PREPARATIONS FOR COMING TO JAPAN

What should you think about before coming to Japan? There are a few important facts you should know:

1) Electricity: Japan has TWO systems. The whole country has a 100 Volts supply. The Eastern side is set at 50 Hz (Tokyo, Kawasaki, Sapporo, Yokohoma, and Sendai); the Western regions 60 Hz (Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, Hiroshima). This tends not to make any problems for most appliances, although you may need to adjust your electric shaver slightly. Plugs are standard international two flat-pin plugs, with some two flat-pin and one round-grounding-pin types. An excellent resource for electrical information abroad is at http://www.kropla.com/

Plug type: http://www.kropla.com/!ab.htm
Power supply: http://www.kropla.com/electric2.htm and scroll down to Japan
Computers: http://www.kropla.com/electric.htm#computer

This site also has lots of information about using computers abroad - see

http://www.kropla.com/phones.htm

2) Making phone calls to Japan: the above site also has a dialing code list - the Japan page is at

http://www.kropla.com/city_hij.htm#japan

When calling, remember that there may be a large time difference between your country and Japan. If you are calling, or someone will be calling you while you are here, you should be aware of the time differences unless you want to be woken at 3am by your mum. The easiest way is to go the following converter site:

http://www.convertit.com/timezones/tzconverter1/

or look at the list of major cities and times:

http://www.convertit.com/timezones/timezoneclock/

Note that Japan has only one time zone, so the time in Tokyo is also the time in Okazaki.

3) Money: When you come to Japan, you will find that some things are less advanced than you might expect. For example, credit cards are still only now coming into use, and the debit card was only discovered about two months ago. So, you should bring some cash with you. There are a few ATM (Automatic Teller Machines or cashpoint machines) around, but they are very limited and don't always take all cards, particularly foreign ones.

The same is true for credit cards - some places only take their own credit card. For example, several students have been surprised to find that one of the local supermarkets has VISA signs all over, but only takes their store-issued VISA card. The two cards in use around Japan are VISA and Mastercard; American Express is virtually unheard of. Traveller's cheques are accepted at most banks; Yen-denominated ones will always be easier to cash, but dollar ones are usually okay.

When arriving at Nagoya International Airport, there is an ATM so you can draw Yen cash on your card; it is generally advisable to bring some Japanese currency with you in case (ATMs tend to close somewhere between 7pm and 11pm). Although this may sound alien to someone from Europe or the States where ATMs and debit/credit cards are inconstant use, Japan is still largely a cash-based society, and it is not unusual to carry fairly large quantities of currency - one of the benefits of living in such a safe country.

Conversion is simplest using the following Personal Currency Assistant:

http://www.xe.net/pca/