There’s good and bad news on the food front: first, eating out in Japan is much cheaper than we’re used to. Second, eating in is much more expensive.

Groceries are surprisingly high cost. A pair of apples can set you back 300 yen. A half-pound of cherries is 400. Cereal, 300 for 2 bowls worth of Kellogg’s, 200 for a local brand. More on that here, although I don’t know how up-to-date it is. Based on my rough observations, everything costs about 30%-40% more here. Of course, I’m used to shopping at Wal-Mart, which exists in its own little discount universe, so maybe it’s not so bad as that.

On the flip side, taxes are cheap and usually included in the price, so what you see on signs is pretty much what you pay, which is partly why eating out is so cheap. The other is that you don’t tip here. So even though prices can look reasonable to high, you don’t have to add 6-10% taxes and 10-20% tip, and a 650 yen meal stays a 650 yen meal.

So, these two have so far evened each other out. We spend about 300 yen each on a meal at home, then spend about 700 yen each on a meal out each day on average. Okay, we eat three meals, but somehow breakfast and snacks always seem to be about 300 yen per person no matter where we’re eating. If we keep this up, we’ll be well within the budget for food/misc. I imagine that the couple of weeks we’re planning to travel extensively will inflate this, but it looks likely to stay below $1000.