subject: Life After Becoming An Ex-Pat [print this page] Life After Becoming An Ex-Pat Life After Becoming An Ex-Pat
I am now 46 years old but I have lived in Japan for, almost continuously, the last 21 years. Those few times in which I have returned to have a go in my homeland, the U.S., I have felt strange, out of place, and well, like a foreigner. It's not that I think I'm turning Japanese, though until about five years ago I really did think so.
After all this time, I have to admit that while Japanese culture has had a profound impact on my way of thinking, and although I often think?like? a Japanese, feel comfortable in Japanese social settings, and more or less speak the language fluently. Despite all this I have to admit that I have not in fact become Japanese at all but I am no longer "red blooded American" either (this has nothing to with patriotism, which I decline to discuss- the "pat" in ex pat simply stands for "patriate"). It took me many years to figure out, for the desire to belong is strong, that I am most indubitably a member of that rare wandering group: an expat.
But discovering that I was indeed an expat and not a Japanese or somehow still completely American was a liberating experience. When one is an oddball, what's the point of pretending otherwise? Now I'm free to prefer my native language, to look at to foreign lands for other expats in the hopes of maybe doing business someday, and a sort of adventurous feeling that the world is my oyster has overtaken me (where I will go with that I have no idea). I rather enjoy being an expat now, and if you're not an expat, and oddball odds are that you're not, I'm sure it must be very difficult indeed to relate.
