A Little Shopping Spree

Finally I got my first bill for gas, electricity, and phone!

My gas bill. 913 yen.

The gas is cheap for sure, I rarely cook.

Electricity. 2.458 yen.

Not too bad. But surely by the next 3 months it will be more expensive cause no doubt I will use much more appliances such as heater or kotatsu to fight the winter.

My phone bill!! I am very nervous when opened my bill envelope at that time.

Surprisingly, it is cheaper than I thought. Remember the previous post about the forecast bill for my phone? I wonder why it is cheaper (still dont know until now). I thought it will be 8000 yen up above something. Only got 7300 yen for phone bill just makes my day!!

Still not getting my bill for water though. I wonder how much it will cost? *scared*

Recently, not much to do except to attend training in my company like as always. However around this week I’ve been buying going to several places such as Tokyo Midtown, Tokyo Sky Tree, Yoyogi Park, and several every day need shopping. However  I didn’t manage to take proper photos because most of them at that time I go unintentionally only for taking a little bit walk after church (on Sunday).

I bought several new things though! So exciting but feels a little bankrupt at the same time..

I bought a small humidifier from Muji. 

This is still in the middle of Fall but the air is very dry already. If I dont buy this thing, my skin will be ruined! It usually went very dry in the morning without humidifier. I have to buy this to prevent my skin not too get very dry or else it will be very itchy.

After that I buy a new eyeliner, lashes and colored contact lenses!!

• Heroine Make Liquid Eyeliner Jet Black : 924 yen.
• Candy Magic 1 Day Colored Contact Lens Miracle Brown : 1680 yen.
• Diamond Lash 5 pair : 1050 yen.

See that’s why I feel poor already (but happily poor!)

However however however finally this is my first time of buying colored contact lenses!! I never use lenses before but after a while here I am really really convinced to try colored contact lenses. I saw that almost 98% of Japanese girl wear contact lenses so why not try? Since I think the quality of colored contact lenses is better here rather in Indonesia, so I try this Candy Magic brand. Firstly I buy the daily usage one. Want to try whether I can use contact lenses or not.  One box consist of 5 pairs of contacts. So exciting to try all of these!

Maybe on the next post later I will try to review this brand, along with the lashes and eyeliner! So see ya then!

Cheap Japanese Food (??)

Who says living in Japan is very expensive? I don’t think so. Nowadays, living in Japan is as the same as living in America or Australia in some ways. The food cost, transportation, is stil ok. Maybe the most expensive one is the accomodation in my opinion, especially in Tokyo. So many people come to Tokyo for work it is getting very crowded, small apartment being build and offering expensive rent cost.

This time I want to share especially focusing on food. In Japan, you can search for food as cheap as 280 yen until as high as 6000 yen, you choose. Not need to be afraid there is no food stall here and there. Even you can have bentos from the supermarket (or small convenience store) and all you have to do is to buy it and heat it on the microwave (even sometime they have the microwave and free to use for customer!). Usually big department store sell SO MUCH type of bento you’ll be confused which one to try. The bigger the supermarket the bento type will much more varies.

Photos below is one of the example of bento boxes sold in Seiyu, one of the famous supermarket in Japan.

  

They sell everything from salad, pasta, onigiri, japanese food, and so on. They all ranged from 280 yen, until 600 yen. Even sometimes they sell trayed rice only / appetizer only. If you bring your own rice, all you have to do is buy the complimentary. Easy life, eh??

And this one is from small convenience store, 7Eleven (yea they have 7-11 too there). Not bad, huh? 

Although the choice is'nt that much at least you know lah you won't die of hunger in Japan. Hungry? Go to konbini, problem solved. Unless you are too lazy to walk to konbini, go die. hahaha.

What is the best thing about supermarket bento?? Well, if you quite ignorant about the quality, you can wait until past 7 p.m and usually they give all these bentos BIG DISCOUNT since if it’s not sold they have to throw it all to maintain the quality. SO, you can find some much more cheaper than 280 yen bento above 7 pm every day. EVERY DAY. Horraaay for that!

Bought this discounted bento. Still good!! Rice topped with salmon, tuna, squid, and other thing I don't know but delicious!

Even here sometimes I found a store specialized in selling bentos only. However, if you are sick of bentos, you can try to go to these kind of store: They sell menus usually from a machine that you have to enter your money first and pick the menu. After that the coupon will come out and give it to the staff there and just sit! Usually this kind of restaurant sells food ranged from 280 yen to the maximum of 800 yen. The portion is big too! Several examples are Yoshinoya, Matsuya (pic1), Chikara Meshi (pic2) and Nakau (pic3) below.

 

The machine, coupon, and my order. Steak for only 680 yen. What???

However, in these kind of restaurant, you cannot spend too much time eating and talking. They are a (semi) fast food restaurant that usually visited by only one person or two person eating alone, finish eating, then go. No room for chit chat, especially when it is crowded. Suitable for eating alone, not suitable for group eating, as sometimes you will be separated by seat (they usually don't have the dinner table type, only bar).

For a much proper restaurant (without ticket machine), usually they sell menus from 700 yen until 2000 yen.  Some example below are listed.

Eat at Danny's. This cost me about 890 yen (include the fancy drink).

 Eat at 100 yen Sushi Shop. I ordered about 7 plates for only 735 yen for total. Matcha are free!

Me and my friend that night. Happy, feeling full and not bankrupt. Pfiuh.

After around one month here, I found that most common cheap food I found are rice topped with meat (“gyudon”,”katsudon”), curry rice, and ramen. Besides of that, it is usually being sold above 700yen. Vegetables is more expensive in Japan rather than meat, so usually cheap food rarely comes with a lot of vegetables. I usually buy salads if I really want to eat vegetables. And then so much food using pork for it’s ingredients here. Have to be much more careful if you can’t eat pork.

For me, 2000 yen per day is more than enough to budget your expense for food. However, if you want to eat fancy stuff in cafe, big fancy restaurant, of course you need more than that. After all, expense is based on each one lifestyle right? I hope this article will help you all to imagine about the food expense in Japan.

Nb: Use a little bit of your budget to try desserts from convenience store. From cream puff, long roll cake to purin and stuff, it is amazingly cheap and delicioussss!! I recommend the yakipurin, creampuff, cream roll. 

Happy eating, SAVING, and see ya on next post!! Jahh!!

Moving to Japan ( My Apartment in Japan)

As I’ve been promising you guys. I have moved to my new apartment in 12 October 2013. Here we go. This is my apartment building and hallways.

I pick the last one on the hallway so that people will rarely crossing my front door, and decreasing chances of hearing noisy sound especially at night. And finally this is my room!!

View from inside to the front door. Based on this picture, on the left side is toilet, and kitchen.

 

This is washing machine and shoes rack (+ kitchen utensils rack since I don’t have any other place to store them. I know a little bit sounds gross but okay, as long as I’m the only one that used it.)

A little bit weird for me because in Indonesia, usually washing machine placed on the back on the house, not in the front near the door like this. And below is my kitchen. The kitchen is very small!!! When in my house back then I always complained that my mom’s kitchen is very small. Now I know that my Mom’s kitchen is very big. Ugh. I can only store things on the very small rack up there.

View from from the front door. door on the left is bathroom.

Bathroom near the kitchen. So small, again.

And finally my room is next door.

The bed, the bed board, and kakefuton (fluffy blanket thingy) I bought them all from Muji. The kakefuton is so damn comfy it makes waking up 10.000x harder than before. I can store things too under the bed and on the head board.

I can say I’m not regretting buying things from Muji (this is not an endorsement okay) although it is still a little bit expensive. And here is my bookshelves that I used for something else rather than stocking books. Beside is my cute mirror, wardrobe and hanger. I bought almost all of the things secondhand. Cheaper of course.  

 

And this is  the famous kotatsu!! (ignore the bucket)

Kotatsu is a table that has a warmer machine under. Usually Japanese use them on winter to warm the feet and hand. I knew this stuff from manga wtf. Before I used it, I have to buy the cover first so the cover will trap the heat properly. Now it still functioned as a common table. If already have covers, it will be something like this. 10.000x comfier (and warmer!).

The front balcony, and a little shot of my view everyday.

 

 

 

Roughly the whole area is only around 17m square which is quite a common size for an apartment in Tokyo to live individually (what?). The rent is about 58.000 yen per month including maintenance, not including utilities bill. For overall I like my apartment very much, just too bad I cannot pin something in the wall because it is considered as damaging the property and I need to pay for that.

I spent about 250.000 yen for all this things Including some small things from vacuum cleaner, brooms, bucket, detergent, laundry hangar and so on). This is can be included very cheap because most of my friends averagely spent about 350.000 yen for all of their stuff. Here are some tips to move cheaply in Japan:

• Buy secondhand stuff. Secondhand doesn’t always means that the product is broken or something. In Japan, especially Tokyo, lot of foreigners and students come for just a temporary stay and if they are moving, they cannot throw away their things freely because in Japan, large waste such as bed, wardrobe COST YOU MONEY to throw it. For example, for my kotatsu, if I want to throw it, I have to pay around 3000 yen and after that the garbage company will come to my place and take it. So, rather than paying, they put their (usually quite new) stuff to secondhand store or sell it on internet.  Try to search one secondhand store near your neighborhood or try to google “sayonara sale”. Lots of foreigners (that mostly go back to their country after temporary stay) and also Japanese sell their secondhand furniture there.
• If you need moving service, try to search for several moving company which are experts in moving stuffs. I know several of them such as: Tokyo Move , Tokyo Helping Hands , XPS Tokyo , Moving S , 7 Doors, Quoz.  I use Tokyo Helping Hands because they are the cheapest of them all (based on my each comparison, I email them one by one and compare) and the owner can speak English, but try to survey all of them first and compare which one is the best for you. 
•  For small things such as bucket, broom and so on, don’t ever buy it on the big department store. Search for “100 yen store” that sell almost everything that you need for your house, with only 100 yen per item. The difference of price is so damn high sometimes compared to big department store. I myself regretting some things that I’ve already buy in department store and later found it on 100 yen store.

And for preparation of moving, here are some tips and informations:

• Don’t bring any uneccessary electronic devices from your country to Japan. I see that in Japan here the voltage is very small compared to my country; they have around 110V while my country usually use 220V. I’ve brought my hairdryer and curling iron here to Japan and they just won’t heat. I have to buy some new ones finally.
• Japan, you have to register your electricity, gas and water before you move in. Here is the website for registering gas (english) , electricity and water. However for water you have to search for local water bureu that serves your place. For example, my friend who live in Yokohama, have to register to Yokohama Water Bureau site. In here too you can choose to pay your bill by bill (mail) and pay it on convenience store or directly deducted from your bank account. 
• Be patient to search the furniture. Measure your room well, since it is usually very small, you have to be very careful in picking furniture that won’t stuffed up your room until you can’t move. Remember, it takes a lot of cost too to throw all the big furniture.
• For initial payment of apartment, usually you need more money rather than just 1 month rent fee. You have to pay deposit fee (usually cost you 1 month rent fee), “reikin” or commission to the landlord (it’s a common practice here) (usually cost you 1 month rent fee too), fire insurance around 20.000 yen, initial gas payment (I don’t know the exact amount, differ from apartment to apartment), and internet installation around 6000 yen. Each apartment comes with different internet provider so you have to ask the landlord or your agent about this.

I hope this will help you if you have any interest to move to Japan!

For the whole process until this point, it was a hell lot of troublesome thing to do. From waiting for my furniture day by day (they come one by one), my baggage from Indonesia, internet checking, buying some additional needed stuff such as cables, and so on, it was really a pain in the ass. Not to mention all the schedule collide with my training programs. 

I have enough of all the moving thingy so frickin’ grateful it’s finished. See you on next post!!