Soul Society is NOT Japan.
It's a separate Realm that (Wrongfully so) lives immersed in Japanese culture and the language...
But there's not really a sense of nationality because it's not a Nation.
Byakuya was born and raised in Soul Society. He's a Born Soul, a nobleman from one of the Great Noble Houses.
He's the Head of his Clan.
Those are his identities.
He has no real emotional connection to Japan as a nation.
Ichigo however IS Japanese. Born and raised. It's his culture. His language. It flows in his veins.
But he's just on the threshold of adulthood when he escapes to Norway, living his day-to-day life in Lillehammer, working in Asgard.
Things that had made him be singled out in the negative sense, now make him blend easily.
No one cares about his hair colour or his eyes, a brown so light they look amber.
Even as his body gets a surprise growth spurt and his frame widens, he never feels his neighbours and coworkers' eyes on him in the same sneering, prejudiced way he'd always felt in Karakura...
Byakuya does get some curiousity filled looks, but his preference for peace and quiet outside the workplace meshes well with the population of Lillehammer and it doesn't take long for him to be wholeheartedly accepted.
He learns the language easily and quickly.
He immerses himself in the culture, he adapts, he feels like an actual person for the first time in his life.
He makes friends... He becomes part of the community.
From the place they left, nothing but closed doors and the feeling that Soul Society is just pretending they don't exist anymore.
It stings a bit, but they go on.
Years and years go by and now they're parents, raising their children as Norwegian.
They have the Norwegian passport.
They speak mostly in Norwegian (They still use Japanese. They refuse to forget the language. They teach it to the kids.)
They eventually go back to the place they were forced to escape from.
Some bonds are rekindled.
Others seem impossible to repair...
But it's not home anymore.
Neither Soul Society, nor Karakura.
And now, officially, they are foreigners in Japan, since choosing the Norwegian nationality forcibly means abdicating the Japanese one.
Ichigo feels it. Doesn't drown on it, but he does ponder on the fact that the identity he grew up with doesn't belong to him anymore.
It doesn't really register. Doesn't faze him. Doesn't make a mark.
It was never his identity.
And that shows in the daily life they resume back in Norway... First back in Lillehammer, but then in the village of Lærdalsøyri...
Little things like Byakuya's passion for football.
Not only is he's a huge fan of Vålerenga, but he's also a real supporter of the Norwegian National Team, watching all of the games.
Ichigo follows the Japanese Team still, alongside with the Norwegian one. Byakuya doesn't...
Ichigo is a Norwegian man on paper and on his daily life, but his childhood, his upbringing, sticks with him still.
Ichigo is a Japanese man deep down inside.
Byakuya, never having that type of identity etched into his heart and soul, discovers and learns one in Norway.
He's a Norwegian man through and through... One who was simply raised immersed in a Japanese-like culture but not in a sense of nationality.
The sense of identity and belonging that seemed to elude him at times, has never left him since he built his life in Norway...
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