Japan and Finland Sittin in a Tree

Ahh hello again freaks and geeks. Here we are again with a new installment. Got a good one for ya today, so get in a comfy armchair but take that tobacco pipe out of your mouth so it doesn't burn your lap when your jaw drops baby. Let's do this!

Okay maybe it won't be THAT action packed but check it out.


Japan has a crush on Finland

Everything Japan does is random, even in its love life. So why don't we start today on it's little crush on a country we all know and love as Finland. Of course Japan has a crush on Finland, just, of course it does. Not Norway, not Sweden, not Italy, nope. Finland.

One thing you gotta know about Japan, along with the overload of other things I could never have time to even express, is that everything is cute in Japan. It's also true that the word "cute" is in the hearts and minds of all Japanese people everywhere. The word "kawaii(可愛い or かわいい)" meaning cute or attractive is spoken by everyone(not predominately girls like in the US) and might as well be played on the harpsichord*. Thus, perhaps Finland's fate as Japan's heart throb was sealed by the creation of a cute little character called "Muumi(Right)."

Muumi, the Finnish masterpiece, is originally a show made for kids, but of course Japan saw this irresistible character and now applies it in a number of situations. Characters such as these are all over the place in Japan actually, every prefecture, and every city has its own unique animated character representative. It's worth mentioning that my small city's character, "Sano Maru," won the city character competition in Japan last year. And boy do people take cute seriously here*, thus Sano's  cute, winning character can be found all over Japan and now gives the city one of its few claims to fame. Thank you Sano Maru. Anyways, so by corollary, if a new legendarily cute character is created somewhere in the world, Japan feels a disturbance in the force. And ohhh was the force strong with this one. Muumi can be found in many corners of Japan in everyday life. I would say it is deserving of the primary reason why Japan has this crush on Finland.

Here area just two pictorial examples of what I'm talking about with Muumi:

One of my students brought a little muumi for show and tell

One of the teachers in my office has a Muumi towel

When we did show and tell in class the other day, the normal way of things was to listen to the speech then ask a question or two. Well I just loved it when this kid brought in a little muumi for show and tell. My question was this: What country is muumi from? Almost before I could get the question out of my mouth, my student said, "Muumi is from Finland," in a very matter-of-fact manner. Yes, it's true that focusing on muumi might lead one to believe that Japan loves Muumi, and not Finland. However, muumi is not the only spark in Japan's Finnish flame. I learned this very quickly just being a teacher.

Upon opening the English textbook for my 8th graders in the first weeks of my stay here in Japan, I noticed something interesting on the inside cover of the first page:

Finnish is the first language exemplified 

Hmmm, that's interesting. At the top of the inside cover the textbook introduces itself by making examples of "Languages around the World." And cool check this out, Finnish is the first language shown with it's "Hyvaa paivaa."(Lit:good day) Neat, that's funny and ironic hehe funny they put that one first......wait....then I continue down into the contents and the chapters:

The eighth grade textbook has a whole entire chapter on Finland.

Huuuuhhhh????? My textbook has an entire CHAPTER on Finland. And in the next chapter after this and before this and beyond it talks about completely unrelated things. Finland is the ONLY featured country in this textbook. That was like okay WOW. But then I found another featured story about a woman in Finland in a different textbook by a totally different company. WHHHATTT??? Now there's really starting to be something to this......then I started grading some of my students' work later on not too long after I made this little discovery. The topic of the essays they wrote over the summer was "What country I wanna visit the most." Now Finland wasn't number 1 I wouldn't say....so I won't go that far, but it was definitely number 5. Doesn't sound high but considering that there are a couple hundred countries in the world, I'd say it's pretty dang impressive.  The others that topped the list were the totally expected ones, USA, UK, France, and Italy. Now think of this, the Japanese school children want to go to the USA, the UK, France, Italy, and Finland. Which one of those doesn't seem to belong in the average vacation destination list???

Not even done yet! SO then, yes then, I was playing a game with my students the other day where they were in groups and have to, one by one, name items of a certain category. Well we had already run the gambit of clothing items, body parts, days of the week, months, etc etc and we were getting into more obscure categories, at least for a junior high foreign language English class. So I said okay nameeee, countries in Europe! Everyone groaned at the difficulty of this task as I went up to the first guy prompting him to answer and of course the first word and answer out of his mouth was "Finland!"

Well I had thrown my arms up at this point, as I was just getting then used to the completely randomized list of traits which constitute Japan, but one final thing popped into my head later on......When I was Finland, I went to Santa's village. Maybe just for throwback purposes we can throw out this picture:

Yup, ole Saint Nick as it were

I remember noticing something that, among many other things at the time, piqued my interest and curiosity. As I was sending a postcard home, one thing I should make better practice of doing actually, I noticed on the wall some statistics about the letters coming into Santa's village(for Santa) from other places in the world. Well you guessed it, Japan was on top! I don't know if it's still that way, but you can guarantee it's top 3! Tens of thousands of letters come from Japan every year and go straight to the Finnish Santa Claus!

In fact it's true that Finnish Lapland gets a good number of Japanese tourists. And actually, Finnish Santa is purported to know "all" languages, you know, since he's Santa. Now I hate to burst the bubble of the 10 year olds reading this, but after all that Santa is most likely just some Finnish dude(and you thought it was your parents, lock your chimneys, kids!). And that dude's gotta know a lotta languages, but surely he can't know them all. But he's gotta learn the ones he gets spoken to in the most, right? If you are the Finnish "know all languages" Santa, and you get a bunch of German tourists talking to you in German, well you better know German pretty well! Right?? Well I remember my Japanese friend not believing this knowing all languages malarky and so he decided to test poor Santa in a challenging way. Not only would he speak to Santa in uninhibited, natural speed Japanese, but he would also speak to Santa in his -specific- Japanese regional street dialect. So here goes nothing, good luck, chap.

There we went. We walked into Santa's little room together, and our Japanese friend went quickly directly to Santa, all the while addressing him by rattling off some deep Japanese slang. The plan was in full motion.Well Santa immediately responded IN KIND. Our Japanese friend fell to the floor because he just couldn't -believe- what he was hearing. It wasn't just shallow greetings either, he went blow for blow with Santa in Japanese and Santa shrugged it off with perfect Japanese responses, no joke, in dialect. We all still remember this very vividly! All of this came flying back to me, as did these analyses, as I started to notice these odd connections! Thus there had to be droves of Japanese tourists flying through Santa's Village in order for Santa to be that well versed in Japanese. There just had to be. Well....that is....unless the magic of Santa really is real, which who knows, it might be. Regardless, I don't care what anyone says, Japan is under that magical love spell Finland has cast - and oh that magic is real. There's something up in the land of the rising sun that ain't just the sun baby, they're just happy to see Finland.

But what can I say, I love Finland too, and singing to the choir? If that's what you would call it. Well I do love to sing.  Preaching! That's the word I'm looking for. Anyways this has been your digest of Japan this time folks. I suggest a thrilling and off the beaten path Japan-Finland vacay. You won't be disappointed, but you might get totally confused! Peace!


*(See blog coming up in the next few days)

*(I'll probably write a whole blog post about the importance of cute things in Japan)