Dakota Hall wears a princess kimono, while her friend is dressed in samurai armor during a trip to Kyoto earlier this year. Dakota attends high school in Tokyo.
After spending more than four years studying in Japan, Dakota Hall knows that she’s back in the United States as soon as she steps off the plane.
Sure, there are the familiar food kiosks and the occasional newsstand during her visits home. But mostly it’s the hum of conversations in English. That’s when the 17-year-old Templeton native knows she’s back in America.
“I’m used to being a little walled off,” Dakota said, noting her limited Japanese vocabulary. “It’s strange being able to understand every-one’s conversations. I feel like I’m being really impolite.”
Dakota left Templeton, where she lived with her mother, Carolina Hall, for Tokyo in eighth grade to live with her father and stepmother, who moved there a couple of years earlier. She attends the American School in Japan.
Dakota had visited her father in Japan once before moving there, she said, and was exposed to Japanese cuisine at an early age.
Her academic life resembles that of ambitious teens in America. She has tackled topics from U. S. involvement in China to overfishing of the world’s oceans as part of her debate club and recently was selected to join the National Society of High School Scholars.
She’s traveled throughout Asia and has friends in Beijing and Shanghai in China, Moscow, and Jakarta in Indonesia.
“Your friends become very spread out” when attending such a school, Dakota said.
With graduation approaching, Dakota is preparing for the next stage: college. She has been accepted to New York University and Oberlin College in Ohio.
Dakota doesn’t yet know where she’ll end up or what she wants to study. Her top choice may be English and history— or maybe psychology or film.
“The question is more what I don’t want to study,” Dakota said. “I’m going to have a hard time choosing a major.”
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