The Diary Of a Tired Japanese.

1. Me

That is a picture of my dog.
He's pretty much the only reason I didn't go mad when I was in high school.
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When people ask me, "Where are you from?" I have a bit of a problem answering straight away. If they mean where as in which part of Japan, that's easy. Yokohama.
If not?
Well.
Do you mean by blood?
Or do you mean nationality? You wanna see my passport?
Or do you mean where I grew up?

Blood: Taiwan. My biological mother and biological father are both from Taiwan.

Nationality: Japan. I've had a Japanese passport for 15 years now.

Hometown: California, San Francisco, Berkeley. The first word I spoke was English.

Now you tell me, what am I supposed to say?

My DNA is 100% Taiwan. I was born there. My mother comes from a family that only speaks Taiwanese in the house, and my biological father wouldn't have been able to marry her if he wasn't Taiwanese.
I speak Chinese and some Taiwanese, I have a very heavy Taiwan accent when I speak Chinese.
I love my Grandmother and Grandfather, and my family goes to Taiwan to meet them about once or twice a year.

My nationality is Japan. I went to elementary school, junior high, and high school here. I'm a student of a national university right now and I major in Law. I became an adult in Japan, I learned how to cope with life. I had my first date, my first sleepover, my first fight with my mother in Japan. My first language is definitely Japanese, and I feel safe when I'm here.

I went to preschool, kindergarten in America. My first word wasn't "mommy" or "daddy" it was "why?". I had my first best friend there, her name was Madison. She had brown hair that turned red in the sunlight, and pale brown eyes that I can still remember.
I read my first book, I learned how to ride a bicycle, I had my first and only fist fight with a squirrel and I lost.

Every single foreign student I've met in college, every foreign tourist, every single professor I've had a conversation in English or Chinese with, have asked me that question. "Where are you from?"
One of the students said to me, "Wait, you're not a foreign student? You're a normal Japanese student?"
So I said yes. And I asked him why.
"Well, your English is good. So I didn't think you were from Japan."

I wasn't shocked that he didn't think I was Japanese, no. I was shocked because he basically implied that being able to speak English meant that you weren't Japanese.
I didn't know what to say say.

I still don't.

-Noise