I’m a dual-national living in a third country. I’ve never lived in just one country. This past year in China has made me learn about and, appreciate a lot more my various countries.

So Aceface, did your time in the US make you feel more “Japanese”?

I’m an American who’s spent 12 of the last 14 years abroad, in Chile, Malaysia, and South Korea. There have been many moments of “awakening” as you describe.

In ‘93, there were visits to the Instituto Chileno-Norteamericano in Santiago for magazines before the Internet and a lecture on Toni Morrison winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. There was also reading “Moby Dick” in Chile, meeting Chilean devotees of Walt Whitman, and commies interetested in the Haymarket Affair and Vermont Secessionism.

In Malaysia in ‘96, there was an inivation to the embassy and and invitation to the apartment of four Iraqi contracters who called me the “Friendly Enemy.” The architct among them gave me as a gift the design he had for his house based on his hero, Frank Lloyd Wright.

In Korea, where to begin? There were idiotic anti-American protests at the university I worked for from ‘97 to ‘00 that led me to defend my country vociferously.

More recently, my discovery of paleoconservatism and paleolibertarianism have led me to reject univeralism in political matters and to a deeper devotion to the liberties gained by English-speaking peoples over the last 800 years, which are fast-eroding.

Actually I tried to be as “American” as possible when I was there.I have no bad experience being Japanese there.Only I’ve got nervous when trade issues comes up to the headlines and people ask you “why you guys cheat in trades”.

I guess I was lucky to come back before WW2 become huge issues in the 90’s.In the 80’s there were zero friction with Asian kids and us Japanese.

I came from a liberal family and raised in Kichijyouji in the late 70’s and 80’s,back then it was(still is) a very liberal/leftist teacher’s union strognhold who spends hours on “peace”education in elementary school.Oh yeah I’ve learned about Nanjing massacre and March 1st movement crushed by mounted Japanese officers in 4th grade,someting doesn’t fit into wide spread foreign Japanese hype.

My first WTF american experience was those flag allegiance and anthem singing at class in the morning.Something considered as “nationalistic”back now and then in the land of rising sun.Coming from leftwing background such as myself,it was jawdroppinig experience.

My real “awakening” came years after coming back to Japan and that was during the first gulf war and reading Karel Van Wolfren’s “Enigma of the Japanese Powers”,but that’s another story….

Minhea:

It took me 2 years to come to terms with who I was, and I have to say that I still don’t know where I belong, exactly.

That’s one curse about living overseas, and I almost feel the same way. If the experience alters the outlook or values that you grew up with, you can ultimately feel that the hometown or country that created those values becomes a more foreign than the country you visited.

To share my own experiences, I first came to live in Japan at age 17 and spent the next ten years equally between Japan and the eastern US, going back and forth between the two and ultimately having trouble deciding where I wanted to be. I felt that I “should” be in the US —but found that in the balance of things, I was happier in Japan. And as much as I love America, there is something about it that makes it feel like a foreign country that I just don’t “get” anymore.

I never feel more American than when I’m in China, where I’ve spent the last three years. Is the opposite true? Not really- I come from San Francisco, and living in an international city helps soften the blow of reverse culture shock. Still, when family members and friends point out my evolving accent and acquired habits I am reminded how much living overseas has changed me.

I love that YH and Chirol are country boys. I’ve always found it easy to relate to the Mexican guys I meet from little dusty villages to work in big cities like Chicago where I live now.
The unfortunate truth for me is that once I left home I’ve never quite felt like I fit in anywhere I have lived, definatly not home, but in few of the cities I’ve lived in. (Chicago included, San Francisco was my favorite, though). So, I’ve come to see myself as kind of a wild goose, forever on the loose.

Although a New Zealander, I grew up in Malaysia in the late 1960s and early 1970s (my father was in the diplomatic service). So I never had an awakening, as such, but the experience of childhood in another country has left a very deep and life long impression on me. It’s not that I feel different from other New Zealanders – except in the sense that I’ve always had an acute and, I’d like to think, realistic sense of a much wider world, of which NZ is a rather small and unnoticed part. This is often lost on many New Zealanders.

I had an epiphany of sorts much later, after I had returned to New Zealand after a period overseas. I was working in government, and much of my work involved negotiating with Maori, the indigenous Polynesian people of NZ. Early on I saw a map of NZ which only had Maori tribal names listed against tribal territories – it opened my eyes in quite a powerful way to the reality that there is “another country” in NZ, beyond that of European society, an impression that was subsequently confirmed when I learned much about local histories and landmarks from the Maori negotiators I was working with.

Great post Curzon.

Serving overseas in Japan for 3 years and visiting foreign countries for a few days at a time in the Navy, I always felt deep shame at being “American” because of the disgraceful attitudes and actions of some of my shipmates and other American tourists.
This feeling has continued since being in America, dealing with a large body of totally uninformed or misinformed people who have little idea of what the world beyond their town or city is like beyond their limited liberal, conservative, religious or ethnic biases and talk loosely of bombing those “Arabs in Iran” or throwing up walls around the country. Looking forward to this feeling going away, but I don’t see it happening anytime soon.

The only exception is when I explain America to my HK Chinese fiancee. With her I do my best to be upfront about our failings but unabashedly patriotic and proud of events like the American Revolution, the Civil War, Civil Rights Movement and Pres. Reagan’s role in pushing the Soviet Union into the rubbish bin.

I’ve always had an acute and, I’d like to think, realistic sense of a much wider world, of which NZ is a rather small and unnoticed part. This is often lost on many New Zealanders.

You could say the same thing about Canada.

Elambend: I wouldn’t describe myself as a country boy, I actually grew up in a mid sized city almost all my life, albeit near rural areas.

Eddie: What! You aren’t ready to bomb the Arabs in Iran? Go to France =) Actually, you should park that cynicism and instead try to explain and educate your people. That’s how I deal with it. There’s no point arguing with most and with your knowledge, most people wont have much of a response because they realize they just dont know anything.

I lived in Germany (Heidelberg) when I was 7. Other than being relegated to goalie on the soccer team (Americans could only use their hands, apparently), I loved it and didn’t want to move back. All throughout school I was able to travel a lot in Europe and Egypt with my parents, and I always enjoyed it. I do feel more American while overseas, both in a good and bad way, but in the same way that I feel more like a New Englander when in Texas, and more like a Bostonian when in Maine, and more like a suburbanite when in Boston.

Generally I think my travel at a young age helped me see the similarities in different cultures and people much more than the differences that a lot of the previous commenters write about. After playing soccer with kids in Germany when I was 7 and kids in Egypt when I was 11, the differences that matter to me was being relegated to goalie in Germany, and being forced to take off my shoes when playing in Egypt (so I didn’t have an unfair advantage).

My awakening really came when I got back to my rural little town in the mountains….a tiny town in the Rockies.

. A good friend of mine is from Red Deer; she remembers fondly summer sunsets at 10PM, 50 below temperatures in the winter, and warming chinooks.