Since moving to a relatively rural prefecture in Japan to teach English, I've often been mistaken for or passed as a Japanese person, and perhaps this is no surprise. Though not fluent, I can sustain a basic conversation for at least a few minutes. But I'm not Japanese—my nationality is American, my ethnicity Chinese, and my feelings, when I am taken for a Japanese person, are conflicted.

"Do you have any specific suggestions for improvement for Elena? Anything that would help you learn more in class?"

“I think that she has to feel a little bit more confident.”

As I pressed the button on the door of the green fence and waited to be buzzed into my new secondary school, I felt close to losing both my resolve and my breakfast.

Today, my son Indrek was supposed to bring a candle and two hardboiled eggs to school for an art project. In his school planner, he had written “pikk küünal,” which means “long candle,” so I’d bought a long, white taper candle. When I double-checked his school’s messaging system this morning before school, however, the teacher had written that students should bring a “piklik küünal,” which, as far as I know, means “oblong candle.” Shit, I thought…