Accepted to Study!

Yesterday I got accepted to Yoshida Institute in Tokyo and now there isn't much I can do anymore to speed up the events. I received an e-mail from Go!Go!Nihon telling me how the system is going to roll from now on but summarized the application has now been sent to Japanese immigration to be accepted and then they are going to issue a certificate of eligibility (COE) for me. The I am required to pay school fees for 6 months in order to receive the original copy of my COE. When I receive the paper I need to take it to Japanese Embassy here in Finland and they will prior my arrival to Japan and add visa tags to my passport. And all this won't happen before last days of November because the Japanese immigration does the visa results only one month before scheduled landing.

I'm pretty relieved as well as excited that the first part of the paper war has been won now (though to think that we only had to make sure they had all the papers they needed with right kind of translations, it wasn't even a fight, more like a pleasant journey). For few last days all this has become more real and true than it has been ever before. It's also little bit scary and it is almost like you didn't really comprehended what you were going to do before.

Our (hopefully) last second-hand happening is on Sunday and we really hope to get all the extra things out of our hands. There are pretty much things we never expected to sell and let me tell you, if we weren't moving to the other side of the planet, we never would sell those items. But we're lacking storage space and we cannot take everything to be held in our relatives' places. It has probably been the first real growing up experience from this project, to be able to left so many things behind. I haven't even considered before how much unnecessary things we actually keep in our apartments (even though I have moved before and done this in a little bit smaller proportion). Like I thought we don't really have that meny things (and that is actually true to compare to any other normal couple (it's all because of our saving, we haven't had money to buy things! ^^)), but there is still so much to go. Oh well, let's see how the Sunday turns out!

(on the left our adorable Natta when he was only 3 weeks old and on the left all the 

8 boxes of flea market stuff we hope to sell on Sunday

(Natta won't be sold on Sunday ;) ))

Flights booked

Last night Mikko was doing once again checking with the flights and with trying even the most nonsense options like two way flights (so that we won't use the return flight) he found an option we had to consider for a moment. It was a two way straight flights from Finnair lasting the minimum flying time and arriving to the destination daytime. The price was 599 euro for each and to think that last time we flew to Japan it cost me approximately 750 euro (one stop in Heathrow) and for Mikko a little bit over 800 euro with straight flight, so these ones were really cheap. We went over the budget and we never considered flying straight, but when we have compared prices with one way flights and those costs about 550 euro without stopping in Moscow so we did the decision to spoil us now a little bit and we booked straight flights! The take off is now 26th of December and we arrive Japan 27th of December. Yey! I went to sleep feeling like we would be flying next morning! Now we only have to hope all goes fine with the visas. ;)

Roppongi (Tokyo), 2012

Shinjuku (Tokyo), 2012

Himawari

Today is this week's first free day from the work and I have to say that I feel pretty exhausted. I've been working really hard with the kanji and the Minna no Nihongo books so that this tight schedule could be kept, but I admit that it's not easy. The past week I've tried to study before the work and after work, so to be able to do today just whatever I wanted, study kanji without having to check time all the time and spent some time with the bunnies, it all has been so relaxing (and I bought myself a sunflower (向日葵, Himawari) to keep the good spirit up ^^ )

When I've studied to JLPT tests (first to N5 even though because of work I didn't actually manage to go to the test) I have noticed that there isn't actual official kanji list for the test. I was searching different kind of lists (you can find plenty from different "Study Japanese/Study to JLPT test" pages) when I noticed this book series. So this series seems to be published for JLPT studies in the beginning fo 2012, but I haven't yet had enough time to see how do they ship it to Europe and with how high shipping costs because the book itself isn't that expensive (and for us it's too late). But because of the different resources it is hard to estimate the exact amount of kanji that N4 requires. Oh well luckily our real goal stands further than what any list suggests (500 kanji) so we should be okey! 
 

Cheers and Ganbatte to everyone stuggling with JLPT and kanji aswell! ;)

 

Riding Dreams

So at least for a moment, Go!Go!Nihon has now everything they need from me. The documents where the name and personal number were highlighted were success and I managed to take scans from my old passport's pages where I had the tickets from my last visit (even the passport itself is invalid, the pages cut in half and so). So from that side everything looks great now and I hope there won't be any more problems.

I didn't receive an answer about the school fee for 9 months but when I googled by myself I found Yoshida Institutes own page where it was estimated. So now the school fee is also marked up to the monthly budget on the Project data -page. I'm still a little bit worried about the estimations, but at least we aim so much over that there has to be some moving space.

Kayna and Astria

My computer is having it's last moments and I really can't use it more than an hour at the time now. So no matter how much I'm intimidated that I have to put some money to a new one, it really has to be done. The idea about the money in the saving account would feel so much nicer, but luckily I've been working some extra again and saving for a new objective for my camera so saving and buying a computer don't necessarily rule each others out (though the objective must wait now, maybe I buy it from Japan).

I'm seriously worried about the schedule to read the Minna no Nihongo -books. While working full-time there is really many days when I feel way too tired to grab the books and start to study after work or before the shift, but for past few days it has had to be done anyway, no mercy. The greatest feeling is when I really have started to notice that I recognize all the time more kanji-combinations easier and also reading has gotten better, even though I'm still kinda poor at it. Especially katakana has been a struggle for me since you don't face them that often.

And this I must share: I hobby horseback riding with Mikko and we were kinda down when we realized that we can't ride for about one year. I was curious how common is the horseback riding in Tokyos area because last them when we were in Kyoto we actually saw a stand with couple of young citizens trying to get new members for their riding club. Back then we didn't speak Japanese more than just the basic how-to-order-food-from-restaurant kind of things so even when we tried there was no hope getting a riding lesson back then. I was very shocked when during my googling I found out that there is a stable in Yoyogi Park! Like in the most center Tokyo of all places (and only few kilometers from our apartment-to-be). And they actually rent a horse for you for 45 minutes for individual riding. The cost is pretty luxurious (because usually training hour for our in expensive stables in Helsinki costs something like this), 8 000 yen converted to be right now approximately 58 euro. But I think we need to be this crazy and at least try once if it is possible in reality (you can never know if there is some other expences they just don't inform on that page).

 

Gion (Kyoto), 2012

Book Delivery

Hi again,

Clock is ticking and cause of a morning shift I had to wake up at 5am this morning and now I'm super tired. So I'll just update you really quickly and continue tomorrow with better time (and with not so tired eyes ;) ). Go!Go!Nihon didn't answer to my questions about what I should do with the visa documents they had troubles with, so I decided to try this mad idea I suggested to them and circle up with red liner my name from every and each of the financial documents they asked us to send. Then I sent them again and added the questions about the school fee and the beginning date again, just to be sure to get the answer this time.

Well, this time I received the answer really fast, only in couple of days telling me that everything was good for now and the beginning date of the school is 5th of January 2015. I didn't get clear answer about the school fee so I have to continue whit that... So this "everything is good for now" period lasted only few days when I received a new e-mail with a new problem (seriously I don't get it why they can't list everything once). I had to update my passport and due to that I don't have any tags about my last visit to Japan in 2012 which usually you're supposed to add to the visa application so that they know (this is our civilized guess) that you haven't exceeded the maximum time of the tourist visa (3 months). So now I have replied that the passport is a new one and I'm not so excited to see if they are going to think is as a problem.

But that's all really minor when we compare that we finally got our Japanese books from Minna no Nihongo -serie (books 1 & 2 plus the translation and notes from both) from Japan finally and now we understood that there is basically only 4 months until the JLPT test (1st Sunday of December) what means only 4 months time to read all of these books and complete the kanji amount. So now all the thumbs up, because this timetable is going to get tight! Silver lining of this cloud is that at least the 10 first chapters from the Minna no Nihongo 1 should be just pushover since those are the basics of the basics and something we already know. But yey we actually got the books after almost 2 months waiting and they were actually cheaper than thought! Nights~

Flight Hunting

Hi again!

It's almost end of the July, the blogs counter shows only 150 (approximately) days untill the take off. The fact behind the approximately is that we actually don't have flights yet. The counter has been settled to the date which would be best for us, 27th of December, but the reality is that we may have to be flexible in order to get the best flights. That has been harder than expected though. Our dates aren't that flexible what we would like them to be. The reasons are pretty simple: we want to spent Christmas holidays (23-25th) with our families because we have to be long time apart from them. We also want to fly before New Year's Eve in order to be able to start arrangements in Tokyo before the beginning of the school. So with those boundaries it actually leaves dates to be only from 26th to 28th of December... Not really flexible?

Other problem is the flying route. I personally would prefer not flying through Russia right now and even if considered the time we have to spend in Moscow's airport is insane in most of the combinations (reaching 30 hours in some cases.). But if you are willing to fly with only one stop during the way (Moscow) through Russia the prices begins from 400 euro (for one way ticket). If you aren't willing to fly with the Moscow stop the prices rises from 550 euro and there will always be more than one stopover. So we're kinda waiting something to happen and trying to hunt a best offer. We've also considered booking two-way flights, but those won't actually come much more cheaper and because we're going to spent so long time there the flying companies can't list us right away flight back (so we would have to purchase a right to change the return date and that costs something like 100-150 euro from different companies but not everyone is offering that deal) So keep the thumbs up for our search!

ps. Have to say I'm pretty proud that I've already achieved 150 kanji limit even though it was originally Augusts goal <3 Hurray! 
 

2012

Mailing

So at least right now one of the reasons want to flee to Tokyo right now is not the heat. It's boiling hot in here, in Finland, who would have guessed. Weather is almost reaching the 30 Celsius degrees which is really rare here. Our poor bunnies are all overwhelmed by the weather and this house holds only fan belongs to them now. Also my old laptop is experiencing troubles with the weather as well, since it is old and already little bit broken it really cannot handle the heat and has already twice emergency shutdown itself in order to prevent overheating. So I'm basically just waiting when it says "puff" again and I'll lose the work whichever is open on the screen on the moment.

Go!Go!Nihon finally answered (yeah it's really once a week if even that fast but who could you blame when we don't pay them for their services?) but not to the question about the beginning date of the school. The message can be summarized to this one sentence: "-- can you please make sure that your name is clearly visible on the financial documents". Well, I double checked all the documents and my name stands clearly with big font size in the front page of every document, sometimes even with the social security number. The problem here is that if it is official document they want there just isn’t any way to get a paper with "more clear way for the name to be visible" in these documents, because these documents are the ones I were given by the bank, by the tax agency and by my employers accountant.

So I now mailed them back and asked if they need me to circle the names up for them or something like that, because these are the documents we need to live with now. I also reminded them about the school beginning; let's hope that they will answer to that question now, as well as to the questions about the fees of 9 months studies which is also still hanging. When we first started to apply through Go!Go!Nihon I were already aware about the problems we might face with their services because many other people from other countries have blogged about the same issues. So it hasn’t really come as a surprise for us and I'm already relieved that we are not getting an apartment through them since others have had problems for example with the apartment matching its description. And the other significant thing is that not everything is told about what you should actually get yourself ready for. One thing is the Tokyo’s residency card, we googled about that. But never mind those, it's still awesome that they're able to do all the paperwork for us and they do it for free. So I warmly do recommend doing this through Go!Go!Nihon, but only if you're wake enough to also confirm the information you're given from elsewhere and keep your eyes open for surprising things!

Gion (Kyoto), 2012

From the Beginning

So time to start the story here in Tokyo Through Blue Eyes. It's 22th of July 2014 and there is approximately 160 days until the take off. Me and Mikko have been completing all our documents for our student visas, paid the application fees for Go!Go!Nihon and now we're just waiting for the results. The school we picked is called Yoshida Institute located in Waseda, Shinjuku-ku and the program level we're aiming for is intermediate (starting from N4 level aiming to N2) which takes 9 months. We already have arranged the apartment for us from Tokyo, with a bit of luck and out nationality it worked out very easily for us. We're going to be living in place called Nekotalo (neko = Japanese means cat, talo = Finnish, means house), which is owned by very friendly Hirasawa-san. The room itself is small (only 19 m^2), but the rent and reliability as well as the location in Koenji made us feel strong about our decision. We're looking forward this so much!

One of our biggest concerns at the moment is, not very surprisingly, money. Month after month we've been re-calculating our estimation how much it will cost to live in Tokyo for one month, but it has appeared to be really hard. We've been in Tokyo only as a tourists before, so it is extremely hard to figure out how low we can actually go for example with the food cost (because even eating out was actually pretty cheap and back then yen was really strong against euro, now we have advantage over that because yen is now weak against euro). Also estimating the cost of using public transportation and calling by phone has been almost impossible even with all the googling and research we have done, so we're estimating it hopefully far too high (100 euro for both in a month). Mikko actually checked the student fee for public transportation for our route from home to school and the program estimated it to be from 20-50 euro. The reason why the range is so wide is that is that the student visa we'll have will affect the discount and we're not sure how much.

Our goal for the coming 9 months has been 10 000 euro. When you apply a student visa in Japan for 6 months the government expects to see 1 000 000 yen in your account as a warranty that you are going to survive with life cost there. We've applied for that 6 months visa, because there is no 9 months visa and the warranty amount rises fast to 2 000 000 yen. The 6 months can be extended very easily so that's why we are depending on it. So our warranty amount, the 1 million yen is right now equivalent to approximately 7 300 euro. We're already over that and with the way our savings are going now, we're going to easily pass the 10 000 euro. It's huge relief for me, though I'm still wondering how our finances and calculations are going to work out.

And then when it comes to this moment, our biggest worry after all is to complete the N4 level in JLPT test in December. Without any lessons or courses it has took quite much of a self discipline because the kanji amount is quite a lot for only half a year. And the fact that we ordered our Minna no Nihongo -books almost 2 months ago and still haven't received them irritates me since the time is running all the time.

Oh well, we're still looking forward for it so much and gazing the suitable flights gets me exited every time! And we're lucky to have awesome parents too who have promised to back us up if the worst case scenario happens even though it's really the last option, since we want to do this on our own. (but the idea about it that this won't be at least ruined by money is pretty comforting)
Happy summer for all!
Yours, Acha

 

Nippori (Tokyo), 2012