More About Us👩🏻👩🏻 (Patreon)

Sometimes people misunderstand things, so we wanted to clear things up! 👍✨

In case you didn’t know already, we’re Canadian, born and raised! Our mother’s side of the family is originally Irish-European and has been in Canada for a long time, whereas our Dad is Swedish since our grandparents both came from Sweden without knowing any English! That makes us half-Swedish and Irish mixed Canadians! 💙💛

We’re sometimes mistaken as being half Japanese or Asian (which is totally fine!) and even close friends have told us they thought we were for years… When we were little, our hair was a lot more red, but now it’s a dark brown with red highlights. Our eye shape is the same as our Dad’s, but we honestly don’t look too much like our parents, and even school teachers have thought we were adopted, but we definitely aren’t! 💦

Our parents both only speak English, but we’ve been learning Japanese since we were in early middle school through a private tutor! We started learning because we wanted to play untranslated video games and go to Japan without needing a tour guide to get around! ✨ I think we can safely check both those goals off our list now that we have professionally translated games and lived in Tokyo for more than a year. We haven’t taken the JLPT exam for around 10 years now, but last time we passed N2 with great scores! Ally even got 100% on the listening portion! 😆

We’ve been to Sweden once to meet our extended family, but otherwise we really don't know much about Sweden or Swedish culture, and definitely can't speak Swedish either... We'd like to learn, but we spent years trying to learn French and it never stuck either... Swedish seems somewhat similar to French, but even more complicated! 😣

The only time of the year where we feel somewhat Swedish is Christmas time! Our family celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve (like in Sweden) but then also on Christmas Day too! The only difference for us is that we have a Swedish Christmas dinner, with lots of breads, cheeses, meats, and canned fish! We don't really like the breads and cheese and meat part though, so we just stick with the fish and hard-boiled eggs with Kales creamed roe on top! ✨ It's much easier to prepare compared to the traditional Christmas turkey dinner! Glögg is also a must have for the family during Christmas time, but we've never really had it because of the wine... We just like how it makes the whole house smell like Christmas! 🎄

When we visited Sweden, our favorite parts were the beautiful scenery and houses and of course, the Swedish godis (candy) and salmiak licorice! It's very very different from the other sweets we've had before, and we really like licorice... It was easy to find ice cream shops selling black licorice ice cream too! Super strong black licorice ice cream with black licorice sprinkles...!! It was super yummy! 🖤

We had so many delicious home-cooked Swedish meals with our family! There was lots of salmon and smoked salmon too, so we were in heaven!! Everything looked so picturesque in Sweden and we did lots of sightseeing too! Of course, that comes complete with sunburns too... 💦

We were also really lucky to get to stay at our relative's neighbor's house when we were in Sweden! The one part of the deal is that we had to make sure to feed and play with their cat that had kittens recently...!! 🥹💕 Best lodgings ever!!

The most difficult experience we had there was when our relatives prepared Surströmming (fermented canned herring) for us... It's the most smelly food in the world!! Ally was really determined to try some since she likes nattou and it's pretty famous in Japan too... After they opened the puffed-up can of the fish outside in the street with a hose running to control the smell and spray, it was still too smelly to physically get within 2 meters of it... It's not something to take lightly! 🫥 Definitely not something we can eat.

We used to go to a Midsummer Swedish cultural festival here in Vancouver with our grandma too! And as grandmas sometimes do, she'd make us dance with her too... As long as she's having a good time and smiling! 💕

At the very least, we're happy to be Canadian and celebrate the many cultures of the world here in our home! It makes life fun and flavorful! ✨