Name: Top 10 Tips for saving money IN JAPAN
Uploaded: 2016-12-14T07:18:27.000Z
Duration: 12 min 31 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hey guys!  Today I'm here with Andrew Marston.

so we have a lot of experience with trying to live in Japan as cheaply as possible.

So today we are going to combine all of our experience

and give you the ten best tips for saving money in Japan.

If you move to Japan and  you need to furnish your apartment

furniture stores can be kinda expensive but there are a lot of foreigners who are always leaving Japan

because their work contracts are up and you can get their stuff for super cheap.

There are a lot of "Sayonara Sales", that's what they're called.

So people who are leaving Japan, sayonara.

They sell their stuff really cheaply on facebook or Gaijinpot has classifieds.

Sometimes you can just find them on random websites.

But check the city that you move to. In Nagoya, we have a facebook group called Treasure Trove. Yes.

And that's where you can get cheap stuff from foreigners.  I think Tokyo has one...

Tokyo Garage Sale. Yeah. On facebook group.

You could also go to thrift stores. That's where Jun and I got a lot of our furniture from. Same here.

Like our island here, this did not come with the apartment. We got this at the thrift store.

Sometimes those are called "recycle shops". Right.

And if you want to get cheap clothes, thrift store also have those very frequently.

There are two different types of thrift stores in Japan.

There are the high-end resale places that sell clothes, brand names... Still kinda expensive.

And then there are ones that lower the price every single week and so the stuff is really cheap.

Those are the ones that I go to. Sometimes they are called like 'maishyuusagaru'

Which means "every week the price falls". There are some really common thrift store chains. Yep.

The "Off" series, so Book-off sells books really cheaply. Often they have a clothes section as well.

There's Mode Off. I believe they sells clothes and discounted furniture.

Hard Off which sells electronics. Save that one for last.

Hardware. It sells hardware at off prices. Yeah. (laughs)

Tip number two: A lot of shops around Japan have a sign that says

Tax-free Shop and if you have a non-Japanese passport

and if you spend over five thousand yen on a purchase

then you can get that without any  consumption tax added on.

Right. You have to be on a visa that's less than six months in Japan.

So if you are on a student visa it probably won't work.

You also... Sometimes they won't give you the tax off right away.

Some times there's a tax refund counter where you have to fill out paperwork there.

But, yeah, you can get your tax back for a lot of things.

Three is food. Everyone knows about this. You've probably heard it before

but if you go to a supermarket right before they close they will often mark down set meals or meats and fish.

Or you know, twenty percent off, thirty percent off, sometimes half off. Yep.

It's like the sushi plates, the bentos, all the pre-prepared stuff that they have to throw away if it doesn't sell by the end of the day.

Number four is how to get free accommodation. Who doesn't like that?

There's a website called Couchsurfing.com which is basically a social network where you can

request to stay with people who have volunteered to host other people on their couches

Often it's better than just their couch. Maybe they'll have a spare room, sometimes it's worse than the couch,

it will be the floor. I have couch surfed probably over a whole month

if you added it all together, in Japan. I met a lot of great people.

People that I'm still friends with today. it's very safe. It's very reliable. I highly recommend it and it's free.

That is the most important part. Also if you are desperate and you find a twenty four hour fasfood place

like McDonald's or a Loteria then they probably won't kick you out.

In fact, I tried it and they didn't kick me out. If you just buy a big meal, sit at the table,

kinda fall asleep there and stay there  until the first train the next morning.

So another option that I've actually just discovered was a website called WWOOF or W-W-O-O-F

and I'll post more information about this in the description, well it's your description.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm taking over her desciption

It's okay, I'll share. If you want to volunteer to work on...

There's a lot of farms post on there, there's some inn, there's some cafes.

If you want to volunteer to work six hours a day six days a week then in exchange you can get free room and board.

It's actually a really great way to kinda have a home-stay experience and have free room and board in Japan.

And the last free option would be camping.

And there are camp grounds all throughout Japan that you can pay money to stay at

but if you're feeling adventurous usually if you pick a place that's out of the way

and you're not bothering anybody then you can usually pitch a tent  kinda... almost anywhere.

And one of these actually kinda leads into accommodation as well,

the night bus or even day bus can be one of the cheapest ways to travel in Japan

And if you take the night bus then you can try to sleep on the bus while you're getting from city to city

so you don't have to pay for a hotel that day either.  So it's kind of a trick.

And the longer the bus route, usually the more comfortable the seats are. Right.

Some of them are not that bad actually but some of them are... not fun.

That bus is pretty uncomfortable. We have taken that bus many many times.

We mentioned rail pass recently on a previous video, if you're a foreigner coming to Japan

before you get to Japan you can apply for a rail pass which gives you JR trains for free for a certain number of days.

After you pay for the rail pass which is  pretty expensive itself.

If you want details they will be down in the description box.

Another cheap way to travel if you are hitting a lot of stops in one day is an 'ichinichiken'

which we also talked about recently on our channel.

It's an all-day pass for certain cities taking certain train lines and maybe metro buses, city buses, as well.

Just keep in mind which rail company you bought that 'ichinichiken' for because you'll only get access to those lines.

Like if you buy JR you can only go on JR Rails but not Tokyo Metro so keep that in mind.

One of my favorite ways to travel on trains cheaply is using what's called the 'seishun  jyuhachi kippu"

or like, 'seishun eighteen tickets. And what that is is you pay a little over a hundred US dollars

and you get a pack of  five tickets that let's you ride as much as you want on JR lines

but only the two slowest train lines. Like local trains.

So no shinkansen. You are not getting anywhere quickly. You could travel from northern Japan

to southern Japan but it's going to take you all day.  One cool thing about this ticket pack

is that you can split them up among friends.

So if you have five friends who want to take a one day train trip together for cheap

then you buy the 'seishun jyuhachi kippu". Everybody can take a day and you all take this one day massive day trip together.

Or you could just you yourself use it for five days in a row.