What it’s like to be half Japanese half Turkish 🇯🇵/ 🇹🇷

What's up! It's me, Ruri. I'm a first-year medical student here in Turkey, and today we're talking about what it's like to be growing up half Japanese and half Turkish. I will timestamp every single thing that I mention in the description below so that you can skip to the part that you're interested in. So let's get started!

Firstly, let me talk about my background. My mom is Japanese, fully, and my father is fully Turkish. I was born in Japan but grew up in Turkey. I got all of my education in Turkey. I visit my grandparents, who are living in Japan, every summer vacation. Summer vacation in Turkey is three months, so I quite spent a lot of time in Japan. I also went to Saturday Japanese school here in Turkey when I was in elementary school and secondary school. There, we had math and Japanese lessons with other Turkish-Japanese mixed kids.

My name is Rudi Bedil. Rudy is my Japanese name, and Beril is my Turkish name. I usually use Rudy because I don't know, I quite love my name, and Beril is kind of harder for Japanese to pronounce. So I usually use my name, Rudy. I think Rudy is a quite easy name to spell, but I get my name wrong every single time in Starbucks. It's just like four letters: R-U-R-I. Is it that hard?

I'm currently taking a break from university, but when I was in school, it was pretty easy to make friends for me personally. I mean, I'm not a person who is in the middle of the class, but I always had friends because I think there is always something to talk about, and people usually notice that I'm mixed. In Turkey, people usually assume that I'm Asian, and in Japan, people notice at first sight that I'm mixed. So I always had something to make conversation about, about culture or about foods. I don't know about the other country; it really helped me to make friends when I was a kid, and it's also currently helping as well.

In Japan, if you're a foreigner and cannot speak Japanese very well, I think you kind of struggle to make friends. Japanese people are usually shy and usually not good at speaking English, so I think if you are fluent in Japanese and if you're a bit extroverted, you will definitely make friends. In Turkey, people are usually, I guess, pretty extroverted. When you like a new girl or new boy at school, usually people come up to you and ask who you are, where you're from, where you're coming from. So people are very open compared to Japan.

Let's talk about bento. I used to bring my own bento during high school. My mom is a chef, and she's obviously very good at cooking. She used to make very delicious bentos for me. People usually ask what I was eating, and they often say, "Can I taste that?" Usually, they don't like it, or sometimes they like it. Though I usually get comments like, "What? I think it's gross," and all that stuff. But I usually don't care because it's their loss; Japanese food is delicious.

I always get asked if I'm very good at karate, like people really dress in Tokyo, like Tokyo Drift or Fast and Furious. I feel like no, it's just a film, and people get very disappointed from that. I also get quite a lot of comments about sushi. People told me that it's very gross to eat raw fish, but I think sushi is delicious. When I meet people for the first time, they usually ask me to speak another language. When I'm in Japan, people usually ask me to speak in Turkish, and when I'm in Turkey, they usually ask me to speak in Japanese.

I kind of sometimes get annoyed by it because it's repeating and repeating and repeating, but I've now just gotten used to it. We talk in Japanese like that. I always feel like not being at home because I don't think that I think like fully Japanese and fully Turkish. I think my self-identification, my identity, my personality is very mixed. So when I'm in Turkey, I don't feel like a regular Turkish person. I feel like I can see things from different sides, so like from my Japanese aspect and from my Turkish aspect.

In Japan, I kind of feel like... I don't know. I don't feel like a foreigner as well, but I don't feel at home either. It's kind of a very weird feeling. But when I asked my other mixed friends, they say that they don't feel at home as well. So I think it's just a kind of thing that people who are mixed experience in both cultures at the same time.

Let's talk about my cultural identity. When people ask in Turkey, I say that I feel like Japanese, and in Japan, I say I feel like Turkish. But in reality, I'm just half and half; I just feel mixed. And then when I say that to people, they don't accept that. They say, "Pick one!" I say the opposite culture because I don't know, and I stopped actually trying to identify myself because I have no need to identify myself. I'm just mixed, and that's my identification.

So let's talk about the good sides and bad sides of being mixed. The good sides are: you are likely to be more open-minded compared to monocultural people because you see different cultures and you can compare them, giving you a different perspective. Secondly, learning new languages: I'm very good at learning new languages because I spent a lot of time learning languages when I was a kid. I'm fluent in four languages: German, Japanese, Turkish, and English. Japanese and Turkish are my mother languages, and English and German are my third and fourth.

I don't know languages, so yeah, I think language is a big point as well. Thirdly, there’s always having something to talk about. As I mentioned at the beginning of the video, it's easier to make friends. The fourth one is I think the way I look. I think I look pretty mixed; I love my kind of mixed-looking face.

Now, let's talk about the negative sides of being mixed. I think cultural identification is very hard when you're mixed. It takes a very long time to identify yourself, and I know that a lot of people get bullied because of their culture. I'm very, very sorry for that, but just stay strong. Appreciate your culture. If you don't know the other language, people usually expect you to be very good at that language. If you cannot speak that language, people usually say, "Oh, you cannot speak that language?!"

So I think that is a big expectation. Expectation from society and from your parents can be a bit different when you are mixed, and I think it can be pretty hard. Another downside of being mixed is that you really have to take the time to learn both of the cultures, and having a balance between both cultures is very hard, in my opinion.

Maintaining both cultures is so hard: trying not to lose your identity, learning to love both cultures, accepting both cultures, and especially if they are very different like mine. It takes a lot of time to accept both of them. Stay strong; it's going to be okay. It will take time to accept yourself and accept your culture, but it's all okay.

So, I think that's it for today. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments down below. I will appreciate every single one of your comments. So bye for now, and let me see you in my next video! Bye!