Currently Thursday 28th of May, 5:32pm (7:32pm NZ)

(I'll give you some more factual details in this blog since ma said my other blog posts are boring TT__TT Cheers ma)

Exam Season next week! While everyone else are in exams Zoe and I get to go to Kabuki and the Ghibli Museum.

Kabuki is the opposite of Takarazuka. Theatre performances/musicals. However in Takarazuka, all the cast are female and in Kabuki, the entire cast are male. It's like a girls only or boys only school reciting a play except more professional of course. Ms Sakurai said there will be Chinese and English translations being played in earphones at Kabuki so Zoe and I will be able to understand.

Ms Sakurai is also going to take us to the Ghibli Museum and maybe Asakusa and Tokyo Tower. Ghibli Museum is a museum dedicated to the Japanese Animation production company, Studio Ghibli. They've produced some very famous movies such as Spirited Away, Laputa, Grave of the Fireflies, Totoro, Howl's Moving Castle, Tales from Earthsea. Despite being animations, the storylines in these movies are usually unique and fantastic, so we're looking forward to that. Asakusa is apparently a superb place but I'm not sure exactly what's there so I'll give details about that later. Tokyo Tower reminds me of a red and white version of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, I'm curious as to how high it is.

It seems the Japanese exchange rate is quite direct depending on where you go. At the moment the Japanese Yen's gone up (Woop woop! It should go up more, cause then I'd get more money if I change my NZ currency =] ) It's at about 60.04 at the moment so for every $100 NZ Dollar I'd get 6003.83 Japanese Yen. Big numbers, I know. It sounds like a lot but basically, it gets you what $100 NZ Dollars would get you, perhaps a bit more depending on what you buy. For clothes, I'd say it's about the same. You can get ridiculously cheap clothing, say for 500-1500 yen but they're usually the clothes that aren't very good or are nothing special. There are shops with good clothing only for 1500-2500 yen though but it's quite rare and when you compare the clothes to the more expensive shops, they really are, nothing special.

Here it have 100 Yen shops which would be the equivalent to our $2 shops in NZ 'cept you can get really good stuff from these 100 yen shops (Unlike the $2 shop). They sell nearly everything in those shops and a lot of it is actually decent quality and useful, not cheap rubbish. If you want an exact figure, 100 yen is around $1.70 NZ dollar so I it's cheaper than the $2 shops if you think about quality as well.

When you look at most things here, the cost here seems cheaper than NZ but if you shop at a popular place, things aren't really all that cheap. You can get accessories for say 300-500 yen which is very cheap or you can get basically the same thing for 1000-2000 yen, and you could get some nice clothes for about that price or about 1000 or 2000 more yen. I've noticed in shops when I buy something, there are a lot of people buying pants or a top for 10,000 yen or more ($165.20 NZ Dollars). I think it's because realistically, even though we'd say that's far too overpriced for just some pants or just a top, it's not really too bad in Japan considering the tax rate is only 5.5%. Most clothing items in shops are 4000 or above so it's not hard to spend over 10,000 yen a day here.

Food here is really quite cheap, especially in supermarkets and convenience stores. You can get a lot of delicious food items for only 100-700 yen. ($1.70-$11.60 NZ Dollar). Restaurants are around the same price but if you go to restaurants in department stores or foreign restaurants, they're quite expensive. Around 1000-2000 yen for one dish ($16.51 - $33 NZ Dollars). Department stores are abnormally expensive in general (Like Ballentynes in NZ, good example).

For a visitor, you need to be pretty careful in Japan because when you look at something you think, "Oh that's not too bad, it's only 700 yen" but there are A LOT of things here and eventually it all adds up when you thought it was just ONLY 700 yen and another 300 yen, plus another 500 yen.

Here's a basic look into how much living costs here.

Japanese food = Reasonably cheap

100-1000 yen for normal foods ($1.70 - $33 NZ Dollars)

(Oh their apples here are huge, and only 100 each! That's only $1.70 NZ for this apple the size of a normal sized fist {Not Asian fist, European fist! Excuse the funny description}).

Other than that, fruit here ain't all that cheap.

Drinks, ice creams, small snacks are usually 100-300 yen ($1.70 - $5 NZ).

Some stores selling desserts and drinks only sell them for 500-1500 yen ($8.20-$24.70 NZ). Pretty expensive.

Starbucks is like that, because it's a foreign cafe.

Vending machines (That are everywhere, literally) are usually 100-170 yen ($1.70 - $11.50 NZ), sometimes a tad more for the contents. You can get everything in them too. Cigarettes, alcohol, underwear (why you'd want to get underwear in front of hundreds of people walking past you on the street... I don't know) and other stuff! The displays, even... move sometimes and you can get hot drinks in cans from those vending machines, not to mention jelly and yoghurt!

Average clothes = 500-2000 yen ($8.20 - $33 NZ)

Decent/good clothes = 1500-2800 yen ($24.70 - $46.20 NZ)

The best clothes = 3000/8000 yen and over ($49.50/$131.90 and above)

Shoes = 3000 ($49.50 NZ) and over. Most shoes here are 5000 ( $82.50 NZ) and over, not cheap.

Other small necessities like skin care lotion, make-up are around 600-1500 yen ($9.90 - $24.80 NZ) usually.

CD's and DVD's are around 1000-2000 yen ($16.50 - $33 NZ)

Doesn't sound like a very cheap place to live does it? But considering their tax and public service, it's not too bad. They have pretty good public service here, clerks are always pleasant to you and you even get free tissues and other handouts on the street.

That's about all now. I'll write more next time, I was expecting this post to be short =S