Flea market

Cheap 2nd hand fridge, fan, carpet, bookshelves are up for sale. Bought a fridge for 5000yen (RM150), fan for 500yen (RM15) and bookshelf for 2000yen (RM60). Got a very good buy on fridge and fan, because I was the first in line, waiting for the door to open, rushed in and hugged the fridge that I wanted. However, the bookshelves had run out of choices and the expensive bookshelf are the only good ones left.

In Japan, throwing stuff away can be expensive.
Refrigerator costs 6000yen to be thrown away.
TV: 4000yen,
Air cond: 5000yen,
Washing machine:4000 yen.
After buying, I thought, damn. Throwing away that fridge costs more than buying it!!! No wonder people would give away these stuff for free in Japan. Even cars are available for free.


Fridge: 5000yen: GOOD BUY!!! (6000yen to throw away)


Fan: 500yen: GOOD BUY!!! (500 yen to throw away)

Bookshelf - 2000 yen: Bad buy :( (500 yen to throw away)


My new assets :D

Online shopping

I know that getting a bicycle is the only way to get freedom here so that I do not have to rely on the bus to get to town or anyway. We went to the bicycle shop in Urasa to look what are the models available. However, to my disappointment, the bicycles there are without gear & is around 20k yen range... which is very very expensive. The cheapest is a 2nd hand 6000 yen bicycle, but it's small.

That night, while talking to several 2nd year students, they said I should go online to buy the bicycle. However, shopping online in Japan means surfing Japanese website, which I don't really know.

Anyway, I went on to go search for bicycles, spent the first hour going around the Japan Internet, found several sites selling bicycle before found Yahoo Japan. The 2nd hour wasted on learning their online shopping site conventions. Finally I know what everything means through the Firefox plug-in, I spent the 3rd hour learning on how to fill up the online forms with name, phone number & address.

At the end of the 3rd hour, I was so tired I just click Confirm to confirm the purchase & wait for the bicycle to arrive

First day shopping

2nd day in IUJ, we went to Urasa to shop for our food. Urasa is the nearest town, around 3km from IUJ where shop actually exists.

First thing... there's a very strict schedule for bus leaving from IUJ to Urasa and from Urasa back to IUJ. The bus leaves on the dot, accurate up to seconds. There is a limit on how many people can actually board the bus, but even if the bus is full minutes before the schedule, the bus won't leave. The driver will still stay until the scheduled time before driving off. This is the Japanese working attitude.

There are several supermarkets around here, which we called them "supa".



This is the most common place we buy our groceries, vegetables, ramen, milk etc. Things in Japan are really really expensive. A pack of 4 Fuji apple would cost 400yen, which is RM12. RM3 for 1 apple!!!

Packaged food are more reasonable. At least 1L of milk costs or 1L of orange juice 100 yen (RM3), chocolate bar costs 70yen (RM2)





The second shop which is called Musashi, which means 634 in Japan, mostly sell hardware & daily goods. First day shopping costs me 2000 yen, which is around RM60 O_o

Urasa is really small. On the map, which is A4 size, we can walk from one end of the map to the other end in just 15 minutes. The 2 shops are just across the street.





I would need a fan for my room, since it's still summer and days are still hot at 30 deg C. However, simple fan costs 2000 yen (RM60) puts me off.
1 Spoon costs 100 yen (RM3)
1 plate costs 300 yen (RM9)

I still can't get comfortable with the price here yet.

Monbukagakusho Scholarship (Part 4) - University Placement

Result of Interview




OK, after more than 1 month wait, I got this letter. I was so surprised, because I thought I have flopped the interview. Even the interviewer slept.

Anyway, now here's the hard part. In 1 month, I will have to submit a checkup report and letter of acceptance from the universities.

For the checkup report, I'll just need to go to hospital, give the doctor the list of items to check on my body & send back the report.

However, for the letter of acceptance, I have problem. I'm getting an MBA. In order to be admitted, I'll have to sit for the GMAT, the prerequisite for any MBA programs. For this exam, I have paid RM1000 just to sit for the 4 hour paper. Anyway, GMAT is not a very hard exam, just do the sample papers which can be bought from bookstore and you will be ready.

At the same time, I emailed the university on the result of the nomination for their assistance to get the Acceptance Letter from them. Well, taking into account the time to post the documents & for them to post back, it could as well take as much as 2 weeks, leaving only 2 weeks for them to process. So I sent them the scanned soft copy & send through courier.

Just in time, I got back the confirmation letter & all the documents & able to submit it to the Japan Embassy.

Welcome to the land of automatic

4th September, first day in Japan. Arrived in Narita Airport at 7am together with 2 other Malaysians who would be heading to IUJ as well. The Monbusho staff waited for us & gave us a bit of allowance.

Here I met another Monbusho scholar, from Vietnam and together we traveled.

We took a 1 hour train from Narita to Tokyo, where we spent 2 hours waiting for Shinkansen to take us to Urasa. We sent our 30kg of luggage using the courier service, which cost each of us 1600 yen (RM 48). It's quite cheap comparing the efficiency of the service provided. They said the luggage will arrive the next day.


We took the famous bullet train, Shinkansen from Tokyo to Urasa. From the outside, it looks like a normal train. From the inside, it still looks like a normal train, but you cannot stand. However, when it runs, it's so fast that the picture taken is blur.



At 2pm, reached Urasa, where the IUJ van is waiting for us. There were 2 other people in the bus. Being courteous, we ask whether we should close the the van door.

They said "no, it will close by itself". "Welcome to the land of automatic", said the other guy and truly, the door closes automatically.

Monbukagakusho Scholarship Statistics

Here's a bit of statistics on Monbusho Scholarship for Malaysian.

http://www.mlab.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/%7Eylfoo/Monbusho.html

If you look carefully, for postgraduate scholarship which I applied, around 621 submitted the applications. almost all of them are shortlisted, but a few couldn't make it.
Out of the 518 who sat for the exam, 20% or 107 are shortlisted.
Of those 107 who are shortlisted, 30% or 34 are nominated, successful.

This means, since I am going for the interview for every person who i see on my left & on my right in the embassy on the interview day, one of us will get this scholarship. 544 applications for 34 places which work out to 6% of the people got it.

In contrast, compared to undergraduate, 712 applications for 5 places which work out to ONLY 0.7% of the people got it.

So if you are undergraduate, your chance of getting the scholarship is really really small.

Monbukagakusho Scholarship (Part 3) - Interview

Japanese Government (Monbukagakusho:MEXT) Scholarship 2007 - Notification of Interview



This is the hardest part of the application.

On 17th May I got the letter for the interview. On 23rd June, I will have to prepare everything. I have 1 month to prepare all of these

- Completed application form. I have actually handwritten on all the 4 sets of application form. 8 pages of each form, times 4 = 24 pages of handwritten stuff. That's a lot for me since I have not used the pen for such a long time. These days people type on computer mah...

- List of 3 universities that offer your course (If you have done preparation as I mentioned in Part I then you can skip this). Choose your university carefully. This would be the final list and if you get, you CANNOT change that university! Choosing hard university will give you a hard time, because you might not be admitted to top universities such as Tokyo University.

- Finalized Field of Study. The last chance to write carefully what you wanted to study. The decision of your scholarship will be based on this very much.

- Certified academic records (go back to your university to certify all your certs, degree & transcripts)

- Recommended from university principal & employer. I have problem for this one. I left university quite some time and the principal don't know me anymore. Getting recommendation from my employer will tell them I have intention to leave. This is a very hard thing to get. But anyway, I got both of them.
For the university's recommendation, I went back to my university with a sample of the recommendation letter which I wrote myself, tell him the story why I need that recommendation, let him copy it again & sign it. Getting a professor should give more weight, but I can't confirm this. I just get one of the professor to write it anyway
For the employer's recommendation, I told my manager about it & I'm glad he's more than happy to write it for me. Later I found out he is also leaving the company!!!

- Other documents... should be easy to get. Read the instructions in the Instruction Page 4.

OK, 4 sets of each documents, prepared. I'm ready to go for interview.




NOT.... Interview is not easy. I got 30 minutes to present yourself or all your hard work preparing the documents wasted. So... I actually went all the way to learn back my Japanese, write some sentences, memorize it, write down all the possible questions & answers.

Now, i'm ready to go for the interview.

I went to Japanese embassy, dressed smartly & 2 hours earlier, just to prepare myself mentally. I went into the embassy half an hour earlier than scheduled, expecting to wait. Suddenly, a lady said, since the other candidate is not prepared, I can go inside first. What a shock, as I was still not really prepared yet. Anyway, I went into a room with 6-7 people sitting in front of me. One of it is a Lecturer in UM, representative from JASSO, alumni, representative from the industry, and a few others. They started questioning.

Some of their questions are...
"... why do you choose this course..."
"... what you have done in your undergraduate's thesis..."
"... what makes you choose IUJ as your university... "
"... what will you do if suddenly IUJ has insufficient fund for your scholarship..."
and all sorts of questions.

30 minutes went on and I actually didn't do well in the interview. My talking was so boring that one of the interviewer slept. I'm not sure it's because of me or because it's just right after lunch time. I went home without much expectation.

Here I have attached all the Instruction & the application form for this stage

Instructions
Instruction Page 1

Instruction Page 2

Instruction Page 3

Instruction Page 4

Application Form
Application Page 1

Application Page 2

Application Page 3

Application Page 4

Application Page 5

Application Page 6

Application Page 7

Application Page 8