Cost of the trip to Japan

Some of you may be wondering how much did my 2-months internship cost. Today, I will present a summary of the money I spent in the 2 months. The university did provide me with partial scholarship which covered approximately the fare of the plane ticket, but I did not subtract the amount from the analysis for completeness.

So here's the cost breakdown (in Thai baht, using the conversion of 100 JPY = 32 THB).

The total is 116,339 THB, but let me explain each categories.

Plane Ticket: This is self-explanatory. The cost of an economy class round-trip ticket between Thailand and Japan.

Food: All the eatings I did in Japan. A cheap meals at the cafeteria cost approximately 500 JPY, but I've also had meals in the range of 1000 - 1500 JPY.

Accommodation: My room fee at Sakura-kan. It's a special facility for researchers at AIST, so the price is quite low.

Transportation: My accommodation is right inside AIST, so I don't need daily transportation to go to work. This section mainly consists of me traveling around for sightseeing.

Souvenir: Also self-explanatory. Things I've bought for my friends, family and teachers.

Other: This section includes essentials such as soap, other less-essential spendings such as entrance fee to tourist spots or other things I've bought for myself.

About AIST

My internship has finished and I've safely returned to Thailand. In this post, let me introduce a little bit about AIST, the research institute I did my internship at.

The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) is a public research organization largely funded by the government. AIST in its current form has been established recently in 2001, but it predecessor has been active since 1882. AIST’s main headquarters are located in Tokyo and Tsukuba, with my workplace being the Tsukuba campus.

In many places inside the campus, AIST’s charter together with the motto “Full Research in Society, for Society” can be found. The content of its charter includes “Accurate Assessment of Social Trends”, “Creation of Knowledge and Technology”, “Application of Research Findings” and “Responsible Conduct”.

AIST conducts many fields of research including energy, geology, chemistry, biology, materials, IT, health and many more. Because I'm studying Computer Science for my bachelor, my internship is at the Information Technology Research Institute (ITRI) whose job is to perform research on various IT services in order to bring improvement to the society. Within the ITRI, I am in the Grid Infraware Research Group, which does research on the infrastructure of today’s popular “grid computing” or “cloud computing”.