I'm a traveller.

Hello!

Remember my "...andthatswhoiam" -posts? They can be found under the tag being myself. I used them as a method of therapy, because I struggled with situations when I had to introduce myself or tell someone about myself. It clearly helped because I actually went to a job interview last Friday!

But I haven't actually shown you all the pictures that I chose from that website last autumn! So now I'm going to tell you a little bit more about myself.

I love travelling. I want to see everything. I feel like the best thing to spend your money on is to travel and see all the different places and meet people who come from different backgrounds than you do. It will widen your views and help you grow as a person. You will get memories that you'll never forget. It will help you become less materialistic and you'll start to appreciate your experiences more.

Travelling has probably always been my favourite thing to do. I'm from a small town, but it does have a travel agency. I used to go there and carry a copy of all of their brochures home. I loved looking at all the pictures and dreaming of all the places I could go to.  Unfortunately, my mum's idea of travelling was to catch a ferry to Sweden, and to stay on it and head back home straight away, without even setting a foot on the ground. Once I was old enough to travel, I cached one of those ferries and went to see what Sweden really looked like.

I'm the exploring kind of traveller. I find it hard to just do what the tourist guide book tells me. I want to find out things myself. I might go to the tourist information to get a map, in case I get lost (which unsurprisingly happens quite a lot), but my favourite activity is to just wander around aimlessly in a new city. I've never been on a beach holiday, because I think I'd find it difficult to just lie there getting burned, when I could be exploring all the suspicious side alleys and getting to know some interesting local people.

Did I ever mention that I'm a big Doctor Who fan? How many TARDIS-themed things have you noticed on my blog? The whole concepts of being able to travel through space and time really fascinates me. There must be more out there. And there is a reason why I ended up with a degree in Archaeology. But I'm stuck in this time and our planet. Which really isn't that bad after all. Exciting things are happening in our time, with all the digitalisation and equality movements. Scary and awful things are happening too, and there are many places I don't even want to travel to at the moment thanks to their political situation. But there's still at least half a planet left which I could and would like to explore.

I strongly believe that understanding the language of the place you travel to helps you get more out of the trip. The more you understand the language the more you understand the culture. And vice versa. Travelling is also the key to learning languages. When you need to find a Burger King in Spain, you suddenly can understand those instructions in Spanish. Or at least I found my way to the Burger King. I also learned to pronounce it the Spanish way.

I've never been to Asia, but I've got really interested in Japanese, Korean and Chinese cultures recently. I thought that Japanese might be the easiest Asian language for me to learn first, so now I've started planning a trip to Japan. It will happen once I feel that I've learned enough Japanese to get the most out of that trip!

I have a funny feeling that the only reason why I've watched all of the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit films is the fact that they are shot in New Zealand. That's one place I would really love to travel to. Originally, I wanted to spend an exchange year there, but it never happened. It's the furthest place on Earth I could travel to, which probably makes it even more exciting.

I have lived in a couple of different countries. I've lived in England and Germany for a month, and in Finland and Scotland for years. All of those countries have a place that feels like a home to me. Sometimes I meet people in Scotland who hear that I'm a foreigner and ask me "so where's home?" They think it's a cunning way to phrase the question: "where are you from?", but I always find it a little bit insulting. Do they mean I'm not welcome here, and want me to go back where I came from? I don't want to go back. I want to find a place I belong. The question is also difficult, because I find Scotland to be my home just as much as Finland is. I'm from Finland but I live here now. And I'm not sure where I want to move next. 

But okay, my home is in Europe. For now at least.

Finnish people don't make friends easily, which is kind of a problem. I have, however, met amazing people from all over the world. I wish I'd find it more natural to open up to people and actually make life-long friends and to stay in touch more.

I've always thought that the best cure for depression is to go travelling. I've never felt sad or depressed while travelling. Everything in this world is just too amazing, to feel depressed. Depression is like being stuck. If you don't realise that you're free to go and do anything, you will feel depressed. If you ever feel suicidal, just sell everything you own and use that money to go travelling. As far as possible, and you might find the reason to live again.

I love learning to get to know this planet. I want to explore my options before I decide where I want to settle down to. I feel that there's no point feeling miserable with my life, if I don't want to go and see how people live elsewhere. Maybe there's a place that is more suitable for me than the place where I'm now? And if not, there's nothing better than that feeling of coming back home.

P.S. Here's a map of the places I've conquered so far.

It's fairly Western Europe centred so far, but I'm working on it.

I pinned these places on the TripAdvisor app on Facebook. And then I mangled it a little bit on Paint, because I hate the way Google Maps stretch the North. Unfortunately this app doesn't have all the places I've been to. I'm especially sad that North Rona is missing. But according to this app, I've visited 17 countries, which is 13% of the world. That sounds like a good start!

I honestly, don't know where I'm going next. But I like to keep my options open.

It's almost Christmas!

Today I woke up. (Well yeah, that alone is quite an achievement for me...)

And I realised that there's only a couple of days left until I'll be trying to fly to Snowland for Christmas. And I have't even eaten all the chocolates in my advent calendar! Also, the snow is not guaranteed. Thank you global warming. But I wish there will be snow!

I have spent the three most recent Christmases in Scotland. But this year it's time to do some crazy flying around Europe and sleeping at airports to get to the Finnish Christmas Wonderland.

Finland, the land of trees and snow.

I have bad experience of flights being delayed, cancelled, diverted and whatever other things could happen to them. So I never really expect to get where I am trying to fly. You can read about it more in my post "About unexpected situations!". From past experience I am flying via Scandinavia, because they are more prepared for snow and will not close the airports like the rest of the Europe tends to do. And when I say Scandinavia, I really mean Scandinavia. First we're flying from Aberdeen to Stavanger, Norway. From there we fly to Copenhagen, Denmark. And from Denmark we fly to Helsinki!

Helsinki Cathedral. Or the "Church of Doom" as the Finns like to call it.

I quite look forward to spending Christmas in Finland this year. I'm taking Laura with me and we'll see where we end up spending it. We've been invited to three different households on Christmas Eve. Fortunately all of them are in the same town.

But Christmas in Finland is fun! Teletubbies even made an episode of it.

That's exactly what it used to be like in my childhood! I'm not sure what I'm going to wear this Christmas, now when I don't have an elf costume.

Loimaa, the little town in Proper Finland where we're going to spend Christmas, is not that bad either. As long as there is Christmas food, Christmas tree and my cat. It might even be enjoyable. It's a small town - most of which is agricultural field or forest. It's name basically means "countryside". The greatest landmark is the grain elevator - the huge building for storing the crops. They even put fancy lights on it.

Loimaa! Photo by 16valve at taloforum.fi.

But what! I didn't realise it was almost flying time already! I better get on with doing laundry and packing. I can't really do laundry without emptying my suitcase that I currently use as a laundry basket. And I can't pack anything because I am almost out of clean clothes. And if I start doing things with it I could just start piling Christmas presents in it already. Tomorrow I'm also going to meet a friend I haven't seen since first year, do the rest of the Christmas shopping and then go to our Japanese society's Christmas meal! Where having hot pot. I'm so bad at eating hot pot, but thankfully there will be skillful people there to help me.

Icy Tampere.

Can you feel the Christmas approaching?

Why don't I have tattoos?

Dear blog,

Today, I wanted to write about tattoos. They are art that we carry on our skin. I myself am not very artistic, and maybe that's the reason why I don't have one. But I've been secretly jealous for people who have beautiful tattoos that are now a part of who they are.

Ira Chernova.

Tattoos are a way to make friends. It's like a code: if you see someone who has a tattoo, you know they share at least one aspect of their worldview with you. It's a conversation starter. You can share stories and talk about the pictures, text and symbols you and they have tattooed on your bodies and where and why.

Via Overd0z.

I really like Ira Chernova's tattoos. I think she's beautiful. Her tattoo choices seem somehow unusual. It's fascinating.

I think it's just as fine to have writing tattooed on you as it is to have a picture, as long as you can read your tattoo yourself. There's no worse tattoo than ones that are grammatically incorrect or say something that you didn't want written on you.

My favourite type of tattoo is something like this:

Tattoo Design Live.

I guess I find that there's something magical about big tattoos on small people. Especially when none of it seems like it's too much. I like the tree, the compass and the owl. It gives me a feeling that she's part of nature. People sometimes argue against tattoos by saying that it's changing our bodies in an unnatural way. But if tattoo makes you seem natural, then it's just beautiful, right?

There are people who find tattoos really cool. You get respect from them if you have tattoos. They probably find me boring, because I don't have any. I'm trying to figure out whether I find myself boring.

I'm actually don't think there's anything wrong with my skin. It seems fine without ink.

I feel like if you're going to get a tattoo, there needs to be a good reason why you're going to get that tattoo. Perhaps people who are covered in tattoos get pictures just because they think it might go with the rest of their tattooing, or maybe they just have a lot of meaningful stories. We all have a lot of stories. But maybe it's easier to tell them if they are tattooed on you? Or maybe then there's no need to tell them. But I feel like if you're going to get your first tattoo - there definitely needs to be a good story or reason behind it.

Jonna Äyhö.

My friend, Jonna, got her daughter's name tattooed on her shoulder. I think that is definitely a meaningful tattoo you wouldn't regret.

Probably the biggest reason why I don't have a tattoo is that I don't have a clue what sort of picture would be meaningful enough for me to tattoo it to my body. Not to mention that I would also have to know where I want the tattoo. And it costs and probably hurts as well.

Until now, I've always been quite sad that I don't have a tattoo. Nothing to talk about with those cool kids.

But now I am quite happy being tattooless! I've been looking into Japanese culture recently, and turns out that tattoos are not cool in Japan. In recent past, tattoos used to be illegal and they are still associated with criminals. In Japan, tattooes are not seen as something respectable. Apparently many places may refuse to serve tattooed customers. And in some places such as gyms and onsens they are banned. Onsens are places where you go to bathe and relax. You use them naked because it's easier to relax when you don't wear a swimming costume. And that's why everyone would see your tattoos, and it might cause problems.

And after I have learned Japanese, I want to go and visit Japan. And it would be sad if I couldn't visit an onsen.

Hakuba Happo Hot Springs.  白馬八方温泉。

Onsens are "hot springs" that are located in hot spring area where you get to bathe and relax in really hot water. There are a lot of different ones. There are public ones where men and women are separate. Some are run by the muncipilaty and might even be free. Then there are some private ones that are meant for families or couples. At the moment they are something that I definitely want to  experience when I go to visit Japan. They are on the activity list already!

My Japanese vocabulary is still fairly limited. I can say hello, introduce myself and say onsen. I haven't even learned many kanjis* yet. I know the kanji for an onsen and for a book.

温泉　　　本

     Onsen                                          Book

* Kanjis are the Chinese characters that are used when writing Japanese.

I feel like I have now learned very essential things. I also know that a book is pronounced "hon".

So, because I am this excited about the possibility of visiting an onsen, I am not even worried about not having any tattoos anymore. Oh, and no - I wouldn't get a kanji tattoo even if I could go to an onsen with one.

After feeling lame for so many years because I didn't have any, I don't feel that way anymore. I like this feeling. I celebrated it by buying a new dress.

New dress.

What kind of tattoos do you like?

Glasses, きき and pink nails!

Hello, nice to see you here!

Remember when I mentioned that I would get new glasses? Well I did! 

Also notice my funny socks that I got from my
ex-flatmate, Louise, as a birthday present!

What do you think of them? I quite like them, but my girlfriend thought at first that they are too hipster. They are big, but I've secretly always wanted big glasses, and since they are in fashion now, this seemed like too good and opportunity not to get them. I can also see a bit more comfortably with these than the old ones, although these felt heavy at first.

This week I also joined a new society! It's called Nippon Connections, and they are the university's society for people who are interested in Japanese culture and language. They had a film night on Friday, and I went along. We watched two Japanese films. The first one was an old Japanese film called Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa.

I don't know if it's because it was Japanese, or because it was released in 1950 or because it felt like a play - but it was a very weird film. It's refreshing to see something different though! After Rashomon, we watched an anime called Kiki's Delivery Service -　魔女の宅急便。

きき！

It was a great film! I mean, it was probably aimed for kids... But kids' films are happy, and I like happy films! There was a 13-year old witch, Kiki, who leaves home in order to become a successful village witch somewhere. Except Kiki has always dreamed of moving to a big city. So she takes her cat Jiji, and her mum's old broomstick and flies away to start a new life. And when she finds a perfect city, she's determined in settling in and starting her own business. I wish I had seen it earlier! I think it may have become my new favourite kids' film*.

In other Japanese study news, according to my phone and it's useful hiragana trainer app, I now master 97% of hiragana. And the morning after the day I congratulated myself for that, I turned on my computer and there was a little surprise for me. Erm, I wasn't really sure if I was ready for this.

My laptop screen.

For some reason my laptop was in Japanese. Presumably, some sort of error happened when the Japanese keyboard was installed for my computer. I had wanted to be able to write hiragana with my laptop, but my Japanese definitely is not good enough yet to have my whole computer in Japanese.

But fortunately, you can google anything these days. It is very useful in this sort of situation to be able to just ask google to translate things like "shut down". Being able to do that definitely made a traumatic experience like this more comfortable.

Thank you, Google Translate for helping me shut down my computer.

So yeah, my language learning is going well. I also received my Japanese Textbooks today! I now have a Basic Japanese Kanji book and Japanese for College Students. I hope these will be useful books when I try to learn vocabulary and grammar. My girlfriend is clearly threatened by my enthusiasm to language learning and signed up for a Mandarin Chinese language course at uni. Soon we can have competitions which one can read more kanjis. Doesn't that sound like a fun freetime activity?

Kone Helsinki: U05 and
Natural Collection: Crystal Clear.

Another thing I've been practising recently is something I've always found very difficult: varnishing my nails. My nails are short, but I think they look a lot more cheerful when they are painted a bright colour.  I used to like coloured nails in secondary school, but I was really bad at it even then. There was always colour on my fingers as well, and the surface of the varnish was never smooth.

But I bought these cheap nail varnishes so that I could practise. And I think I am getting a hang of it. Instead of one thick layer, I've been painting 3 thin coats and letting all of them dry before adding the next one. And because the pink nail varnish has some glitter in it, I've finished my nails with a layer of clear varnish on top of it to get a smooth surface, and also to make the varnish last longer. Ha, I have learned something new!


* I definitely think that the films I refer to as "kids' film" are suitable for adults too. I'm an adult and I enjoy watching them too! But because I have other favourite films from other genres, I wanted to specify that this is my favourite without an age limit.

Last Friends

Happy autumn everyone!

It must be autumn since they've started selling advent calendars in shops.

Today, I wanted to tell you about something I realised recently after watching a Japanese TV series called Last Friends. But first, I am going to tell you why I was watching Last Friends!

ラスト・フレンズ

A long time ago, I set myself a life goal to visit all the continents. I've so far visited several European countries, and set my foot in North America, but there are still five to go. So since I've been enjoying Asian food recently, and because Asia is not as far away as some of the other continents, I figured it could be my next destination.

My next thought, however, was that I've never visited a country where I haven't been able to understand the local language at all. After studying Swedish, English, German and French it wasn't difficult to understand most of what I needed to understand when I visited the Netherlands and Spain. I have even managed to have a conversation with Tennesseans.

I think, being able to understand the local language - even a little, gives you some valuable insight in the culture that you're visiting. It allows you to understand the things that are not specifically aimed for foreigners and therefore written in English, but also the things that are there for locals. I also don't expect there to be signs written with latin alphabet in countries that don't use the alphabet, and being unable to read anythging sounds like a very scary thought. You also get a lot more respect from the locals if you try and say even a few things in their language instead of just assuming that they will speak English to you.

But I don't understand any Asian languages! Not even a word! I've only studied Indo-European languages before and would be very interested in learning a language that belongs to another language group. Fortunately, my mother tongue is Uralic so that should give me some perspective and make my language learning a little bit easier.

Thanks, Wikipedia.

But there are so many Asian languages to choose from!* I wish I could study them all, but that's impossible. It's better to start with one.

First, I decided that I would want to choose a living, lively language! With a lot of speakers, so that I wouldn't spend a lot of time learning a language I could not actually use in real life. I've spent some time over the past years doing some background investigations in languages such as Sami, Mari, Inuktitut, and Old Norse, but those are not really good choices for me, if I actually want to speak to real people.

I used to want to study Russian. There were a lot of language courses available in my country, but while I was living there, I was focusing on French and German. But now, I haven't started learning a new language for over 8 years, and I feel like it's time to pick a new language in order to improve my language skills. Unfortunately though, because of the current political situation in Russia, I no longer feel inspired in learning that. And I already decided to pick a non-Indo-European language.

I own a book in Thai. I can't read it. But when my dad and brother went on a holiday in Thailand in 2007 and asked me what I would like as a souvenir, I asked them to bring me Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in Thai. And they did! I treasure it in my book-case and enjoy how cool the writing in it looks. So, I considered learning Thai, but because of its tones, I would probably be really bad at speaking it, with my very mono-tonic language background. I'm not brave enough to try and learn it quite yet.

I also did not feel particularly inspired in studying languages of countries where they would be likely to kill or arrest me just because of who I am, so that cut out some options. Then on the basis of the food I enjoy the most, I ditched Indian and Chinese. I may have eaten slightly too much Indian and Chinese take-away recently and am not really feeling it anymore.

Lately, I've been really enjoying sushi and Korean cosmetics. Because I know some people (such as the two I live with) who also study Japanese, it felt like a better decision than Korean. Being able to practise a language with other people will make learning it a lot easier and definitely more fun. But if I decide to learn Korean later, Japanese will still be helpful, because they are from the same language family.

I definitely wouldn't starve in Asia.

To be fair, I don't know much about Japan. I know where it is and what the flag looks like, but that's about it. I don't even like manga or anime (which is why I never even considered studying the language before).  Apart from Pokèmon, of course! Sometimes I walk around town with just Pikachu in my backpack. It makes me feel like I have a friend.

Sometimes we go out for drinks.

Sometimes I feel like I probably should have grown past this stage 15 years ago. But maybe they will understand me in Japan. I've heard that they have a lot of weird things in Japan. I look forward to learning more about Japanese culture while I study Japanese.

I started learning hiragana (the Japanese phonetic symbols) last Friday, and am about to start learning katakana (the other phonetic symbols). I've also been watching the Japanese TV series Last Friends -  as I mentioned earlier in this post - in order to get used to hearing Japanese and to learn about the Japanese culture.

I really like the TV series! There are 5 friends who live together in a share house and face problems with life, love, work and relationships. They are there for each other. I don't like watching sad TV series, but this kind of reminded me of Gilmore Gilrs or Friends.

Last Friends!

Although there is a lot of dark things in this TV series, such as, domestic violence, manipulating, threatening and stalking - I enjoy watching their life in the share house. They are happy together and that makes me feel happy too.

But what I realised when watching the series is that: it doesn't matter how miserable some people might make you feel - when you're with the right people you can be yourself. And when you can be yourself - you will be the happiest. And those people who make you feel rubbish don't matter anymore. There's nothing they could do to take that happiness away from you.

It probably sounds simple, but this is actually the first time I've really thought about it. I've always focused too much on the people who don't like me, and it's made me feel like I'm not worthy enough to be happy. But when there's a happy place - like the share house in Last Friends - none of those people aren't there. And none of that feeling should be there either. The friends in the share house protected the house from all bad things getting in. That's how it always should be in life. I wish everyone could live in a happy place. When you're feeling miserable - you're not really yourself. But when you're happy, you can do the amazing things you're capable of doing. And you will be able to shine that happiness to other people.

Giraffe, Aberdeen.

Anyway, smiling is the easiest way to spread happiness around us. There's no language barriers there either.

Is there a language you would like to learn?

* I understand that many of the "languages" I mention, are actually not single languages but larger language groups that contain several languages. At this stage, however, I was only intending to choose a language group that I could choose a language within.