Addlz

I am not a person who could be satisfied by whatever I could write here to represent myself. I am not a bad person, but I often make mistakes which I eventually learn from. I love my friends - who are my family - with all of my heart and, at times, selfishly. I love my biological family as well, but that is a longer story that doesn..t belong on a MySpace profile. I tend to be a complicated person who struggles with being overly analytical; although, that is not to say that there aren..t times when I act compulsively. I suppose I can be really hard on myself, but that is also what keeps me going. All of this may cause me to appear hard, but I..m a very affectionate person. I think I..ve experienced ..identity crises.. for most of my young life - something I am quite recently beginning to come to terms with. A major facet of this is also, ironically, the substance of what makes up quite a bit of my so-called identity: The dipolar element of being a product of two gravely different - and sometimes contradicting - cultures. One belonging to the United States and, the other, Japan. Being a native of Tokyo and growing up in the U.S. has been an ever-paradoxical experience for me. As a child, observing the two and naturally trying to decipher my ..place.. in both societies, I felt, for a long time, like I was being torn apart. My affinity towards one did not match my affinity for the other because they are both so different. I felt intensely passionate about the on-going rules of respect (for those and everything around you) that seems to be the centrifugal force sustaining/maintaining Japan as a nation that is both peaceful and efficient. On the other hand, the United States is a land whose philosophies are based on individual and political freedom and there is not much that I need to say to praise a unique place with - at the risk of sounding redundant - ..idealistic ideologies.. such as this. Finding the balance between the two has been an experience that has made me. It is the stuff of my values, personal goals, theories on life and how I intend to live it. It is what it is and I hope to be on a continuous path of self-education.