identifying more as an american, she feels a complete discord with her surroundings, and feels as if her "life is unreal, and sunnyvale, which was real, was a jillion miles away in time and space, like the beautiful earth from outer space." she struggles in assimilating to a new, japanese environment and experiences the disorientation of being viewed as "the other" in the country of her ethnic heritage. her foreignness in japan, as an american, causes relentless bullying from her classmates at a public japanese school.