Where Are You From?
You meet someone for the first time. At a party, a networking event, work. It does not matter. At some point, usually early in the conversation, you come to this question; Where are you from?
I hate this question. Because as a half Japanese, half Spanish growing up in multiple countries, I don’t know how to answer that damn question. Are you asking my ethnicity? Or you want to know where I was born and grew up? Either way, there won’t be a simple answer for me.
I spent the majority of my life in Tokyo. But being half Spanish, I never fit in nor felt Japanese. I was very young when I left Spain. So I definitely don’t associate myself with Spanish culture. Spending my youth in California won’t make me an American either. I like how this makes me an interesting person. But wherever I go, I’m an outsider. So I’ve been a lost child with identity issue all my life.
I never knew where or what home was. I’ve had many temporary homes. When I lived in San Diego, I would go see my family in Tokyo, but San Diego was my new home because that was where all my friends lived and my favorite clothes and shoes were. When I left there after college, I moved back in with my parents. As much as I loved San Diego, not having a plan to go back, it was no longer home the moment I left.
Tokyo was the new home again. But I knew living there wouldn’t have made me happy. So with a clear goal to relocate within two years, it was just a temporary home.
And just like I promised myself, I left two summers later to start a new chapter here in Berlin; a city I’d never been, but had the conditions I needed. It didn’t scare me at all until the night before leaving my parents’ place closing my yellow suitcase for the last time. And now as I’m in the mid of my third grey winter in Berlin, the unknown place that scared me that night is my home now. But how long would I stay? I don’t know.
I enjoyed living in all those cities. I identified myself as one of the citizens in each city and I was even proud to be one. But again, I could never ever genuinely feel I was one of them. I needed a visa to stay in the States and I grew up eating bento for lunch not PB & J. I was too tall and my nose was too big for a homogeneous Japanese society. Now in Berlin, I can’t even pronounce Brezel — you thought pretzel was already German, didn’t you? — properly.
People ask me all the time why I love Berlin. My dad comes from the sunniest city in Spain, Sevilla. When I was looking for college, I picked San Diego over New York City just for the weather. Among all my family members and friends, I’m the last person to voluntarily live in a city with so little sun. I’d tell people it’s because it’s international. People say this all the time about Berlin. But what does that mean to me? I’d never really thought about it. Then, I realized. People come from all over the world to Berlin. Artists, tech geeks, hipsters, students, no matter what you are, who you are, this city allows you to be you. That’s because this city is made up of people like me, who never fit in anywhere, who have been looking for home.
All these years, I’ve been moving from city to city trying to find a place I can call home, and find a sense of belonging I’ve never known. But the truth is, I’ll never find home. Because this is not something we find, but build. To some it comes easy. They love where they grew up and they call it home proudly. But to others, it’s a little trickier than that. They go out to the world and have to search for it. But instead of a place, we search for ourselves.
Because home is something we build within us.
