It’s been about a year since I moved back to Singapore. I say “about” because I remember it being early Nov but I don’t remember the exact date (I’m bad at dates; for example, I once got two out of three of my sibling’s birthdays wrong. And yes, they have not let me live that down).

The year has definitely flown by. I still feel like I just left.

And I know I wrote about realising that Japan is also my home, but I still have this thought:

You are not allowed to miss Japan. 

On one hand, five and a half years is a long time and living there influenced who I am today.

On the other hand… I don’t want to be one of those people that lay claim to countries that they have no right to. You know, those people who travel overseas for a week and come back with a new accent and continue to post throwback photos years later.

Those people.

So I ask myself, do I really have a connection to Japan? Am I making this connection to be more than what it is?

Am I allowed to lay claim to this country?

Because essentially, this is what all this ‘imposter syndrome’ is all about. Do I have the right to claim a part of Japan for my own, to say that yes, this country is important to me and I am allowed to miss it (and talk about it until all my friends tell me to stop).

To be honest, I’m sure that if I talked about this to my Japanese friends, they’ll say I’m silly and ask me when I’m coming back for a visit. But I’ve read so much criticism about people laying claim to spaces that aren’t theirs that honestly, I’m a bit afraid. While I don’t think there’s much legitimacy in many of the criticisms*, I can’t deny its influence on me.

Sometimes, I feel like I’m being melodramatic and that I need to take a break from the internet (and ideally on a trip back to Japan). But no matter how many times I tell myself that, the nagging thought that “you don’t get to miss Japan, you only lived there for five years, now get over it” reappears.

And I don’t know how to stop it**.

*History shows that all cultures are influenced by each other and that it’s pretty ridiculous to draw a line around a culture and say “no touching!” – in fact, I’ve never seen an instance where the Japanese agreed with the foreigners rushing in to ‘defend’ their culture. But that’s a whole other post.

**Writing this out makes me wonder if this is related to how my brain tends to grab hold of one thought and repeat it until it’s a fact to me. Plus my counselor has pointed out before that I tend to be insecure in my friendships and this could be related to. BUT WHAT IF I’M WRONG (and I should accept that Japan is in my past and not dwell on how much I miss it. But let’s stop here before I rehash this entire post)?