I Slept Through Thanksgiving

• MOTHER: Lonely and depressed. And you are expected you to fix this for me.
• SON: I am deeply offended by your laziness and blaming. I wouldn’t do it myself, and I refuse to be sucked into your games.
• MOTHER: Oh, you are so bad and selfish.

*VOICE management and staff have been incredibly supportive, providing Japanese-speaking staff to take me everywhere I need to go, giving me exquisite places to live and work, providing my amazing trip to Osaka, with my stay at the swanky Hotel the Lutheran. With VOICE, it has been TLC all the way, and I have met few American companies that treated me quite so graciously.

*My problem-solving, hardworking supervisor, Masaya Iemura, and others, have modeled for me the highest qualities of service. Last night, I worked with him and Kyoko san until nearly 10:00 at night, trying to improve my handouts, how they’re organized and translated. (Last night, in fact, I finally learned how to use a Japanese keyboard. Amazing!) We left as the building started to shut down, and on my way out I must have seen five other VOICE employees at their computers.

These sweet people working at VOICE remind me of the extraordinary volunteers who have helped me in America, including Julie Schroedl, Kristy Simmonds, Gail Glassmoyer and Lilylady, Kathy Wilewsky. What these folks don’t know about service could fill a thimble!

*Nancy Clark, the legendary medical intuitive, met me for dinner. I’m so grateful to have had the chance to meet her in person after all the years we’ve been pen pals through email. I met her first when her name was provided as a reference for VOICE, an unheard of Japanese company that had just contacted me with an offer to come work for them. Experiencing Nancy’s presence and friendship, her stories of miracles, I savored her magnificence.

*On a less lofty level, I’m grateful for a supermarket I found. In this upscale neighborhood, part of Tokyo’s “Embassy Row,” the two obvious grocery stores are way expensive. Yesterday, Kyoko told me that the one where she shopped during lunch had the highest prices she had ever seen. Lucky me, the explorer, I have found a place just blocks away in a different direction where you can buy a cabbage nearly the size of your head, oozing with brain cells (oops, I mean chi), for just a buck. Hooray!

*Generous people have been everywhere in Japan. The last time I rode the subway, I took a train in the wrong direction. Getting out, I asked a random stranger which way to go. This courtly businessman, “Sam” didn’t only explain. In English! He escorted me down a long platform, pointing and explaining repeatedly until he was sure that this dazed-looking American really understood. So dapper in his grey suit, Sam’s face lit up with a smile. Then he bowed and shook my hand.

*Most of all, I am grateful for my students and clients. There I am, doing my best to do justice to the techniques I’ve been given. Often I bumble or stumble, right in full view, yet nobody sneers. Not one student, in all these years, has given me so much as a “Duh!” or rolled eyes in disbelief that I could be such a klutz. The most recent example of forbearance involves nudism.

There I was last Sunday, in full lecture mode with a roomful of students, when I happened to give an example that involved “being a nudist.” My interpreter, Masako Watanabe, stopped cold. Smoothly bilingual and gifted at holding an audience, Masako san had been so tuned into me during our workshop, after I belted out “I wanna hold your hand” she had echoed the song, to the amazement of everyone present except, perhaps, herself.

Masako didn’t know from nudists, however. For several minutes, the workshop stopped as if time itself had stopped. I explained as best I could what a nudist was. Every face in my audience went blank and, in some cases, apprehensive. What weirdness awaited them now from this often bizarre American teacher? This same day I had already treated them to an elaborate analogy between empaths’ skills and potty training.

Japan, you may be saddened to know, has no nudist colonies. Therefore, I was finally persuaded to drop this analogy and choose something else. I did. The interpreter flowed out more words. Ah, Japanese! That incomprehensible language, like tinkling wind chimes spoken in silk.

My students listened attentively, appreciatively, as though the awkward moments never had passed. In America, I might have lost the group for good. But these eager Japanese students stayed with me always, like sticky rice on chopsticks, eager to learn, forgiving, trusting.

Maybe I slept through America’s Thanksgiving but here, in Japan, I’ve had one all month.