I Belong, But Do I Really?

Something about me is that I am fourth generation Japanese American. I was born here, my parents were born here, and their parents were born here. Everyone I meet here accepts and sees me as Japanese. When reading “Literacy,Discourse, and Linguistics” by James Paul Gee, I began reflecting on my life and how many Discourses I have used throughout my life and just how much I ‘mushfake,’ or “making do with something less when the real thing is not available” (13)  in my daily life. There are so many times I have to mushfake my way through conversations simply because I don’t know what people are talking about, particularly with pop-culture trends that I just haven’t heard of, or about music artists that I don’t listen to because I’m not really into that genre of music, but everyone around me does. 

Me with friends in Japanese yukata at a
festival at our church to celebrate our
ancestors

There is one particular part of Gee’s article that that stood out to me as I was reading. He wrote, “…someone cannot engage in a Discourse in a less than fully fluent manner. You are either in it or you’re not. Discourses are connected with displays of an identity; failing to fully display an identity is tantamount to announcing you don’t have that identity, that at best you’re a pretender or a beginner” (9-10). This popped out at me because I immediately thought back to the trip to Japan that I took between my junior and senior year of high school. For me, because I think of everyone born here as American, when people ask me ‘what are you?” I know that they are asking about my ethnicity, so I automatically say I am Japanese. 

My group taking one last group picture with the groups
from Hawaii, Canada, and Brazil.

The trip I went on was a youth trip with my church, so it was a group of mostly Japanese American  teenagers and young adults, and our continental US delegation met up with other delegations from Hawaii, Canada, and Brazil. The majority of participants were of Japanese ethnicity, but when we arrived you could clearly pick us out of a crowd. It was very clear that we were not Japanese from Japan, but Japanese from another country. 

Me and my homestay sister, who is my friend and part
of the group I went with, and our homestay parents on the
last day we spent together before she and I left for the
next part of our trip. 

 While our hair color for the most part matched the people around us, the way we dressed was different, the darkness of our skin was different, the way we acted was different, even our jaws were shaped differently. Just by looking at the faces of the people around I could tell we were different, and in a way although the people we saw and met had the same ethnicity, I couldn’t help but feel as though I wasn’t Japanese, as though I was a ‘fake Japanese person’ because I didn’t look or have the same mannerisms that they did. During that trip, I never felt so American in my life. It felt like the discourse I had built all my life just disappear because I saw what it was like to ‘truly be Japanese.’ When I came back, I loved showing pictures of my trip, the places I saw, the people I met and stayed with in their homes, my short hospital visit because I reacted badly to a bug bite, and the friends I made from other countries. But at the same time of seeing those memories, it also reminded me of how my Discourse before I left on this trip turned out to be one big mushfake. Since that trip I’ve been mushfaking my Discourse as I try to build another one that is more ‘accurate’ based on what I know now about my ethnicity and culture. 

In the left picture, I am with the Bishop
of the US branch of my church
 (Hawaii has their own) and another friend
 that came with our group.

In the right picture, I just wanted to show a
difference between Japan and the US. When
entering a home or temple, you must take your
shoes off, and because we were at a temple we were
 given plastic bags to put our shoes in, because it
was raining while we were there, we kept them off
the entire time we were in the temple,
even when we changed buildings. 

The presentation of food is also different, and meals
were composed of individual plates that held
small portions of different dishes. 

Sitting etiquette was also a lot different. Most
of the time we sat 'seiza' style, or a way of
sitting on the floor on our knees. Most of the
time we ended up sitting cross legged or with
our legs to the side because our feet and legs would
fall asleep.

This was taken on one of my favorite days of my trip. My
homestay sister and I were able to go to the preschool
where our homestay mom worked and we got to play with the
kids and talk to the other teachers there.