“Excuse me, where are you from? I bet I can guess your language.”
When Yuji Beleza strolls through the streets of Vienna, he doesn’t just see crowds. He sees a challenge — and an opportunity to connect.
In spontaneous street interviews, the Japanese-Irish polyglot surprises passersby with greetings in their native language — whether it’s Turkish, Swahili, Kurdish, Kazakh or Zulu.
With his wide smile and quick-fire linguistic reflexes, Beleza has become a social media sensation, amassing over 2.7 million followers on Instagram, 3.6 million on TikTok and another 388,000 on YouTube.
“If you speak at least a few phrases, it’s such a great icebreaker,” says the 27-year-old.
“Especially when I use phrases that surprise people — ones that really matter in their language or culture. You can instantly connect and win over their hearts.”
‘I didn’t know where I belonged’
Beleza discovered his knack for languages — and the power of a simple hello — early in life, thanks to his multicultural upbringing.
He grew up in Kyoto, Japan, with an Irish mother who taught English and spoke four languages — English, Irish, Japanese and Spanish — and a Japanese father who worked as a security guard.
“My sister and I learned early on how to switch between languages,” he recalls.
“And I think I had a pretty broad perspective from a young age because I was always curious and eager to learn about the world.”
He attended local public schools in Kyoto, where he was a good student, played basketball and had friends. Still, he never felt fully accepted as Japanese.
“They always called me a ‘foreigner,’ because I was the only mixed kid in school,” he says. “I had this feeling like I didn’t know where I belonged.”
At 16, Beleza spent a formative year abroad in Tipperary, in the heart of Ireland, to connect with his mother’s culture.
But on the other side of the world, he wasn’t fully embraced as Irish, either.
He gravitated toward the local immigrant community, where he met people from Lithuania and Poland, who were speaking with each other in Russian, their lingua franca.
“I thought, if I wanted to make more friends, I needed to learn Russian, too. That’s what really motivated me back then,” Beleza recalls. “That was my linguistic spark.”
Connecting through language
His experience in Ireland inspired Beleza to study Russian in college and spend a student-exchange year in St. Petersburg.
While overseas, he dove into a few more languages — German, Turkish and Serbian — each one offering a new window into another culture.
When learning new languages, Beleza draws on a mix of strategies, from watching videos online to jotting notes in his notebooks, practicing with friends, listening to voice memos on his phone, and studying traditional textbooks.
“Whenever I get a chance to speak in a different language, I always take the chance to practice,” he says. “I have to always train my brain all the time by just talking, talking, talking.”
Particularly interested in developing his German, he decided to pursue a master’s degree in political science in Vienna, Austria, where he could continue practicing the language.
Living in Vienna’s 10th district — known for its large immigrant population — he constantly heard Turkish, Serbian, Arabic and Kurdish spoken around him, and had many opportunities to train his linguistic muscles.
Though he loved living in Vienna, Beleza found himself at a crossroads when he graduated from his master’s program in 2023.
He had dreamed of working in international affairs — perhaps landing a job at the UN or serving as a Japanese diplomat.
While waiting to hear back from job applications, Beleza returned to Japan to look for work.
But as the months passed with no opportunities in sight, he decided to return to Vienna and take a chance on himself.