Since friends will once again be able to enter the country in two days, I thought I’d write a simple post outlining the many options for food and groceries available here.
Nationwide Chain Restaurants
There are a few good and cheap chains you can find in every city. Yoshinoya and Matsunoya sell a variety of rice dishes, particularly featuring beef, chicken, and pork. Koko Ichiban sells many flavors of Japanese dry curry over rice and meat and offers seven levels of spice. MOS Burger and McDonalds are Korean and American respectively, but the burgers they sell in Japan are in local serving sizes and cater to the indigenous palates. They are arguably better here than in their countries of origin. Sushiro is a conveyer belt sushi place where you can get what will probably be the best sushi you’ve had in your life for one or two dollars per piece. Gindako sells delicious takoyaki for about one dollar per ball. These are so cheap you could eat out very frequently without taking a major hit to your income. But be very careful, because you can easily get fat on a diet of just this.
Local Restaurants
Local restaurants are also very good, but you have to look on Tabelog or walk around on foot to find these. They are typically small, humble, and more expensive than the chains, but they serve the best food out of all options. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend any because that would damage my opsec.
Bentō Specialty Stores
You have heard of the bentō. There are many small shops that specialize in selling ust these to people looking for a quick lunch or to pick up dinner on their way home from work. There is often not much variety, and you can very easily get fat on them, but they are convenient and quite tasty. These also you have to find either on the internet or by wandering around.
Regular Grocery Stores
A similar option for people who don't know how to cook, or are too exhausted or lack the time to cook a proper dinner, is the pre-made food they sell at grocery stores. There is much variety, and you can find many of the staples of Japanese cuisine cooked in house that same day, ostensibly using fresh ingredients (pls check this for yourself), and ready for you to warm up and eat at home. The cool thing about this is that prices are always marked down by half after a certain point in the day, usually after 6:00 PM. So an easy way to have good, normal cooked food, instead of the fattening garbage they sell at 7-11, is to wait until 6:00 to walk over to your local grocery store and buy ingredients for that night's dinner. These grocery stores obviously have produce etc., but they also have attached to them shops selling pastries, flowers, jewelry, cooking implements, and various other goods. Seiyū is one grocery store chain that you can reliably find across the country, but there are also regional or local chains that are sometimes better, depending on your preferences.
Gyōmu Sūpā
If you prefer to cook for yourself, but don't want to spend as much money as at Seiyū, there are also these places called gyōmu sūpā 業務スーパー which sell a broad variety of food, including frozen food, meat, and produce, at affordable prices.
What Convenience Stores Are Actually Good For
Many of you like 7-11 and similar convenience stores like Lawson and Family Mart, but these are actually not good places to buy food. The stuff they sell there is low-quality compared to what you get at even cheap chain restaurants, and it's usually quite fattening. Convenience stores are mostly good for cheap delicious drinks, especially various flavored milks, snacks, and other sweets. You should assume that anything you buy at these places, other than perhaps the milk and some of the fruit juices, is just as poisoned as anything in the heartland of ARIZOG1.
The Cheapest Food
For those who like to eat as cheaply as possible, I recommend udon. Udon is not particularly delicious or nutritious, but you can buy large quantities of it for very little and either eat it by itself or mix it with a little bit of meat or curry like a stew. A diet of just this will obviously ruin your health, so don’t do it unless you really have to.
Armenian-Roastie-Ismaili-Zionist-Occupied Government.
I enjoyed this, please do more poasts which recommend ways to live in Japan (preferably outside of Tokyo).
Thank you 🙏. I have always wanted to go to Japan and now might be the time to do it with a relatively strong dollar and travel restrictions easing.