About Us

Welcome to our blog. We are Laurens and Daphne from Holland. In 2012 we will be living and studying in Tokyo. With this blog we would like to keep you up-to-date of our experiences in Japan.

Our academic background forms an important motivation for our journey to Japan. At the Erasmus University in Rotterdam we both studied History of Society with a specialisation on Global History & International Relations. The East-Asian region, and especially Japan, has been of great interest to us. Our fascination is reflected in our exchange with the Keio University in 2010. Fortunately, we had the opportunity to study abroad for 6 months to follow courses on international relations at Keio, and start our studies of the Japanese language. In this period Daphne also did research for her Master thesis on the perception of Anne Frank in Japan.

      Besides our specialisation in International Relations, we broadened our academic horizon with other disciplines. Laurens minored in Philosophy and researched military development for his Master thesis. Daphne completed her bachelor Economics at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, and continued her Master Economics at the University of Amsterdam. She specialised in Public Economics and researched the value of historic heritage.

Apart from our academic interest, we just love Japan and Japanese society. We like Japanese food, both eating and cooking (and making pictures of it to show on this blog). We want to see different regions of Japan, and therefore we plan to travel through the country. Practising Aikido is also one of our interests in Japan. Laurens started at very young age, and has been practising for 13 years. He has been teaching children classes and passed his black belt exam in 2009. Laurens enthousiasm encouraged Daphne to start Aikido as well, and together we trained at the hombu dojo in Tokyo in 2010. This year we will continue our training there.

In 2012 our primary goal is to improve our Japanese. Therefore we enrolled at the Yoshida Institute of Japanese language. Secondly, we want to enjoy life in Japan and everything it has to offer.