Boy, time surely flies. only 12 more hours to go. I feel a bit unsettling right now because I have never lived in places other than Vancouver and Hong Kong. This is a totally new life challenge for me, and I am looking forward to it!
I will start uploading tons of pics when I have internet in my room. That should happen in the first week of October.
It’s only about a week to go and I have started packing already. I am bringing mostly clothes and daily essentials. The temperature fluctuates alot (see table below found in Wikipedia), so I have to bring some winter clothes. I don’t plan on buying a lot of clothes there….I want to save up more money to travel.
| Osaka avg taken at Chuo-ku, 2004[13] | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Avg high °C | 9.4 | 12.6 | 14.8 | 21.6 | 25.7 | 29.3 | 34.0 | 33.3 | 30.7 | 23.2 | 19.4 | 14.5 | 22.4 |
| Average °C | 5.8 | 7.9 | 10.2 | 16.4 | 21.1 | 24.8 | 29.5 | 28.4 | 26.2 | 19.0 | 15.2 | 10.2 | 17.9 |
| Avg low °C | 2.6 | 3.8 | 6.0 | 11.3 | 17.2 | 21.3 | 26.2 | 25.1 | 22.9 | 15.7 | 11.4 | 6.5 | 14.2 |
| Avg Humidity % | 59 | 56 | 57 | 54 | 65 | 66 | 63 | 66 | 67 | 69 | 66 | 64 | 63 |
| Rainfall [mm] | 19.0 | 47.5 | 75.5 | 125.0 | 281.5 | 133.5 | 42.0 | 106.5 | 202.5 | 356.0 | 117.5 | 88.0 | 132.9 |
I am going to bring 2 luggages and 2 piece of carry ons….. JAL specified maximum weight for the check-in baggages are 32 Kg each and for carry-ons are 10Kg total. My luggages are heavy but they are not overweighted by any means. They are just packed with stuff….see below.
My plan is to throw away some stuff when I come back…. I should have enough space for new clothes and shoes.
And I can’t believe Carmen is bringing two empty luggage. Shopping Crazy.
In case you don’t know, I will head to Osaka in 2 weeks on a working holiday. I plan to stay there for 6 months at least, and I wish to travel around the Kansai area and may also join WWOOF and volunteer at a farm or tea shop if time permits.
Now to get a Working holiday Visa is really not that difficult. All you need is being under 30 years old and prepare some other items which are documented in the Japanese Consulate website. Just spend some time organize everything and you should have no trouble getting the Visa.
Before I was thinking if I should apply the working holiday Visa through SWAP. SWAP is a Canadian organization owned by TravelCuts and it serves to help people to prepare for their Working Holiday plans. By paying a fee ($395 CAD if destination is Japan), they help you with all the paper work for Visa application and will provide information package plus 2 night of free accommodation in Tokyo. The catch is, they require all participants to book flights through Travel Cuts. I am not too sure if the price of the flight TravelCuts offered is higher than other agency. I checked the Travel Cut website and their cheapest flight ticket from Vancouver to New Kansai airport is with Air Canada and cost about $1,240 CAD including all tax. I got mine for $1,164 and its a one year ticket.
Of course applying the Visa through SWAP is less hassle than doing it myself. I don’t need to go back and forth to the Japanese Embassy to get all the documentations done. But I just don’t need that service.
Now on a related note, from what I see, not that many people know about the working holiday program. Besides Japan, many countries around the world, including U.K., France, Korea, South Africa, Australia, and Spain, offer this Visa. I believe working and living in another foreign country is a good life experience, so I think young people should take advantage of these chances. There is only a small window of opportunity to do this, and I am sure the experience will be quite amazing. This is explain by the formula: Happiness Gained > All Other Sacrifice.
To conclude today’s entry, I want to point out that…..did you know that each year Canada issues about 10,000 working holiday to the Japanese each year? No wonder Vancouver downtown is full of young Japanese people.
A blog about Japan is not really a proper one without a self-introduction in Japanese! Here is a brief one about me, Sunny Rock:
香港出身中系カナダ人です。 １９９２年にカナダへ移民しました。 Ｓｉｍｏｎ Ｆｒａｓｅｒ Ｕｎｉｖｅｒｓｉｔｙの卒業生です。 現在日本語が一生懸命勉強します。
今までの経歴は …
Ｌａ Ｓａｌｌｅ Ｐｒｉｍａｒｙ Ｓｃｈｏｏｌ （ホン・コン）
Ｄｅｌｔａ Ｎｏｒｔｈ Ｅｌｅｍｅｎｔａｒｙ Ｓｃｈｏｏｌ
Ｇａｒｄｅｎ Ｃｉｔｙ Ｅｌｅｍｅｎｔａｒｙ Ｓｃｈｏｏｌ
Ｐａｌｍｅｒ Ｊｕｎｉｏｒ Ｈｉｇｈ Ｓｃｈｏｏｌ
Ｌｏｎｄｏｎ Ｊｕｎｉｏｒ Ｈｉｇｈ Ｓｃｈｏｏｌ
Ｓｔｅｖｅｓｔｏｎ Ｈｉｇｈ Ｓｃｈｏｏｌ
Ｓｉｍｏｎ Ｆｒａｓｅｒ Ｕｎｉｖｅｒｓｉｔｙ
今年の９月、Ｃｅｒｔｉｆｉｅｄ Ｇｅｎｅｒａｌ Ａｃｃｏｕｎｔａｎｔ （カナダ 公認会計士）になりました！
来年は、大阪に行く予定です。
友達とＬａｎｇｕａｇｅ Ｅｘｃｈａｎｇｅ Ｐａｒｔｎｅｒを募集中。
よろしく
I will use something similar when I meet new people in Japan 
I have started this new blog to document what I see in Japan. You folks will read about my commentaries and see lots of cool pictures. I will try to give you a sense of how life in Japan is.
My blog design is very simple for now. I am not very familiar with using Wordpress so I may change it later if I have time to learn about how to change themes.
I hope you will enjoy reading my blog. Please come visit often!
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