10 Important Things To Do to Start Living in Japan

February 6th, 2010

Back to couple of months ago when i came to Japan for the first time. I think the first 3 months was the hardest period to start living in Japan. I was lucky since my wife came to Japan first and my daughter and i came 1 month after so at least couple of things are already been prepared before we came. Besides, my wife also speaks Japanese so we didn’t have any communication problems with Japanese people here.

Back to the topic. From my experience there are at least 10 important things to do to start living in Japan for the first time. Here in this case i assume you already have your accomodation either an apartment or a university dorm if you come to Japan for study.

1. Alien Registration - If you come to Japan for a long period such as study or work you need to register to the local City Hall where you stay. In Japan they call it “Alien Registration” but lately they changed to “Foreigner Registration”. After you registered you will get an ID card stating your period of stay.

2. Insurance - This is one of the most important thing to have when you live in Japan. You’ll see most of the things here are insured included mobile phones. But the critical one is the health insurance since medical cost is really expensive here. But by paying for insurance you can get significant deductions.

3. Embassy Registration – This probably sounds not important but to be honest you will need it someday. So i suggest you to visit and register your self and family to your country’s representative in Japan either the Embassy or Consulate General.

4. Bank Account – Once you get an Alien Registration Card you can open a Bank Account. There are a lot of banks available in Japan both local and international brands. But some banks require you to stay at least 6 months in Japan before you can open an account.

5. Learn Japanese Language - Most Japanese people doesn’t speak English, even here in Osaka, the third largest city in Japan. So if you plan to stay in Japan for a long period of time i recommend you to start learning Japanese Language since the first time you arrived.

6. Mobile Phones – I know some people probably can live without mobile phones. But here in Japan, is that normal? So i guess you need to get a mobile phone so you can communicate with other people without going to public phone.

7. Internet Connections – Most of apartments in Japan are already equipped with standard utilities such as electricity and gas. But for internet connection, you need to handle it your self.

8. Find Church -
Since i’m a Christian i need to find a local church here in Japan. It’s not easy to find an English Church so you probably need sometimes until you find it unless you don’t have any problem to go to a Japanese Church.

9. Join Communities - For Indonesian people especially students there are communities available here in Japan called PPI (Perhimpunan Pelajar Indonesia). And for Osaka the name is PPI Osaka-Nara. You may find such communities for your country or join another communities.

10. Enjoy Your Life – During the first couple of weeks you probably will feel totaly like a stranger in town. No body knows you and you don’t know anybody. You can’t talk to anybody since no body speaks English and you don’t even understand anything on the TV. Besides you probably also will have a problem with the foods. But most likely you will be shocked with prices here in Japan. But rather than trying to compare it to your country i suggest you to enjoy your new life in Japan unless you will get depressed.

Well, on my next posts i will share about each of these topics and hopefully it will help anybody who plans to live in Japan like me. So stay tuned and get updated!

Singing With the Christmas Choir at the Osaka International Church

December 26th, 2009

The Christmas 2009 is over but the memory of the Christmas will be lasting. And one of the most beautiful moment of the Christmas for this year is when we sang with the Christmas Choir at the OIC Christmas Eve Celebration. I never thought we could sing in a choir like this again after we moved from Indonesia. But God heard our pray and gave us a chance to serve Him again through a choir.

I remember what we had done last year with our church in Bogor. As the coordinator of the Music and Choir ministry in our church, i was responsible to make a permanent choir as part of the church ministry. By the grace of God, we finally managed to form a choir with a very limited resources at that time. As the name of the church we named it “Rahmani Choir” with me as the coach and my wife as the coordinator of the choir, what a family.

Time went by and we had a regular rehearsal every Sunday after the church service and one week break at the end of the month. Again by the grace of God, we managed to sing couple of songs and performed not only during the church services but also in another occasions like marriage ceremony. We sang various kind of songs from Hymn to Classics, from an easy one to the most complex songs. And the peak of our performance was on the Christmas Eve Celebration in our church just exactly one year ago where we sang the “Hallelujah” Handel as one of the songs. We also sang another songs on the farewell of my wife and that’s became our final performance and also the end of the choir.

Arrived in Japan on May 2009 i never thought we could sing in a choir again like we did before. The first church we went to was totally Japanese. We then managed to find a bilingual church but the main language was Japanese. And after couple of months we decided to find another church and finally we went to the Osaka International Church (OIC). I was really happy to know that there’s a choir at the church although it’s not a regular choir. We finally decided to join the choir for the Christmas occasion.

My first impression of the choir, not much different with what we had in our church before. There were only few people join the choir at the first rehearsal. But the good news is i was not the only men there. After couple of weeks, still not so many people came and we had only three men on the choir. The coach decided not to sing the Tenor part. After couple of weeks rehearsal we finally made it. We sang 7 songs in total, two of them in the Sunday Christmas service and the whole songs in the Christmas Eve Celebration. I would say we’ve done a great job but the most important thing is God had given us a chance to serve Him again.

Hunting the Momiji at Arashiyama

December 11th, 2009

This is my first post after couple of weeks and this time i’ll write about Momiji. I remember few weeks ago when i posted a status update on my Facebook about Momiji, then one of my Indonesian friend asked me what Momiji is? Then when i posted some pictures about Momiji on my Facebook, my sister asked me what kind of tree that is, looks like Maple in FarmVille. Yeah, that’s right. So i guess Momiji is not so popular like what i thought before.

I’m not going to talk about the Momiji it self anyway as you can find it easily in Wikipedia. But basically, what i understand from what people said, Momiji or Iromomiji is the condition where the color of Maple trees becomes red which is happened during the Fall in Japan. The name of these Maple trees is Acer palmatum, called Japanese Maple or Smooth Japanese Maple and this species is native to Japan, Korea and China.

Arashiyama Momiji 2009

Arashiyama Momiji 2009

I went twice to Arashiyama, one of the best place to see Momiji in Japan. The first time, i went with my family including my parents in law which came to Japan couple of weeks ago. And the second time was with my Indonesian friends. Arashiyama can be reached by train and it takes about 1 hour from Umeda, one of central train station in Osaka. You can also go there by bus or car but i don’t really know the route so i recommend to use the Hankyu train.


View Larger Map

I would prefer to come to Arashiyama during the week days since during the weekend or holidays the place are so crowded. You can compare those two pictures below taken from the same street. The first one was taken during my first visit which was not on the weekend or holiday and compare with the second picture.

Arashiyama Main Street during Weekdays

Arashiyama Main Street during Weekdays

Arashiyama Main Street during Weekend/Holidays

Arashiyama Main Street during Weekend/Holidays

Basically if someone ask you what to see in Arashiyama, the answer will be the Momiji. But actually there are another places you can visit but most of them are temples. One of the nice place to see is the bamboo forest and close to that place there’s one station where you can enjoy what they call Torokko Romantic Train Ride. Unfortunately when we went there the ticket was sold out for that day. But the thing that attracted my attention most were the Pedicab, not sure this is Japanese or Chinese Pedicab. While sight seeing at Arashiyama you’ll see some pedicabs on the streets and looks like the passengers are really enjoy the ride.

Arashiyama Bamboo Forest

Arashiyama Bamboo Forest

Arashiyama Torokko Romantic Train Ride

Arashiyama Torokko Romantic Train Ride

Arashiyama Pedicab Ride

Arashiyama Pedicab Ride

Well anyway, Arashiyama is a nice place to go and the Momiji was beautiful although you can find the same trees around any places in Japan during the Fall. So the conclusion, Arashiyama is a recommended place for sight seeing.

Blog Migration and Couple of Updates

December 9th, 2009

And finally i decided to stop my “Internet Marketing blog” activities and switch the blog to become the journal of my personal living experience in Japan. I used to write about these things on another domain. But now i have migrated all the contents to this domain and from now on will use this blog.

Just couple of updates during the last few weeks about me and my family. Firstly, we have moved to the new apartment. It’s a smaller apartment but personally it’s much more comfortable compared to the one that we lived before. It cost us ¥47,000 per month. Secondly, now it’s Winter in Japan and the weather is getting cold everyday. But according to one of our friend here, Osaka is rarely snowing and the temperature is not so extreme as well. At least it’s good for us with a toddler.

There are also many stories i would like to share here in this blog during our stay in the Osaka in the last few months. It’s very difficult to keep posting consistently but i’ll try because i’m sure there are many people overthere need those info. That’s all for now and see you later on another post.

Enjoying Breakfast at Mister Donut

September 28th, 2009

Lately we have a new special routine. Me, my wife and daughter spends every Saturday morning having breakfast at one of our favorite restaurant, Mister Donut. And last Saturday willl be our last breakfast at the Mister Donut Minoh since we’ll move to the new appartment this weekend. But hopefully we’ll find another Mister Donuts on our new place later.

A bit about Mister Donut, it’s founded by Harry Winouker the brother-in-law of Bill Rosenberg, the founder of Dunkin Donuts. They broke off their partnership in 1955. In 1983, Duskin Co. Ltd. of Japan took an unprecedented step by acquiring the sales and trademark rights for Asia from Mister Donut of America. Read the full story here!

For us, i’m not sure when it’s started but for sure we really love this restaurant. To be honest, i don’t really like the donuts at the first time. It doesn’t taste like most of donuts in Indonesia such as J.Co, Dunkin Donuts or Krispy Kreme. I guess it uses less sugar so it doesn’t really sweet. But then i start to get used to the taste after couple of weeks.

For beverages, of course they serve coffee, perfect couple for donuts. But don’t imagine you can get various kind of coffee like Starbucks. It’s only black coffee with or without creamer. Besides they also serve tea and water. But if you don’t want the donuts you can still enjoy your breakfast with another foods such as noodles, hotdogs and cakes.

The donuts price ranged from ¥100 to ¥150 per piece i guess. And usually they offer special discount on the weekend so you can get all donuts for ¥100. They also have special sets with special price if you order donuts with coffee or tea, or another foods with coffee or tea. And in these sets you can refill the coffee if you want.

Well, again if you are looking for a nice place just to have some coffee, breakfast or snacks alone or with your family, i really recommend Mister Donut. The price is reasonable, good foods and you can enjoy the cozy place. Especially the Mister Donut Minoh which is the nearest to our appartment, the restaurant has a very nice layouts. We’re gonna miss it!