How did you become so interested in Japan? What’s taking you back there on every holiday a year after a year? This is the story the author and designer Liisa Stenberg is often asked to tell – a story of what has made her fall so in love with Japan.

I’ve been interested in Japanese culture in its many forms for about two decades. I’ve travelled to the land of the rising sun a dozen of times and spent months touring its cities and nature in different seasons. My host family experiences during high school and an exchange year in my twenties gave me a broader perspective to living among Japanese people – and of course allowed me to rail travel through the country. Flower arrangement, green tea, Japanese cuisine, language, video games, shamisen music, pop lyrics, traditional arts, old filosophies and vivid history – I’ve found most aspects of Japanese culture always highly fascinating.

My interest in Japan at its earliest stage, however, began in elementary school. At that time my mom bought me a video casette from local super market’s sale. It was early 90s and “the Rose of Versailles” animation about Marie Antoinette and Lady Oscar became one of my favourite videos. I watched it over and over again, until at some point my mother discovered, that some of the language used in the story was a bit inappropriate for kids my age, and got rid of my precious tape. As a little girl who spent most freetime drawing, I loved the detailed dresses of the princesses and the overly cute looks of the big eyed characters in that story. Only later on I learned, how much that tape had actually inspired my drawing style and my interest in Japanese animations. It was one of my first experiences of Japanese culture. I just did not know it back then.

Pokémon and Japanese language as a starting point

Then came the time of the Pokémon fandom. My little brother was watching the hugely popular TV series every Saturday morning, when it was aired on local TV channel. It was my job as an older sister to point out that the series was utterly childish, but of course in my hart, I liked the series very much. So much actually, that me and my best friend tried to make our own Pokémon battle card game with all those 151 Pokémons – for our little siblings, of course!

During Junior high school my older sister was studying Japanese language in University among her major studies. I got really interested in her kanji books and tried to learn the characters myself. Around same time my sis took me to watch the first Studio Ghibli film shown in movie theatre during a film festival in Helsinki. The film, ‘Spirited away’, had a huge impact on me, and it trickered my deeper interest in Japanese animation and culture in general. I read piles of Japanese manga comic books and decided that I want to go and study in Japan some day when I grow up.

Determination to study abroad

I don’t know if it was destiny or just pure luck, that my choice of Finnish countryside Senior High Schools happened to have friendship school arrangement with a Japanese High School. For that reason I was able to study little Japanese at a special extra-curricular short course already at that early age. I came from a small village of a bit over 3200 people, so it was a big deal back then. It was not common at all to have a chance to study such a special language around our area – usually schools had two options among English and compulsory Swedish: French or German.

After the course I was determinated to apply for local Lions Club’s stipend for a Youth culture exchange program. Half a year later seventeen year old me jumped on a plane to Osaka and spent a summer holiday with two lovely Japanese host families living in Kobe.

That summer made it very clear to me: a month in Japan was not nearly enough. I wanted to experience a whole year in Japan to see all the seasons and to truly immerse myself in the different culture. Therefore, when I was interviewed for University studies of design in Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, one of the firs things I asked about the school was, if they had a study exhange program with a Japanese school. And they did.

A year in Japan

In 2009 after hard preparation and some more extra-curricular Japanese studies, I left for a year in Tokyo. It was a hard but mostly amazing year of interesting design studies, new friends, lots of “Lost in Transtalion” moments and learning to cope in totally different culture and with totally different language. That year changed a lot in my life: not only did I realize that one can do allmost anything, if they really will and fight for it, but I also got contacted by Finnish educational publishing company. Finn Lectura had read my Finnish blog that I kept about my Japanese adventures and offered me a book contract. It was another dream come true – along with drawing I had always loved writing, and writing a book was one of my big goals.

My first book ‘Vuosi Japanissa’ (Eng. ‘A Year in Japan’) came out in 2011. It is a guide book about living in Japan written in Finnish. All things in that book project were made by me: I wrote the text, took and edited the photos, designed the book layout as my graduate thesis project and finally even created the cover and final print files. The project thaught me two things: creating books is something I love, and, if I want, I can create a whole book from scratch by myself.

Book creating as a spare time fun

That’s where history meets today. I’ve realized, that even though I love and enjoy my current job as a digital service designer very very much, there’s another part in me, that wants to create something of my own, and to share stories and my experiences in form of a book. Therefore, during my spare time I create books as a hobby. In the future I’m interested in seeing, if these free time projects of mine can some day lead into something bigger. If you want to help me figure that out – well, try buying my first e-book. I sure had fun making it, so I hope you have great and insightful time reading it.”