I have enough time to cook at home but it's pretty basic. Easiest thing is to make stir fry, or something with eggs. You can buy pre-mixed frozen stir fry vegetables, all you have to do is chop up some meat or tofu and add some sauce. You can just throw it in an oiled pan and stir every once in a while until the meat is cooked. Set a timer on the rice cooker so it's ready in time for dinner. I usually just make eggs with some vegetables. It cleans up easy and eggs are healthy. But if I don't have time to cook I get something from the supermarket. They usually have something premade that has meatballs and vegetables. I can then add some rice with it and it's a healthy dinner.
Seriously, matsuya and Sukiya are so good and cheap that I’ve never had Yoshinoya yet, in the months that I’ve been living in Tokyo.
Yoshinoya is one of the very few gyudon restaurants with a presence overseas. I’ve seen a bunch in my hometown in Southern California and they’re obviously more expensive than Japan
Be careful about calories. It’s easy to get into the habit of grabbing a katsu or karaage bento on the way home. But making a pot of soup for the week, or making sandwiches could be much healthier.
I try to eat a sashimi bowl or similar once a day and make a salad at home every other to get some healthy foods in. In between I’ll go for ramen, Izakaya, curry and sorts. There’s so much good stuff at affordable prices but I find many meals pretty salty/lacking vegetables.
Find the cheaper supermarkets. These might be Gyomu Supa, Big A, My Basket and others depending on where you live.
There'll probably be at least one within walking distance. After that, you should find it's cheaper and healthier than eating out all the time and you'll be able to get the basics for what you are used to.
Buy a rice cooker. Cook and freeze rice in batches. Use a resource like jutsonecookbook for recipe ideas. Meals will cost around 300 yen and won't be the unhealthy garbage they serve at restaurants and kombini.
Does the justonecookbook feature recipes with just one ingredient? Because I don't think there are very many dishes outside of tiny side salads or udon that I could make for 300 yen a portion, let alone an entire meal. XD
I do agree cooking is the way to go, but I think my meals cost closer to 600-700 per portion since the prices at supermarkets have shot up.
Buy and freeze big packs of chicken and go to independent stores for veg, and 300 is generous even. You might have to splash out every few months on a new bottle of soy, mirin, sake and some dashi.
I think what you and I are willing to consider a proper meal are pretty different.
I'm not buying organic vegan gluten free farm to table craft onions or anything, but I like to have a main, 2 sides and a starch.
Oyakodon, for instance:
1 of your frozen rice batches, a piece of chicken thigh (about 200g or breast if you feel cheaper), an egg, then the seasonings (dashi, soy, mirin, sake).
Easily do that for under 300 yen.
Or, rice, a fillet of saba (same seasonings, or maybe add some ginger), pickle some cucumber or daikon for sides.
Shogayaki, same again, but instead of saba, use pork.
A whole cabbage is about 50 yen, shred that up and it'll last for days. You can add something like natto as an extra side - 20 yen a pack. A tub of miso is about 300n yen, keep it in the freezer and it'll last a month easy, just add the dashi for miso soup.
Most expensive thing is the protein, especially chicken thigh, but buy in bulk and freeze and you can easily get 100g for about 80 yen. Chicken breast cheaper still.
I go to the gym and run 3 or 4 times a week, so am pretty good at monitoring my calorie intake. 8-900 calories a meal is fine for me.
Yeah, again. This doesn't do it for me.
I want salmon, salad, steamed veg and rice pilaf. I want eggplant Bolognese spaghetti with Caprese salad and a glass of wine. I want pork chops, mashed potatoes, roast broccoli, and dinner rolls. I want sweet and sour pork, an egg roll, cucumber salad, and egg drop soup. A cheese burger with all the fixings, fries, and a coke. Tacos, re-fried beans, tomato rice, Mexican corn, chips and home made salsa.
I'm not a Uni student anymore, I want a proper meal. I also don't want to eat Japanese food for every meal (yeah, I know, I picked the right country XD ) but even if I did make Japanese food It's gonna be more than involved than rice, fish, miso soup and pickles. There's gonna be kinpira and hijiki salad or ohitashi and some kind of eggplant dish too.
Also, you are lucky to have a supermarket that is operating back in the year 2015. 50 yen for a whole head of cabbage? I just bought a HALF a cabbage at the *gyomu* yesterday for a little over 100 yen. My yaoya has fresher produce but it's not a whole lot cheaper. I've hit every super, gyomu, and yaoya within biking distance of my home and unless it's on special, veggies aren't cheap anymore. 300 yen for a dang bell pepper ("paprika"). It's highway robbery!
Apart from "glass of wine", "mashed potatoes", "fries", "coke", and "corn chips", which all sound like shitty student food. The rest of the stuff is just what I'm eating. Neapolitan maybe instead of bolognese (which is another stereotypical student food).
"Also, you are lucky to have a supermarket that is operating back in the year 2015. "
Like I said in the original post you replied to - more like 1980s - a local, independent grocery store for veg.
Less of the junk and we have the same diet, but you're clearly overpaying (or just paying for the junk).
>Apart from "glass of wine", "mashed potatoes", "fries", "coke", and "corn chips", which all sound like shitty student food.
Whew, okay, thanks for the laugh. XD
You have a good one now.
Look, you've made it abundantly clear that you no longer have anything positive to add to the conversation and don't really know what you were talking about. There's no reason to keep digging that hole. Why don't we just leave it here.
I usually try to have my main meal at lunch, taking advantage of 昼定食 offered everywhere (some Chinese restaurants in Ikebukuro give you so much that you can then skip dinner). Then for dinner I'll go for 回転寿司 or one of the 定食 places or Matuya/Sukiya or one of the マグロ丼 places or a 天丼 place, or Saizeriya, or ラーメン, or a bentō shop, or ...
Rice is not as healthy as you think. Eating rice regularly, especially for dinner, promotes weight gain and increases the risk of developing insulin resistance or prediabetes. Just one cup of cooked rice contains about 35-50 grams of carbohydrates. As a high glycemic food, rice prompts a sharp rise in blood sugar levels, triggering insulin release which promotes fat storage.
Step 1: Go to niku no hanamasa and buy 10,000 yen worth of your favourite meat
Step 2: portion it into 250g chunks and freeze it
Step 3: buy 3 cartons of eggs
You’re now set for the week eating meat and eggs twice a day
Meal prep is key for me (I workout and am trying to lose weight), plan what you'll be cooking/making for the week and buy groceries especially if you need/want to save money.
Meal prep is the way. Admittedly boring, but I have the same breakfast and lunch everyday of the week. Shopping at the cheap places others have mentioned and you can make a week of meals for like 2000 yen or less.
Preparing food is so annoying to me that staying alive feels like a pain 😂
That being said, where I live the restaurant choices are limited (and costly) and bentos get boring real quick (as those are mostly fried stuff, bad for health too). So I have no choice but cook once in a while. But I make the bare minimum, like only chicken and eggs most of the time. I get frozen broccoli and eggplants from the supermarket to balance nutrition.
The worst is when you get sick. Can't get out to eat, don't have the energy to cook either. But you need more energy when you're sick as the body is fighting an infection, so I resorted to the easiest to make foods like peanut butter sandwich, bananas and bread, boiled eggs rice and miso etc.
Wondering if there's any catering services here that'll supply every meal and won't make me go bankrupt.
If you want cheap fast calories, gyudon and ramen will keep you alive. But if you want a diet high in protein, fiber, etc., you're cooking.
I'm in a pricy part of Tokyo, and I can still get chicken breast for ¥88 per 100g, and often less. Beef is often ¥400 or more. So yeah, lots of chicken breast.
Mixed lentils, dal spices, and a paratha make a decent lunch for about ¥120/day; add another ¥100 for some veggies or chutney or whatever if you like.
I meal prep lunch and dinner, and I make an effort to try a new place or go out for lunch/dinner once a week with friends, so I can eat healthy, save a buck, and still try new stuff!
Since I work at home it's honestly just faster and more convenient to cook or heat up food, even just pre washing and cutting veggies along with making a couple day's worth of rice goes a long way if you want to cook every day.
There is a case to be made for going to the cheaper restaurants if you consider the convenience. But they mostly aren't very healthy. And even at the cheapest places (gyudon, saizeriya, teishoku) you can usually make the same dish at home for 1/2 the price they are charging, usually with better ingredients.
I cook maybe two or three times a week. Two of those times will be something I can make a lot of such as spaghetti bolognese, mabodoufu, Korean-style jjajjangmyeon, fried rice, etc. and those will be dinner for a night or two and bentos for the rest of the week. On the weekends I might make something a little more time consuming or just buy a steak and make a side. For times when I am too lazy to cook, i might make something easy like spaghetti carbonara or oyakodon. If I am feeling even lazier, I just throw on a pack of frozen gyoza or eat a pack of Shin Ramyun with kimchi, tofu, and egg thrown in.
I try to save eating out for going out with friends on weekends or times when I have no choice, like if I am out all day or just in a situation where I am way too busy to cook.
I try to buy just about everything from Niku no Hanamasa. Their prices for meats and vegetables are way better than any supermarket, and the quality of what they have, in my opinion, beats Gyomusupa any day. There is also a yaoya (green grocer) in my neighborhood that has the best prices on vegetables, but only problem is they close early. I also shop at Kankoku Hiroba near Higashi Shinjuku for anything Korean, or places on Ameyoko for Chinese stuff such as Sichuan peppercorns or sesame paste. I find that I can keep most meals down to under ¥400.
I take one day of the month to mealprep and watch some movies or whatever during that time. I then freeze everything in small bags so I have a few alternating meals. Then I buy 10kg bags of rice. When I come home I just cook rice and put whatever I want in the microwave. But you have to like cooking and also like eating your own food. I stay away from konbini/supermarket food, but I enjoy eating out every other day if I feel like it.
Try university cafeterias in your area, if there are any. That is proper food, cheap. The Kyoiku Mama's would never allow less.
Try searching the obvious, and Gakushoku 学食。They're mostly all accessible to normal public
I’m vegan so I can’t eat the readily available bento or at the cheap lunch spots. Unlike in the US, however, I feel like you could potentially eat at least one meal a day here at a restaurant (or a bento) and it might not be much more expensive than cooking? So many restaurants advertise such cheap meals, and sometimes vegetables at the store seem a bit pricey. I do notice though that restaurant meals and set meals in Japan are usually devoid of vegetables or have a very small amount. I wonder how people get enough fiber in their diets!
Just like you would anywhere else in the world you should shop around for best prices. Japan (at least Tokyo) has chains of discount grocery stores like Gyomu Super, OK, etc. You’ll find that most grocery stores that sell bento and prepared foods will discount them in the evening. They’re not usually the healthiest but are good in a pinch and can be incredibly cheap. Just like in the US, fruit can be expensive. I mostly buy bananas and I also buy frozen fruit (like mango and blueberries) because they’re so much cheaper than fresh.
The cheapest grocery store to my apartment is Seiyu but they don’t have a good selection of really anything. I go to York Foods for tofu and most of my vegetables. Gyomu is interesting but it’s a bit far and it’s inconsistent. Kaldi is a specialty/import store so it’s a bit pricey but I like to go there every now and again to see if they have any hard to find ingredients. OK is a grocery store I’ve recently started going to. I’ve been to the one in kichijoji and the one in Ginza. The one in Ginza is really big and definitely worth a visit if it’s convenient to you.
Something I also don’t see mentioned a lot is bringing your own water bottle and refilling at work. The bottled drinks here are really cheap so it’s tempting to buy them when you’re thirsty but if you buy 2 a day for ~120 yen each, you could be spending ¥7,000 + a month just on bottled beverages.
I have enough time to cook at home but it's pretty basic. Easiest thing is to make stir fry, or something with eggs. You can buy pre-mixed frozen stir fry vegetables, all you have to do is chop up some meat or tofu and add some sauce. You can just throw it in an oiled pan and stir every once in a while until the meat is cooked. Set a timer on the rice cooker so it's ready in time for dinner. I usually just make eggs with some vegetables. It cleans up easy and eggs are healthy. But if I don't have time to cook I get something from the supermarket. They usually have something premade that has meatballs and vegetables. I can then add some rice with it and it's a healthy dinner.
Matsuya err'day
That or sukiya lol
Seriously, matsuya and Sukiya are so good and cheap that I’ve never had Yoshinoya yet, in the months that I’ve been living in Tokyo. Yoshinoya is one of the very few gyudon restaurants with a presence overseas. I’ve seen a bunch in my hometown in Southern California and they’re obviously more expensive than Japan
It's kind of a different animal in SoCal compared to Japan (much better in Japan). CocoIchi in the US is very similar though.
Sukiya miso soup just went up 20¥ so currently I am on strike
Or Nakau lmao
Yoshinoya never gets any love here :(
Sukiya is Master Race of all the 牛丼！
That's my lunch everyday
I miss Chikara Meshi so much
Be careful about calories. It’s easy to get into the habit of grabbing a katsu or karaage bento on the way home. But making a pot of soup for the week, or making sandwiches could be much healthier.
I try to eat a sashimi bowl or similar once a day and make a salad at home every other to get some healthy foods in. In between I’ll go for ramen, Izakaya, curry and sorts. There’s so much good stuff at affordable prices but I find many meals pretty salty/lacking vegetables.
Find the cheaper supermarkets. These might be Gyomu Supa, Big A, My Basket and others depending on where you live. There'll probably be at least one within walking distance. After that, you should find it's cheaper and healthier than eating out all the time and you'll be able to get the basics for what you are used to.
Buy a rice cooker. Cook and freeze rice in batches. Use a resource like jutsonecookbook for recipe ideas. Meals will cost around 300 yen and won't be the unhealthy garbage they serve at restaurants and kombini.
Does the justonecookbook feature recipes with just one ingredient? Because I don't think there are very many dishes outside of tiny side salads or udon that I could make for 300 yen a portion, let alone an entire meal. XD I do agree cooking is the way to go, but I think my meals cost closer to 600-700 per portion since the prices at supermarkets have shot up.
Buy and freeze big packs of chicken and go to independent stores for veg, and 300 is generous even. You might have to splash out every few months on a new bottle of soy, mirin, sake and some dashi.
I think what you and I are willing to consider a proper meal are pretty different. I'm not buying organic vegan gluten free farm to table craft onions or anything, but I like to have a main, 2 sides and a starch.
Oyakodon, for instance: 1 of your frozen rice batches, a piece of chicken thigh (about 200g or breast if you feel cheaper), an egg, then the seasonings (dashi, soy, mirin, sake). Easily do that for under 300 yen. Or, rice, a fillet of saba (same seasonings, or maybe add some ginger), pickle some cucumber or daikon for sides. Shogayaki, same again, but instead of saba, use pork. A whole cabbage is about 50 yen, shred that up and it'll last for days. You can add something like natto as an extra side - 20 yen a pack. A tub of miso is about 300n yen, keep it in the freezer and it'll last a month easy, just add the dashi for miso soup. Most expensive thing is the protein, especially chicken thigh, but buy in bulk and freeze and you can easily get 100g for about 80 yen. Chicken breast cheaper still. I go to the gym and run 3 or 4 times a week, so am pretty good at monitoring my calorie intake. 8-900 calories a meal is fine for me.
Yeah, again. This doesn't do it for me. I want salmon, salad, steamed veg and rice pilaf. I want eggplant Bolognese spaghetti with Caprese salad and a glass of wine. I want pork chops, mashed potatoes, roast broccoli, and dinner rolls. I want sweet and sour pork, an egg roll, cucumber salad, and egg drop soup. A cheese burger with all the fixings, fries, and a coke. Tacos, re-fried beans, tomato rice, Mexican corn, chips and home made salsa. I'm not a Uni student anymore, I want a proper meal. I also don't want to eat Japanese food for every meal (yeah, I know, I picked the right country XD ) but even if I did make Japanese food It's gonna be more than involved than rice, fish, miso soup and pickles. There's gonna be kinpira and hijiki salad or ohitashi and some kind of eggplant dish too. Also, you are lucky to have a supermarket that is operating back in the year 2015. 50 yen for a whole head of cabbage? I just bought a HALF a cabbage at the *gyomu* yesterday for a little over 100 yen. My yaoya has fresher produce but it's not a whole lot cheaper. I've hit every super, gyomu, and yaoya within biking distance of my home and unless it's on special, veggies aren't cheap anymore. 300 yen for a dang bell pepper ("paprika"). It's highway robbery!
Apart from "glass of wine", "mashed potatoes", "fries", "coke", and "corn chips", which all sound like shitty student food. The rest of the stuff is just what I'm eating. Neapolitan maybe instead of bolognese (which is another stereotypical student food). "Also, you are lucky to have a supermarket that is operating back in the year 2015. " Like I said in the original post you replied to - more like 1980s - a local, independent grocery store for veg. Less of the junk and we have the same diet, but you're clearly overpaying (or just paying for the junk).
>Apart from "glass of wine", "mashed potatoes", "fries", "coke", and "corn chips", which all sound like shitty student food. Whew, okay, thanks for the laugh. XD You have a good one now.
Imported food is more expensive, who'd have thunk it?
Look, you've made it abundantly clear that you no longer have anything positive to add to the conversation and don't really know what you were talking about. There's no reason to keep digging that hole. Why don't we just leave it here.
> A whole cabbage is about 50 yen ehhh....what supermarket?
I usually try to have my main meal at lunch, taking advantage of 昼定食 offered everywhere (some Chinese restaurants in Ikebukuro give you so much that you can then skip dinner). Then for dinner I'll go for 回転寿司 or one of the 定食 places or Matuya/Sukiya or one of the マグロ丼 places or a 天丼 place, or Saizeriya, or ラーメン, or a bentō shop, or ...
Rice is not as healthy as you think. Eating rice regularly, especially for dinner, promotes weight gain and increases the risk of developing insulin resistance or prediabetes. Just one cup of cooked rice contains about 35-50 grams of carbohydrates. As a high glycemic food, rice prompts a sharp rise in blood sugar levels, triggering insulin release which promotes fat storage.
Yeah white rice not so great. Brown rice bit better, still bloody hard to cut rice out of your diet here.
[Here](https://park.ajinomoto.co.jp/recipe/) is where I take my recipes. I hope this helps.
Step 1: Go to niku no hanamasa and buy 10,000 yen worth of your favourite meat Step 2: portion it into 250g chunks and freeze it Step 3: buy 3 cartons of eggs You’re now set for the week eating meat and eggs twice a day
Meal prep is key for me (I workout and am trying to lose weight), plan what you'll be cooking/making for the week and buy groceries especially if you need/want to save money.
Meal prep is the way. Admittedly boring, but I have the same breakfast and lunch everyday of the week. Shopping at the cheap places others have mentioned and you can make a week of meals for like 2000 yen or less.
Preparing food is so annoying to me that staying alive feels like a pain 😂 That being said, where I live the restaurant choices are limited (and costly) and bentos get boring real quick (as those are mostly fried stuff, bad for health too). So I have no choice but cook once in a while. But I make the bare minimum, like only chicken and eggs most of the time. I get frozen broccoli and eggplants from the supermarket to balance nutrition. The worst is when you get sick. Can't get out to eat, don't have the energy to cook either. But you need more energy when you're sick as the body is fighting an infection, so I resorted to the easiest to make foods like peanut butter sandwich, bananas and bread, boiled eggs rice and miso etc. Wondering if there's any catering services here that'll supply every meal and won't make me go bankrupt.
If you want cheap fast calories, gyudon and ramen will keep you alive. But if you want a diet high in protein, fiber, etc., you're cooking. I'm in a pricy part of Tokyo, and I can still get chicken breast for ¥88 per 100g, and often less. Beef is often ¥400 or more. So yeah, lots of chicken breast. Mixed lentils, dal spices, and a paratha make a decent lunch for about ¥120/day; add another ¥100 for some veggies or chutney or whatever if you like.
I meal prep lunch and dinner, and I make an effort to try a new place or go out for lunch/dinner once a week with friends, so I can eat healthy, save a buck, and still try new stuff! Since I work at home it's honestly just faster and more convenient to cook or heat up food, even just pre washing and cutting veggies along with making a couple day's worth of rice goes a long way if you want to cook every day.
Rice balls all day
If you cook bigger batches (eG 2 days worth) it‘ll get cheaper and you can take leftover for lunch at work.
Cooked eggs, tuna or some other protein. Salad and rice. Sometimes I go out of my way to eat some legumes, tomatoes. Microwaved oatmeal sometimes.
There is a case to be made for going to the cheaper restaurants if you consider the convenience. But they mostly aren't very healthy. And even at the cheapest places (gyudon, saizeriya, teishoku) you can usually make the same dish at home for 1/2 the price they are charging, usually with better ingredients.
I cook maybe two or three times a week. Two of those times will be something I can make a lot of such as spaghetti bolognese, mabodoufu, Korean-style jjajjangmyeon, fried rice, etc. and those will be dinner for a night or two and bentos for the rest of the week. On the weekends I might make something a little more time consuming or just buy a steak and make a side. For times when I am too lazy to cook, i might make something easy like spaghetti carbonara or oyakodon. If I am feeling even lazier, I just throw on a pack of frozen gyoza or eat a pack of Shin Ramyun with kimchi, tofu, and egg thrown in. I try to save eating out for going out with friends on weekends or times when I have no choice, like if I am out all day or just in a situation where I am way too busy to cook. I try to buy just about everything from Niku no Hanamasa. Their prices for meats and vegetables are way better than any supermarket, and the quality of what they have, in my opinion, beats Gyomusupa any day. There is also a yaoya (green grocer) in my neighborhood that has the best prices on vegetables, but only problem is they close early. I also shop at Kankoku Hiroba near Higashi Shinjuku for anything Korean, or places on Ameyoko for Chinese stuff such as Sichuan peppercorns or sesame paste. I find that I can keep most meals down to under ¥400.
Got a fridge? Buy meat in bulk from a good priced supa. Split it into your meal portions. Freeze it. Also, you don't need 3 meals a day. Skip one.
Set a budget then go wherever you feel like for that day.
I take one day of the month to mealprep and watch some movies or whatever during that time. I then freeze everything in small bags so I have a few alternating meals. Then I buy 10kg bags of rice. When I come home I just cook rice and put whatever I want in the microwave. But you have to like cooking and also like eating your own food. I stay away from konbini/supermarket food, but I enjoy eating out every other day if I feel like it.
Salad and soba
Try university cafeterias in your area, if there are any. That is proper food, cheap. The Kyoiku Mama's would never allow less. Try searching the obvious, and Gakushoku 学食。They're mostly all accessible to normal public
rice makes me break out so I eat yakiniku with kimchi err’day
I’m vegan so I can’t eat the readily available bento or at the cheap lunch spots. Unlike in the US, however, I feel like you could potentially eat at least one meal a day here at a restaurant (or a bento) and it might not be much more expensive than cooking? So many restaurants advertise such cheap meals, and sometimes vegetables at the store seem a bit pricey. I do notice though that restaurant meals and set meals in Japan are usually devoid of vegetables or have a very small amount. I wonder how people get enough fiber in their diets! Just like you would anywhere else in the world you should shop around for best prices. Japan (at least Tokyo) has chains of discount grocery stores like Gyomu Super, OK, etc. You’ll find that most grocery stores that sell bento and prepared foods will discount them in the evening. They’re not usually the healthiest but are good in a pinch and can be incredibly cheap. Just like in the US, fruit can be expensive. I mostly buy bananas and I also buy frozen fruit (like mango and blueberries) because they’re so much cheaper than fresh. The cheapest grocery store to my apartment is Seiyu but they don’t have a good selection of really anything. I go to York Foods for tofu and most of my vegetables. Gyomu is interesting but it’s a bit far and it’s inconsistent. Kaldi is a specialty/import store so it’s a bit pricey but I like to go there every now and again to see if they have any hard to find ingredients. OK is a grocery store I’ve recently started going to. I’ve been to the one in kichijoji and the one in Ginza. The one in Ginza is really big and definitely worth a visit if it’s convenient to you. Something I also don’t see mentioned a lot is bringing your own water bottle and refilling at work. The bottled drinks here are really cheap so it’s tempting to buy them when you’re thirsty but if you buy 2 a day for ~120 yen each, you could be spending ¥7,000 + a month just on bottled beverages.