Quote:
Originally Posted by Sangetsu
BTW, cell phones here are outrageous now, 30k to 55k yen, so put some money aside for one.
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Where on earth are you getting your cell phones?
We paid 2500yen for the newest model recently, at an official Docomo shop - you just have to sign up for a year contract. Anyone who is buying the phone and then signing up for a contract is pretty close to crazy if you`ll be using it any more than a year.
Utility prices... In every apartment we`ve lived in, 2500/month is pretty standard for water. Gas depends on the size of your bath and how much cooking you do. A bath every night (as is the norm) in a standard sized apartment tub and average cooking will put you around 6000/month. Expect more if you like long showers or to simmer things for hours and hours on end. Gas isn`t used for heating, unless you have a gas stove with hookups in a nice apartment.
Electricity depends on how much AC you use more than anything else. In the spring and fall, when we don`t use any electric heating or cooling, the electric bill for our huge place is only 5000 something a month. In the summer, with an air conditioner on only at night (so we can sleep) in ONE room, for 2 hours while we fall asleep and then another couple hours before and after we wake up pushes it up to 12000 or more. God forbid we have someone stay over for a few nights and have two ACs on. *choke* When we lived in a one room apartment, we let ourselves go one particularly hot summer and had the thing on almost all the time we were at home. I think the bill almost hit 30000. For ONE MONTH.
Air conditioning is NOT something to use lightly. Seriously, the electric bill will KILL you. I think you`ll find that most people in Japan consider AC a sort of luxury, and rarely turn it on, even on the hottest days.
Our phone bill is about 4000 a month. The actual phone part of it is the base fee only, with I forget however much added on for FTTH.