"What's it like being a “Foreigner” Raised in Japan?"

RotaryGirl13 3 日前（編集済み）

I’m a blue eyed, blonde haired American who moved to Japan when I was fifteen and attended an all Japanese high school and college. I spent a lot of my most informative years there and I often feel more at home, comfortable, and accepted around Japanese people. Maybe it’s because I came when I was older but I never got told things like “go back to your country”, instead I got told things like “I always forget you’re a foreigner!” Or “to me you’re just Japanese like us”. However when I went back to the United States and tried to tell people about Japanese culture or different ideologies I was discriminated against for identifying as mix-cultured. I was told that because I’m white and not ethnically Japanese I had no say in the argument. Meanwhile the Indonesian-Japanese kid who didn’t speak a word of Japanese and had never been to Japan was openly welcomed to speak. It’s sad how little people around the world realize that culture isn’t what you look like or the color of your skin, it’s what’s inside you and what you’ve experienced.