In the same way, I would think that people like my mom and her friends would see these Asian fusion restaurants as a unique interpretation of Japanese cuisine filtered through the tastes and experiences of Chinese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, etc. immigrants to Canada (or the U.S., for you Asian Americans). My mom’s friend used to run an authentic Japanese restaurant, so that could be one reason it really bugs her to see restaurants pop up everywhere capitalizing on the popularity of sushi and all things Japan by selling themselves as a “Japanese” restaurant even though none of the staff speak Japanese and the chef wasn’t trained by a Japanese sushi chef. While I can understand that, I also can’t blame Asian-Canadians looking to make a living capitalizing on the ignorance of non-Asians as to what exactly constitutes Japanese culture, and again, it’s not just non-Asians who can’t tell us apart, because non-Japanese come up to my sister and me all the time, asking us if we’re <insert non-Japanese Asian ethnicity here>. Or even worse, they start randomly talking to me in their native tongue, blithely unaware that I don’t understand a word they’re saying. I don’t get offended when a fellow Asian mistakes me for one of their own, but I always feel a little guilty having to explain that I’m Japanese: it’s hard to hold one’s head up high when faced with the particularly brutal war-like tendencies of one’s own native country, especially in the presence of those who may have directly suffered under Japanese Imperial rule, never mind that I wasn’t even born then yet, it still makes me feel guilty.

As well, what exactly constitutes a Japanese? My parents have Caucasian friends who are more culturally Japanese than I am, who can read, write and speak Japanese better than I can: I’d say they are more Japanese than I am. I met a guy the other day who was from Bangladesh, and he spoke Japanese to me and said he learned it when he was in Japan for a couple of years. He went on and on about how much he loved Japan and Japanese people, culture… it was really kind of embarrassing for me, because I really don’t know a whole lot about what it actually means to be Japanese, despite having been born there. I grew up in North America, and I’m culturally more ‘Canadian’ (read Caucasian Canadian, I suppose) than anything else, that I just don’t feel it. I have a Facebook friend who went off to Japan a couple of years ago and she’s already able to read, write and probably speak it better than I can. She’s definitely got a larger vocabulary in Japanese than I do. Those are the kinds of people I consider ‘Japanese’, not people like me. I’m only Japanese solely due to a random toss of the dice of life, whereas I consider the people who really love Japanese culture, who live it, who want to be it, are what I would call real ‘Japanese’.

Oh, wait. I know. It’s because the bollocks of Asian people grow when they’re fighting other Asians.

Oh, wait. I know. It’s because the bollocks of Asian people grow when they’re fighting other Asians.