Our tips on how to save money in Japan

hey guys welcome to tct time i'm your host shusika anderson and today i am joined by sharla fiori and sarah welcome and if you guys haven't seen the last episode sarah is our new staff here at tct time so yeah welcome to tea time [Music] today we're going to be talking about ways to save money while living in japan as you guys probably all know first hand and probably a lot of you watching um from back home japan can be a very expensive place to live and travel but it's not too bad if you kind of know you know if you know the hacks at least um i know in vancouver in canada for example like housing prices are insane it's like i've given up all hope of ever living there like tiny like nowadays like a tiny apartment is just like crazy expensive you need to have roommates yeah basically but in japan that's not really the case um living in the center of tokyo is definitely more expensive than living outside um and you do end up with like smaller spaces if you live in the center of the city but you can get those smaller spaces for like reasonably affordable prices is really great um but i don't actually live in the center of the city so i can't give like a really good ballpark but shiyoti i think you're living pretty central is how are the prices do you think for you is it affordable uh i wouldn't say it's affordable because after i'm showing my apartment in tokyo creative play at tc homes a lot of people commenting they can't believe it's like more than fifteen thousand because so i think for the average of in abroad or i'm not sure who uh they are living where but compared to that of course it looks much more expensive because how tiny this apartment is yeah but if you go a bit farther from the station for example 15 minutes walk distance if you want to save some money just choose the place a bit far from the station but uh you know just use the bicycle something to explore around i guess or if you choose a place where a crime was committed a murder or something you could get a really good deal i used to live in an apartment like pretty close to ikebukuro which is like you know bought in tokyo you think it would be really expensive and now they didn't tell me any crime happened there but i always had a suspicion because it was really cheap it was a two-bedroom apartment in a really good location really close to the station for nanaman what 22 000 yeah so something happened there and they're just like oh we don't need to tell the foreigner but i can't complain it was a great great apartment great location so that's one way you can save money actually i'm not sure but i thought that in japan they were actually like required to they are but i feel like they're like oh this foreigner won't know that rule does not tell them we only need to tell once so for example now sarah moved to that apartment so after that oh so it's just the person that lived there the first time you need to tell them and then after that it's like cleared because oh my god really the one way to maybe save some money if you don't mind for example living in front of the grave oh my god that's great great parent houses are cheaper if you don't apply like it probably depends on the graveyard like some of them might be like creepier looking than others but generally like they're very well kept and like new flowers and like clean them regularly so they're actually not that bad to live and i didn't realize it but i do live right next to you maybe your place is a little cheaper than normal it is my place actually super cheap but i thought that the only reason was because it's in a really inconvenient location which is the other tip so like you can also i also don't live central tokyo i live about a 45-minute train right away from like central tokyo which is not it's like it feels long but it's also not too bad because the trains are very like it's one train it's very easy yeah and i also live very far from the station on the top of like a mountain oh geez um so i live here and exercise getting to it from the station but i consider it awesome exercise and like personally the reason why i don't gain so much weight is probably my daily life involves like biking up a very large hill that way and it's a bonus it is so i mean my tip would be like living somewhere rather inconvenient and then you can save money on rent a lot and if you live outside of the city you can get a much bigger space which is like i have like a yard um and it's it's so nice because you just kind of a yard yeah luxuries wow sharla you you're so you're also not living in tokyo but yeah i'm up in morioka it's um one train ride technically you can take the bullet train from tokyo to where i live and it's 2 hours and 15 minutes um quite expensive i think it's about 150 for the ticket but yeah so for a house out here i have a quite large two-bedroom apartment and it's 750 a month oh 75 000 and it's brand new it was like nobody had lived here before me yeah i find that to be a really good deal and this was one of like the most expensive apartments in the area like i thought i would splurge on that so you can get an apartment here for maybe 400 a month and it would be a decently sized apartment so of course if you can live out in the countryside that's always good definitely like if you don't want to sacrifice your space yeah um and the quality of the apartment then definitely living farther away is super worth it i think it's going to be more choices because the currently tokyo creative is doing the remote work i think we are keeping up the studio and then just writing out the studio whenever we need to because you know that's more efficient and then it's okay so which means you can live in morocco anywhere you love come up to morioka everywhere over there no this is the new way to save some money come on because you don't need to locate to the center of tokyo anymore since we're working from limo you know no problem so very true uh you're living in the share house right yeah pros and cons for the city money so my logic was it's my first time living in tokyo i didn't want to be really far away so i'm like relatively central tokyo and that's also why i chose a share house and you can save money on rent depending on the sharehouse but mine is a little more like pricier because it's modern but that being said i find that i do save money because there's so many people in the house and we are social at home so rather than going out and meet people at restaurants taking the train we all just have like a little party at home so yeah like every day we're social and it saves money in the long run like that yeah those share houses have really good shared areas where you can like set up their party or i've i've done a video for one of them and i really liked it i was sad to leave he's flying out we have a projector and we like pull it down we have movie nights yeah we have like a little like outdoor area so we have barbecues too so cool what that's amazing so i think that like if you want to live in central tokyo sharehouses are a hundred percent the way to go yeah um if you want to save money some of the facilities are amazing and i had visited one sharehouse that my friend was looking into moving into and they had like this huge i can only describe it as like a play area like but like for like adults it was like a chill like an indoor like grass field with like a hill on the top so like you can kind of like climb up there and sit there and have a picnic like big ball chairs yeah there's like a little movie area and like a huge kitchen and like a little outdoor garden and like we can invite friends to our house so you know the rent is including the utilities as well yes so in my case like it includes internet utilities and then like we have we each pay about like 500 yen per month which is called like a common fee and with the common fee we buy like toilet paper um you know soap and all that kind of stuff so it's pretty cheap yeah because we get everything for 500 yen though budget done easy to budget the other things right because you don't need to worry about internet and youtube alright also good because in summer like we don't have to worry about like how much we're using in the air con i'm so jealous oh that's a really good one i'm i'm a little sad that i've never lived in a share house i was thinking the same thing when i made that video like why did i ever live in one of course like everyone's experience can differs like sometimes um the people are not as fun to like live with social so it depends you kind of have to scout out which one is for you but pros and cons yeah definitely definitely but how about like once you move into the into your apartment or share house like do you guys have any tips for how to save money in like your daily life um do all your furnishing stuff at the dollar store that should be like your first stop once you get an apartment because the dollar stores are good here they're not like the dollar stores in north america you can get quality items all your like kitchen utensils um storage buckets like everything it's really really great it can be like you can have the smallest amount of money and furnish your whole place so yeah go to the dollar store that would be a good one we're adding on that there's a lot of facebook groups now out there like tokyo sayonara sales and you find lots of like expats or like yoga says that like we're studying here and they're getting rid of their things and sometimes it's free or sometimes it's really cheap so that's also something that's a great one because they just want to get rid of it because in japan it costs money to have your big garbage picked up so people if someone will take it for free then that benefits everyone and speaking of the sayonara sales um recently i saw somebody post in one on like facebook or something and they were selling a nintendo switch and that was hilarious because it was gone in a second maybe is it not compatib compatible like depending on they are you can use yeah you can use foreign games on it people sell everything in the like cyano sales groups like everything to like bring everything home i don't know like switches are pretty small but maybe like they had a lot to bring yeah who knows but yeah so those can be really good you can definitely find um good items for cheap also like bicycles i think sometimes you can uh really good on them what i do is i buy it and then i just sell it when i'm leaving that area yeah yeah so you don't even like have to worry you're not paying you just like same idea because you don't have to pay for moving and stuff like that well for those items yeah that's cool do people tend to buy them quickly like is it hard you have to be like watching the page if you're looking for something if it's like a high demand item it's gone like that really yeah maybe craigslist it's not really a thing for japanese people but like the foreign um like expert the former community tends to use craigslist only yeah that's another place to check out um but also for like uh for daily life things like um supermarkets definitely some supermarkets where you can get really good deals one of them would be like there are specialty supermarkets for like uh businesses that's kind of what they're able like it's one of them actually means like the like business what does that mean business yeah kind of like costco but not exactly yeah pretty much it's basically no actually i was going to say it's only food ingredients but actually i think they sell other items sometimes you can find clothes and things i think i saw on tv i haven't actually been there but i don't have one in my area either but like ways that i save money at my local supermarket they've always got this like corner with the almost expired fruit and vegetables and they're always like 50 off or like fruit is so expensive here but if you get the stuff that you like have to eat that day you can save a lot of money so i would check that to see if there's anything good in the pile and also if you go at night time they'll put the bentos and all the pre-made food that they can't sell the next day they'll put that on like half price so sometimes you can get a full bento for like two dollars so true night time that's a really good point like night time if you can wait until later take that and there's so many people waiting no no so like they'll stand there and they'll wait for the the clerk with the ticket and everyone goes in do you guys know what time they start marking down the bento boxes and things it's different for every supermarket but i feel like it's probably around 7pm like after dinner time i feel like two hours before they close my earlier supermarket was around that time so 8 8 p.m or 7 to 8 p.m if i go they started in a small number so like starting from 20 percent off and then yeah if you need five minutes if you go like right around closing time then it'll be much cheaper yeah well you may not have the good variation yeah that's the thing but if you go like around probably as you said like seven then i think you'll have the really good selection still um but a little bit cheaper you can save it for your bento for like the next day or something yeah uh living the a little bit of the countryside right yeah do you have a lot of the farm around your area because local business at least my parents home they sell like the no ones no one stuff kind of the uh shops and then they said please put your 100 oh yeah like in the jar yeah those are so cute the little farm stands like at the end of their driveway i've heard about those like i've seen those on um on tv actually but we don't i haven't seen anything like that in my area i think that's a really cool system though it's like it's sort of a donation based yeah it's so cheap at bread shops notice that they put the crust like really cheap for sale like just a bag of crusts yeah and i like the crust i'm always like so you just buy that bag of crusts yeah like kenyan like equivalent of a loaf of bread so yeah there he is um that's a great idea actually i always wondered what people would buy the crusts for because like like sarah how do you eat them like do you just normally like i just put like my butter on it you guys don't eat the crust i hate the crust i don't buy only that i don't know i don't know if it'd be the same without having like the nice part in the middle and if you have fries you for the name oh yeah you can also make like um maybe like a pan style like a deep fried bread it's not rust yet it's still like you don't fry it so much i think so it's still a little bit soft on the inside sounds good the occupying japan you add either like cocoa powder or cinnamon sugar or pineapple powder on top eggy pot is amazing also actually occupied is probably one of the cheaper yeah definitely there's a restaurant you can get it uh humbe it's like a showa era they have i think it's like 70 yen or so yeah i'm just going to say i love humbei as a place to save money if you want a cheat meal you want to go out and have fun and have it be really a cheap hyundai each item is like less than a dollar and the cool thing about it is that it's very it's like a very retro it's from like the kind of the feels like the showa era in uh in japan which was from [Music] the 80s 80s and like the snacks kind of are all from that period yeah yeah they sell snacks as well yeah a little bit yeah you don't go there expecting like amazing cooking it's it's meant to be retro themed almost war era style like like you can even get like canned meat like one of the items is like a can of meat you just opened it up um what's it called not spam yes i haven't had it but i've got friends that always ordered every time we go there and i just have fun watching them open it with a little hyundai there's so so many interesting things there that's what and if you're a girl for some reason you free ice cream yeah those are some ways to save money when you're eating out um oh but the other thing is like um you can eat if you're eating like local japanese food um if you don't go to restaurants that serve western style food i think you'll find they're much cheaper totally they're so affordable i was so shocked by how cheap food was in japan i don't know why everyone has this image of japan being very expensive because you can get like a bowl of rice with beef on top for like three dollars like a full meal for like three dollars soba udon there's so many really cheap options if you're eating japanese food and i finally have time during the day like going out for lunch i don't know in australia i don't find there's like lunch deals at restaurants but in japan there's like the lunch special and sometimes it's like one thousand yen or like a really elaborate like menu yeah search room that's a really good point actually you can even go to like typically expensive restaurants and get a really good deal um at lunchtime so like in the evening like sometimes in the evenings they're like high-end restaurants like quite expensive but they still have it during lunch time like a 1 000 lunch deal it's like my friend would get yakiniku for lunch it was like usually three thousand four thousand yen it'll be like one thousand i'm just going for a lunch break having a can you cruise wow so true so yeah lunch time eating out for lunch is definitely a good way to save money instead for dinner because they really raise the prices in the evening for some reason um also like taishoku restaurants are really cheap most of the time they're definitely more um tradition like traditional japanese style with like a right so is like a set meal um like a set meal i guess like a rice bowl of rice and like a bowl of miso soup usually and then like the main dish um and sometimes it'll come with a little dessert and pickles so it's like a really full dish but sometimes like depending on the shop like i've seen like one coin oh yeah like 500. again yeah less common in japan the biggest coin here is five dollars so it's common for lots of restaurants to be like a one coin meal for five dollars so yeah if you know where to look and you're like looking for japanese um traditional food it can be super cheap to eat like you can eat your five dollar lunch every day and that's a pretty good deal so we've actually covered a lot of tips today and i think we maybe have too many for one video and then we'll uh we'll split this into another video and cover more tips again in the next video don't forget to give us some tips down below yes see you guys next time [Music] you

Channel: Tokyo Creative Talk

Views: 8,571

Keywords: shizuka anderson, tc tea time, tc talk, life hacks, japan life hacks, save money, how to save money in japan, how to, Living in Japan, Japan

Id: lT5oUsr2bBk

Length: 22min 54sec (1374 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 05 2020