My friend beckoned me toward a door I had always presumed to be a mere closet, a portal to some ordinary storage. Stairs, descending into the earth. A second house beneath the house. Japan does not have basements — our houses sit lightly on the land, and our ghosts live in proper places like wells and old mirrors. Here, every family floats above a private dungeon of its own past. And in it: a drum set. A SECOND refrigerator, holding only beverages, like a shrine to thirst. Sofas in exile. Twelve boxes labeled XMAS. A treadmill wearing coats. The trophies of his childhood on a shelf no one visits, gleaming in the dark like a museum that lost its funding. "Watch your head," he said — which is what Americans say instead of "this realm has different laws." I asked when he last played the drums. He said college. I asked when college was. He said: "Don't worry about it." DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT. The official motto of the American basement. Carve it over the stairs. We found what we came for — a folding table, the load-bearing object of all American gatherings. But the basement does not release men so easily. He opened one box marked XMAS and found his old baseball cards instead, and for twenty minutes our errand was suspended while he showed me men named Cal and Nolan, and his voice changed when he said their names. The basement had claimed him. I watched it happen. I could not save him. I did not try — some currents you respect. A man does not ask the basement for his belongings. He descends, and negotiates with his past. His wife called down the stairs: "Did you two get LOST?" We had. That is exactly what we had done. Hear me, America: you do not "grab something" from a basement. You DESCEND. You are tested by your own past. You return changed, carrying a folding table and three baseball cards he insisted I keep. Cal lives in my wallet now. I am told he was good at stealing bases — a crime, apparently, that this country celebrates. I am also told the attic is worse. I have asked to see the attic. My friend said, "Don't worry about it." I worry about it constantly.