Planning the schedule and shopping

We had our first meeting this year on Friday 18th. We met in a café called Mummo kahvila, Granny’s café. We hadn't really decided a topic to discuss about, and we ended up going through our schedule and decided dates for the whole spring, when we are going to meet. We looked at our already planned list about things we want to do, and decided dates for them. We also decided few extra dates when we’re focusing only in Finnish and Japanese language. After the café closed we walked around forum a little bit, visited few shops together and left home. Me, Mayu and Rika took the same bus so we discussed little bit more on our way to home.

Next time we were supposed to meet on 25th, and it was planned for shopping. But on Thursday it turned out that Mayu had some other plans, and then Jonas also informed that he couldn't come either. Me, Tiia and Rika decided to go anyway, and check the last sales that shops had. After school we met on Forum, and started going through the shops. We talked about shops in Japan and how customer service differs in our countries. In the end we didn't buy many things. Rika went home after we had walked around for about 2 hours and me and Tiia stayed in the centre for about one hour more.

From now on for next few weeks we have meeting every week. This week we’re going to visit an Asian market here in Jyväskylä, and maybe do something else too if we have time. And hopefully I remember to bring my camera with me then..

Visiting Tampere

As I mentioned our next meeting was planned on 30th November. Unfortunately that plan got cancelled because Mayu got sick, so we decided to postpone the meeting.

On 15th-16th December we had plans to go to Tampere for a short visit. We decided to buy the train tickets beforehand on 11th December. We all 5 were supposed to go to Tampere, but this time Jonas got suddenly other plans he had to do, so he couldn't come with us. But since we had made all preparations for the trip, the rest of us decided to go and bought our tickets.

I went to Tampere already on 14th and on the morning of the 15th, I went to get Tiia, Mayu and Rika from the train station. 

At first we went to nearby super market to buy food for the weekend. We decided to eat traditional Finnish Christmas meal. Then we headed to my sister’s place, where we would all spend the night. We dropped our luggages there and ate before we left to back the city centre. Mayu and Rika wanted to see the Christmas market in Tampere so that was our first destination.

The weather was really cold, I think it was around -15C and it was fairly windy too, but the Christmas market had really nice atmosphere on it. We also went to another smaller Christmas market in Stable yards, a little walk from the centre. On our way we visited Tampere’s movie theater and I showed that not all movie theater in Finland are similar as in Jyväskylä (to be honest, I don’t like Jyväskylä’s movie theater at all..).

We also took a quick view of Näsinneula from the Näsinkallio park. Näsinneula is the high tower located in the amusement park of Särkänniemi.

Mayu and Rika both like Moomins a lot so of course the Moomin shop was a must visit. When we visited the shop, there seemed to be other Japanese in the shop. Seems like Moomin’s really are popular with Japanese!

We finally decided to move indoors and went to the shopping mall, Koskikeskus. We spend our time checking the shops and around 6pm my sister came to pick us. When we arrived to her house we decided to cook some food and bake Christmas tarts too. 

Mayu and Rika also made these for us

I’m sorry girls, I forgot the name of this dish. But they were really good and fresh! I also served everyone Tampere’s special, black sausage! Seems like it was edible, and maybe even rather good? I hope so!

My sister's friend also baked a reindeer pie for us! I think it was the first time for everyone tasting a reindeer pie.

And of course Christmas isn't Christmas without Christmas chocolates!

This black cat was also our entertainer during the evening.

We were all pretty tired so we went sleep quite early!

On Sunday morning around 10am we left to Vapriikki, a museum in Tampere. It has many exhibitions and it’s very affordable for students with student card, only 3€. It has many exhibitions, I think around 10. We spend few hours walking around and I hope Mayu and Rika learned about the history of Tampere a little bit, as many other things from Finland too. We also discovered a small Angry Birds play ground in of the exhibitions! You could play the game for real. It was quite fun. 

The exhibition that I wanted to see most was The Mummy exhibition and it was pretty interesting.

After going around the museum we headed outside of Tampere, to Ideapark. It’s a big shopping mall about 15 minutes drive from Tampere. So for the rest of the day everyone spent their day going around the shops and looking for something interesting to buy. There was also a gingerbread house contest going on, you could vote for the gingerbread house you liked the best.

Before leaving we went to eat Italian ice cream together.

Around 4pm we started to get ready to leave back to Tampere, because Mayu and Rika’s train would leave at 5pm. We escorted the girls on the train, and me and Tiia took the next train at 8pm to Jyväskylä.

I had really fun weekend, but it was too bad that the weather was quite horrible. Maybe if we have time we can go to Tampere again on spring, so everyone can see little bit different Tampere, and maybe that time with a nice weather!

Each One Teach One

This blog is for my school’s course Each One Teach One, or for short, EOTO. I'm a first year student in business administration in Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences. In this EOTO-course, there are five of us and we plan to meet every once in a while, and do all fun things: cook Finnish and Japanese foods, go shopping, go around the city and visit different places etc. We want to learn about each other’s cultures and languages, and I’m kind of looking forward to practice my English and Japanese skills. We have already met two times and next I’m going to tell a little bit about our first two meetings. Sadly I don’t have many photos since at the time I didn't know I was going to write a blog for this course, but from now on I’m going to take many photos, since they make writing blog much more fun. My English isn't always the best, but I hope I don’t make too many mistakes!

How I met Mayu and Rika?

I’m interested in going to Japan as an exchange student, so in the beginning of fall semester when I heard someone talking in Japanese on the bus stop when I was on my way to home, I was pretty excited! So yes, I first met Mayu and Rika on a bus stop at the centre of Jyväskylä. At first I didn't have the courage to say anything to them, and to be honest, I was quite nervous. On the bus I realized that this might be my only change to talk to them, so I gathered up courage and asked if they were from Japan. Turned out that they were, and they were indeed studying in Jamk, so we decided to add each others as friends in Facebook. A few days afterwards I met Mayu and Rika with Tiia, my classmate, in Jamko café, and we discussed various things, and later decided that we should take the EOTO-course. Mayu and Rika also told us that Jonas is interested taking EOTO-course with us, so we decided to form a small group, and take the course together. We made a group in Facebook, so that communication would be easier, and then decided when the first EOTO meeting would be held.

30th September 2012

We decided that we would bake cinnamon rolls on the first meeting, since they are quite traditional Finnish buns. We held the first meeting in Mayu's apartment, in Roninmäki. I brought all necessary equipment with me to Roninmäki, and then we all went to Keljo's Prisma by Jonas’ car and bought necessary ingredients. As we shopped Mayu and Rika asked a few questions about Finnish products, such as which is milk and which is sour milk, what kind of cookies are good and so on. After we finished shopping we went back to Roninmäki and started baking. I made the paste quite quickly, and then we all sat down and chatted for about 30mins, while the paste rose. When we started making the cinnamon rolls, I first showed Mayu and Rika how to make them, and then both of them took turns and tried making them too. All of the cinnamon rolls turned out really good and tasty! 

Mayu and Rika liked them a lot, so I was happy. We sat down, drank some tea and ate many, many buns. We talked about various things, and made a little word list of the ingredients in Finnish. Mayu and Rika also wanted the recipe for cinnamon rolls, so we promised to translate it for them.

4th November 2012

We had talked in Facebook about when we should meet next time. We decided to meet on Saturday 4th, at Rika's apartment in Roninmäki. For this meeting we had planned to cook Japanese dish, okonomiyaki. I had heard about okonomiyaki before, but never eaten it, so I was really looking forward tasting it. We arrived to Roninmäki around 13:00 and Mayu was already making some preparations for the food. While the two girls were cooking, we chatted a little bit, drank some tea and looked how okonomiyaki was made. It seemed quite simple to do! As Mayu and Rika finished cooking, we could finally taste the long waited dish, and it was really good! 

I really want the recipe, so I can cook it for myself sometime. The girls made both different versions of okonomiyaki, and they said that everybody has their own style to cook it. Mayu used cabbage and Rika used cabbage and potatoes. After eating we made a little word list about the used ingredients in Japanese. We also talked about the schedule  and what all we should do in these meetings, and decided 3 more meetings for the end of the year. Since neither of us knew our school schedules for spring, we didn't plan the dates further than that, but we discussed what all we should do. Our next meeting was planned to be on 30th November.