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The smoke-filled stalls along Dōtonbori mark the foodie heart of Osaka. Sizzling yakitori, takoyaki and mitarashi dango burn their scents into the canal as the dominating Glico man looks on. If there’s one thing the people from Osaka love more than hating on Tokyo, it’s food. And it was this passion for food that became my source of peace following the June 2018 earthquake. I was a student on placement, living in a tiny countryside town just on the edge of Osaka, with only a couple months to go when the earthquake hit. Earthquakes were nothing new to Japan, and we were drilled on the basics of earthquake safety before I’d even left England. So, when I woke up to the shelves in my room trembling and the plates smashing in the kitchen next door, I was startled, but not traumatised beyond belief. The following days were filled with constant tremors, warnings of landslides and an inability to travel into the city centre due to damage to the metro lines. It was frightening, but more of an inconvenience than anything. The severity truly dawned on me when I was told of the magnitude; a whopping 5.6, and we were just a short forty-five-minute bus ride away from the epicentre. However, not all the students saw it my way. Before long, more than half on my course had pulled out, packed their bags and flown home out of fear of ‘another hit’. Even more unsettling was the foreign media coverage of the earthquake. The overly generous usage of words like ‘disaster’ and ‘tragedy’ did little to quell my slowly growing nerves. Suddenly, I felt alone, isolated and utterly foreign in a far-off corner of the globe. But my host family was onto it. I had been assigned a host family upon my arrival at Osaka University, and for our first few visits, we had dribbled awkwardly through small talk over long meals. The earthquake was, however unintentionally, the icebreaker we needed to get our makeshift family rolling smoothly. They attempted to bring my anxiety to heel in the most Osaka-like fashion. With food. One of the best parts about having a host family is abusing their profound ability to avoid tourist traps and help you discover hidden local gems. They guided me through several back-alley twists and turns until we reached a tiny shack with the dimmest lighting. There, we had one of Osaka’s most popular dishes – Okonomiyaki (a savoury pancake made from eggs, flour and shredded cabbage.) “Eat! Eat to feel good! It’s the Osaka Way!” My host mum would tell me in broken English, and then follow up in rapid Japanese “The mochi-cheese one is particularly good if you pair it with yaki-nori and bonito flakes.” I just took her word for it. Over dinner, we spoke about the usual. They would comment on how my Japanese was rapidly improving, and how I should use more Osaka-ben (referring to the Osaka slang and accent unique to the city) instead of the “snobby” Tokyo dialect I was taught at university, as they put it. They then took me out for taiyaki (a fish shaped cake traditionally stuffed with red bean), then we topped it off with matcha tea and biscuits to cleanse our stomachs. Somewhere between meals, I’d forgotten about earthquakes and landslides. My only focus was on trying not to throw up all the delicious food that was, well-meaningly, being shoved down my throat. That night, when they returned me to my dorm room full-bellied and exhausted, I was still on my own on the other side of the world, but I felt much less alone. There’s nothing like a natural disaster to remind yourself of the importance of making strong connections while in a foreign country. Sometimes the luxury of a simple human interaction can mean all the difference. Even in the face of natural disasters, I was able to find at least some comfort, because my host family supported me the Osaka Way.