I’m half Mexican and half Filipino. I also asked my dad what I was “supposed to be” when I was younger and he just told me that I was human. Idk. I kinda like that sentiment
Nope. Be both and be independent and free to construct your own identity. When you chose a label for you that means you are losing your freedom to choose whatever you like. I’m an Aisan from Araba, I’m Arab, brown, Asian, human, free and independent all these hashtags belong to me as I chose them myself.
Mex and Pinoy can be confusing to others (esp. when based in Cali). The skintone, the names etc., many of such qualities seem way too similar to the average observer (myself included). That said, having both qualities can be an advantage as well......
growing up American-Japanese and feeling shame for bringing bento to school lunches as a child was soooo real 😭 also equally regretted not appreciating it as much as a kid...
I’m Japanese and American myself and totally agree with the pressure you feel to feel connected to Japanese culture. There’s a significant clash between the 2 cultures that it’s so easy to forget about your Japanese heritage if you’re just trying to survive/fit in to American society. Thank you for sharing this!
Thank you so much for this video. You voiced so many of the same questions that have been floating around in my head for the past several years and I'm happy to know that I'm not the only one! I think I might've had more Japanese people around me growing up than you did, so there's a part of me that has always felt very connected to Japan. But having been born and raised over here, there's a part of me that's just not at all Japanese, whether it's in terms of lifestyle or just the way I think. And like you, as a nisei, I have a hard time also relating to the multi generational Japanese Americans who have a 100+ year history in this country. And I kind of smiled when you mentioned that you listen to jpop and watch Japanese TV as a way to just stay in touch in Japan because I do that too. And I'm happy to have friends that kind of understand why I'd do this, but I also feel like it's in a sense a bit of an impulse that they won't 100% get. Watching this, I just thought うわ〜、マジ泣けるわ！And some people might think it kind of silly for me to feel so moved by this videoでも、まぁ…しょうがない！ Cheers from Oakland! これからも応援してます！
I've never come across a more relatable story! I also grew up Japanese (and) American in a predominately-white space, being bombarded with questions about my obentou, attending Japanese school every weekend, and trying to keep up with J-pop (2010s Arashi & Perfume) to stay relevant within the small Japanese circle. College was definitely the time I could finally take classes about Japanese culture and meet people with similar narratives through JSA. Growing up Japanese in America is quite neat, but I know I've struggled much due to lack of (accurate) representation, and therefore, identity for who we are to society. But it's kinda empowering because our own stories pave the way within our communities. I'm used to not relating to any story, so this content was very comforting and refreshing. Thank you!
Love this video! Thank you for sharing your story. It was so relatable, I remember how much I hated going to Chinese school but now as an adult, I’m glad my parents made me go. I love learning about my two cultures and sharing it with my community!
I met many "Asian Europeans" when I went to school in Europe. To me, I saw their struggle a lot since they were also born and raised in there. My experience with racism was not about my name was hard to pronounce for a teacher or kids try to hook you up with same race person but simply others told me to go back home, why are you here or people just talk about what races they prefer rather than other races more openly than U.S. On top of that, those Asians speak a local language, but they were always labeled as something else. When I came to U.S to study, you can still say I'm "Asian American" "Irish American" or whatever identity you have connections too. I didn't really see my friends being able to do that back in the day. What I learned about it was not to think about being Asian or your identity so much though it is still crucial part of your life. Relationships between Asian American, and Asian Asians are not my favourite sometimes, but hopefully everyone of us will be able to look at each other more equally. You are who you are. Appreciate the fact that you can live happily, and have friends who care about you. We all have sad experiences, that remain in our heart, but once we move on, great things are ahead :))
L A F O R Ê T Well, he said not to think about being Asian “so much”, like don’t dwell on it too much that it’s becoming the main aspect of your identity rather than it becoming a part of who you are, like a piece of a puzzle that is you.
@@jesssc402 Ya he said he loved being Asian as if to say well I wouldn’t love myself if I were white. I used to say I love being autistic, what I meant to say is I am what I am.
Thank you for sharing your story. I'd say that your name is not hard to pronounce at all - the problem is that people who've grown up with just one language get themselves stuck trying to pronounce your name with English pronunciation. That is to say, as someone who grew up learning Spanish first and then English, I find it's easier for bi or multi-lingual persons to pick up nuances in other languages, and accents for that matter, than it is for those growing up most of their life in a monolingual and cultural bubble. I hope that things have gotten better for you and those who you know who've also suffered. For every person that gives you a hard time, know that there are many many more who support you.
Love this video! I’m Japanese American and I definitely understand where you are coming from. I appreciate you sharing your experiences and I agree that there are different “types” of “japanese Americans”.
lmao wait a minute. this is the most relatable video ive ever seen youtube LOL. im half japanese half chinese with parents that both immigrated from Japan and hong kong. I went through the exact same existential crisis sometime before college, Im currently a student at UCSD and am also apart of a Japanese org on campus. Thank you for making this video, I agree that I have not come across a lot of japanese american, especially those who have parents that had immigrated. I think people with similar circumstances to you and me will really appreciate what u have to say! Especially the younger ones going middle school and high school. I never comment on videos but i felt like this one hit a little too close to home to not say anything!
If you are C/J half then you have the basic language advantage. That said, you'll still have to take additional steps to ensure those advantages will serve you justice in your later work life. Having one true multiglot in the society in existence is much more referred to one monoglot......
I'm brazilian and my grandparents are japanese. There are a large japanese community in Brazil, most of them are in state of São Paulo, Paraná and Mato Grosso do Sul. And in almost all city that have a japanese community there is a bulding hall.
This video was so interesting! As a Filipino American, I’m so glad you talked about this topic. Please talk more about your experiences. What was it like visiting Japan every year?
thanks for sharing your story :) it's actually really similar to a lot of asian Australians here who are sort of caught between two worlds since our parents are first gen immigrants. I found it surprising that even though I'm Chinese Australian our experiences aren't too different
also so glad someone is talking about the distinction between Japanese-American and being American and Japanese!!! it's a unique identity that most people aren't familiar with unless it's explained. The difference in experiences between Japanese-Americans whose lineage in the US goes back several generations, vs. 2nd generation American-Japanese like ourselves is v real
Wow Mayuko I love the duality!!!! Please do more videos like this when you can!! Also, my parents are from East Africa and I’ve never been. I was born and raised in Canada and I never felt the need to know where I was from....I know that sounds very weird but I felt like I already knew enough but to other people from my country I know nothing! Oddly enough I’m fine with it and I don’t know how this came to be. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed hearing your perspective!!!
A lot of this stems from our parents. When we are young, regardless of if our parents are right or wrong, we look to them for guidance. As such, if they do not take us back to their birth countries during the school holidays or see family in their respective countries, when we become older, we don't feel the need to do.
Great videos , like the real and casual way you tell things , with no beating around the bush and really wanting to help people with even the small stuff.
I’m learning about the coding, so I watched all of your tech series. It’s also learning English for me. You’re so positive, always give me more energy. I like to watch your video😊
Hey, we are about the same age and I also went to UCSD and currently a SWE in the Silicon Vally. I am definitely not Asian American since I came to this country when I was 18 from China. I never had any confusion about my cultural identity since I came here so late. But I always think that the important thing is trying to understand and apply the good parts from both cultures to our everyday life. We don't have to stick with either one of these cultures or figure out the exact composition percentage or something. Being exposed to multiple cultures is already an advantage.
Hola Mayuko! Thank you for sharing your life story! My life experiences are simular to yours. I'm Puerto Rican and American, it's werid to say that because Puerto Ricans are American weather born in mainland USA or on the island. I was born in Florida and I grew up there up until I was 7 and went to live in Puerto Rico for the first time like a year. Even though I been to Puerto Rico as a child, culture shock set in like going to school and stuff is completely different and was awesome! I really connected with my family there and my culture. Then we moved to North Carolina due to my brother asthma and a specialist from Puerto Rico recommended his colleague in Duke University to check my bro out because his life was at risk. Due North Carolina was like..... To me as a kid. It was so different and lot of the kids in school would say comments like the Spanish kid and try to speak Spanish to me when i can completely speak, read, write English lol. I was also introduced to ESL in middle school and I was like why? But I glad I did go because I had a huge crush on this girl, her name is Jen who is Asian hehe😍. So....😳 I kinda blushed right now reminiscing lol... I faced also racism as well and didn't really had friends although I would connect with the Hispanics in my school and other people from different cultures which is great! Those times where rough but I always accepted that I'm Puerto Rican, American, and me. Im learning a third language which is Japanese, because one good thing I got out of ESL is that I like to learn from different cultures and connect with people!
Thank you for sharing your video and experience. As a よんせい or 4th generation Japanese American with relatives who lived through the camps my cultural identity and experience has been different then yours. I liked how you were able to identify some of the differences. This video has actually helped me with my own cultural journey. Best of luck and keep posting
Thank you for sharing your story. I'm Japanese-American. I had some exposure to Japanese culture when I was growing up. I became familiar with some Japanese customs and ate Japanese food. I did not grow up speaking Japanese. I started learning Japanese after becoming an adult.
Hi, Mayuko :) Excellent video! As a French-Pakistani, your story relates so much to mine, even tho it's a different culture. Growing up with 2 different cultures can be hard but at the same time, it's really good !!! It brought me a lot of knowledge about my roots and the society we live in. :D
Thank you for sharing this. I am 100% Japanese, but I was born and raised in Brazil. I live with my family in California and we are now Americans and my kids who are half Japanese and half Russian biologically will go through what you mentioned and this was helpful for me to help them to figure out who they are.
I love this video because I can relate so much to your experience as an Asian American. Especially when you talked about how we had to figure out on our own how to prepare or apply for college since our immigrant parents didn't really understand how the American education system worked. I honestly didn't even know what the SAT was till the end of junior year of H.S. Because of that, I've always felt like everyone around me had it all figured out except for me. Now I am studying computer science in college and ever since I came across your channel, you've been such a role model to me and someone I can identify myself with as an Asian American, as a child of immigrants, and as a woman aspiring to work in the tech industry. Thank you for being such an inspiration to me and so many other Asian Americans.
Very nice video, Mayuko. I live in Brazil and here there are many Japanese emigrants with this situation like yours. It was very good to hear and learn about how do you feel and think about this dilemma of being from one country and living in another.
Super cool to hear the perspective of someone who grew up close to the culture and how they dealt with the consequent unique identity issues. As someone who falls under the Japanese-American 日系人 category, sometimes I just really loathe myself for not being as Japanese as what few relatives I have back at the mainland. We can't choose our upbringings, but it's encouraging to hear you talk about just being who you are. Really needed that. Thanks!
This is why it's so important to teach people to think about how language affects thought (and identity). If you are Asian but not from Japan, "Japanese" refers to your ethnicity. "American" is not an ethnicity but a nationality (and cultural identity). So "Japanese-American" would refer to an immigrant, but "Japanese American" would refer to an American of Japanese ethnicity.
I'm born Japanese, never been an American legally, I only lived there for 15 months when I was 9 to 10 at Boulder, CO, and you're definitely a genuine American to me :) (if such a thing exists, and that definitely coexists well with your Japanese heritage). And I didn't know you were in Connecticut! Your English is so west-coast :) A bright personality like yours, and your fluency of English (plus Japanese well-proven in your rebuild.fm program recordings :)), are something I don't have, primarily because of the autocratic monoculture of Tokyo. I wish I could be learning and studying and living more in the USA for longer years, but that's something you couldn't control or decide when you were a kid. It took me a long time to accept who I have been as what I am (it took >40 years), though I'm still in the process of being fully able to accept and embrace what I've experienced, being continuously scrutinized as a person who has a different communication mode from many of "pure Japanese" (e.g., who hasn't really experienced any of American or other styles of cultures, which constitute >70% of people, and I expect it ~98% of the population), and still feeling a strong sense of exclusion from the local communities (especially because living in Osaka where I moved/emigrated from Tokyo 27 years ago). I'm planning to return to Tokyo soon for more business opportunity, less linguistic friction (the Kansai style of communication is so different from Tokyo people including myself), and for a stable living. Quite a few people in Japan define and categorize me under the label of 帰国子女 kikoku shijo, which is a technical term built by the Ministry of Education in the 1970s to treat the returnee kids as something special and not normal as other "ordinary" Japanese kids, and I've had a really hard time in schools because of the definition. OTOH, during my travel in Stockholm, Sweden, with my spouse Kyoko in this May 2 weeks ago (she is one of those 海外留学体験者 kaigai ryugaku taikensha aka those who experienced studying abroad, in her case she spent 2 years in Germany, and she shares a lot of common with me about how returnees are being socially excluded in Japan), I discovered no one really cared about me being different from them, and my English switch was fully on then (and a tiny amount of Swedish words :) ), so I rather felt far freer than I lived in Japan. I went there for a talk at a conference of Code BEAM STO 2019, for the Erlang/Elixir and other BEAM languages/systems, and the talk was recorded and to be published soon on UA-cam - you might find a crazy me there. :) I know my English is getting rotten and degrading because I don't really speak it every day (in Japan almost all daily life language is solely in Japanese), but it's still part of myself. I could be nothing else but Japanese legally, but I'm definitely not a "pure" Japanese where those "pure" Japanese people are expected to me. And that's a burden of living in Japan as a Japanese. (Sorry, I have no clear conclusion in this comment; thinking about the identity issues simply makes me emotional and not rational.)
Thank you so much for sharing, Kenji-san. One of the reasons I always feared and therefore ruled out the possibility of going to school/work in japan was exactly that treatment of 帰国子女 (i don’t even know if I can call myself that hahaha). Anyway, please let me know when your talk is out! I’d love to check it out ☺️
@@hellomayuko About 帰国子女: I think you were absolutely right about the decision. OTOH, remaining in the USA wasn't our choice anyway (even though we lived shorter than my parents expected).
Very interesting video! As a third generation Brazilian Nikkei, I went through many similar experiences and conflicts of identity as well. Along my childhood I always imagined how nikkeis on other countries experience these feelings...
Hi, Mayuko-san! It was first time for me to watch your video, and I felt that your English is easy to understand for English learners!! Dunno, maybe because I'm a Japanese...😂? And the topic was very interesting! I'm gonna watch your videos more to study English!
I never comment on videos but thanks for sharing! Vibed a lot with the things you said as I was raised by my first generation Japanese parents in North Carolina with hardly any other Asians around. All in all, let's just be us.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. I'm in your parents' shoes; both my wife and I are Japanese, but our kids were born and being raised in the States. I personally don't know that many people who's been through what our kids are going through, so it's a lot of figuring stuff out on the spot, and it certainly was valuable to hear your perspectives. Thanks!
Great video mayuko! I also struggled with my own cultural identity, but after a while of delving deep into the subject I found it was too complicated and gave up. Then I found that in the end, I was the only one keeping track. To me It seemed like specific labels weren't ever that important to begin with.
Great video. I can't believe people had a hard time pronouncing Mayuko, it's by no means hard to say. But then again, my name is easy to say but still people butcher it. My name is Santino, and I get so many different mispronounciations, such as Santiago, Santonio, San Antonio (not joking), Santego (don't know how one got there...), Santina, etc. I guess some Americans can't really get past too many non-English names. This video was the right video i needed to hear, as I have struggled with knowing how to classify myself culturally and ethnically, as my background is diverse and I really only have ties with 1 country despite having family and ancestry from 5-10 more. Thank you.
Wow it’s great to see how many little things that many people worry about, am I Japanese am I American , you’re just a Japanese living in America and you have American citizenship and your day to day life will change you to an American but Japan will still be deep,very deep inside you .Just be the person who are not matters people like it or not ,but Japanese people are the most who forget their origin and culture but it’s okay 👌
I found myself relating to many of your experiences as a fourth generation Japanese American. It is such a unique experience growing up as a minority and I love to see more and more representation of Asian Americans creating media and art. Thanks for sharing your story!
I'm Japanese American born and raised in Utah. I can relate to so much of this video. I did move to Japan as an adult, and it was a great experience. It gave me some insight into why my parents are the way they are.
自分の娘もいつか自分のアイデンティティについて葛藤するのかと思うと、少しせつないです。Her dad is Chinese Canadian who immigrated to Canada from Hong Kong when he was very little. And I immigrated to Canada when I was 30. Her language skills were English>Japanese>Cantonese. 今でも時々私は日本人だけど、カナダ人？と聞いてきます。自分が香港人という認識は薄いようですが。何じんというくくりでなく、自分という人格を誇りに思ってくれれば私はうれしいですが。I love how you speak and how clear your voice is!
I'm Brazilian-Japanese, but I've always been strongly influenced by Japanese culture, as I lived in the same building as my grandmother. But fortunately, Brazil is the second country with the most Japanese, after Japan, so I always had Brazilian-Japanese friends, but even so, I always felt a little out of place from other people. so it was always much easier for me to interact with the japanese, they understood well what we thought and what we wanted. thank you so much for videos like this, it's really cool to see how other japanese feel around the world.
It's so refreshing to hear you talk. You got a lot of positive energy and optimism. I can listen to you talk about a wall all day and not get bored. Keep doing what you're doing. Love from Pakistan.
As a American father of Japanese/American children being raised in Japan, it is good to hear your perspective and experiences. We moved to Japan to give my kids the Japanese cultural experience, and so they could have grandparents in their lives while they are young (both of my parents have passed away). Also it was important to me to provide a standard Japanese education first, because whether or not my kids learn English at some point, I think learning to write Kanji outside of compulsory education is harder to learn than learning English as a second language. I completely do not push English education on my children. I figure they will have more success in learning English if they show interest and actually want to learn it themselves. In fact, our home language has always been Japanese, even when living in the U.S. for several years. At this point they don’t have a big interest in learning it (or need because we live in Japan) and I think that’s fine. I think pushing second language learning too hard, if the child is not really into it, will just result agitating the question of identity. Kids have enough to deal with, between growing up, social development, school, homework, routine home responsibilities, and parent’s expectations, etc. Language is just a tool - what’s more important is what kind of person is driving that tool. So giving a child the space to come to their own conclusion about their identity will help them to develop confidence in who they are, and in turn be the best they can be. Then when they learn to use a new tool, whether it be language or something else, they will be properly prepared, as a person, to use it. Anyway, we are all who we are, unique yet similar, but also ever changing, so we can never fit into a set definition. Indeed, as humans our uniqueness is our strength. Thanks for sharing your experiences. :^) I am sure it is giving support to those who may have had similar situations or are trying to define who they are.
One of my friend’s friend was born in Thai and spent like 1/3 her life in Australia and now she is living in Japan. Every time people ask her where are you from, she feels confused because inside her there is a big mixture of cultures. I think that’s the change caused by globalization that the combination of one’s soul and skin do not need to be the same. I myself is also a member of this group ;) I’m moving to nyc this year the mixture inside me is going to be much more messy :) I think just enjoy. You are you, the unique creature on the earth.
Damn, this hit close to home. I used to beg my mom for Lunchables instead of her homemade bentos- they were what everyone else had and looked so cool and fun. Nowadays, I wouldn't even consider Lunchables over a homemade bento from my mom. The struggle to figure out a cultural identity is so relatable, and I appreciate that you were able to articulate the generational disconnect with the larger "Japanese American" label (something I've struggled to put into words myself). Discovering Kina Grannis was a revelation for me as well. Good luck on the ever-continuing journey of identity!
Absolutely love your videos! You’re such a great speaker and your stories are so interesting! I became a Patreon patron of yours because of this video and your last full length one!
Oh, I definitely feel the same about the label Japanese American for the very same reasons!! I've come to associate it with generations of Japanese Americans who lived through WWII and/or have parents and/or grandparents who lived those experiences so I'm not into using it myself. Especially when I never felt the need to hide or suppress the culture my mom came from, and that's a privileged position to come from. I'd rather just describe myself as a Japanese person, to put it most simply, and has American citizenship.
It was really precise how you describe your identity. Talking about "The identity" with this amount of detail and accuracy shows that you are intellectual enough to understand such an existential matter and brave enough to share it to public. I really like this video, good job.
Great vid. My kids are ha-fu, and still young, so they haven't really thought much about culture, identity or nationality. You also can't easily visually spot their mixed ethnicity- they look pretty typically Caucasian. It's lead to some amusing interactions- like one time my older son was reading manga at a cub scout meeting and was asked why he was reading Japanese by another kid his age- his response was just "because I am Japanese", the "duh" wasn't actually said at the end, but it was clear he thought the question had the most obvious answer, and he was confused as to why it was being asked. They both go to Japanese school here in the states, full-time- I suspect they will need to take ESL when we do eventually move them to public school - but the trade off if played right is that they'll have way more opportunities in life being fully bilingual. I tell myself I've done my job well if they can go to college in either country and do well.
like your insights. Very sensitive and Will be useful to young people who are growing up in a majority culture that is different from Their own. I can relate. The feelings are universal not necessarily those of Asians growing up in White America. I grew up as a Chinese person with immigrant parents in a Japanese community. Even among Asians the cultures, values and customs are different. Does not make growing up smooth and thankfully most of us survive. I’ve subscribed and I’m viewing the rest of your videos. Learning lots from your discussions And experiences.
I can so relate to your identity struggle. I still hold my japanese passport but moved to australia and more comfortable with the culture here than japanese ones.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I’m half Mexican and half Filipino. I also asked my dad what I was “supposed to be” when I was younger and he just told me that I was human. Idk. I kinda like that sentiment
+1
biracial gang
Nope. Be both and be independent and free to construct your own identity. When you chose a label for you that means you are losing your freedom to choose whatever you like. I’m an Aisan from Araba, I’m Arab, brown, Asian, human, free and independent all these hashtags belong to me as I chose them myself.
american
Mex and Pinoy can be confusing to others (esp. when based in Cali). The skintone, the names etc., many of such qualities seem way too similar to the average observer (myself included). That said, having both qualities can be an advantage as well......
日本で生まれ育ち、日本に馴染めず高校まで過ごしていました。日本の大学に進学し2度の留学の機会を掴み取れました。仲の良い友達ができて、必死に勉強できる環境に身をおける幸せな毎日を過ごし、やっと海外に居場所を見つけた様に感じていました。いつしか、アメリカで生まれ育ちたかったな〜とか思っていました笑 しかし、日本で生まれ育った限りMayukoさんの様な方の境遇を知る機会がなかなかなく、UA-camを通してMayukoさんの様な方々がどんなcultural identityをもっていて、どんな経験をしてきたのかを知る事ができるのはとても嬉しいです。私自身、カナダ・アメリカに身を置いてみてやはりアジア人で、日本人で、その国に生まれたことに誇りを持てる様になりました。結局何を言いたいのかわからなくなってしまいましたが、日本人として世界で活躍していける様に頑張ります！笑
I love your happy face, I love the energy that you bring to this video.
Very positive!
You go girl!
ok
Babe im traveling to usa in sept would you like to join me?
Are u Vietnamese?! :D
@Jacky Phantom She is Vietnamese. Just look at her surname. 🤣
@Jacky Phantom OK... I see~
growing up American-Japanese and feeling shame for bringing bento to school lunches as a child was soooo real 😭 also equally regretted not appreciating it as much as a kid...
How many of you guys noticed there’s a cutie sitting besides her?
ma lil loaf ❤️
Two cuties 😅
Plot twist she is the cutie
You: How dare you not notice!! *smack*
Me: Ow!
i wanna have one slice of that loaf 😳😍
I’m Japanese and American myself and totally agree with the pressure you feel to feel connected to Japanese culture. There’s a significant clash between the 2 cultures that it’s so easy to forget about your Japanese heritage if you’re just trying to survive/fit in to American society. Thank you for sharing this!
Thank you so much for this video. You voiced so many of the same questions that have been floating around in my head for the past several years and I'm happy to know that I'm not the only one! I think I might've had more Japanese people around me growing up than you did, so there's a part of me that has always felt very connected to Japan. But having been born and raised over here, there's a part of me that's just not at all Japanese, whether it's in terms of lifestyle or just the way I think. And like you, as a nisei, I have a hard time also relating to the multi generational Japanese Americans who have a 100+ year history in this country.
And I kind of smiled when you mentioned that you listen to jpop and watch Japanese TV as a way to just stay in touch in Japan because I do that too. And I'm happy to have friends that kind of understand why I'd do this, but I also feel like it's in a sense a bit of an impulse that they won't 100% get.
Watching this, I just thought うわ〜、マジ泣けるわ！And some people might think it kind of silly for me to feel so moved by this videoでも、まぁ…しょうがない！
Cheers from Oakland! これからも応援してます！
How you switched up from English to Japanese, that's a super power!
I've never come across a more relatable story! I also grew up Japanese (and) American in a predominately-white space, being bombarded with questions about my obentou, attending Japanese school every weekend, and trying to keep up with J-pop (2010s Arashi & Perfume) to stay relevant within the small Japanese circle. College was definitely the time I could finally take classes about Japanese culture and meet people with similar narratives through JSA.
Growing up Japanese in America is quite neat, but I know I've struggled much due to lack of (accurate) representation, and therefore, identity for who we are to society. But it's kinda empowering because our own stories pave the way within our communities.
I'm used to not relating to any story, so this content was very comforting and refreshing. Thank you!
Luna Terauchi So relatable! I’m mixed but very similar experience.
Love this video! Thank you for sharing your story. It was so relatable, I remember how much I hated going to Chinese school but now as an adult, I’m glad my parents made me go. I love learning about my two cultures and sharing it with my community!
I met many "Asian Europeans" when I went to school in Europe. To me, I saw their struggle a lot since they were also born and raised in there. My experience with racism was not about my name was hard to pronounce for a teacher or kids try to hook you up with same race person but simply others told me to go back home, why are you here or people just talk about what races they prefer rather than other races more openly than U.S. On top of that, those Asians speak a local language, but they were always labeled as something else. When I came to U.S to study, you can still say I'm "Asian American" "Irish American" or whatever identity you have connections too. I didn't really see my friends being able to do that back in the day. What I learned about it was not to think about being Asian or your identity so much though it is still crucial part of your life. Relationships between Asian American, and Asian Asians are not my favourite sometimes, but hopefully everyone of us will be able to look at each other more equally. You are who you are. Appreciate the fact that you can live happily, and have friends who care about you. We all have sad experiences, that remain in our heart, but once we move on, great things are ahead :))
L A F O R Ê T Well, he said not to think about being Asian “so much”, like don’t dwell on it too much that it’s becoming the main aspect of your identity rather than it becoming a part of who you are, like a piece of a puzzle that is you.
@@jesssc402 Ya he said he loved being Asian as if to say well I wouldn’t love myself if I were white. I used to say I love being autistic, what I meant to say is I am what I am.
Thank you for sharing your story. I'd say that your name is not hard to pronounce at all - the problem is that people who've grown up with just one language get themselves stuck trying to pronounce your name with English pronunciation. That is to say, as someone who grew up learning Spanish first and then English, I find it's easier for bi or multi-lingual persons to pick up nuances in other languages, and accents for that matter, than it is for those growing up most of their life in a monolingual and cultural bubble. I hope that things have gotten better for you and those who you know who've also suffered. For every person that gives you a hard time, know that there are many many more who support you.
Love this video! I’m Japanese American and I definitely understand where you are coming from. I appreciate you sharing your experiences and I agree that there are different “types” of “japanese Americans”.
lmao wait a minute. this is the most relatable video ive ever seen youtube LOL. im half japanese half chinese with parents that both immigrated from Japan and hong kong. I went through the exact same existential crisis sometime before college, Im currently a student at UCSD and am also apart of a Japanese org on campus. Thank you for making this video, I agree that I have not come across a lot of japanese american, especially those who have parents that had immigrated. I think people with similar circumstances to you and me will really appreciate what u have to say! Especially the younger ones going middle school and high school. I never comment on videos but i felt like this one hit a little too close to home to not say anything!
If you are C/J half then you have the basic language advantage. That said, you'll still have to take additional steps to ensure those advantages will serve you justice in your later work life. Having one true multiglot in the society in existence is much more referred to one monoglot......
I'm brazilian and my grandparents are japanese. There are a large japanese community in Brazil, most of them are in state of São Paulo, Paraná and Mato Grosso do Sul. And in almost all city that have a japanese community there is a bulding hall.
my mom is a japanese peruvian. there’s also a large japaenese population there. :)
This video was so interesting! As a Filipino American, I’m so glad you talked about this topic. Please talk more about your experiences. What was it like visiting Japan every year?
日本からよくまゆこさんのビデオ見てます！こういうビデオも新鮮ですね！
応援してます、これからも頑張って！
But the video is in English, do you understand it?
bbb888 🤣🤦🏻♂️
We love to see you travelling in Japan, and show us some traditional good stuff in there. Super like!
自分のアイデンティティが分からなくなるのはとても大変ですね。
自分らしく生きるのが大切だと思いました。
thanks for sharing your story :) it's actually really similar to a lot of asian Australians here who are sort of caught between two worlds since our parents are first gen immigrants. I found it surprising that even though I'm Chinese Australian our experiences aren't too different
Second, I love the variation in your content, keep it up
also so glad someone is talking about the distinction between Japanese-American and being American and Japanese!!! it's a unique identity that most people aren't familiar with unless it's explained. The difference in experiences between Japanese-Americans whose lineage in the US goes back several generations, vs. 2nd generation American-Japanese like ourselves is v real
I'm glad I found this video prior to May. Nice and looking forward for future video!
Wow Mayuko I love the duality!!!! Please do more videos like this when you can!!
Also, my parents are from East Africa and I’ve never been. I was born and raised in Canada and I never felt the need to know where I was from....I know that sounds very weird but I felt like I already knew enough but to other people from my country I know nothing! Oddly enough I’m fine with it and I don’t know how this came to be. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed hearing your perspective!!!
A lot of this stems from our parents. When we are young, regardless of if our parents are right or wrong, we look to them for guidance.
As such, if they do not take us back to their birth countries during the school holidays or see family in their respective countries, when we become older, we don't feel the need to do.
*_LOVE THIS CONTENT_*
This video was really informative. I love learning about different cultures like this. She seems like such a well rounded person.
Great videos , like the real and casual way you tell things , with no beating around the bush and really wanting to help people with even the small stuff.
Hi Mayuko, thanks for the interesting vids! Great perspective, very informative.
Mr. Cat gave up at 10:55
Mr. Dog invade at 12:25
are you a good boy!?
yes you are...!!
:D
How do you know they're Mr. ?
@@huynguyenvan1505 the Loaf, an orange tabby, almost always boys. Of Kona she says "good boy."
It's a very great channel, Mayuko
It feels like a real deep conversation and fully of advance.
Congratulations for being that way.
I’m learning about the coding, so I watched all of your tech series. It’s also learning English for me. You’re so positive, always give me more energy. I like to watch your video😊
man mayuko always has this positive energy to spread. everytime i watch her video my mood is all boost up.
Loved this video. I totally related to all the points you made, especially the Saturday Japanese school bit. Sending love 😚
Hey, we are about the same age and I also went to UCSD and currently a SWE in the Silicon Vally. I am definitely not Asian American since I came to this country when I was 18 from China. I never had any confusion about my cultural identity since I came here so late. But I always think that the important thing is trying to understand and apply the good parts from both cultures to our everyday life. We don't have to stick with either one of these cultures or figure out the exact composition percentage or something. Being exposed to multiple cultures is already an advantage.
Your fabulous and your worthy of acceptance and love. 👍😁👍 Love and light to you.
Even though I’m not Asian American,,, I’m Mexican American so I can relate !!! Also so cool you loved in San Diego,,, I was raised there 🌞🙌🏼
Eyyy SD represent!
Hola Mayuko! Thank you for sharing your life story! My life experiences are simular to yours. I'm Puerto Rican and American, it's werid to say that because Puerto Ricans are American weather born in mainland USA or on the island. I was born in Florida and I grew up there up until I was 7 and went to live in Puerto Rico for the first time like a year. Even though I been to Puerto Rico as a child, culture shock set in like going to school and stuff is completely different and was awesome! I really connected with my family there and my culture. Then we moved to North Carolina due to my brother asthma and a specialist from Puerto Rico recommended his colleague in Duke University to check my bro out because his life was at risk. Due North Carolina was like..... To me as a kid. It was so different and lot of the kids in school would say comments like the Spanish kid and try to speak Spanish to me when i can completely speak, read, write English lol. I was also introduced to ESL in middle school and I was like why? But I glad I did go because I had a huge crush on this girl, her name is Jen who is Asian hehe😍. So....😳 I kinda blushed right now reminiscing lol... I faced also racism as well and didn't really had friends although I would connect with the Hispanics in my school and other people from different cultures which is great! Those times where rough but I always accepted that I'm Puerto Rican, American, and me. Im learning a third language which is Japanese, because one good thing I got out of ESL is that I like to learn from different cultures and connect with people!
Thank you for sharing your video and experience. As a よんせい or 4th generation Japanese American with relatives who lived through the camps my cultural identity and experience has been different then yours. I liked how you were able to identify some of the differences. This video has actually helped me with my own cultural journey. Best of luck and keep posting
Thank you for sharing your story. I'm Japanese-American. I had some exposure to Japanese culture when I was growing up. I became familiar with some Japanese customs and ate Japanese food. I did not grow up speaking Japanese. I started learning Japanese after becoming an adult.
Hi, Mayuko :) Excellent video! As a French-Pakistani, your story relates so much to mine, even tho it's a different culture. Growing up with 2 different cultures can be hard but at the same time, it's really good !!! It brought me a lot of knowledge about my roots and the society we live in. :D
Thank you for sharing this. I am 100% Japanese, but I was born and raised in Brazil. I live with my family in California and we are now Americans and my kids who are half Japanese and half Russian biologically will go through what you mentioned and this was helpful for me to help them to figure out who they are.
thank you for making this video mayuko. Count me in for being interested in your story videos- I like them the best:)
I love this video because I can relate so much to your experience as an Asian American. Especially when you talked about how we had to figure out on our own how to prepare or apply for college since our immigrant parents didn't really understand how the American education system worked. I honestly didn't even know what the SAT was till the end of junior year of H.S. Because of that, I've always felt like everyone around me had it all figured out except for me. Now I am studying computer science in college and ever since I came across your channel, you've been such a role model to me and someone I can identify myself with as an Asian American, as a child of immigrants, and as a woman aspiring to work in the tech industry. Thank you for being such an inspiration to me and so many other Asian Americans.
Love your outfits Mayuko😊
子供のころ、日本語がポルトガル語より上手に喋れるのに「あなたはブラジル人なんだよ」と言われた時はショックでしたね 笑
でも今の自分はまゆこさんみたいに「自分はブラジル人であり、日本人でもある」とは言い切れません
個人的には「日系ブラジル人」の方がしっくりきますね（日本生まれ、ブラジル育ちの日系３世です）
受け売りですが、日本６０％＋ブラジル６０％で１２０％の日系人になれたらいいなと思います
俺も最近そういう風に考えてる。俺はインド人と日本人のハーフだけど、自分がインド人であり、日本人でありとは自身があります。
気持ちは良く分かります。私もブラジルで育ったから、日本に行って、初めて「日系人」って言われてショックを受けた覚えがあリます。
お、たかしじゃん こんなところにいたのか
おー@@Ennocb 、久しぶり！
UA-camのコメント欄で会えるとは 笑
日本で産まれたなら日本人、日本で産まれてないなら外国人という認識です。
Very nice video, Mayuko. I live in Brazil and here there are many Japanese emigrants with this situation like yours. It was very good to hear and learn about how do you feel and think about this dilemma of being from one country and living in another.
This was Amazing! Thank you so much for sharing 😊
Great video mayuko
Super cool to hear the perspective of someone who grew up close to the culture and how they dealt with the consequent unique identity issues. As someone who falls under the Japanese-American 日系人 category, sometimes I just really loathe myself for not being as Japanese as what few relatives I have back at the mainland. We can't choose our upbringings, but it's encouraging to hear you talk about just being who you are. Really needed that. Thanks!
This is why it's so important to teach people to think about how language affects thought (and identity). If you are Asian but not from Japan, "Japanese" refers to your ethnicity. "American" is not an ethnicity but a nationality (and cultural identity). So "Japanese-American" would refer to an immigrant, but "Japanese American" would refer to an American of Japanese ethnicity.
I'm born Japanese, never been an American legally, I only lived there for 15 months when I was 9 to 10 at Boulder, CO, and you're definitely a genuine American to me :) (if such a thing exists, and that definitely coexists well with your Japanese heritage). And I didn't know you were in Connecticut! Your English is so west-coast :)
A bright personality like yours, and your fluency of English (plus Japanese well-proven in your rebuild.fm program recordings :)), are something I don't have, primarily because of the autocratic monoculture of Tokyo. I wish I could be learning and studying and living more in the USA for longer years, but that's something you couldn't control or decide when you were a kid.
It took me a long time to accept who I have been as what I am (it took >40 years), though I'm still in the process of being fully able to accept and embrace what I've experienced, being continuously scrutinized as a person who has a different communication mode from many of "pure Japanese" (e.g., who hasn't really experienced any of American or other styles of cultures, which constitute >70% of people, and I expect it ~98% of the population), and still feeling a strong sense of exclusion from the local communities (especially because living in Osaka where I moved/emigrated from Tokyo 27 years ago). I'm planning to return to Tokyo soon for more business opportunity, less linguistic friction (the Kansai style of communication is so different from Tokyo people including myself), and for a stable living.
Quite a few people in Japan define and categorize me under the label of 帰国子女 kikoku shijo, which is a technical term built by the Ministry of Education in the 1970s to treat the returnee kids as something special and not normal as other "ordinary" Japanese kids, and I've had a really hard time in schools because of the definition.
OTOH, during my travel in Stockholm, Sweden, with my spouse Kyoko in this May 2 weeks ago (she is one of those 海外留学体験者 kaigai ryugaku taikensha aka those who experienced studying abroad, in her case she spent 2 years in Germany, and she shares a lot of common with me about how returnees are being socially excluded in Japan), I discovered no one really cared about me being different from them, and my English switch was fully on then (and a tiny amount of Swedish words :) ), so I rather felt far freer than I lived in Japan. I went there for a talk at a conference of Code BEAM STO 2019, for the Erlang/Elixir and other BEAM languages/systems, and the talk was recorded and to be published soon on UA-cam - you might find a crazy me there. :) I know my English is getting rotten and degrading because I don't really speak it every day (in Japan almost all daily life language is solely in Japanese), but it's still part of myself.
I could be nothing else but Japanese legally, but I'm definitely not a "pure" Japanese where those "pure" Japanese people are expected to me. And that's a burden of living in Japan as a Japanese.
(Sorry, I have no clear conclusion in this comment; thinking about the identity issues simply makes me emotional and not rational.)
Thank you so much for sharing, Kenji-san. One of the reasons I always feared and therefore ruled out the possibility of going to school/work in japan was exactly that treatment of 帰国子女 (i don’t even know if I can call myself that hahaha). Anyway, please let me know when your talk is out! I’d love to check it out ☺️
@@hellomayuko About 帰国子女: I think you were absolutely right about the decision. OTOH, remaining in the USA wasn't our choice anyway (even though we lived shorter than my parents expected).
リアルだなーってめっちゃ思いました。日本からも楽しませてもらってます。
Love this video !
Love your sharing!
Mayuko thanks for your video!
Very interesting video! As a third generation Brazilian Nikkei, I went through many similar experiences and conflicts of identity as well. Along my childhood I always imagined how nikkeis on other countries experience these feelings...
Thanks for opening up, I can relate. also you are so pretty wtff
Loved this video.
Very relatable video! I was also born and raised in the US but my parents are both Japanese.
Great video, love your stories!
I love the style of this video
Hi, Mayuko-san!
It was first time for me to watch your video, and I felt that your English is easy to understand for English learners!! Dunno, maybe because I'm a Japanese...😂? And the topic was very interesting! I'm gonna watch your videos more to study English!
I enjoyed this video. Thank you.
I never comment on videos but thanks for sharing! Vibed a lot with the things you said as I was raised by my first generation Japanese parents in North Carolina with hardly any other Asians around. All in all, let's just be us.
i really like this topic.
mayuko hope you did more about this topic video.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. I'm in your parents' shoes; both my wife and I are Japanese, but our kids were born and being raised in the States.
I personally don't know that many people who's been through what our kids are going through, so it's a lot of figuring stuff out on the spot, and it certainly was valuable to hear your perspectives. Thanks!
Great video mayuko! I also struggled with my own cultural identity, but after a while of delving deep into the subject I found it was too complicated and gave up. Then I found that in the end, I was the only one keeping track. To me It seemed like specific labels weren't ever that important to begin with.
Great video. I can't believe people had a hard time pronouncing Mayuko, it's by no means hard to say. But then again, my name is easy to say but still people butcher it. My name is Santino, and I get so many different mispronounciations, such as Santiago, Santonio, San Antonio (not joking), Santego (don't know how one got there...), Santina, etc. I guess some Americans can't really get past too many non-English names. This video was the right video i needed to hear, as I have struggled with knowing how to classify myself culturally and ethnically, as my background is diverse and I really only have ties with 1 country despite having family and ancestry from 5-10 more. Thank you.
Thanks for always keeping it real, I find asian culture very interesting. I am ghanaian and Italian but growing up in the uk
You find it interesting as you are ignorant. They wish to be white, this sort of culture is not for us.
Wow it’s great to see how many little things that many people worry about, am I Japanese am I American , you’re just a Japanese living in America and you have American citizenship and your day to day life will change you to an American but Japan will still be deep,very deep inside you .Just be the person who are not matters people like it or not ,but Japanese people are the most who forget their origin and culture but it’s okay 👌
Mayuko is fabulous
Is there a video of Mayuko speaking Japanese?
ua-cam.com/video/nN5WEoCAyGM/v-deo.html
starts at 10:15
I found myself relating to many of your experiences as a fourth generation Japanese American. It is such a unique experience growing up as a minority and I love to see more and more representation of Asian Americans creating media and art. Thanks for sharing your story!
Same same same. From the bento, Saturday School to the existential “what am I?!” Thanks for sharing!
OMG AWWWWWW I SAW THIS AND JUST SCREAMED IN HAPPINESS
I'm Japanese American born and raised in Utah. I can relate to so much of this video. I did move to Japan as an adult, and it was a great experience. It gave me some insight into why my parents are the way they are.
Thanks for this - I can totally relate to this as a British Chinese.
love you mayuko!
自分の娘もいつか自分のアイデンティティについて葛藤するのかと思うと、少しせつないです。Her dad is Chinese Canadian who immigrated to Canada from Hong Kong when he was very little. And I immigrated to Canada when I was 30. Her language skills were English>Japanese>Cantonese. 今でも時々私は日本人だけど、カナダ人？と聞いてきます。自分が香港人という認識は薄いようですが。何じんというくくりでなく、自分という人格を誇りに思ってくれれば私はうれしいですが。I love how you speak and how clear your voice is!
It’s gonna be fun if seeing you and TechLead come up with a video together lol
The cat and dog are the mvps of this video! But im really liking this type of content!
I'm Brazilian-Japanese, but I've always been strongly influenced by Japanese culture, as I lived in the same building as my grandmother. But fortunately, Brazil is the second country with the most Japanese, after Japan, so I always had Brazilian-Japanese friends, but even so, I always felt a little out of place from other people. so it was always much easier for me to interact with the japanese, they understood well what we thought and what we wanted. thank you so much for videos like this, it's really cool to see how other japanese feel around the world.
It's so refreshing to hear you talk. You got a lot of positive energy and optimism. I can listen to you talk about a wall all day and not get bored. Keep doing what you're doing. Love from Pakistan.
As a American father of Japanese/American children being raised in Japan, it is good to hear your perspective and experiences.
We moved to Japan to give my kids the Japanese cultural experience, and so they could have grandparents in their lives while they are young (both of my parents have passed away).
Also it was important to me to provide a standard Japanese education first, because whether or not my kids learn English at some point, I think learning to write Kanji outside of compulsory education is harder to learn than learning English as a second language.
I completely do not push English education on my children. I figure they will have more success in learning English if they show interest and actually want to learn it themselves.
In fact, our home language has always been Japanese, even when living in the U.S. for several years.
At this point they don’t have a big interest in learning it (or need because we live in Japan) and I think that’s fine.
I think pushing second language learning too hard, if the child is not really into it, will just result agitating the question of identity.
Kids have enough to deal with, between growing up, social development, school, homework, routine home responsibilities, and parent’s expectations, etc.
Language is just a tool - what’s more important is what kind of person is driving that tool.
So giving a child the space to come to their own conclusion about their identity will help them to develop confidence in who they are, and in turn be the best they can be.
Then when they learn to use a new tool, whether it be language or something else, they will be properly prepared, as a person, to use it.
Anyway, we are all who we are, unique yet similar, but also ever changing, so we can never fit into a set definition.
Indeed, as humans our uniqueness is our strength.
Thanks for sharing your experiences. :^)
I am sure it is giving support to those who may have had similar situations or are trying to define who they are.
Very interesting talk. I especially like how you take the negative experiences with philosophy and comprehension. Your enthusiasm is contagious!
One of my friend’s friend was born in Thai and spent like 1/3 her life in Australia and now she is living in Japan. Every time people ask her where are you from, she feels confused because inside her there is a big mixture of cultures. I think that’s the change caused by globalization that the combination of one’s soul and skin do not need to be the same. I myself is also a member of this group ;) I’m moving to nyc this year the mixture inside me is going to be much more messy :)
I think just enjoy. You are you, the unique creature on the earth.
You're a straightforward speaker with good speaking skills combined with your positive nature and energetic nature keep up the good work mayuko! 💛💛💛
Great video about who you are as a person and how you think, thank you.
Hi Mayuko~ ! I’m Japanese American as well and a programmer and I thought you are so relatable! Thanks for sharing your story!
Love the video!!
I always wondered how it feels like to be in such environment.
Damn, this hit close to home. I used to beg my mom for Lunchables instead of her homemade bentos- they were what everyone else had and looked so cool and fun. Nowadays, I wouldn't even consider Lunchables over a homemade bento from my mom. The struggle to figure out a cultural identity is so relatable, and I appreciate that you were able to articulate the generational disconnect with the larger "Japanese American" label (something I've struggled to put into words myself). Discovering Kina Grannis was a revelation for me as well. Good luck on the ever-continuing journey of identity!
Childhood peer influences are very real.
動画楽しみにしてます！
Absolutely love your videos! You’re such a great speaker and your stories are so interesting! I became a Patreon patron of yours because of this video and your last full length one!
Very interesting! Thank you ^^
Oh, I definitely feel the same about the label Japanese American for the very same reasons!! I've come to associate it with generations of Japanese Americans who lived through WWII and/or have parents and/or grandparents who lived those experiences so I'm not into using it myself. Especially when I never felt the need to hide or suppress the culture my mom came from, and that's a privileged position to come from. I'd rather just describe myself as a Japanese person, to put it most simply, and has American citizenship.
It was really precise how you describe your identity. Talking about "The identity" with this amount of detail and accuracy shows that you are intellectual enough to understand such an existential matter and brave enough to share it to public. I really like this video, good job.
Great vid. My kids are ha-fu, and still young, so they haven't really thought much about culture, identity or nationality. You also can't easily visually spot their mixed ethnicity- they look pretty typically Caucasian. It's lead to some amusing interactions- like one time my older son was reading manga at a cub scout meeting and was asked why he was reading Japanese by another kid his age- his response was just "because I am Japanese", the "duh" wasn't actually said at the end, but it was clear he thought the question had the most obvious answer, and he was confused as to why it was being asked. They both go to Japanese school here in the states, full-time- I suspect they will need to take ESL when we do eventually move them to public school - but the trade off if played right is that they'll have way more opportunities in life being fully bilingual. I tell myself I've done my job well if they can go to college in either country and do well.
Great video thanks! Have a wonderful day 😇👍
like your insights. Very sensitive and Will be useful to young people who are growing up in a majority culture that is different from Their own. I can relate. The feelings are universal not necessarily those of Asians growing up in White America. I grew up as a Chinese person with immigrant parents in a Japanese community. Even among Asians the cultures, values and customs are different. Does not make growing up smooth and thankfully most of us survive. I’ve subscribed and I’m viewing the rest of your videos. Learning lots from your discussions And experiences.
僕日中のハーフで、同じような体験をしていて、すごく共感できました。 一時期シリコンバレーにいたのですが、その時にイベント参加しまくってて、その時にお会いして体験をしたかったです。。。 これからの動画も楽しみにしてます
I can so relate to your identity struggle. I still hold my japanese passport but moved to australia and more comfortable with the culture here than japanese ones.
Interesting video! Great job! 😁