I spent several years of my impressionable twenties living and teaching public school in remote and rural Iwate, Japan –the very region that has sustained much of the tsunami and earthquake damage over the past week.

Watching the news each night, I feel a pit in my stomach as I see and hear reports from town after town in the area where I once had friends. Names of villages and cities long since filed in the dark recesses of my brain now come back, many with painful familiarity.

Amid the carnage, destruction and multiple disasters profiled incessantly on TV, it is surprising for many to see the calm and resilience the Japanese public is exhibiting.

There is no looting of convenience stores. Despite seemingly interminable lines and food shortages, the expressions on the faces of people who have lost everything appear eerily unfazed. There are teary eyed reunions, certainly, but there is no panic. There is an unsettling sense of tranquility amidst human tragedy and horror.

And while many do find this type of behavior remarkable and surprising, I do not. To me, it’s part of the script.

I find the reactions and behavior we’re witnessing to be absolutely in character for the Japanese. Indeed, one of my observations one year into my teaching assignment in Japan was that the entire country seemed to be reading off a script. The verbal exchanges of virtually every interpersonal connection (teacher-student, teacher-boss, teacher-neighbor, teacher-ramen shop owner) appeared to be predetermined and guided by verbal cues. Social harmony in the country depends on it.

I still cringe when I think about how slow I was on the uptake.

On one occasion in the Japanese municipal government office where I worked, I recall becoming visibly frustrated at the glacial pace in which a request I had submitted was being handled. I’m not sure, but it is very likely that I let out one of my signature deep sighs. The woman who sat next to me—a co-worker who would later become an adopted Japanese mother of sorts—in a terrifying departure from her usual cheerful character went into parental mode, audibly scolded me.

Gaman shinasai she said abruptly.

It’s an expression often overheard at grocery stores and on trains, in lines at the post office and in elementary school classrooms. Mothers regularly tell their toddlers to gaman. Shape up and shut your yap seemed to be the message. Little did I know at the time that gaman goes way beyond “shut your piehole.”

Translated literally, the characters that make up the word gaman are those for 我“self” and 慢“neglect.” Though regularly mistranslated into English as “patience,” the concept of gaman goes light years beyond that.

Paper training a puppy requires patience.Losing your house, your belongings, your family and your village while  simultaneously suppressing any outward sign of remorse, entitlement or anger falls squarely into gaman territory.

Years ago, a Japanese friend once colorfully described the concept of gaman as a “silent endurance,” and to this day I struggle to find a better description. Two years later, I left Japan convinced that the concept of gaman is what sets the country apart.

In English, we tell people to be patient. In Japanese, you do gaman. It’s an action verb.

Are the faces we see on television really devoid of human emotion? Of course not. They are devastated, hungry, disoriented, sleep-deprived, anxious, lost and pissed off. But rather than pretending to “be” patient, the Japanese are following the cultural script, and “doing” gaman.

And that doing is exactly what will lead Japan out of this chaos.