At the end of 1986 my embassy work was behind me, and I began work at the Department of Asian and African Studies with the support of a grant for returning scholars from the Academy of Finland. Nevertheless, as early as the following summer the invitation came for me to go to Copenhagen, where the Nordic Council of Ministers had decided to reorganise the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS). In order to implement the changes, a stopgap director was required, and this time the intention was to find a Finnish candidate. For three years, the NIAS offered me an excellent panoramic view over Nordic Asian research in particular.

There followed another gap year as a teacher and researcher at the University of Helsinki, until in 1991the East awaited me once more in the form of a position as translator at the Finnish Embassy in Beijing. However, I only managed to remain in China for 18 months before the University of Helsinki required someone to fill the post of professor of East Asian Language and Culture. As acting professor, I took care of these duties for around three years, as well as those, in part, of the new chair of Japanese studies.

From 1996–2000, I again worked as press and cultural attaché at the Finnish Embassy in Tokyo. Some of the regular clients of the embassy had not even noticed my nine-year absence.

In the autumn of 2000, I returned once more to the University of Helsinki, this time to the Renvall Institute, where with the help of partial funding from the Japan Foundation and the favourable influence of the University Rector, Kari Ravio, I began to prepare a degree programme in Asia-Pacific Studies. The degree programme, offered in English and concentrating on current themes, enjoyed immediate popularity, not only among students but also among potential part-time teachers. It was possible to study the subject as a major in bachelor degrees awarded by the faculty of arts, and a university lecturer was assigned to the programme. In the subsequent university reforms, the subject was combined with East Asian Studies.

During the first years, visiting Japanese professors, funded by the Tokyo Foundation, worked in Asia-Pacific Studies. In January 2006, I began to investigate the possibility of Helsinki also playing host, in a flexible way, to high-level Chinese experts from various fields. A visit to Hanban, the current headquarters of the Confucius Institute, convinced me that a Confucius Institute, part funded by China, would be the best way to achieve this end.

The institute was commissioned surprisingly quickly, when in September 2006 Prime ministers Wen Jiabao and Matti Vanhanen agreed on the establishment of the institute at the University of Helsinki, and a letter of intent was signed between the University and Hanban. The actual constitutive agreement was signed in May 2007, and the institute, which the University of Helsinki manages together with its Chinese partner, the Renmin University of China, began in September of the same year. I have had the honour of working both in the planning phase of the institute and also as its first full-time director from 2007–11 and once more as its part-time director from September 2014 to July 2015. In addition to Helsinki, the institute has teachers in five university language centres around Finland, and it is thus national in scope.

In the years 2011–14, I worked in Tokyo as the director of the Finnish Institute in Japan. At the beginning of 1996, I had delivered a report to the Finnish Ministry for Education, at its own behest, on the possibility of establishing the institute in Japan. The institute itself was eventually founded in 1988 through the efforts of Rector Yrjö Saotamaa, Rector Kari Ravio, minister Aarno Karhilo, the designer Kenji Ekuan and numerous other figures. I was wonderful to be able to work in what is currently the only Finnish institute in East Asia – an institute that had earlier been my brainchild.