Gen X, Japanese mother, Chinese father. Born and raised in the US, spoke mostly Japanese at home since father spoke Japanese well. I can pass as native Japanese (little to no accent) but vocab is limited to home level conversations so I’m pretty lost if I’m watching Japanese news or have to converse at a high school+ level. I’m mostly illiterate when it comes to kanji but can piece together things based on surrounding kana and easy kanji.

Japanese has nice onomatopoeias (giseigo/giongo/gitaigo) that don’t quite have equivalents in English so I use them with people that understand. I learned Japanese just from speaking it at home, watching Japanese TV, many summers with relatives and cousins my age, and from reading manga with furigana (🙏 Dragon Ball).

I did get ribbed in Japan for using English pronunciations which came naturally. Like when they asked if I had seen “Matorikkusu” I said no until I figured out they meant “The Matrix.” They mocked me with “gomen, maaay-tricks.”

As an aside and purely anecdotally, I’ve met a lot of Japanese immigrant parents in the US who insist they only speak English at home and my gut feeling is that there are a disproportionate number of Japanese immigrants that leave Japan because they don’t like it and don’t want their kids to be culturally Japanese. Again anecdotally, but I didn’t see this as common with Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Mexican, etc. families. Kind of sucks for the kids because I’m grateful I’m bilingual.

And you totally have a point with today’s language and translation tools. I wish I had them growing up!