# Minä olen japanilainen.



## japanilainen

Hei!

Recently I have been thinking about what I should say when I introduce myself to strangers. If it were English I would've said something like "I'm from Japan" which is indeed synanomous with "I'm Japanese". I want to stress where I grew up and where my hometown is, rather than exerting my ethnic identity.

But I noticed that (I may be wrong, since I didn't live in Finland that long.. one and a half years!) in Finnish they seem to introduce themselves as "Minä olen suomalainen" and hardly something like "Minä olen kotoisin Suomesta". But would it sound unnatural to Finnish ears when I say "Minä olen kotoisin Japanista." or "Minä olen kotoisin Tokiosta." rather than "Minä olen japanilainen."? I'm sure they understand it both ways but I'm interested in the naturalness and grammatically correct usual Finnish sentences they would rather want to hear/use.


----------



## Hakro

Hei japanilainen,

Both are grammatically correct but in Finnish we are used to say the nationality instead of the country.

If you say "Minä olen kotoisin Japanista" we may possibly think that you live in Japan but you can have any nationality.

On the other hand, if you're living in Finland you should say "Minä olen kotoisin Tokiosta", but if you're only visiting Finland you can also say "Minä olen tokiolainen".


----------



## japanilainen

Thank you for your answers!

But "lisää kysymys"... What is the right way of saying "From Tokyo, Japan"? Since I've heard both "Tokiosta Japanista" and "Japanista Tokiosta".


----------



## Hakro

japanilainen said:


> But "lisäkysymys"... What is the right way of saying "From Tokyo, Japan"? Since I've heard both "Tokiosta Japanista" and "Japanista Tokiosta".


Both are correct. There's no actual difference but I'd prefer "Japanista, Tokiosta": first the country, then more precisely which city. If you say "Tokiosta, Japanista", someone might think that you don't understand that we all know that Tokyo is in Japan.


----------



## japanilainen

OK, Thank you very much for pointing it out! I'll stick with "Japanista Tokiosta."

See, it's exactly explanation about subtle differences in language that I'd appreciate from the native speakers


----------

