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Hi y’all! I don’t post about my personal life too often, but I wanted to share something that I internalized and felt shame for a while. (1/18)
About two years ago, I was able to go to Japan - this was huge for me being half Japanese. This was the first time I had the opportunity to be part of my mom’s culture, which had been kept away from me by my white father. (2/18)
You see, my father stopped my mom from teaching me Japanese and he talked down on my Japanese side heavily. My father refused and still refuses to acknowledge that I am Japanese. Most of my cultural connection comes from my mom and her food. (3/18)
I ended realized that my ex partner of ~5 years had very similar sentiments about me that my father had. Unfortunately realizing this long after this had happened. (4/18)
Back to the story, I ended being able to find some cheap tickets and went on a trip to Japan with my ex and about 7 of his best friends, all white. About half of his friends were respectful to the culture and I have nothing negative to say about those people. (5/18)
It was my ex, his brother, and their friend who constantly made jokes about striving to to be that “loud American tourist”, they would get upset at me for asking them to courteous to tradition, and would get mad when I refused to be a wingman to pick up Japanese women. (6/18)
I was met with nothing but anger from my ex when I pushed back on the group going to Aokigahara, the suicide forest, because the dead are NOT a tourist attraction and the pain they experienced should be respected. I didn’t go. (7/18)
What stung the most on that trip was that with these 3 men in particular, on one night, while we were walking to the subway station when they suddenly started making the jokes to me “you aren’t even Japanese, Sedona”, etc., in which my ex-partner enthusiastically agreed. (8/18)
In Japan, I felt more accepted than I do in the states. For the first time in my life I was surrounded by people who looked similar to me. I wasn’t asked the famous “you aren’t white but what are you?” question. I was able to simply just exist. (9/18)
That situation left me mortified. Already being mixed, I struggle with my identity and to find spaces I am welcomed in. To hear that, being in my mother’s country, by the person I trusted the most was shattering. (10/18)
I spoke up about it. What resulted in it? My ex-partner breaking up with me in a foreign country surrounded by his closest friend and I had no one. I was told I ruined his vacation and that I should have kept my mouth shut because it was “only 10 days w/ the boys” (11/18)
I even was met with more anger at the end of the trip when I refused to carry 20lbs (TWENTY POUNDS) of hentai internationally for his friend in my suitcase because I was already uncomfortable with the fetishization of Japanese women. (12/18)
I eventually came to realize that my ex both did not view me as a partner - a person on equal ground and that he dated me because I satiated his fetish for Japanese women and culture. (13/18)
More had happened but a tweet thread can’t encompass it all. That trip left me feeling so much shame that I internalized into self-hatred. I felt bad that I ruined my ex’s trip and I felt even more lost and uncomfortable with my identity. (14/18)
However through self-reflection and my therapist (we love her), I was finally able to recognize that that wrongs I believed I committed weren’t true. That shame that my ex, his brother, and his friend put on me were meant to wear me down and keep me submissive. (15/18)
Moral of the story: don’t be “that” tourist - respect the culture and traditions of the country that are are visiting and if you’re traveling with someone who is looking to explore their own culture, RESPECT THAT AND EMPOWER THEM. (16/18)
2nd moral: if you are struggling with your identity, and figuring out your place in the world and how you stand with others - give yourself grace and time. We all have been forced to conform to a white America that doesn’t want us to explore our cultures. (17/18)
3rd moral of the story: if you’re a weeb, go ahead and unfollow me rn 
(18/18)
(18/18)
