Last week I shared how much I’m paying for rent, health insurance, and transportation in Japan, and it turns out that I’m saving quite a bit! In the second half, let’s see how my other expenses measure up…
Food
Groceries Back Home: $150 ~ $250/month
Groceries in Japan: ¥15,000 ~ ¥25,000 ($150 ~ $250, estimated)
Winner: Tie
Back home I cooked almost every night (though some nights I loosely defined “cooking” as prepping a box of mac and cheese) as part of my regular routine, and that’s mostly been the case in Japan now that I’m more settled. During my first few weeks here I found myself relying more on convenience store lunches (which are excellent) and pre-prepared foods from the grocery store, which actually worked pretty well since there’s a lot of sushi, noodle, and meat dishes you can get for around ¥400-1,000 ($4-10), especially in the evenings when they start marking down the prices!
Squid on a stick at at the Japanese supermarket. (I usually steer clear of these…)
Now that my kitchen’s all set up, most of my meals are simple ones I can prep with basic ingredients: my go-to’s are stir-fried vegetables with some meat over rice, pasta with some sort of sauce, ramen or other noodles, and gyoza (Japanese-style dumplings). I’m trying to expand that repertoire little by little, though, and I might do a longer post just about cooking later if anyone’s interested ;-)
My Japanese fridge, just under four feet tall by 1.5 feet wide (note dish drainer on top for size comparison).
My Japanese refrigerator is halfway between a real fridge and a dorm fridge, with three short shelves and some taller space on the door for holding cartons and bottles. Whereas back home I tended to buy a lot of larger-sized items and load up when stuff went on sale, less fridge and cabinet space makes that more difficult here, and I have to plan more of what I buy and when.
Big-ass box of Costoco oatmeal. I bring the blue o-bento (lunchbox) container on days when I don’t eat school lunch.
…though that didn’t stop me from heading to the Toyama Costco with some friends and loading up on foods I couldn’t get back home, including a 2 pound jar of Nutella, some block cheese (which freezes well!), two big bottles of cranberry juice that somehow manage to fit in my fridge, and this 10 pound box of oatmeal that I’m guessing will last a while ;-)
During the week I eat school lunch (kyūshoku) with the students, which costs a mere ¥271 (under $3), saves me some morning prep time, and is actually pretty decent. It comes with milk, rice, vegetables, soup, and some kind of meat or fish, so it’s a good way to ensure I eat at least one healthy meal a day ;-) I’ve included the ¥271 cost under the groceries total above, since it seems pretty comparable to what I was paying to bring sandwiches, fruit, and yogurt for lunch back in the States.
Since I don’t have a car to carry groceries with, I’ve been bringing them back from the store in the basket of my bike and in my backpack, so the ability to transport less is another reason to make shorter grocery runs more often. Usually I bike down to a larger grocery store on the weekends (< 10 minutes), though during the week I stop by a smaller grocery store/pharmacy (< 5 minutes) for milk, bread, and non-perishable items.
Japanese heater/air conditioning unit mounted to my upper wall. Works fast, but doesn’t circulate that well…
Utilities
American Costs (Electric, Heat, and Hot Water): $50-90/month
Japanese Costs (Electric, Heat, Hot & Cold Water): ~ ¥6,000 ($60) so far
Winner: Not sure yet…
My American apartment was pretty bare-bones when it came to heat: it had one natural gas heater and that was it. I kept the heat turned off when I was out to save money, and at night I manually turned the thermostat down to 55 degrees and slept with extra blankets.
This was actually really good prep for Japan: like most Japanese apartments, mine has a single wall-mounted air conditioner/heating unit (eakon) operated by remote control, and it’s meant to be turned off whenever you leave just like I did at my old place. The plus side here is that my eakon is right above my bed, meaning that after a long day at work I can come home, turn it on, and crash beneath a blast of warm or cold air depending on the season.
Japanese kotatsu low table. You use the blanket underneath the top panel to cover your legs and seal in the warmth from the heating unit beneath the frame. Perfect for a cold winter night…
For winter my predecessor left me a space heater (!), an electric rug (!!), and an electric blanket (!!!) meaning I’ve got a lot of different ways to keep warm since Japanese apartments have close to zero insulation. I also bought a kotatsu, which is a Japanese low table with a heating unit mounted underneath you use by covering your legs with a blanket. This gives me plenty of options for winter, so I’m curious how high my electric bill will actually be…
WiFi router from AU (no relation to Google Home).
Phone and Internet
American Phone (Family Plan): $35/month
American Internet: $40/month
Japanese Phone: ¥5,000 ~ ¥6,000/month +¥32,000 for a new phone ($50 ~ $60/month + $320)
Japanese Internet: ¥3,315/month + ¥16,200 for a new router ($33/month + $160)
Winner: America
I visited the cell phone shop with one of my coworkers on my second day in Toyama, and after the chaos of choosing a plan and sort of figuring out how much everything cost (in terms of difficulty, understanding cell-phone-plan Japanese ranks just below understanding hospital-Japanese IMO) I walked out with a new phone, a WiFi router, and plans for both that were pretty decent…I think?
I went through AU (one of Japan’s big three cell phone companies) and got a sliding data plan with a base number of phone minutes (60, I think????) since I’m not planning on making many calls. This was a LOT cheaper than the unlimited plans they tried to sell me, and I felt more comfortable with a sliding plan since I wasn’t sure how much data I’d actually be using with my new setup (though I suspect it won’t be much since I don’t use my phone at work).
I’d also heard a lot of horror stories about NTT (the big Japanese phone company) taking weeks to hook up new broadband internet accounts because they’re so busy, so I was happy to avoid that by also going through AU so I’d have internet ready out the door. The downside, though, was that this involved buying an expensive router that converts phone signals into WiFi when I could have used my own (much cheaper) modem and router through NTT. This raises a pretty big question: was the extra cost worth the ease?
For me, at this time, with my budget, I can honestly say that the extra cost was worth it because I had about ten million other things to do during my first two weeks here and just needed to get them taken care of regardless of cost (well, within reason!). I don’t feel particularly pressed for cash at the moment and I really wanted to get back to work on this blog, among other things that require steady internet.
Still, I could totally see someone needing to save the money and waiting for NTT internet, so the real best option depends on whether your time or your money is more valuable at any given point in your life.
Laundry in Japan: no frills, just rope and clothespins.
Laundry
Cost in America: ~ $12/month
Cost in Japan: Basically Free
Winner: Japan
My last apartment had a washer and dryer setup in the basement, and when they weren’t broken they charged two bucks for a wash and another two bucks for a dry. Doing laundry also meant going down multiple flights of stairs and making sure I had lots of quarters—chotto mendokusai…
My Japanese apartment has its own small washing machine on the balcony that seems to be pretty high efficiency and is literally within arm’s length of where I keep my dirty clothes, thus saving a lot of laundry time. Since it’s technically outside (but covered by the balcony roof), doing laundry in the winter will likely be cold and annoying, but we’ll see how it goes…
While there’s a laundromat a few minutes away that has dryers, most Japanese people hang their laundry out on their balconies using plastic clip hangers that can dry 4-5 pieces of clothing at once. I wanted more drying space, so I bought some rope from a building supply store and strung some lengths of clothesline across from the hooks on the balcony ceiling. The clothesline can easily handle a full load, and on a sunny day my clothes will be bone dry in a few hours, saving money and energy by harnessing the POWER OF THE SUN in a way that’s ridiculously easy and useful. Kinda makes me wish more Americans air-dried their laundry instead of trying to ban outside clothes drying in their neighborhoods…
Other Expenses
Winner: America
So far I’ve found that most things cost pretty much the same in Japan as in the States (clothes, pots and pans, eating out, etc.). In terms of fun or interesting things to do, going to museums in Japan is almost always cheaper than back home (usually ¥200 or ¥300), though a nicer museum or a night of karaoke with drinks can easily set you back a few thousand yen if you’re not careful.
One thing that seems oddly expensive here is men’s haircuts—my town has a lot of smaller barbershops and salons, and word on the street has it that these places all cost upwards of ¥4,000 ($40). I’m just about due for one now, so for that price it’d better be the best damned haircut ever!
There are also more bank fees to deal with here—my bank’s ATMs all charge ¥105 (just over a buck) to take out money after 5:00 for some reason, and I’ve been steadfastly avoiding this by going right after I finish work at 4:00 when I need cash. Some Japanese bills also have to be paid by making bank transfers at the ATM, which comes with more fees—paper checks never caught on here and online bill-paying isn’t quite up and running yet. There are also the dreaded Sending Money Home Fees for international transfers that I fortunately haven’t had to deal with yet—but wish me luck when I do!
Bottom Line: The Essentials are Cheaper Here, and Everything Else is About the Same
If you followed Part I you might have noticed a pattern: the costs of my health insurance, rent, getting around town, and even my laundry are WAY cheaper in Japan than they were back home, while most everything else costs the same and only phone, entertainment, and convenience-type stuff costs more.
This creates a more efficient living situation for someone like me who generally steers clear of luxuries and frills and just needs to take my creative work to the next level. Even though there’s a lot of things that make living in Japan hard, finances definitely aren’t one of them ;-)
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