The Even Greater Tokyo Region

Anecdotes of Identity



“Many a man travels the world to find happiness, and return home to find it.”

“Home is where the heart is.”
It sounds simple enough: Go back to the country of your birth and discover yourself in a whole new light. But as the legendary Dutch footballer once said: "Voetballen is simpel, maar het moeilijkste wat er is, is simpel voetballen." [playing football is simple, but the most difficult thing that there is, is playing simple football]. In other words, nothing is simple.

Last August I was in Edinburgh during the comedy festival. Me and my New Zealand friend went to a free show, and one of the comedians, an American started picking on the crowd. He says: “You with the hat, where are you from?”

I was wearing the hat. Damn it. I was on the spot. I didn’t know. What should I answer? Unwilling to try and explain my unique situation, probably under the influence of my friend, I said “…uh… New Zealand”. Now, the comedian picked up on my hesitancy. That’s what comedians do.

“You didn’t sound too sure yourself.” he said. Truer words have never been said to me. In reality, if I had of tried to explain my situation, I would have had to have said everything that I have written in this entry. That would really have killed the comedy.

It has been almost 1 1/2 years since I came back to Holland, and the question I get asked a lot where I’ll end up next (often it is asked by that annoying voice in my head, when he isn’t telling me to kill hobos). I still don’t have an answer. In fact, I am going back to New Zealand for the first time in 3 1/2 years, and I have lost hope that it will give me any answers. because I am starting to wonder if the question isn’t fundamentally wrong.

Now, I don’t think I am by any means unique. There are generations of immigrants, refuges, 2nd and 3rd generation-naturalised citizens all over the world. It is just my annoyingly over-analytical mind which has caused me trouble. See, I was born in Holland, lived in New Zealand between 4 1/2 and 21, excluding a one-year exchange. For most people, they would think that I was young enough to grow up as a normal New Zealand kid. And for the most part I was (well... except for the ‘normal’ part). The only difference was, at home I had to speak Dutch. I am still so thankful I was forced to speak Dutch, often against my will, often on the verge of tears of frustration, often to the point where I feared going out in public because at any moment, my father could tell me off in Dutch. In retrospect, it was a very good parenting technique. It really kept me in line, and you could tell off your kids anything, anytime and no-one would ever understand. So, Dutch is the language of my youth at home. It still sounds childish to me. That is why I cannot take Dutch pornography seriously. It would be like seeing Minnie Mouse giving a lap dance. (actually, I think they have websites for that.)

As a four-year old, I assimilated almost instantly, but as soon as I went to regular school at age five, I completely shut down. I wouldn't talk to anyone, apart from two classmates who came to school on the same day. This went on for a long time, enough to make my parents and teachers extremely worried. However, almost everyone thought that my English wasn't good enough. People tried to trick me into speaking to them. They asked me to whisper. They asked me if I wanted to read aloud while behind the bookshelf. I hid under a pile of bags during break time. People teased me, and rightfully so: I was the wierd foreign kid. One day, it was decided that I would go to the special reading class. It was called "Rainbow Readers"... yes, it was for "special" students. I was comfortable around that lady, and she gave me a book to read to her, I guess to test my reading ability. It was a book of Spot.



Man, I read that book so fast that I remember the lady being surprised at me being in the special reading class. Then, after the first summer holidays, I was moved up a class and made a conscious decision to just start talking. It surprised everyone at first, but soon nobody was to think of me as 'the weird foreign kid' ever again. Even as a young teenager, I was pretty normal although I liked to stand out in small ways. I wasn’t an attention-whore by any means, but complete assimilation wasn’t for me. For example, I would leave my shoelaces untied to buck the system of school uniforms. Later, I even painted brown shoes to the regulation black and wore them to school, letting the shoe polish wear off to give the shoes a rusted-look. It was a ga me to see how bro wn they could get before a teacher pointed them out. I know, it’s petty. It’s kind-of douchey. Shut up, I was a kid… Also, I always thought it was a bit of a shame that I didn’t have a slight Dutch accent. I now am SOOOO glad that I don’t. Seriously, a badly preformed Dutch accent makes me wonder if it possible to laugh and throw up at the same time. I was at Starbucks recently, and a Dutch woman sat at a nearby table. She was speaking to some other lady in English, forcing me to take out my MP3 player. Anyway, I grew up in New Zealand without an unusual accent. Of course, maybe now my English accent has changed – that’s one of the things I am looking forward to finding out when I go back.

I also had an unnatural attraction to orange clothes. I owned three different Dutch football shirts, and several other orange clothes, or items with orange in them. I still do, although in Holland I don’t like to wear it as much because people might think I am a hooligan. I also liked the red-white-blue combination (which is NOT an American thing) The most ridiculous example is that I once bought a cheap rug – you know the ones made up out of strips of old clothing? Well, I based my decision on choosing which one to buy from the pile because on one, all that was visible in the fold was red, white and blue.

So privately, I probably always thought myself as Dutch, although no-one else did. For me, I think the defining moment in my youth that prevented me from accepting New Zealand as my homeland was when I was 16. See, basketball was the most important thing in my life. It was something I became pretty good at, thanks to several top-class coaches, talented friends, brother, rivals, and at times, practices five times a week. I always represented our city in regional and national tournaments and even got selected for an unofficial under-16 representative team that traveled to Australia. My eventual goal was to play for the College (high school) A-team, and for several years I was close to making the team. I always thought that once I became a senior, I would be on the team. I felt it was my right of passage. Well, I did make the team, however, there was a little rule in the New Zealand inter-college rulebook stating that each team was allowed to have only one import. Since I only had a Dutch nationality and passport, I was legally classified as an import. It’s true, I was not a New Zealander; I was a permanent resident. There was a senior at our school from Alaska also on the team, so I was dropped from the competition team. It was as ridiculous as it was frustrating. The rules of citizenship at the time was that Holland did not allow citizens to have a double passport, meaning that if I were to become a New Zealander, I would lose my Dutch one. There are no other repercussions for permanent residents, and I wasn’t going to give up my EU passport, so that was the end of the story.

I felt like I had basically been told by the New Zealand government that I could not play the sport I loved for my own school. That hurt. Miraculously, the next year Holland relaxed its rules, to giving its citizens the choice of a dual-nationality as long as they gained the 2nd nationality before they turned 18. So, with nothing to lose, I became a citizen a few months before I turned 17, among a group of young Cambodians, and some older English people. Slightly cheekily, I wore my bright orange Dutch football shirt at the ceremony, as I stood in front of the Mayor and recited the pledge of allegiance to the Queen of England. Here is the physical evidence of that event.

I was able to join the A-team the next year, and anti-climactically nothing really came of it (this is another story). Nevertheless, I still felt I had been slighted. In a way I still do. At the least, I became sensitive to the issue of what I was, and the arbitrary definitions of nationality.


Choosing Your Own Nationality

Since graduating high school, I spent one year in Japan before starting my 3-year bachelor’s degree. I was so eager to leave New Zealand that I finished my degree in two years. Sure, I wanted to go to Japan again, but I was actually bored with New Zealand. Not that I didn’t enjoy those two years, I really did, but I was just… bored. The two years in rural Japan really heightened my unawareness of what I was. The only thing was, I hated it when Japanese would speak English to me, so to combat that, my general policy was to tell people that I was Dutch. That way, if they spoke English to me, I could call them a dumbass because the Dutch have their own language. Technically, I came to Japan as New Zealand on my New Zealand passport (because you need to be from a native English speaking country). I was really starting to blur the boundaries.

I always imagined that I would come back to Holland one day. All my non-direct family is here, I still speak the language (somewhat), and it just seems right to come back and see what my home country is like. I am so lucky that I stumbled on the course which I am about to complete. Legally, as a Dutch student, I got 260 Euro per month, and free travel on weekends. I am so glad to be Dutch sometimes. However, I sometimes act like an international student. See, my English is far better than my Dutch (which is no where near academic standards), and more importantly, my English is far better than my lecturers’ English. It is my policy to speak and write English to them, because it puts me in a position of authority.

Okay, so here is a quick summary of my nationality in different situations.

1. I am a New Zealander in order to go to Japan
2. I am Dutch while in Japan
3. I am Dutch in Holland when claiming student-related perks
4. I am a New Zealander as an academic

Is it fair to choose my nationality like this? Yes. Absolutely it is. However, others can absolutely not choose it for you. Here is a story which illustrates this point from my yet-unused manuscript I wrote while in Japan:

“May I please interview you on your thoughts about Japan?”, a pretty Japanese girl asked in well-practiced English. “It will take only five minutes.” We went outside the international youth hostel, along with a cameraman and another man managing to look busy as only the Japanese can do, holding a clipboard. They started rolling as she asked me some standard questions. “Where are you from?” “Toyama.” I replied. Maybe I was trying to be difficult, but I wanted to let them know that I wasn’t an overseas tourist. “I’m a teacher in Toyama, and I’ve come for the weekend to Tokyo.” She translated to the clipboard guy, and exchanged disappointed grunts. She knew she was going to have to try a little bit harder. “What country are you from?” she asked, emphasising the word country. “Holland”, I replied. This time, I was not trying to be difficult. Yes, while it is true that I grew up in New Zealand, have a New Zealand education and a New Zealand accent, came to Japan on my New Zealand passport and all my friends consider me a New Zealander, I am Dutch. I was born there, all of my family is there, and I speak fluent Dutch with them, albeit childishly. I only became a New Zealander when I was seventeen. In fact, I couldn’t play for my high school basketball team because I was technically classified as an import. I even own much more orange than black clothing. It isn’t a simple justification, and certainly not one I need to make to a stranger, but I am Dutch. “But”, the intervieweress started again, “Why do you speak English?” This interview was getting off to a slow start. I quickly told her the story that my immediate family immigrated to New Zealand when I was four and a half years old. She listened carefully, nodded vigorously, and translated for the clipboard guy. “Ah!” he exclaimed, his world suddenly making sense again. I then watched in horror as he scribbled out “ORANDA-jin” [Dutch] and wrote “NYŪJIRANDO-jin.[New Zealander]”

For many people, the question of what you are is simple, and look at me and try to answer the question for me. But for me, it is not black and white: It's some strange mix of black and orange.


Blood

Okay, admittedly I look very stereotypically Dutch – comically Dutch even. Tall, thin, blonde, blue eyes. I am absolutely a “Nederlander” in the ethnographic sense. Of course, there are millions of Dutch people who don’t look like me. Last year, I was working at the Feyenoord Stadium in Rotterdam on Christmas. It is a giant stadium and a big operation every single game. A group of four of us temporary workers were assigned to a car park, directing cars to the available spaces. The leader of our group, a bitter, old Dutch man with a filthy moustache said he needed one person to stand at the entrance and stop cars to ask them for their parking card, or direct them to where they needed to go. This was the job that involved conversing with the drivers. The old guy looked at us four. One guy was black. The girl was black. The other guy was probably Moroccan or Turkish (Forgive my ignorance). Guess who got chosen to stop the cars? Yeah. I was chosen despite my Dutch surely being the worst of us four.

Still, my bloodlines are 3/4 pure Dutch, of which 1/4 is Frisian (yes, like the cow), and my other grandmother was originally born in Austria. Still, Austria isn't so much different really, and besides, 75% is pretty high. I’ll take those odds. Since New Zealand is also a predominantly European nation and basically only an immigrant nation, this has never been much of an issue, but it surely should play a large part.


Name

An email from a lecturer a few weeks back said it very well. I had asked her a question, and she replied a quick email asking if she can reply in Dutch. She wrote back “OK, yes, your Dutch name made me expect a Dutch nationality". Exactly.


Legally

I have a dual citizenship, but the fact remains that I only got the New Zealand one out of convenience, and even that was a stroke of luck that made it possible. Of course, I can’t be faulted for taking up both citizenships, because it made me going to Japan as a teacher possible. However, now that I think about it, had I never been able to get the New Zealand citizenship, this entire question of what I am wouldn’t even be an issue. At this point in history, Holland is having issues with immigration, and this has led to particularly some anti-Moroccan sentiment. On more than a few occasions, I have heard Dutch people complaining about Moroccan kids in Holland who keep their Moroccan citizenship; they think that these kids should just choose one and stick with it. When one old guy I was working with said this, I told him I have two passports. “Do you have a problem with that?”


It turns out that he didn’t. He reasoning was that I was born in Holland and have Dutch family. I think he meant to say that I wasn’t brown, or Muslim. I guess what this means to me is that re-assimilation is much more attainable for me.


Language

So, my English as mentioned earlier is native New Zealand. I am a big believer in the language ego (your own conception of your identity is inextricably linked with and formed in the language you think in). But Any New Zealander will claim me as one of them. My Dutch, on the other hand, although fully conversable, is still awkward, and to most Dutch people, I am "the New Zealander" (or Australian, if they are stupid. They often are).

I finally have that accent I always wanted! However, the accent causes me great pains sometimes. In daily life, I don’t want to be foreign. See, in Japan people would always use me as an English language target practice. It is the phenomenon I call the English Backtalker. It was such a buzz-kill to me when a stranger said something like “thank you” to me. Even if they mean well, the implication will always be “You don’t belong here”. So, when the same thing happens in Holland, it is just as bad, if not worse. I might be a dick about this, but at least I am a consistent dick.

A big F-you goes out to:

* The fat, slobby cashier lady at a supermarket replied to me in English when I forgot to put the stickers on the bananas I was buying.
* The bike repair-man I mentioned last year out in bumble-fuck who replied in English when I made a cute mistake of saying I have a “leaky-tyre” instead of a “flat-tyre”.
* The rare customer at work who replies in English. I mean, I am employed in Holland among other Dutch people. Wouldn’t it occur to you that although what I said might have sounded a bit funny, I do understand Dutch?
* The kindly old lady who helped me with directions when I was lost on my bike and it was raining.

The reason I think it is worse in Holland is, while in Japan this phenomenon is based on (probably) innocent racial profiling, in Holland, it is pure arrogance. They like to prove how good their English is. See, if I wanted to, I could probably learn to put on a thick Rotterdam accent, but I want to speak how I do. As Jackie Chan said “I speak Jackie Chan English”. Because I might pronounce a word with an English-language accent, or not have the proper elocution that might be typified by an English speaker, the English Backtalker in Holland thinks they are smarter than me. And because probably 95% of the time I understand Dutch better than they speak English, it gets to me. It just destroys your confidence in your own ability. What have I done wrong? Nothing. The problem lies with them. See, if I had a weird accent but was brown, I think this would happen a lot less often, because many people get annoyed at brown people (or people wearing head-scarves) who can't speak Dutch. But since I look like I could be an Englishman or American, to them, my accent is an opportunity to them to claim superiority and/or try to look cool. I especially hate it when they speak with a forced American or English accent. The general accent is bad enough…

However, this is one aspect which I have direct control over. My Dutch is improving, through social interaction at work mainly, and I intend to study Dutch much more intensively next year. I won’t force an accent, but I can surely improve enough to make it okay.

Cultural Knowledge
One thing I have noticed between me and the Dutch is the disparity of pop-cultural familiarity, which is often the basis for a lot of humour and even friendships. I am now on a volleyball team and for the begin-year party, every team made a presentation. Our team decided to do a rendition of this as our performance (don't watch it all because it is really lame):



It was an old kid’s program that probably every Dutch person over 20 grew up with. The team was loving the idea, laughing at every suggestion. But for me, this was the gayest shit ever. I mean. Come on. Still, I joined in, but I maintain that I didn’t enjoy it.

The only time this year that I have truly, truly laughed until I was spent was when my New Zealand friend was here. He kept making jokes about the Drink Driving government-paid warnings on TV. If you can watch this ad without laughing, you are not a NZer.



It was so refreshingly funny to have someone who shares a communal nostalgia. You can’t equal that, you really can’t.

This seems to be the reason I don’t really get along very well with many Dutch people. Even my volleyball teammates, who are all nice people, I just don’t watch the same TV programs – the basis for all true friendships. (Admittedly, this could also be the vast cultural gap between volleyball players and me, who is still ideologically a basketball player.) I don’t get along at all with other non-Dutch northern Europeans who I always seem to piss off. But I’m always instantly able to have fun with Americans, as I seem to have a pretty good knowledge of enough quality American TV.


Music
I was bar-hopping with some friends in Leiden. The law is that after 1pm (on most nights) the bar is not allowed to let new people in. It was already a bit late, but one bar is known to flaunt this rule, and we briskly walked in before the lax bouncer could block us. We got some drinks, and the music was… Terrible. It was playing a popular song, a techno song, and then it would play a Dutch Pop song (known as “Neder-Pop” or “crap music”). Seriously, every Neder-Pop song sounds like the Smurf song. It was so frustrating. But the thing is, drunk Dutch people love this music. They know all the words, and sing them loudly. Hard to believe, but the song ends up sounding even worse. However, at one stage one of these songs came on. As I was leaving the dance-floor, a girl came out of nowhere, flung her arms around me and started dancing with me while singing along loudly. Even better, she was dressed in an anime costume of Link, from the Legend of Zelda. Like this:

Now, I am no gamer, but I know hot when I see it. She was dressed as a Wood Nymph! I decided there and then that I would stay on the dance-floor. Very brave of me.

Judging by how loud she was singing, this girl was enjoying the song a lot (i.e. she was drunk). I looked over to my friends, and mouthed “I don’t know this song”. I must have looked very confused. The girl then looked at me accusingly, so I started singing something. (“La la la-la-la-la”) She did a double-take. She stopped dancing. She looked at me to check if I actually was singing the song. It was obvious that I wasn't. She hit me in my chest with the palm of her hand and said in Dutch: “You don’t even know this song!” And with that, the dance was finished, and she began dancing with some douche-bag who did know the lyrics and was enjoying the song very much (he was also very drunk).

I felt a little depressed after that. In theory, that should have been the easiest close ever. But my lack of knowledge of truly awful Dutch music cock-blocked me. It seemed to me then, that I wasn’t Dutch enough. My friend reassured me by saying “If the definition of being Dutch is knowing that music, you don’t want to be Dutch, do you?” Tough call…

Other People's Opinion of my Nationality
However, there is no question that almost everyone I know considers me to be a New Zealander. It just isn't that simple, as this long post has shown. I even had a random thought of a method how other people might come to consider me as Dutch: Join the army. (Holland has an army? Yeah, they do. I was as surprised as you are.) This was a completely honest thought that I had. My hippy up-bringing and my naturally rebellious-to-arbitrary authority notwithstanding, this would unquestionably make me Dutch. I mean, serving the country... But, the only thing I will ever serve is food and tennis/volley balls. I mentioned the Moroccans earlier, and many of the youths are said to be causing trouble and committing crime because they aren't considered Dutch here, and aren't considered Moroccan when they go back to Morocco. I don't see how crime and vandalism can help solve this problem, but maybe I should try it some time. It can't hurt (apart from myself, and society)

Some people ask me, what do you "feel"? I still don't have an answer. I love supporting Dutch football, and New Zealand Basketball. (if the Dutch football team and the New Zealand basketball team ever played against each other, I would incredibly confused...) I just hope the Queen of England and the Queen of Holland never get into a fist-fight (well, I imagine if they fought, it would probably involve them glove-slapping each other, or hitting each other with bunches of flowers, like on Jerry Springer. I mean, I would only NEED to make a decision of my nationality if there was a war between the two countries, and then I would probably be thought of as a spy.

I think, in the end, I think I prefer to slip between the two. And this sensitivity to nationality has become an obsession of mine, inspiring a complete manuscript, and being a huge portion of my master's thesis. In a way I envy those who have a conception that you must be ONE nationality. This general conception is that nationality is a like a giant bubble, in which the rest of your identity resides. But for me, it is a small part of the whole. I don't want to say I am a universalist, because that isn't true either. The closest description I have ever heard is this one by my hero George Carlin:


I truly am happy that I am both Dutch and a New Zealander, and the perspective and amazing opportunities it has given me. While the idea of an ultimate place to call "home" and going "back to my roots" may be a beautiful and poetic one, and one that I sometimes wish I had, in reality it does not mean anything to me. And I think, this realisation and resolution is what I have learned during these last 1 1/2 years on Back 'n Dutch.

Bonus Videos on the topic
So Dutch


The chorus of this song by Mos Def and Q-Tip is perfect in its simplicity




On a final note, this is the conclusion for Back 'n Dutch. I will continue for the next month as 'The Victory Tour 2010', and then as something new. Thanks for your patience, especially for this post - if you got this far. And thanks for sharing in this, ultimately pointless journey into my being back 'n Dutch. It's been great.