Last Friday, at an izakaya in Tokyo, my American coworker said something I can't stop thinking about. His name is Ben. He's 50. From Georgia. He's lived in Tokyo for twelve years. He'd been reading the news all week. Three beers in, he put his glass down and said: "I don't think we're good people anymore." He wasn't joking. He looked tired in a way I had never seen. I'm Japanese. I've been watching Americans in Japan for twenty years. So I told him what I've seen. In March 2011, after the tsunami, America sent 24,000 people. Sailors. Marines. Pilots. They called it Operation Tomodachi. Tomodachi means "friend." They helped dig out the airport in Sendai so the relief planes could land. My mother watched it on TV and cried. She still calls American sailors "the tomodachi boys." Last spring, at Shinjuku Station, I watched an American tourist with his own giant suitcase carry a stranger's baby stroller up forty steps. Then he went back down and carried the next one. Then the next one. He stayed on those stairs for twenty minutes. His wife waited at the top, holding his suitcase, not even surprised. At a convenience store near my office, an old man was thirty yen short. The American behind him put the coins on the counter before anyone could feel embarrassed. Then he went back to looking at his phone like nothing happened. Every January, there's a big relay race here called Hakone Ekiden. One year, I stood near the course. The last runner came through, far behind everyone. The Japanese crowd had already started to leave. One American family was still there. Mom, dad, three kids. They screamed for him like he was winning. He wasn't. He looked up at them anyway. He ran faster. Ben listened to all of it. Then he shook his head. "That's just a few people." "Yes," I said. "It's always just a few people. But everywhere I look, there they are." He didn't say anything. So I told him what I really think. Americans keep telling me they've lost something. Their kindness. Their decency. The country they used to be. But you look exactly like my father looking for his car keys. Patting every pocket. Checking the kitchen. Asking everyone in the house. Getting more and more upset. While the keys are in his hand. Ben laughed. A real laugh, the first one all night. Then he put his face in his hands and cried a little. Right there, in the izakaya. The salarymen at the next table pretended not to notice, which is the most Japanese kindness there is. So, America. You didn't lose it. You're just holding it while you look for it.