Christina Morimoto is sitting in the office of the Tokyo modeling agency she works for, answering questions about her first acting job in the new movie "I Am Nipponjin."
In the film, the 20-year-old Sophia University student plays Amy Watanabe, a young woman much like herself except for some details. Like Amy, Christina has one American parent and one Japanese parent, but in her case her father is the American (Morimoto is not her real name). Like Amy her late Japanese grandfather was a practitioner of the martial art of kendo, but unlike Amy she didn't grow up at his knee absorbing the niceties of Japanese culture because when she was younger she couldn't understand Japanese well enough, and he didn't speak English.
Most importantly, she didn't come to Japan to teach the natives what it really means to be Japanese. Amy, as Christina is quick to admit, is a bit of an exaggeration: a foreigner who is so enamored of Yamato-damashii (the spirit of Japan) that during her first day as an exchange student at a Japanese university she stands up during an assembly and sings "Kimigayo" louder than anyone in the auditorium.