| JFMF TRAVEL ADVICE |
BEFORE YOU LEAVEPassport |
Before you leave there are several things you should take care of. The first is making sure that you obtain a passport if you do not already have one. If you already have a passport please check to make sure it does not expire while you are in Japan or near this time. If it is set to expire you should renew your passport before leaving. If you do have an up to date passport that is not in danger of expiry please continue to the next section. If you do need a passport please read on.
Obtaining a passport these days is a bit more time consuming than it used to be, due to new laws and regulations. Additionally, passports are now required when travelling to our neighbors Mexico and Canada. How does this effect you? Because of this new requirement it takes considerably longer for your passport application to be processed. The first thing you should do upon getting your acceptance letter is to apply for your passport. The government has a very informative page with all of the information you need on how to get your passport. Please visit: http://www.travel.state.gov/passport/passport_1738.html.
Some things to keep in mind. The passport agencies will no longer accept hospital issued birth records in leiu of an official state birth certificate. If you do not have your original state issued birth certificate you must obtain one before you can apply for your passport. I had this happen to me and it delayed the process so that I had to pay for expediated passport service. You want to avoid that if you can as it is very expensive. I used VitalCheck to obtain my birthcertificate and I received it within a few days. My husband also applied for his birth certificate and it took a bit longer. The reason for this is that New York (where he was born) takes longer to process birth certificates than Pennsylvania (where I was born). If you are even thinking of applying to JFMF I would apply for your passport and/or birth certificate so that you do not need to rush at the last minute.
Your passport photo can be taken at some of the passport agencies, but it is a lot less expensive to get your photo at your local Walgreens (or similar type of store). Additionally, the wait times to send in your passport application seem to be less at locations where you do not need to get your photo taken. It would have taken me over a month to submit my passport application at the post office and I could do it at the same day at the courthouse. The difference is that at the courthouse you need to bring your own photo and at the post office they take it for you. |
Packing |
PACK LIGHT! I know you will hear this over and over, but take it to heart. I ended up packing all white, grey black clothes as I could mix and match them easily.
Clothing
Dress in Japan is not as casual as it is in the United States and you must remember you are representing not only your school and school district but you are representing your country. For this reason you really want to respect local custom with your dress. No one wants to reinforce the bad American tourist stereotypes!
My clothing advice for women:
DO:
1. Bring at least one pair of comfortable walking shoes. You will be doing a LOT of walking. I purchased a pair of Mary Jane sneaker/shoes. This way I could wear them with slacks when I was doing official tours and I could wear them with socks and shorts when I was sightseeing. If you want to see what they look like please visit: Amazon. They are not the most attractive shoes... but they are VERY comfortable. When I purchased them initially, I planned on only using them for Japan, but now I find myself wearing them to school to teach in. I love them!
2. Bring a pair of low heels. I found that between my low heels and my sneaker/shoes I had enough shoes to cover all of my outfits from my formal dress for the receptions to my tourist clothes. You really do not want to bring more than two pairs of shoes. They waste valuable space.
3. Bring one or two pairs of long shorts for your free sightseeing time. You should NEVER wear shorts on your official tours, however, if you are travelling in the summer you will appreciate them when you go to places like the fish market.
4. Bring some clothespins so that you can handwash your clothes. Laundry service at Japanese hotels is very expensive. Some people also brought some string to hang clothes, but I found all of my hotels had string in the shower. I handwashed a lot of my clothes and it worked very well!
5. Bring a raincoat if you are travelling in June. The June cohort is visiting Japan during its rainy season. We were lucky not to encounter too much rain, however, we did get rained on a bit! If you are travelling in October it gets a bit cold and you may want to travel with a coat. I have not visited Japan in October so I cannot say with certainty what the weather is like, but I have heard you should pack a couple sweaters and you will not be needing shorts.
DO NOT:
1. Wear tank tops, short shorts or other overly revealing clothes. I know this may be hard if you are travelling in the summer as it gets very hot, but please respect the fact that most Japanese find tank tops and short shorts too revealing.
2. Wear flip flops. I brought a pair just for clunking around my hotel and I made the mistake of wearing them on my free day. My feet STILL hurt. There is far too much walking to be done wearing flip flops.
3. Bring large bottles of perfume. You will be charged import taxes.
Other non-clothing tips:
1. Bring a scrapbook or photo album to share with the students you meet as well as with your host family. Many of the people you meet in Japan will know little to no English, however, photos are a universal form of communication. I brought my scrapbook (This scrapbook was my first and was made specifically for the JFMF trip.) with me when I visted the schools and the kids all loved to see pictures of my students, family, pets etc.
2. Even though Japan supports a strong gift giving culture, JFMF will ask you not to bring a large number of gifts for the people you meet. You should only bring a small gift for your host family. The gift for your host family should be something unique to where you live. I brought myhost family some cactus candy, cactus jelly and some books about Arizona. The books were largely photo pictorials of the Grand Canyon since I was unsure of their English proficiency. You can also bring items for students at the schools you visit, though you should always give them to the TEACHER to give to the students. Do not give gifts directly to students.
3. Make sure you bring at least one small bag with wheels to bring with you when you travel to your host city. You do not want to lug huge bags with you.
4. Bring one empty bag with you so that you can fill it with gifts and souveniers. Even if you hate to shop (like me) you will be surprised how many things you pick up.
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Money |
1. Not all places take credit cards so you want to carry cash. Be prudent, however, and do not carry large amounts of cash with you at any given time.
2. Currency exchange is not difficult in Japan, however, I found it easiest to get currency in advance at my local bank.
3. If you run out of Japanese money and have American currency you can usually convert currency at your hotel. All of my hotels had currency exchange.
4. Bring your ATM card. You can withdraw Japanese money from the ATMs at the post office using your american debit card. |
Communicating with Friends & Family in the States |
1. A lot of people use phonecards for this. I cannot give advice on this as I did not use one. I also did not use pay phones. I chatted with my husband for free using Skype.
2. In order to use Skype you need to have a computer. Bring a laptop with you if you can and bring a headset with a microphone. Make sure to install Skype on your laptop as well as on the computer of whoever you will be skyping (calling). I would strongly advise testing it out before you leave.
3. Another way to communicate with people in the states is to create a blog. I created a blog of my trip so that my students, friends and family could follow along on my journey. You may visit my blog here: MY BLOG. WordPress is very easy to use and people really seemed to enjoy having the blog. DO NOT SPEND ALL YOUR TIME BLOGGING!! Some people ended up spending all of their time blogging and they regretted not getting out and exploring. I usually spent little time in the morning, evening summarizing what I did. You can write more later.
4. If you plan on bringing a camera with you, having a computer is a great way to avoid having to spend a million dollars on memory cards for your camera. You can dump pictures to the laptop daily and even post a few on you blog. |
