According to songwriter David Fenton, “Turning Japanese is all the clichés about angst and youth and turning into something you didn’t expect.” Fenton intended the song to be a love song, with the character of the song “pining over a photograph of his ex-girlfriend” in his bedroom, drawing from Fenton’s own experience of being rejected.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Japanese#:~:text=….