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When sending a thank you message to a friend that showed me and my family around in her country, I wrote something along the lines of

We had as much fun as we did thanks to you.

Later when I was trying to put that into Japanese, the closest I could get was

(わたしたちは)あれほど楽しめたのは○○さんのおかげです。

which I think gets the point across, but I don't think I've heard a native speaker say anything like that and I don't want to be speaking English even though the words are Japanese.

What would be a more natural expression for this situation?

Is a phrase that more literally means "as much as we did" simply not used?

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  • I guess the change of(わたしたちは)into (わたしたちが)sounds "as much as we did". Commented Sep 16, 2019 at 22:57

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You are right that a native may not put it in that way, but if you want to be sincere, better at least not to make your friend think that you just copy-pasted what a native would say.

It may be more about culture than language, that a Japanese may more likely focus on expressing gratitude for what the host did, rather than on how he/she felt about what the host did. So, simply 本当にお世話になりました. But, saying that would just seem like a generic copy-paste, so, I think yours probably works better, or write e.g. starting with the above "copy-paste" and add [might be better to address his/her family name] "Xさんのおかげですごく楽しかったです。" [Or, depending on your + your host's age, possibly replace "すごく" by "とても"]

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