TCK Identity
Gaijin da! [There’s a foreigner!]” I was a 10-year-old at the public pool in my hometown in Japan, when I heard the all too familiar impertinent words shouted by two Japanese boys.
“Damare! [Shut up!]” I fired back. The two boys recoiled with surprise upon being chastised in fluent Japanese by a tall, red-haired, freckle-faced Caucasian boy.
Embarrassed, they quickly apologized, “Gomennasai [I’m terribly sorry].”
I turned away and dove into the pool. It was just another day as a foreign kid in a Japanese city.
An accepted outsider in Japan
I grew up in Japan, living there for over 18 years. We visited the United States every three to four years for several months at a time. My hometown, Nakano, Japan, is an adjacent city to Nagano, the host city for the 1998 Winter Olympics. Prior to the Olympics, the sight of foreigners in my city was rare. I was the first foreigner to attend my local elementary school.
Therefore, understanding my identity in relation to the broader culture understandably produced some tension. Even though I spoke Japanese fluently and could write calligraphy as skillfully as my Japanese counterparts, I remained the gaijin. I received regular reminders of this: inquisitive stares, finger-pointing, and tactless exclamations.
And yet, I never felt ashamed of being a gaijin. In the midst of being conspicuously Caucasian, I also formed meaningful relationships with individuals in my neighborhood, church, and the surrounding area. This helped shape my sense of identity as an outsider with a felt sense of inclusion and acceptance.
Still a gaijin in the US
Ironically, I felt just as much of a gaijin in the US as I did in Japan. Because my parents were well-known among their large network, I could not escape being known as the American-looking Japanese kid. When I moved to the US for college, I delighted in being able to disclose my background at the time and place of my own choosing. For the first time in my life, I could be known simply as Levi—not Levi the Gaijin.
As an adult, I have grown to cherish my identity as the Gaijin from Japan. In the process of understanding and embracing this identity, I feel an increasing sense of inner integration, wholeness, and belonging that I yearned for in my youth. I have come to treasure my friendships with other “gaijins” from around the world—Third Culture Kids. We share a special bond and sense of belonging because of our similar experiences, interests, and conflicts with culture.
Grateful to be a TCK
Ultimately, I believe every human-to-human encounter is cross-cultural in nature. I feel indebted to my cross-cultural upbringing in Japan for shaping my personal identity and equipping me to navigate cross-cultural relationships with a comfort and confidence I would not have otherwise. I feel immensely blessed and overwhelmingly grateful to have been raised as a TCK in Japan. Now the cross-cultural venue is where I literally feel most at home.