Freja Siiri Ikehata

**Freja Siiri Ikehata** (Japanese: 池端 フレイヤ・シーリ *Ikehata Freja Siiri*) is a young woman from Japan who is working as an office lady in Sweden. She is of Swedish and Finnish origins.

## Etymology

In Norse mythology, Freja or Freyja, which means "the Lady" in Old Norse is a goddess associated with love, beauty, fertility, sex, war, gold, and seiðr (magic for seeing and influencing the future).

Siiri is an Estonian and Finnish feminine given name derived from the Old Norse name Sigríðr, composed of the elements *sigr* "victory" and *fríðr* "beautiful". It is a cognate of the modern Scandinavian name Sigrid.

Ikehata comes from the words ike (池) means "pond, pool" while hata (端) means "edge, tip, end." The surname may have a meaning of "pond end" or "pool edge".

## Appearance

Freja is a teenage girl with, despite being of Nordic descent, has a blue hair and light blue eyes. She mostly wears a suit, even on Saturdays.

On Sundays, however, she wears a white short-sleeved shirt and a denim pencil skirt as casual outfit.

## Personality

She is also an anime fan, particularly anime of varieties of markets, ranging from shoujo to josei, Japanophile, Koreanophile, and Europhile, meaning that she admires a lot about the culture of her home country, her neigbouring country (Korea) and about Europe in general (not just Sweden). She watches more anime than reading manga.

## Background

Born and raised in Osaka, Japan, Freja mostly had a Swedish ancestry with some partial Finnish roots. Her father is Japanese while her mother is half Japanese from her grandfather's side and three-eighth Swedish and an eighth Finnish from her grandmother's side (her grandmother is three-fourth Swedish and a quarter Finnish). In other words, she is

3
4

{\displaystyle \frac{3}{4}}

 (75%) Japanese,

3
16

{\displaystyle {\frac {3}{16}}}

 (18.75%) Swedish and

1
16

{\displaystyle \frac{1}{16}}

 (6.25%) Finnish.

Her mother tongue is Japanese and has fluency in English and knowledgeable in Swedish. She learned and improved her English a lot to communicate better with other foreign communities and to those who are not knowledgeable or conversant with Japanese.

She learned Swedish during her junior high school years in Osaka. This is because of her planned moving to Sweden. As the years go forward, she eventually became knowledgeable in Swedish and spoke Swedish to some of her classmates in senior high school and colleagues at work in Sweden. English is only used to other nationalities and to most of her colleagues at work.

At the age of four, her parents were separated due to financial problems. Since then, she lived mostly with her mother, her younger brother Satoki, her Japanese grandfather, and her Swedish-Finnish grandmother. Despite this, only her mother changed her surname from "Ikehata" to "Murata" and their children continue to use the surname of their father.

Freja spent most of her childhood and her early teen years in Osaka. She attended elementary and her first two years in junior high school in Osaka.

She had been to other places in Japan, such as Tokyo, Sapporo, Kyoto, and others. She has never been outside of Japan until moving to Sweden.

Freja moved to Sweden with her mother on March 29, 2017, after her second year in junior high school. She lived in Gothenburg and continued completing her compulsory education for another year and studied for another few months in senior high school.

Freja wanted to work in an office, such as an office lady, a secretary, or assistants in accounting firms, even as a teenager. She thought of Sweden as a country to earn more money than in Japan, most especially in Stockholm where it is the financial capital of the country. Being a teenage office worker would be fun and fascinating in her assessment and prove that even teenage girls have daily office lives likewise.

Freja applied for an office occupation at WeWork's Stockholm branch online. Weeks before she moved to Stockholm, she visited the city’s physical branch in October 2018 during her autumn school break. Freja asserted that the office is delightful and that she would love to work and hand other coworkers there, even if she is only a teenager. She later applied for an apartment rent within Stockholm in order that she could reside and take an ease to travel between home and work.

On December 20, 2018, she attended her final attendance at school in Lindholmens tekniska gymnasium as a first-year student. She would continue spending her Christmas time in Gothenberg and reside for another month.

After almost two years of living in Gothenburg, she moved to the capital city, Stockholm on January 23, 2019. At the age of 16, she had rented an apartment along the Vasastan neighbourhood of Stockholm and began working as an office lady at a coworking space for WeWork on April 1, 2019.

Since her office lady in Stockholm outset, she began travelling to other cities in Europe, such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Oslo, Copenhagen, Prague, Helsinki, and Vienna.

## Relationships

### Satoki Ikehata

Freja's younger brother and best friend by more than a year. They hangout each other since their childhood and almost do not materalize to have a sibling rivalry. The only time they had it is when he and Freja were arguing about owning the plush bought by their mother, which is technically owned by Freja. However, they were still very young and now that they grow older, they mostly enjoy themselves as real friends, even close to being a tandem.

Instead of their parents, she is the one financially supporting Satoki with his school and other stuff. This happened to be a bit of a misunderstanding as Satoki only wants financial support from his mother. However, it was actually Freja herself that had an initative to support him instead since she is the one earning from her work as an office lady. Later, Satoki accepted Freja's initiative and the misunderstanding was resolved.

From late-November 2019 to early-January 2020, he visited Stockholm to meet again his "best friend and sister". They had most of their fun times by hanging out quite often, eating together and spend times in amusement parks and other attractions. He even had an initiative to buy her cake and a present for Christmas and her 17th birthday.

## Education and Career

* Elementary School
	+ Kanaoka Elementary School, Osaka (April 2009 - March 2015)
* Junior High School
	+ Shinkitajima Junior High School, Osaka (1st and 2nd year from April 2015 - March 2017)
	+ Nordhemsskolan, Gothenburg (Högstadiet / Upper stage 9th year from August 2017 - June 2018)
* Senior High School
	+ Lindholmens tekniska gymnasium, Gothenburg (Första ring / 1st year from August - December 2018)
* Career
	+ WeWork Coworking Space, Stockholm (April 2019 - )

## References

1. ↑ *Born in Osaka, Japan.*
2. ↑ 17 (in 2020), 18 (in 2021), 19 (in 2022)
3. ↑ *She would also obtain a Japanese citizenship but due to the Japanese law, dual citizenship is illegal. Therefore, Japanese citizens who wish to be a citizen of another foreign country must abandon their Japanese citizenship.*