The real I found in Virtual Reality

Where is the Real?

The word "Virtual Reality" is translated as 仮想現実 in Japanese
and people would imagine it's a fake thing by this word.

People and world that you can see through VR is just a imagination and it will disappear once you take off your VR headset.

Is the true reality only existing in the real world and the Virtual Reality can't exceed the real world?

Here is my record that I saw with English in the VR social platform called
VRChat that I started from March 2021.
(This entry is the 23th day of VRChat Advent Calender 2021.
You can also see Japanese ver of this entry from here)

The language barrier between my family

Before started to talk about VRChat, I have to tell my past story in my life.

I'm half Japanese and half Chinese.
However, my parents grew up in China and then bring me to Japan when I was 3 years old, so we don't have "the same native language". 

Due to this language problem, It's difficult for me to communicate with my parents and I've never told my inside thoughts to them.

What happened to me because of this problem?

First of all, as I hear Chinese that I can't understand fully made me dislike the language it self. Then I feel strong anger towards the fact that I borned as half Chinese. I gradually lost my self esteem and I bacame more speechless
because of the less experience of communicate with people.

Eventually, I decided to not speak Chinese for resisting this situation. 

Every time I went to my friend's house I saw they can talk to their parents with the same language, this fact made me feel that I wish to born as Japanese like others.

I was bullied in junior high school.

I don't even know the exact reason why they bullied me but this experience made me to have social phobia and I wasn't able to go to the school since then. After graduated junior high school while stay in my home I entered high school but I quit it half year later because of my phobia.

I wasn't be able to see any bright future in my life, so there were only two choices that I will live like a dead fish or end my life.

The girl I met in China.

As you can tell that I'm half chinese, I have Chinese relatives who live in China.
One day, one of my relatives invited me to go to Chinese high school.

I didn't have any choice to deny it so I went to China while having mental problems.

That was like the hell.

I had to spend in a situation that no one understands my Japanese fully.
I felt despair every night in the dormitory of the school where I couldn't take a mental brake at all.

The most toughness thing was I blamed myself that I coundn't even stand this situation.

About half the year had passed, I fell down in the schoolyard because of devastated my heart.

When I was resting in a break room while decinding to end my life,
The girl who is in the same class came to me by skipping the class.

She had been studying Japanese through self-study and looking for Japanese international student.
she was also the highest peformance student in the school and be loved by other students, it seems she has a bright future from my eyes.

She talked to me a few times shortly after I entered the shcool,
but I kept distance from her as she try to get close to me due to my social phobia.

After she came to me in the break room, I speaked my true mind to her that I don't care whenever I die then she suddenly grabbed my hands and said,

"If you want to die, I will die with you".

I coudn't believe it at the first moment, but it seems there was no reason for her to die and I coudn't think that she was lying by watching her unclouded eyes.

Even though I wasn't be able to believe anyone, there was no choice to doubt her words because of this action. 

I decided to live my life whatever happens in the future in order to repay for her action from this day.

I back to a Japanese high school after studying abroad then I went on to a university and entered the Japanese society, however even after that experience I was still embarrassed about being a half Chinese.

I was afraid that I will break relationships with my friends if I reveal my identity so I acted a fake version of me all the time.

I tried to live positively for repaying her action,
but when I went to a crowd of Japanese people I always felt that "I'm not a part of this society" and felt extreme loneliness.

My first meeting with English studying.

Three years ago, I started to study English for some reason so I read English grammar textbook for the first time. It surprised me a lot.

I had never studied English in my school days because of the situation so I didn't have any interests towards foreign countries and it's culture but I got so surprised about the fact that English-speaking people uses "low-context language which doesn't have ambiguities" unlike Japanese.

This made me have a strong interest towards English language itself.
(I think there was also the feeling that I wanted to forget about Chinese)

However, It also made me realize about the fact that majority of people knows basic English grammers that I didn't know, this despaired me a lot that made me feel wanting to reset my life.

There was no choice to go to abroad or go to English school to me.
I had only one choice to study English through self-study due to both
my age and my financial situation.

So I made an effort to study English for 3 years than anyone else. 

I listened to English voices through an entire day even while I'm asleep, I did English shadowing all the time., I wrote English diary every single day and memoize it until I can speak it unconsciously, then try to use it practically on online English conversation.

 
Eventually, I became be able to speak English.

However, the fact awaited me is that
"there is no oppotunity to speak English while living in Japan". 

The world where is no national boundaries.

One day, I saw a Japanese manga called "VRおじさんの初恋(The first love of middle aged VR man)" on my Twitter's timeline.
People plays VR social platform in that world and the protagonist will fall in love for the first time in his life with an old man who uses woman avatar through Virtual Reality.

After reading this manga, I thought this would possible to happens in the future if VR technology will be developed at this level where you can change your appearence and voice freely while watching replies.
I found one reply that says "This already happens in VRChat".

Already happens in VRChat??
Is it really possible that this already happens?

I was so intrigued about VRChat by founding this reply so I tried to find informations about it on the Internet but I couldn't find anything.
So I decided to buy Oculus Quest2 which was released by Facebook in order to see it by myself.

It was the world that I've never seen before.

So many English conversations come to my ears.
A baby yoda who suddenly talked to me.
A gigant who's size is break through the ceiling and
foreign childlen who were arguing about something each other.

A skelton who was singing something on a stage, and a woman who was swinging her body along to the song.

On top of that, a foreign child asked me to clone his avatar and
treated me as his child.

These experience impacted me a lot and the fact that I finally found the place where I can use my English speaking skill made me sleep less at that night.

After exploring some public instances I wondered where is Japanese people, so I went to 「JP］ Tutorial world.
The event calendar that I found there gave me a big impact again.

"There is a society in this world"

People live life and make communities together, some make avatars and worlds, it seems like people are making the society in this new virtual world.

After a while, I noticed that there is an event called
EN-JP Language Exchange which is organized by sleeping_now,
so I went that world immediately.

"There was no national boundary at there"

No one can identify other people's races, nationality, even gender in the first time meeting because everyone wear avatars. Various countries people speak English and Japanese and can be friends by crossing the physical distance.
By entering this community, I'm no longer a minority for the time in my life.

All of those attributes are no longer matter in here.
The only important thing is one's individuality that can completely disappear my nationality problem which had been tormenting my mental health through the entire life.

I finally found the place where I can be natural myself in Virtual Reality.

You can see the essence in Virtual Reality 

Virtual Reality is translated as 仮想現実(Fake Reality) in Japanese
but the original meaning of this word is
"An appearence is different but the essence is the same as the reality".

This world doesn't have "Physics".
You can't shake hands with your friends, it goes through as you try to touch it.
Of cource you can't eat any foods at here.

However, you will be freed from "every physical constraints existing in the real world".

No mattar how far apart we are living, we can feel that we are in the same space right now.

You can be freed from inferiority of your appearence from birth by changing it.

You can change attributes like gender, race, voice, even your age that you can't change completely in the real world.

One thing I can say for sure is "This is the world where has the different physical law" that can reflects the essence of things.

2 month ago,  I met one girl who live in America in VRChat.
We became friends across age gap and one day I knew that she studies Spanish.

I wondered why she studies Spanish so I asked her, then she said that she was born in Mexico and moved to America with her parents when she was child, so she doesn't have the same native language with her parents. 

It got me so suprised.
I thought I will have this problem alone through my entire life and I've never expect that I can meet  someone who has the same parental problem as me through Virtual Reality.

World Name : Mochie

You can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

https://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/

The famous speech said by Steve Jobs at the Stanford University.

3 years ago, I started study English alone with uncertain future,
then eventually it connected me to the person who I can only meet through Virtual Reality and I was finally relieved from the suffering.

If I had enough financial ability to go to abroad, or an oppotunity to move to 
foreign country, I probably didn't choose to come to VRChat.

The problems that has been binding me led me to VRChat
and it connected the dots. 

I was finally able to feel that I want to live my life not for the girl who I met in China but for myself.

Where is the true reality?

It might be existing inside connection with people,
not in the Real World or Virtual Reality.