Last Saturday, my American neighbor pointed his fist at me. I did not know what I had done. In Japan, a closed fist held out toward another man has never once meant anything good. I said a short prayer for my family. It was Bryan. Yes, the chair one. We were at his son's Little League game in Tokyo. His son had just hit a single. Bryan turned to me, held out his fist at chest height, and did not even look at me. He kept watching the game. The fist just waited there, like a dog that knows you have food. I bowed to it. The fist did not move. "Bump it, man." So I bumped it. Gently. Knuckle to knuckle. The way you set a teacup down on a saucer at a funeral. Then Bryan pulled his hand back, spread his fingers, and made a sound with his mouth. "Pshhhhh." An explosion. A 44-year-old man. In public. With his mouth. Nobody around us looked up. Nobody. This was normal. "You gotta blow it up," he said. There was a second stage. Nobody had told me there was a second stage. In Japan, a greeting tells you exactly where you stand. Who is older. Who is the guest. Who owes whom a favor from 1997. An American fist bump tells you one thing: you're good. Then it explodes. Then it's over. It is a whole contract, signed and celebrated in under a second. That afternoon I received eleven more. A seven-year-old offered me his fist. I panicked and shook it like a hand. He looked at me like I had cancelled Christmas. A grandmother in a folding chair offered me her fist. Grandmothers do it too. Nobody in this country is exempt. The umpire gave one to a kid who had just struck out. The kid stopped crying. I have seen Japanese medicine do less. A toddler held out a fist the size of a grape. I bumped it with great seriousness. It was the most important meeting of my week. I asked Bryan how many kinds there were. "Oh, there's levels." There are levels. The fist bump. The fist bump that explodes. The high five. And the final form: a handshake that turns into a hug, and ends with two hard slaps on the back that sound like somebody beating a rug. "How do you know which one to use?" Bryan thought about it. "Vibes." I wrote down "vibes." I have since looked for it in four dictionaries. None of them would explain it. All of them were Japanese. In Japan, we greet with our spine. In America, you greet with your knuckles, and then you add sound effects. On Monday morning, my department head praised my report in front of the whole floor. He is 63. He has worked at our company since before I was born. We have never touched. I was still full of Saturday. Before I could stop myself, I held out my fist. The floor went silent. Thirty years of corporate hierarchy, stopped at chest height. He stared at my fist for a very long time. Then, slowly, he bumped it. And then he leaned in and whispered, very seriously: "...Do we blow it up?" We blew it up. Quietly. Respectfully. In the Japanese style. "Psh," he said, like an apology.