This is another article for the Anthropology Students at UKC because it’s been a pretty uneventful week (well uneventfulish). This is about the living costs in Japan which I can give a better estimate now that I’m out here. Before I gave tips on how the trip overall would be like and I retain the advice to SAVE NOW, even if you’re not sure you’re going to go abroad save now! And save more then you think you need, I did and I think it’s what’s saved me.
Why? Because the exchange rate’s a bitch. Thanks to the crap economy etc the £ to the yen is not as great as it was the last time I came here and instead of everything being half price it’s almost the exact price, but with basic foods costing a lot more. Sooo to sum it up I’m spending more then I thought I would thanks to the exchange rate.
Ok, let me break it down. If you want to live a pretty uneventful life doing not very much then you probably could live off of £50 a week (right now that’s about 6500yen, although could be 5000 in a few months time, who knows). If you want to go out and see sights and go shopping I suggest you budget for about £100 a week. I know you’re not necessarily going to pay this much a week (I certainly am not) but it doesn’t hurt to be safe.
I’ve found that food for cooking for about a week can be between 1500-2500yen (not including a bag of rice which can cost up to 2000yen which could last you a month) and this often lasts more then a week. Transport can be about 200yen for a bus trip (one way coz Japan don’t have return tickets), and up to 1000yen on the train (one way again), so a round trip will cost double this. Buying food out can be between 500-1000 for a single meal depending on how luxuriously you want to eat. Eating lunch at the cafeteria is about 300-700yen for a meal. I keep thinking of these as 100yen = £1 to reduce my spending. It’s working and I’ve been able to cut my spending to 300yen a day on lunch (although I keep bindging on the 100yen drinks from the machines…I need to stop doing that) and then about 2000yen a week on home cooked food (which is mainly rice, soup, veg and I had a fish the other day which was omnomnomnom).
Sooo that’s how I break my daily spending down. If I wanted to go to Osaka it would cost me 740ish there and back, plus 400 for the underground (there and back), then 700yen for a meal out, 2000yen on stuff (depending on what I’m buying…I’ll more likely spend more). Sooo that’s a total of 3800yen…ish ^_^ Which is about £30. Which if you think about it in terms of going out in England isn’t too bad, but if you want to go out every week it can build up to a lot.
So prepare prepare prepare!
Oh yeah, minor note: BANKS ARE EVIL! I went with Nationwide because before they didn’t charge for me taking money out abroad but now (again thanks to the recession) they’re going to start charging. Other banks can charge up to 5% per withdrawal (who knows how that’ll change). Oh and Nationwide, although are better then other, are being really annoying. This is my own experience and I feel like I need to rant: 2 weeks before I left the cash machine ate my flex account card (the one I use abroad) so I told the bank and they sent me a new one…the wrong one -_- I told them again and they sent a new one for the flex account…but they’d changed it so I couldn’t use it abroad. This is 2 days before I need to leave, so I call them up and they tell me they’ve upgraded my account and will sent me a new card which I can use abroad. But I’m leaving before it’ll arrive. So I leave my mum on standby to get it when it arrives and send it to me but after 3 weeks it still hasn’t arrived!! I think I could have got this sorted a lot sooner if…just stuff hadn’t kept happening that was a mixture of the bank and other stuff >_< It’s just really annoyed me and grrrrrrrr.
From this you need to realise that no matter how much you plan something will ALWAYS go wrong. *siiiigh* Ok I hope that was useful ^^; I’ll shush up now and go watch some anime to make it better (note: watch Gankutsuou)
I couldn't think of a picture to put with blog so I decided to put up a random amusing pic I found in the Osaka underground of a child getting trapped by the train doors and having fun while doing it! YAY!
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