Half your food bill
November 09, 2009
Well not exactly your whole food bill but…
Japan is notorious for being expensive and for travelers it certainly is but after living here for so long I’ve found ways to save some money. Many places in Japan that sell prepared dishes are usually fairly reasonably priced to begin with. A serving of tonkatsu might go for a few bucks, some tempura for a few bucks, etc. When you buy several dishes though it can add up and sometimes I feel like it’s probably worth going to restaurant instead.
Most places, however, offer big discounts towards closing time. Around my neighborhood, a places that only sells prepared dishes called O-zen starts putting “hankaku”, or “half price” stickers on dishes at 8:30pm. There’s another place that also starts discounting at 8:30. The supermarket chain Life also discounts and I imagine they start at a similar time. This fabulous idea is appropriately named “Time Sale” in Japanese.
Be prepared to fight off crowds though – people start stalking the store around the magical time and dive in when the store worker starts yelling about the lowered prices.
Tonight I bought teriyaki chicken, a tonkatsu bento, deep-fried lotus root, and a bacon, asparagus, cheese deep fried thing for a grand total of 676 yen. You cannot beat that!
