If the old saw is correct and, "You are what you eat," then Takeru Kobayashi is a hot dog. In more ways than one. First, he is the brightest star in one of the world's fastest growing "sports" – competitive eating. And what he is most renowned for is his dominance of the "sports' " marquee event, Nathan's annual Fourth of July hot dog chow down in New York, an event he has won for six years running and where he once devoured 53 plus dogs in 12 minutes.

The concierge at my hotel had to ask me twice. "You want what?" "A bookstore," I said. Over my shoulder showed the never-sleeping glitz of the casino. "You want what?" she asked yet again. But then shook herself and said there had indeed been a bookstore on the strip in years past. Her pupils grew, as if she were gazing into history and the noble days of the Southern Paiutes. "But now you'll have to take a cab into the city." A notion I scoffed at.

I slouch on a rumpled cot in a hospital ward in the American Northwest. My second son lies out before me with tubes in his body and a packet of blood suspended above his head. A nurse wiping his brow tells me she too has a 21-year-old boy, a marine somewhere in the firestorm of Iraq. "He usually e-mails every day, but I haven't heard from him now in a week." There is a tremble to her lips.

The snake is perhaps more tacky than menacing. To others, it shows only my poor taste in decoration. To me, however, the snake symbolizes something beyond. It signifies the choice I made in opting to live my life in Japan. An eternal reminder that I am snake-bitten. "Get rid of it," says my son. I can't. The snake, in its evil coil, is a scaly link between my two homes, one here and one in the States. Which of these is "abroad," I can no longer say.

I have actually been to the Twilight Zone.

I am uneasily reminded of a time 20 years past when I too applied for higher education from within Japan.

My old college roommate has named his dog after my wife. "Is this some sort of a prank?" I ask him.