Language: Japanese
Writer's Background: "I was born in Japan, and I live in a house environment where only Japanese is spoken at home."
Language for me can be seen as two different tools. One is positive, the other is seen as negative to many people. I see language as a guide to a unique, desired future, and as a wall that separates me from other people.
Let’s start with the bad side first. I live in the United States since 2005, but my English never got to the point where I can speak like an American. It has been twelve years since I moved out of Japan and came to this country. There could have been a possibility that I got completely Americanized, forgetting my language and culture. But I never did. Perhaps, I was never able to.
I don’t know the exact reason why I was never Americanized. I still speak my Japanese very well, and I still get better at it. I go to weekend school to learn and keep my Japanese language skills, and I speak only Japanese at home, so Japanese is just in my life without even trying to keep it. Even what I am interested in is related to Japanese culture. I listen to Vocaloid music*, watch anime in its original language, and play Nintendo games. I never liked what is popular in this country, I was just never interested in it. My parents sometimes worry about my lack of pop American culture knowledge. Honestly saying, I never even knew Katy Perry or Taylor Swift until I entered high school. I am just illiterate in American Pop culture. The reason, I believe, is language.
There is an imaginary border between others and myself, and language is one of the causes. Where you are raised doesn’t make the person blend in in other places. People will always have a connection to where they were born, that is what I believe. Language is the only connection I have as a cultural identity of myself living here, and I can’t lose it. People become Americanized by getting rid of the foreign customs to fit in, but I am just not able to. For my language connection to Japan, I can’t get used to the American life, stuck with a bad English accent.
But the positive part about it is that the language leads me to the path I am desired to go to, which guides me home. I only lived in Japan for the years that I don’t remember. With skim memories, the language is the only way of connection, to the family, friends, and all the good stuff. Japanese is what ties my heritage and my current lifestyle greatly. For not forgetting my language, I see where I am going, where I want to go, where I need to go. What I want to do is unclear, but I know where I will go. Very few, maybe no one will be able to follow the same path. The language kept made me open a path which leads me to the future, what I desire unknown.
The barrier and the path: what does this create? The two elements of language to me leads to one separate path back to my heritage. The path separates outside elements but shows a clear path, one way to home. The path seems to take me in a quick pace, like a highway. The road created by my language leads me home, a highway to home.
Living with the language and keeping it makes me go in a separate path alone, but the path is quiet and clear. I know where I am going, it is a long way there, but I have the tools to get me to the end.
*Vocaloid music: originating in Japan, this music is made through a synthesizer to create lyrics and melodies. Its largely popular due to fictional Vocaloid characters/singers.
Kawai is a high school junior in Livingston, NJ.
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