A chance conversation in Japanese between a doctor and patient — two men, two cultures, one shared joy.
He came in wearing a loose hospital gown, but he carried himself like a man who had once walked freely through the world.
When I asked him what sparked joy — my now-standard question for new consults — he didn’t hesitate.
“Travel,” he said, his eyes lighting up. “Dozens of countries. I love learning how people live, eat, think.”
Then he paused. “But if I had to choose just one?”
He leaned forward, almost conspiratorially.
“Japan. Lived there over 25 years.”
I perked up. “Hontō ni?”
“Eh? Hontō hontō!” he beamed.
And just like that, the oncology suite turned into an izakaya.
We chatted in Japanese for several minutes — I, a Black man from the Pacific Northwest with a Japanese wife and a daughter who had attended college in Kyoto; he, a white man with a surprising Tokyo accent and stories that could have filled a dozen ryokans.
The nurses outside the curtain must’ve been baffled.
There we were: two middle-aged men, dressed like surgical extras, speaking rapid-fire Japanese about onsen, natto, and konbini snacks.
In radiation oncology, these are the moments you don’t forget.
When our conversation drifted back to English, we kept circling the same theme: experience.
He told me about sleeping in the Sinai desert under a blanket of stars.
About sipping strong coffee in Addis Ababa.
About riding motorcycles through Southeast Asia before Google Maps existed.
What he didn’t talk about were things.
No fancy watches.
No new Teslas.
No gadgets.
Just the texture of moments lived.
And it hit me: the joy that lit up his face wasn’t the kind you get from opening a box.
It was the kind you earn by stepping into the unfamiliar. The kind that asks something of you — and gives back more than it takes.
We tend to think happiness is about comfort.
But psychologists like Dr. Laurie Santos (of Yale’s wildly popular Science of Well-Being class) suggest that the happiest people spend less on stuff and more on experiences.
Why?
Because of experiences:
A new phone gets old fast. But your first tuk-tuk ride in Bangkok? That stays with you.
There’s even a term for the trap we fall into with material things: hedonic adaptation.
The idea is that we quickly get used to new pleasures.
The house, the car, the clothes — they stop thrilling us.
But experiences?
They stay vivid.
I wrote about a similar theme in 10 Tiny Habits That Make You Healthier, Calmer, and Harder to Kill — the idea that intentional living creates lasting joy, not just fleeting dopamine hits.
Some of my favorite travel memories come from places that required a little more effort than, say, Paris or London.
These places didn’t just offer a change of scenery. They offered a shift in me — the way I saw others, the way I understood culture, the way I experienced time.
My patient and I shared one more truth that day: that illness, like travel, strips you down to what matters.
It makes you see the world in a different light.
It humbles you.
And if you let it, it can open you.
Sometimes I think the best journeys aren’t measured in miles, but in mindset.
You don’t have to get on a plane.
You just have to notice something new.
That day in the exam room, two men with nothing in common on paper laughed like old friends, because we shared a language — and not just Japanese.
We shared curiosity.
And in that moment, amid machines and masks and schedules, we were both simply human.
Author bio: Michael Hunter, MD, is a cancer doctor, travel junkie, and collector of patient wisdom. His new ebook, What Dying Patients Taught Me About Living, is available here.
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