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Twenty-seven years after boarding my first plane to Japan, I found myself speaking to hundreds of people at the Japanese Ambassador’s residence in Washington, D.C. I never could have predicted where that first trip would lead. The most consequential experiences in life rarely announce themselves in advance.
Read MoreWalt Disney World’s busiest day tops out around 85,000 visitors. Expo 2025 Osaka was averaging 230,000 a day. What stayed with me wasn’t the scale of the buildings, it was watching our Youth Ambassadors turn a national exhibit into a series of personal connections.
Read MoreNara is often overshadowed by Kyoto and Osaka, but it taught me an important rule: do not get distracted while holding deer food. Beyond the humor, the city offered a lesson about identity. The strongest communities don’t imitate their neighbors, they lean into what already makes them unmistakably their own.
Read MoreI had never seen a grown man carry and dance with a 100-pound tuna on his shoulder until the opening day of our U.S.-Japan Sister Cities International Summit. Between that and the story of a tsunami-swept boat that became a sister-city friendship, I learned that a conference becomes memorable when people encounter a story, not just information. Thank you, Izumisano, for that kind of welcome.
Read MoreBefore millions of visitors ever walked through Expo 2025 Osaka, I got to see the USA Pavilion behind the scenes with Sister Cities International. More than 160 nations were facing the same challenge: how do you represent an entire country in a limited space? The finished result looks effortless because the preparation was not.
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