Finances

I left for Tokyo about 4 weeks ago. Today I decided to take stock.


and what other better way to do so by actually figuring out how much money i've actually spent?


it came up to a shocking 200,000 yen. of course that included discretionary expenditure like transport fr the airport and a round trip air ticket to hong kong, as well as school books and detergent, a wash-basin, and random other things like a mike. which are once-off expenditures.

but I have been eating like crap, honestly. sandwiches most days for lunch. maybe i should cut down on the expenditure on my everyday tea/coffee/snack in class....

i don't expect expenditure to decrease by much, though. I still want to travel around japan - planning a trip to Kyoto soon (in 2 weeks), and a round trip for transport is going to cost at least 10000 yen. I want to go to an onsen at least once; go hiking somewhere in the snow; also planning to go to Fukuoka with prof. Amyx when she comes to Japan during Penn's spring break. and perhaps make a side trip to Hiroshima...and I want to do things like go for taiko drumming/eat nice meals at restaurants occasionally/go for concerts and jazz bars. Hopefully I can still keep within the USD 1500 that is my pocket money.

i guess i should spend the money. *grin* after all, I'm only in Japan for this long, once.

ooh. but moving into the dorm will be a big big help. :) can't believe the rent there is only about 12000 yen/month max! Right now it's more than 6 times that...

I haven't tracked my expenses like this for a long time. started off doing that while in Penn, but gave up after a while. using an ATM card/debit card most of the time really does make me feel like I'm not spending that much money, but here I'm using cash all the time and it's scary how fast I have to replenish my money.

I think I probably over-spent while I was in the US. but I saved like crazy in my first year, and that probably helped. plus working as a TA probably - no, definitely - helped too. Thinking about it prices here really aren't that bad compared to US prices; it's just that transport is prohibitively expensive because I have to travel to school everyday by train. oh and rent is expensive, too.

ah well. it's not like I didn't expect to overspend....


:)

I guess I could take stock in other ways, but perhaps I'll leave that for the next post.