Odinfjodi, Backcount Comptroller Extraordinaire

My wife's parents have been abroad exactly once. Twenty years ago, my father-in-law, a rice farmer from a small village in Niigata, and my mother-in-law joined a bus tour of the American West. Thirty-six Japanese tourists. Average age 68. Total English between them: "Thank you" and "Excuse me." A few days before Christmas, somewhere on the plains of eastern Colorado, a blizzard shut down the highway. The bus pulled off at the only lights they could see. A town of about 400 people. The tour guide was 26 and terrified. She walked into the gas station to ask where thirty-six old people could sleep. The man at the register made one phone call. Forty minutes later, the Methodist church was open. Lights on. Heat on. Coffee on. Then the town showed up. Women in snow boots carrying casseroles. A farmer on a tractor, plowing the church parking lot at midnight. The high school wrestling team, carrying suitcases for people who bowed to them every single time. Kids dragging sleeping bags. A nurse who went down the rows checking blood pressures. Nobody asked her to. My mother-in-law still talks about the food. A green bean casserole with crunchy onions on top. And a salad that was not a salad. It was Jell-O, with marshmallows inside. She had three helpings of the one she did not understand. My father-in-law sat with a wheat farmer named Harold. Neither knew a word of the other's language. They talked for two hours anyway. On napkins. Harold drew wheat. My father-in-law drew rice. Harold pointed at the snow and shook his head. My father-in-law pointed at the sky and shook his. Two farmers, complaining about the weather. They understood everything. Around one in the morning, families started taking people home. Nobody organized it. A couple would stand up, walk over to two of the oldest Japanese, and say, "You're with us." My in-laws went home with a young family. The parents gave up their own bed. Their daughter, Abby, who was ten, handed my mother-in-law her stuffed horse. "So you won't be scared of the snow." The next night was Christmas Eve. The road was still closed. So thirty-six Japanese went to church with the whole town. At the end of the service, they turned off the lights and lit candles. The organ began "Silent Night." Every Japanese person knows that song. We learn it as children. We just know it in Japanese. So the town sang it in English. And thirty-six Japanese voices sang it in Japanese. Same melody. Same candles. Same moment. My mother-in-law says she couldn't read the hymnal. She says nobody in that church could see anything by the second verse. On Christmas morning, the road opened. The whole town came out to the bus. Hugs. Bows. More hugs. Abby cried. Harold handed my father-in-law his work gloves. Through the guide, my father-in-law asked him one question: "Why would you do all this for strangers?" Harold looked confused, like it was a strange question. "Out here, when the road closes, whoever's on it is ours." That was twenty years ago. My father-in-law is 84 now. Every December, he mails a bag of Niigata rice to a little church in Colorado. Every December, a box comes back, full of Christmas cards. First from the people he met. Now from their children. Harold's gloves hang by his front door. He has never worn them. He says they are not for work. When the news shows America angry, shouting, coming apart, my father-in-law turns off the TV. "That's not America," he says. "America is a town of 400 that opened its church at midnight for 36 strangers. I was there." He has been to America exactly once. Two nights, in a snowstorm. He says that was long enough to know who you really are.

"Do you have dogs in Japan, or just cats?" That was the first question in the first letter. My nephew Sota's class just got 28 letters from a sixth-grade class in Kansas. (Some of you met Sota's class last month.) He asked me to help translate. Some of the questions: "Do your teachers yell? Ours only yell during state testing." "Is it true you clean your own school? Please don't tell my mom." "What's your favorite NFL team? You don't have one? Ok. It's the Chiefs now." "My grandpa was in Japan in 1971. His name is Ron. Do you know him?" "How do you eat soup with chopsticks? Asking for my whole family." "Is anime real?" Sota's class laughed through every one. Then we got to the letter from a girl named Addie. "My mom says Japan is really, really far away. If you ever come to Kansas and get lost, my house is the yellow one on Cedar Street. You can stay as long as you want. We have a dog. Not just cats." Nobody laughed at that one. Thirty Japanese 12-year-olds spent their entire lunch break on Google Earth, looking for Cedar Street. It took them 40 minutes. They found it. It's yellow.