Transportation in Tokyo for students (and normal people too)

There are many transportation companies in Tokyo that it might be a mess sometimes. However, you can be a pro after 1 month living here.

There are basically 3 big companies:
1. Tokyo Metro (metro, only inside tokyo)
2. Toei Line (I dont use it much because it does not cover cool places in tokyo)
3. JR (train , crowded train :D and it goes to outside tokyo too)
4. Other minor companies like Skytree line, Tobu line, Keisei, Tsukuba express,...

If you are student in University in Tokyo, you can use the unlimited rides discount on the line between your house to school which is about 30 to 400 euros per month  :D depends on how far your house is. You can calculate the monthly fee on www.navitime.co.jp/ by putting the metro station of your house and your school to the depart and destination, then search!
and then scroll down to see this in the search result

This means that for university students, 6 months from Nishi arai station to yotsuya station is 38140 yen per month. It is twice as expensive if you are not a student :(.

This can be cool if you live somewhere that the metro line from your house to the school can go through cool places like Ueno, Tsukiji, Ginza, Ikebukuro, Asakusa etc,. then you can enjoy "free" or "unlimited" rides to go to these cool place after school or anytime you want. This fact could be considered when you try to find houses.

The monthly ticket price for students also depends on how many companies included in the line. For example if you live in Ikebukuro and your school is in Yotsuya, there are 3 options

1. JR Yamanote + JR Chuo (transit in Shinjuku)
2. JR Yamonote + Marunouchi line (transit Shinjuku)
3. Only Marunouchi line

Based on Navitime, option 1 is the cheapest and then option 3 is the 2nd cheapest and please do not choose option 2, the combination of different companies brings the most expensive option, it is more expensive to choose your monthly ticket going through JR and Marunouchi line than only Marunouchi line even though only Marunouchi line is longer.

So really, choose wisely the line that you are going to travel. If you like to explore things a lot and do not mind wake up a bit earlier to go to school because the line is longer :D  do not hesitate to pay a little bit more to go on the longer line ;). In the ticket office, they will let you choose what you want and pay accordingly.

In my case, I live in Nishi arai and study in Yotsuya. There are 3 options for me

1. Tobu line - Hibiya line - Marunouchi line
2. Tobu line - Chiyoda line - Marunouchi line
3. Tobu line - Hibiya line - JR Chuo line

We chose option 1 because it can go to Ueno, Akihabara, Tsukiji, Ginya and Kokkai gijidomae so whenever we go to these places, we do not have to think for the fee and that is awesome.

If you have any question, I can answer :)

Stay tuned!

Flight and House!!!!

After dealing with different papers in your home country, you will need to start to fight in another battle called "Finding cheap place to stay and cheap flight to go" ;)

I. Finding flight

I believe you are already a super traveler and familiar with your different website to find cheap flight like
https://www.skyscanner.net/
https://www.ebookers.com/
http://www.edreams.com/
and
http://www.momondo.com/
already.

Flight to Tokyo from Helsinki is about 500-700 euros. To me, the most comfortable flight should be no more than 2 transits and last about 10-14 hours. More than 2 transits and long distance light will make us super tired especially moving around a new place with big luggage.

In addition, it is better to fly to Haneda than Narita airport because the public transport from Haneda takes only less than 30 mins to Tokyo center with only 600 yen max while it might take more than 1000 yen from Narita and the travel time will be 1200 yen to 2700 yen :D

Our flight was by SAS and transited in Copenhagen with the price of about 670 euros yo Narita as the cheapest option because we booked it quite close to the departure time so I think when you receive your CoE already, it is good time to book your ticket. No need to wait until you have your visa because the CoE is quite sure that you can go already :).


II. Finding houses

There are some rules you should follow and it is pretty much the same rules as finding flight ;) so you need to be sure where is your university and which metro line goes through your university's station and then follow the line and find house based on that. The price, comfortability and the distance will be trade-off meaning that you can only pick two out of three criteria ;). In our case, we picked price and comfortability (I will tell you later).

Your university will provide you dorm but your dorm might be more expensive than market houses and also the transportation might be tricky (even though it is the school's dorm). So you should really do some research before hand.

There are some online place where you can find a place:

https://tokyosharehouse.com/eng/
http://www.sakura-house.com/en
https://www.facebook.com/RealEstateJapan/?fref=ts
https://www.kabocha-b.jp/en/001/
http://www.chintai.net/ (this place required you some skills in Japanese but the price is very cheap here)
and of course the most awesome place that we all know
airbnb.com

Some of the above page has the money currency as yen and they usually use the word "man" or something like this  "4.2万円" which means 42000 yen. The kanji 万 means ten thousand and of course 円 is how you write yen in kanji.

HOW MUCH IS REASONABLE?

I would say it depends on your budget. You should benchmark with the price of the house plus the transportation to the price of the dorm that your school provides and you can see. Some of my friends are happy with their houses in Yotsuya (near Sophia University) and in Shinjuku and they are ready to pay 500 - 800 euros for that because it is near the school and near the coolest place in Tokyo so it is easy to parties :D. And then there is me, who lives 50 mins away from school by train and metro but only pay less than 180 euros so it is really your choice. Like I said, you just need to trade off among MONEY, DISTANCE and COMFORT.

ADDITIONAL MONEY

There are plenty of additional money besides the rent so please be aware of this or else you will be surprised :D:

• Deposit (one month’s rent) 
• Key money (one month’s rent) 
• Agency fee (up to one and a half months rent) 
• First month’s rent = 80,000
• Property insurance = 15,000
• Maintenance fee = 10,000
• Key exchange fee = 12,000

However, you can avoid these ridiculous money by choosing the agency or site wisely, i.e. there is no such additional fee in airbnb or in tokyo sharehouse.

HOW DID WE FIND OUR PLACE?

We set the minimum price that we are willing to pay (e.g. 350 euros) which is later on become the filter on the searching sites. We used mainly tokyo sharehouse and airbnb since there seems to be no additional fee. After almost 2 months looking around and contacted many houses, we finally found a newly built sharehouse from GG house management on airbnb. Here is there official website

http://gghouse.co.jp/en/

They have many houses available in the north of Tokyo and the service and the price is very reasonable. There is no ridiculous additional money and they have English speakers to assist you.
There will be a post about my experience with GG house later :D.

Stay tuned!