It all started when an American boy and a Japanese girl met in El Paso Texas and fell in love. 

My mother moved to America from Japan when she was just 20 years old to experience the college life in America and met my dad, a young boy from Maryland.

My mother loved the life she had discovered in the States and decided she wanted to start a family here instead of going back to Japan to her mother, father, and brother.

Years later, my mother and father had my two older brothers and I. We became a family of 5 and had a very multicultural family.  

My mothers first language was Japanese and spoke very broken English during her earlier years in America.

My father spoke little Japanese but his main language was English.

My brothers and I grew up speaking both Japanese and English in the household. We spoke Japanese with our mother and English with our father.

Years went by and my parents got a divorced. Although my brothers and I spent time with both my mother and father, we spent a majority of time staying with our mom.

This resulted in the Japanese language becoming the main language used in our household at a very young age.

Fast forward, my older brothers started school and so did I just a few years later.

The Japanese language was not used in our schools which forced the English language on us more than we were used to.