I live in Tokyo, Japan and was on vacation visiting my family in Ramona, California. I went outside to have a smoke, as my mother and father are not smokers. After a short while I saw a beam of light coming down from the sky. The beam was only about 75 to 100 yards from where I was smoking. It seemed as if the light was searching for something; moving here and there, up the hill and then down the hill. At first, I thought it might have been a helicopter searching for something, but I didn’t hear the sound of the blades cutting through the air. The sky was very dark blue and the stars were out, but when I tried to see where the light was coming from I couldn’t see a thing. I thought at least I would see a silhouette of the thing from where the light came. I called to my nephew, who was about 9 or 10 years old at the time, to come outside. He yelled back that he was watching something on television. A few minutes later the light went out. This was the strangest experience I ever had and remember it forever. Every time I hear the word ‘UFO,’ or ‘alien,’ I always think of this strange moment in my life.