The truth is that Japan is probably nowhere as expensive as you may think (or fear). Even living in Tokyo can be manageable, assuming that you get a reasonably priced place to rent. This article hopes to introduce to you some ways of coping and forcing down your costs.

This is more meant for people living in Japan than touring it (though there’s nothing stopping tourists from using the tips here). Also, the stuff here has been formulated mostly by me and other students in Japan – and as you may or may not know students love to save in ridiculous ways to spend money on ridiculous things! Some of the tips here may seem extremely trivial but hey, a yen saved is a yen spendable on something else.

Food

You need food to survive so you’ll definitely need to spend some money on this. But there are ways of suppressing the cost.

1. Cook.

This may be obvious at first, but keep with me here, it gets more specific. Assuming that you know where to shop for your ingredients cooking may be able to slash your expenditure on food to one third of what it might be without. One friend (American, Male) spends less than 10,000 yen a month by cooking three times every day. Is three times a day too much? Cook two portions for dinner and leave half for the microwave for lunch tomorrow. Saves you both the money and the expense.

Even if you don’t want to cook whole meals, even just cooking the rice and bringing it with you for lunch (mainly applicable for students) will save you money in the long run.

2. Shop Smart – At The Wholesale Market

Wholesale markets (ie. 業務用スーパー) are places where restaurant owners go to buy their ingredients. These places are your friends especially if you cook a lot. There are a few good places worth keeping in mind.

1) Costco: Readers from North America and the UK may recognize this. Yes it’s in Japan too. You need to pay 4000 yen for the membership but if you’re sharing a house with people, you can split it up. Anyways, if you’re living nearby it’s definitely worth it as things are quite cheap.

• Official Site to check shop locations
• Further Reading: Costco Japan, by Danny Choo

2) Gyomu Suupaa (業務スーパー): My personal favorite. Quite widespread throughout the whole country. Generally very low prices, especially if you don’t mind frozen foods or large product sizes. Some produce (generally vegetables) may be cheaper somewhere else, but this is generally a safe bet for low prices.

For example …

138 yen for 500 grams of frozen vegetables is probably going to be the cheapest you can find. (It’s usually even cheaper – it’s the end of winter now so vegetable prices are a bit higher than usual)

And also…

19 Yen udon!

3. Shop smart – And Late If You Don’t Plan To Cook

9.45 pm at my local supermarket (note: mine’s a 24 hour one so the discounts aren’t that steep. For supermarkets with a closing time discounts can go all the way until 50% before closing)

Most supermarkets will start offering discounts for their ready-to-eat food nearing closing time. Generally, 2-3 hours before closing 10% discount tags start to get tacked on. As closing time approaches these go up all the way to 50% discounts – you can get a nice ready-made meal at a very reasonable price if you go late to your supermarket near 9 pm.

4. Miscellaneous Tips From Me And My Friends

Buy 輸入食品 (imported foods), like meat from America or Australia, or frozen food from China, bananas from the Philippines, etc. never buy Japan 国産 (made domestically) stuffs.

Yes made-in-Japan produce tends to be more expensive indeed.

Buy strawberries meant for jam/juice at a lower price – jam/juice strawberries usually look quite terrible and are close to being overripe but they taste great still. And are cheap, for about 198jpy per pack over here in Kyoto. … I find them in random supermarkets.

Never done this myself but sounds legit – better than being overcharged just because of the unnecessary packaging.

If you like tea, forget buying even the 2 liter bottles they sell. Buy tea packs instead (and buy bottled water online if you don’t like tap).

Making your own tea is really a lot cheaper than buying it. And bottled water online is much cheaper than buying it in the actual stores.

In MCD (Macdonalds), check the keitai (mobile phone) coupon before buying anything. Also, having 2 or 3 100yen burgers plus one 100yen S size drink would be enough to make you as full as buying those expensive set meals.

Ie. subscribe to the Line/email mailing lists of restaurants such as McDonalds, Sukiya etc. They often send discount coupons to subscribers via these lists.

If you’re eating out consider places (usually family restaurants（ファミレス） such as Gasto if you just want somewhere to have a nice long chat with people. They have things called drink bars ie. a free flow of soft drinks, tea and coffee for an unlimited period of time. Also consider this if you need to study etc.

Stalk out your local stores. Some of them may have special days of the week / month where they have big discounts on a certain item eg. meat. Shop according to the calendar after you find this out.

Avoid: convenience stores… you pay for convenience, not for the value. If there’s a convenience store there’s probably a supermarket nearby. Find the supermarket and shop there.

Avoid: being picky. I don’t know what you Europeans call bread. As far as I am concerned if it’s made out of raised flour and is fluffy it is bread. We all have our pet peeves of how Japan bastardizes/does not have (it usually is either-or) our favorite national food which we miss – but demanding it is going to cost you a bomb. So you might as well start learning how to cook/eat Japanese stuff! Hey that’s what you’re here for right?

General Shopping

What about other shopping related things, then?

1. 100 Yen Shops

The first thing that you need to do when you arrive to Japan is to find the nearest 100 yen shop and raid it for anything you possibly need. Daiso and Seria are the more major ones. Go to their websites, search for the nearest one to your house and plunder it.

2. Point cards…

What you may (not) want to do

This can help you to save money in the long run. But get too many and you’ll find your wallet bursting with plastic.

Generally drug store point cards may not be very useful because they tend to go along the lines of 1 point per 100 yen spent, and 500 yen redeemable after reaching 500 points. Which means you need to spend 50,000 yen to get the discount. Not very useful in my opinion.

Instead consider getting point cards for the big electric stores such as Yamada Denki or Yodobashi Camera – you’ll probably need to go there occasionally for printer ink/appliances etc if you don’t buy those online. Those give you 10% of the amount you spend in terms of points so that helps in the long run.

3. Consider Shopping Online

Photos by Thomas

For Sayonara Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn – kudos if you get the reference.

Nowadays you can get everything and anything online and usually for a reasonable price. Some websites you may want to check out are:

1. http://kakaku.com/ – helps you directly compare the same product being sold over multiple sites so that you can make the best buys.
2. http://classifieds.gaijinpot.com/ – full of second-hand stuff which people want to get rid off for cheap or for free. Watch out especially for “sayonara sales” from people leaving Japan.
3. http://www.nitori-net.jp/ – for furniture
4. Groupon / Groupon-ish sites – such as http://www.groupon.jp/ or http://ponpare.jp/. These can get you good deals for eating out/travel/whatever if you keep your eyes open and snap up the attractive ones.
5. Portal sites – such as http://www.rakuten.co.jp/　and http://www.qoo10.jp/ are also worth looking at. That being said whether the deal is good depends on the individual vendor.

4. Also consider buying things second-hand.

Check for 2nd hand shops (リサイクルショップ) such as 2nd Steet which sell a whole variety of goods second hand. Recycl-navi is another website listing these 2nd hand shops in each prefecture.

For clothes, Shimokitazawa (Tokyo) for example has lots of second hand clothing shops. Find out where the second-hand clothes districts are if you want to save up.

5. For weird souvenirs:

With this kind of stuff you can’t possibly go wrong.

Need to get some souvenirs for a short trip home? I recommend Don Quijote. When you’ve got a departmental store which sells things like these you probably can’t go wrong.

Transport

Getting around can be a big expense. Trains, buses, taxis… you name it. Here are some ways to save money on transport.

1. Cycle

If you’re in Japan for more than ~6 months this will likely save you money unless you live very nearby to a convenient train station. After all…

• Buses are around 200 yen per ride. This adds up quickly. You might as well bike to the nearest station.
• Having a bicycle also widens the area you can shop – meaning that you probably can shop cheaper with one.
• Bicycle vandalism / theft is not common in Japan so it’s unlikely that you’ll have to pay extra beyond the buying the bicycle.

2. Kaisuuken

If there’s a route that you frequently use and which your commuter/student pass does not cover, you may consider getting some kaisuukens （回数券）. The system differs from company to company but some may for example sell you 11 tickets for the price of 10 for a single route (eg. JR East, Hankyu). Some may even sell off-peak hour kaisuuken for even steeper discounts.

They expire in about 3 months so only buy these for routes you reasonably use. Also, this may not be compatible with your IC card so you’ll have to keep the paper tickets in your wallet if you do so.

3. Special Tickets (eg. Seishun 18)

Tourists to Japan may know of the JR rail pass which allows for unlimited Shinkansen and JR use within the period of time. Unfortunately that’s limited to tourists. But, even if you’re a long-term resident in Japan there’s other things you can use.

Consider:

1. Limited area unlimited use passes – For example Kyoto residents will know about the 500 yen, 1 day free pass on Kyoto city buses. JR East offers unlimited railway use for a day within the 23 wards of Tokyo for 730 yen. This may be useful when you need to pop by multiple places in a day.
2. The Seishun 18 – Very useful if you like watching countryside scenery / have time to spare. A useful and relevant article can be found here

4. Buses are good too.

Especially if you want to travel long distances. For example, the cheapest trip between Tokyo and Osaka is around 3500 yen single-way; the same trip on JR (excluding the Seishun 18) would cost at least 8000 yen and take around 9 hours if you’re just riding local trains. Plus you get a seat.

Willer Express may be good if you’re not confident of your Japanese ability, but otherwise Rakuten has a whole slew of bus operators in its travel section.

5. Budget airlines for very long distances.

Because at long distances…

1. The availability of bus routes dwindles. Plus, 14 hour bus rides damage people’s sanity.
   2) Trains become increasingly expensive and take very long too.

At shorter distances do note that because airports are less convenient than major bus terminals, it may be more expensive (and take longer when adding waiting time etc) than buses.

Note: Hitchhiking is not often practiced in Japan. Wikitravel has an artice about if you want to try though.

Avoid: The Shinkansen. Yes it cuts down the traveling time to around 2 and a half hours between Tokyo and Osaka. But the title of this article is how to save money not how to zip across Japan. Plus, an extremely roomy 2 seat-per-row overnight bus costs about 10,000 between Tokyo and Kansai (cheaper than the Shinkansen) – take your pick.

Lodging / Rent

1.Rent

Really can’t be avoided but there are a few things you can do:

• Consider moving into a share-house such as those operated by Oakhouse(English) instead of a typical apartment. Saves money and you can make friends albeit at the cost of having to share amenities.
• Try apartments without the 敷金 (shikikin – something like a deposit) and the 礼金 (reikin – the money you have to pay as thanks, yes seriously). Also ensure that the shikikin and reikin aren’t just reflected in an inflated monthly rent price.
• Because the Japanese are very particular about having a bathtub / ofuro, searching for an apartment with only a shower may be cheaper.
• From a friend: “I’m not sure but somebody once told me that there are special offers like renting an apartment where some poor soul committed suicide … and it’s much cheaper (c)” Another friend says, “Yeah I’ve heard of places being cheaper because of suicides or murders, too. They call it 事故物件 (or 訳あり物件）.”

Oh, right, Tofugu wrote about that: “How To Avoid (Or Even Find) A Stigmatized Property In Japan”

Worth a shot maybe?

2.Temporary lodging

If you find yourself needing to stay someplace temporarily (for example, when traveling within Japan) you may want to consider the following options:

• Capsule Hotels: Available in the major cities. Cheap but I HIGHLY RECOMMEND (from personal experience) to buy some 100 yen earplugs if noise bothers you.
• Hostels: Consider the youth hostels operated by this group (English map). Same thing applies, ear plugs recommended.
• Wikitravel also has an article on camping if you really don’t want to spend any money on lodging.

Utilities

Generally you can’t do much in Summer – if you can make do with a fan instead of the AC that saves you quite a bit of money though. HOWEVER, it’s more than possible to keep warm in winter without the heater.

Behold the creativity of me and my friends!

• “Since electricity is cheaper from 11pm to 7am, only charge your computer, wash clothes and use anything that needs electricity during that time”
• Get a wearable blanket like the ones that they sell at Don Quijote. Very fluffy, comfy and is able to surprisingly negate the need for external heating.
• Pair the above with 100 yen room shoes for the cold cold floor. Or if you don’t want to…
• “Stick huge hot water bottles under your feet in bed/at your desk. I recommend the metal kind that can be reheated on the stove.” – If you’re the type to get literal “cold feet”.
• “Hang wet clothes in the room to save on humidifier bills!” (Note: this saves on having to use the clothes dryer too. Make your own clothes lines or buy indoor clothes hanging racks from Nitori)

Entertainment

Unless you like playing games in your dormitory or are content with the internet, you won’t be able to avoid spending on this. These are the ways you can make the most bang for your buck though.

1. Karaoke Deals

Karaoke is quintessential if you’re living in Japan (and a good way to shed your sense of shame). Anyways…

1. Karaoke freetimes (フリータイム) are your friend, especially if you’re a student who doesn’t have to wake up the next morning. Most times, taking a free time is more worth it if you’re staying more than 2-3 hours anyway.
2. Some Karaoke chains have special deals on weekdays such as men’s night etc. One that I frequented had a deal where on Thursdays (for men, Wednesdays for women) Karaoke was free for 2 hours if you just bought a drink.
3. Sign up to be a member. This usually automatically gives you a discount.

2. Amusement Centers

Round 1 also has an all-you-can play giant sports-and-arcade facilities for a flat fee. (A full list of shops can be found here, look out for the ones with SP (スポッチャ) highlighted in their labeling.

Kansai residents can also take advantage of Beaver World which offers the very same things PLUS Karaoke PLUS bowling under the same price.

Watch out for: Free flow drinks at Izakayas

While having free-flow alcohol may sound like a good idea, be wary of deals which are actually deceiving.

Most Izakayas will require you to order at least 1 item in addition to their automatic starter. Thus, what may look like an 800 yen 2 hour free-flow may actually be closer to 1500 when adding the starter and a dish (around 500 yen perhaps). Not to mention that the drinks are often heavily weakened.

Bonus! Free Travel!

Occasionally some of the local tourist bureaus of lesser-known cities will be fishing around for foreigners to tour their city. These are often conducted free of charge and all they require you to do is to write feedback forms / some PR material for them.

Occasionally google searching ”外国人モニターツアー” may yield you some promising results so be on the lookout for these.

By the way, add your suggestions to the comments – I may collate them into a Part 2 post with the ideas that you all have.

Relevant article:

• (Tofugu) 25 ways to save money while traveling in Japan

Bonus Wallpapers!

[1280x800] ∙ [2560x1600]

A Konkatsu History

The emergence of online dating sites in Japan started in 2003 with sites such as 「ブライダルネット」(also known as IBJ) which translates to “Bridal Net”, and “Excite”, the formal name for which is 「エキサイト恋愛結婚」(Excite Marriage for Love). Following that in 2005, Yahoo also launched their own similar site. A couple years later in 2007, the term “konkatsu” was coined and used for the first time in an article of Aera magazine. One year following that, in 2008, a book entitled 「婚活時代」(The Generation of Marriage Hunting) was published, authored by Momoko Shirakawa and sociologist Masahiro Yamada. Yamada is also known for coining the term “parasite singles” which refers to a single person beyond their late 20s who still lives with their parents. And often, it is used with a negative connotation toward young, unmarried women. The book「婚活時代」is available on Amazon here. It is what really popularized the term “konkatsu”, getting the word nominated for the annual buzzwords-of-the-year contest of 2008.

The konkatsu trend also had economic support. Along with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Inc, the economy plummeted which fueled the concern and potential realities of becoming economically unstable. And thus began the race to find financial stability through marriage. And as with most things in Japan, once it got popular, it boomed.

The Golden Age Of Konkatsu

Japan capitalized on this recession-induced trend that put konkatsu into its golden age. There was a rise in konkatsu businesses such as an influx in dating websites and specialized cafes, and the emergence of television shows and drama series. The public popularization of marriage hunting in Japan allowed people to become more open about actively hunting for a marriage partner.

Another side concept that arose from the konkatsu boom was known as an “earthquake marriage” (震災婚 – shinsai kon). The 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami disaster is said to have brought up a desire for their partners and a desire for marriage in people.

Local governments have also been known to encourage konkatsu activities by providing a variety of financial support to konkatsu mixers, seminars, day trips, and group dates, to name a few. An example of this is the city of Itoigawa, which was highlighted in an article from Japan Pulse. Local governments wanted to support marriage-hunting activities in hopes of increasing the birth rate in Japan, which had also been on the decline. Aside from providing financial support to businesses, local governments have also been known to promote konkatsu by offering meeting places for single men and women. For example, in Miura City of Kanagawa Prefecture where agriculture is a point of focus, they organized konkatsu events that would raise awareness on the lack of future farmers. Another example is Urayasu City in Chiba Prefecture and their sponsored konkatsu event at the Disney Resort hotel.

Shift In Marriage Ideology

Japan’s average marrying age has been steadily getting higher. In the 1970s the average marrying age was 25 and currently it stands at around 30. On top of this there is some pressure for women of marrying age to get married. Unmarried women above the age 25 are sometimes referred to as “leftover Christmas cake” (because you eat Christmas Cake on Christmas, the 25th) and feel as though it will be harder for them to find a husband the older that they get.

Even though the concept of “konkatsu” has boomed in Japan, 1 in 5 males and 1 in 10 females still say they will not get married, which is an increase compared to 30 years ago. According to a survey conducted by Japanese magazine Joshi Spa!, 33.5% of the 37,610 participants didn’t see any benefit to getting married. The largest age group that showed no interest in marriage were those people in their 30s. At first glance, this seems like a lot. However, according to a study conducted for an NHK special, the percentage of men and women who still hope for marriage is high: 89% of women want to get married, and 86% of men said they would like to get married. And the number of people who work hard to appeal to potential partners is also increasing. But even though this is the case, it still doesn’t seem as though Japan is seeing high marriage rates. Why is that?

Relationships Between Money and Marriage

It could be because for women, the potential for financial stability in a receding economy is top priority. A majority of women hope to marry a man who has an annual income of $60,000 USD or higher. However, only 4% of men who are 20-30 years of age meet this high salary requirement. The average salary for the 30-year-old age group is between $38,000-$42,000 USD. The want for financial stability when getting married is what is continuing to drive the decision to find a marriage partner. One woman who is in the middle of marriage hunting explained that while she isn’t looking for a life of luxury, it is necessary for her to be able to live each day-to-day comfortably. A survey showed that 37.6% of men aged 30-39 years with a salary of $60,000 USD or higher are married. 9.6% have never had a significant other. 22% of participants recorded that they have a significant other, and 29.8% recorded that they did not. Comparing this to 30-year-old men with a salary of $30,000 USD or less, the discrepancy is quite big. Only 9.3% of men with a $30,000 USD or lower salary are married, and only 18.4% have significant others. 38.8 % recorded that they are currently not seeing anybody, and 33.6% have never been in a romantic relationship.

Saving Up For The Wedding

In some countries, such as in the US, it may be customary to build up some kind of marriage fund to use toward a wedding and getting started into that new life. According to some surveys, there are a percentage of people in Japan who do save up for marriage as well, but my impression was that it is relatively low considering the surge in the marriage hunting activities that Japan saw.

According to a survey conducted by Excite, the majority of women (38.9%) answered that they do not really have wedding funds. Only 8% of women surveyed were consciously saving up to get married and 10.5% of the women surveyed were expecting their wedding funds to come from their significant other. Looking at the men’s results from the same question regarding marriage funds asked by Excite, the majority of men (34.1%) answered to having some kind of marriage fund. 23.5% of the men surveyed answered that they are actively setting aside money for getting married, which is more than double of the number of women who answered the same. Per the results above, it seems possible that men are more likely than women to assume that they will need to shoulder the responsibility of putting out money for the wedding.

BIGLOBE also conducted a survey in 2010 regarding finances for weddings that compared men and women, both married and unmarried. Over 50% of both married men and women said that they needed financial assistance from their parents for wedding funds. 71% of unmarried men and 62% of unmarried women answered that they did not think they would need parental assistance whereas roughly 30% of those surveyed said they would need that support.

In regard to saving up to get married, 10% of unmarried male participants said they were not saving up to get married, while 8% of unmarried female participants said they were not saving. Out of the married men and women who participated, 10% of males and 12% of females said they did end up saving. As for how much they were saving, the majority of married males saved between $20,000-$30,000 USD (18%) and the majority of married females saved between $10,000-$20,000 USD (20%). For the unmarried participants, the majority for both genders expressed wanting to save $20,000-$30,000 USD (17% and 20% for men and women, respectively) toward marriage. The full survey results can be found in the links at the bottom of the article.

The Economics Behind Konkatsu

There does appear to be some conscientious thought about money in relation to saving up for a wedding but most of the emphasis seems to be on how much money one will have after getting married. Economic factors, including the recession and the knowledge that there is more stability in a two-income houseold, appear to have induced marriage-seeking in Japan. However, according to some reports, the financial standards set by women are also quite high, which gives the impression that the majority of women are marrying for money. What do you think the financially driven reasons for wanting to get married along with the financial limitations placed on potential partners will do to the continuing generations of marriage in Japan?

Sources:

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
• http://www.japantoday.com/catego…
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ama…
• http://www.nhk.or.jp/shutoken/2…
• http://nensyu-labo.com/2nd-nend…
• http://www.biglobe.co.jp/press/20…
• http://wedding.excite.co.jp/vote/…
• http://wedding.excite.co.jp/vote…
• http://blog.japantimes.co.jp/ja…
• http://fpcj.jp/en/useful-en/wjn-e…
• http://wedding.excite.co.jp/spec…
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

Please, Tell Me More

The magnificent koban was an oval gold coin equal to exactly one ryo, an early Japanese monetary unit (this got replaced by the yen after the Meiji era). The koban was a big part of the Tokugawa money system. How big, you ask? More on that later.

In the beginning, a koban was equal to one ryo and contained about one ryo’s worth of actual gold, so everything fit together all nice like. But with successive mintings, the gold content started to diminish and the actual value and the face value no longer matched up. Oops. Meowth does not approve.

The Exciting Economy of Japan’s Past

Back in the good ol’ days (pre 19th century), Japan’s economy was largely based on rice, the standard unit of measure being the koku. One koku was equal to the amount of rice needed to feed one person (or Meowth) for one year. Very specific. Also very large.

Farmers paid taxes in rice, vassals were paid with rice, rice was king back then. But then the Portuguese came to Japan in the 1550s and were all like, “What the heck are you guys doing?” The Portuguese had Japan get their act together and convinced them to use gold for foreign trade. The koban was equal to three whole koku of rice. That’s a lot.

Remember how I said that subsequent mintings of the koban debased in value? Well things got much worse as time went on. Feudal lords began minting their own koban and the value debased even further. The authorities of the time issued reform after reform but all efforts just debased the koban (among other coins) further. Counterfeit koban also started to run rampant.

By the time Commodore Perry visited Japan in 1853, older counterfeit koban was actually more desirable than current legitimate koban because the older counterfeits contained more gold than the newly minted ones! The Tokugawa regime was in deep financial straits by this point due to all the inflation. Things were bad.

After 1868 and the Meiji Restoration, the goofy koban system was finally discontinued and replaced with the yen which was based on Western standards. Everybody liked this system a lot more, and that’s why it’s still around today.

So Where’d All This Gold Come From?

With all these koban coins floating around, the gold had to come from somewhere, right? Well, the gold for these koban coins came from a place called Sado Island. The Sado Gold mine is the island’s most important historical site and was in operation from 1601 all the way up to 1989. That’s 388 years! It was probably in operation for so long due to it being the largest gold mine in the whole stinkin’ country.

A whopping 15,000,000 tons of ore were mined from the place and it produced 78 tons of gold and 2,300 tons of silver. These riches helped finance the Tokugawa regime. The nearby town of Aikawa blew up after gold was discovered and the place became a booming mining town.

The working conditions weren’t so great here and men and children alike often worked in cramped and dangerous areas. However, the miners were paid well and only worked 4-hour shifts. Unfortunately, these men often died young due to all the respiratory diseases earned in the mines.

These days the mine is a museum, so that’s pretty cool. You can even tour one or both mine shafts and mechanized robots operate authentic machinery to really give you a good idea of what things were like back then. As far as I know, no one’s seen any Pokemon in the caves, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t any in there.

Koban Today

Armed with all this koban knowledge, now you know why Meowth has one of these plastered to his forehead. Koban are nifty little pieces of currency. You might also recognize them as being part of the iconic “Lucky Cats” you see around Japan and the rest of Asia along with various Asian restaurants.

For the coin collectors out there, a koban coin can be pretty expensive. A quick search on eBay shows these coins going for anywhere between $2,000 and $8,000 or even more. These coins are only about 1.5 inches long on average, so that’s a lot of money for such a little coin. But to some people, this price is well worth it. I mean, these coins are pretty neat after all.

I think these koban coins are pretty cool, but definitely too expensive for me to try and get my hands on one. What do you think about the museum though? I think it looks pretty interesting. I’d definitely hit it up if I was in the area. Would you go if given the chance? I know Meowth would.

Sources Referenced:
Japan Visitor
Wikipedia

In Japan, I worked for an investment company as a financial planner and broker. While working there, I shuddered and trembled upon witnessing the so-called “ジブリの呪い” (giburi no noroi), aka “Ghibli’s Curse” aka “The Curse Of Ghibli.”

I had no idea until I started working as a financial planner that this curse even existed, holding itself over the stock and currency market. However, as soon as I joined the financial industry, the curse occurred. After a Ghibli movie was aired on TV one Friday night, bad things happened to the market. Very evil and curse-like things (dun dun dunn).

You see, Nippon Television Network Corp airs a movie every Friday night. That spot is called “金曜ロードショー” (kinyou roadshow/ Friday Roadshow). Occasionally on this show they air a Ghibli movie. When this happens, bad stuff happen to the Japanese stock market or currency market soon after.

Sometimes it’s related to 米国雇用統計 (beikoku koyoutoukei / US jobs numbers), which is also called 米国非農業部門雇用者数 (beikoku hinougyoubumon koyoushasuu / US nonfarm payroll dates). Other times it has to do with bad reports. No matter what the trigger may be, Japanese traders, investors, and other related workers are acutely aware of this eerie “curse” and will pay attention to the TV schedules for just this reason.

Running The Numbers

It’s been a while since I quit my job so I don’t remember exactly, but I feel like I remember how on these days other countries’ currencies would go down or the Nikkei (Japanese stock market) would drop. I wanted to make sure that I could show this to you guys so I ran the numbers and made a diagram from February 22, 2008 until August 2, 2013. Please take a look below. There you can see that with 28 out of 35 of these days, either the US currency went down or the Nikkei went down. Isn’t that insane? I thought so, at least the first time I learned about this.

So, that’s what happened over last four year eight months. You can see that the Ghibli Curse has taken place an eerily and head scratching amount of times. Of course this could be a coincidence that just lines up with the poor economy, but there is a reason why people believe in this curse, so something must be going on, even if it is completely by chance.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL recently picked up Ghibli’s Curse as a topic, as well. They interviewed some traders in Tokyo, so I’m going to introduce some parts of the article.

“Yen watchers expect the worst when a Ghibli flick airs at the same time that nonfarm payroll data is released in the U.S. (That is at 8:30 a.m. in Washington, D.C., and 9:30 at night in Tokyo.) In eight of the past nine such convergences, the data came in weak. In seven of those cases, the dollar tanked versus the yen and Japanese stocks fell.

On July 8, 2011, during a showing of “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” a Ghibli film about a young witch and her cat, the payroll numbers came in 86% below expectations and the dollar fell 1.2%. The following Monday, Japan’s benchmark index fell 0.7%.

“I always factor into my trading that when a Ghibli movie airs on a Friday, the dollar-yen market could get volatile,” says Yukio Nakamura, a senior manager at a French insurance company in Tokyo, who dabbles in foreign exchange on the side.

“I don’t watch Ghibli movies on TV myself, but I’m always checking the broadcast schedule as a kind of risk hedge.”

So it’s not just me! I’m not crazy, right? Now are you getting scared of Ghibli? Apparently some people who support the conspiracy have even thought that NTV is timing the broadcast deliberately to coincide with the bad news. Against this argument, a spokeswoman for NTV didn’t really mention a lot but said, “We decline to comment. Actually these questions do not merit commenting on.”

Do you believe that this Ghibli’s curse is all a setup? Personally, I want to believe it for fun, but there also is some reasoning behind why this might happen. The movies usually start at 9pm Japan time, on Friday where Japan’s market is already closed for the weekdays. The market in Europe still continues during the movie and the New York market opens afterward. Plus, Current Employment Statistics (CES) in the US is revealed at 9:30pm Japan time on the first Friday of every month. So, bad things tend to happen on Friday nights. Hence, I’d believe the curse more if it continued even if the movie spot changed from Friday to another weekday.

A Destructive Coincidence

This is not directly market related, but there is another mysterious phenomenon on Friday movie night related to Ghibli that I’d like to introduce you guys. It’s actually not for all Ghibli films but for “天空の城ラピュタ (tenkuu-no-shiro-Laputa/Laputa: Castle in the Sky)” and while it’s being aired, Japanese Netizens spam “バルス (barusu/Balus or Balse)!” on either 2-channel or twitter as many times as possible, for some reason.

‘Balus!’ is the magic spell of destruction, which Pazu and Sheeta cast at the climax of the movie. It’s said that spamming ‘Balus’ in sync during Laputa broadcast was started by 2-channelers in 2003.

According to the Twitter Japan official account, the word ‘Balus’ was tweeted 25,088 times-per-second at 11:22pm JST on December 9th, 2011 during the 13th Japanese television broadcast of Laputa. That established a new word record of the number of tweets per second.

However, this record was defeated easily by the 14th airing of Laputa on August 2, 2013. It’s almost like a festival event on the Internet. In order to let more people enjoy this event, ニコニコ動画 (Niko-Niko-Douga) and the Japanese SNS site Mixi launched special web pages for users to spam ‘Balus’ and even Yahoo Japan enabled a ‘Balus’ button on its top page.

And guess what? These all efforts caused 142,199 tweets per second, which is over five times more than the last record and four times more than the existing 2013 record of 33,388 “あけおめ” (akeome -abbreviation of akemashite-omedetou-gozaimasu / A Happy New Year) tweets, according to Twitter JP.

Is it just a coincidence that people tweet the name of the spell for destruction on such a “cursey” day? (Probably). Are you convinced that the Ghibli Curse is real? Me? Well…I am wondering if I am indeed, cursed…because I wrote this entry more slowly (のろい/noroi) than I usually do.

Did anyone get it? Yup, “curse” in Japanese is 呪い and pronounced “noroi” just like the word 鈍い which means “sluggish” or “slow.”

Even if you don’t believe in curses, I hope that you at least enjoyed reading about these Ghibli superstitions! If not, hopefully anyone can enjoy this “Nikkei” Choral Ensemble video doing Ghibli tunes, at the very least (because 日系 sounds like 日経!).

American credit and debit cards are laughably primitive compared to the rest of the world. While America is the birthplace of the bank card, the country has fallen behind as the rest of the world has leapfrogged on American technology. Many other countries in the world have bank cards with much more sophisticated security mechanisms than the simple magnetic strip that’s on all of America’s credit and debit cards.

Most Americans couldn’t care less about how people in other countries spend and secure their money, but it’s funny how actually being in one of those other countries changes your mind.

Like most places in the world, you use cash for pretty much everything in Japan—because in the words of RZA, GZA, et al, “cash rules everything around me”—it’s not always convenient. You have to keep your cash reserves topped off by constantly withdrawing from ATMs, and that can be difficult because not all Japanese ATMs accept American bank cards.

Plus, keeping cash around can be a huge pain. You’ll find those flimsy ¥1 coins piling up over time with no good way to get rid of them (if only vending machines accepted them!), and you have to be rather precise when spending your cash, lest you end up with an extra ¥20,000 burning a hole in your pockets at the end of your trip.

You Have Options

I’ve been thinking a lot about alternatives to cash recently (mostly because I just finished David Wolman’s book The End of Money) and, fortunately Japan has a lot of options.

Despite not being able to use the growingly-popular and supposedly Japanese-created Bitcoin, there is still a diverse patchwork of payment options for both those just visiting Japan and those in it for the long haul.

Prepaid Cards

One of the most common alternative payment methods you’ll see in Japan is prepaid IC (integrated circuit) cards.

These things are veritable Swiss army knives. You pay a refundable deposit to get your card, put some money on it and you can use them at conbini, vending machines, pay for train tickets, as keys for coin lockers, for taxis; hell, the only thing that don’t seem to pay for is your plane ticket back home. Typically, you can buy these prepaid IC cards in train stations around Japan, so they’re easy to purchase.

There are a ton of different kinds of IC cards, but probably the most recognizable is the Suica card, with its cute penguin mascot and the incredible amount of wordplay in its name and marketing. (Read the “etymology” section of the Wikipedia article on Suica and be awed.)

There are some downsides to prepaid IC cards, though. While a lot of the major cards recently became interoperable with each other, they’re still not as universally accepted as cash and other payment methods, and all of the different types of cards can be really confusing. (Does my Pasmo card work in Hokkaido? Do I want to buy a SUGOCA or Hayakaken card?)

Phones

While Japanese phones don’t seem as advanced and cool to Westerners as they used to, they have some features that aren’t available on Western phones; or, at least, aren’t used often on Western phones.

There are lots of different ways that you can use a mobile device to make payments in Japan. Not only do some of the prepaid cards I mentioned above have corresponding mobile apps, but there are other mobile wallet applications that have been in use in Japan for years.

Using your phone to pay for things seems nice and convenient. You always have your phone on you, transacations happen quickly, and you can keep an electronic trail of your spending.

Here’s the downside: Galapagos syndrome.

Galapagos syndrome is a term people use to talk about things that have evolved to meet the unique needs of their particular environment. Most people use the phrase to talk about Japanese cell phones, which developed very differently from phones in other places of the world.

In the case of making mobile payments, Galapagos syndrome kicks in when it comes to the underlying technology. Japanese phones and Western phones have historically used different technologies to make payments (FeliCa vs NFC), so if you’re visiting Japan and you have a fancy Western phone, don’t count on it working. While Tofugu was in Japan earlier this year our own Viet was unable to use his NFC-enabled Galaxy S III phone to make payments.

Unless you have a Japanese phone, it’s doubtful that you’ll be able to make mobile payments.

Fortunately, the Japanese have been making an effort to change that in recent years, producing phones with both payment technologies or just the more universally accepted standard (NFC). It’s very possible that, in the near future, your phone will be able to make payments in Japan and you won’t have to worry one bit about the technology behind it.

For better or worse, it’s hard to go completely cashless in Japan right now. As much as we might want to avoid the hassle of moving exchange rates, compatibility with foreign banks, and just keeping track of physical yen, the time just isn’t right yet to forgo cash altogether.

Still, I think that it’s very feasible that in the next decade or so, it might be possible for you walk right on by the currency exchange window in the airport on your way to Japan armed only with your trusty phone.

Only time will tell how phone charms will factor into the equation.

Wallpapers/GIFs

Once again, our incredible illustrator Aya has provided some full-sized desktop background images and animated GIFs for your enjoyment!

Desktop background (1280×800)
Desktop background (2560×1440)

Animated GIF (700×438)
Animated GIF (1280×800)

Why Pay?

To sum it up in one word: efficiency. You can’t pay to inject Japanese into your brain with a syringe, but you can pay for things that will help to make the things you already have to do easier (and more importantly, more efficient). Most Japanese learners go through the same kinds of things, and the same kinds of hardships. Why not flash a Jefferson or two to not have to go through some of the more unnecessary ones?

The following are a few of my favorite paid resources for helping you to learn Japanese faster. A couple I use a ton, and one of them is new (to me). The thing that makes these resources unique, I think, is that they definitely aren’t good for learning Japanese if they are the only thing you’re using. These will all help you to supplement your Japanese learning along with something else (or some other things) – they won’t be able to single handedly teach you Japanese, unfortunately.

1. MyGengo Translation Service

MyGengo is the “new” resource. I don’t believe I’ve mentioned it before, though I haven’t (in the past) thought of it as much of a way to help with Japanese learning (and only thought of it as purely a translation service… which is pretty much what they are).

There are times in Japanese study where you either 1) can’t for the life of you figure out what something means and 2) can’t for the life of you figure out how to say something in Japanese.

Now, I do think struggling and working really hard to figure out translations is a super important part of learning Japanese. If you, for example, just put every Japanese sentence you come across into MyGengo, you’d never learn a thing. 99% of time you should persevere and figure it out yourself. Only the other 1% of the time should you pay for translation. Here’s how it works:

First, you’ll have to create an account (I tried putting my test translation in first, then submitting it, and when I created an account it deleted the thing I put in to get translated and I had to re-submit, dang!).

Then, you choose what language you want to translate from and to. Japanese to English is 3 cents per character. English to Japanese is 5 cents per character (at least for the standard level translation, which should be all you need). If you stick an essay in there, then it might get pretty expensive, but I’m thinking this could be useful for single sentences or short paragraphs, mostly for when you’re really really stuck.

After you put what you want translated into the system, you just wait a bit (mine took a couple hours to be completed, pretty quick if you ask me), and then get your translation. I translated four of Shinnosuke’s Tweets (he’s the other guy in Cat Island, Part 1) just to try it out and it worked well. Gotta say, I was a bit impressed.

So, if you’re having trouble with one sentence … or if you need to translate something really bad (and can’t figure out how to), give MyGengo a try. The four tweets consisted of 125 characters (and around 8 sentences, I’d say) and cost $3.75 to translate. If those were 8 sentences I couldn’t translate on my own, that’s $3.75 of well spent money, I’d say. Afterwards, you can compare the translation and the original, and try to figure out what you couldn’t figure out before (and hopefully learn something from it). The worst thing you can do when studying is get stuck. This will help so you don’t ever have that problem.

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2. Lang-8 Premium

Lang-8 is one of those sites that I just can’t stop loving. You can (and should) use it for free. It allows you to write journal entries in the language you’re learning, and get them corrected by native speakers (for this article, let’s assume that’s Japanese). In theory, you’d help out by correcting people’s English too (or whatever your native language is). It’s all about helping each other and language exchange. If you’re upper beginner / intermediate or above, you should be using this site every day. It’s seriously awesome.

There’s also a premium version of Lang-8 you can pay $5 a month for (or $45 for the year). When this first came out, there weren’t too many features. Now, though, I think it’s definitely worth that tiny monthly payment. $5 is barely enough to buy lunch, after all.

There are many other features you get with premium, but I have a few favorites (that make it worth while on their own, I think).

1. Emphasize / Prioritize Your Entries

By paying $5 per month, your entries get a special background color and show up higher in people’s feeds, meaning they get more corrections and get corrected faster. Time is worth paying for, I think, and this is something that will give you more time to study Japanese. You’ll be able to write more entries in the same amount of time (and get them corrected faster) and you’ll get higher quality corrections (in theory) because more people will correct your entries. This is my favorite feature of premium Lang-8, I think. It just saves you time and helps you to learn Japanese more quickly.

2. Personal Journal Search

If you take #1 to heart and write a ton of entries, you’ll start finding that it’s hard to find them all. With language learning, being able to go back is pretty important, I think. This just makes that easier. If you need to take a look at a specific correction that you learned something from (but apparently don’t remember it), this feature is awesome and helps a ton.

3. Journal and Correction Data Download as a PDF

If you’re the type of person who likes things on paper, this feature is great. It lets you get your journal entries and corrections in PDF format, allowing you to print them out and study with them. It also just makes it easier to study what you’ve done on Lang-8. Whether you like studying on paper or not, I’m a big fan of this one. Things suddenly become easier when you print them out in the special Lang-8 PDF version of your journal entries.

If you’re really serious about your Japanese studies, and want to learn way, way faster, use Lang-8. If you want to be faster than fast at learning Japanese, pay for Lang-8 Premium. Totally worth it.

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3. Evernote Premium

If there’s one service I use more than any other on my computer/iPhone/iPad … it’s Evernote. It’s one of those applications you don’t think you’ll need even if you start using it for a while. But then, if you keep using it, you’ll start realizing what you’ve been missing all this time. I use it to keep track of photos, articles, parking spaces, apps to try, and everything else in between. Ways you can use Evernote are literally just limited only by your imagination.

I wrote an article a while back about how to use Evernote to learn Japanese. You can use Evernote to keep track of vocab words, sentences, and so much more. The premium version of Evernote ($5 per month or $45 per year) takes Evernote and supercharges it for you. Here are the premium features I use for Japanese studies (though I use it for so many other things too, making it an incredible value for me).

1. Local Storage On Your Mobile Device

This is the most useful thing on Evernote Premium (especially when it comes to Japanese). You can put PDFs, text, and whatever else you want into Evernote on your computer and then sync it with your phone. With local storage (regular Evernote stores everything in the cloud and makes you pull it from there on your phone) you’ll have everything ready to go. I’m working on a post about “Japanese on the go” and this plays a huge role in what you can and can’t do. This is especially helpful when you have an AT&T iPhone, and can’t rely on having any reception anywhere away from wifi.

2. Allows different file formats

Standard Evernote allows for images, audio, ink, and PDF, which is pretty much all you need (I love saving Japanese audio files and Lang-8 PDFs), but sometimes it’s nice to have other file formats as well. It doesn’t come into play too often (most of your Japanese studying stuff is going to be in one of those formats), but if you need to put Word files, or something like that, you’ll wish you had it.

3. Access To Note History

Also nice is the ability to see your note history. If you’re using Evernote to study Japanese, you’re probably changing things, moving things around, and taking notes on things. With note history, you can see those changes. I don’t use this all the time, but I’ve found it really helpful quite a few times.

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What Premium Services Do You Use?

I’ve only listed three things, and I’m sure there’s plenty more out there. What pay services do you use to supplement your Japanese study? Try to keep it down to below $10 payments – We’re looking for things that just help you to get an advantage over everyone else, and no more. I’m curious what you’ll come up with! You folks are pretty smart that way ; )

P.S. It doesn’t cost any money to Follow Tofugu On Twitter!

P.P.S. Then again, perhaps you’re the Facebook type….