Welcome to Gaia! ::

Well im Part Japanese if that counts?

I can speak to a level of decent conversation but im not near fluent maybe Level 3 Profieceny?

I can read and write Hiragana, Katakana, and about 200 Kanji.

I dont live in Japan though, im in Mini-Japan (Australia) and my Japanese family comes from Mini-Tokyo (Queensland).

My grandmothers name is せつこ　かわさき and when in Japan my family reffer to me as either: アレッス　かわさき or ほご　かわさき. My friends in Japan just call me Alex or Arekkesu.

God i could rant all day about people wanting to be Japanese, i wrote a essay on the topic in a free choice English assigment, basically the reason i think its not cool is because unless you 100% Japanese the Japanese population on a majority level wont accept you, no matter how hard you try they will always dis-clude you from activities or ignore you on certain issues. Its to do with Japans underlaying racism, its not a form of horrible racism but its because they only opened up to the worl 200 years ago that they still havent had a large influx of がいこうくじん (People from other countries, GAIJIN is an offensive word!), they stare at you on trains and will prefer not to sit next to you, they wont directly confront you on any matter and will prefer not to have to include you in activities if they think you wont be offended. These may seem like little things but it hurts after awhile because being left out after all is still being left out.

I dont look REMOTLY Japanese even though im part Japanese, but sometimes i think its better that way, my friends who are part Japanese and look part Japanese have been offended alot in Japan by some of the more Pro-Japanese Blood Line people.

Sorry to rant

sweatdrop

I agree, but even the japanese are racist with eachother... I have many pen-pals and they all tell me the same, they rather live in US than Japan, they don't like Japan at all... how ironic...

Full-blooded Italian that lives in the UK. No Japanese background whatsoever.