Jump to  Filing your Final Tax Return Albert Einstein once said: "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the Income Tax." Welcome to Adulting 101. As adults and contributing members of society, we all will, eventually, have to deal with taxes. Dealing with taxes even in your native language can be very challenging, imagine doing this in Japan, in Japanese. *cue nosebleed Before we jump into the steps of filing your Final Tax Return, let's go ahead and explain some of the words you will be encountering while you deal with this. 源泉徴収 (Gensen Choshu) - Withholding Tax Gensen Choshu(源泉徴収) is the process where your employer estimates how much income tax you will need to pay and will withhold that amount from your monthly salary. In other words, withholding tax. Your monthly payslip will show how much tax you paid and since this is just an estimated amount, there are instances where you either over or underpay your taxes. Whether you overpaid or underpaid your taxes w

Living in Japan, even as an exchange student or as a language student means that you have to know how to conduct yourself in society. Manners are required anywhere in the world and the same is true in Japan. You've probably heard the saying "when in Rome, do as the Romans do", well, "when in Japan, do as the Japanese do." The concept of  "Omoiyari" If you go to Google Translate and type this in, you'll get "consideration" as its translation. But the Japanese concept of "omoiyari" is more than just that. The full definition of "omoiyari" is the consideration towards others by imagining oneself in another person's position and act accordingly with their point of view. This is the actual reason why the Japanese people exude an aura of politeness. People will go out of their way to avoid causing inconvenience or discomfort. Building on the concept of "Omoiyari", let's go through a few things to keep in m

"Will I be able to send money home?"  How to send money home as a language student in Japan. Coming from a Filipino background, it's deeply ingrained in our culture to take care of our families back home once we set foot on foreign soil. This is especially true for OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers). But, being a student, is this really feasible? In my previous post, I described in detail how much the  initial costs are for studying in Japan . It goes without saying that it gets pretty expensive. I also wrote a post regarding a student's monthly budget to give you an idea of how much you will earn and spend monthly.  As a student, you will be earning an average of 80,000 to 100,000 yen a month for working 28 hours a week, Factoring in tuition, rent, and other necessities, you will probably have about 10,000 left depending on how much effort you put into savings. If you live simply, cook your meals at home, and don't spend much on going out, you can save even more.

On our third day in Japan, we started with our very first part-time job or arubaito (アルバイト). When you come to Japan to study, you will be allowed to work for 28 hours a week to help with your day to day expenses (rent, utilities, food, etc.) At the time, the hourly rate for part-timers in Ibaraki was 800 yen per hour. One good thing about working as a part-timer in Japan is the fact that everyone is paid the same rate. They don't look at age, gender, or nationality. Across the board, the minimum wage is the same. Update: As of 2020, the minimum wage in Ibaraki is at 850 yen per hour. There is a multitude of part-time jobs available all over Japan. But if you come here with practically zero language skills, then your options become limited. Let me show you a few of these arubaito  gigs that can be done even when you barely speak Japanese. Let me tell you our story... After the school orientation, we were given the rest of the day off. Or so we thought. At around 3pm, (if memory ser

Hello Everyone!!! I have been thinking of some things to post and I really wanted to share how I am learning to survive in Japan. Yes, I may have a little bit of Nihongo under my belt but not nearly enough to understand everything that goes on around me. And so I came up with this!!! Silak's JST (Japan Survival Tips) series This will be basically short posts on practical tips and tricks I've picked up along the way. I will be sharing stuff that I learned and am still doing that makes my life so much easier. This will be anything and everything under the sun from post rescheduling, inquiries, groceries, and many, many more! And, good news to the introverts out there like me that want to minimize their human contact as much as possible, these, are going to help you a lot! (As much as possible I do most of my stuff online and I only call if, and when I really need to.) I will try to make the posts as educational as possible with as many picture illustrations as I

Happy Sunday Minasan!!! The weather is slowly cranking up and it's getting more and more difficult to step out especially when you don't have a car and will have to walk to destinations. The dangers of heatstroke are real people! So today I want to talk a little bit about my life as an ALT in Japan. What is an ALT? Time and again, people from outside Japan would ask me: "What work do you do there?", to which I reply, "I'm an ALT." Wait, what? To people who have been interested in Japan as I had been before coming here, you would know that ALT stands for Assistant Language Teacher. Now, this takes different meanings as well depending on where you're teaching and I will discuss the role in detail in a Junior High School perspective as this is where I am assigned. I am basically an assistant to a Japanese Teacher of English.  I will try and get Jerome, Richard, and Leizel to talk about their experience in the Elementary school front so we

みんな、お久しぶり！ Long time no see everyone! Okay, so I know I keep promising to update more, but despite all the time I have, I can't seem to get into my blogging groove. But I guess I can churn at least 1 post a week. I will most certainly try. So, I can't even remember what my last post was. Hahaha! But lemme catch you up with my current status. Before December 2017  The first time I took the test was back in July 2017 for the N4 level which I passed due to diligently studying for exams and memorizing kanji every down time I get even if it's just for 3 mins. So N4 was easy for me, but since then, everything went downhill. I was lucky enough to score plane tickets on sale and went home for a couple of weeks during summer vacation. When I got back, I was really tired of going to school everyday. It was so boring and I got caught up in a game on my smartphone. In short, I was barely studying if at all. Before we knew it, it was December and we needed to take the

Wow... took me a whole year to write the sequel to my winter survival tips article . Last year, I and my colleagues experienced our first-ever winter in Japan and it was a real challenge. When this year's winter rolled around, we were a bit more prepared than before. Compared to last year's winter, this winter is definitely colder. Last year we had exactly one snow day that lasted about half a day. This year, we had a snow day where the white landscape lasted for a week and a half. After this episode, we had several more snow days and it was really nice but annoying. (Snow looks really nice and all, but I really hate it.) So as promised I am giving several tips for keeping your room warm in the winter. Tip #1 Mind the Flooring Insulating the floor is one of the first steps in keeping your room warm. If you have your space heater on and warming the place everything is moot if the floor is not insulated. So if your room is not lined with tatami, you can consider going