F U K U   w a   U C H I

Hello and welcome to my blog! This blog will serve as an information package for any future exchange students that are going to study at Seinan Gakuin University in Fukuoka, Japan. I will update this blog regularly, but my Finnish blog will have more pictures and more random stories than this one.

Fukuoka is a harbor city closest to the Korean peninsula.

My exchange experience will begin in January 2012 and I’ll be staying in Japan until May the same year. I’ll join the International Division of Seinan Gakuin University, so that’s why the semester is a bit different from normal university semesters in Japan. The International Division has quite a nice selection of Japanese language and culture courses available in English. I’m aiming for the Advanced Japanese course, but I think I’ll have to revise some kanji in order to be able to join the course.  頑張るぞ！I’ll do my best!

Why Japan?

I’ve been interested in Japanese language and culture since I saw Pokemon on Finnish TV. At first I had no idea it was from Japan, but when I found out where this show came from, I wanted to know more about this country and culture. Even though I was interested in the language and culture on an early age, I only joined my first language course in the first year of high school in 2002-2003. I took all three courses available in a community school in my home town Jyväskylä during my high school years. I graduated in 2005 but had no idea what I wanted to do in the future so I decided to work in a junior high school while doing political science studies in an open university.

Right after I had started working and studying political science I heard of an opportunity to study japanology (Japanese language and culture) in the city of Vaasa in Finland. Right away I did my decision to apply for this study program when it was possible again. Next Spring I did my first trip to Japan and after returning back to Finland I was sure what I wanted to do with my life. I applied for the japanology program, got accepted and begun my new life in Vaasa.

My first time in Kyoto, Japan in February 2006.

I loved studying Japanese language and culture, I loved the people and the teachers and my new surroundings. The first year was quite easy but on the second year studying became harder. I spent one month of the summer between my first and second year of studies in Japan and I begun teaching the beginner Japanese language courses at an community school in Seinäjoki. I also passed my first Japanese Language Proficiency Test (Level 3) in December 2007.

My first time in Tokyo in July 2007.

Until 2007 I thought Japanese language was quite easy because speaking the language feels similar to speaking Finnish, but in 2008 I noticed the kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese language) are very hard for me to learn. In order to learn more of the written Japanese I took an intermediate course in Japanese language in Kyoto in the summer of 2008. After the summer in Japan I felt a lot more comfortable with the language.

With my host sister in Gion Matsuri in Kyoto, July 2008.

In the end of 2008 I was expected to know around 1 000 kanji characters and I felt like it was the limit for me to remember, even though it’s only about half of the characters used everyday in Japan. In the beginning of 2009 I applied for the Monbukagakusho scholarship for Japanese language and culture studies in a Japanese university. Even though they said my interview in Japanese went well they couldn’t give me the scholarship because of my insufficient kanji knowledge. There were nine applicants for this scholarship in Finland and only one of them was granted with the scholarship. After this failure I wasn’t confident at all with my Japanese language skills for quite a while and I couldn’t get myself to study more and I begun to forget a lot of kanji I had already learned before. I failed my final kanji exams at my university and couldn’t begin my graduation thesis.

I felt like I needed a break from Japanese and a change of environment so I decided to apply for the degree in Tourism and Hospitality Management at JAMK University of Applied Sciences. I got in and begun my new studies while still teaching beginner Japanese for the third year at the same community school as before. Teaching helped me to keep up my language skills without stressing me out too much since I didn’t have to focus on advanced kanji skills. Again, I loved my new student life!

As soon as I learned that it was possible for us to do our first mandatory practical training abroad I knew I’ll have to go back to the place I had left my heart in – Kyoto, Japan. I sent about ten applications to different traditional Japanese hotels in the city of Kyoto and soon got a positive answer from Togetsutei Japanese Inn. I begun my ten week practical training there in April 2010.

At work with my colleagues. Kyoto, May 2010.

After returning back to Finland I did my first gig as an interpreter with a Japanese group visiting Finnish enterprises while learning about our entrepreneurship. It was hard work but a really nice experience. After finishing my work as an interpreter I knew I had to learn more advanced and technical vocabulary in order to really master the language. I felt, and still feel like, I’ve been stuck in the intermediate level for many years now.

Visiting Nokia HQ with the Japanese group.

In Spring 2010 I had applied for a study abroad program in South Korea and I was leaving there for sure in February 2011, but in December 2010 I heard that my university had done a mutual agreement with a Japanese university and for the first time it was possible for us students to apply for a semester in Japan. I knew my possibility to get another semester abroad might be low but I still got to try. Just before I left for Korea I heard that I got accepted for a second semester abroad – I was going back to Japan!

I feel privileged to be able to do not only an internship but also two exchange periods abroad. Hard work has paid off for sure. I’ll do my best in Japan to finally jump from intermediate to advanced level – not only with oral language but also with writing. F I G H T I N G !