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I'm part Japanese part white, but I was raised very American and now my grandpa (only connection to my Japanese family/culture) is dying. He literally won't tell us anything about our culture and family (they're all alive they just don't know I exist). I want to embrace this part of my identity, but don't know where to start. Send help!!
reconnecting with culture(???)
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Gluma
Like the other comment said, I'm no expert. Though, I do wanna say that I'm kinda in the same boat as you but replace Japanese with Brazilian, haha.
(Apparently, Brazil and Japan seem to have pretty friendly relations with each other, funny enough)While I obviously have Brazilian family members, they're pretty much strangers to me (+ they don't speak English). They're all on my mom's side of the family, which sucks because I am not very close with my mom and she never bothered to really give me any history, culture, nor language lessons ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Everything I know about Brazil is mostly just from pop culture/personal research (I do not know many things)While I'm not too invested with learning a whole other culture, I have decided to at least learn Brazilian Portuguese a bit. I think a language can teach a culture somewhat as slang and certain words can make someone go "huh I wonder why they say it like that" and BAM you give yourself a mini history lesson. You can also interact with online communities (or, at least be able to understand them), which can give you some insight on a country's culture/politics/news/etc. In fact, I actually would recommend doing that! People struggling with their cultural identity isn't new so I'm sure there's some online communities you can search for! I...never bothered to look lmao but I do know there's gotta at least be a subreddit for something like that. Back when I had Reddit, I would follow the French (country) and Brazilian subreddit just to practice my language-learning skills and sometimes it's pretty fun to try to decipher stuff through memes lmao
I also think the other comment's mention of simply just watching videos talking about Japanese culture is fine as well. I'd suggest videos from Japanese creators themselves but I unfortunately don't know much about that. Either way, it's a good way to summarize the most important parts of Japanese culture so you at least know the basics.
ech0gek0
i mean... you could always watch youtube videos? i'm not japanese but i've very interested in japanese culture since i was like 9 and most of it was from youtube. and mostly western youtubers that moved to japan for job offers and talked about their experiences
i'm definitely not an expert tho lol