alt Hacker News> Please stop telling people "they will never be Japanese" since it's blatantly wrong.
You are wrong here. You will indeed never be Japanese if you haven't both 2 ethnic Japanese parents and raised in Japanese (second-generation raised abroad, for instance in South American are out). You can't rewrite all your DNA and go back in time to have a Japanese education in Japan.
The real issue is why caring so much about "becoming" Japanese? You can integrate in Japanese society as a foreigner, and being treated as an outsider also has its perks. Typically you are not expected to follow some of the rules, and thus has less bullshit to deal with. Just be careful of not becoming too good in Japanese (or at least pretend not to be), so you can maximize the benefits of speaking Japanese while minimizing the expectations.
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> You are wrong here. You will indeed never be Japanese
I think you are assuming they share the same definition of "Japanese" as you. Even the Japanese government does not agree with your definition.
I should have been clear. As a spanish, we consider spanish anyone with spanish culture. We do not care that much about the ethnic group. I think that is different from North America, where the ethnic group determines a lot what kind of "american" you are.
That said, when I say "you will never be a japanese" I am not talking ethnic groups. I am saying that even if you speak japanese and try to be japanese, people in Japan will always see you as an outsider. This is not the case, for example, for a black african raised in Spain who speaks spanish perfectly. They just become a fully integrated part of Spain and noone even questions that as long as he adopted the language and culture.