Halves

My sophomore year of high school, my mother abruptly announced that we were moving to Japan to be closer to my aging grandparents.A month later, just two days after packing my entire life contents into four cardboard boxes labeled "BEDROOM" in pungent Sharpie and sending them and their haphazard ducttape job across the Pacific Ocean, I found myself on a crowded subway platform in Yokohama, Japan, jittery with nerves that inevitably come with moving halfway across the world to find yourself commuting to the first day of 11th grade in an unfamiliar country, alone.Admittedly, Japan isn't entirely unfamiliar to me.I was born in Tokyo and am half Japanese, or "hafu."My childhood is colored with soft, simple memories of blinking Japanese vending machines; unicycles, their leather seats sticky under the summer sun; and starlit, cricket-filled nights glued to the sumo match on the television screen.I attended a public school near my grandparents' home for five consecutive summers, and I return to Japan every year.Following my parent's divorce when I was eight, I have lived exclusively with my Japanese mother.However, I am also half-American; my family moved to the states when I was a toddler, and I grew up across Portland, Oregon; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Palo Alto, California.Several summers ago, I attended a family reunion in Texas, and amidst the mason jars of chewing tobacco, smoky sunset hot dog cookouts, and garishly neon floral-printed swimsuits hung to dry on a tree by the lake, I was reminded that I am equally from this, too.I have never spent more than three years at a single school and have always struggled straddling the line between my Japanese and various American identities.In Japan, I am American.In America, I am Japanese.In both places, I am an "other."Culture is made up of the nuances of the local community, and in the countless times I have been uprooted and replanted in new and different cultures, I have lost touch with all of them.That morning, I remember weaving through the crowd of half-asleep blurs, catching glimpses here and there, echoes of my childhood in Japan that left quickly-fading imprints like footprints in the sand.The crisp, neatly pleated white of a collared shirt.The persistent blinking red light of the vending machines lining the walls.The smooth, scuffed handrail of the escalator as I descended into the masses jammed onto the platform.I was intoxicated by the sheer number of people that ebbed and flowed from each passing train, spilling into the platform and rearranging themselves in neat lines, heading into the bright white sunlight that stood in stark contrast to the dimly lit underground.