I first started learning Japanese in my last year of high school in Toronto. I found a Saturday Japanese Language School that offered weekly Japanese courses for all levels. I enjoyed learning the language, and so decided to try it out for a year at Carleton University.
In Gongendou, Saitama. Doing o-hanami, viewing the sakuras, and I caught 5 goldfish.
My first Japanese instructor was called Mami Sasaki and she made me fall in love with the language. I really wanted to continue learning it and signed-up for every class year after year. My Japanese instructors Sowka-Sensei and Mika-Sensei were absolutely amazing. They made sure that we understood everything properly and helped us in any way they could. They also introduced us to Japanese culture by promoting events sponsored by the Japanese Embassy, or by the Carleton University Japanese Association. I decided to make Japanese my minor.
Every year, the Embassy and the Japan Foundation holds a Japanese Language Speech Contest in major cities across Canada. Students of Japanese are able to sign-up and compete against fellow learners for the top prize in each category. In 2011, I won first place in the advanced category of the Regional Japanese Speech Contest in Ottawa, and later won third place in the National Japanese Speech Contest in Calgary.
After the speech contest, I realized that I really wanted to improve my Japanese language learning abilities and signed up for a student exchange to Osaka at Kansai Gaidai University. I lived there for one year. That was probably the best decision of my life. I really wanted to immerse myself in the culture and the language in order to become fluent and pass the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. My language abilities increased enormously and I was able to pass the N2 level of the JLPT.
In Toyama. Snow walls were 19m high.
After coming back to Canada, I just wanted to go back to Japan. I had unfortunately taken all of the Japanese language courses offered at Carleton, and so couldn’t take any more classes. Because I had no way of studying Japanese, I decided to create a YouTube channel where I would upload cooking videos every week in Japanese, English, and French. This was a way for me to keep up with the language and obviously eat my delicious homemade food.
I still wanted to be involved with the Japanese community, which is why I joined CUJA, as the public relations coordinator, and organized events all year long for students who were interested in Japanese culture. In my final year of university, I decided to sign up for the JET Programme for the 2014-15 year.
I now live in Japan in Saitama prefecture where I teach English to high school students. I started blogging about my life in Japan for thejetcoaster.com. This site is run by JETs, and all of the bloggers are also JETs. We all write blogs weekly about travel, food, bugs, culture shock, and so on. In addition to that, I became the official food editor for the AJET Connect magazine this year!
My YouTube channel has gotten more popular over the last couple of months, probably because I upload videos 4-5 times a week, but also because I started uploading videos about my life in Japan.
Taking a soba noodle class.
It’s primarily a cooking channel, but I also have different series including travel, restaurant reviews, vlogs, strange food from Japan, and Japanese ice cream flavours! All of these promote Japanese culture, travel, language from my own personal experiences living in Japan.
My ultimate goal while in Japan is to pass the N1 of the JLPT, the 2 of the 漢字検定, travel the whole country, and to become YouTube famous!!