Hi friends,

Thanks for reading this blog even with your busy lives. I wish I had more time to write and share all the unbelieveable experiences we’ve had over the last 3 1/2 weeks. Somehow at night I spend my limited  time preparing for my next speech, washing my intimates in the sink, or just organizing my luggage. So, blogging has been neglected!

This is my second to last night in Japan, and I just spent a wonderful dinner with my mother’s three brothers here in Tokyo. My mom’s older brother, our Uncle Juichi, is visiting from Seattle, and this is the first time all 4 siblings have been together in 15 years or so! We met my cousin and her kids, and just enjoyed a plentiful meal in a private room of a local restaurant. We laughed and caught up in life. They all read our book in Japanese, and I have to admit, I was a bit self-conscious. When strangers read it, it’s okay, but when my relatives read it I felt a bit embarrassed. Do my uncles need to know about my sex life???

Anyway, the book opened up a conversation of warmth and depth I hadn’t experienced before with my relatives. They’ve always been supportive and understanding, but never really knew what was going on… until we described it in our book. By being human, they came closer to us…

Today I spent the day running around Ueno, shopping with Taka, our friend, for souvenirs. Sort of surprisingly, we met Dr Steven Shak and his wife Gail, our longtime friends, in Ueno and went shopping together.  It was awesome! Dr Shak used to work at Genentech and invented Pulmozyme, the medication that saved our lives. Because of Pulmozyme, we gained weight and lung function, graduated from Stanford, taught English in Japan and were well enough for graduate school and eventually the modern science of transplantation. I believe we could be here in Japan, promoting CF awareness and transplantation because of superb, compassionate and dedicated scientists like him.

It was quite the chore to find each other in this huge subway station with multiple exits, but when we saw each other, like typical Americans, we ran across the street, hugged and kissed in the intersection, and made loud cries of joyful greetings. So UN Japanese! Who would have thought that we would meet our dear friends, who live 10 miles from us, 4000 miles away??? 

Yesterday was a very full day- again. This last week in Tokyo is killer! We went to my friend Naomi’s alma mater, Obirin University, (sister school to Ohio’s Oberlin) and spoke to about 120 undergraduates. Though there were some sleepers (the class was Friday, right after lunch- I don’t blame them), the staff and several students were very enthusiastic. As usual, we hardly got any questions. “Japanese students are so shy”- that’s how the hosts explain it. After our talk, as usual, several students pile towards us and hover, eager to ask questions… they are so sweet and innocent.  We had a lot of time for this class, so we also showed the USA Transplant Games video – with so many Americans hugging and crying and screaming… how different humans can be in their emotional expression.

After Obirin, we headed back for 1 1/2 hour to central Tokyo to speak at Hosei University, one of the top 6 universities in Tokyo. We spoke to students interested in public health, together with a panel of Aihara-san, father of a heart recipient, and Kakumu-san, mother of a multi-GI organ recipient. Ana and I rushed through our 40 minute talk, feeling confident and articulate in our last Japanese language speech in Japan!!! We did it! We survived this crazy task of giving speeches in a different language!

After the talk, as usual, students came up to us to ask questions. But one women just came up to me and started crying and crying. She has such a hard time articulating herself.  I felt bad for her outburst, tried to comfort her, but was so glad she could release like this. It turns out she lost a sibling, and has never shared this with anyone except her other sibling.  Her question was, “Will I ever be able to talk about this without crying?” Such a simple and honest question. This kind of thing has happened about 2 other times during this month. During our talk, Ana and I talk so openly and comfortably about heavy topics like death, illness, fear, sadness, meaning, etc. Something we say triggers a deep, hidden spot inside the listener, and opens us a swell of emotion. I feel like Japanese people do have the same emotions that we do- of course! humans are humans!, but it must take so much energy to suppress thoughts and feelings. It was apparent with these several emotional outbursts we witnessed that sometimes the emotion must be released.

There are more of these encounters than I can ever write about, but they give this visit to Japan tremendous meaning. For the first time, I am truly interacting with Japanese people at a really soul to soul level.

I’m also interacting with my film crew and family at a soul to soul level. After last night’s talk, we went to Shibuya, one of the busiest downtown areas of Tokyo. It was 10PM by the time we sat in a private karaoke dining room; the beer was poured, the yakisoba, pizza and sundae parfaits were served, and the songs were inputted. Andrew belted out “Candle in the Wind”, Ashley sang a mean Johnny Cash, Mom sang old fashioned Japanese enka songs; Marc- oh what can I say about Marc- he sang EVERYTHING!!!!  We all sang Dylan songs, Bangles, Alanis, and best of all, Ana and I belted out a great “Turning Japanese”!!!! We laughed and screamed til midnight! The heavy weight of performance was over. We survived our speeches. We were done! This was such a great way to celebrate our last major speech, and the completion of nearly 270 hours of footage in Japan. Everything has gone so well. We’ve had at least three interviews with newspapers, radio, magazines; we went to the Japanese Diet to meet with two prominent politicians and to the American Embassy to speak to the health and environment directors; we never missed trains, planes or automobiles, we have all gotten along, we have not run out of money, and most importantly— WE HAVE NOT GOTTEN SICK!!! Fingers crossed, we have two more days!

I’m totally rambling in my blog, because that’s just how my head is operating these days. 

Well, I have to take a moment to reflect on what it has been like overall for me to be in Japan for nearly a month. I feel highly overstimulated. The train stations are a sea of people flowing one way and another, high paced, bumping into each other. The sounds of people and announcements and music is so deafening. The flashing lights and constant barrage of commercial demands – from sweet shop owners yelling out to passerbyers to buy their goods, to the sights of pickled octopus and dried squid and piles of seaweeds out on the street, to the 10 story high buildings with flashing signs all the way up— I am completely bombarded in every sense. I find the little things amusing.  Every toilet has a bidet, seat warmer,  and a button to “cleanse the posterior”. The last thing I want to do in a public bathroom is cleanse my posterior! Also, American sayings are everywhere and usually make no sense. Grown men wear t-shirts that say “Teddy Bear Man”. A beautiful, sweet, meek, polite, highly polished young women at Kyoto Nursing School greeted us at the registration table wearing a shirt that said:

Too Drunk To Fuck

Can you believe it!? There is such a worship of western words and ways and yet such a resistance to certain western ideas as well- like organ donation or clinical trial science.

On a different note, Japanese people, in general, are very quick to agree or show consent but inside they may feel differently. From all our interaction this month, I’ve noticed Japanese people can be best appreciated for the following qualities:

1) extremely polite 2) very grateful 3) somewhat apologetic and 4) very cheerful

Everywhere we have gone, people have been so incredibly nice.  I can’t write fully how touched I’ve been by the incredibly hospitality and generosity of our Japanese hosts. People have come to our hotel or train stations to personally escort us to our speech venues. We’ve received so many wonderful gifts of Japanese snacks and other goodies from our hosts. People have set up tables to sell our book at nearly every event. Most hosts have prepared yummy bento lunch boxes for us, or have taken us out to coffee/cake or dinner after our speeches. I am so completely indulged by kindness, I just don’t know what to do with myself. I wish I had a million dollars, because each of these hosts deserves that in return.

Okay, it’s late- I have more to say but need to rest. I will go to Yokohama tomorrow for my last event with the Japan transplant Support Association, and will meet Dr Tomoaki Kato, a famous Japanese surgeon in New York. we will give a 5 minute remark, and I’m really excited to meet other recipients.

I bid you farewell tonight, and will probably write again when I’m home. Tomorrow I’ll spend the evening trying to pack tons and tons of stuff into mytwo bags… impossible, perhaps. Right now my hotel room looks like a bomb went off in it!

Thanks for your care and concern about CF and organ donation around the world! Hugs Isa

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