Finland vs Japan｜5 Differences Between Finland and Japan

[@couple_of_expats]

Watch next ➡Best Things About Working in the Nordics kzbin.info/www/bejne/d2rNnqmehKt7pK8si=3mEjI1R7IEQJlrP9

[@finlandexamhelp]

I am living in Finland now, and I live in Japan in 2022. Thank you

[@mikrokupu]

One Japanese guy living Finland said for him it was easier to learn Finnish than English. The languages are not related but there are similarities in pronounciation. Would be interesting to hear a similar discussion with the Latvian person mentioned in the video :) Finland has rather close ties to Estonia but Latvia and Lithuania are relatively unknown for most Finns, even though rather close geographically.

[@couple_of_expats]

Hi! The Latvian person mentioned in this video (who you will see in our future videos sooner or later, haha) has studied both Estonian and Finnish from a young age. By learning Estonian first, it was easier for him to study Finnish later on. Nowadays, although he may have forgotten Estonian, he is fluent in Finnish and often uses it as his main working language.

[@happysolitudetv]

Megumi's accent is mixed Japanese and Finnish already 😊

[@couple_of_expats]

She has been here for a long time, after all, haha.

[@just42tube]

I have different experiences of student parties but that could be because those more memorable ones were arranged with more mature people including researchers and faculty members. We had well organized parties where at least some had well defined responsibilities making sure that sauna, food and drinks were available for all who would arrive. E.g. I was heating a smoke sauna in an abandoned remote house in a forest some distance away from our research center. It took many hours.

[@couple_of_expats]

Oh, yes, definitely. Parties or other events that involve more senior academic staff, such as researchers, tend to be more organised.

[@just42tube]

My experiences of student groups and parties is that those tend to be very selected groups with their own "cultural habits", which are very loosely - if at all - tied to the general society and culture in that context. My personal experience was that students from different parts of the country, different fields of study, different stages in their studies and of course income levels can have significantly different ways. I used to stay partly connected to student life from the later part of the 1970s to first part of 1990s in Tampere and Helsinki.

[@couple_of_expats]

Nowadays, various student organisations bring students together. Each organisation usually has its own overalls with assigned colours representing students from specific majors or degree programmes. However, many events now involve multiple student organisations, allowing students from diverse backgrounds and all over the world to meet each other. Orientation weeks are currently taking place across Finnish higher education institutions. This is the ideal time to start meeting new people, with opportunities to connect both during university classes and other events. Additionally, student unions increasingly encourage student organisations to make their events bilingual, considering English for the benefit of students who may not speak Finnish.

[@just42tube]

@@couple_of_expats Overalls etc. have a long history and were in use even in my student days. But they have been adapted more widely to more fields and used in more occasions, I would assume. Degree study programs using foreign languages as the language of tuition didn't exist much or at least I didn't know about them almost 40 years ago. But some courses were taught using foreign languages. Even I remember having been involved with arranging one. We had exchange students, collaboration and exchange, and of course some visits from many places all over the world. The Internet as we know today didn't exist but we had Usenet and email. Finland was much less multicultural in the sense this is understood today. There where cultural layers and subcultures including having own language. We had Finnish Kaale, with roots which can be traced to northern Indian continent. We had Finnish Tatars, a Tatar ethnic group and minority in Finland whose community has approximately 600-700 members. The community was formed between the late 1800s and the early 1900s, when Mishar Tatar merchants emigrated from the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate of the Russian Empire, and eventually settled in Finland. And of course we had Scandinavian people, Britons, Russians, refugees from Chile etc.. Some multiculturalism existed but not to the extent where it's today. Foreign language families and people are exceeding 30 percent in some places and the society is getting more fragmented.

[@just42tube]

Just the other day I was walking in Helsinki listening to a podcast and watching tourists. I was looking for a public toilet and obviously seemed lost since a woman offered her help. She assumed I was a tourist. I explained that I am not really lost, and we had a small discussion. She was clearly agitated about something. I don't repeat here the whol discussion. It included a lot about becoming international and immigrants. She herself was an old immigrant from Russia who also had lived in Finland about 30 years and had become a citizen. She was fuming about beggars in Helsinki. There have been beggars from Romania for many years. You can find them in other municipalities too. Another sore point for her were immigrant families with many children, she mentioned 7 children. She associated this with misuse of social benefits. She complained that the city had become dirty and unsafe. It was obvious that the Russian invasion to Ukraine and all the consequences had hit her hard in many ways. She felt people hated her because of her ethnic background and Russian name. What can we say: More international or multicultural Finland has also got the similar problems that existed in some colonial countries and some more modern complications including political movements with nationalistic ideas.

[@just42tube]

International faces.... that must be in some ways a coded expression describing as she actually mentioned looking different from the majority. The majority in Turku itself was an international mix, depending on how you define nations. There were clearly visible traces of Scandinavia tribes but also from other Finnish tribes and countries. But there numbers of foreign language families and students was much smaller and in that sense it was clearly less visible. I have a different experience from 1970s in Tampere. I was admitted to a study program and remember looking at them list of names of my class. The list started with Russian, English and other foreign names. There were about a dozen names until there was the first Finnish surname. I remember being amazed. I knew they would speak Finnish since that was the language of tuition. Later I met them and learned that none of them were actually immigrants themselves. Some were second generation immigrants. Later I learned that the school had foreign language exchange students. But those were more advanced degree students or researchers. I even remember giving some introduction or course in programming using English. I was working as a lab assistant at that time. So, what am I trying to say: Looks or even names aren't so reliable way to say who is from a different nation, international in that sense. But I do understand that some looks are more unusual and can give the impression of the person being alien. I have been spotted in the Huddinge railway station south of Stockholm, Sweden by a couple of girls waiting for the train. I still don't know how they could tell.

[@couple_of_expats]

Of course, nowadays seeing someone who looks ''foreign'' doesn’t necessarily mean that the person isn’t a local. However, the situation in Turku at least 30 years ago was very different, and spotting Megumi on the street would have been surprising to many people living in Turku back then.

[@just42tube]

@@couple_of_expats I have to disagree, or perhaps we have different ideas of what kind of surprising you are thinking. I have lived through that period and would express it differently. Japanese and Asian looks where more rare, that is clearly true. But there were Japanese people in Finland and somewhere even publicly known like Katsuji Wakisaka who worked for Marimekko from 1968 to 1976. People would have been more curious about what has made her to move to Finland. You also need to remember that Turku is a harbour town and people were used to seeing sailors from many places. In those times, or more so before that time, taking cargo of and of ships took much more time giving sailors much longer shore leaves. That gave them time to roam and be a more visible part of the town.

[@just42tube]

@@couple_of_expats People tend to underestimate how connected the world has been throughout history. Not even this part of the world has been totally isolated. Larger towns and cities have always had foreigners at least visiting. My mother's father was a sailor more than 60 years ago. He visited India and Africa on his shore leaves. I don't know if he visited Japan though I know he brought a 👘 to my mother as a souvenir.

[@just42tube]

@@couple_of_expats My family moved for work several times when I was a kid. I learned what local means because I was always the new kid in the neighborhood or school class. Locals where people who had stayed at least a generation. Others were newcomers. Locals had farms or forest or grandparents living in the neighborhood. They knew all locals and all locals knew them and their families. The last part was difficult for some young people who tried become independent adults. I remember discussions in a student housing with some students, who where so relieved that nobody knew them. They had move for higher education to bigger towns, where they had come to feel the freedom of being not too familiar with everyone they meet.

[@just42tube]

@@couple_of_expats When I got admitted to a study program in Finland much before Megumi had moved to Finland, I remember being astonished by the name list in my class. There were people like George Henry Aslak Bacon. A British sounding name and he had the looks to match the name. His English was also native British. But he was also a Finn and spoke native Finnish. So did all the students including those having Russian or other foreign backgrounds. We were a kind of international bunch of students even though we also shared local culture, language and identity. People just had multiple or complex identities.

[@nenitaschmidt7197]

Sami culture!