A lifelong friend – a man who had lived in Japan for 28 years, married a Japanese woman and raised three children there, found out that I was going to Japan for a year to make an independent documentary. He called me up to try to talk some reality into me.

"The only way you’ll ever become a part of the culture," he told me, "is if you were born in a Japanese village to Japanese parents".

I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I had grown up on several continents, spoke five languages, served in the Peace Corps, and already had two travel documentaries under my belt. I was convinced that I could learn to read and write the language, study the rules, and if necessary, completely recreate myself – my character, my way of looking at the world. Whatever it took to fit in.

I was a fool.