Since it’s been a long time and I dont’ have media to share, I figured I’d provide some experiences with getting myself and my stuff back home for those of you who are abroad.

Shipping things home: There are many ways to ship things home from Japan, the two best are through Kuroneko Yamada shipping company and through the Japanese Post Office. Kuroneko is useful if you have extra luggage that you won’t be able to carry. They’ll ship your bags directly to your house, however it is fairly expensive (2man yen~) and takes a long time to arrive. This is mainly useful so you won’t have to carry an extra large suitcase on the train.

The Post Office has boxes that you can pack things in and ship in a variety of methods (by sea, by air, etc.). The boxes are not very large, but you can fit a lot of things in them, depending on the size. You get charged by weight for these boxes. They’re a lot cheaper than shipping Kuroneko, but you also have to carry them to the post office after packing them. Also, I closed the boxes with duct-tape, but they cut through the boxes to check what was inside, so you can make a decision on how tight to pack it.

Something else to note is that customs will cut open your boxes and search through everything (they cut the plastic wrap on my manga books). It’s possible that they will take things out of the boxes if you don’t expressly note what is inside, so make sure you keep track as you pack them.

Also, do not pack electronics in your luggage or in any boxes that you send home. Keep everything that is really important/valuable in your carry on, because apart from my losing many electronics, many people I’ve talked to also had things taken.

Be careful when packing!

Expect lots of updates soon!

For now, I’ll give a little bit of info on what has been going on since the semester ended and my long spring break started.

Recently, I started working at one of the partner universities here, 神田外語大学 (Kanda Gaigo Daigaku), the Kanda University of International Studies, or KUIS. KUIS is the campus that hosts the students who take part in the Society and Culture section of IES Tokyo. Anyways, about the job: it’s for teaching elementary students English as well as teamwork, through English lessons and then soccer-oriented activities that are used to practice what they learned earlier in the day. So far, we’ve only had our staff informational session, and the program won’t actually start until April, but I’m really looking forward to being able to get some teaching experience, no matter how little.

Also, I recently found out that I’m going to be getting a homestay for the coming semester. I’m going with our housing worker tomorrow to meet the family and hopefully we hit things off 🙂

After I stay with them for awhile, I plan to make a post talking about the differences between dorm and homestay living options, and asking some other people here for opinions on the topic. Hopefully it will help people decide what they want to do.

Other than that, all that’s been going on recently is studying for the placement test. My professor gave me two sets of 400 kanji to study and learn before the test, because the 500 placement is a lot harder, apparently. So far, progress has NOT been very fast, but there’s still a bit of time left until the program starts up (March 29th is arrival day). So, 頑張ります (I’ll do my best)!