Seems like an opportunity for me to promote my home country if I’m going to Japan, especially if they’re interested in Malaysia lol.
>Shizuoka native Takaya Kenjo, for one, recently built up a significant nest egg as a participant on the Working Holiday program — a form of intercultural exchange aimed at 18-30 year-olds — over the course of two years in Australia, where the national minimum wage of 21.38 Australian dollars (¥1,990) per hour is more than double the ¥961 available in Japan.
>“I was working at a hotel for $29 an hour on weekdays, and if I worked on a Saturday, it was $32, on Sunday $38, and on public holidays, $54 an hour,” the 24-year old — now in Canada after leaving Australia in July — said via video call, the sense of disbelief still evident in his voice.
>It was during his second year in Australia that, having grown tired of traveling around the country, he settled down to work in a small sleepy town in the country’s Margaret River region, an area hit hard by the COVID-19-enforced loss of migrant workers.
>Combining his morning job as a hotel receptionist with night shifts as a food delivery driver, he also cleaned the hostel where he was staying in exchange for room and board, eventually saving AU$25,000 (¥2.35 million) over the course of ten months — half of which he then used to fund a trip back to Japan before further travel throughout North and Central America.
>Of the money left over, Kenjo said, much of it remains in his Australian bank account due to his belief that the recent weakening of the yen — which reached a three-decade low of nearly ¥152 against the U.S. dollar in late October — is part of a longer-term trend, and that further gains on exchange of the currency may be possible further down the line.
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Seems like an opportunity for me to promote my home country if I’m going to Japan, especially if they’re interested in Malaysia lol.
>Shizuoka native Takaya Kenjo, for one, recently built up a significant nest egg as a participant on the Working Holiday program — a form of intercultural exchange aimed at 18-30 year-olds — over the course of two years in Australia, where the national minimum wage of 21.38 Australian dollars (¥1,990) per hour is more than double the ¥961 available in Japan.
>“I was working at a hotel for $29 an hour on weekdays, and if I worked on a Saturday, it was $32, on Sunday $38, and on public holidays, $54 an hour,” the 24-year old — now in Canada after leaving Australia in July — said via video call, the sense of disbelief still evident in his voice.
>It was during his second year in Australia that, having grown tired of traveling around the country, he settled down to work in a small sleepy town in the country’s Margaret River region, an area hit hard by the COVID-19-enforced loss of migrant workers.
>Combining his morning job as a hotel receptionist with night shifts as a food delivery driver, he also cleaned the hostel where he was staying in exchange for room and board, eventually saving AU$25,000 (¥2.35 million) over the course of ten months — half of which he then used to fund a trip back to Japan before further travel throughout North and Central America.
>Of the money left over, Kenjo said, much of it remains in his Australian bank account due to his belief that the recent weakening of the yen — which reached a three-decade low of nearly ¥152 against the U.S. dollar in late October — is part of a longer-term trend, and that further gains on exchange of the currency may be possible further down the line.