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
@albert_karwur
