NAGANO, Japan - Kyoko Ina grew up to the accompaniment of gunfire, car alarms and taxis screeching away from curbs. She lived in New York City, next door to the Dakota, where John Lennon lived and died. When she was 8, Ina missed a day at school. Her street was closed while police investigated the ex-Beatle's murder.

"Central Park was my backyard," she said. "I'd be more afraid if I lived in a house in the country. I couldn't stand the quiet."

Now that she is a world-class figure skater, Ina hears the same question over and over. What about your background? She was born Japanese and she began her skating career as a Japanese competitor, even though she lived in the States.

Ina thought she was paying respect to her background when she boarded planes for regular 15-hour commutes to Tokyo for competitions. Her mother had been a star swimmer, an Asian Games champion in the breast stroke, and her grandfather had run track for Japan at the 1924 Olympics.

But more and more, she began to realize that that she was as hard-core American as they come, a New Yorker. One day, she looked down at her Japanese uniform, with a rising sun over her heart, and she knew she had to make a change.

"It just felt wrong," she said. "My friends were American, and I thought like an American, and I acted like an American."

She and her coach, Peter Burrows, were due to fly to Japan for an event, and she called it off. She was 14, and she went on a year-long sabbatical. When Ina returned, she competed as an American. Now, at age 25, she has returned to Japan, as part of the top-ranked U.S. pair at the Winter Olympics. She and her partner, Jason Dungjen, have won two straight national titles, and they will skate in the short program on Sunday.

AFTER HER MOST recent championship, a reporter asked her how it felt to be returning to her home country. "I look Japanese because I have dark eyes and black hair, and my skin is a certain color," she said. "But that's it. I don't feel Japanese. I feel American."

Japanese culture has shaped her perspective, but not her personality. As a child in New York, she spoke Japanese at home with her parents and English among her friends. And she is a wonderful speaker, in any language, engaging and witty, highly opinionated. That side of her, cultivated on the Upper West Side, did not fit in with the Japanese skating world.

"When she speaks sometimes, that's bothering them (Japanese officials)," her mother, Yoshiko Ina, said.

"They want to know "Why this kid is asking "Why?" They think if Kyoko is Japanese, she would be 100 percent Japanese. The Japanese student is shy, has no personal ideas, no personal opinions to say. But the American student always has something to say."

Ina's mother knew that Kyoko was unhappy in her second year with the Japanese federation. Ina had gone on an international trip and seen some Americans that she knew in the dining hall. She sat down with them and chatted away. Later, a Japanese official called her mother and asked that Kyoko stick with her team constantly.

AT THE JUNIOR world championships, according to Burrows, a team leader walked into a hotel room and immediately demanded that the television be turned off. "It was like living with a master sergeant," Burrows said. Japanese officials called Burrows frequently to check on Ina's progress and to tell him how he should be training her.

"They're very strict," Ina said. "They want things done a certain way."

She carefully avoided criticizing the Japanese, mindful that the country's values are simply different, not better or worse. The Japanese would surely be appalled that she once missed school because a famous neighbor had been gunned down. Japan's gun laws are so strict that the country shivered at the thought of the biathlon shooting competition taking place on Japanese soil. Each biathlete has been put through strenuous identification processing, including a retinal scan. "I understand both (cultures)," Yoshiko Ina said, "because I grew up with both." Her father was a diplomat who spent five years in Washington and then five in New York, where he was Japan's ambassador to the United Nations.

Ina's father, an importer-exporter, brought the family back to the States when she was still a baby. Ina began skating at four, joining with Dungjen a little over six years ago.

She said she had never regretted leaving the Japanese federation. "I'm not good on jet lag," she said, "and there were times we were making six trips in a two-month period."

THE JAPANESE officials, she said, supported her decision. She always sensed that local skaters, living in Japan, resented the fact that she was taking a place on the national traveling team. And she knew that she and the officials would never mesh.

"I'm a New Yorker," she said firmly. "We're obnoxious."

That's the surest sign of her affiliation. While she is wary of supporting any stereotypes about the Japanese, she gladly pokes fun at the city that molded her personality.

Ina loves fast cars and fast talking. She's not really obnoxious, but she's not at all what people expect when they see her, a delicate-looking skater with a heart-shaped face. She is different, a New Yorker, an American, the granddaughter of a Japanese Olympian and ambassador. She is a little bit of many things. She is simply herself.&lt;