about me. [ my journey in broad strokes ]
My name is Jeremy Toshio (俊夫) Fong. I was born in Singapore in May of 2000. I lived in Singapore with my parents until shortly after my sister was born in 2003. My parents along with my sister and I moved back to the Bay Area of California where they had lived previously. We lived in Hayward, California with my mother’s parents for 11 years. During this time, I went to elementary and middle school in different school districts. Then, in the summer of 2014, my family moved to Tokyo, Japan for religious reasons. My mom worked as a speech therapist at the Christian International school my sister and I attended, and my dad worked with our local church teaching English and maintaining a photography club. Once I graduated high school in 2018, I took a gap year in California to gain work experience and money to afford college. I eventually applied and got accepted into Carleton College which provided me with generous aid to be able to attend. After I got accepted, I returned to Japan for the rest of my gap year before starting at Carleton. In many ways, this represents the briefest of intros into where life took me before college.
Once at Carleton, I spent all of the first year of the pandemic on campus, and only returned to Japan finally for my winter break. After taking my summer vacation of 2021 back in Japan, I spent the majority of my junior year studying abroad in places I had never been before. During my studies, I lived in and visited Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the UK. It is during this time that my worldview greatly expanded and the expectations I had set for myself widened significantly.
What this capstone project represents for me is a time to reflect on my cultural journey thus far. As I write this, I am aware of complicated my journey has been and I have difficulty describing it succinctly. Yet, I believe the process of me writing out my thoughts and reflections scattered across time maps my trajectory up until the present. In reflecting upon my journey, I am well aware of how I have grown and changed over the years but the ability to articulate those changes directly eludes me. I hope that you will join me as I began to retell the narrative of my life and the many experiences that have come to shape my perspective today.
Berkeley, CA 
Tokyo, JP 
Berlin, DE
I have organized my capstone project in the idea of a book. I am a firm believer in the idea that life and its many processes and relationships are played out in a similar manner to the writing of a book. I came across this idea in the context of friendship and the idea that ‘friendships have seasons’. The idea of friendship is something I hold dear because as a child, I was taught that friendships are forever. Yet, from an early age, I was affronted with the idea that friendship is hardly ever a guarantee, nor does it ever reach the point of forever. Throughout my almost twenty-three years of existence, I have had to grapple with questions of loss, what constitutes a good friendship, and whom and what do I value. As such, I like to think of my relationships as that of a book. Characters are constantly written in and out of books as the story progresses. In this way, people too get written in and out of my life in unexpected ways. Friends that I had not met in years suddenly pop back up in my life and I cannot help but think about it as a story that continues to be written for me.
Also like a book, my life continues to be in progress. My father once made a photo book of pictures of my sister and I up until that point in our lives. He entitled it “A Work in Progress”. In many ways, I also view my life as such. I am still learning and growing (and I refuse to peak in college) and my story continues to be written. I am a work in progress, so here is my book. It is not finished yet because I am continuing to work on it.
Read through some of the chapters of my life.
- Meine Heimat
Heimat ist für mich immer noch ein kompliziertes Wort. Im Englischen und Japanischen gibt es keine direkte Übersetzung. Im Deutschen kann Heimat viele Vorstellungen bedeuten. Für einige ist Heimat vielleicht der Ort, wo sie geboren wurden. However, for me, the place where I was born, where I was raised, and where my parents live are… Read more: Meine Heimat - interlude.
Where are you from? This is one of the most quintessential get-to-know-you questions. Yet, I often find myself without a quick forthcoming answer. Depending on the person or location, I may say one of two answers: “My parents live in Japan” or “I grew up in the Bay Area”. Most people are satisfied with one… Read more: interlude. - X = X.
I recently had a conversation with my mom about someone I had been seeing briefly. As we were talking, she said to me, “just because they didn’t want you does not mean that you are any less valuable. You are a diamond necklace, but they were looking for something else. A diamond necklace is still… Read more: X = X. - Called to be Home.
I’ve always known home wasn’t solely a place. Moving numerous amount of times in my life, I knew that couldn’t be true. Had not every place I had lived felt like home to me in one way or another? For much of my life, I assumed home was the people I was surrounded by. I… Read more: Called to be Home. - letting go.
I wrote this for an Instagram caption in September 2018. I had now spent a couple of months back in California, and though I was still resentful of my time there, しょうがない。[ It can’t be helped. ] Once upon a time, the very utterance of this phrase would make my blood boil. To me, this… Read more: letting go.