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Today 23rd March marks the one year anniversary of the time I first came to Japan. It was on a three week holiday to Osaka to see Japan as well as being a surveillance trip to see if I would like to perhaps live here for a bit longer. I did.

I arrived early in the morning after a sleepess 14 hour flight exhausted. In the car ride from the airport back to the house I tried my first bit of (incorrect) Japanese on her father (Osaka asoko?) After that, without any further discussion on the matter we both mutually decided to speak in English.

It also marks the anniversary of my first trip to an onsen. Within an hour and a half of the first time I had met my girlfriend`s parents I was getting naked with her father, covering my modesty with a towel more similar in size to a flannel and entering a large humid building with many types of large mineral baths like fishponds containing either searingly hot or screamingly cold water and bewildered naked Japanese men. I (no less bewilderingly) enjoyed the experience although I was still English enough to not want to repeat the experience a couple of days later.

It was also my first proper taste of sushi. I had eaten at a sushi restaurant in Paris once but it was nothing compared to this delicious exhibition. I still wasn`t 100 percent convinced of the edibility of raw fish - raising the fish to my nose to test for freshness each time. It was my first taste of squid and octopus which I wasn`t a big fan of to start off with although I love now. They also proceeded to get me drunk on warm sake constantly refilling my cup each time I took a sip.

Afterwards we looked at seemingly futuristic mobile phones and digital cameras in the local shopping centre and passed bizarre cube shaped cars on the streets with names like Noah, Note and Fuga that could only appeal to the Japanese market. I spent the rest of the day in a dreamy stupor dulled by jetlag and sake. My first day in Japan.