even today when we were like walking around
yeah a lot of people were like surprised when i spoke to them in japanese they did and you
speak perfectly too and they still gave you the oh your japanese is so good right right
it's easy to feel like a foreigner in your own country when 98 percent of the population around you is
ethnically exactly the same but what does that mean for the rising number of mixed families
and mixed people here in japan well today we're getting some perspective on that because i've
gotten the chance to walk around with a japanese man who's grown up in his own country just a
little bit different from everybody else so my name is jesse and i'm 23 years old and i was born
and raised in japan so my dad is from nigeria and my mom's in japan even when i was a kid i guess i
got stared at on a train in a restaurant i know that feeling but especially when i go to like
a restaurant with my mom since my mom is japanese and I look foreign a lot of them don't think that
we're family okay yeah they'll be like who's this good um my mom would be like oh that's my
child and they didn't believe her yeah they didn't believe yeah well you seem to have a
really good attitude about it so how do you kind of brush it off how does it not bother you i try
not to care too much about what other people like think about me and just try to be myself i think
people liked you're a lot and it's more social than i am people are just like sure i'll talk to you
all right it's funny and i think another reason why is because they think i'm a foreigner so
that's why like they're very friendly and trying to help well we took this to the streets actually
pretending to be english-speaking foreign tourists to see if anyone would catch on to jesse's game
and the more people that we talked to the more shocked we were with the results so make sure
you watch this to the very end so you know we can get like ice cream from like convenience stores
oh that one they have ice cream what's the what's the best ice cream
blue it's a blue ice cream ice cream
soda
good very good
excuse me excuse me excuse me do you know where the bathroom is located i don't know
no english
toilet?
this is a difficult one
Not Toyota. Not the Toyota cars.
Toyota?
Not Toyota.
like i said i went to the school in the states until like last year so i think that's how i was
able to yeah learn english even though japanese is my first language that's amazing so when you
were a kid and you're growing up in this bilingual household what language did you use at home a lot
of people assumed that we speak in english but it's only japanese really strictly japanese yeah i
didn't know how to speak english to i was 12. when you're walking around do people that don't know
you speak to you in japanese or do they speak to you in english usually english every single time
go straight just go straight just keep going all the way
a couple people guessed that you were japanese like right away
right right i i guess i do have like some japanese facial features too so yeah what's your name
Hi nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you. Hiroto
Your English is so good.
Ah, a little bit.
are you guys a student or are you do your work i work work are you working
so i want to buy ice cream
it's like i want to buy hot look at how much he's sweating look at this oh this way this way
okay let's go together where are you where are you guys going
oh they're so cool they were gonna take you all the way to the ice cream shop
and they don't even know you i know they're willing to help me they're
so nice i know they're really nice let me take you guys to the convenience store
yeah i didn't want to like say no cause yeah wow such kindness to strangers
do you feel like you could fit in more in the us or more in japan oh definitely more in the
us really and you're not even american i mean you're nigerian and japanese right
you fit in more in the us right because in the u.s people don't really like judge me
based on like how i look because like in the u.s i feel like it's more diverse you know a
lot of people from different backgrounds different religions different nationalities but in japan i
stand out yeah even like walking through shibuya or like shinjuku wherever i always stand out so
you stood out less in the u.s you weren't in a big city indiana right i think indiana is kind
of like the heartland i'm kind of surprised to hear that you feel like people judged you less
in the us than they did here definitely definitely yeah and you're not you're not a citizen of the us
either but i'm not yeah because like japan is a homogenous country so you don't really
get to meet with yeah people like me because they're like mixed and foreigners real sumo
HI!
yeah wow that's amazing real sumo
can I see your biceps?
you missed it you could have said something to him i should have
you felt why didn't you i i cued you i know i should have uh i missed the
chance yeah you did what happened you're okay with the girls but you get nervous around men
i got nervous a little bit because he's a real because he's big it's big i was like
maybe you'll hurt me
but like i have a lot of mixed kid friends who went through bullying in elementary school
middle school and they stayed home at home school was the best situation yeah not that bad right
my dad didn't want me to go with getting bullied and uh in japan because that's
like a huge thing especially for mixed kids a lot of them get bullied like elementary school
so so he was worried about that yeah he was really worried but he worked really hard so
like he can send me and my siblings to school in the states so that's why i considered living
in the states after i graduated because like i feel really comfortable living in the u.s but
i wanted to like come back to japan and because i like the food here my family lives in japan
so i wanted to like stay here for a couple years and see how it goes and let's see whether if i
want to go back to the states or if i have you know good experience in japan then i might stay
here so okay so you you might stay here you might move to the us that's kind of on the
on the table for you right so i'm just out there seeing the options everybody should subscribe to
jesseogn thank you so much and hit the like button and see you next time
we can do more collabs together for sure for sure alright see you guys bye