Letter Home - Juha-Matti Katajamäki

I spent my spring semester in Momoyama Gakuin Daigaku, in Osaka, Japan.

Before my arrival, I had experienced this beautiful country three times already. With my previous experience and little knowledge of Japanese customs, integrating was farely easy. Surely I made a few mistakes in the ways I talked or acted, but now that the school is over, I believe that I could return any day and be greeted with warmth.

I am a Business Administration student at Centria UAS Ylivieska. For my studies, I was very interested in learning about Japanese business customs and "styles", keeping in mind that I may work in international surroundings in the future. Getting a closer look into another country's ways of doing things surely brought me valuable "inside information" that'll absolutely come in handy in the future.

The courses at my host university were quite different than what I had hoped for. Learning Japanese, on the other hand, was very challenging but extremely fun! The other courses were a bit too easy in my opinion. While I did learn a lot about Japanese businesses and economy, I had hoped for a challenge that would make me push myself. This, unfortunately, only happened with Japanese language studies.

The study culture in this University was laid back. It might've been the fact, that since the classes were taught in English, the teachers wanted to keep it simple so that any and all students would be able to practice their English skills and learn how to use them effectively.

Everyday life in the University and the small city it is located in (Izumi) is very peaceful. The worst thing that I experienced was the notorious "Kansai humidity", which made me, a sizeable Finnish man, suffer. For this, the locals taught me a word that will surely follow me for a long time: なつばて, "natsubate". It's a condition that refers to exhaustion due to extreme heat. People that are sensitive to extreme heats should take great care in hydration and proper clothing.
 Apart from that, the life here was easy living. Restaurants and stores and very close by and you can find most of your everyday needs in your immediate proximity.

As for what has been challenging... I'd say the various cultural differences that are bound to pop up in international surroundings like these. While us Finns appreciate direct speech with nothing "hidden", the Japanese tend to avoid direct confrontation. Instead they refer to things in their speech that should make the listener understand, that he or she is doing something that could be considered "challenging" in nature. Praises are, however, given with ease and big smiles. I had to learn a lot to modify my personal way of doing and saying things, but once I started to act more like the locals, our everyday situations were extremely pleasant. Now that I have sees "the other side", I think I'll be keeping some of these newly acquired manners once I return back to my home.

As this last part I should write about a highlight during my trip, but honestly there are so many "highlights" that to pinpoint a single one is impossible. The food, my new friends, the crazy experiences in Namba, the underground music scene, the scenery of the countryside Japan which would make a novice story teller blush... you name it, I have a "highlight" of it.

All in all, this half a year has been an experience that I'm glad I worked so much for. No regrets, just memories.

みんなさん、どもありがとうございます！さようなら！

- Juha-Matti "まきちゃん" Katajamäki
28.08.2019, Nose, Osaka, Japan

D-I-E Korea

DESCRIBE
Moving to Korea, I encountered what was going to be my first and perhaps only cultural bump just a few days in. At that point, I didn't actually think of it as a cultural bump because it came from my student buddy (we had exchanged a few emails prior to my journey and a few messages when i got there before actually meeting). This cultural bump has to do with Korean small talk which goes thus;

Speaker: Hey, what is your name?
Me: Clinton.
Speaker: Where are you from?
Me: Finland / Cameroon.
Speaker: How old are you?
Me: 26.

Find anything odd in there? If you didn't then I bet you must be familiar with Korean small talk. I just found it weird to ask someone's age , less than five statements into your chat when you just met them. I always answered but would find it difficult asking what their own age was because it wasn't something I was accustomed to. I was met with this same line of questioning whenever i tried engaging in small talk with someone i met at a gathering.

INTERPRET
The ''raison d'etre'' behind this remained a mystery until one day when I met this Korean lady at a Cameroonian party in another city and thought of it in the course of our conversation. She didn't get to ask what my age was this time around as I joined the conversation midway but she was able to solve what had remained a mystery for so long. Koreans basically hang around with their age-mates, that is, they date, make friends and chill with someone who is the same age as them. So the reason for asking your age that early is to determine if you are in their age group and if they should be hanging with you.


EVALUATE
After this explanation, I was able to understand why it was difficult having friends besides my buddy and his friends to whom he had introduced me to, especially as they had all become friends during the previous semester whilst they were all exchange students in Canada from the same Korean institution, Chungbuk. I was much older as most students where between 18 and 22. After that fateful conversation, I remained content with not trying to make any new friends and stuck to the few I had already.

Letter Home

I was studying at Chungbuk National University in the Republic of Korea for the spring semester of 2019 as an exchange student from Centria. Being a Business Administration student, I had to take courses from two different departments at Chungbuk; Department of Management and Information Systems and College of Business.

The teaching culture is almost very similar to that of Centria but for the so much importance attached to written exams at Chungbuk. I had presentations in four of the five courses i was offering at Chungbuk which entailed a lot of team work as I had to take part in at least one presentation every other week. This wasn't strange as team work (research and presentation) are a corner stone of my study path in Centria.

With the great importance attached to exams at Chungbuk, it wasn't strange to find students putting in a lot of hours in the library or  at their homes studying for mid-term or final examinations. Each semester has two exams per course (mid-terms which generally constitute about 30% while final exams constitute 70% of the total grade). It was therefore impracticable to find students taking part in some leisure activities two weeks to the start of exams.

Studying in Korea was a good experience as most lecturers had some sort of international experience as majority had studied and went on to teach in the United States, The UK and some other European countries but the United States obviously dominated the lot as the two countries entertain a very cordial relationship. My study group consisted mainly other exchange students from Thailand, Russia, Belarus, Germany, Mongolia and China as I was at a public university with  Korean as the main language of instruction. Native students were studying in Korean and they had just a handful of English language courses for incoming exchange students.

My everyday life was quite simple and homogeneous as i lived on campus in a student dormitory so I had no troubles commuting to school. My classes were always approximately 7 minutes-walk away from my dormitory because it was such a massive campus with each department or faculty having a building or two (like big buildings).

Throughout my stay, the most challenging aspect was sharing the same room with someone else especially as it was quite small. I always had the impression I was in some sort of a box when i went back to my dormitory. This was so challenging because I had never had to share such a small living space in the past.
Not so easy picking out a single moment or instance as the highlight of my exchange as I had lots of fun memories and visited some amazing places. Probably, the cable car mountain at Mount Palgong.

D-I-E - France

The most unusual and quite frankly, terrible thing that happened during my experience was that I had my electricity cut from my apartment for 10 days. One day I come home from school and I try to turn on the lights, but they don’t seem to work, at that moment I just assumed that the bulb had gone out, so I let it be. Then I proceeded to get something from my fridge and noticed that the lights did not work there either, at this moment I realized that I don’t have any electricity. I immediately tried to call the electric company EDF, and they told me that the residence manager in my student residence had cut it, they were baffled by the occurrence as well, since it was without reason, I had paid my rent, my electric bills and everything, but for some unknown reason this happened, they then offered an appointment for the electrician to come and put my electricity back on on a designated day, but the electrician never showed up, in total I had to make three appointments and call them numerous times each day over the 10 day period. I couldn’t believe that this could happen. I felt absolutely furious and I demanded reimbursements for all the cold showers I had to take, and the food that I had to throw away. In the end the electrician came and I got my electricity back, and the electric company also paid for the trouble they had caused.

Fortunately there was a common room
where I could charge my laptop and phone.

The reason why this happened is still unknown, when I tried to confront the residence manager about it, she was clueless as well, and she then put the blame on the electric company, even though the electric company told me that she was the one who cut the electricity. One theory that I had was that perhaps she meant to cut the electricity from another apartment and accidentally cut mine but was too proud to admit it was her mistake. Or, it could have also been some kind of a bug in the system of the electric company, or maybe the electric company had made the accident, because I did find an envelope in my mailbox saying that they will cut the electricity from my apartment on a designated day, it will forever remain a mystery. And the funny part is that I could have prevented it if I just had checked my mailbox on a daily basis.

It was not the most pleasant 10 days of my life for sure, and honestly I was quite depressed and angry during that period, but on the other hand, I began to appreciate the fact that I still had a roof over my head, and that I shouldn’t take these kinds of things for granted. When I told my French friends about this, they were less surprised about it than my Finnish friends for example, what I have understood from the French culture is that if you really want things to work, you must complain, a lot.

Letter Home - Jussi Kärkinen

I am currently doing a double-degree in La Rochelle, Excelia Group Business School. In order to acquire the double-degree I have to study in the fourth year for one academic year. The courses we have had have been really great, the school really emphasises on quality learning approaches, we have had professors from all over the globe, for example the U.S, Ireland, Canada, Great Britain just to name a few. Furthermore I would like to point out that we have had a lot of group projects, and I mean a lot of group projects, which has been really beneficial since our class is very culturally diverse.

In Centria, I am studying in the Finnish track of BBA, which is the Tradenomi- program, before going to La Rochelle I had completed one academic year.

The study culture is really present in La Rochelle, our school offers a lot of activities for students, such as sailing, gym, music, La Rochelle itself seemed to be a really student based city, and the city is really lively, there’s a lot of events happening at all times. The group that we have, as I previously mentioned, is really multicultural, we have over 10 nationalities in our class. Overall, I have found my classmates to be really interesting and friendly people.

Typically our school days start quite late, like around 10 – 14 but at the latest we would stay in school until 8pm. Me personally I enjoyed the advantage of sleeping in, so normally I would wake up maybe two hours before going to school, watch some TV, make breakfast and go to school and come home, nothing too special, although occasionally me and my classmates would go to an Irish pub for a drink or two. I enjoy having walks around the harbour and adore the architecture of the boats and the buildings, and also I happen to live about 200 meters away from McDonald’s and Burger King, so sometimes I go there to grab some food.

At first it was hard to get accommodated to studying in a foreign language, all the business lingo was very unfamiliar to me since I had previously studied in Finnish language, but fortunately it was a temporary issue, now I know the words and the definitions of things in English as well.

The thing I have enjoyed the most so far has been the people, everybody is so different and they come from completely different cultures, and that is something I find quite important, being able to learn and exchange experiences from our countries.

D-I-E France

I think I can about many cultural and episodes that are different from my culture and finnish culture in general but one that stand over all of the them was the manifestations and protest across the country regarding the taxes that were increased in the country.

Describe:

People started to organized to protest on the rise of taxes that the state was imposing. People first started talking about it and then expressing their disagreement till the point where non centralized groups started to appear with a common thing and idea. They characterize for using a yellow vest and to go on protest across the country with different activities till the extreme point of burning cars, business destruction, confrontation with the authorities and city destruction in general. People were in expressing that those taxes in the rise of fuels where affecting small businesses and country side people that had no other way to travel and do their affairs without a vehicle compare to the people in the big cities with other means of transportation like metro and buses. 

I manage to see close friends in France that were affected by these taxes and they shared with me their perspectives in how the state didn't look beforehand in the consequences that this decisions where carrying out. I didn't know what to feel as I have never experience in first hand something like this in my life inside Mexico and Finland. I was just thinking about different ways of protesting and different ways to find a solution to all this. 

Interpret:

I think and I know people were really tired of the amount of taxes they have to pay as it looks they were affecting the life of people with low incomes that had no means to go through their daily life.  Also I could see that French culture is characterized to stand for their rights and express their nonconformity with the situations in the country. I try to explain to myself that the only way to reach the government and public attention was to go down to the path of extreme means and actions and that is way many business, cars and material things as well as confrontation with police took place in the protests.  

Evaluate: 

In a way and with non intentions of being close to the situation and ended up living the events and experience everything really close. I had to travel to Paris for a university event where Centria was present and we as students of the university were going to help. I traveled by train with two other students from Finland, the first event took place when police stopped me to search and check all my luggage because of their concerned I might be going to Paris to protest and they wanted to be sure I was not carrying any dangerous materials or tools. I explained them that I was a student from Mexico representing a Finnish institute and that's when they calmed down but of course I could feel the tense environment and their efforts to control everything around the country as authorities. When we arrived to Paris we found out hundreds of Police officers guarding the railway stations and street sidewalks around the city, they stopped me one more time to check my backpack and my documents. I have to point out that this have never happened to me in Mexico or Finland. Of course I felt a bit uncomfortable but I kept my nerves as I knew they were doing their job. I didn't have a negative or positive feeling but just a neutral feeling of being a third party and casualty of the events. Not long after that we were able to witnessed how 10 police cars just stopped in a fast action to detained three persons in the street, we could see they were heavily armed and that was a bit shocking even though in my country we have sometimes the presence of the army in our street but of course in Finland this is not the case. We walked away and then we found the manifestation in our way to the university event we were trying to assist. Police stopped us again to ask about our intentions and they gave us orders to walk in a different direction to avoid the conflict.

When we went out of our event with Centria it was night and the protests were all over the city we saw burning cars and people fighting with the police, most of the people were covering their faces and they were breaking windows and shouting they non conformity with the regulations of the state. 

At the end I can imagine myself in the shoes of those people but also is hard to fully understand the situations. I could see and understand how this regulations affect people with no means to live their life because the state is asking them to pay more taxes and of course as the situation grows the people run out of tools to convince the state of taking a different approach. In the other way around I can't imagine myself doing or protesting in the way these people were but I guess is because I have never been in the edge of something affecting my life till the point I can't no longer live with dignity.

I hope this was not to dark for other students in the blog with intentions to travel but I have to say that these things happen all across the globe in one way or another and it is important to be informed and to take it easy in an objective way.

Letter home - Diego Villegas Salazar

Hello, my name is Diego Villegas Salazar, I study business management in Centria and I had the opportunity to studied in Excelia University in La Rochelle, France. 

I can tell you that the educational system in France compared to the system we have in Finland is different in many aspects. One of the big differences is the amount of hours that are invested in going to the courses and the projects at home, especially when times of exams are coming. People can also find out that the amount of information each course has is bigger than the ones in Finland. My personal opinion is that their educational system lacks on efficient and effective learning methods but offers in the same way a great amount of data and theory for their students. 

About the educational culture in the host university and country in general, I can tell you that students like to study in groups and might be always in front of their computers.  Many projects are given in the length of a semester and most of the projects are presented in groups. Courses are divided  in individual assignments, group projects and final exam that most of the time covers half of the percentage of the total course. All assignments and projects were focused on theory and students culture is to recreate enterprise conditions to imagine what they might find in the  professional world.

It was common to go to school in the morning, around 8 am and end up our classes around 3 pm to 5 pm. There used to be a gap of half an hour to one hour to eat before classes continued.

My study group was conformed of students mainly from Europe, there were Germans, Finnish, Spanish, Belgians, Italians, Estonians and some other students from Vietnam, USA, China and India.

As for my daily life, I can tell you that La Rochelle is a mix of tourists and students so in general a beautiful place with a present nightlife. There are many cultural attractions and places to visit, stores are close to the town center but they close around 22:00 and on the week ends was really hard to  find them open specially on Sunday where everything was closed. So our days started early going to school with a lunch break. I have to remark here that for French people it is important the lunch hour and therefore most of the services are out from 12 mid day to 2 pm. After hour classes it was common to finish couple of assignments and try to get ready for regular meetings with other students in the restaurants, pubs and clubs. It was a bit difficult to travel around France because of the expensive tickets that the train company manage but inside La Rochelle there were a lot of activities that let us enjoy our time in the country. Food was expensive and as well as the rent of the apartments around the city. 

Some of the best things about La Rochelle is the nightlife and the touristic places that they have. The food is a great thing and if you like wine that is the country of excellence. They have a good taste in fashion and they try to keep things in a classic way. 

In the other side, I don't like the way operations are manage, and I mean in general the way of doing things in France include a huge process of bureaucracy and this make everything complex. People sometimes they were a bit rude even though they say that is their way of being.

The highlight of my experience and time in France as a student was the award my team and I got for an exercise were we simulate companies and were we obtained the first place among the companies in our market for best performance.

The highlight outside the university was the big trip we made from Finland to France and France  to Finland by car.  A lot of adventures and things to see.

Hope some of the things that I put here help someone else to know just a bit more about what can they find in France.   

I attached two pictures of how beautiful was the city and how crazy was the nightlife. :)