I finished doing the final tallies on my budge, and here are the graphs of the final breakdowns (it’s two weeks shy of a full year’s worth, but this waas a good time to do it, and most Fellows would be leaving around this time anyway)
I actually ended up being closer to my original plans than I had thought. The only real things I should really point out for future fellows are:
-don’t forget to budget in the cost of outward plane tickets! Like I kind of did!
-be careful about the phone bill – I ended up spending about twice as much per month as I had intended to. Calls are expensive.
-Some food and travel costs were cheaper than they should have been because of the many times I was treated by various people, including most of the times I was staying with Sawa’s family.
-Travel ate up WAY more of my budget than I had intended or anticipated. It was all fun, but be aware of how much it adds up.
-Incidentally, I somehow wildly miscalculated my research expenses in my last budget, which is why it was so high then. It ended up being in the range I had intended, although I had hoped to buy a shamisen and given my overspending in other categories, that seems unlikely right now.
