Cheap Japanese Food (??)

Who says living in Japan is very expensive? I don’t think so. Nowadays, living in Japan is as the same as living in America or Australia in some ways. The food cost, transportation, is stil ok. Maybe the most expensive one is the accomodation in my opinion, especially in Tokyo. So many people come to Tokyo for work it is getting very crowded, small apartment being build and offering expensive rent cost.

This time I want to share especially focusing on food. In Japan, you can search for food as cheap as 280 yen until as high as 6000 yen, you choose. Not need to be afraid there is no food stall here and there. Even you can have bentos from the supermarket (or small convenience store) and all you have to do is to buy it and heat it on the microwave (even sometime they have the microwave and free to use for customer!). Usually big department store sell SO MUCH type of bento you’ll be confused which one to try. The bigger the supermarket the bento type will much more varies.

Photos below is one of the example of bento boxes sold in Seiyu, one of the famous supermarket in Japan.

  

They sell everything from salad, pasta, onigiri, japanese food, and so on. They all ranged from 280 yen, until 600 yen. Even sometimes they sell trayed rice only / appetizer only. If you bring your own rice, all you have to do is buy the complimentary. Easy life, eh??

And this one is from small convenience store, 7Eleven (yea they have 7-11 too there). Not bad, huh? 

Although the choice is'nt that much at least you know lah you won't die of hunger in Japan. Hungry? Go to konbini, problem solved. Unless you are too lazy to walk to konbini, go die. hahaha.

What is the best thing about supermarket bento?? Well, if you quite ignorant about the quality, you can wait until past 7 p.m and usually they give all these bentos BIG DISCOUNT since if it’s not sold they have to throw it all to maintain the quality. SO, you can find some much more cheaper than 280 yen bento above 7 pm every day. EVERY DAY. Horraaay for that!

Bought this discounted bento. Still good!! Rice topped with salmon, tuna, squid, and other thing I don't know but delicious!

Even here sometimes I found a store specialized in selling bentos only. However, if you are sick of bentos, you can try to go to these kind of store: They sell menus usually from a machine that you have to enter your money first and pick the menu. After that the coupon will come out and give it to the staff there and just sit! Usually this kind of restaurant sells food ranged from 280 yen to the maximum of 800 yen. The portion is big too! Several examples are Yoshinoya, Matsuya (pic1), Chikara Meshi (pic2) and Nakau (pic3) below.

 

The machine, coupon, and my order. Steak for only 680 yen. What???

However, in these kind of restaurant, you cannot spend too much time eating and talking. They are a (semi) fast food restaurant that usually visited by only one person or two person eating alone, finish eating, then go. No room for chit chat, especially when it is crowded. Suitable for eating alone, not suitable for group eating, as sometimes you will be separated by seat (they usually don't have the dinner table type, only bar).

For a much proper restaurant (without ticket machine), usually they sell menus from 700 yen until 2000 yen.  Some example below are listed.

Eat at Danny's. This cost me about 890 yen (include the fancy drink).

 Eat at 100 yen Sushi Shop. I ordered about 7 plates for only 735 yen for total. Matcha are free!

Me and my friend that night. Happy, feeling full and not bankrupt. Pfiuh.

After around one month here, I found that most common cheap food I found are rice topped with meat (“gyudon”,”katsudon”), curry rice, and ramen. Besides of that, it is usually being sold above 700yen. Vegetables is more expensive in Japan rather than meat, so usually cheap food rarely comes with a lot of vegetables. I usually buy salads if I really want to eat vegetables. And then so much food using pork for it’s ingredients here. Have to be much more careful if you can’t eat pork.

For me, 2000 yen per day is more than enough to budget your expense for food. However, if you want to eat fancy stuff in cafe, big fancy restaurant, of course you need more than that. After all, expense is based on each one lifestyle right? I hope this article will help you all to imagine about the food expense in Japan.

Nb: Use a little bit of your budget to try desserts from convenience store. From cream puff, long roll cake to purin and stuff, it is amazingly cheap and delicioussss!! I recommend the yakipurin, creampuff, cream roll. 

Happy eating, SAVING, and see ya on next post!! Jahh!!