Shunny Murase: Mind the Vowels

Shunny Murase shares about how his accent is perceived in different parts of the world.

Last summer, I went back home to Tokyo and worked in a golf store. A few weeks in, a colleague told me something I still think about.

“You sound sixty and six at the same time bro.”

Sixty because all the Japanese words I come across nowadays come from outdated drama series on YouTube. Six because I lost 9 years of Japanese literature that my parents say “form your fundamental intellect”… yeah right.

I left Japan after I turned 11, then spent almost the same amount of time in England, long enough for English to become the language I dream in, and for the accent to settle into my voice.

Then I moved to Berkeley.

Picture this: A 5 ft 5” Japanese guy, ordering coffee with a British accent in a Starbucks in Ukiah. I often hear things like “say again?” And each time, I get flashbacks to when I was 11 learning English for the first time.

So, I adjusted. I flattened my vowels and rolled my Rs. Americanizing myself depending on who was listening. I have lived in Berkeley for four years now, and when I call my friends in England they tease my ‘Murican accent, telling me that I sound less trustworthy than I used to.

I appreciate the dryness of British humor, but less trustworthy? As if trust lived in my vowels. As if the pint and lads version of me was more honest than the one ordering a double-double with extra pickles.

In Japan, I sound both too young and too old. In California, I sound too confusingly foreign, and in England, I don’t sound British enough. Every place I end up, I defy categorization.

But Berkeley and the Bay Area in general is full of people like me; people who echo the depth of multiple countries in one sentence. And that gives me the courage to keep trusting my voice, and to not be afraid of other people’s judgement. With a Perspective, I’m Shunny Murase.


Shunny Murase is a senior studying Conservation and Resource Studies at UC Berkeley.