How much does Food in Japan REALLY COST?!?

[@TokyoCreativeTalk]

Is Food in your country as expensive as Japan? Comment your thoughts down below!

[@TheEyeofMobius]

Another Lovely Video. Tipping isn't required by law in Canada but a place may add a gratuity charge of usually 15% if you are in a group of 6 or more. My favourite inexpensive food in Tokyo has become the little food trucks; usually 500-700 Yen for something you would pay 300 Yen more at any sit in place.

[@Mwoods2272]

@@TheEyeofMobiusI also like the food trucks because you will be supporting a small business owner.

[@notAlbertbtw]

Canada! Montreal ! IT COST HALF A KIDNEY TO EAT IN RESTAURANTS! For example McDonald bigmac combo is 15$ Buffet are 25$+TIPS (cheap ones) A good asian restaurant is 40$ to 60$+TIPS Typing is the moral thing to do, if not tip they give you the stare of despair. There's even some fats food restaurants that DEMAND you to tip them

[@ernst-udopeters1637]

@@notAlbertbtw Clearly, you are paying too much. You need to shop around a little. The prices you are mentioning are in the downtown core. BTW the lunchpassport in Japan still exists: lunchpassport.com

[@evaweiss1160]

As a vegan I don't get to enjoy any cheap lunch sets in Japan. My overall grocery costs are probably a bit higher than they were in Germany which is due to fresh fruits and vegetables being more expensive in Japan. Things being sold per piece or bag is also more confusing than buying fruit or veggies per kilo. Even at a cheap countryside supermarket it is still more expensive. I really miss eating big fruit salads in summer...

[@Angultra]

Not legally required to tip in Canada (but of course still customary), also some places add a service charge (tip) for 6+ people so need to be careful not to double tip.

[@kaltask1]

Tipping is bs, just pay actual salary to your workers! Happy that we dont have that in Finland.

[@matt7luck]

Perfect timing! I was just making myself some tea!

[@calvinchapman6824]

It's definitely not legally required to tip in Canada, everyone is just really nice and generally tips even when they receive bad service. The tip is an expected part of the salary, however if you give me terrible service you're going to make less because I won't tip you.

[@pikachuiloveyou-il6zz]

I love watching your videos! They are always so informative. I have the world's shortest attention span, but I always find that I'm able to watch your videos from start to finish.

[@XSpImmaLion]

Oh, I'll just add one more thing as a tip for people going there.. and perhaps people living there too. For restaurants, if you wanna go in the cheap, there are family restaurants with really cheap but still good food. I bet Shizuka and the others already know about this but they forgot to mention. These types of restaurants usually have a... how was it called? Drink buffet? All you can drink buffet, and then cheap menu plates. One that we went a lot on our trip last year was called.... Saizeriya? Near the Narita station area.

[@TokyoCreativeTalk]

Thank you for adding this helpful tip!

[@zam023]

On my campus, we have the 100yen breakfast from 8:30am to 9:00am. You get a small bowl of rice, miso soup and 2 side dishes (eggs, fish, veggy etc). Tea is all you can drink. It is only for student and staff though. For normal lunch and dinner time, students and staff get a discount, comes to about 400 to 600 yen per meal, it depends on what you take. Visitors pay normal price, but it is still pretty cheap, and it is really good. Could I take Shizuka out for lunch if I come to Tokyo ^_^ It will be on me.

[@annikaa.5417]

What is your campus/college?

[@matthiasheuberger952]

Following

[@rachelruthfrankle3905]

Very useful video as I’m travelling to Japan end of May and this video has given me plenty of tips for when I need to budget keep up the good work x

[@nikkei325i]

There are supermarkets in the US that mark down food as well. Mitsuwa, Marukai (now Tokyo Central) and Nijiya will mark down the bento boxes like sushi, fish and fried foods.

[@aegistahl1835]

Can you make a video about the overall cleanliness of Tokyo being the large city it is? Like garbage/recycling rules?

[@silviastanziola659]

Tipping is not required in Canada, at least not legally. And Starbucks does have the short sizes here, too, but they don't seem to advertise it a lot either.

[@Jeldin486]

In regards to tipping, its not illegal to not tip in America, but a lot of our servers here don't even make minimum wage (only a handful of places will pay min and even less pay over that). For reference, I served a few years from like 2012-2014, and I started at $3.35/hr and left at $3.75/hr. So its not gonna get you in trouble with the police, but its definitely looked down on since you're basically preventing them from making a living. A good general rule that I go by is 10% for poor service, 15% for average, 20%+ for great or better service. I never refuse to tip even on bad service since, having worked as a server, I totally understand that sometimes you just have a bad/off day. It sucks to have a bad experience, but that shouldn't warrant making it more difficult for that person to live or take care of their family.

[@yury150784]

for lunch, the best deal for me is the university canteen...they sell donburi for only 300 yen with free flow ocha, meanwhile for dinner for sure go to the supermarket for the half-price items, if you're okay to wait until like 9 pm...you cannot beat 45 yen onigiri or 150 yen soba set in those joints

[@themysterytraveler6536]

Shinjuku Nakamura was about $8 for lunch when I went there a couple of years ago, and $80+ at dinner from what I understand. It's a 1 Michelin starred restaurant. There's also 3 ramen restaurants that have Michelin stars too, so that's another affordable option.

[@alanlee1355]

What a nice group of people. 👍

[@marcoabyss]

i'm moving to japan in the fall semester....just in time for tsukimi burger!

[@nataliyainmotion]

Tokyo can be affordable for sure! It’s just it takes a bit of search effort on your part. I can often find a thing of strawberries for ¥300 or even ¥150 if they will go bad soon at the little produce shop rather than ¥500-900 at my supermarket. It’s just sometimes I’m tired and I default to one-stop convenience.

[@soju81]

LOL I totally relate to the girl who said she waits in the supermarket for the workers to mark down the prices. I was that dude.

[@notAlbertbtw]

I was just plannig to go to Japan, this vid was uselful because im planning to eat the whole country's food suplyy! Keep up the good work

[@hawkeye9168]

Also check out Abroad in japan. :)

[@TokyoCreativeTalk]

Thank you so much for watching!

[@user-py7mz8oj7o]

Canadian grocery stores do sometimes mark down older food for quick sale but it is more infrequent.

[@pikachuiloveyou-il6zz]

I used to work at a grocery store on Vancouver Island. The only thing we ever marked down was the meat, and it was usually at the end of the night.

[@SirEveryman]

If I've said it before I've said it a thousand times, Ian is a titan. The guy probably shits cultural insight in the morning.

[@largesmallworld]

When Starbucks was mentioned I immediately recalled the scene in Nichijou when Yukko attempts to order coffee and fails 😂

[@user-py7mz8oj7o]

Just went to Canada's best restaurant, Alo. One dish was A5 wagyu striploin from Kumamoto. The tip for 2 people was $100.

[@waltera4448]

Kinda funny that as the group is discussing prices, I'm reminded of the high costs of finding food items in certain cities in the United States. Cities like Los Angeles, New York, and even surrounding areas that are pretty on-par with those in Tokyo. 800 Yen for 8 strawberries is pretty close to the $10 for 1/4-pound of strawberries in Southern California last summer with the price gouging that goes on.

[@XSpImmaLion]

I think it's like this: - All major metropolitan cities have food that goes from very cheap to very expensive. Some cities, cheap food is hard to find, or is very unhealthy and/or poor quality; - Tokyo keeps a good range. Perhaps cheap food is not as healthy and as high quality as expensive stuff, but even the cheapest stuff is still plenty plenty good. Good enough to attend nutricion needs and enjoy. Like you pay premium for real premium... or in most cases I've seen, you pay premium for a more exclusive experience overall; Comparison to the city I'm currently living in... Brazil, smaller sized capital city. Here it's not suuuuper hard to find cheap food, but it's also not convenient, nor good. Shopping malls (which are still very popular here) restaurants are always expensive, no way around it. You can find cheaper restaurants downtown outside malls, but there always seems to be a catch. Food isn't good, the place looks horrible, the meal is poorly prepared, it's unhealthy fried fast food, stuff like that. The other major difference here is that buying ingredients on the market and preparing things yourself is only cheaper if you have a family to feed. If you are by yourself, you are almost paying the same as just ordering food. Because single serving portions are not a thing, so when you can find it, it's often overpriced. Even delivery stuff comes in too big portions for one person, so what you usually do is order food for a couple of days. I used to cook for myself, but after a while I realized that I was having extra work to cook and clean stuff, wasting food that rot because I couldn't finnish all, while paying the same price I'd pay for a bento-style delivery. I mean, I don't think kombini food all the time is suuuper healthy in Japan too, but it's multiple times better than what you get here, no doubt. From vacation trips I spent in Europe and US, I think this is also true for those. At least the Lawsons, Family Marts and 7 Elevens I went to on my trip last year, they always seemed to have basically everything you'd want on a meal. Small portions of green salad. Some fruit - bananas, mikans, ringos. Standard rice plus some meat. Onigiri. Some selection of pasta dishes. Udon, lamen, soba. The biggest problem for kombini food seems to be that right next to regular healthy food, you also have all the incredibly tempting unhealthy stuff... xD

[@nantzstein3311]

"Bento wars" anyone ? ! ベント

[@ScipiotheYounger]

I was gonna say, there's an anime that explains it all. Sort of 😄

[@giochacon8354]

make a video about the artsy side of Tokio, the music scene, art galleries o street art exhibitions , any free art expo we can visit season to season. Thx

[@rsrs8632]

Just been a month long holiday in Japan. I am from The Netherlands, and compared to home it is cheap. 1000Yen is like 8€. And we spent mostly between 1.000 and 1.500 yen for a good dinner, including drinks. And this is all over Japan. And you don't have to tip! Biggest plus is that prices are consistent, you can be in a museum, or a really tourist area, and prices don't double (maybe 10'or 20 percent higher). My biggest gripe would be that its not always clear if Tax is included. Sometimes it is, sometimes not.

[@itsalladream]

I see why you don't have the snacks on the table - that never get eaten. :D

[@AndyLifeInVideo]

It depends on what you get and where you get it. If you eat what you did before coming to Japan, it's gonna cost you. But if you eat more locally and learn to make stuff at home, you can save so much money!

[@user-py7mz8oj7o]

It's not the law to tip in Canada.

[@skipper4114]

Dazraf I second that. No one can make you tip. In the US the servers or waitress only gets 4-7 $ per hour so they rely on tips. In Canada they have to pay minimal wedge and everything else is a bonus. But in no way is it illegal to not tip.

[@XSpImmaLion]

Oooh man, the department stores bento sales! Good point! Did you guys know there's even an anime about that? It's hillarious... I think the name is Ben-to. kzbin.info/www/bejne/eJDUeoGHa9KibZY My relatives who went to work in Japan a few decades ago ate only that basically. xD

[@edmondtan8815]

with the mini cans of beer, im pretty sure theyre marketed towards those stereotypical salary men who go home after a long day of work and take a hot bath. the tiny cans of beer would then quench their thirst enough after a hot bath without necessarily getting drunk

[@raulmaldonado6026]

In the US, an employer of a tipped employee is only required to pay $2.13 per hour in direct wages if that amount combined with the tips received at least equals the federal minimum wage. If the employee’s tips combined with the employer's direct wages of at least $2.13 per hour do not equal the federal minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference. Many states, however, require higher direct wage amounts for tipped employees.

[@haleylahr6782]

A big bowl of ramen for lunch in Tokyo is roughly 500 yen to 900 yen and I found this my favorite when visiting Japan 🇯🇵😁

[@justinjeffries9248]

It kills me when I eat Ramen in the states knowing that the same bowl would cost me 500-600 yen when in the States its like 15-20+

[@haleylahr6782]

@@justinjeffries9248 yes and it's no where near as good also

[@esitu5655]

Here is a terrible Walmart Canada story: When the Walmart Superstore first opened in Airdrie, AB (Shizuka knows where this city is), they overstocked too may beef steaks during opening week. My fire fighter crew just happened to be doing a familiarization walk through of the new Walmart, and we saw this stack of about 30 beef steaks being put in a cart by the meat manager. I asked why, and she said it was because the best before date had “expired” that morning. We were there at 10 am, and I asked if we could buy some for our dinner that same day. The manager refused to sell us the steaks because of the date, even though it was only about 2 hours after the store open for that morning. She said they had to have been sold last night, and it was now illegal for Walmart to sell this “expired” meat. So all the steaks were tossed into the garbage.

[@Unit02Chan]

We have the short size cup in America starbucks too!

[@alstonjacobs4934]

There is an anime about the mark down stuff at super markets called Ben-to

[@coffeedudeguy]

Matsuya is my go to whenever I visit

[@W.i.l.l._Nguyen]

different price in different prefectures is not that uncommon in Canada: for example, prices for coffee at Tim Horton's in Quebec and Ontario are quite different even if the difference in tax rate between the 2 provinces is 1.975%

[@justinmorning7288]

I live in a city about an hour away from Toronto, Canada and at about 7pm they mark down the meat and baked goods in most of the grocery stores haha I always wait cus I'm a student and its bu 50% typically

[@josephzhang2492]

I think tipping is North America (USA and Canada) thing. In NZ tipping is not compulsory.

[@chelseaoates610]

Its not required in the USA to tip, but it is frowned upon if you don't. Lately, the tipping percentage has gone up because of covid. Lowest is 15-20%...

[@DnDOldGuard]

In the US, waitresses and waiters DO NOT make minimum wage. They usually get anywhere from $2-$5/hr depending on the state. It's absolutely TRASH! Speaking from personal experience here.

[@Heylow1]

Suggestion: BRING BACK THE JAPAN NEWS SEGMENT, even if it's only once a month or something. That was always so fun to watch, and the abroad in Japan podcast even stopped their wacky news segment. I love your videos, Tea time and all your guests/staff/clients, but it's been like 4 months and like ~20+ videos. Mix it up a bit, like on your play channel. PS: Loved your video. Super informative

[@lilldea]

Those lunch passports existed in Kyoto a few years ago as well.

[@rialbufames4023]

Love these videos, but I feel like the voices are kind of low, even after increasing my laptop volume... maybe move the mic closer? Or raise the voice up? Thank You! ( I am no expert in media)

[@TokyoCreativeTalk]

Thank you so much for watching and for the suggestion! We'll work on that to improve the show :)

[@rialbufames4023]

@@TokyoCreativeTalk Thank you for the reply! Looking forward to more videos!!!

[@michaelahallfilms5450]

The short size at Starbucks is standard everywhere :)

[@jpn_119]

Wouldn't say its standard, short is more like child one in America or Canada, tall is standard...

[@michaelahallfilms5450]

Tokyo Dollxo I just meant it is available everywhere. They said in the video that they think it’s special to Japan and I’m saying it’s a Starbucks standard size that’s available everywhere

[@nicktroehler4872]

I think you're right, but the Starbucks on and around my college campus, and now near my home did not offer it (no cups, etc).

[@apredator4gb]

Tipping in america is directly related to the quality of the service. Bad service, no tip. Good service, starts at 15% and can go up unlimited from there.

[@W.i.l.l._Nguyen]

Shizuka: It's not a legal requirement however it is expected.

[@martigo7152]

When is the beach episode?😁😅

[@geoh7349]

tokyo was double the cost of anywhere i went in japan except for certain things

[@ubertoby]

Lunch at Tesco, (for the Brit lads), £3. Sandwich, crisps & can of monster. Done deal

[@LloydSeven]

With the exception of fruits, restaurants and food stores are about the same here. Fruits are much cheaper.

[@tony91200211]

should watch the anime bento

[@yunchunsa]

Topic suggestion: How difficult is it for a foreigner to start their own company in Japan?

[@Heylow1]

They already did that like a year ago. An half hour interview with Tokyo Creative's CEO, Chris Okano. And I feel like Dude Okano always brings up that topic every couple of videos, like him being ceo, it being hard, him being ceo, employees being like his babies, him being ceo, tips for working in JP, him being ceo, weird/foreign business etiquette in JP, him being ceo... ;) Just search "okano company in japan"and you should find a couple of videos

[@yunchunsa]

@@Heylow1 Cheers, I'll look it up :)

[@Bobbylopezcreative]

The woman on the right is absolutely stunning! ❤️

[@TheJProducti0ns]

Did Shizuka just say "Square watermelon"? what???

[@rachiemushroom]

The portion sizes I found were to much for me when I was there.

[@itsjustkoco]

I'm from South Africa and everytime they would say something is cheap in dollars, I convert it to rands (South African currency) and think the opposite💔💔

[@BoltCRNA]

The tipping culture in America is ridiculous. If you summed up how much you spend in tipping everybody and their brother here you could probably pay off all the massive student loan debt we all have.

[@TheLolkid777]

You could just not eat lunch or make one at home

[@christianhansen3292]

sounds like u guys are whispering ina closed booth volume is so low sorry.

[@christianhansen3292]

You guy definitely need to get mic'd up.

[@TokyoCreativeTalk]

@@christianhansen3292 Thank you so much for watching and for the suggestion! We'll work on that to improve the show :)

[@신상우-k4l]

it costs your life bcuz it is radioactived