About Me — Bart Emanuel

A.K.A. bakagaijin, 馬鹿外人 — (a stupid, foolish, dull, or ridiculous foreigner, especially one of European descent).

I was born in Texas, moved to Japan when I was six months old, and lived mostly there for the next sixteen years. I say mostly because we spent a year in the U.S. every 4–5 years. For me, these were for First Grade / the First year of Primary School (Middlesboro, in the very southeast corner of Kentucky), Seventh Grade / the First year of Middle School (Muskogee, in the Eastern part of Oklahoma), and 12th Grade / the Senior year of High School, in Knoxville, in the Eastern part of Tennessee).

I don’t think my parents intended for it to be that way, but each of these years happened to coincide with what I think of as potentially important years in any young human’s growth.

For me, the experience was one of being wrenched away from home, from comfort, and from all the people I knew, and being inserted into a very foreign place (America was a foreign place to me at the time), with total strangers who thought (and spoke) differently than I did.

Of course, there was also a sense of adventure and excitement in travel, and in going to new places, especially since my American parents tried to give our family some knowledge of what America was.