Her foreignness in Japan, as an American, leads to relentless bullying from her classmates. Identifying more as an American, Nao feels completely disconnected from her surroundings, and feels as if her 'life is unreal, and Sunnyvale, which was real, was a jillion miles away in time and space, like the beautiful Earth from outer space.' She struggles to assimilate in the new environment and experiences the disorientation of being viewed as 'the other' in the country of her ethnic heritage. Part of this discomfort derives from the fact that – unlike her parents, who identify as Japanese and speak the language fluently – she only speaks conversational Japanese and has a very limited knowledge of and exposure to Japanese culture. Nao identifies as an American and feels like 'an ordinary California girl adopted by Japanese parents', though she feels alienated in her new environment and finds it difficult to relate to the Japanese part of her identity. Nao, a second-generation Japanese American and native California girl, experiences the pain and discomfort of being uprooted from her home in Silicon Valley after her father loses his job, prompting her family to move back to Tokyo. A Tale for the Time Being is a metafictional novel by Ruth Ozeki narrated by two characters, a sixteen-year-old Japanese American girl living in Tokyo who keeps a diary, and a Japanese American writer living on an island off the coast of British Columbia who finds the diary of the young woman washed ashore some time after the 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan.

A tale for the time