My earliest memory of growing up in Tokyo is in kindergarten hiding behind the trunk of a giant tree.
βShe has to be somewhere,β someone whispered. βI bet sheβs hiding again,β another snickered.
Like a rabbit sensing danger, I waited until their voices faded, then dashed past a group of giggling children to my usual hiding spotβthe bathroom.
No one looked for me there, not even the teachersβit was perfect. I ate lunch in that bathroom. I cried in that bathroom. I hoped in that bathroomβdesperately aching for a warm body to wrap their arms around me.
My dad was a diligent man who grew up in Nepal with a big family of five brothers and three sisters. He liked to recite over and over again with an animated face how he walked to school barefoot because his family couldnβt afford new shoes.
Despite that, he won a scholarship to a graduate program at an Ivy League in New York, and landed a job as a civil engineer in Tokyo.
He was brownβIndian brown. My mom was fairβBollywood fair. When we walked together as a family, I instinctively clung to her. I knew, even as a child, that Dadβs skin was βwrong,β and Momβs was βright.β
I was a mix of bothβββolive,ββ like it says on my Nepali passport.
I thought things would get better after kindergarten. I was enrolled in an international school full of gaijins (foreigners). I learned that the streets of Tokyo were where the real danger lurked.
Every day, my younger sister and I walked past a large Japanese public school full of eager children playing during recess. One afternoon, we were eating ice cream on the way home from school when I noticed three boys stomping toward us, their faces scrunched in disgust.
One of themβa chubby boyβ leaned inches from my sisterβs face and growled, βStop eating Japanese ice cream!β Then he slapped the cone out of her hand.
Splat.
I dropped my own ice cream, grabbed her hand, and we ran, leaving a remnant of a battlefield. After that, we didnβt dare take the same route again.
Hiding became a recurring theme of my childhood. I learned early that I was not the βright kind.β Not my nose, not my skin, not my eyes. Silence was the only way to survive, and I was a walking warning label. It was like my very presence disturbed the order of things, like I was a disruption just for existing.
My international school was more tolerant. My bestfriend was a feisty Yugoslavian girl named Jackie. She wore red lipstick to school and was constancly reprimanded for it, but she carried herself like a boss, that like-me-for-me-or-fuck-off-kinda air that pulled me to her.
It was nice to have a best friend, especially one who was white and pretty. I walked beside her on the streets of Tokyo like a bodyguard, except she was protecting me from the prying eyes of the Japanese. As long as I glued myself to her, I was safe.
I loved Japan. I considered it my motherland. We visited Nepal every two years, but I sounded like a foreigner speaking Nepali, which I didnβt know until my cousins started imitating me. My connection to my supposed home country felt like a portrait of Mount Everest hanging on a wall, a reminder that itβs there but Iβll never conquer it.
My mother spoke Japanese like a native, like I did. When her friends visited, they would say: βNihongo jyouzu ne!β (You speak such good Japanese!)
Of course I do, I wanted to say, I grew up here. Then would come the questions:
βDo you miss Nepal?β
βYou must miss your family.β
βWhat a beautiful country it must be!β
I would nod, but all along, I would be thinking: Didnβt they understand? Japan was my country too. I moved here when I was two. I bowed at all the right moments and understood the subtle social ranks of the language. But I was still just a visitor and would never be one of them.

Perhaps I had too high of an expectation. At my international school, my white friends were my human shields. The Japanese gawked at my them like starstruck fans.
But the ones who had it best were the hafusβhalf Japanese, half something else. Some were scouted on the streets by talent agencies looking for models. Their faces decorated billboards, commercials, and magazines. They were the right gaijin.
I learned to wear sunglasses even on cloudy daysβanything to hide, anything to blend in. At night, I would stretch my eyes to the sides in front of the mirror, trying to make them look more Japanese. I hated my noseβit stuck out like a nail.
Itβs not that I wanted to be invisible, but being seen felt dangerous, like the Japanese proverb: The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.

When Dad retired, my parents moved back to Nepal. They were always guests in Japan. It was time to go home.
But me?
Iβve renewed my passport many times since leaving, which means thereβs no official record that I ever lived in Japan. 17 years of struggling to fit in erased and exiled.
After I left Japan, I carried its trauma with me. For years, I didnβt talk about my childhood, not because I had forgotten about it, but because I didnβt yet have the words. I moved countries and made new homes, but an undercurrent of emptiness followed me. I kept searching for a place that would let me feel whole.
Now, decades later, I live in Germany with my husband and our six-year-old son. Heβs half German, fluent in three languagesβ Japanese, German, and Englishβand living in a country that accepts him as he is, which is intentional.
I never ever want him to live in a place that isolates, bullies, and crushes him. Iβm raising him with the tenderness I craved as a child, fiercely protective of his right to belong, to take up space without waiting for permission to exist.
As for me, Iβm starting over. Iβve come full circle to a place that reminds me of my upbringing. Iβm learning a new language and culture, and figuring out where I belong in this strange country I now call home.
I donβt speak the language well enough. I have no mom friends or any friends for that matter. All around me, everyoneβs white, and Iβm the only brown person in the neighborhood. My childhood scars are still very much still there. At times, I get so anxious that I canβt step out of the house. Itβs like the body remembers everything, every little thing.
The difference is, Iβm no longer that helpless child, although that child lives in me. Childhood wounds hurt, but they donβt define me.
Iβm a happy mom with a happy child and a good, giving man. Having lived in Tokyo, Hawaii, San Francisco, Nepal, Thailand, and Myanmar, I know belonging is not a passport (I became American at 25) or a place.
And as much as I adore my husband and our boy, they can be taken away from me. When I was 37, my mom died, my home perishing with her. I learned that belonging is not a person.
So, what is belonging?
I think belonging is not a full stop. Itβs not something to cultivate outside yourself, but rather an inner knowing. I havenβt figured out yet how to soften that intense fire in me that struggles to have a voice.
The roots are so far down, and the answers will bloom after many springs, and I must be patient.
Oh June this is beautiful! So powerful. So poignant. So relateable to me on one level and yet I carry the privilege of white skin. I look forward to reading more from you here. So lovely to read your words again my lovely xx
This is so heartbreaking and beautiful and just I have no words.
You may have no friends in Germany but you have one cheering you on always from Canada