My friend Kosuke has been an interpreter for Japanese baseball players in America for fourteen years. Four teams. Eleven rookies. Thousands of press conferences. He keeps a notebook he has never shown a reporter. On the cover, he wrote: "Things American teammates did that nobody asked me to translate." He let me read it. 1. A relief pitcher from Arkansas, six-foot-five, asked Kosuke how to say "We've got your back" in Japanese. Kosuke did his best. It came out closer to "Your back now belongs to us." The pitcher wrote it on a strip of athletic tape and stuck it inside the rookie's locker. The rookie laughed for ten minutes. He still has the tape. 2. A catcher from Ohio learned to count in Japanese so he could call pitches. He learned it wrong. "Ichi. Ni. Sushi." The rookie never corrected him. They won eleven games that way. 3. A veteran outfielder took the rookie to buy his first pickup truck. The rookie lived three blocks from the stadium. He did not need a truck. He has the truck. 4. A first baseman from Alabama called the rookie's mother in Japan after every win. "Ma'am, he did good." He doesn't speak Japanese. She doesn't speak English. They talk for about four minutes. Kosuke has no idea what about. Neither of them will tell him. 5. The players' wives threw a baby shower for the rookie's wife, who spoke no English. Forty-one women learned the Japanese word for congratulations, "omedetou." Most of them said it like a sneeze. She cried anyway. 6. The night the rookie gave up a walk-off home run, nobody said a word. The whole bullpen just came over and sat next to him. Eleven grown men on a bench, looking at their shoes, for half an hour. Kosuke says it was the easiest thing he has ever translated. There was nothing to translate. The last page is about the rookie's mother. She came to America once. Her first time out of Japan. She sat in the family section, very small, very quiet, holding her purse on her lap with both hands, the way Japanese mothers sit at school ceremonies. In Japan, mothers don't yell at games. They clap. Politely. The other players' mothers took one look at her and moved in. Somebody wrapped her in a team blanket. Somebody put a foam finger on her hand. A woman from Texas named Crystal sat down on one side of her, a woman from Georgia sat down on the other, and they did not leave her for nine innings. In the eighth inning, her son came up with the bases loaded. Thirty American mothers stood up and screamed his name. So she stood up too. And he struck out. Kosuke says the whole section went quiet for one second. He watched her face fall. In Japan, this is the moment you sit down and look at your lap. Then Crystal cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled at the field: "THAT'S OKAY, BABY! SHAKE IT OFF!" And all thirty mothers yelled it with her. At a grown man who had just failed in front of forty thousand people. The rookie's mother didn't know the words. She watched their mouths. And on the third time, she yelled it too, in her best English, one word at a time. "SHAKE. IT. OFF." She is 68. She had never yelled in public in her life. Last month, at her grandson's Little League game in Osaka, he struck out looking. Every Japanese parent clapped politely. One grandmother stood up and yelled, in English: "SHAKE IT OFF, BABY!" The other parents are still talking about it. America, you think it's just baseball. It's the only place I know where a stadium full of strangers will stand up for you right after you fail.

In my wife's desk at the high school where she teaches in Tokyo, there is a notebook. Every exchange student reads it before they fly to America. Twenty years ago, a boy came home from a year in Kansas, handed my wife a cheap spiral notebook, and said, "For the next kid." On the first page, he had written one piece of advice. Every student since has added one line when they came home. Sixty-one kids. One notebook. Title on the cover in marker: "THINGS NOBODY TELLS YOU ABOUT AMERICAN FAMILIES" My wife let me copy some of it. "Your host mom will ask if you're hungry. 'No' is not an answer. 'No' means 'make me a smaller sandwich.'" — Kenta, Kansas, 2007 "There is a second refrigerator in the garage. It contains only drinks, and one casserole nobody will claim." — Rei, Michigan, 2011 "Every house has a junk drawer. Dead batteries. Forty rubber bands. A key to nothing. Soy sauce packets from 2015. Do not organize it. A girl tried in 2016. The family held a meeting." — Emiri, Wisconsin, 2016 "Ranch dressing goes on everything. Do not fight ranch. Ranch will win." — Kosuke, Iowa, 2012 "When they say 'We're leaving in five minutes,' sit down. Have a snack. You have forty minutes." — Misaki, Texas, 2018 "In Texas, 'y'all' is one person. 'All y'all' is everyone. 'All y'all' can include the dog." — Takumi, Texas, 2010 "In Ohio, you will be assigned a football team before you unpack. Do not ask about Michigan. Do not even say the word." — Sho, Ohio, 2015 "Your host dad will teach you to drive in an empty church parking lot. You are not allowed to drive. He knows. He does it anyway, 'just so you know how.' He will hold the door handle and say 'You're doing great' in the voice of a man who is not doing great." — Yusuke, Nebraska, 2009 "Grandpa will call you 'kiddo' and secretly hand you twenty dollars 'for gas.' You do not have a car. Take the twenty dollars. It's not about gas." — Chihiro, Kentucky, 2014 "At Friday night football, the band moms will adopt you. You will not be consulted." — Asuka, Georgia, 2019 "Your host brother will fight with you like an enemy. If anyone at school is mean to you, he will fight them like a soldier. Both are love." — Jun, Michigan, 2017 "If the dog sleeps in your bed on the second night, you're in. It is more official than your visa." — Momo, Minnesota, 2021 "Your host mom will tell you she isn't going to cry at the airport. She is lying. Pack tissues for two." — Natsuki, Missouri, 2022 Two years ago, a girl named Mina borrowed the notebook to read on the plane to Ohio. She forgot to give it back. It spent a whole year in Ohio with her. Her host mom, Carla, found it on Mina's desk. She couldn't read Japanese. So she typed every single line into a translation app, one by one, at the kitchen table. All sixty-one. When Mina flew home, the notebook came back in the mail. With a note: "Sorry, I added something." On the last page, in neat American handwriting: "To the next kid, I read all of these. I laughed until I cried, and then I just cried. Here's what nobody wrote down, because none of you could know it. We were scared too. Before you came, we cleaned your room three times. We practiced your name in the car. Your host dad watched YouTube videos on how to make rice. He still can't. We worried you'd be lonely. We worried you wouldn't like us. We worried you'd like us, and then leave. You will leave. That's the deal. We know it the day we sign up, and we sign up anyway. So eat the second sandwich. Let the dog in. Text me when you get there. You're not a guest. You're just family we haven't met yet. — Carla. Mina's American mom. Ohio." My wife made a copy of that page and taped it inside the front cover. Now it's the first thing every kid reads. This spring, a sixteen-year-old boy flew to a farm in Iowa. He was so nervous he couldn't eat for a week. The night before he left, he read the notebook cover to cover. Then, under Carla's letter, in pencil, he wrote the sixty-second line. Before he'd even gone. "Okay. I'm a little less scared now." To every family who ever cleaned a room three times for a kid they had never met: Sixty-one of them wrote about you. They're still writing.

𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔 𝑰𝑵𝑰 𝟓𝑻𝑯 𝑨𝑵𝑵𝑰𝑽𝑬𝑹𝑺𝑨𝑹𝒀 𝑫𝑶𝑴𝑬 𝑻𝑶𝑼𝑹 [𝑪𝑰𝑻𝒀 𝑶𝑭 𝑳𝑰𝑮𝑯𝑻𝑺] 𝐃-𝟐 #KYOSUKE# #INI# #INI_DOME_TOUR# #INI_CITY_OF_LIGHTS# #藤牧京介# #FUJIMAKIKYOSUKE#