This inspring memoir, While I was Away talks about the unfamiliar feeling author Waka T. Brown feels when she's forced to go to Japan. Known as the "smart Japanese girl" in rural Kansas, she is soon labelled as the "dumb foreigner" in Japan as she struggles with reading and writing in kanji, doesn’t quite mesh with her complicated, distant, and strict Obaasama (grandma), and gets made fun of by the students in her Japanese public-school classes. Waka T. Brown is a Stanford graduate with a BA in International Relations and a Master's in Secondary Education.