On Cultural Identity and Mixed Feelings

My friend Joe and I at the Christ the Redeemer statue, looking Asian as always. For the millionth, trillionth time, I am not Japanese, I think to myself, my blood boiling as yet another person here in Brazil calls me Japanese. Here in Rio, they have a saying called engolir sapos, literally “to swallow frogs,” but figuratively meaning those tense moments when you have something you’d like to say angrily, but you bite your tongue and keep it to yourself.