Nothing much exciting is happening right now, so rather than blog about sitting in a classroom for 3 hours, looking for my pants, and doing hw, I decided to do my first info blog: How to Live on 500 yen a day.
First of all... let me give you an idea about how much yen is worth...
Going by train to a nearby station... ~170 yen
Bunch of grapes: 300 yen
Going by train to another part of the city: ~500 yen
A quarter gallon of milk or 10 eggs: ~200 yen
5 kilogram bag if uncooked rice: 1800 yen
2 gallon jug of cold green tea: 200 yen
average vending machine prices: 100 yen- 150 yen (120 yen for a bottle of coke)
That look on your face when you realiized you JUST cashed your last traveller's check: priceless.
New video game release: 4000-6000 yen
rice cooker: 6,000 yen (cheap and sucky)- 20,000 yen (average)
Weekly Shonen Jump: 230 yen
From my experience, it is important to have 2 meals a day...
1. A well rounded, balanced, nutritional meal. Cheapest stuff possible, but must be good quality (as in, not rotting) preferably lunch.
2. Cheapest, most filling meal possible. Preferably dinner.
For 1, I eat at the dining hall. It costs me 400 yen to fill up on rice, salad, chicken, a couple various vegatables, and noodles.
Sometimes I still feel a little hungry afterward. At this point, drink at least 4 cups of water. (2-3 tall glasses) its important to stay hydrated, and you may not want drinks out of your faucet.
For anyone who can cook, try rice, beans, carrots, a few lumps of meat, mushrooms... I dunno, anything you can whip up. Stir fry is easy. Keep your lunches varied and nutritional.
Living solely on instant noodles is BAD. Its cheaper, but not worth getting sick and depriving your body of nutrients.
Meal one is your expensive meal. Meal 2? Easy. Pasta. Easy to cook, you can't mess it up. It's cheap, it's filling, it's wood. It's pasta, it's pasta, it's better than bad, it's good!
(Sorry everyone, I felt like I just HAD to throw in the
Log reference here)
ANYWAY. Yeah, pasta. Mostly just to fill you up. This is important. If you've had enough nutrition in a day, no need to eat any more expensive food that day. A cheap filler is all you need. Pasta is it. It costs about 100 yen here for 300 grams of pasta... thats 2 servings. They make sauce packets here too for 100 yen each... boil the packets in water and pour on the sauce... mmm... I eat those a lot.
Food to avoid:
-"Instant (insert food here)"
Do your best to avoid instant food. "Oh, its easy and quick to make!" Yeah... it is. "Ohh, I ate instant ramen every day for lunch for a month. I think my heart stopped." Yup. Need I say more?
-Food only made in your country:
Some foods you may be sooo used to you'll find that you are buying them in a foriegn country. Prices can radically change. Milk... bread... for example. Milk and bread aren't so big here. They're more expensive. Ritz crackers? Expensive import... try some rice crackers instead. Hamburger? Try fish now. Just adapt and build your range of taste.
-"The hundred yen shop":
Yes. Hundred yen shops are awesome in Japan and they kick 12 kinds of American dollar store butt. But... they do have 100 yen pasta and ramen... but is that stuff the only stuff you're going to buy???
-"Ice cream" (and other favorite treats)
ohh... man... I LOVE ice cream. But I only recently realized how expensive it is. 200 yen for that small of a cone? Jeez... it will be impossible to even eat a cone every week. Prices add up in the long run... limit your treats, but don't absolutely deny them. Ice cream is my anti-depressant, I won't eat it every day, but you bet I'm still going out for it.
-The same thing over and over:
I'm starting to feel sick of pasta... bleh...
Now, a couple questions I have so far on Japanese food...
First of all: milk and eggs. Starting with milk. I don't see milk... anywhere. Most (but not all!) convenience stores have milk in 190-200 yen quarter gallons. And... no one buys it. Or it seems that way. By the low quantities of milk I've seen sold in stores, I would think Japanese only buy milk for cooking. Where do they get their calcium? Or they just don't??? Also... the Japanese don't seem to have a concept of the word "gallon". At supermarkets, that 2 liter of green tea... is the only big thing there. everything else is... a liter at most. Like milk. You can't buy ANYTHING in bulk in Japan except rice.
Then... eggs. Japanese seem to LOVE eggs. They mix raw eggs into things. They throw hard boiled eggs in Ramen. They put a fried egg on a serving of chow mein. Isn't part of the Japanese religion buddhist? Can buddists eat eggs? I dunno. By how I see Japanese eat... they eat like at least 1 egg a day. But no milk???
Also, rice. How can someone have rice with every meal??? You know what rice does? Clogs up the ol' number 2 as I call it. I will not eat rice every meal. Once every other day seems right.
Another issue I have with Japanese food is... salt. Sodium. Ramen is full of it. And in homecooked meals I always see pickled vegatables and fish. And miso soup. Miso with almost every meal. And soy sauce is a very commonly used sauce in japan (and is salty). How can these people ingest so much sodium and still be alive?
And... there's ginger and wasabi... but that's a more personal dislike because I hate spicy food.
That's about all I got right now. Just some bottom lines: spending too little is just as bad as spending too much. Don't undereat, but remember nutrition. A treat once in a while is great, but don't go buying ice cream every day. Eat as much as you need, never overeat. Drink only as much milk as you need for calcium. Lay off instant noodles.
Oh man... I could sure go for a chocolate milkshake with a half gallon of oreo ice cream right about now... with chicken pot pie for dinner right before that... with baked and buttered dinner rolls... corn on the cob... a stuffed turkey... creamy gravy... mashed potatoes... cranberry sauce... and... um. I think I shouldn't blog my daydreaming. I better go sleep.
Mm... Frosted Flakes... Honey Bunches of Oats... I miss cereal too...
