Member-only story
About Me — David Mendoza
Cultural bridge builder, backpacker, and cooking enthusiast
Hello hello, thanks for giving my articles a read!
I’m still quite green, but I’ve already come to truly appreciate the space this community offers to us all.
I aim to write Japan-centered content from my experiences working in a traditional Japanese company as a foreigner to more general societal topics. So I thought I’d share a bit about myself here first.
Growing Up
I was born into an American military family as the oldest of three, being raised largely in the U.S. states of California and Texas. While being known as comedic among my parents and closest friends, I was always both the quietest and shyest kid in school. It wouldn’t be until joining my high school’s Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) program in the California countryside (Yes, California also has farms and horses) that I finally began to break out of my shell, albeit through force and rigor!
My grandparent’s stories of Japanese occupation in the Philippines during World War II had ignited my passion for history. Through junior high and high school I absorbed any books I could get my hands on about history from ancient Greek mythology to the colonization of Australia. However, it has always…
