terça-feira, 28 de junho de 2016

帰国する

2004, in a small city, in the countryside of Brazil, my birthplace.
I was in the 5th grade.
As my family was the only Japanese family in the town, me and my brother got used to be called the slant-eyed kids.
Or that's what I thought after all those years seeing through my eyes, other children pulling theirs so they could pretend their eyes were slanted like mine.
Until the day my geography teacher decided that Pearl Harbor would be a great movie to teach us kids about the Second World War.
Until all the kids who used to play with me during the lunch break said that the beautiful couple (formed by an American military pilot and an American military nurse) was attacked and destroyed by my "stupid grandpas".
Until half of the kids got up from their seats to tell me to go back to my country.
I could just wonder if I could ever get used to be an outsider.

For a long time the sentence "go back to your country" got stucked in my mind.
The country my grandparents came from.
The country where my dekassegi mother and father fell in love with each other.
The country where my older brother was born.
The country I had never been to, but I should go back to.

Powerfully the word "should" blocks every kind of "wants".
Japan was the unwanted country I was supposed to return to.

2004 now feels too far.
12 years ago in which 6 I tried not to think what not-belonging felt like.
Just so for the next 2 years I would see that maybe Japan could be a part of me I was neglecting and that I should try to reconnect to, so maybe I could figure out how to fill the emptiness inside.
So from 2010 to 2013 I didn't know anything but japanese soap operas I watched on the internet.
All that obsession made me think that maybe if canalized, could become something profitable, kind of...
I decided my major would be Japanese.
So for the next 2 years, from the age of 19, while guilty for not speaking, nor writing or reading my grandparent's language, I tried my best to learn how to speak and write and read just like they did.
But of course it didn't work.
Still destiny decided I was ready.
So in 2015 I got the opportunity to finally "go back to my country".
The country I inherited through blood.

But even though it was my grandparents home, they were not there to say welcome.
So for a long time I felt like I was at other children's ojiichan and obaachan's house.
In fact, every time I would say "お邪魔します"(excuse me for disturbing), I meant it.
I couldn't feel at home.

But why should I feel at home?
If I should be my own home.
When even if I lived in a house in front of the most beautiful beach in Brazil, or if I could spend the rest of my days at the most traditional and relaxing hot spring in Japan, it wouldn't be enough to make me feel comfortable if I'm uncomfortable under my own skin.
The yellow skin that adores to be tanned by carioca sun rays, is the same skin in which lies sweat when touched by heated groundwater that rises from the Japanese earth crust.
The sun is not mine.
The groundwater is not mine.
But the skin is so very mine, I feel whatever the skin feels.
Whether it is samurai's katana, or a tupi-guarani arrow, whichever touches my skin first.
I may never be able to feel a katana, or an arrow, even if I hold them.
But I feel my skin.
My skin holds me.
I live under my skin.
















sexta-feira, 24 de junho de 2016

In the first place

Almost 4AM and I'm writing my research thesis.
One month to 22 years old and I'm a mess.
To begin with, I don't know in which language I should write this.
Because I don't quite know who I wanna reach when I write this in the first place.
And I do know that by choosing English, overdramatic as it may sound, it feels like I chose not to reach those who only understand Portuguese, or Japanese.
And by that, I may have choosen to exclude from my "people I want to reach" list my parents, some of my dearest friends and my grandma.
Then I doubt my first choice and think that maybe I should've written this in Portuguese, which is my first language.
My English is always grammatically imperfect and I wonder if I can deliver the message.
So, yes, I should've chosen Portuguese.
But then I remember Portuguese is my native language, and still, I make grammar mistakes all the time. Which makes my inability of writing something gramatically correct even more embarassing than it does in English.
Plus, I'm always writing these huge texts in Portuguese. Portuguese speakers grew tired of my words some millions of characters ago.
You know what I should have done? I should've challenged myself by writing this in Japanese.
I mean, I study Japanese everyday for almost three years now. I should be able to express my feelings in Japanese already, shouldn't I?
But I think that if I wrote this in Japanese not only the people who don't understand Japanese, but also, those who have Japanese as their first language, no one would understand this, but me.
Or maybe even I wouldn't. I never know how to read the kanjis I wrote.
I don't say this in a self-deprecating way at all. It's just that, last week, my teacher of Japanese writing ran out of red pen after fixing my wording.
When she puts a question mark next to a word I wrote, it means she doesn't understand what I meant. Whenever I read the words next to the question marks, I read them in a question intonation. And I see what she meant when she didn't understand. I don't understand either.
Now that I stop to think about it, even if I write three versions of it, one in English, one in Portuguese, and after gifting my Japanese writing teacher a new red pen and begging her to fix my question marked words, one in Japanese, I won't be able to reach my brother, whose facebook has been deactivaded for months. Nor some of the amazing facebookless people I know. Nor my dogs, whom I realized don't really get words even if they are spoken words. I realized it after they were told millions of times not to piss in the carpet, but they still piss in the carpet anyways.
To conclude, I don't know how a self-note about my almost birthday got to my dogs' piss.
But I guess you got my point.
I didn't know who I wanted to reach when I began to write this.
I still don't.
From me to my dear unreached self.
Ps.: The one who should've read it was the one who wrote it. So I guess it's useless for anyone else to get here. If the you, who's not me, got here, I'm sorry for the futility.

terça-feira, 7 de junho de 2016

Cinco

Foram cinco meses de puro frio que em cinco segundos você me fez esquecer.
E me fez crer que cada moeda de cinco ienes que eu deixei nos templos dessa cidade foi pra te conhecer.
Foram necessários cinco dias depois das cinco horas que eu passei com você para me fazerem perceber que daqui a cinco anos você nem vai se lembrar de mim.
Daqui a cinco minutos eu vou dizer que te esqueci.
Mas nesse momento os meus cinco sentidos imploram por você.