This summer, a pastor in Pennsylvania called my family in Tokyo. That's how we found out about my great-aunt Chiyo. Chiyo was my grandmother's little sister. In 1953, she married an American soldier named Joe and moved to a small steel town in western Pennsylvania. Our family never forgave her for it. They stopped speaking her name. Only my grandmother kept writing to her. One letter a year. In secret. For seventy years. My grandmother died this spring. The letters stopped. Chiyo is 94. Joe died in 2009. They never had children. And a few years ago, she started to forget. Her memory went first. Then something stranger. Her English went too. Seventy years in America, and one day the English was just gone. All that was left was the Japanese of a girl from Yokohama. Nobody in that town spoke a word of it. She was alone, and frightened, in a country that suddenly couldn't understand her. And the town did not leave her there. Tammy, the mail carrier, learned "Good morning" in Japanese from a YouTube video. Ohayō gozaimasu. She practiced it in her truck for a week. On the first morning, she leaned in the door and said, very proudly: "OHIO GOZAIMASU!" Chiyo laughed. Really laughed. The neighbors said it was the first time anyone had heard her laugh in months. Tammy has said "Ohio gozaimasu" every morning since. Nobody has corrected her. Nobody ever will. Brayden, sixteen, from next door, shoveled her walk every morning all winter. He learned one word. Daijōbu? Are you okay? He'd knock, poke his head in, and ask. Every day. If she smiled, he left. If she didn't, he stayed. The church ladies learned to say "Itadakimasu" before they set down her dinner. They said it wrong. She ate every bite. Somebody started a ring of index cards and hung it on her refrigerator. Everyone who came to help added one. Japanese words, spelled out the way they sounded, in a dozen different handwritings. ONAKA SUITA? = Hungry? SAMUI? = Cold? OTEARAI = Bathroom (VERY IMPORTANT) ARIGATO = Thank you (She says this a lot. Say it back.) The pastor found my grandmother's letters in a shoebox in Chiyo's closet. Seventy years of envelopes. Our address on every one. That's why he called. In October, Chiyo got very sick. Hospice came to the house. And at night, she started crying out. In Japanese. Over and over. "Okāsan." Mother. "Uchi ni kaeritai." I want to go home. She was 94, and in her mind she was a little girl in Yokohama, and she wanted her mother, and nobody in that town could tell her she was safe. The hospice nurse asked the pastor if anyone knew a Japanese song. Anything. Something she might know from when she was small. Nobody did. So the pastor found one. "Sakura, Sakura." A very old Japanese song about cherry blossoms. Every child in Japan learns it. My grandmother used to hum it while she cooked. He put a sign on the church door. "Thursday. 7 p.m. Basement. Bring a coat." Sixty people came. They sat on folding chairs in the church basement and learned a Japanese song from a YouTube video. Phonetically. Line by line. Farmers. Teenagers. A retired steelworker who kept losing his place. Tammy. Brayden. The church ladies. Three firefighters still in their boots. Then they walked down the street in the dark, in the snow, and stood in Chiyo's front yard. The nurse opened the bedroom window. And sixty Pennsylvanians sang "Sakura, Sakura" to a 94-year-old Japanese woman. Badly. Off-key. Some of them reading the words off their phones. The retired steelworker one line behind everyone else, the whole time. The nurse told my mother what happened next. Chiyo stopped crying. She opened her eyes. She turned her head toward the window. And she started to sing. Every word. Perfect. In the voice of a little girl. The words had been gone for years. They came back, from somewhere very far away, for one song. When it ended, she looked at the nurse, and said the only English word anyone had heard from her in three years. "Home." She died two days later. Peacefully. In her sleep. My mother flew to Pennsylvania for the funeral. The first person from our family to visit Chiyo in seventy years. The church was full. At the end of the service, without anyone announcing it, the whole congregation stood up and sang "Sakura, Sakura." The retired steelworker was still one line behind. My mother says she had never cried like that in her life. Before she left, the pastor gave her the ring of index cards from the refrigerator. It's in our home now. Next to my grandmother's photo. The card on top is in Brayden's handwriting. SAMISHII? = Are you lonely? On the back, there are a few lines of Japanese. In very shaky writing. The nurse said Chiyo asked for a pen one morning, near the end, and wrote it herself. My mother read it to me on the phone, and then neither of us could talk for a while. It says: "Not anymore. These people are my family."

Japan has a giant question-and-answer website where you can ask strangers anything. I searched it for one word: "Americans." Japanese people are very, very confused about you. Here are some of my favorites. The best answers all come from Japanese people who've lived there. Q: An American coworker asked me, "How was your weekend?" I told him everything. It took twenty minutes. He listened to all of it. Is he in love with me? Best answer: No. He's American. On Monday, ask him about his weekend. Bring a snack. It will take forty minutes. Q: I just moved to Tennessee. My new neighbor asked what church I go to. I'm Buddhist. Is this a problem? Best answer: Not a problem. She will invite you anyway. Go once. There will be a potluck. You'll come home with enough leftovers for a week, and a new grandmother. Q: My daughter's American boyfriend's father shook my hand for a very long time and looked directly into my eyes. I'm scared. Best answer: That was him telling you you're family now. There's no paperwork. It's already done. Q: My car got a flat on the highway in Wisconsin. It was snowing. A woman, maybe 70, stopped and helped me change it. Then she gave me a granola bar and told me to "drive safe." Is this normal? Best answer: In Wisconsin, this is the minimum. Q: My son plays Little League in Nebraska. He struck out. The other team's parents clapped for him. Did they misunderstand the rules? Best answer: They understood the rules. In America, they clap for anybody who steps up to the plate. Your son will remember that when he's forty. Q: At the airport, Americans walk up to soldiers they don't know and say "thank you for your service." Why? They don't know them. Best answer: They don't need to. In America, the uniform is enough. Someday you'll see an old man in a veteran's cap at a diner, and when he asks for the check, it will already be paid. Nobody will tell him who. And then there was this one. Q: I work in Kansas. Last month my father died in Japan. I told one person at work. One. The next morning there was a card on my desk signed by 41 people, and a note from my boss: "Go home. Take two weeks. We've got it." How did they all know? I only told one person. Best answer: You told one American. That's the same as telling all of them. The man who wrote that answer lives in Osaka now. He spent twelve years in Kansas. Under his answer, he added one more line. "I still have mine. Forty-one names. It's on my refrigerator, next to my father's photo." I read hundreds of these questions. Japanese people have been asking the same thing for years, a hundred different ways: "What does this American want from me?" And every best answer says the same thing. "Nothing. Say thank you, and let them."

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