This was for two reasons: |
|
Furthermore, I've separated my spreadsheet into different categories, such as... |
|
Heather O’Connell’s Major Portfolio |
|
One of the first things I actually did after arriving in Japan was make a spreadsheet to keep track of my spending. Here's a link to a sample document I made (without numbers).
It's easy for receipts to pile up and it's even easier to lose track of what you spent where. And because Japan is primarily a cash-based society, I don't have a digital record either through a credit card. Additionally, not all places have receipts, especially when you're splitting the check between friends. I have a system now where I input the receipt total into my spreadsheet (with a note on the location), mark the receipt as checked, then store them all in chronological order. For times where I have no receipt, I quickly note the price in my memos to add later.
Originally this was for my own interest to see how much I spend on different things (everything here seems expensive because there are no decimals...) but this works two fold because I can also provide these numbers for future students. Then they can know exactly how much I spent on food, rent, etc. as a student rather than general estimates from "cost of living" sites. This is the best because not only does the spreadsheet do all of the maths for me, but I also got to color code it! So far, my goal is to spend less than ¥80,000 each month; with a $1.00 = ¥100 ratio, that'd be $800 per month. The first couple of months are a little off because rent was double and I had to buy some things to make my room a little more habitable, but I hope I can stick with this budget.
0 Comments
Today I received and email with information about where I’ll be staying in Japan! Yay! There was also very important orientation and scheduling information in there as well as a notice about the first two months’ rent, but I’m just happy to have an idea of where I’ll be living for the next eleven months!
So that’s all a plus! I haven’t looked around for places to eat or grocery stores yet, but so far it looks pretty neat! I wish there were more street view photos though, but it’s neat enough to see the buildings on Google Maps. Actually, if you look at the image on this post, the whitish building in the center a little ways back—I think that’s going to be my building. Update 09/16: I was right! That is my building—the whitish five-floor building in the center of the image with the blue doors. I’m on the fourth floor. Yay. I sat down with Mom's credit card this morning to purchase my international ticket to Japan! It was fortunate that we decided to do it this morning—I got one of the two remaining seats! That was close! If you haven't guessed already, I've decided to go with ANA (All Nippon Airways) for both my international and domestic flights. I even signed up for their mileage club, so I hope I'll use them again for any other flights around Japan in the future. So it's official; the flight is scheduled to depart from LAX at 1:20am on September 14th. My plan from there is to arrive in Tokyo at 5:00am September 15th, go through customs and stuff, board my domestic flight at 8:30am and arrive in Fukuoka at 10:15am. The bus from the university leaves at noon, so I think that I've accounted for the wait time okay (knock on wood).
So that's another check off the to-do list. Many more to go!
I just received a notification that my welcome packet from the University of Kitakyushu has arrived at my house (thank you Japanese mail tracking!), but I'm three time zones away at the moment so I'm waiting for a friend to scan and send it to me. With this information, I'll finally be able to order my ticket with confidence that I'm picking the right date. I'm looking forward to getting my visa as soon as I get home at the LA Embassy. I actually started a countdown on an app on my phone; it says it's 46 days until departure (or d-day as I've started to abbreviate it). This is the first time I've put it to a number and forty-six doesn't sound very long! I swear, some days I'm more excited and confident, while some days I'm more nervous. On those days I think I should probably be studying more...
At the end of this semester, we did another practice round for the LESCANT photo project. These are my seven photos from this round.
Part of our academic requirements while abroad is to document our experience through a photo journal. In order to deepen the learning experience, we are supposed to thoughtfully view the world through the use of the LESCANT principles: Language, Environment, Social Organization, Context, Authority, Non-Verbal, Time.
I've started to put up some of the relevant course work in my first few classes! The Japanese Cinema page in particular has a lot of evidences because we wrote an essay a week reflecting/analyzing films. I look forward to adding more examples of my coursework onto this website!
|
ClassesFall 2015
Spring 2016
Categories
All
Archives
October 2015
|