Miles from Home

People always ask bilingual people which language is easier for them. For me, that question has always been strangely difficult to answer.

Japanese is my first language. English is my second. My mom is Japanese, my dad is American. I grew up in between languages, between cultures, between emotional ecosystems. At this point (and for a while, to be honest), I don’t really feel like I “translate” myself like I used to do when I was learning English at ten years old. My brain just kind of… picks a language depending on the shape of the thought.

Some emotions arrive in Japanese first. Some jokes only work in English. Some thoughts exist somewhere in between the two, which comes out in bunched up gargles of Japanglish.

For a long time, I assumed I needed to be with someone who understood English in order to fully understand me. Part of that was circumstantial. I spent most of my identity-building years (so prepubescent years and middle school) in the States. Much of my adult identity was built in English because I chose to go to college in the United States and start my career there. My humor sharpened in English. Some versions of me only seemed accessible through English.

But somewhere in my mid-to-late twenties, the question quietly changed.

Instead of asking myself what language I wanted to express myself in, I started asking what language I wanted my life to return to at the end of the day.

And the answer surprised me.

I think I want Japanese as a default.

Not in a way that rejects English. But in the sense that I want my emotional home base to exist in Japanese, even if parts of me will always wander elsewhere linguistically.

Despite being fully comfortable in both languages, I realized something slightly embarrassing after dating in English for almost a decade:

I want to be loved in Japanese.

Because “I love you” and 愛してる (aishiteru) may technically be translations of one another, but to me, they do not carry the same weight at all.

American English uses “I love you” constantly. Romantic partners say it. Friends say it. Parents say it. Someone can end a phone call discussing grocery shopping with “love you, bye.” You can say “love ya” while holding a burrito. (Why a burrito? Perhaps because I crave one, but that’s a story for another time.)

And there’s nothing wrong with that. I actually think there’s something warm and beautiful about verbal abundance. But somewhere along the way, “I love you” became emotionally lightweight for me. Not meaningless, exactly. Just a bit… diffused.

Part of that is probably cultural.

But part of it is personal.

My dad said “I love you” often enough. In English, affection was verbally available. But he also left our family for a new one. So somewhere in my brain, the phrase detached itself from permanence. From safety. From commitment. “I love you” became something people could say sincerely and still leave. Like most of my exes.

The form of “I love you” that holds emotional permanence is the Japanese accented one that sits closer to “labu-you” said by my mother, which is hilarious and genuinely adorable.

Meanwhile, Japanese affection developed differently inside me.

Japanese, especially in romantic contexts, often communicates through implication rather than declaration. Through timing. Through care disguised as practicality. Through things like:

「ちゃんと食べなさい」(Chanto tabenasai) “Make sure you eat”

「帰ったら連絡して」(kaettara renraku shite) “text me when you get home”

「無理しすぎんなよ」(muri shisuginna yo) “Don’t push yourself too hard.”

Sometimes I think Japanese romance lives partially outside language altogether. It hides in peeled fruit and convenience store drinks bought without asking. In someone remembering how you take your coffee. In quietly waiting on the station platform until your train leaves.

And because explicit verbal affection is rarer, when someone does say something like 「好きだよ」(sukidayo) or「愛してる」(aishiteru), it lands differently. At least for me.

Heavy isn’t quite the right word.

Dense, maybe.

Compressed.

Like emotional mater folded into itself.

“I love you” can mean a lot of things, like:

“I care about you.”

“You matter to me”

“I’m fond of you”

But 「愛してる」(aishiteru) feels almost existential. It feels like “My life has changed shape around your existence.”

I think that’s why I swoon more when affection is given to me in Japanese. The phrases feel rarer. More deliberate when said. More difficult to say casually. The emotional signal-to-noise ratio is higher. Granted, my sample size remains flawed, as Japanese men around me seem determined to express affection exclusively through vague eye contact and occasional smirks thrown in my general direction.

And maybe that says something about me, too.

Maybe I’m simply someone who responds more strongly to restrained affection than repeated reassurance. Maybe years of hearing “I love you” detached the phrase from emotional gravity for me. Or maybe bilingual people just end up building different emotional architectures around different languages.

Because translation and emotional equivalence are not the same thing. A bilingual person knows this instinctively. There are phrases that are technically correct translations but spiritually inaccurate.

I suppose “I love you” is one of them.

And maybe that’s the strange gift and burden of living between two languages: you eventually realize your heart has a default language and subtitles, too.