'Cheap' Japanese food?

[MuRaSaKiiNkI]

I'm planning on traveling abroad to Japan to study Japanese, but I hear food is so expensive there, and I'm worried (I only have $2,000 and my friend who went last semester went with $5,000~I'm not rich!). I love trying new food, but due to my poor man's budget, I don't think I'll be able to afford many things beyond ramen, 助けってください！

P.S. I'm looking for a meal from 500円-1,000円

[steven]

If you cook at home, you can average about 300円 for a meal if you're careful. If you eat out, you're gonna be spending about 700-1200円 for a pretty average meal (which will vary by how much you eat). If you do a bit of drinking at an izakaya, it will cost you about 3000-5000円. If you go to a bit of a higher class place, which I think would be hard to go to all by yourself, you'll spend about 5000-10,000円 on a course meal.

It's easy to get into `konbini` food... I don't recommend this. To get full, you'll probably spend about the same amount you'd spend to go out to an actual restaurant, but you're gonna most likely be eating empty calories.

Rice is fairly cheap and will fill you up. There are also a lot of different kinds of noodles-- I eat soba, udon, and somen all the time. You can get a package of those for under 100円 if you do your shopping right (it will cost more for better quality). Cooking stuff like curry (with packaged rue) is easy and will last you a few days. Hayashi rice is the same thing. Another thing that works (and is good for dieting) is getting some cabbage. It's very cheap... and you can cut some up and have it as a side dish to help fill you up. Goma dressing tastes good, but I recommend Sushi no su (寿司の酢)　as it has like no calories and tastes pretty good. I could go on and on about this kind of thing so I'll leave it at this for now.

On the other hand though, if you wanna eat `western` food all the time, it will cost you a pretty penny. Excessive (by Japanese standards) meat will cost you a lot of money. Beer and packaged foods are also more expensive. Unfortunately, fruit and stuff like that can also be extremely expensive, so it might help to learn how to buy stuff like that "in season" or at least when there are sales.

It's good to balance things, but if you wanna eat cheaply, you're gonna be intaking a lot of carbs, so you might want to consider some 運動 if you go the cheap route.

[MuRaSaKiiNkI]

Originally Posted by steven

If you cook at home, you can average about 300円 for a meal if you're careful. If you eat out, you're gonna be spending about 700-1200円 for a pretty average meal (which will vary by how much you eat). If you do a bit of drinking at an izakaya, it will cost you about 3000-5000円. If you go to a bit of a higher class place, which I think would be hard to go to all by yourself, you'll spend about 5000-10,000円 on a course meal. ....

Thanks for replying, I've been doing some research, and I've heard about the vending machines outside noodle restaurants? And a 'beef bowl' sold in a chain restaurant (Toshinoya) for around 600円. I love cooking...but I haven't for a while since working at a restaurant. I don't know if I could still try it, I might set something on fire...

[konbini]

You can eat quite cheaply actually. Japan is no longer expensive. You can eat quite a substantial meal for under 700 yen. It depends where you go. The places with ticket machines for ordering are usually cheap. I even ate some meals for as little as 400 yen.

[cranks]

I just came back from Japan to the states and the food there was actually cheap. for 500円-1,000円, you have a wide variety of selections. Only thing that are expensive are things like pizza and burger.

650 yen Mega beef bowl at Sukiya is huge and has 1200 kcal. or so. They have regular ones (670 kcal.) from 280 yen.

[steven]

I contend that it's still cheaper to make something like that yourself.

Sukiya and Yoshinoya are alright I suppose, but personally I try to stay away from fast food-- so I give a perspective of how to save money on a non-fastfood diet. However, I think that fast food is actually quite expensive for what you get.

Again from personal experience... but I haven't had the best luck with vending machine ticket food. I've found it to be quite mediocre and the serving sizes seem to be a little small. It's also really impersonal which I kinda don't like much. Another thing that I don't like is that while it's seemingly inexpensive, you have to order a bunch of tickets to get a decent meal. Like if you order udon, sometimes you'll have to press a button just to get negi on it!

The only thing close to what I've found to burgers in America here is Freshness burger (I live in the inaka so we don't have many choices for that kind of thing). A meal there will cost about 15-20$ when all is said and done. If you simp out you can get by with about 1000円 but that would be like a hamburger and fries (and their burgers are kinda small).

While I've had thin crusted restaurant like pizzas in Japan, I've never encounted a giant greasy the bomb dot com pizza like they have in America. I was at a take out pizza the other day (to get one as a gift for payback to a friend) and it was 1500円 for a "medium" pizza. Their large would barely be a small in America, let's put it that way.

MuRaSaKiiNkI, if you're looking to save money and experience different kinds of food in Japan, I think you're in luck. Trying to save money and eat like we did in our home countries is pretty much impossible here. Making simple things like Curry and Rice is a no brainer. As is boiling soba or udon (noodles) and stuff like that. When you go out to eat take some mental notes and try to make the things that you see. If you don't know the name of an ingredient, you can try just asking... sometimes people will be happy to tell you! My wife and I do it all the time when we go out and she can make pretty good replications for fractions of the cost.

This might give a little extra insight, at least as far as pizza and dairy products go:
Top twenty pricey perceptions of Japanese goods | 世論 What Japan Thinks

[Sashimister]

We don't even know if OP will have a kitchen, do we?

[steven]

That's true! I didn't think of that... I've also seen some apartments with a "kitchen" in the entry hall way... which is something I wouldn't call a kitchen. That'd be a nice place to make tea for people when they come over, but I couldn't imagine cooking a meal in one of those.

To be honest, I'd pay an extra 1万-2万　a month for a place with a kitchen, as it would probably cost more than that to eat out every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

If you're stuck with a certain apartment or マンション though, then I guess you just have to bite the bullet.

So OP, as Sashimister has pointed out, whether or not you have a usable kitchen will make a difference in your eating habbits.

I hope that you get a kitchen!

[cranks]

Cooking is definitely the best option but it's kind of hard especially when you live alone... I like cooking but lately I mostly buy frozen microwave dinner kind of things. It's just cheaper and more nutritious.

[steven]

On the topic of nutrition, I was always under the impression that microwave food wasn't nutritious (like TV dinners and stuff like that). It might be nutritious if you eat just one of those per meal, but I think any grown man could eat like 4 of those which would kind of defeat the purpose. I used to eat those a lot growing up though...

I guess it's hard to do shopping for just one person... if you really plan things out it can be done, but it is quite a pain. Even if you overbuy and end up having to throw things out, you'll still probably spend less than eating out a bunch. Cooking is hard at first, but usually you start to get better and better. To me the hardest part about cooking is... cleaning up .

There is something a little さびしい about cooking and cleaning up by yourself, but along the same lines as that is going out all by yourself. Some places are just hard to go to all alone!

Also, one other thing that I failed to think about was transporting what you get at a store to where you're gonna live. That can prove to be quite difficult, especially if you don't have a car. This will result in multiple trips to the store per week. Also, having an apartment will usually result in a small fridge, so it's hard to stock up on things when they are on sale because you start to run out of room. That's one of the advantages of Hokuriku, you can get away with having a small fridge in the winter because your entire apartment virtually becomes an entire fridge (and occasionally a freezer...). That means that you can cook soup or curry and not have to put it in your firdge because it will actually be kept cooler outside! How's that for ecomonical thinking

edit: and your beer never gets warm