Overcoming my Weakness as a Japanese

Moi! I’m Keikei. Although it’s already in the middle of March, Finnish winter is so stubborn that it won’t leave and it even snows heavily today, which is surprising as a Japanese. In this season in Japan, I suppose, we can feel the arrival of spring by the scent of it or trees having buds on their branches. I can’t wait for spring!!! (Seriously)

In this article, I reflect on my mental growth through my study in Finland. Living abroad is much more tough than I expected although it helps me tackle my weakness. Starting with the conclusion, I became willing to claim my right and state my opinion which is difficult to tell people in the aspect of its contents.

I’m like a kitchen guardian.

I refer to my experience in my dormitory as an example. I live in a dormitory and use a shared kitchen with my roommates on the same floor. You know, maintaining public space with many people isn’t easy; it often gets chaotic and dirty because once someone uses it in a not good way, other people follow that.

So does our kitchen become pretty chaotic not occasionally, but frequently. For example, some people don’t clean the kitchen table after their use, so there are often ingredients scattered like tometo source (it often makes me wonder whether they made tomato pasta lol). Also, some people don’t classify garbage correctly; they throw a pack of meat away not in the mixed trash can but in the plastic one.

Although considering it’s abroad, some of you guys might think me sneaky and too nervous, and I should give up it to some extent, please imagine those examples above are only on the tip of the iceberg and there is nobody to take incentive to maintain kitchen clean. For me, it was quite irritating and stressful.

In the beginning, I was unwilling to ask my roommates to use the kitchen cleanly so that everyone can use it comfortably by poiting out some undesireble way like I mentioned because I was afraid of being disliked by them as a sneaky Japanese girl. However, gradually, I can lead my roommates to maintain there clean by suggesting we devide the responsibility to do cleaning regurarly and throw garbage away. Through this experience, I learnt the way to ask people to do what they are unwilling to do, not offending their feeling or making them feel oppressed.

Claim to be treated fairly.

After our floor started the cleaning of the kitchen regurarly, the situation got better, but one day after many people gathered in the kitchen, it got dirty and the reception gave us a warning about that by email. The problem was, they said that if the same thing happen again in the future, they would impose 10 euro on each of us, which wasn’t acceptable for me at all. Why people who use the kitchen cleanly and are loyal to the rule should have a punishment because of few people who use there in the opposite ways?

If I have experienced this in Japan, I would have complained nothing to the reception, but I’ve changed since I came here, which made me protest against the unfairness of the warning to the reception. I could persuade them to understand our efforts to keep the kitchen clean as much as possible and challenge the punishment itself in a polite way.

Express my opinion in a polite way, not conceal

In summary, I could express my opinions and feelings even if they are hard to tell someone for the fear that they might make him/her angry or uncomfortable. If I carefully choose the words and think about how other people feel by my remarks before I say that, it doesn’t matter, rather, I can build stronger and more intimate relationship with other people. Also, it’s not good for my mental health to ignore my opinions or feelings and compromise with other people without any negotiation. My experiences here have made me stronger and independant, which I appreciate a lot.