American “❤️” our “❤️”

Our culture bump was that Americans have so many flags. At first, we felt scared, surprised and amazed because in Japan, we don’t have so many flags. Just the ‘Super Japanese’ and the administrative offices have the Japanese flag. So, we asked about this culture bump to some American students. The answers we go were, people use flags to show respect for their ancestors who sacrificed themselves for their country. Another student answered, we are proud of our country and state. Then, we analyzed their answers, and noticed that it is patriotic. Also, we thought their thoughts are similar to Okinawan’s thinking. Just the way to show pride in our country is different. As well, Texas students believe that Texas could be a country. By experiencing this culture bump, we realized Okinawa and Texas has similar history in that they both used to be independent countries. So the people have similar ways of thinking. We both love our prefecture and state. Texans love being Texans. And when asked, we always say we are from Okinawa before Japan because we love Okinawa.

-by Ruka Maemori, Yukino Nakamoto, Yuna Itokazu, Runa Kinjo