Growing up, I never thought that being half-Japanese and half-Hungarian would ever lead to the amusing encounters that I have had over my travels. People have often recognized facial and bodily features similar to their own in me, thinking that I am one of them. Nonetheless, being racially ambiguous is a double-edged sword. I have been the subject of microaggressions and racial profiling at border controls.

“You’re an exotic breed, a mixed cocktail” triumphed over all the other comments that I got after my introduction in a Hungarian house party. But as far as I know, I am neither a pet nor a drink. The person continued by enumerating Japanese brands and cities. He said, “Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Honda, Toshiba”, trying to show his wit. I regret not responding with the Hungarian equivalents, “Debrecen, Miskolc, Pick szalámi, Boci csoki”, to show the extent to which I was impressed by his wit.

Quite often, people disregard the less exotic half of my ethnic and cultural background and focus on the other part. It is typically the case when I am the only person they know from Japan or Hungary; hence my distinguishing feature becomes Japanese or Hungarian respectively. This is when the stereotypes about the Japanese and Hungarian appearance kick in. I will never look Japanese or Hungarian enough. The wavy hair, strong eyebrows and my height all scream not-Japanese. Conversely, my black hair, the shape of my eyes and my skin make me appear Asian. Oddly, after I grew my facial hair, a number of people thought I was Middle Eastern or Latino.

Whenever I travel, these are some of the features that people would notice and then use to make assumptions about my origins, often thinking that I am from their region. In Kazakhstan I was Kazakh, in Brazil I was Brazilian, in Iran I was Iranian. When I said that I was from Hungary and Japan, most people had no further questions. However, Iran was mindblowing for me as I began to doubt whether my parents really are my biological parents. From the airport to the streets, not a single person had a doubt that I was Iranian.

During my time in Shiraz, my two Iranian friends and I were getting faloodeh. As we were talking in English, an Iranian man approached me and asked where I was from. He added later that he was surprised to see an Iranian-looking person speak such fluent English, that’s why he had asked. When I talked to other travelers, they told me that strangers do not usually walk up to them to ask where they are from. It could have just been a one-off occurrence, but what subsequently happened at the airport was mildly shocking for me. Upon seeing my Japanese passport, the border control official asked me to hand over my Iranian one. Responding that I didn’t have one, he asked in English,

“Why don’t you speak Farsi? Are you half-Iranian?”

After all the travels, I thought that perhaps people from different parts of the world look more alike than different, or it might be that only my appearance carries characteristics matching the local stereotypical look. Whichever is the case, I hope for one thing to improve, and it is the normalization of multiracial people. I used to ask people to guess my country of origin to better understand various ideas of citizenship, origin and ethnic background, but now I only want to feel at peace with my passport and my identity regardless of the way I look. There is a long way to go from people perceiving me as a mixed cocktail to them seeing me simply as Noel Konagai, but I know that it will happen.