Queen Nana Fella

My brother-in-law Shun is 36. An engineer. The quietest man in our family. For nine years, he has taken the same train in Tokyo for 70 minutes every morning. In nine years, not one stranger has spoken to him. Last month, his company sent him to a factory in a small town in Ohio. One week. His first time outside Japan. His boss gave him a notebook and one instruction: "Write down everything strange. So you don't make mistakes." On his second day, Shun filled eleven pages. He showed me the notebook. Here is one ordinary Tuesday in America, exactly as he wrote it. 6:51 a.m. Hotel breakfast. A man I have never seen said "Mornin'." Not "Good morning." Just "Mornin'." Like we have known each other for twenty years and he is a little tired of me. 7:04 a.m. I could not operate the waffle machine. An old man said "Here, buddy," and flipped it. He did not ask if I needed help. Then he told me about his knee surgery. His name is Gary. I now know more about Gary's knee than my father's. 7:48 a.m. Two cars reached a four-way stop at the same time. Both drivers waved. Nobody moved. Eleven seconds. Then both went. Then both stopped. Then both waved again. A small war of kindness. Nobody won. I believe this is the national sport. 8:10 a.m. On a country road, every pickup truck lifted one finger off the steering wheel at me. I did not know what it meant. I lifted one finger back. My heart was pounding. I have never felt so American. 9:15 a.m. A coworker walked past and said, "How are you?" I prepared a full answer. He was already gone. I told the hallway I was fine. 11:52 a.m. Drive-thru. The cashier said, "The car ahead of you got it." I tried to follow the car to say thank you. My coworker grabbed my arm. "Nah, man. You just get the next guy." So I paid for the car behind me. My hands were shaking. It is the most dangerous thing I have ever done. 12:40 p.m. Diner. In one meal, the waitress called me "hon," then "sweetie," then "baby." I have been married six years. My wife has never called me baby. Brenda did it in forty minutes. Brenda also refilled my coffee four times without asking. I think Brenda loves me. 1:30 p.m. Grocery store. A very tiny old woman pointed at the top shelf. "Can you grab that for me, sweetheart?" In Japan, we do not ask strangers. We wait for the shelf to come down. I grabbed it. She patted my arm and said, "You're a doll." I looked it up tonight. I am keeping it forever. 3:12 p.m. A school bus stopped. A little red sign came out. Every car stopped. Both directions. Even the big truck on the other side of the road. Nobody told them to. Nobody had to. 3:40 p.m. A girl, maybe seven, selling lemonade on the corner. Fifty cents. A man in a suit paid with a twenty and said, "Keep it, boss." She did not understand the math. She understood him. 5:55 p.m. A man mowing his lawn went about two feet into his neighbor's yard, then turned around. I asked if it was a mistake. My coworker said, "Nah. You go a little over. That's how you say hi." 7:20 p.m. Little league game. A man in the stands gave me half his sunflower seeds and explained baseball to me for two innings. I did not tell him I have watched baseball my entire life. I did not want him to stop. A boy struck out. The whole crowd clapped anyway. The man next to me stood up and yelled, "That's okay, buddy! Good swing!" Then he sat down and said, very quietly, "That's my boy." In Japan, we clap when you hit the ball. Here, they clap because you swung. 9:48 p.m. Back at the hotel. The woman at the front desk looked at me and said, "Long day?" I said yes. She said, "Well. You made it, hon." I do not know why I cried in the elevator. Wednesday morning, Shun asked his coworker Dale how his evening was. Dale shrugged. "Eh. Nothing happened." Shun wrote that down too. Last line on page eleven. Underlined twice. Next to it, in Japanese, he wrote: "That's a lie." Shun has been back in Tokyo for three weeks now. Every morning, on the same train, he says "Mornin'" to the man who sits across from him. The man has not answered yet. Shun says that's okay. "In America, you go a little over." America, every night you go to bed and say nothing happened. Something happened. Forty times. Before dinner. In one small town. You waved the finger. You paid for the stranger. You stopped for the bus. You clapped for the boy who missed. You don't remember a single one. A quiet man in Tokyo remembers all of them. You haven't lost a thing, America. You just stopped writing it down. So we did.

My wife has taught high school in Tokyo for twenty years. Every year, a few of her students spend a year living with a family in America. When they come home, she asks each of them one question. "What do you miss?" She expects hamburgers. She almost never gets hamburgers. And these aren't old stories. Most of these kids came home in the last two years. "Every time I left the house, my host mom said, 'Text me when you get there.' In Japan, nobody needs to know where I am. In Ohio, somebody always did." (Mina, 17, Ohio) "If you walk toward a door, an American will hold it open. Even if you are very far away. So you have to run. I ran to so many doors." (Itsuki, 16, Georgia) "My host brother screamed on the floor of a grocery store. A stranger walked by and said to my host mom, 'You're doing great, Mama.' She almost cried. I didn't know strangers were allowed to say that." (Aoi, 17, Texas) "We went away for the weekend and left our trash can at the curb. When we got back, it was by the garage. Nobody said who. My host dad said if it had been there one more day, the neighbor would have knocked." (Haruto, 16, Minnesota) "A car got stuck in the snow in front of our house. Four men came out of four houses. Nobody called them. They pushed, the car drove away, and they went back inside without saying their names." (Ren, 17, Michigan) "Every American has jumper cables. Maybe half of them know which clip goes where. The other half help anyway." (Shin, 16, Montana) "In July, my host family put a cooler on the porch. Cold water, snacks, and a sign: 'For our delivery drivers. Thank you!' I asked if they knew the drivers. They said no." (Nanami, 16, Arizona) "Downtown, there are banners on the lampposts. Photos of soldiers from the town. Some old, some very young. My host grandpa walked me down the street and told me every name." (Yuna, 16, Iowa) "I got a C-plus on my first test. My host dad said, 'I'm proud of you,' and put it on the fridge. In Japan, nobody is proud of a C-plus." (Takeru, 17, Pennsylvania) Then the quietest girl in the class raised her hand. Sora. Seventeen. Missouri. "Nobody asks me 'home safe?' anymore," she said. She was wrong. In September, there was a typhoon warning for Tokyo. At 2 a.m., Sora's phone lit up. It was her host mom. In Missouri. Watching the weather in a country she had never been to. "Saw the storm. You home safe?" Sora told my wife she cried for a long time. Then she typed the answer she had typed a hundred times, from football games and friends' driveways. "Home safe." Her host mom wrote back one line. "Good. That's all I needed." My wife has asked that question for twenty years. Not one kid has ever said they missed how big America is. They miss how America says goodbye. And how it checks that you got home. So, America. You think you've lost something. You haven't. It's on a porch in Arizona. It's pushing a car in Michigan. It's awake at 2 a.m. in Missouri, watching our weather. You don't remember doing any of it. A kid in Tokyo will never forget.