Anon Sonomura

Q: What is your full name? What is the meaning behind your name?

A: Anon Olive Sonomura. Anon means ‘sound of love’ in Japanese. ‘A’ (愛) is the character ‘love.’ ‘Non’ (音) is the character for sound. And then ‘olive’ just comes from the olive branch, olive oil, all those peace representing things, that’s what they took it from. Sonomura: ‘sono’ (園) means ‘garden’ like ‘courtyard garden,’ that kind of royalty garden, and then ‘mura’ (村) means village. So it means ‘garden village’ for my last name.

Q: How do you spend your free time?

A: I would probably practice instruments: drums and piano. I’d practice a lot with my free time. Other than that, I really like watching movies and drawing so I think that’s what I do most.

Q: What is your favorite movie?

A: That’s such a hard question. Not to be biased or anything, I’ve got to say it’s like any Ghibli movie or just like movies made by Japanese animation companies. Like “Your Name” and “Weathering With You.”

Q: What are you passionate about? Why?

A: I’m really passionate about music, just ‘cause I’ve been doing it since I was really little and it has a lot to do with my family. My name originated from the whole idea of music because my dad has a musical family and so that’s why they decided to use the character “sound” and that’s why they put it in my name. And then it just really has a lot to do with our family, and my life kind of revolves around it because of all the extracurriculars I do. All this time I spend outside of school has a lot to do with band or jazz and all that good stuff. 
Other than that, I’d say I’m pretty passionate about languages or my culture just because I’m also really exposed to that.

Q: What makes you unique?

A: I have been standing up because of my race. Because there are really no Asians around Utah County and being able to speak three languages, that’s also something that not many people can do. First of all, there’s not many people that can speak Japanese here and even if we are to say ‘there are Asians in Utah,’ they’re mostly Chinese. There’s very few Japanese people here. And also there are very few people that can say, ‘I can speak Chinese, English, and Japanese.’ So I’d say that. And I grew up in a Japanese household but in the US. So I kind of grew up between the two cultures. I’d say that’s something unique about me.

Q: What motivates you in life?

A: The whole concept of reaching out to people, or just helping people, or just doing stuff with others motivates me because that can do anything from what you want to do with your career to what organizations you want to be in in high school. And you know, it has a lot to do with families. So I guess what motivates me in life is like people and like what I do with others ‘cause like in the future I do want to do something that has to do with helping people. So that’s a motivation in the educational aspect and then others, leadership and whatnot, I decided to do Student Council because I wanted to have interactions with others. ‘Cause I’m not good at that but I want to be better at that.

Q: How would you describe yourself in two words? Why those two?

A: Diligent and understanding.
Anything I do, I take them seriously. I don’t go loose on anything, I want everything done right and near to perfect. I guess you can also replace the word with perfectionism but more than that I am pretty diligent and serious about the work I do and the people that I connect with like with my friends and my family. 
Understanding is like, I’d say I’m pretty flexible around people.

Q: What is a vivid memory or experience you’ll never forget?

A: I’d say my whole trip to Japan when I was younger. ‘Cause like I haven’t been able to go for the past six years because of ticket prices and COVID but when I was younger I’d go every single and every single year I went, something massive would happen. So I’ve literally been going to Japan from age zero to like eleven. But every single year something happens like when I was six, the engine exploded on the plane to Japan. And then every year I went to elementary school in Japan for like three months and that was interesting because Japanese school is way different than American school. But I’d say the things I did in Japan are like memories that I will never forget in my life.

Q: What is something you do that is unique to your family, your culture, or the way you were raised?

A: I’d say everything is different compared to what my friends do. Because number one, I was not allowed to speak English at home. It was full-on Japanese. Everything we listened to like movies, music, books, food, the language we spoke, everything was in Japanese so there was absolutely no English in our household until we went to junior high and high school when we had to speak English with our dad for homework and stuff like that. So that’s one and the other was that it was a requirement for our family to go back to Japan every single year because that’s where my mom’s family is. We ate different food from everybody, we ate Japanese food, we were taught values that are highly protected in our culture like respecting people that are older than you, that’s a huge one. I was so shocked when I first hung out at my friend’s house because my friends would call their friend’s parents by their first name or just their last name because we never do that in our culture. But I would say just being raised in a different culture and just doing different things. I’d say language is the biggest thing.

Q: Who is your favorite celebrity and why?

A: I’m big on artists and musicians, I’d say Kenshi Yonezu is like my absolute favorite because I listen to his songs, no joke, 24/7 and it’s like a lot of his life I can relate to so a lot of the things he creates are just like so impactful and influential to me.