What Color Are Your Eyes?

What color are your eyes? Seems like a simple enough question, doesn't it? But ask that to a Japanese person and they get the deer in the headlights look on their faces. I have asked this in several classes amongst other "What color is....?" questions. And they look confused, and realize they can't see their eyes so they would have to pull this from memory. And then they all answer "black". I have tried to teach them that in America we would say they were brown. But, as kids have never filled out any sort of identification forms, I thought I would ask an adult. So tonight I asked my private student Yukia. She, too, looked confused and then answered black. She said she had never thought about it. She knew many Westerners had different colored eyes, but never thought what color her own eyes were. My eye color is a big part of my identity. Just another cultural difference.