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Nyororin (Offline)
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06-02-2010, 12:43 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by steven View Post
The credit card thing is true, but as a foreigner you won't be able to get one, so for foreigners it IS a cash sociey. You can sometimes use your cash card from your bank, but that is usually not the case and is not something I can recommend counting on.
I am a foreigner and I have two cards - one has a guarantor, but the other is just me on the paperwork. :P
Either way, I wouldn`t be so fast to say that for a foreigner it is a cash based society - international cards work here. Tons of people bring their cards registered at home to Japan and use them while here. This is particularly true when there is a limited income situation (student) with money sitting in a foreign bank account.

Quote:
with that said, always bring money when you go out at night no matter what (despite how danerous that sounds from an american perspective).
Just bring money with you all the time. It really seems that the perspective for carrying money here is very different than the US. Carrying 50,000yen around is nothing - I have 40,000yen in my wallet right now, and have carried more. I don`t really feel uncomfortable with the amount unless it goes over, say, 100,000. But if I were to switch any of that over to dollars I would choke and NEVER do it in the US. $100 in the wallet is iffy, let alone $400.
But the feel is more than 10,000 bills are $20s. They buy a lot more, but do NOT behave like $100 bills in any other way. You`ll never find a store that doesn`t take them.

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Also watch out for shipping clothes and stuff. You might want to do some shopping in Japan. Most of it is really expensive and it may be hard for you to find your size, but if you find a used shop you can do really well (especially if you buy a jacket for the winter at the end of summer or beginning of fall). So if you can, I'd do a bit of research to find out if there are places like that around where you're going. I know the "Book-off/Hard-off" chain has some used clothing stores now (I think they're called B-style or something). In my area we have a lot of stores called "2nd Street",which is absolutely amazing by the way. Just watch out because you'd be suprised at how much used clothes go for in Japan sometimes! If you're careful you can get stuff for dirt cheap though.
I still think that clothing outside Japan is significantly cheaper. Particularly if you are tall or wear any type of specialty size. (Specialty being anything other than the most typical shape. Hips a little wide for a guy? Arms a little longer than average? Good luck!) This goes for native Japanese as well, so being Asian may not help at all. Shoes are also a nightmare as finding anything over the standard top size (24.5 for women, 26 for men) is close to impossible. It doesn`t just cut down your choices - it pretty much removes your choices. I wear 25.5 and my husband (Japanese) wears 27.5 - we pretty much have two options. Pay incredible amounts for specialty size shoes... Or... Not buy any. I have yet to encounter a pair of shoes in a shoe store that fit, and my husband is usually so desperate that if it is within budget he`ll jump to buy any pair that does.

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The biggest problem with you being Korean is that most people will probably mistake you for being Japanese, and when what they're saying to you doesn't seem to translate, they might look at you really funny. They might be able to tell you apart by your clothes or mannerisms, but most of the time, probably not.
I would actually guess that they will be able to tell quite a lot of the time. I know a few Japanese born outside of Japan, who were raised within some level of Japanese culture, but who still stood out for quite some time after coming to Japan. Even when they started with near fluency. Japan is pretty homogeneous, so small things that wouldn`t be noticed as foreign in some other country do stand out.


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