Back from my trip to Aichi! It was one of the most memorable weeks of my life. I seriously do not have enough words to express my gratitude for my host family, all the members of the association, and to everyone who came out to all the events. It’s amazing the amount of things you can experience in just one week.

I really want to write a more in depth entry later, but I’ll try to point out some quick things I noticed on this trip:

First, my spoken Japanese is quite terrible. Like ghastly. All the grammar rules flew out of my head the moment my mouth opened, so I could only mutter incoherent things like nouns and verbs. However, when I did manage to string a sentence together, everyone was saying how good my pronunciation was, which made me super happy. (Countless hours singing Arashi on the way to work paid off.) Surprisingly as well, my listening got a lot better on this trip. Most people already knew I wasn’t Japanese (although I pretty much blend right in), so they would talk to me in English. However, I would occasionally hear them talking about me in Japanese. LOL. I didn’t catch anything bad per se, but I hope they knew I was onto them. =P

Secondly, I had mentioned this before, but the weather in Nagoya was freezing! I was already used to the cold here in Toronto, so I was expecting spring-like weather over there. However, it SNOWED. Not once, but TWICE! The day we toured Okazaki Castle it looked like a winter wonderland with huge flakes falling everywhere. I would have not made it through the week without my heater, the kotatsu and the ofuro. Actually, my heated futon was pretty good too, except my head stuck out from under the covers. I kept getting massive headaches the next morning, which I’m pretty sure was due to sleeping in a freezer.

Third – I ate too much. Breakfast every morning was an extravagant meal. Usually I munch on toast in the morning while I frantically try to get myself to work on time. However, over there I could always count on something new everyday. =)

+++

There was a couple cultural things I never really got the hang of while I was there. Sometimes when Shoichi-san came home from work and Yoko-san and I were in the house, he would say “Tadaima.” I usually reply with just a “Konnichi-wa.” I figured it would be a little awkward saying “Okaeri nasai” to the homeowner. Hehe.

I also never quite understood how to address people. I’m not quite ‘western’ enough to call people casually by their first names, so I usually try to add a ‘san’ to their names. I was also told to use the ‘masu’ form when speaking, however things will slip out from my mouth in plain form as well. It was a little tricky trying to master the level of politeness, so usually I stuck with English to avoid any blunders.

+++

Oh, I mentioned to Yoko-san at the beginning of the week that I love Arashi. By the end of the week, everyone knew about it. LOL. Except I really don’t think they comprehended the extent in which I love Arashi.

“You like Sakurai-kun?”

“Yes, if you mean the Keio-boy, fail!boat, なで肩, chesuto, undou-onchi, Maximum umai, ZERO, Sakurai Sho-kun.”

Hehe. Actually, Tsuyoshi-san bought me a copy of TV Life magazine with them on the cover. I thought it was really nice. Too bad I didn’t meet anyone in the fandom. ^_^

+++

More to come in my day-to-day entries!