This semester is coming to a close. Tuesday marked the last day of finals for me, and I leave Copenhagen officially on the 20th. This weekend, I’ll be visiting Odense (one of the island regions of Denmark) and then Amsterdam to meet up with friends from Tokyo. I’ll only have a few days after this trip to enjoy Copenhagen, a city that I’ve come to adore and respect so much in the past four months.
I wrote a reflection essay for my Danish Language and Culture class, and thought I’d share that with you today.
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I barely read or slept during the eleven hour flight from Tokyo. I kept shifting positions and tried to read myself into a comatose state – which usually does the trick – but nothing seemed to work. Every other 10+ hour flight I’d been on in my life I’ve immediately fallen asleep on, but I should have known this was going to be a bit different. Other than the week I’d spent in Italy and two weeks in Ghana during high school, the majority of the long flights I’d taken in were transpacific: taking me from home in Tokyo to family, camp, or school in the US. Despite attending an international school my entire life and being raised as a “global citizen” (my school and parents’ motto) my perception and understanding of the world had been predominantly shaped by the two countries I have citizenship in. Maybe that’s why it took me so long to come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t in Denmark for a vacation and adjust to a regular pace of life here; to me, this wasn’t home or even a home away from home and finding my place in it took longer than I’d expected.
That’s why I’m so grateful I chose to live with a host family. Despite being further away from the city center, the bond I’ve been able to form with this beautiful group of people is one I wouldn’t trade for a shorter commute to class. My hostmom Camilla is Danish and my hostdad Julian is from England, so much like my house growing up, in this home bilingualism isn’t just encouraged – it is the norm. My host sisters (four years old and seven years old) are going through the primary stages of learning two languages simultaneously, and watching their struggles and triumphs in maneuvering two tongues remind me a lot of my brother and myself when we were kids. I love hearing Sophie say things like “skal you play with me outside nu?” or watching Izzie take the two extra seconds to find the right English word to replace the Danish one she thought of initially. Bilingualism is beautiful because it forces us to be more critical about our word choices but also allows us to gain insight into a culture through its mode of communication.
So, I came to Denmark wanting to learn Danish. I was told I wouldn’t be able to pick much up in four months, but I was determined to at least try to communicate with my Danish host family. But seeing as they spoke English pretty perfectly and after finding out that most Danes do as well, I realized there was no necessity to my learning Danish. It’s been fascinating living in a country where multilingualism is the norm, and finding myself in a space where I do not speak the dominant language. Because despite having travelled quite a bit since I was young, the languages spoken in the only two countries I’ve ever lived in were my native languages.
But the fact that I was studying at an American study abroad program filled with American students shaped my experience in a way that made me reflect on my identity as an American in a foreign country. Because despite having an American father, an American passport, and an American accent (whatever that means), I never really identified as being from the United States of America. I’ve felt this distance from my American identity especially since starting college in the States, and my allegiance or connection to the country I was born and raised in has become a lot stronger the longer I’ve been away from it. My fellow non-American friends at DIS always joke that we are “abroad while abroad” since US has barely or never really been home to us. When our American peers compared Copenhagen to their home towns in Alabama or Connecticut or California, or commented on how Americans would handle a situation differently from Danes, or how Danish history is so much longer than American history, we were making these comparisons to Japan, Taiwan, Nepal, India, or Ecuador.
I found that Japan and Denmark are actually surprisingly similar. Surprising, because of the geographical distance between the two nations and the physical differences of its people. However, the modesty of the Danes reminded me a lot of the Japanese way of coexisting. While there is no Japanese version of the Janteloven, this idea of humility and not sticking out from the group is very much embedded into public spaces, education, workplaces, and social interactions in Japan as well. There is a Japanese saying which translates to “nails that stick out will be hammered down” that I thought of when we first read about the Law of Jante in Danish class. The peace, cleanliness, and quiet on public transportation that I missed so much in Boston existed in Copenhagen because of this group mentality, this resistance to stick out from the group by being loud or messy or rude.
I’ve loved being able to make connections like these between this country and my home country because I was starting to feel hopeless about Japan. Especially after this summer when parliament passed an unconstitutional amendment that allows Japan to have an offensive army for the first time since 1945, and from the anti-hate speech rallies I’ve attended with my mom and brother that made me realize how much discrimination and unsolicited hostility some immigrants must face in Japan, my love for my home country has been stained. That’s why it’s been great to see a country like Denmark with all of its progressive aspects struggle with similar issues of migration and redefining what it means to be a nation in this day in age. It made me think that I can find a balance for myself and that Japan can also move forward, but it requires a greater participation and involvement by the people. Political participation is encouraged in schools here and the amount of protests I’ve witnessed in my four months here are proof of it. There are many student and youth driven movements and collectives that exist within this small city, and that has made me want to find more spaces like these in Tokyo. After all, Tokyo does have twenty-six times more people living in it than Copenhagen does, so it can’t be that hard.
Japan and Denmark are similar historically speaking as well: both are island nations that have experienced a crushing end to their empires, and have intentionally excluded themselves from outsiders for a significant part of their histories. The tribe mentality that comes out of this past, the looking inward for success instead of constantly reaching out, still exists today – I would say more so in Japan than in Denmark. “Du skal ikke tro, at du er dansker, fordi du føler dig dansk;” you can’t just be Danish (or Japanese) because you feel that way, as opposed to an American identity which is much more malleable and unsolidified which makes it more adaptable to a larger variety of people. Growing up in Tokyo I never felt like I belonged there despite always telling people “I’m Japanese, I’m from Japan, Japan is my home” because a part of me felt rejected by the homogeneity the country projected to the rest of the world. America has been easier to “fit in”, since being multi-ethnic is not as unusual there as it is in Japan (or in Denmark), but I’m not sure if I accept the country as much as it accepts me. So everywhere I’ve lived I’ve felt like a foreigner even though I technically wasn’t. Living in Denmark was the first time I actually was a foreigner and felt the label fit me.
I’m going to miss this place. I’ll miss cycling in the city, I’ll miss my host family, I’ll miss the beautiful cafés, I’ll miss my friends. But what I’ll miss most is feeling like a foreigner, not because people treated me that way but because it was the first time I actually didn’t belong and I was alright with it. I’ve seen aspects of this very foreign country and culture that I had never been exposed to before, but I have come to I adore and hope to bring back – like the concept of hygge. Danes are so much better at having fun and just revel in the beauty of existing than Americans or Japanese are.
Working at a Danish office for my internship has also given me the opportunity to see the wonderful work life balance adopted by most Danes. My supervisor leaves everyday at 16:00 to pick up her kids from school (on her bicycle, of course) and spends the rest of the day with them. My professor teaching my maternal health class also regularly brings her baby to work, which I find refreshing and empowering. I’ve seen so many children in prams, on bikes, on buses and trains, with or without parents in the city. Japan is similar in this way, because of the great public transportation systems a lot of families can allow their children the freedom to commute to and from school alone, or go to afterschool classes alone. But a lot of the children’s lives revolve around school and other forms of work, which is reflective of Japanese society in general. The intensity at which people work and the (patriarchal and misogynistic) attitude toward women and domestic life aren’t aspects of Japanese culture I adore, and so I hope to live in a more Danish way in this sense when I begin working and having kids.