By Cara Lam

“Wow! Cara you completely blend in with the students. I can’t tell that you’re a foreigner at all!”

As a small Asian girl (5′2″ or about 157 centimeters) with tanned skin and (previously) straight, black hair, I’ve reluctantly gotten used to being mistaken as Japanese in the past year that I have lived in rural Japan. Besides the East Asian facial features that I inherit from my Chinese parents, nothing about me is “Japanese.” I was born in Australia, grew up in Hong Kong, then spent eight years living in Australia and the U.S. prior to coming to Japan to work as an assistant language teacher in the JET Programme. While I might look as if I am from Asia, a lot of my ways of thinking are Westernized.

According to a 2016 article in the Japan Times, 30 percent of foreigners living in Japan come from China alone. Yet, the fact that being Asian doesn’t necessarily mean being Japanese still seems like breaking news to many locals.

Ignorance at school

Past ALTs at my school have all been of non-Asian descent and to be honest, I never really thought that I was that different from them. This changed, though, when one of my Japanese coworkers tapped on my shoulder and told me I look exactly the same as the students.

Not knowing how to respond, I tried to not feel weird about my foreign identity being unrecognized. What I secretly hoped, though, was that I wouldn’t be considered a lesser foreigner than previous non-Asian ALTs at the school.

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