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RickOShay (Offline)
JF Old Timer
 
Posts: 604
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: USA, formerly Shizuoka for 7 years.
03-19-2010, 04:39 AM

Hmmmm.. if you are on your own I can imagine it would be tough... I would imagine $2000 a month to live off of would be safe. Including the cost of your capsule hotel (or I imagine there are cheaper places than that.. never researched it though) Plan on at LEAST $300 month for food since I imagine you will not be cooking, rather you will be living off conbini stuff and eating out. Plus add in all your visits to public baths, internet cafes, prepaid cell phone etc.. I would imagine you may be able to find a part time gig pretty easily but your salary, maybe even just hourly pay, will be pretty low and not enough to support you.

But I think people are getting the $5000 plus number from the fact that once you get a job (if you can find one) you will probably need to have a spare $2000-5000 cash to pay for key money, and a deposit (I would expect this amount especially if you live in Tokyo.. or another big city) not to mention to get your visa status changed I believe you will have to leave Japan for a day (probably fly to Korea). So you will need to have money set aside for that little trip. So.. to bum around Japan and look for a job for a month (ie not traveling very much though) you will probably need about $2000, but once you try to get set up especially in a big city... I would have at least an extra $3000 set aside on top of the $2000, which means $5000 mininum would be my recommendation just to be safe.

Last edited by RickOShay : 03-19-2010 at 04:43 AM.
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