Identity awareness

It is quite interesting for me to realise how being away from Singapore and being amongst Japanese actually help me learn more about what being Singaporean is all about. By immersing myself in a foreign culture, I instead come to understand my own culture better than before. After all, when asked, "What do you think from a Singaporean point of view?", I have to come up with a logical answer that more or less represents what an average Singaporean would think. And that means I need to know Singapore culture/history/thinking better to provide the basis for logical thinking.

So being in Japan not only allows me to understand the Japanese better, it helps me understand what being Singaporean is all about.