Now, you may have already begun considering this question on your own. For me, it was one of the first things I started wondering about when I seriously began planning my semester abroad about this time last year. And that question is simple to ask, but a little bit complicated to answer:
How are you going to stay connected to the internet while you're in Japan?
Now, I get that to some, this may seem like an overblown question. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. are all hardly what one would truly consider necessities, and I would agree with that. I'm not out to offend any older generations with my attachment to the web and/or social media (though I do have lots of friends on some of those sites whom I do genuinely hope to be able to stay in touch with).
But internet access means so much more than being able to access these sites. It also means having a GPS in your pocket everywhere you go, which can help keep you from getting hopelessly lost in a foreign country. It means having an app that alerts you when your train is pulling into the station at a given platform, so you don't end up getting on the wrong train (and thereby ending up hopelessly lost in a foreign country). It means being able to stay in touch with your friends and family back home, as well as being able to reach emergency services if something goes wrong (in Japan, 119 for fire/ambulance, and 110 for the police). It means having live weather-monitoring services, earthquake early-warning systems, and what basically amounts to a pocket translator (Google Translate, while not always 100% accurate, is still your best friend, especially if you can read/type kana).
Essentially, for the student traveling abroad, internet access is, indeed, absolutely essential.
"I have a smartphone," you say. "I'll be good to go. I'll just be careful with the amount of data I use; my talk and text are unlimited." Unfortunately, most unlimited talk and texts plans only cover North America. Verizon Wireless, for example, will charge you $15 a day to use your plan as normal while in any other region of the world. If you're going to be abroad for, say, around 140 days, that means you'll be spending $2100 on just having your normal cell plan available to you (and that's besides whatever your plan normally costs).
This, obviously, is not an option.
You could, theoretically, just buy an entirely new cell phone abroad, but I didn't end up going that route (buying a new phone sounds a bit more expensive than I want to deal with). Similarly, most smartphones sold in the US are bound to a certain company (unless you specifically buy it "unlocked"), so you can't just get a new SIM card while abroad and trade it out for your old one. (Plus, then you have to worry about losing your tiny home SIM card while you're outside of the country, and with it, your mobile phone number.) Also important to note is that just as you have to pay extra money to call foreign numbers from a North American mobile number, you'd have to pay extra to call friends and family back home from your new Japanese number.
"Well, I'll just use public WiFi," you argue. But, as I believe I've mentioned once or twice in earlier posts, WiFi is not nearly as ubiquitous in Japan as it is in America. In fact, one of the things Kansai Gaidai made clear to students applying for a homestay is that homestay families are not required to have WiFi (or even Internet access) available at all to their homestay students. While most hotels and many tourist attractions have WiFi (and usually whichever school you're attending will too), it's certainly not able to be found everywhere. And besides that, how are you going to use Apple Maps (or Google Maps, whichever it may be that you prefer) if you're stuck hopping from hotspot to hotspot everywhere you go, entirely at the mercy of the shops and businesses around you and their willingness to offer free WiFi?
The answer, basically, is that you're not. You can't.
Unless you can take the WiFi with you everywhere you go.
Enter the genius invention that is pocket WiFi. You are given a little hotspot, basically a mobile WiFi router, that fits in your pocket. (The name is fairly self-explanatory.) The router is connected to one of Japan's cellular networks (which are, thankfully, pretty much omnipresent at this point, at least in the populated areas). As long as you're somewhere with a cell signal, and you have this little doohickey in your pocket, the internet is at your fingertips, like always.
(To make sure your phone company doesn't hit you with extra fees back home, make sure to let them know you're studying abroad soon. Verizon told me to just use my phone only in airplane/WiFi-only mode, and that doing so should prevent me from stacking up any extra charges beyond my normal cell plan. And since it's still technically connected, and able to access Japanese cellular networks (even if for an extra cost), I'll be able to use it as normal in case of emergency.)
Something important to note about pocket WiFi is that it's not unlimited (so far as I know). I'm signed up for 30GB of data a month (which is considered a medium-sized plan at the company I'm going with). I'll have WiFi access for free whenever I'm at school, and I have all of my fingers crossed that I'll have internet access at my homestay too (though it's certainly not a dealbreaker if they don't, by any means; I know what I'm possibly signing up for). So, when I'm out and about, I'll have around a gigabyte of data available to me every day. Considering I'm probably going to be using the GPS built into my phone a lot, that's probably a good thing. If I end up needing more or less, I will definitely let you guys know, so you have a better idea of what to expect you'll need.
The 30GB data plan I'm going to be working with is going to cost me around $50 a month, but that's very little compared to the $2100 we were talking about just to have my normal 1GB a month I get through my cell plan. So, assuming it works well, the connectivity is strong, and the battery life of the hotspot is decent, I should be good to go.
And again, I'm not being paid to endorse any particular company, but I'll tell you that I'm getting pocket WiFi through Sakura Mobile, since they offer special plans for travelers planning to use the pocket WiFi for more than 90 days (and because their name is, objectively speaking, really, really cool). Sakura Mobile can deliver the hotspot to an address/hotel, or allow you to pick it up at the airport. And if you don't want to use your credit card to pay, you can also pay with cash at several different convenience stores, such as Lawson's and FamilyMart.
But, interestingly enough, not 7-Eleven. 7-Eleven, apparently, is not the answer to every question the Japan-bound student may have.
TL;DR: If you want to maintain internet access while studying in Japan, looking into pocket WiFi is probably the most cost-efficient and user-friendly way to go.
And this information is important enough that it bears being included again in the summary: In Japan, you can reach emergency services at 119 for fire and ambulance, and 110 for police.
Saturday, December 29, 2018
Friday, December 28, 2018
A Quick Shameless Self-Advertisement Plug
We interrupt your totally-irregular scheduling with an exciting (at least to me) message.
Earlier this month, I self-published my first book, a paperback through Kindle Direct Publishing! It's a collection of my poetry from the past few years. I think I ended up with 36 poems in here at final count.
The book is also available as an eBook, if you prefer those! Despite the price difference, I personally actually only make like $1 more from the paperback than from the eBook, so if you want to get the eBook to save money, I promise that I will not be offended at all.
Also, this is my first time self-publishing, so if there are any issues--glaring typos I missed, poor cover quality, or formatting errors I didn't catch in the proof copies, etc--please do let me know so I can try to get the problems edited out and fixed. I have been working hard to polish both versions up over the past couple weeks, but like I said, this is my first time--I may have made some mistakes!
The eBook version of the book should be available globally, anywhere you can use Amazon (whether the UK, Japan, the US, etc).
The paperback is available in most markets too.
You can also find it by searching "Elizabeth Ree" on Amazon; the Kindle version is the first result, and the paperback version is just a bit farther down.
Oh, and if you get either version of the book, whether you like it or not, please write an honest review! The more reviews I get, the more likely Amazon is to show people the book as a recommended item. Even if it's not 5 stars, let me know what you think!
That's all for this brief interruption. Even if you decide not to get a copy, thank you for reading this post! Have a Happy New Year, fellow travelers, and I'll be back soon with more posts about preparing to study in Japan.
The Problem of International Money Movements
So, you have your passport and your visa. You've got your plane tickets. You've even started packing (which will get its own separate blog post in the very near future). But now there's another big question--how are you going to get to your money while abroad? Where are you going to get Japanese cash? How are you going to make purchases in Japan without piling up bunches of foreign transaction fees?
Before we go any farther, let me just say that I'm not being paid by anybody to suggest any of the following brands or services. I've just done buckets of research over the past few months trying to find the best places to get this stuff done, and these are the brands I've discovered seem to offer the best deals. Of course, I've just recently gotten them and haven't tried to use them abroad yet, so we'll have to wait and see whether it all works out properly or not.
First of all, you're going to want to get a checking account that your home institution can deposit your financial aid into, and that comes with a debit card you can use to get cash out of Japanese ATMs. (And yes, you will have to get cash out of ATMs. Japan is still much more of a cash-reliant country than the US, and you shouldn't be surprised if a restaurant, non-chain hotel, or shop doesn't allow credit or debit cards. Even where credit/debit cards are accepted, you're likely to find that only VISA and Mastercard are allowed. AmEx and Discover can be used some places in Japan, but far fewer than the two brands above.)
The checking account I ended up going with is Capital One's 360 Checking. This is an online checking account, rather than an account you have to set up at a physical branch (though if you have a branch near you, you can go that route as well). The biggest reason I chose this one is that, unlike literally every other checking account option I looked at (through US Bank, CitiBank, Wells Fargo, etc.), it doesn't charge foreign transaction fees. If you use the debit card provided (a Mastercard, hooray!) in Japan, it will use the current exchange rate, and won't hit you with an extra 3-4% fee on top of the cost. From what I've read, it also doesn't charge any extra fees when you use it to withdraw cash from certain ATMs in Japan.
You can look into opening a Capital One 360 Checking account here.
Which brings us to the next thing, finding friendly ATMs that won't hit you with extra fees either here or there. An interesting thing about Japan is that, for whatever reason, 7-Eleven (yes, the convenience store) is much more popular over there than it is even here in the States. You can find 7-Eleven pretty much everywhere in Japan. They and Lawson's are the two biggest convenience store brands in Japan (or, as you say in Japanese, konbini).
Okay, so there are 7-Elevens everywhere. But how does this help the globetrotting college student? Stay with me. 7-Eleven's Japanese branch also runs a bank, called SevenBank. Yes, you read that right. 7-Eleven has a bank. And every 7-Eleven in Japan has an ATM in it, which is a SevenBank ATM. And SevenBank ATMs, for whatever reason, play extremely nice with American credit/debit cards. They don't charge you any fees for using them to withdraw yen in cash. So, basically, SevenBank is your new best friend.
Assuming, of course, that you get a debit card (like Capital One 360) that won't hammer you with fees on the American end, either.
Do note, though, that SevenBank ATMs may charge a small fee if you use them during off hours or on the weekends, and some cards may not be usable for small periods of time in the middle of the night (11:50 PM through 12:10 AM for Mastercards, if I recall correctly). I'm not sure why the cards aren't accessible for those ten or twenty minutes, but I'm sure there must be a reason. It may be so that the ATMs can be updated with the day's exchange rate or something; who knows.
You can find more info about SevenBank ATMs here, and info about the hours when a given card brand is usable here.
There are options for buying yen in cash online ahead of time, but I've ended up deciding not to go that route because of all the extra fees that seem to get tacked on everywhere (and the fact that a really bad exchange rate is usually the one used). I'm going to try to get some yen out of an ATM in Tokyo first thing, and if that doesn't work, I'm going to have some cash available that I can exchange for yen at the airport. Of course, that will also mean extra fees, but even if that happens, it won't be the end of the world. (I guess.)
And, of course, even if you don't plan to use it, make sure to take at least one credit card with you. You never know when an emergency might come up and you'd need it.
I hope someone else studying abroad in Japan can find this post to be helpful! It took me a long time to sift through everything and find the best options, and while I found different travel blogs that suggested one thing or another for certain financial questions, I never found any one post that actually helpfully summed everything up like this.
I will definitely let you guys know if these solutions work for me, or if for whatever reason, they end up not working as advertised.
TL;DR: The best solutions I've found for accessing money in Japan are as follows:
Checking account: Capital One 360
Debit card: Capital One 360 Mastercard
ATMs in Japan: SevenBank (at 7-Eleven)
Before we go any farther, let me just say that I'm not being paid by anybody to suggest any of the following brands or services. I've just done buckets of research over the past few months trying to find the best places to get this stuff done, and these are the brands I've discovered seem to offer the best deals. Of course, I've just recently gotten them and haven't tried to use them abroad yet, so we'll have to wait and see whether it all works out properly or not.
First of all, you're going to want to get a checking account that your home institution can deposit your financial aid into, and that comes with a debit card you can use to get cash out of Japanese ATMs. (And yes, you will have to get cash out of ATMs. Japan is still much more of a cash-reliant country than the US, and you shouldn't be surprised if a restaurant, non-chain hotel, or shop doesn't allow credit or debit cards. Even where credit/debit cards are accepted, you're likely to find that only VISA and Mastercard are allowed. AmEx and Discover can be used some places in Japan, but far fewer than the two brands above.)
The checking account I ended up going with is Capital One's 360 Checking. This is an online checking account, rather than an account you have to set up at a physical branch (though if you have a branch near you, you can go that route as well). The biggest reason I chose this one is that, unlike literally every other checking account option I looked at (through US Bank, CitiBank, Wells Fargo, etc.), it doesn't charge foreign transaction fees. If you use the debit card provided (a Mastercard, hooray!) in Japan, it will use the current exchange rate, and won't hit you with an extra 3-4% fee on top of the cost. From what I've read, it also doesn't charge any extra fees when you use it to withdraw cash from certain ATMs in Japan.
You can look into opening a Capital One 360 Checking account here.
Which brings us to the next thing, finding friendly ATMs that won't hit you with extra fees either here or there. An interesting thing about Japan is that, for whatever reason, 7-Eleven (yes, the convenience store) is much more popular over there than it is even here in the States. You can find 7-Eleven pretty much everywhere in Japan. They and Lawson's are the two biggest convenience store brands in Japan (or, as you say in Japanese, konbini).
Okay, so there are 7-Elevens everywhere. But how does this help the globetrotting college student? Stay with me. 7-Eleven's Japanese branch also runs a bank, called SevenBank. Yes, you read that right. 7-Eleven has a bank. And every 7-Eleven in Japan has an ATM in it, which is a SevenBank ATM. And SevenBank ATMs, for whatever reason, play extremely nice with American credit/debit cards. They don't charge you any fees for using them to withdraw yen in cash. So, basically, SevenBank is your new best friend.
Assuming, of course, that you get a debit card (like Capital One 360) that won't hammer you with fees on the American end, either.
Do note, though, that SevenBank ATMs may charge a small fee if you use them during off hours or on the weekends, and some cards may not be usable for small periods of time in the middle of the night (11:50 PM through 12:10 AM for Mastercards, if I recall correctly). I'm not sure why the cards aren't accessible for those ten or twenty minutes, but I'm sure there must be a reason. It may be so that the ATMs can be updated with the day's exchange rate or something; who knows.
You can find more info about SevenBank ATMs here, and info about the hours when a given card brand is usable here.
There are options for buying yen in cash online ahead of time, but I've ended up deciding not to go that route because of all the extra fees that seem to get tacked on everywhere (and the fact that a really bad exchange rate is usually the one used). I'm going to try to get some yen out of an ATM in Tokyo first thing, and if that doesn't work, I'm going to have some cash available that I can exchange for yen at the airport. Of course, that will also mean extra fees, but even if that happens, it won't be the end of the world. (I guess.)
And, of course, even if you don't plan to use it, make sure to take at least one credit card with you. You never know when an emergency might come up and you'd need it.
I hope someone else studying abroad in Japan can find this post to be helpful! It took me a long time to sift through everything and find the best options, and while I found different travel blogs that suggested one thing or another for certain financial questions, I never found any one post that actually helpfully summed everything up like this.
I will definitely let you guys know if these solutions work for me, or if for whatever reason, they end up not working as advertised.
TL;DR: The best solutions I've found for accessing money in Japan are as follows:
Checking account: Capital One 360
Debit card: Capital One 360 Mastercard
ATMs in Japan: SevenBank (at 7-Eleven)
Thursday, December 6, 2018
Minor Apprehensions
Don't get me wrong. I'm still beyond excited to go, and now that I've already bought my plane tickets and got my visa, there'd be no room to chicken out even if I wanted to.
That said, I'm starting to feel a little bit nervous. I don't think anything's going to go wrong, and I'm sure I'll have a great time. I'm not so much worried about what's going to happen there, as what I'm going to miss here.
I'm going to miss my brother's high school graduation next May, my little sister's birthday and her confirmation, and my littlest brother's birthday. Several of my closest college friends are seniors, and after next week, I might never get to see them again in my life. I'm not gonna get to see my best campus friend's senior art show, or see all of my senior friends walk at graduation.
I'm glad I finally get to go to Japan, and I wouldn't trade this opportunity for the world. I'm just... really gonna miss my friends and family on this side of the globe too. I know I can still call and text and stuff (pocket wifi for the win), and I know part of the reason this blog exists is to be able to stay in touch with the people I care about (especially since I didn't end up getting the Gilman).
It's just... hard to believe the semester is already over. I went stargazing and on a hayride with some friends back in August, right after the summer started, and that feels like forever ago, and yet, at the same time, the time since then has absolutely rushed by. It felt unreal when fall break got here back in October, and even more so when Thanksgiving break rolled around a couple weeks ago. And now, here I am, a week from winter break. After this semester, I only have two more here at my home school, and then it'll be off to grad school.
I realize this post is a lot more rambly than most, and there's a pretty good chance this is the most rambly post I'll have on here. I just needed to get my thoughts out.
I'm going to be a better person for the experience, I know. But it's still hard knowing that the world back home is going to go on without me, and that I'm going to miss a lot of things. I'm definitely so excited to go on this adventure, and like I said, I wouldn't trade it for the world.
It just sort of feels like I really am going to have to trade my whole home world so that I can go.
That said, I'm starting to feel a little bit nervous. I don't think anything's going to go wrong, and I'm sure I'll have a great time. I'm not so much worried about what's going to happen there, as what I'm going to miss here.
I'm going to miss my brother's high school graduation next May, my little sister's birthday and her confirmation, and my littlest brother's birthday. Several of my closest college friends are seniors, and after next week, I might never get to see them again in my life. I'm not gonna get to see my best campus friend's senior art show, or see all of my senior friends walk at graduation.
I'm glad I finally get to go to Japan, and I wouldn't trade this opportunity for the world. I'm just... really gonna miss my friends and family on this side of the globe too. I know I can still call and text and stuff (pocket wifi for the win), and I know part of the reason this blog exists is to be able to stay in touch with the people I care about (especially since I didn't end up getting the Gilman).
It's just... hard to believe the semester is already over. I went stargazing and on a hayride with some friends back in August, right after the summer started, and that feels like forever ago, and yet, at the same time, the time since then has absolutely rushed by. It felt unreal when fall break got here back in October, and even more so when Thanksgiving break rolled around a couple weeks ago. And now, here I am, a week from winter break. After this semester, I only have two more here at my home school, and then it'll be off to grad school.
I realize this post is a lot more rambly than most, and there's a pretty good chance this is the most rambly post I'll have on here. I just needed to get my thoughts out.
I'm going to be a better person for the experience, I know. But it's still hard knowing that the world back home is going to go on without me, and that I'm going to miss a lot of things. I'm definitely so excited to go on this adventure, and like I said, I wouldn't trade it for the world.
It just sort of feels like I really am going to have to trade my whole home world so that I can go.
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