No one in Japan ever told me I was fat. Instead, relatives — my mother is Japanese — would say things to me like, “Wow. You are starting to look like your father, aren’t you!” Obesity, just so you know, is one of the major factors that contributed to my American father’s death.

My Japanese cousin asked me, “Are you considered large in America?”

“Small to medium,” I said.

“Oh. So I would be minuscule over there.”

“Yes. Very, very small.”

“It’s best to stay in one’s own country, isn’t it?”

My cousin’s comment initially struck me as the kind of naive thing a homebody might say to an inveterate international traveler. But now I take her words at face value. She meant that she ought to stay home to avoid what had happened to me.

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"It won't disappear here," everyone insisted. "Japan is going to change."

I tried imagining a similar conversation following a national tragedy with friends and family in New York, California and Nebraska. I know what I would hear: the names of potential candidates to lead the Democratic and Republican parties, state laws that could serve as models for the nation, criticism and praise of the media. In other words, I would hear a small-scale version of the garrulous chatter that surrounds us every four years during a presidential election.

So at a dinner part in Kyoto, I asked some friends: "Do you think you will have another election? Maybe your government will change?"

My friend Sakiko, who is 33 and lives in Kyoto, practically laughed. "We don't have heroes in government. We would never elect Obama."

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