is that good yeah we're getting a performance
That kid
You made a fan
He was into it.
Wait until you get a little bit older.
He was into it. He's like "Look at this babe"
I'm sorry boo boo. You're going to have to wait a few years.
oh here we are yes I got my starbucks like okay
and I'm with my friend Katie hello Katie nice to meet you
you might have seen Katie in another video I just thought she was so interesting
I just wanted to interview you and ask like a few questions
so what's your back story like your family and where you're from
my mom is Japanese and my dad is from the states
He is from California my mom is from Yamagata mostly raised in Sendai and
I am from Aomori japan so like northern Japan countryside
and I've lived my life half and half so it's half my life in
Japan half of my life in the states right now I've been in Japan for longer
I think than in the states and when you were
growing up did you use english in the house or did
you use japanese everybody always asks me that
question we we mix and what's funny how much like how much we mix like we mix
within our like sentence within the sentence it's mixed
it's not like that i speak japanese and they speak english it's like i speak
japanese and english and they do japanese and english like it's
at the same time
Oh, what's he have? i'ma taste it
Rice cracker
Salty
Cheese
Salty Japanese soy sauce
he thinks you don't speak japanese we're gonna go and come back all right
yeah i like you're gonna come back so when well this is a tourist spot but
when you go walking around do people speak english to you oh yeah 100%
they speak english see all the time most of the time most of the time they do
And i try to see how far that goes
because they're trying their best speaking English
i don't know don't worry about it like they're trying so
you know some people talk to you in english because they want to use their
english and practice right right that's true
so like until they give in i'm not giving in
are they ever surprised that you speak japanese
They be like "What the hell"
oh
and you went to school in japan too right so um
especially with anime and manga and all that there's so much about
high school in japan and school in japan is it really that cool
is it really as cool as anime makes it If ya'll think
if y'all think it really wasn't all that pretty like it wasn't it wasn't
that like that like you know oh it's anime
you're you're like memorizing words and taking a lot of tests
in my mind that's what it is it's just a lot of memorization and
hardcore studying and like a lot of pressure
The Japanese education system needs an update but you know
we're taking our time and they still made you take english class didn't they
which was hilarious i was probably that one student that
they didn't want in class. You're like "Your not doing it right"
Mam, let me see your passport. You ain't got one. Umm, I thought so.
yeah that wouldn't go very well in japanese school. because they can be strict like
no nail polish no this no that everyone needs to look like this
put your hair back do this okay so everyone needs to look like this was
my issue because everybody don't look the same
different is not bad
when i was teaching in china like i taught little kids
they would like go up and look at me teacher why are your eyes blue
teacher why do you have blonde hair they would like
i don't know they were like enthralled curious they were so little
It's adorable.
There's a lot of new things you don't know you'll learn soon i was i think i was
their first foreign student so i did set a lot of new rules i did
set a lot of new rules middle school you don't get that much
freedom because you're supposed in that you're supposed to learn i guess like
disciplined and you know being strict or like you know following rules
and stuff like that so you had to have your hair up if it's past your shoulders
okay but when you go to high school you get a little bit more like freedom you
get a little more leeway so even if your hair was past your shoulders so you can
have your hair down first year in high school my science
teacher came up to me in the hallway after the bell ring and everybody else
was in the hallway so like you're trying to humiliate me that's not going to
happen he came to me in the hallway he asked he
told me to put my hair up because my hair looked like it got it was done like it was it had been done but you didn't notice
I'm black. If you didn't notice. i've been here for half a year but you know if he is over here i know i fit in very well
But I am a little bit different
You must So like it was an issue
well to him it was an issue the reason why is because they want you to come in
your natural state when you're still learning like you're not here to look
pretty for anybody you're here to learn right so
i'm coming as i am that was mostly for me and my little sister so she would
probably go to the same school that i'm going to right
this is not going to happen to anybody else that comes after me like this
shouldn't be an issue that was that was one of the tough
things it's not really tough it's just you have to
if you could speak up it's not tough but when you're when school is all you
have it's a small world it's a small world so
you want to be able to fit in and not stand out because you won't have a place
to be right right luckily i had a place to be
outside of that so it didn't bother me too much
wow the weather got so nice the sun is always on my side
Do you have dual citizenship um it's about to be done
over i gotta fix that you gotta pick one i gotta pick a side i
guess whatever that means you have to choose an american passport
or a japanese passport so i guess that's the rule when you
reach a certain age i'm guessing that's what it is i'm gonna look into it i'm
asking questions like do i have to is there a loophole
would you rather live here in japan or go to america oh
current situation i might want to stay here
right with yeah right now in that case you take japanese
citizenship then but a japanese passport is more valuable than american passport
yeah you can get into a few more places but i mean
it means that you can't get social security in the u.s and it's hard to
invest in the stock market and stuff like that pros and cons and i
mean yeah that's a tough decision to make like right now
especially now especially now wow
I haven't been here since that day.
welcome back
Guess who's back?
Back again.
Katie's back with a friend.
Yes! That was so lame.
how about what you're doing now you're a dancer
i've been dancing since i could remember but when i get when i started getting
serious about it was in like my second year of high school i was
dancing with people like we had events and clubs and stuff
like that or outside of clubs and like i just got connected with a lot of
people that were dancing out in the streets i'd be like hey
how do you do that because i want to kind of get into
kind of get into that what you're doing over there because it's cool
hello, I've seen your dance before.
Thank you so much. I'm so happy to hear that.
that got me known by a lot of other dancers and then i got the opportunity
to audition for a professional basketball
team wow or Aomori's professional basketball
team they're first members and stuff like that so i did that for two years
that led me to learn more about different types of dance like i did
zumba i was a zumba instructor for two years
two years maybe like half a year because i wanted to move down here so
it's like i moved from aomori to tokyo you don't have plans to go back to
america and live there again not anytime soon with everything going on
i'll see you guys in a couple years.
Maybe a little bit later.
do you have anything else you want to add like any
anything you want to say or have do you have a funny story to share about japan
or talk about something you like or dislike
or whatever wait well so i wanted to talk about if
you do visit japan but i don't know if that's gonna happen anytime soon but if
you do if you do visit japan though bring cash
make sure you have cash they don't take a card like they do in
other countries because usually everybody pays with cards like they
take cards They don't hold cash
Here you need it it's a very tangible society you know they
they have techo still they write things in notebooks really old school they like
paperback books they like cash for um yeah they still
have files uh in offices physical files you gotta
Physical files go through drawers and like dig through like you gotta put in actual
work to find stuff that's another thing japan you might
think japan is really high-tech and we still use fax machines they'll
send me an email to send them a fax like that um but that's like really old
school like they're really old school they like
to upkeep their tradition you know some things you don't need to keep going
it's ironic that you were just talking about how old school japan
is and we found a pay phone my grandma used to collect like the cards that you
can like pre-charge for the pay phone there's a hundred yen
to make a call how long i wonder how long they have it
in english it's a little bit more high-tech maybe
it's for foreigners that don't have a cell phone here
that's old school so case in point we weren't lying it's really old
it's really cool it's like a retro vibe so you get a good feeling like oh this
is like hippie or whatever yeah i don't know i'm
sure people have some questions for you too and maybe we can answer
those in another video so if you have questions for katie
write them in the comments section below and uh we'll try to do another video and
I might answer them and I might not you set the bar really high right here
Don't tell me what to do. No, I'm kidding.
You actually sound a lot like me that's why we get along
i don't like authority either i'm not good at it
i got a japanese pattern mask okay see is that pretty
it's all right see i didn't bring my fancy mask because i forgot it at home
kimono this is like kimono material really i think it's modeled after that
that is like i don't know if it's real but
that's okay that's what they told me that's why i paid extra money for it
it was expensive japan japan is expensive it is expensive
It is expensive. bring cash alright see you next time