I won't close my eyes. I won't sleep. I refuse. Must not sleep. Must not sleep. Don't sleep. Don'tsleep. Don'tsleepdon'tsleepdon'tsleepdon'tsleepdon'tsleepdon'tsleep....

Every time I blink, I miss another country. Blink. We've crossed the Russian-Mongolian border. Blink. We've slipped through the Gobi. Blink. Beijing was yesterday. Blink. Japan is a tiny dot behind us in the Pacific. Blink. California.

Countries slip through my blind fingers like beads on a string. Mongolia vanished, dream-like, in a cloud of bronzy dust. China was a fog; Japan a cartoon.

I barely remember China. I ran twice – the two runs bracketed an acute and messy bout of food poisoning. Both runs had a nightmare quality: I'm running down an endless, shoulderless road, under a poisoned platinum sky. Curious dogs sniff my socks. Heaps of colorful roadside trash block my way, looking like piles of smelly confetti. It's oppressive and hot and the air tastes strange (I usually wake up at this point to discover I've burrowed beneath my pillow and I'm slowly suffocating). You know, I've had this dream before – but I'm usually wearing ridiculous shoes and Russell Crowe is somehow involved. The muddy and fish-filled dream leading to the Yellow Sea was bad for a number of reasons: my shoes were ridiculous, Russell was nowhere to be found, and I was awake.

Japan at night was a garden of neon. Flowers, sparkles, smiley faces, and arrows exploded in showers of yellow and green and lavender and blue. Hot pink advertising, much of it in English, spanned the entire horizon. Japan at night was designed by a group of giggly eight-year-old girls in frilly dresses. Japan at night was Hello Kitty cute. At four in the morning, however, I was not amused. In the middle of all the pastel neon, I was a large brown frowny face. The run to catch the morning ferry, though, turned out to be really fun and breezy and relaxing. Any country with neon arrows pointing the way is a winner in my book. Japan during the day was another matter. As soon as the sun rose, a large, invisible finger switched off most of the cheery neon and, sadly, all of the English. Oddly, each time the lights went out, I was left stranded in the middle of an intersection, staring at signs filled with kittens waving semaphore flags.

The flight from Narita in Tokyo to San Francisco was just under nine hours. Blink. Blink. Blink. Okay, I was trying to miss that one. Not everything needs to be cherished.

Sunshine. Traffic. Jamba Juice. Tofu. English. Harry Potter. Oh God. I'm home. I'm home. But not quite. I still have a country to traverse. Careful. Don't sleep. Mustn't sleep. Blink and I'll miss it.