Short Story : Rite of passage - 16 years old kids in London from different cultures

September, 1988.

Mornings in London were beginning to darken, and the air carried that crispness hinting at the onset of autumn. I walked into the kitchen for breakfast, the faint aroma of toast and tea in the air. My father looked up from the table, his face a curious blend of seriousness and routine.

“You’ve got to register at the police station within a week of your 16th birthday,” he said, setting his mug down. “It’s for the Alien Registration. Best to tell your teacher—you’ll have to miss a class since they only process applications during the day.”

Alien Registration.

The word lingered in the air. Alien.

It wasn’t a word I was entirely unfamiliar with. It carried two meanings, after all. One, a visitor from another planet; the other, a foreigner. The latter always seemed to sting a little, as though the law had to remind you that you didn’t quite belong.

Among the older students at school, the term sparked no end of irritation. “Alien—honestly, what kind of language is that?” I’d heard one of them complain. “Who comes up with this nonsense? Probably the Foreign Office. Lot of good their words do.”

My appointment was on Thursday, at 1:00 PM—right in the middle of my biology class. It felt strange, almost fraudulent, to think of missing a lesson for something like this. Would it even count as a valid excuse?

After school, I explained the situation to my biology teacher, Mrs. Casimier. Her response startled me.

“Well, turning sixteen—how wonderful! Congratulations!” she exclaimed, cupping my cheeks briefly in her hands before planting a kiss on each.
“Of course, you may miss class.

“It’s an important step,” she continued. “Alien Registration, I mean. Of course, you can miss class for it. It’s part of growing up, isn’t it?”

By the end of the week, she’d even addressed the entire class. “Next Thursday, Ami will miss biology to complete her Alien Registration. A significant milestone, isn’t it? Soon, many of you will face this as well. And when you do, remember—it’s not just bureaucracy. It’s your first step toward adulthood, your formal recognition as someone who’s here, living in this country, not as a child but as an individual.”

Her words made it feel momentous.

The congratulations started pouring in as we boarded the minibus to travel between campuses. Turning sixteen meant new freedoms. You could drive a car under supervision, or even make medical decisions with a parent present. There was a sense that life was about to open up, albeit cautiously.

And yet, registering as an alien felt oddly grandiose. A formal acknowledgment that I, once just an extension of my parents, was now someone distinct—albeit still a foreigner.

Thursday arrived, and my father and I left for the police station. We arrived half an hour early, as planned, but the queue was already immense—dozens of families, their expressions a mix of boredom and quiet resolve. By the time my name was called, there were easily fourty or fifty people waiting.

“Quite a crowd,” I murmured.

My father nodded. “Thirty minutes early, and it’s still this bad. Let’s just get through it.”

The procedure itself was surprisingly simple. Name, address, and place of birth. The officer at the desk pronounced my small Japanese hometown perfectly as he wrote it down. A photograph was attached to the document, and within minutes, I held my Alien Registration card—a slim, greenish-grayish piece of paper that now carried my identity.

That evening, I sat in my room, the radio murmuring in the background. I held the card, running my thumb along the edges, unsure what to feel.

Then a song came on.

Sting’s Englishman in New York.

The chorus caught my ear: “I’m a legal alien, I’m a legal alien, I’m an Englishman in New York.”

A legal alien. Like me. Only instead of New York, it was London.

I glanced back at my registration card. At the bottom, there was an empty space—a place where nothing was written, but something could be.

If I were truly an alien, I thought, from a different world, which planet would I be from?

The question amused me, and soon, a playful thought emerged. If foreigners were aliens in England, then perhaps England was the Earth. And what of the rest of the world?

Japan, distant and small, felt like Pluto—so far removed it might as well be on the edge of the solar system. America, energetic and overwhelming, could be the Sun. The Caribbean, with its turquoise seas, seemed like Mercury. Africa, with its fiery landscapes, might be Mars, and Europe, familiar yet distinct, could be Venus. Jupiter belonged to the Middle East, vast and steeped in history.

By the next day, this little game had taken on a life of its own. My classmates joined in during lunch.

“So, what planet are you from?” asked Neda, a Persian girl from my year.

“Pluto,” I replied with a grin. “It suits me, don’t you think?”

“If Britain’s Earth, then where am I from ?
Neda continued.

"Jupiter, the lucky planet”.

“And me? Where does that leave the Philippines?” asked Maureen.
“Neptune,. “Surrounded by water, like your islands.”

The weeks that followed brought other, quieter reflections.

On that day, pop songs about space and planets momentarily became a soundtrack to our lives. Duran Duran’s "Planet Earth" and Madonna’s "Lucky Star" blared as we walked between classes. Even Maureen’s sister, Margaret, who registered days after me, gleefully declared herself a “mermaid from Neptune.”

Though it began as a joke, this game softened the strangeness of being labeled an alien. It transformed what might have felt like a bureaucratic obligation into something celebratory—a shared rite of passage.

Some children balked at the idea of reporting to the police, despite having committed no crime. But to us, it was a rite of passage, a moment that marked the arrival of our sixteenth year—a strangely celebratory occasion, even if it seemed absurd at first glance. There was, after all, the curious twist of choosing one's "home planet" as part of the process, a playful addition that lightened the mood and gave us something to laugh about afterward.

A year later, I found myself at a new school, struggling to settle into an unfamiliar environment.

My former classmates had been mostly from Asia and Africa. The school itself was small, intimate in its way; everyone knew one another. It was the kind of place where conversations were easy to come by. There, I’d been fortunate enough to encounter both Islam and Christianity, a rare chance to observe and engage with two worlds side by side.

But this new school was different. Here, everything seemed neatly divided, the students clustering by their countries of origin. The British stuck with the British, the Americans with the Americans, and those speaking languages I didn’t recognise formed their own tight-knit groups. This was the dominant structure, the unspoken rule of the place.

I’d been told there were other Japanese students, but apart from two in my year, I rarely interacted with them. The Japanese students avoided one another, creating a curious dynamic that made forming close friendships seem almost insurmountable.

Still, there were kind-hearted individuals, most of them mixed-race or dual nationality students, or those who’d lived abroad for many years. They were the ones who approached me, slowly bridging the gap with a certain ease born of experience. Others, unconcerned with nationality or background, would strike up conversations too, as if unburdened by the divisions that defined so much of this school’s social structure.

It was also here that I encountered discussions about Alien Registration. I remember a particular exchange with a dual nationality student holding British citizenship. Somehow, the topic of the “alien registration” came up. The word “alien” seemed to startle her; she looked at the document I carried with wide eyes, as though it were a relic from another world.

It was in the spring term, when the weather had finally begun to soften. I was having lunch in a shaded spot, away from the glare of the sun, when James approached. He was an American boy, though he’d been raised in London. There was something about him that defied categorisation—an air that made it impossible to say whether he belonged more to Britain or America. He was, in every sense, an enigma.

.“I heard you did Alien Registration,” he said.

“Yes,” I replied. “I'm from Pluto.”

I wasn’t sure if James would quite understand, but I told him about the little imagined detail I had added to my Alien Registration card. In the blank space at the bottom, I’d mentally drawn a line and written the name of my supposed home planet: Pluto. I explained to him that I’d decided to pretend I was from there, and to my relief, he seemed to like the idea. He even grasped the reasoning behind my choice—how Sting’s Englishman in New York had inspired it.

Then James asked a question that caught me off guard.

“What did you feel like when you registered?”

The question gave me pause. But after a moment, I answered.

“Well, I felt more independent. Before the registration, I was just a piece of furniture my parents carried around wherever they went. But once I had my name and address officially recorded, it was as if I’d gained a little autonomy. I could go anywhere I liked.”

“Go anywhere?” James tilted his head. “What do you mean?”

“You know, for things like art galleries or museums. Sometimes they ask for proof that you’re a student to give you the discount. So I show my alien registration card and the school binder with our emblem on it. It’s really handy when you want the student price.”

James nodded, silently this time, a quiet understanding settling between us.

Then he smiled. “Pluto’s a good choice.”

Graduation day arrived, and amidst the hurried farewells to friends, I found myself back at home, preparing for a short trip to a countryside town the following day. The familiar sound of Capital Radio played in the background, a comforting presence in the chaos. Somewhere between the chatter of the DJ and the music, a listener requested a song by Sting.

The DJ’s voice came on air, curious and warm. “Can you tell me the reason why you’ve requested this song?”

And then, to my surprise, I heard James’s voice. There was no mistaking it, calm and measured, with that peculiar blend of American and British inflection. “My friend is from Pluto. But the orbit’s shifted, and she has to leave England—‘The Earth.’ This one’s for her.”

Moments later, the haunting opening chords of Sting’s “Englishman in New York” filled the room. I paused, motionless, struck by the unexpected poignancy of the moment.

But that wasn’t the end of it. The voices of others soon joined the broadcast, each with their own requests and dedications. Terry, a British friend, asked for Duran Duran’s “Planet Earth.”

“Why this song?” the DJ inquired.

“My friend said the UK is Earth,” Terry replied, “and she even sang that bit—‘Bap bap bap bap, this is Planet Earth!’”

Neda, an Iranian classmate, requested Madonna’s “Lucky Star.”

“What’s the story behind it?”

“My friend’s from Pluto, too,” she explained, “and she told me I should register as being from Lucky Jupiter.”

The DJ chuckled. “Have you done your alien registration yet?”

“Soon,” Neda replied, her tone bright.

“Well, good luck with it,” the DJ said kindly.

The stream of requests didn’t stop there. A Russian-British classmate, uncertain whether to align with Earth or Venus, also requested “Englishman in New York.” Others—students of mixed heritage, dual citizens, and those whose roots stretched across continents—called in with their own planetary choices. An American-French friend debated between the Sun and Venus, while a Danish student, choosing Venus, requested the finale from Les Misérables, a song we’d sung together so often that it felt like a shared anthem.

Even strangers chimed in. One listener from New Zealand declared their support for the idea, humorously wondering if they belonged to Pluto or Neptune. Another, from Malaysia, firmly identified as a Neptunian.

The conversations deepened. Mixed-nationality children phoned in, torn between the identities of their parents’ countries and the places where they themselves had grown up. One boy, born in England to American and Swiss parents, pondered whether to align with the Sun, Venus, or Earth. Another girl, of Indian descent but raised entirely in the UK, confessed she no longer spoke much Hindi and thought it made sense to simply register as being from Earth.

For over an hour, the radio became a space for collective reflection—on identity, belonging, and the curious weight of labels. Some felt the strain of choosing just one planet to represent their multifaceted lives. A few wistfully wished they could pick them all.

Through it all, the DJ kept addressing me directly, gently coaxing. “Come on, Pluto -  we’re waiting for you. Just ring us—we’d love to hear from you. You know the number: London XXX-XXX-XXX.”

But I didn’t call. By then, the discussions had grown so complex, so deeply personal, that I felt my little joke about being “from Pluto” no longer mattered. What could I add to what had already been said?

Instead, I stayed silent, hoping these moments of playful rebellion and earnest introspection would bring something meaningful to everyone who participated. That they would complete their alien registrations—a strange yet symbolic rite of passage—with the sense that they had claimed something of their own. And that, in the end, they could celebrate each other’s choices, whatever planet they might call home.

A few years later, I found myself back in England, this time for a year at a small university in a northern town. It felt strange to return, but also oddly familiar, like stepping back into a room you hadn’t realised you’d missed.

One evening, as I listened to Capital Radio, a voice on the broadcast caught my attention. A Japanese listener, clearly upset, was lodging a complaint about an incident that had apparently occurred some years ago. They were furious over the game we had played—choosing a planet of origin during the alien registration process. “Calling Japanese people Plutonians,” they said, “is racist.”

I sat there, startled and a little bemused. At the time, I’d dismissed the game’s detractors as people who lacked a sense of humour. But it seemed that, over the years, the playful nuance of our invention had been lost. Somewhere along the line, the phrase “Japanese people are from Pluto” had taken on a life of its own, stripped of its context, reduced to a lazy shorthand that no longer reflected the original intent.

The misunderstanding wasn’t entirely surprising. Some had even speculated that the association with Pluto might have been offensive because of the Disney character—a yellow dog with long black ears. To some, it might have seemed like a pointed jab, linking the character’s yellow skin and long black ears features to stereotypes about Japanese appearance  (Yellow Japanese with long black hair). Perhaps that, too, had added fuel to the fire.

In the end, the story of the planetary game faded away, dismissed as a regrettable misstep. But I couldn’t help thinking about what we had intended: a moment of lighthearted self-discovery, where sixteen-year-olds stepping into their first adult responsibility could celebrate their individuality.

The essence of the game had been about freedom—choosing your own identity. A Japanese child born and raised in America might claim the Sun and Pluto. Someone born in England with Japanese parents might choose Earth. It was meant to be expansive, playful, liberating. Yet, as time passed, the layers of choice and nuance seemed to have been stripped away.

For those of us who played it, it was never about nationality alone. A mixed-heritage friend might choose Venus and Earth to reflect their Russian and British roots. Another, with American and Swiss parents but a life spent in London, might claim Earth, the Sun, and Venus. Someone born in Singapore but raised in England could choose Neptune and Earth. The combinations were endless, a mosaic as complex as the lives they represented.

At sixteen, identity is often a shifting thing—half-formed, tentative. Yet the act of choosing, even playfully, felt significant. It hinted at the bigger questions: Which nationality will you claim, if you have more than one? Where will you settle, if your ties span multiple homes? Will you choose the land of your parents or the place where you’ve grown up?

In the end, alien registration was more than just bureaucracy. It was the first real responsibility for many young people, a symbol of stepping into adulthood. It marked the threshold of a life where choices—and the consequences of those choices—would define us.

As I switched off the radio, I thought about the mixed-heritage children in Japan who would someday face their own version of this rite of passage. I hoped it might be an occasion for celebration, a moment where they could take pride in their growing independence. Congratulations, I thought, imagining them standing at the cusp of their futures. It was a small hope, but one worth holding onto.