There’s a question that haunts every person who lives abroad for a long time.
It usually creeps up on you in the quiet moments.
Maybe it’s when you instinctively bow to a confused cashier.
Or maybe it’s when you visit your home country and find yourself annoyed by the things you used to love.
The question is simple, but its weight is immense.
Am I still Japanese?
I don’t have a simple answer.
But today, I want to be honest about what it feels like to live in the strange, lonely, and sometimes beautiful space between two worlds.
Too Foreign for Japan, Too Japanese for the World
The Ghost of “Home” That Follows You Everywhere
When I’m in Europe, I am, and always will be, the “Japanese guy.”
My friends ask me to explain anime, to recommend ramen shops, to teach them how to use chopsticks properly.
My perspectives, my mannerisms, my instinctive desire to avoid confrontation—they are all seen through the lens of my Japanese-ness.
No matter how well I speak the language or adapt to the local customs, I am an outsider.
A friendly, accepted outsider, but an outsider nonetheless.
But the real paradox begins when I go back to Japan.
Because there, I am no longer Japanese enough.
I am the “guy who has lived abroad for too long.”
My opinions are too direct.
My sense of humor has shifted.
I get frustrated with the unspoken rules that I used to navigate effortlessly.
I have become a foreigner in my own home.
Losing the Language of the Heart
The most painful part is the language.
My Japanese is, of course, still fluent.
But the nuances, the deep cultural context behind certain words, are starting to fade.
I find myself searching for a word in Japanese, only to realize the perfect word exists only in English.
And when I speak English, the opposite happens.
There are feelings and concepts, like wabi-sabi or amae, that simply have no perfect translation.
It feels like my soul has been split in two, with each half speaking a language the other can’t fully understand.
You are no longer a master of one language, but a clumsy speaker of two.
A New Kind of Home
For a long time, this feeling of not belonging anywhere felt like a profound loss.
It felt like I was a ghost, floating between two shores, unable to ever truly land on either.
But recently, my perspective has started to change.
Maybe home isn’t a place on a map.
Maybe it’s something you build yourself.
I have learned to find a strange comfort in this in-between space.
I can see the beauty and the flaws of both of my worlds with a clarity that someone who has only ever lived in one place can never have.
It’s a unique viewpoint, and there’s a growing body of literature about this “third culture” experience that has helped me feel less alone.
So, am I still Japanese?
Yes.
My roots are, and always will be, in Japan.
But I am also something else now.
Something new, forged in the space between cultures.
And I am finally learning to be okay with that.
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This feeling of being a foreigner in my own country is what I call “Reverse Culture Shock.”
It’s a powerful and disorienting experience that hits me every time I go back to Japan.
【Reverse Culture Shock】5 Strange Things I Notice in Japan Now
