This article aims to provide a better understanding of Japanese Mixed Heritage Youth's (JMHY) relationship to heritage language and senses of ethnicity, by analyzing their daily language use as provided by 14 JMHY. All (with two exceptions) do not use Japanese at home, and some have enrolled in Japanese as a second language class at a university. The article suggests that the participants' use of the term "half Japanese" to describe their ethnicity reveals their complex relationship with their Japanese heritage. Despite the ways JMHY differentiate themselves from Japanese people, the term indicates their recognition of a connection to Japanese heritage and the acknowledgement of the coexistence of the other half of their heritage at the same time. Engaging in making meaning of their ethnicity, JMHY show a tendency to return to roots and to rely on traditions, but it is not necessarily a one-way direction.