I've been following a lot of the tips on Japan Packing Tips on About.com. Important ones include carrying multiple small suitcases instead of one giant one (which is apparently a totally Western thing to do. In that same vein, I'm not packing sneakers but bringing comfortable slip-offs) and getting all the money for rent and everything put in envelopes and separated. And packing away socks I'm not ashamed of. (I don't notice how many of my socks have holes till I actually look at them)
We had a bit of a snare with Warabi House having a staff holiday on Wednesdays when we'll be coming, so I'd advise future students to try scheduling a flight on the weekend instead, preferably in June after Memorial Day Weekend.
Definitely pack an umbrella since June is the beginning of the rainy season. I'm taking one with me in my carry-on luggage. Right now I've got two check in bags, a small bag for passport and misc items, and a backpack with my notebooks and laptop. I've got my bags down to circa 25 pounds each, but I'll be doing a lot of carrying and running (carefully!) up and down stairs for the next few days.
Two of the three meals I'll probably be eating in the cafeteria on campus depending on the cost, since I've heard it's pretty cheap, and I'll have to make food at home, so I bought a packet of Japanese curry stock and made it for dinner yesterday to see if it's much different than making Indian curry. It's actually pretty good if you use actual sticky rice instead of our regular basmati rice.
Curry is apparently really popular in Japan (YES, I'm saved. Thank you, Britishers for taking curry from India and transplanting it to Japan!) and has a lot of delicious flavours, so one option is going down to Tsukiji fish market to get shrimp and putting it in curry. (Oh how ironically times always seem to drift back to making early morning fish runs for my grandmother at the Panaji fish market in Goa)
On the subject of food, I gave a lot of thought to what I would get Kageyama-san, Sugiyama-san, and Matsuura-sensei to thank them for having me over and helping me so much (see Japan Packing Tip 6), and I settled on the closest I could get to tea biscuits in America. I figure they're Pepperidge Farm, so they're delicious, they're practical and won't take up space (especially if they like the biscuits ^_^), and very importantly don't have a lot of chocolate on them so they won't melt in the heat.
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