My Culture?

So I've been living in Japan for a few months now. And it's been... interesting. Can I say that it was even more difficult adjusting than I had thought? Like how I told my sister (who I'm living with while I'm here), last time I came to Japan I knew I was going home after the summer was done with. But this time it's different because I'm not going home to Thailand, after these next three months are over with I'll be going to the States (I have the smallest chance to visit Thailand for a month). There's something daunting about going back to the Sates. Maybe because I've learned while I'm here is that I do lack 'American grace'.
All of my siblings have grown up in Asia. My sister lived in the Philippines for ten years before we adopted her then lived in Japan with us for two before going to America for the first time and of course both my brothers lived in Japan for two years then Thailand for a number of years. Then there's me. Me and my sister got on the subject of our upbringing and how different her's was from mine (she is eleven years older so there was a difference in upbringing) and with a chuckle and shake of the head she said, "You are the most Asian of us all." I had never really thought of that before. I had never really considered that I was very Asian. But as I had written in my blog post about being a TCK, while in Asia I'm American, but while in America I'm Asian. So kind of a lose lose situation there. It's confusing and just... strange. I don't like hugs, I don't really care much for hand shakes (really just human contact with people I don't know is very uncomfortable), and how familiar people are with each other.
Growing up in Asia, I learned that you don't get too close with people, you don't act like they're your best friend when you first meet. But with Americans, it's different. They act so casual with one another, it almost reminds me of Filipinos and how, after one meeting, they're like best friends. It's odd. But then there is still that distance between two people when they first meet. So my question is almost always, 'how close is too close?' Because they're acting like they've known you forever, but then you ask a certain question and you're both strangers again. Like I said, it's odd.
And once again... it's been difficult. Besides my whole family being scattered across the globe, deep down I'm a homebody. I like to be close to my parents (what can I say, I'm the baby of the family?) and don't care much for things changing. So it's been difficult adjusting to the different culture and all because it is so different and let's also add that this is the first time I've been away from my parents for a long time (again I'm the baby of the family).
So while it's been fun, I've got to hang out with my sister more than I've been able to before and get to be around her family. I get to live in Japan again, I have great friends. But homesickness still hits me... I begin to miss the people I left behind there.

War to Peace

If anyone knows me well enough they will know that I am fascinated in World War II. All starting when I read The Diary of Anne Frank, but that's another story for another time. There is just that fascination in the war that happened not to long ago that set the world upside down. It had such an impact on the modern world that it's just fascinating to study.

Unfortunately I haven't gotten the chance to see many WWII sights in Europe, but I have had the great opportunity to see some sights in Asia. I wrote a post during Christmas about our trip to the Death Railway in Thailand. Since that trip I've been trying to think of how to put my feelings of going to former places of suffering and death into words.

"It's happy for deep people"

I will admit I do have a strange fascination in war, really who doesn't? There's something about battlefields that are sad. Or as to quote Sally Sparrow from Doctor Who, "I like old things. They make me sad. It's happy for deep people." And it kind of is. There's something about going to battlefields or old ruins, really just places where major events happened.

When me and my family in the Philippines visited Corregidor Island it was an overwhelming feeling. It was a place where the Americans had to surrender in May 1942. A sad moment in WWII history.
There were rows and rows of barracks where the Americans used to sleep, now left in ruins. The movie theater is also in ruins, unrecognizable. There are open fields, calm and peaceful. The beach where General MacArthur said his infamous words, "I shall return" is also calm. The sea water moves as it always has.
It's hard to imagine chaos in those fields. Because it's just so peaceful, as if nothing ever happened there.
Moving on to this month and my visit to Hacksaw Ridge, Okinawa, Japan. Beautiful scenery, you can almost see the entire island from the top of the ridge.
But according to history, during WWII Okinawa was surrounded by Allie battleships. They say you almost walk from one island to the other without touching water. Mind boggling. Looking over the ridge it's difficult once again to imagine. Because it's so peaceful, because it's so beautiful. The light blue ocean is calm without a ship in sight. There's a pleasant breeze and all is well.

"Wall riddled with a hand-grenade when committed suicide"

For myself, it's not difficult imagining the terror the Japanese felt when they saw the island was surrounded. Japanese jumped off cliffs to avoid becoming a prisoner of war. There is one room in the Japanese Naval Underground that we saw and just stunned me. Left me sick to my stomach.

Hell-fire Pass. What can I say about that place? It's in Thailand? Thousands of people died there after enduring great torture?
That really sums it up. But when you look through the bamboo forest, you see the most beautiful view. I remember the audio that we were listening to as we went on the tour, one survivor said (I am paraphrasing) that that was one blessing that God gave to the POWs there in the Pass. The blessing of beauty.
There are so many horrible things that happened there that's it's almost unbelievable. And yet it's such a beautiful place. Which I think is God's blessing on that place of torture.

All of these places and there are more places where great terror and torture happened. They happened. They're in the past, but does that mean we should forget it? We have peace because we have had war. We have learned from our mistakes.
War is fascinating to me because it's like the domino effect. This happened because this happened before it and so on and so forth. Everything happens because of something else. Nothing is just a solitaire event. It's happened because something happened before that 

Hiatus

So I should have wrote this blog post a while ago, but I posted on Twitter that I was going on a hiatus for the rest of July because of the business going on in my house and I'm due to leave in a only a few days. So the next blog post that will come from me will be from the beautiful country of Japan!
So until then!