Ambassador Justin Morris Visits Diabetes Summer Camps in Japan

By Justin Morris, Team Novo Nordisk Ambassador

Japan holds a special place in my heart, and this trip back to the Hyogo and Chiba T1D summer camps only deepened that. I’d visited both once before, in 2024, so returning felt like a reunion – familiar faces among the staff, and a handful of kids who remembered me too, some even pulling out photos of us together from last time. It’s a small thing, but it says a lot about how much these camps mean to the kids who come back year after year.

Hyogo: One Small Step

Hyogo is famous for Kobe beef and Himeji Castle – the UNESCO World Heritage-listed fortress that became the backdrop for our visit. I joined 30-40 kids in an art session where everyone drew their favourite thing about camp, with the winning drawing set to feature on next year’s camp t-shirt. It was obvious pretty quickly what these kids loved most: swimming, bonfire night, and the relay races all featured heavily.

After snack time, I spoke about my own journey with T1D and the idea of taking “one small step” – this year’s camp theme. For me, that step was as simple as riding my bike to school because I kept missing the bus. That one small decision became the spark for my whole cycling career. Afterwards, the kids wrote and drew their own “one small step” toward their dreams, and while they took turns spinning on my Argon18, I got to hear every single one. Future pilots, future badminton players, and one high schooler who wants to be a scientist – he’d already run his own experiment on how heat affects his blood glucose. The insight and intelligence of these kids never stops amazing me. We left with a big, enthusiastic send-off and a promise to come back next year – and to actually stay for bonfire night this time.

Chiba: Dreams by the Coast

Chiba sits on the Pacific coastline, not far from Tokyo, and its beaches hosted the Olympic surfing competition. Most of the kids here live in Tokyo and had travelled out for their Obon vacation week, and there were more good reunions with staff and doctors who remembered us from 2024.

I spoke just after lunch, and the format mirrored Hyogo, though the kids here were especially keen to try an XL bike we’d rigged up to a home trainer. Dreams at this camp leaned more toward education and tertiary study – future doctors, nurses, and teachers – which I’m told is pretty typical for a Tokyo crowd. The camp’s healthcare providers were genuinely engaged too, asking me plenty about life with T1D and about Team Novo Nordisk. Later, we played suikawari – “smash the watermelon” – one child blindfolded and holding a stick, guided entirely by shouted directions from the group until they found and cracked the watermelon hidden in a bag on the ground. It’s a simple game, but it teaches a lesson that matters a lot for kids living with T1D: leaning on the people around you. Every watermelon met its fate eventually, and we all got to enjoy the spoils.

Tokyo: Community in Crisis

Back in Tokyo, I sat down with three people I’ve crossed paths with before in the Japanese T1D community: Manato Ohara, who rode 900 kilometers in three days as a 13-year-old (I joined him on that ride back in 2017); Shunta Tanaka, a keirin track cyclist I rode alongside at the T-Town UCI races in Pennsylvania in 2019; and Eiichi Ohmura, a community organiser for T1D in Kumamoto prefecture.

The real purpose of the meeting was checking in with Ohmura-san. Kumamoto was recently hit by a devastating earthquake in July, and this year’s summer camp there had to be cancelled as a result. He had a lot of questions about managing T1D around travel and sport, hoping to bring that knowledge back to his community – and he also shared how insulin and other essential supplies reached people living with diabetes in the immediate aftermath. It was eye-opening and, honestly, encouraging – a reminder of just how strong Japan’s community spirit is in a crisis. The local Novo Nordisk sales reps are part of that fabric too; they volunteer overnight at these camps, and it’s clear they love the work and believe in why it matters.

That’s something I always take away from visiting this country: its strength lies in unity and genuine concern for others. That matters for any society, but especially for those of us living with T1D. Nothing worthwhile happens alone, and with communities this strong across the country, people managing diabetes here have real rungs on the ladder to their dreams.