Quote:
Originally Posted by RealJames
I spend 100$ a day on food and random stuff and I'm not even on vacation lol, this is everyday life.
I go out with my gf to eat nearly every night, that's about 6000yen just for that. Then lunch and whatever else I do quickly adds up to 100$ easily.
My lifestyle is decent though.
If I were visiting Japan, I'd budget 200$ a day excluding hotels, most days you'll spend only 100 but you need to know that when something is expensive, it's like nose-bleed expensive, and tourists often get sucked into them.
By the way, price differences between lunch meals and dinner meals are huge!
The kushikatsu place near my house which I love to death is 1200yen for all you can eat 70mins + 210yen for all you can drink at lunch time. For dinner it's 2500yen all you can eat, and there's a silly little dish of nonsense everyone has to buy that costs like 300yen per person. More than double easily! And this is a low-end restaurant, not even close to a pricey or nice place.
I recommend eating out for lunch (or breakfast if you are waking up on holiday-schedule  and eating in for dinners, convenience store foods are quite good actually compared to what I was used to in the west.
If you take taxis, there's a new kind of taxi these days with a 500 on the roof, they are WAY cheaper than all the other ones, the starting fare is 500yen and the meter goes up much much slower. |
Well to give some contrast to this.. I eat breakfast at home, probably costing 120 yen a day at most, I usually teach at elementary school so lunch is 250 yen, and dinner is cooked by my fiance which probably does not cost more than 1000 yen (ten bucks) for both of us but an average of 750 yen i suppose (including energy costs)... so you do not have to live an 1man yen ($100) a day lifestyle if you do not want to. But as a tourist, if you wanna go cheap there are plenty of routes.. for one.. stick to convenient stores and cheap mom and pop places... I firmly believe that as long as you are not a pig you can eat every meal out in Japan for 600 yen or less, that includes tax and the non-existant tip.