Introduction

My first trip to Japan was a month-long holiday around a few cities. I was equipped with a backpack and a JR pass for cruising the shinkansen between Tokyo, Kyoto and Fukuoka. I visited a few other places as well - Nagasaki, Nara, Beppu and Kawaguchi-ko. I was left with great memories from that trip and really wanted to get back there later, so I thought to apply for the exchange program to Sendai. However, there were too many applicants for Tohoku University of Sendai and I couldn't fit in since I haven't studied for all that long in Tampere University of Technology. Only the applicants with highest average grades were accepted. Needless to say, I was disappointed not to be able to get into Tohoku, so I thought I might just apply again next year.

However, I had met a Japanese girl on an internet chat site and she was coming to visit Finland later in the autumn of 2006. After talking about the exchange, we decided that it would be best for me to apply for Kitami, since it was still available for application, and she would move to Kitami as well. So, after filling out all kinds of forms and papers, I was set to go for Japan and just took loads of courses from TUT to compensate for the fact that I wouldn't probably be able to progress in my studies while in Japan by all that much.

I started to take a Japanese course right when the school started in the autumn 2006, but since my flight for Japan was leaving already on 25th of March 2007, I only had time to finish the first two Japanese courses out of the four possible ones. Needless to say, my language skills were more than lacking by the time I was leaving, I could only barely memorize all かな (hiragana and katakana, the Japanese syllabuses) and be able to read them slowly. But having been to Japan before, the fact that most people couldn't speak any English didn't come to me as a great shock or anything. However, it was not like I had a lot of time to study Japanese because of the sheer number of courses I took, so I assumed that I would grasp the language while actually living in the country.