Late Night Groceries Rule

Thanks to Nikki, who sent me a fantastic primer on living cheap(er) in Japan, I've been able to reduce my food expense pretty significantly with little if any change to what I eat.

How, you might ask? Late night shopping.

Like the U.S., the grocery stores in Japan make sandwiches, sushi, rice wrapped in seaweed, sashimi, etc. They also have pre-packaged portions of beef, chicken, fish, etc.

Unlike the U.S. if they do not sell on the day they are made they are thrown away. The utter inability to find tupperware makes me thing that the Japanese do not eat leftovers.

To avoid losing all of their money they start marking down the price in the evening. By 10pm, everything is down to 30-50% off. That's when I swoop in.

Since I have no issue buying such items and eating them a day, maybe even two days later, I can make out like a bandit. I just went and bought some pre-made food for tomorrow as well as some tuna, chicken and beef that was marked down. The meats all went into the freezer to go into stir-fries and curries later this week.

I'm also developing a few tools to condition myself into buying less at the grocery store each visit. Generally I bring Y3000 and see how far I can make it last. I don't really have the space to store more food than that anyway, but habit is hard to break.

Between those items, boxed curries, and some cheap canned fruit I just bought I'm eating cheaper than I did when I got here and much, much healthier. If the scale in the shower room is to be believed I've already lost about a 15 lbs. I suspect it is a little less, but it is a good start just the same. We can start using the Waseda gym after October 4th. Once I get my schedule figured out I will map out a workout plan and finally begin get my fat ass back in shape.

Outside of Japanese (which I can study via my headphones while doing cardio) my courseload will be fairly light. That's the benefit of working myself to the bone last year. That should lead to plenty of time for exercise.

In other exciting news the internet in my room was installed today so I'm typing this up from the luxury of my dorm desk. I attempted to set up the router and managed to get pretty far, but all of the instructions are in Japanese and when I problem arose I was stumped. My buddy Dan is going to come by and take a look this week sometime. I think his combination of tech skills (during the school year he worked at the Geek Squad for Best Buy) and his Japanese language skills we can fix the problem and get Matt up and running via my recently purchased wireless router.

That required a trip to Yodabashi in Akihabara. Let me tell you this. If electricity runs it, you can buy it at Yodabashi. Eight stories of madness. It was a lot of fun!