Back in Sweden

Figured maybe I should write an update now, if by any chance anybody's still interested in what I am up to.

Firstly, I'd like to apologise for not updating my blog. I keep myself busy as always and when I do have time I have quite simply put priority on other things.

I returned to Sweden from Japan by the end of March last year and now live in Sweden together with my girlfriend (who is Japanese). Actually we're getting married here in Stockholm in May and then we'll have a Shinto style ceremony in Japan in July.

I'm currently studying economics and statistics at the Stockholm university and working part-time. My girlfriend is learning Swedish and doing research at a medical university in Stockholm.

I haven't had any professional use of my knowledge of the Japanese language yet. I guess I could find a job for the summer in the tourist industry if I wanted to, but I've got a part-time job I'm quite pleased with at the moment and the salary in the tourist business would probably be lower, which is a quite important point when you're working part-time to have money to survive.
Luckily I can get some training in speaking Japanese with my girlfriend and some Japanese friends sometimes at least, so I don't really feel like I'm forgetting Japanese that quickly. What I've noticed is that I'm slowly forgetting vocabulary and kanji, but I know it will all get back to me quickly if I just study it for a while again, which I will do at some point in the future.

It's quite interesting to follow my girlfriend studying Swedish now after I've been studying Japanese for two years. I realise how incredibly complicated and irregular the Swedish grammar is compared to the nice and simple Japanese grammar. On top of that, the Swedish language has pronunciations and a melody that makes no sense at all, especially not for Japanese people who have none of that in their language. Even if you consider the trouble for a westerner to learn kanji, I'm getting quite sure that Swedish is the more difficult language to learn.

I am of course missing Japan every now and then. Both Sweden and Japan has it's good and bad points, but I'd like to live in Japan again at some point in the future. I have some ideas what I could do over there in the future, but for now I'll focus on my university studies here and we'll see where we end up.

If anybody has got any questions about studying in Japan or anything, feel free to leave a comment, preferably with your email address and I'll get back to you!

One more thing, if you don't believe me about Swedish being more difficult than Japanese, I recommend you checking out this video clip!