Today I'm here with Chika.

Heeyy!

from Bilingirl.

and Melodee

(Hi!)from Melodee Morita

First of all, would you mind giving a brief introduction about yourself?

Ah, sure yeah. My name is Chika.

I grew up in the U.S., I was born in Japan

but I moved to the U.S. when I was in first grade.

Then, I lived there all the way through college,

graduated and came to Japan and started working.

So, I think in a couple years,

The amount of years I've been here, versus the states will be about equal.

Right now, it's a little bit longer in the States.

I'm Melodee, I grew up in the States my entire life.

My parents are both Japanese though so, at home,

I would try my best to speak in Japanese with my parents.

But I do have an older brother,

and he's very Americanized.

So, you've never lived here?

No, I've never lived here, yeah.

I've only visited.

By the way, we just met

(yes!) for the first time yesterday,

I met Rachel once before we had lunch.

(right) and Jun, who

is behind the camera,

I met for the first time yesterday too.

at Youtube Space so,

we're still trying to get to know each other.

Yeah, right, yeah.

We still don't, and even though

they've already told me a lot of stuff,

I forget everything so,

I'm gonna (you asked a lot of questions) ask the same questions

We're getting in this video

You went to school here when you were younger?

Just 'till first grade.

Actually, all of first grade and like

a month of secondary.

When you were adjusting to

re-entering Japan,

I guess that was when you were older?

Yeah. After college so,

my first experience living here was

entering a Japanese company and working here.

That must have been so difficult though,

I mean like, the environment, the people, the language,

everything?

Yeah, um.

It was never a culture shock, 'cause I had

visited Japan and I have relatives here so,

there wasn't anything that I

was like ''oh my gosh, I can't believe this!'', you know?

That this is like this, but

at the same time in a working environment

you know, like the meetings or--

Definitely.

You know, a little bit different,

and people communicate differently

so it did take a while to get used to,

but you always have people that support you

through the way, so that helped a lot.

That's true, I agree about like the whole 'meetings' things

cause in America people like, you know,

they cross their legs, it's kind of like

you know, chilled and laid back but

I think in Japan, or with Japanese people

you have to be really proper.

You have to make sure you're on time, just

always something that you should do but..

Just like, everything that you do I just get so

much more nervous in Japanese meetings.

And I have to feel like, super prepped

in order to be you know, presentable

and be able to put my thoughts out there.

I feel like I have to be a lot more prepared,

and professional and not as laid back

in Japanese, whenever I do meetings and stuff.

Right.

I think people feel that though, like with Kikokushijo,

people who have lived abroad for a long time

and have come back to Japan,

they kind of give you a break,

a little bit or they think,

"Oh, she just doesn't know."

like, "she lived in the States for a really long time",

So it's okay, so you kind of get a break.

I don't know if that's a good thing because sometimes

you feel like "No, I know this!"

Was it ever difficult adjusting to Japan?

Because there are a lot of cultural things I don't know about Japan,

just because I was away for so long

and just traditions and things,

and even you know, vocabulary.

Because what we use everyday

aren't like, complex words.

Right.

So, I feel like even though I am Japanese, I look Japanese,

i'm 100% Japanese, but there's like a chunk of me

missing, you know the 16 years that I wasn't here so,

I don't think people mind but

that's kind of an insecurity for me actually. Yeah.

Must be really difficult.

Yeah, I feel like people think I'm dumb

or I don't know anything sometimes, just because I should know it.

Like some Joshiki that we never really learned.

like we learn through, I guess textbooks or whatever

and regular conversations but we don't

learn like the ''rules'' that Japanese people live by.

So, I feel like if you

haven't grown up here your entire life,

those are things that you kind of have to

learn little by little from the people around you.

Yeah, more than like manners, for me it's just like, traditions.

When I first came back to Japan, i didn't know what Kouyo was.

The autumn leaves turning.

I didn't know what that was, cause we don't really have a word for it.

I see, I see.. it's kinda like Fall foliage..?

Yeah, like Fall foliage but when do we ever-

"Let's go look at the Fall foliage".

No one would say that, right?

So true..

Yeah, and you don't talk about that with your family or anything, so

I came back here, and that came up and

I asked my parents, I asked my dad.

I was like "What's Kouyo?"

and he was like "you don't know what Kouyo is?!"

And I was like "You never taught me!"

and so things like that, that feel like

that should be obvious, in that any Japanese person

should know, sometimes I don't.

and I mean, I've done a lot of catching up in the last eight years

I've been here but still.

(Right) There are these things that come up that I've never heard before.

And I'm not sure if you've been through this, but

I've been through a lot of words that

I kind of remembered differently, because

like 'TA.I.I.KU' and 'FU.N.I.KI' and stuff.

I always thought that it was,

F[U]U.N.I.KI in a sense. You know, that feeling.

But it's FU.N.[I]I.KI right?

Hm-hm, the way you say it, yeah!

So when I was typing on the computer,

I was trying to write FU.N.[I]I.KI and I was typing it so many times.

The kanji wasn't coming up, I was like ''Why is it not coming up?"

That's when I finally learned like, 10 years later,

I learned that I had knew it wrong the entire time.

So, there's little things like that.

Like TA.I.KU i always thought it was TA.I.KU

but it's TA.[I]I.KU

So those little things that we didn't

properly learn word-for-word from textbooks

Right, yeah. I had the 'FU.N.I.KI problem' too.

Yeah, I still say it the way--

Yeah, you do say it like FU.N.[I]I.KI right?

Yeah, but it's FU.N.KI (Yeah)

Have you had any embarassing experiences coming to Japan?

Where there's like a cultural, I guess like 'Joshiki'

that you didn't know about?

It was pretty recently but I went to a funeral--

Sorry, it's kind of a dark topic.

But um, yeah, a friend of mine whose grandmother passed away

and I went to the funeral. It was my first Japanese funeral

and there are things you have to wear, things you have to bring.

And I kind of knew some of the things,

but I wasn't quite sure and

and I should've-- I regretted not researching

it a little bit beforehand and

because that's not a place where you want

to feel embarrassed right?

Maybe like weddings and funerals and events like that.

But, you have to wear the mofuku, right? The funeral wear.

And there are rules as to how long the sleeves have to be,

how long the skirt can be, you can't have your knees showing.

And the reason why the sleeves have to be long is

because when you put your hands together

your sleeves come down a little bit,

so your wrists don't show.

Little things like that. I thought if you just wore

something black that was okay (not showy or anything)

Yeah, but I got there and nobody told me directly,

but I heard a little bit later that--

It wasn't anything negative but it was just like

''Oh, maybe you should tell your friend for next time

that there is, you know..''

''And if she was maybe a little bit younger''.

'cause I'm 30 now, I should know those things.

But, I, you know.

My parents, yeah, and my parents had never had an opportunity

to tell me because unfortunately I had, you know, it's a good thing but

I had never been to a funeral before so.

There's a lot of things that even Japanese people in Japan

don't know, like for example if it's food

like misoshiru (miso soup) is always on the right side

and rice is on the left, but even people in Japan

who grew up in Japan sometimes don't even know.

They had no idea and then they post it on Instagram or something

and people are like "It's the wrong side!"

Oh, I had that happen to me.

I blogged, I was like "I made breakfast!"

and they're like ''It's the wrong way..''

Yeah, I had no idea until someone told me.

Yeah, it's those things.

Oh and like, I wrote a blog about my dad.

and, you know, the difference between 'dad' and 'father' right?

When you're talking to your friends you just say ''dad''.

So, in my blog I write it like I'm talking to friends.

So I wrote ''otousan'' and a few people were like

"No, at your age you should really say 'chichioya'

or 'chichi' " but on my blog I was like "Oh you know

my dad bought me a yukata.''

like ''My father purchased a yukata for me.''

Yeah, it's that barrier you know, you don't wanna sound too formal

and really tight but at the same time, I feel like

when Japanese people read it it's like "Oh that's incorrect,

you should never say it that way.''

But it's hard because within Japanese people

the standards are different too. Some people don't care.

Some people don't know. But other people

are very strict about that, so..

I always think like, whenever I'm tweeting I'm like,

I know on social accounts it's okay to be casual right?

So, 'tabereru' is okay but I also have a feeling that

someone's gonna say something.

And the thing that sucks about being Kikokushijo,

is that, when you make a mistake everyone thinks it's because you don't know it.

Not because you made a mistake.

like, "It's not a typo. She doesn't know".

and sometimes I don't know, but other times I'm like

''I know that, it's just a typo!''

I'm on my phone, I'm tweeting really fast.

So about the miso soup, and all the technical things that people care about,

It's not because they just want to be strict

and, anal, if i can say that word. About it.

But it's just, there are reasons for it.

From my understanding, the reason why the miso soup

is on the right side is because that's what you tend to drink first

in the meal, so it should be easy for you to get to.

There's always a logical reason why we do these things.

But because we don't know it, we just know

that 'that's how it is', we're like ''Why?''

"Why do we have to do that?" But there's always reason to the 'why?'.