Japanese was not a dead language by any means, but it was barely spoken outside of Japan. Hikaru's grandmother had been the most recent member of his family to speak it; he was actually more Filipino than Japanese, by ancestry. But he connected more deeply with his Japanese heritage, so he was learning a language that, had things been different, he may have grown up speaking.

He had taken kendo since he was a child, though the dojo he learned from used the term interchangeably with "fencing" and taught both Eastern and Western styles. He had a few antique katana and other Japanese memorabilia from his grandmother's family. There was something deeply comfortable about wearing the kimono that had once belonged to his great-grandfather, and not just because they were the same height and build.

Friends who had never seen his room believed him thoroughly American. This was true enough, but relearning his heritage culture made him feel closer to the ancestors he had never met.

It didn't hurt that his father once stated his regret that he hadn't learned Japanese when he was young and it would have come more easily. Hikaru was constantly looking for the option his father would have chosen, so that even if he didn't select the same, he could smile and think, "I know my father would have done this." It was another way to feel close to his ancestors; albeit one he had met and looked up to very much.

He supposed he also was trying to ensure that he would never be, as the Japanese idiom put it, "a horse with no skeleton." He had family, though he kept most of them alive in his heart for lack of a better option.