empty space, a noisy scribbling reigns; too much information. Where I have sought simplicity, things have become awfully complicated.

I call the airline as I walk along the road, my eyes unconsciously following the hawks that wheel high over the hills.

Such a beautiful day to be thinking of leaving! I imagine sympathetic signs of spring everywhere. Shoots are pushing up all over the fields and buds are appearing on some of the trees. The days are noticeably warmer.

At Harumi’s house I seek her assistance in arranging takkyubin transportation of my heavy luggage to the airport.