Joe is Japanese

I just read about this at Racialicious. It's an upcoming web animation called "Joe is Japanese", based on life stories from a hapa in Japan.



I've sometimes wondered what my life would be like had I stayed in Japan instead of going to America after kindergarten. I also have a very un-Japanese name! I don't think my life would have been impossible, but it would have been very, very hard.

Here's what Joe says:

The show is based on (mostly) true events from my life. It wasn’t easy growing up a half-breed. No one culture will ever be yours to embrace. No matter how hard I tried, I could never really be Japanese, and as I got older I realized that I might have overcompensated and became too Japanese. You’d have to be Japanese to understand what I mean by that one... :-P

... I get to tell random stories like that. Stories that made up my life… they made me into what I am today, (mostly) Japanese.