Third Culture Kid(s)

Looks “Chinese,” right?  Could be Hong Kong?  Nope.  This is a picture* of “Little Hong Kong” in Tokyo’s Odaiba - a very ersatz Hong Kong that’s at once meticulous in its attention to architectural details (the plaster faux tiles on the “Odaiba Station” gate looks freakishly like the tile used at the MTR stations in HK) and completely problematic in terms of what it chooses to fetishize.  I chose the picture partly because I just liked going to LHK - good restaurants, weirdly nostalgic (since the whole place is ’set’ in 1980s HK) - and partly its inauthenticity seems to mirror my own.

*I borrowed/stole the picture from a Japanese website that I promptly lost the URL for, and I’ve never found it again to make proper acknowledgment.  If this is your picture, or if you figure out where it came from, please let me know.