The Japan Diaries 2020: An Expat’s Perspective on the Black Lives Matter Movement
Image source This month, July 24th, will mark my family’s 4th year in Japan. I haven’t written very much about our life here, but I have talked about it - endlessly, it sometimes seems. To say the learning curve has been steep would be vastly understating things, but what I’ve learned the most about during my time abroad, much to the chagrin of those around me in earshot, has been from my own country. A lot has changed since we left. We’ve changed. I’ve changed. Our country has changed, or at least I used to think so. What I’ve come to realize, however, is that, given the position of an outside observer, all the things I thought I understood about America - about Americans, for that matter - were wrong. We came to Japan in July of 2016, in the dead heat of an election year I was surprisingly optimistic about. Donald Trump, one of the worst human beings I’ve ever encountered personally, was running against former Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton, one of the most qualified perso
