My Cultural Identity Cultural Identity is what culture you identify yourself in. For me, I am still searching for what my true, authentic cultural identity is. Have you ever felt like an alien in your own country? A Made-In-Japan alien is how I felt my whole life living in Japan. My life in Japan but having a completely different mindset was a dilemma for me my whole life and it also shaped my cultural identity. Although I was born and raised in Japan, I've never felt like I was a true Japanese. I have never been to a Japanese school, I don’t eat rice everyday, and I prefer bread over miso soup for breakfast. Growing up, I always felt like I didn’t belong in Japan, but surprisingly, my school felt like home. My school was not your typical
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Well, this has happened to me multiple times and it is not easy to be able to have a good relationship with people that cannot understand you. Growing up, I not only had English speaking and bilingual friends, but I also had Japanese speaking friends too. However, I never got along very well with any of my Japanese speaking friends. The reason is that they never fully understand me, and whenever I say something wrong in Japanese or didn’t know the kanji for a certain word, they make fun of me and say that I’m a wannabe-American by purposely only speaking in English. Although I understand why my Japanese friends would make fun of my bad Japanese, I did not understand why they said I was a “wannabe-American”. This was when I realized how different my mindset was compared to Japanese kids. I never want to be not myself, or saying something that I am not, but my Japanese friends always gets an impression that I’m some sort of Japan-hating-wannabe-American. Another problem caused by my communication conflicts is persons underestimating my knowledge and persons being more interested about English abilities rather than myself. I find myself always getting asked about how to pronounce certain words in English or asked to translate phrases from Japanese to English. This makes me very self conscious because it seems like people only talk to me to obtain knowledge about English and take
Well, this has happened to me multiple times and it is not easy to be able to have a good relationship with people that cannot understand you. Growing up, I not only had English speaking and bilingual friends, but I also had Japanese speaking friends too. However, I never got along very well with any of my Japanese speaking friends. The reason is that they never fully understand me, and whenever I say something wrong in Japanese or didn’t know the kanji for a certain word, they make fun of me and say that I’m a wannabe-American by purposely only speaking in English. Although I understand why my Japanese friends would make fun of my bad Japanese, I did not understand why they said I was a “wannabe-American”. This was when I realized how different my mindset was compared to Japanese kids. I never want to be not myself, or saying something that I am not, but my Japanese friends always gets an impression that I’m some sort of Japan-hating-wannabe-American. Another problem caused by my communication conflicts is persons underestimating my knowledge and persons being more interested about English abilities rather than myself. I find myself always getting asked about how to pronounce certain words in English or asked to translate phrases from Japanese to English. This makes me very self conscious because it seems like people only talk to me to obtain knowledge about English and take