Since I came to Japan, most of my posts basically say the same thing: “Look, I’m in shiny Japan. I’m working a lot, and enjoying my time here.”
Well, I wanted to change the pace a little bit by talking about the cost of food here. I’m doing this because when I chose to make the move to Japan, everybody told me that eating in Japan was extremely expensive. So after six months, I think I finally figured out that that statement is both true and false. Dining out, is expensive. It’s expensive anywhere you live. The lifestyle I led in the states was one that I would eat out three or four nights a week, and sometimes I would cook for myself, but it certainly wasn’t common. Also, eating like an American here is very expensive. Most of the foods that are common here that aren’t common in the states. For instance, rice is eaten with almost every meal. They don’t eat 8-16 oz steaks here. If you want to find one, it will cost a lot of money. Foreign fruits and vegetables are also very expensive (one cantelope costs over $10.00). The price for a liter of milk here is about the same as the price for a gallon in Oklahoma (and it tastes terrible here).
When I cooked for myself in Tulsa, I found that I would go to the store, and spend around $20 for a meal, sometimes a little less, but not much. It always ended up being more expensive than it would have been to just go out to eat. Even the items that I would buy once and use again and again seemed very expensive (I was paying around $10.00/lb for good rice). I would cook, have extra, and it would go to waste, because I’ve never been very good with left-overs.
At first, when I came to Koriyama, I was eating out a lot. Primarily, because I wanted to get a taste for local cuisine, but also because something as mundane as shopping at the supermarket was a chore. It was difficult, confusing, and stressful. Everything was in a foreign language, and it all looked so different.
So, now that I’ve figured out the whole shopping thing, I noticed that I’m actually paying a lot less for food. So here’s a brief rundown of one of my dinners:
Package price first, then serving price (if applicable)
Rice – 5kg – $15.00 – 1 serving (100g) – $0.30
Frozen Vegetables – 1 package – $1.00 – 1 serving – $0.50
Hamburg Steak (essentially a Salisbury Steak) – 1 Steak – $1.00
Eggs – 10 – $1.50 – 1 egg – $0.15
Rolls – 6 – $1.50 – 1 roll – $0.25
Misc Costs (oil, butter, drinks, etc) – $1.00
Total – $3.20
That’s dirt cheap. I wish I had learned to do this cheap food kind of thing when I was back home. Maybe I would have been able to save much more.
Japan is known for their quality for a reason. The cheap foods here are about the same quality as our middle-quality foods. I haven’t noticed the use of things like hydrogenated blah blah in a lot of stuff unless it’s imported. Secondly, it’s not difficult to find packages for one here. In the states, most things are sold in Texas sized packaging. This tends to be wasteful for single people since they can’t finish the whole thing off before it goes bad. It makes sense, since there are a lot of families. In Japan, there is a large single population, so many foods are packaged for one.
I am, by no means, saying that it’s cheaper to eat in Japan than in the States. I am saying that, for me, once I figured out what types of things are good and easy to make, I started spending a lot less money on food than I did at home. I’m sure, that buying food for a whole family would be very expensive here, though, depending on what you eat.
On the downside, it’s almost impossible to find decent beer here, and all the beer is very expensive. Buying one beer costs around $2.50 in a store. I have heard that there are crazy taxes on beer so that they can protect the Sake industry. I can actually buy Japanese beer in Oklahoma cheaper than I can in Japan. It’s pretty ridiculous. On the other hand, sake and liquor is dirt cheap. A bottle of Crown here is about $3-4 less than in Oklahoma. Strangely enough, Jack Daniels is about the same price or a little less, than in Tulsa, and they love it. Needless to say, I was pretty shocked to see a bottle of Jack Black sitting on the supermarket shelf.