Living in Japan

Just as a brief intro, the first until the third paragraph is about my personal life. So, if you want to jump to the explanation of settling in Japan, you can start reading from the fourth paragraph.

It’s been a while since the last time I wrote in my personal blog. Forgive me for abandoning you for a long time. So hereby, let me bring you my status-quo. My life has changed a lot. Now I am studying in Japan (Kwansei Gakuin University) for Chemistry Master program for one-a half year (until March 2019). How did I end up here? It was a quite long story. Since I graduate from Biology bachelor degree in September 2016, I continued my study in Biology master degree in the same university from my bachelor degree (UKSW, Salatiga). Then after attempting a year in UKSW’s master degree, I was pretty lucky to be granted an opportunity to study abroad in KGU Japan due some collaboration works of UKSW-KGU which will give me (hopefully) two Master degree’s from both universities.

Going for overseas study is not an easy thing to accomplish. Preparing all the required documents for the university, dealing with the immigration office (visa, passport, etc), dealing with communication problems with the university office, and even facing financial support issues has been a tough mission for me. Now, I am settle enough to strive through my new life and environment here. To be honest, it’s not an unusual thing for me living in such a half-dead situation. In my bachelor degree, I joined the student board organization and somehow managed to be the chairperson of the executive board. I met many people, with different and strikingly beautiful way-of-think. It changed me a lot, and day by day I will always have organization problem to deal with. It bulked my mental of survival instead of living.

A matter of instance at the moment I finished from bachelor degree was to move-on. It wasn’t an easy thing for me to step forward and leave a trace behind for those special memories and friends I had on the student board organization. I had to restrain myself and only provide sight for those who seek for my perspective. Helping should never overwhelm the parameter of intervention. So then I was focusing myself on my master degree, which later made me chosen as the student to study abroad.

Now, I am stuck in the middle of Japan. Thinking about it, I must tell you that until this point I believe Japan is a good place for vacation, but not for living. If you think you will have a typically romance-harem anime plot life here, that’s completely wrong. Everything is provided in Japanese, and it is quite hard to find a good-english Japanese speaker here (2 out of 10). For social life, they’re not as open as European nor Indonesian (basically my homeland). So, If you do plan to live here, I recommend you to study Japanese.

Next case about living in Japan is the price. Everything here is pretty expensive, moreover for an Indonesian like me (since the exchange rate of IDR to yen is high, 1.000.000 (read: one million ruphias) is around 8.500 JPY). I have to pay around 40.000 JPY for my room, and around 20.000 JPY for food. This calculation is even without the expenses I have to pay for other things (trasportation, etc). So, you can imagine yourself how much you should afford to live here. At least to survive, you need a daily job so then each month you got some salary to help you. It might be difficult to get a full-time job in Japan (I don’t know, never experienced before), but it’s easier to get a part-time job. The salary for part-time job varies around 20.000 JPY (normally more or less). In order to get a part-time job for a foreigner, you have to deal with some “permit” administration in the immigration office when you arrive at Japan (better when you arrive). It’s not that that hard, just ask the officer: “baito”, and hopefully they will understand. After you get the permission, you now can seek a part-time job with a regulation usually maximum 28 hours you can work per week.

For people who want to visit Japan just for vacation, I suggest you to bring about 200.000 JPY (a family with four people having vacation for more or less one week). Mainly your expenses will be used on hotel (7000-10.000 JPY per room/day for a 3-4 star hotel), transportation (by train may exceed 50.000 JPY, but if you use shinkansen it might be much more expensive), and also food. This 200.000 JPY budget is just in case you want a “luxurious” vacation. But if you’re planning to get the most cheapest and it’s only for two persons then I guess around 50.000 JPY for a week is enough. Don’t forget that you still have to pay for the airplane which has a varied price. If you’re from Indonesia and you don’t bring many baggage, then I recommend you to use Air Asia.

So that’s a just a scratch of my experience which I could share. I’m still new though, but I hope it helps you a lot. If you have further questions about a plan to go to Japan, feel free to leave a comment or you can contact my personal email.

8 November 2017
@albert_karwur