Out on the hometown golf links with an old high school chum, I soon ended up in trouble -- for our initial drives found me in ankle deep rough and him sitting pretty on a small rise in the center of the fairway. Before plunging into the weeds, I complimented my friend on his position, and he returned with this tee shot wisdom: "There is no such thing as a perfect lie."

Due to a grammatical error, I at first thought he was referring to sex and not golf. Soon though, I was bewitched by the writer's love of irony, and rather than search ahead for my wayward ball, I instead found myself gazing back at the "perfect" lies I have told myself in my time in Japan.

And here's a lulu. I once claimed that my wife and I would surely raise our children smack in the middle of our two cultures. We would split the fairway with our language, customs and values, and give our kids an even share of respect for both our backgrounds. Our two sons would thus become equal ambassadors of not one but two native lands.