Accommodation Costs for Exchange Students in Japan

If you're planning to go to Japan as an exchange student, you're probably going to have to find some place to stay at. Most students have three accommodation options: apartment, dormitory, or homestay. The following rates are approximations appropriate to the Osaka area.

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Be Careful with Bicycle Parking in Osaka

If you're careless, you can easily lose your bicycle in Osaka. There are two common causes for it: thieves and the authorities. Today's topic will be bicycle confiscation by the authorities.

You can find many bicycle stands near subway and train stations in Osaka, but it's worth noticing that most of them are tagged 有料, which means "money required". If you leave your bicycle without buying a parking pass, and if the authorities happen to check on it, they will take your ride away and you will have to go to the appropriate garage to pick it up and pay a ¥2500 fine (or ¥5000 for light motorcycles).

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10 Reasons Why Homestay Could Be Better

Last time I gave you 10 reasons why homestay could be a bad choice. This time, in contrast, I will list down 10 good reasons to enroll in a homestay program.

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10 Reasons Why Homestay Could Be Worse

Here are 10 reasons as to why homestay in Japan could be a worse choice than having your own apartment.

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Foreign Students in Japan Need a Work Permit

If you're a student and want to work part-time, there are a couple of things that you should know about working as a foreign exchange student.

According to this page, foreign university students who come to Japan to study full-time will need to get a permit to engage in "extra-status-of residence activities" (sorry for just brutally copy-pasting the term here) if they want to work in their free time.

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Install Japanese Smileys in Windows XP

As you probably know, Japanese smileys look different from Western smileys. Just to give you a basic idea, in Japan people commonly type (^_^) instead of :)

If you want to use Japanese smileys, there's an easy way to adopt them to your Japanese word bank (or dictionary) in Windows XP so that you can bring them up with little effort.

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My 5 Favorite Places in Osaka

Every citizen of Osaka has them, right? Mine are...

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