SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Despite the high number of Japanese tourists who visit the North each year, Yellowknifer Victoria Ollerhead found herself lost when looking for a way to expand her love for Japanese culture, through language.

Victoria Ollerhead carried her interest in Japanese culture from childhood into her adult life. While hosting a weekly meet-up to learn Japanese, she is also a regular vendor at the Ptarmicon conventions, selling Japanese toys, souvenirs and snacks. - NNSL file photo

"I've been interested in this since early 2000, but nobody in town offers classes and has these types of groups," she said.

But upon seeing a notice at Sushi North inviting people to join weekly meetings, Ollerhead discovered a small group of like-minded people who had every interest in learning the language as she had.

Ollerhead joined the Japanese meet-up group last year, which gets together every Sunday from six to eight p.m. at Javaroma, where she and now about five to eight others together learn the language.

When she first joined the group, the meetings consisted of herself, Mayja Tanaka and then-16-year-old Emilie D'Aigle.

"I'm one of the founders," explained D'Aigle. "I was interested in learning Japanese and I got in touch with someone, Mayja Tanaka, who used to live here on a Visa. So we started meeting up at Javaroma and she would teach me everything about Japanese culture because she mentioned she was teacher at one point."

However when Tanaka returned to Japan in May, Ollerhead took over the reins as a teacher because she didn't want to see her city left once again without the option of learning Japanese.

D'Aigle continued on in the group and helps wrangle in new members, she added.

"It's a lot easier to learn in a group than it would be on your own," she said, explaining the group brings textbooks and notepads to study together, while also conversing in the language.

Both Ollerhead and D'Aigle's interest in Asian culture began in childhood upon discovering anime.

Because the televisions shows they watched - such as Sailor Moon and Beyblade - are originally created in Japanese, the two had wanted to learn the language so they could watch the shows in their original form, as opposed to reading subtitles.

"The shows and books I read have to do with Japan," said Ollerhead. "I love their culture and became really interested in it as time went on."

While D'Aigle has yet to travel to Japan, but hopes to in the future, Ollerhead first visited in 2004 for a student-exchange program that lasted one month.

She returned again in 2006 for six weeks.

Bringing her passion for the culture to the North, Ollerhead is a regular vendor at the annual Ptarmicon conventions, where she sells Japanese products from comic books, toys and even snacks.

While the group right now consists mainly of English speakers, aside from Akiko Kato who hails from Japan, Ollerhead said she hopes to invite more native Japanese speakers who are interested in improving their English.

The weekly meetings are open to anyone who hopes to improve their skills in either language.