I’m still alive, barely

I haven’t been able to post anything after the Hobonichi post because classes started several days after that and my leisure time literally got thrown out of the window. Many more troubles occurred ever since and my life has never been this hectic. Here goes my mini update post. Warning: this post contains so much love. (You’ll get it later if you read it.)

First things first

I found the apartment where I will be moving into with the help of my lovely friends! It’s located in near the middle part of the town so it’s really convenient. There are mini markets and drug stores around me, several restaurants that I really like, also a bus stop within 4 minutes walk. The rent was pretty cheap for a single apartment if you compare it to others. It’s around 40000 yen excluding electricity and gas per month. I know sharing your room with someone else might be a good solution if you’re tight on money, but I still think living alone is nice since you get all the things for yourself. (Then you cry because you need to cover all the expenses on your own.)

I was drowning in the sea of ‘problems’

… and luckily was able to swim out of it several times. Funnily, all these problems revolved around my scholarship. At first, I thought I screwed up my applications because I misunderstood the instructions, resulting in me filling the forms the wrong way. I thought wouldn’t pass the screening because of it. (It was written that any false information may cause your scholarship to be revoked. Panic, panic.)

Welp, it turns out that I luckily passed the screening and got nominated for the scholarship. (How on earth did this happen, I don’t know.) But then another problem popped up because my dad urged me to decide a date for returning home because a cheap plane ticket was on sale. For those who don’t know, the system requires us to sign in person within a certain period each month in order for us to be able to receive the scholarship, otherwise, you won’t get yours for that month if you skip it. Well, newsflash: the date I will return (not arrive) in Japan coincides with the last day of the signing period!

(Insert several images of me panicking, and my parents telling me to let it go because it’s not easy to change the booking date for cheap plane tickets.)

And luckily somehow this particular airline were so kind they let us change the dates, free of charge. ♥

Other than that,

I’m currently stuck under piles of reading materials and weekly assignments and math. I just had to bold math to emphasize.

Most of the subjects I took requires me to read around 20 pages of materials, others being 40, for each week before class. (I’m sorry but ain’t nobody got time for that.) One of the courses also made us do referencing, ~~which everyone obviously loves.~~ And almost everyone fails in it. Lol.

But let’s not forget about math! My math teacher is really wonderful because he gives us a generous amount of homework and quizzes for us to do every week! Other teachers don’t really give out homework and test that frequently, though. So I guess my teacher’s just the good ambitious type who cares about his students a lot. I don’t get stressed anymore because my stress level never goes down anymore.

So, yeah, I’ll end the post here because 1) I still have essays to do and 2) it doesn’t look like a ‘mini update’ anymore.

Back to Japan

The trip back to Japan wasn’t that pleasant. Turbulence kept happening when I was on the plane to Korea. It took me full 9 hours to get there. Luckily, there was no one sitting beside me so I got more of a wider space for myself. I was only able to sleep for four and a half hours, though. I was unable to sleep again after that. The photo above was taken around 6:30 AM.

The transit at Korea was 4 hours long. I had nothing to do other than munching on french fries from Taco Bell and stare at my phone to report my status updates to my family. Overall, it was quite boring. I even had to listen to several grandmas and grandpas chattering at the waiting room. It wasn’t that fun.

Arriving at Japan, I stupidly missed the bus to Beppu that was in front of my eyes. Even though I saw the sign on the bus saying Beppu, I was too confused whether that was the right bus or not. Lol. In the end, I had to wait an hour for the next bus to come. I didn’t make reservations beforehand so I couldn’t get immediately inside the bus and had to wait outside until all the passengers with reservations got in. I was quite lucky since I got an empty seat!

The most hellish part was probably having to carry my own luggage down the stairs of hell. It connected the highway stop where the bus dropped us to the university. (Heck, I wonder if there are any universities that existed on the top of the mountain.) I dragged my baggage down the stairs three steps each until I reached … another set of stairs.

My hands felt so heavy that I couldn’t even lift it to wash my face after that.

My Innisfree products that I purchased a long time ago before leaving Japan.

Today I went to my friend’s room to pick up my package that I left in her care before I left Japan. I had expected that it would arrive really late since it was shipped from Korea, and I was right. That package was ordered before I made the post about saving money. Lol. Now I kind of regretted seeing all the things left unused scattered on my table. Amazon is toxic!

Students from APM (business majors) will have a course restoration tomorrow and to be honest, I’m fucking scared. Yes, the curse word because it is truly horrifying. Good luck to fellow friends who are taking the registration tomorrow as well. Lol. Wish me luck!

Room layout planning

Last month I posted about whether I should move out alone or with someone. The answer to that question remains unanswered for now, but I thought if I’m going to move out one day why not think about things that are easier to resolve at the moment. So I researched some furniture websites such as Nitori and Muji to compare the prices for their products that I might buy for my room in the future. Here are the things that I put in my list!

Bedding

I decided to go for a futon set instead of mattress due to the reason it’s easier to clean and keep. This futon set includes both the main futon, quilt, and pillow as well as the covers for each of them. There are two sizes available which is S (210 x 100 cm) and SD (210 x 120 cm). But they have 2000 yen difference 😥 which is really expensive for the 20 cm addition in my opinion.

I didn’t really like the idea of directly sleeping on the floor, so I thought this storage bed from Muji might be nice to have since it’s multifunction. It’s not cheap, though, but I think it’s still worth to have rather than having the room cluttered with the things that I don’t use every day. The picture above is the S sized, while the SD sized bed is 5000 yen more expensive compared to this one.

Clothes and shoes storage

Most Japanese apartments have a built-in closet. It’s not too big but will definitely fit most of the clothes I have at the moment. I can simply keep my shoes in a rack provided at the main entrance of the apartment. Even if they don’t have it, I could just simply line the ones I use every day there and keep the ones I don’t in the closet. Easy! If I happen to have excess clothes, I could just buy a simple and cheap pole hanger from Nitori.

Tables

Instead of going with a high dining table, I thought of just purchasing a kotatsu and have it as a multifunctional table. I can take the covers off during summer and have it on during winter. It’s a two in one product! It almost costs 15000 yen, though, but I guess it’s worth the price. I don’t need a carpet since I already bought one, so the only remaining thing to buy is the top cover!

The top cover for the rectangle sized kotatsu is around 4000 to 5000 yen depending on the material and pattern design. Though it might be a little bit expensive, it’s still a must have and worth it item for winter!

Chairs

Since I’m using a kotatsu, I don’t need any actual chairs to sit in. All I need is this cheap and soft cushion which is available at Nitori for around 1000 yen each. An easy solution to save space as well!

There are still a lot of things on my list but that’s the idea for now! If you have any suggestions on saving up space in a little room, please leave a comment because that will definitely be useful!

Going Home

I think I’ve mentioned somewhere in my previous post that I’ve planned to go home in February. So here’s an impression about my trip home: hellish.

Since it hasn’t snowed in Beppu for a few days before my trip, I thought that it wouldn’t need to worry about blizzards anymore, but of course, I was wrong. The night before my trip, snow fell once more and covered all the roads around campus. It wasn’t snowing anymore when I woke up and I didn’t see any signs of strong wind blowing, so I only grabbed my thin jacket and went outside…

Only to rush back inside to get another thicker jacket because I definitely underestimated the weather here.

My friend, Yaya, was supposed to take me to the service area located on the top of the campus. Normally, you wouldn’t find any campus connected to a highway service area, but since this particular campus in on the top of the mountain, you can access it by climbing several sets of steep stairs.

Unfortunately, my lovely friend slept her way throughout the day so I had to desperately search for someone who’s awake at 6 in the morning. God bless my friend Michael for not sleeping because he’s the one who finally took me to the service area when the sky is still pitch black.

Then we had to wait for the highway bus to come longer than we expected because the bus was late for 23 minutes due to the snow. My whole body, especially my hands were frozen to the point I couldn’t move them properly. The waiting seemed forever, but I was finally able to get on the bus and get some shut eye before arriving at Fukuoka.

Nothing much happened at the airport than having to wait in a super long line like the ones you see in a Snake game. I met two other friends who were going home as well, so we went together. We bought two boxes of souvenirs each and then got on the plane headed for Incheon and had to wait there for around 4 hours for transit. The food that was served on the airplane wasn’t that nice … so we decided to get another meal at Taco Bell. It was delicious!

I got to know an old Korean man that sat beside me on the flight to Jakarta. He could only speak Korean, so trying to understand what he was trying to say was very hard since I’m not that fluent in Korean yet. But the textbooks that I bought during the winter break really helped because there were a lot of vocabularies that I memorized! I didn’t think I did a great job in helping him filling in the immigration forms, though. Haha.

After 16 hours of hardships, I finally arrived in Indonesia and got to see my family waiting with grumpy faces. (I had to wait so long for my baggage to come out). I got sick the next day due to exhaustion, but the trip back was worth it because now I can laze around and I don’t have to face the struggle to wake up a bit early to prepare my food every day. Lol.

How to save money

Studying in a country that has a higher currency rate compared to your country is scary because you don’t know when those currencies will skyrocket and make you drown in your own tears of agony. I try to always keep a reasonable amount of money in a separate wallet so that I can use it just in case the exchange rate goes wrong and living cost became a huge problem. However, that method of securing the money in another wallet is not really effective for me because I feel that I always have enough at the moment. It makes me spend my money on things that I don’t really need at the moment. (Screw you Amazon).

An average student spends around 80000 yen per month including dorms, insurance, food and also other miscellaneous expenses. 50000 yen is spent for the dorms, insurance, and phone bills. So that means the remaining 30000 yen for food and others. I actually spend around 6000 yen per week for food, which means I need around 24000 for one month. It leaves 6000 yen for miscellaneous expenses. OK, to be honest, 6000 is not enough for miscellaneous but manageable if I could just ignore the urge to buy things.

The core of the problem and solution:

One – I always have two months worth of dorm, insurance, and cell phone bill for safe keeping. But I always ended up using that money for other useless expenses because I always have it near my reach. So I decided that I would just deposit that money to my Japanese bank account so that I can’t really access it anytime I want.

Two – Amazon. Freaking digitalized era is dangerous for my soul. All these products that are on discount are making my fingers itch to click on it and put it in my shopping cart, really. I should stop checking at this website when I’m bored and find another source of entertainment. Actually, I should just stop putting things in the shopping cart because that’s the thing that urges you to buy those things. It’s like they keep releasing the message ‘Hey, when are you going to purchase me?‘ when you put it in the cart because they keep you reminded of those unimportant things that you want to have.

Three – Youtube. It’s actually okay to watch those short knowledge videos about various things but I might need to skip videos that show ‘____ Haul or Unboxing or Review‘ because those were the things that made me interested and piques my interest to know more about a certain product or object. I think that Youtube might be the main reason I keep going back to Amazon so that I could check on things. Pure evil.

So, yes, those are the solutions that I created for myself right now. I really hope that I stop purchasing unimportant things from now on. Please share me any tips so that I could stop this bad habit. 😆

Wrap-up: January ’17

It’s the first time I …

Spent my New Year and Chinese New Year alone
Spent so much on skin care products
Spent so much on Amazon
Used the word spent too much
Regret doing all the things listed above

One of my biggest challenges was …

Being able to keep my expenses low
Keeping my grades up for my management class
Being a little bit more outgoing

My little achievements

Getting a perfect score for my Japanese class presentation on Highways
Scoring constant A+ for my Japanese quizzes and essays
Got my management lecture essay score increased from 4 to 4.5 out of 5
I learned a bit of Korean!
Not giving into temptation and purchasing more winter clothes (lol)
Distancing myself from online-gaming

I was happy for

My new big brown rug (it’s so fluffy)
Receiving a Totoro keychain as a souvenir from my Japanese friend (my very first souvenir here!)

I was quite upset because

My new white Puma sneakers was too big for me 😦
I lost the Totoro keychain at one point because the rope snapped
My favorite sweater’s got a hole on it …

But, it’s okay!

I am currently attempting to return the shoes to the manufacturer
My lovely friend magically found the Totoro on the street!
Mom will fix it for me once I get back (and I’ve purchased a very cheap and good sweater in exchange)

My plans for February

Return to Indonesia to spend some time with my family
Purchase something as a souvenir for them
Study more Japanese in advance
And maybe some Korean
Plan a new schedule for the next semester

After this I’m going to …

Study for my final exams! It will end this Friday, so wish me luck! 😆

Moving Out: Alone or No ?

Students of my university get the privilege to stay at the on-campus dorm for a maximum time of one year. Afterward, they would have to resubmit an application and get screened to apply for a second year stay, which is somewhat a pain in the ass because there’s this big fat chance that you won’t get accepted. Otherwise, students need to search for an apartment at downtown where you have to pay your own lease, water, electricity and internet.

So here’s the thing. Furnishing a new empty room wouldn’t be something cheap to do if you’re moving in alone. However, things wouldn’t be so bad if you’ve got a friend that moves in with you so that every expense you made for that apartment related things would be cut in half or even a third if you’ve got two other people who will join you. The problem is, not everyone’s got a friend to move in with.

I personally love the concept of living alone because you can do anything you like in your own apartment. It’s just that you have to pay the key money which would cost like ¥80000 or even more depending on your location and room size if you’re alone. That still excludes the lease which would cost you around ¥40000-50000 per month.

Living together with someone eases the financial problems of living alone but in return gives you several limitations of what you could do alone. There’s also this problem when you’re just a loner and nobody really knows you so they don’t even think of inviting you to move out together (in this case, me). Moreover, things could get a little messy if that someone who you share your monthly rent with suddenly decides to move out or have an exchange for a year and leave you alone to search for a new friend to fill in that empty room. Totally not worth the trouble.

I still have a lot of doubts about this a little suggestion about this matter would really help!

Studying abroad while abroad

It’s been like four to five months ever since I’ve left home just to study abroad in Japan and it does feel fun and exciting to step out of your comfort zone and learn to do everything by yourself just by living alone. But thinking about spending the whole four years in Japan just to study, commuting to school and back home every day doesn’t sound really appealing and really monotone to me.

Well, luckily, the university where I’m enrolled to now offers a study abroad program (yes, even though we international students are now abroad). They have a list of partner universities throughout the world where you can go and apply for as an exchange student for either a semester or a whole year.

I’ve already talked to my mom before I departed and she thought that Korea would be a great idea to go for an exchange. It’s just right next to Japan and moreover, I can challenge myself to study a new language altogether! (Even though I still have lots to go for Japanese, I suck at kanji for real).

So I thought of applying for this exchange program during the third year, which is still a long way to go but at the same time a short time to prepare for all the language and applications because you have to apply 1 year in advance for the exchange. I’m still not sure whether I should take a go for it but I’ve browsed and took notes of the available universities for exchange and has business administration for it’s major.

Dongseo University
Ewha Womans University
Hanyang University
Korea University
Kyung Hee University
Pusan National University
Sogang University
Sookmyung Women’s University
University of Ulsan
Yonsei University

They all have dorms available for exchange students. Some of them, such as Sogang and Ulsan offer meal packages so that you don’t have to worry about your meal every day! All those universities sound international-students friendly but not all of it are located in Seoul. I guess I need to research more in the future so that I can decide better.

Oh, and I’ve started to learn Korean language during my winter vacation. I can now read and write hangeul letters as well as make simple sentences (with limited vocabulary)! Self-teaching yourself a whole new language is quite scary because no one will tell you if you made a mistake or not. Sigh. I do plan to take the Korean language at my second year, though. Let’s just hope I have enough credits and time to do so. Until then!

Hi, 2017

Merry belated Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! I hope we all had a blast and a great New Year celebration.

2016 Summary

In 2016 I finally graduated from high school and got enrolled in a university in Japan. I took a major in business just as my dad told me to. So far I’ve been enjoying the new trial and challenges that I’ve faced. I got to make friends from all different nationalities. This year is also the first time where I can’t celebrate my mom’s birthday, Christmas and also New Year with my family. I kinda miss them but we can still communicate every day using video calls!

Regrets

I got myself a part time job at a four-star hotel near the city where I live. It was fairly easy to get hired because they lack employees. The hotel also provides free shuttle bus for students who are doing part time there so that they don’t need to pay for the transport expenses. However, after experiencing work there for a whole day as a buffet hall server, I quit. I quit because I couldn’t keep up with the harsh work that I had to do around the clock. Even though the kitchen manager offered to talk about the shifts with me, I said that I couldn’t continue anymore. I was ashamed of myself not being able to work properly. Sigh. I then realized that there would be no other place where I could get hired and work as easily at that hotel.

Of course, I have more regrets than what I’ve written above, but that’s like my biggest regret lol.

What I’ve been doing

I haven’t been posting on this blog lately since I’m having my pleasant winter break (since I quit my job)! I’ve been marathoning lots of Korean dramas that I’ve been missing. 😀 I’m a bit depressed because school is going to start really soon on the 10th of January. Moreover, I still have tons of homework that I need to finish. 😦

No resolutions?

I used to make New Year’s Resolutions but I guess I stopped making it when I realized I could’ve never accomplished those resolutions haha. I do like having my goals set but I don’t like the feeling of burden or pressure I get from not getting it done. I even made goals of what I should do during my winter break but now I don’t even try to get those bullet points checked.

Well, perhaps, I’ll just set a simple goal of getting a part time job somewhere.

I hope 2017 would be a great start for everyone!

Daiso Haul

I was planning to do my groceries on Saturday, but unfortunately we had lessons that day so I decided to push it to today. I stopped by Daiso first because it’s the nearest to the bus stop and, well, ended up buying several things.

I haven’t announced it to anyone yet, but last Friday I decided to get myself a Traveler’s Notebook, so I ordered their products directly from their online shop. The package was scheduled to be sent on 12th of December, which is Monday. So while I was making myself excited over a piece of leather covered journal that I haven’t even paid for yet (I opted for COD), I browsed through Youtube for customization ideas. One of the easiest thing is to hang a charm on the string of bookmark of the notebook. I did browse the online shop for the charms, but dang, they’re so expensive. Nope.

Now you know why I bought those things.

Why would I buy a stamp set? Because I don’t have one.

I used to have lots of stamp collections back in my home, but obviously their rubbers are all broken by now. So yeah, why not a get a new one. They’re cute anyways.

I’ve seen lots of these clips on social medias and I thought it’s a cool thing to have a set … or two. They’re not as nice as the clips from Tools to Liveby but it’s still quite okay in quality.

It took me quite some time to get the stickers and washi tape that I wanted because there were tons of them hanging everywhere around the stationary section. I couldn’t show you the motive of the washi tape right now since I haven’t used it yet.

Actually, it’s supposed to be a moisture absorbing sticker but I’m not really sure this thing will do it’s work, so let’s just call it a window decoration. It took me some time to get those flakes out from the original sticker template but I really love how my window looks now. 😆 Can’t wait until the snow falls!

There are several items in the main picture that I couldn’t show up close because I forgot to take the pics. I bought other random things such as clothes hanger, washing sponge, pasta cap (this thing is a pain to set up), bus/train pass case and lastly a fluffy neck warmer (the real thing costs over 1000円) which I think wouldn’t do it’s job because it’s super thin but I still buy it anyways because it’s cute and cheap, so why not (heck, I ended up buying everything in Daiso because of this reason).