surviving the recession in Japan--any tips

[skylarking]

In a recent thread regarding cooking salmon, Small World responded with a great tip about putting mikan peels in the fish grill to make clean-up easier. What a great tip! That got me thinking about ways to re-use, recycle, and save money in Japan, particularly in regards to food and kitchen-related matters.

Does anyone have any other kitchen tips or any strategies to save money in Japan? Have you changed the way you shop for and prepare food? Do you make kinpira with daikon peels? Do you buy food at 100 yen shops? Please share.

I save most vegetable scraps to make vegetable stock. I seek out ethnic food shops to buy spices, dried beans, and coconut milk--but only when I'm in the area....a separate train/subway trip could nullify any savings. (By the way, I recently discovered an amazingly delicious product from the Philippines at an ethnic store: doce de leite made from coconut milk. A big jar was about 350yen).

Thanks!

[v. gautam]

If you have a patch of sunlight, a 5-10 US gallon container like a styrofoam cooler can become a home for 1 plant of SUNGOLD cherry tomato that will produce very useful amounts of fruit for 8 months; or, 1 plant of ODORIKO slicing beefsteak type, from which you may get 60-70 lbs of very high quality fruit if you are just a tiny bit careful. Plus, herb basil, from the same ensemble that should last you a couple, 3 years at least, then switch to cucumbers, melons etc. for a while. We can guide you step by step from here. Lemon & Meyer lemons are another possibility, depending on how dear they are in your area.

I have made a few more suggestions here regarding passive hydroponic systems and types of growing media:

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=121203

You are welcome to pm me for further ideas.

I do not know how expensive electricity is in your area, but even indoors, a simple shoplight with ordinary fluorescent tubes [18 h on, 6 h off] will happily grow seedling flats containing good quality potting mix + some potting soil [for flavor] seeded with Genovese basil [relatively thickly, seed USD 18/lb in USA, last you 500 years!!! lol ], say 1/2 flat, dill BOUQUET 1/2 flat. If your shoplight is longer, it can accommodate 2 flats, so you can grow 2 more herbs, or as many as you like. The second flat can be used to produce MICROGREENS : mizuna, choi sum, various Japanese brassica, lettuce if you like, amaranthus etc.

It all depends on what your tastes are, and what is most expensive in the stores but worthwhile and easy to grow at home.

For example, here is a blurb for MENEGI, a scallion or green onion with a specialized use. If this item is something that you like, AND it is costing you a fair amount, you can easily grow it at home at lower cost:

Menegi: This delicate, white green onion is a young shoot of a Japanese scallion. Specially cultivated to produce young shoots that are used as a sashimi and sushi garnish, Menegi are harvested very soon after planting when the scallion has grown to a height of only 3”-4”. Because they are harvested when they are young and thin, Menegi needs heavy planting. Menegi onions look very much like chives and can be interchanged in recipes. Their most popular and typical use is as a garnish.

Maturity: Approx. 25 days

Planting season: Year round in mild climates

Traditional "kyo yasai" or Kyoto vegetables: some of these can be an interesting choice for those who have the space, even a food service bucket or foam picnic cooler is sufficient.

My favorite is the KAMO-NASU: a special eggplant for frying. 1 plant goes a long way, but less productive than the tomatoes.

Sorry if I have not been of an immediate, practical help. If you do consume quantities of lentils, beans and other split legumes, one way might be to make friends with Tibetan or Indian restaurant staff, if any in the locality. When they get their goods delivered, you could see if you could buy wholesle too from their distributors: basmati rice, legumes, spices etc. Space, storage, MEAL MOTHS [pheromone traps], weevils, all need to be kept in mind.

A buying club may make sense where several households of like mind create a business license [i don't know what laws or social conventions apply in Japan] and purchase from food distributors in bulk quantities, say every 2 weeks. In the US, many people have space for a small freezer the size of a washing machine: this helps a LOT!!. I have no idea whether such ideas are practical in Japan.

Here in Ithaca, NY, you can just walk up to restaurant distributors and ask nicely if they will sell say, a bag of onions. In the grocery store, medium size cooking onions are 60-70c/lb in 10 lb bags. With the distributor you get a 50 lb bag of huge sized onions for 17-20 cents/lb. Ditto similar price differentials for eggplant or cauliflower that are 3.99/head retail during the winter. But quantities are too large for single familes, so coordination is the key.

Other places have restaurant cash & carry trade, in the larger cities like Syracuse or Buffalo where anyone can buy restaurant quantities at commercial prices, no license or anything else needed. Huge baking warehouses there sell all kinds of exciting stuff from flour to hardware to the general public at the same terms as to the trade. Ditto meat and vegetable purveyors. In Japan, the wholesalers must have something similar going. How to access that is something that our esteemed friends here can advise you.

Edited February 11, 2009 by v. gautam (log)

[nakji]

A topic near and dear to my heart.

Radish peel daikon is a favourite of mine. These days I've taken to making daikon kimchi, since the daikon at the allotment stand are so cheap. I always use up the leaves, as well, since they're worm bitten enough to convince me he's not using a lot of pesticide. I've slipped some pickles back to the farmer, as well, and he now goes out of his way to give me a little bit larger bushel of whatever I'm buying whenever I turn up at his stand.

I'm cooking strictly in season, and my husband is helping by supplementing our take with lots of vegetables from the Ofuna market, where most things are incredibly cheap.

I have a mental map of everywhere I go for work, and take advantage of the fact that my employer pays for my trains. I always have a carrier bag in my purse, so if I'm swinging by a station that has a Kaldi coffee with a sale on, I can stock up on Italian tomatoes, or similar. They had coconut milk on for 137 yen a can this week, so that went into the basket!

I also have potted herbs that I started with materials from the 100 yen shop.

[helenjp]

If I were to try and make up for lost income solely via food savings, our food budget would be halved.

Grow-your-own - I've bought a new bucket for EM bokashi and the starter culture, and am pleased to see that the bucket is much easier to use than the old style was. Unless you want to spend a lot of money on electric kitchen composters, I think this is the most realistic way to compost in Japan's crowded housing situation.

Energy seems expensive here, and I find my bills go down noticeably if I'm careful to add another item to the pot for later use; use my pressure cooker or thermal cooker to save on gas, or my breadmaker to save on oven use.

As people have said, half the battle is to not waste what you've paid for! Let's revive that "three ways" topic - that approach is a real favorite for me (and more fun to cook), especially as freezer space here doesn't encourage the "big batch/freeze half" approach.

Quick-pickling stretches the life of vegetables, and also means one less cooked dish to make! If you want to go a bit further, buy one of those ready-matured nuka-zuke bran pickle beds that will come on sale in a month or two, or mix up a bag of sagohachi rice koji pickling mix (the mixes are less salty than they used to be).

Vegetable scraps - scrubbing well and peeling thickly provides enough about twice a week to pad out gyoza fillings, dry curries, or mabo-dofu, or make a fried rice or maze-gohan. As well as kinpira, you can make an excellent "daigaku-imo" from thickly cut strips of sweet potato peel.

Everything starts to taste the same if you put all the scraps in together, so I often keep root veg scraps separate from green veg stems or fungi stems/trimmings.

Padding out: tofu is really a workhorse. It even makes good okonomiyaki! Beans, on the other hand, tend to be expensive, though still better value per cup of cooked volume than meat.

Substitutes: lard is cheaper than butter (which has not come back down to pre-butter-scare prices). In baking western goods, sesame seeds are a cheap substitute for nuts, ama-natto or even green peas or fresh ginger substitute for dried fruit, and tea and local herbs and fruits substitute for vanilla, brandy etc.

End of season - mochi are currently half the price they were earlier in the winter, and so we are having ozoni for breakfast/lunch, with plenty of hakusai. With higher wheat prices affecting noodles and pasta as well as breads, bargain bin mochi look like a good buy to me.

Where to shop - keep a "low-price" notebook. You'll find that certain shops consistently offer the lowest price on certain types of goods, and sometimes you can spot cycles in discounts for certain items.

You can buy bulk non-food items such as dish detergent in many places, from office supply shops to discount liquor shops, but bulk items are surprisingly NOT always cheaper than those tiny refill packs.

100 yen shops - excellent for singles and couples, not always the best price per volume unit for families. My brother in law finds the 100 yen single-serving vegetable packs very useful, but for us, it is cheaper to buy bigger packs at the green-grocery or supermarket.

Gyoumu-super - Good places to find large cans of oil or soy sauce etc, and generally good for traditional dry goods such seaweed mixes or sesame seeds. Big bags of cubed dried tofu are good buys too. 800g packs of grated cheese are much cheaper than at the supermarket. For meats, I think the quality is sometimes so awful that it's a waste of money, and the pre-prepared items such as pre-breaded pork skewers are cheap enough, but still more expensive and poorer quality than home-made. However, items such as frozen grilled salt salmon or free-flow packs of pork scraps are handy for bento if your family have outgrown the expensive supermarket versions with their tiny servings. For bulk raw meats other than chicken, you might do better at places such as Hanamasa.

Gyoumu super offer huge packs of harusame (beanthread noodles). I use these to make something I learned as "Samoan chop suey" - originally chunks of pork fried with lots of garlic and onion, with soaked harusame added and seasoned GENEROUSLY with soy sauce. These days I make it with slices of age-dofu (thick fried tofu) and vegetables with some oomph, like daikon greens or rapolini (the kind of "grown up" na-no-hana that's sold the past few years).

...and finally, carrying bottles of home-made mugi-cha with you definitely saves money, if you can find a place to drink it!

[helenjp]

Staple starch survey...this reflects prices and availability in urban areas, where (according to my figures) cheap spaghetti, very cheap bread, and cheap dried udon are cheaper than rice. However, that is less likely to be true in provincial areas where rice is cheap (and bought in bulk) and discount retailers rare, or for urban families who have rice sent free or cheaply from rural relatives.

Average rice price: 100g = around 35 yen (100g is just a little over 1/2 a Japanese measuring cup, and in my family, that's the average serving).

Cheapest way for urban dwellers to buy rice: 20 or 30 kg lots (in 10 kg bags) over the internet : 100g = 28-31 yen. That's the equivalent of 1350 yen for a 5 kg bag, but I haven't seen that price available retail myself. (Conversely super high grades 100 g = 100 yen). It's immediately obvious that padding rice out with vegetable trimmings etc. can bring the per-serving cost down by 20 or 30%.

Bread, assuming 2 slices of 8-cut bread: 30 yen per serving @ 120 yen per bag; 45 yen per serving @180 yen per bag

Bread in a bread machine - for a loaf the equivalent of a bag from the supermarket, using 300g flour, the cost of flour would be 75-120 yen, plus 17 yen (cost of 1 egg or 100 ml milk), plus unspecified costs - yeast, sugar, salt, oil, energy costs. I therefore assume that it is cheaper for me to bake good bread unless I buy bread at less than 150 yen per bag (and cheap bread usually includes whey but no whole milk or egg).

Spaghetti: 100g dried = 25-50 yen (super-low discounter vs supermarket price)

Udon: 100 g dried = 20-50 yen ( as above, discounter vs supermarket). Supermarket frozen udon 1 serving = 60 yen.

Bifun - 100 g = 25 yen, discounter

At discount levels, soba is priced the same as udon, which must raise some questions.

Sorry, forgot to price potatoes and sweet potatoes.

[MomOfLittleFoodies]

I don't live in Japan, but I wanted to toss in my 2 cents.

As far as bread goes, for breakfast, quick breads, muffins and American style biscuits are pretty cheap to make. Pancakes/hot cakes, savory or sweet, can be used to make sandwiches as well. The nice thing about all of these is that you can bulk them up with mashed fruit (banana bread), pureed sweet potatoes or squash (pumpkin bread or muffins) and they typically call for oil or shortening rather than butter.

[helenjp]

Pancakes - yes, and okonomiyaki is not only cheap in itself, it's open to all kinds of variations which take it down to a quick snack or up to a balanced meal, such a hotcake-size okonomiyaki with a sprinkling of green onion instead of pork; or a hearty but economical version with pureed tofu substituted for part of the mixing liquid.

Muffins and quick breads...I must admit, I think twice about turning on the oven, because of Japan's high electricity costs (that's just one example), which have stepped rates that increase substantially if you go over certain levels, or if you have a high-ampere breaker. It's one reason why I use my breadmaker rather than baking bread in the oven.

[MomOfLittleFoodies]

Muffins and quick breads...I must admit, I think twice about turning on the oven, because of Japan's high (that's just one example), which have stepped rates that increase substantially if you go over certain levels, or if you have a high-ampere breaker. It's one reason why I use my breadmaker rather than baking bread in the oven.

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Wow... I think I'll stop whining about my electricity bills now. That makes electricity in California look dirt cheap.

[prasantrin]

Muffins and quick breads...I must admit, I think twice about turning on the oven, because of Japan's high electricity costs (that's just one example), which have stepped rates that increase substantially if you go over certain levels, or if you have a high-ampere breaker. It's one reason why I use my breadmaker rather than baking bread in the oven.

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You're telling me! Plus because my oven is a gas oven, its usage not only increases my electric bill, but also my gas bill! I haven't baked nearly as much this year because of that (though my gas bill is still high because I forget to turn off the hot water heater quite often).

[v. gautam]

Please forgive me for interjecting an issue that has become personally relevant to me for some while. As an Indian in India, I used to eat a great deal of whole meal durum flour and whole legumes etc. that stopped when I came to the USA and my diet became white starches: rice, refined flour, potato, sugar etc., because of money issues.

One of my teachers, David Kritchevsky, a noted researcher on diet and health [1920-2006: http://www.ebmonline.org/cgi/content/full/232/3/337] warned me in the early 1980s about many things including this. Like him, I am a lipid biochemist.

In the items noted in the earlier posts, there is a significant representation of these WHITES, with high glygemic index, with the exception of soba. A bread machine might allow one the freeedom to include more whole grains, sesame seeds, buckwheat groats etc. into the flour mixture.

If feasible, economically, logistically, etc. any effort to reduce the udon, ramen, white bread, white rice components with more of adzuki and whole sprouted soy/mung bean, other legumes, maybe even okara gotten at reduced prices might not be such a bad idea.

This unproductive fixation with white rice is comparatively recent in Japanese history and culture. In the shogunate, rice was an expensive grain reserved for the upper strata. The commoners made do with a diet enriched in millets, barley, coix and a wide variety of legumes, vegetables, tree and forest products ----- a made-to-order nutritional profile for today!!!!

David Kritchevsky studied the Nisei and Sansei morbidity profiles and diets in Hawaii and discovered some amazing, counterintuitive data from which he began to construct his acclaimed thesis on lipids, residence time in the gut and heart disease.

What I am trying to urge in an oblique way, but need to say directly, is that I damaged my health severely trying to economize with a diet comprised of the elements cheap in the USA, the terrible whites. I had almost no money for a while. I have seen the same scene repeated with many Indian students, where white rice, bread, noodles & potatoes become their mainstay and wreak silent damage unbekownst to them. Fruit & fresh vegetables are several multiples the same price, so they shy away from sticker shock. Eventually, the results are terrible in mid-life. Health is more important than short-sighted savings of a few $, because health cannot be recovered once undermined. Please pardon me for the unwarranted presumption but I had to say this.

[helenjp]

No, I agree with you, and was in fact returning to this topic for that same reason, when I spotted your post. It is one reason why it's such good practice to include vegetable trimmings in rice, though post-war Japanese such as my husband really prefer white rice.

I did want to revise starch prices, because trends such as rising wheat prices worldwide and the fading boom for sweet-potato spirits in Japan have changed the old ideas about "cheap" vs. "expensive" starches.

The wartime starch-stretchers are healthy, but non-rice grains have become exorbitant luxuries. Taro (sato-imo and relatives) is no cheaper than sweet potato, and supermarkets seem to devote less space to them each year. It's a pity, and a loss to Japan's cooking. I'll add a recipe or two to the rice topic, anyway.

As you say, you have to change your thinking to avoid sticker shock - we think that 400 yen for a cabbage is ridiculously expensive, yet that would last most families for 3-4 meals, while the same amount of money spent on meat or fish may or may not be enough for one family meal.

One of my favorite strategies for healthy but economical eating is the "ichijuu issai" approach - instead of the typical array of side-dishes, one hearty soup and one bulky side-dish (plus pickles OF COURSE!) are served. This approach inevitably uses more vegetables, and is the original everyday temple fare.

Another strategy for saving on vegetables is not to use an entire packet for anything, but to save a little to add variety to another dish...e.g. the little bit of carrot that didn't go in the chikuzen-ni (simmered winter vegetable mix) is shredded and boiled with the chrysanthemum greens, making a change from my usual way of serving them.

[nakji]

I spent 500 yen at the allotment stand today, which got me two huge carrots, a beautiful new cabbage, five giant leeks, another hefty daikon, and a double-wide bunch of spinach.

Half the spinach was incorporated into a bean soup for lunch, and the other half will be stir-fried to go with a curry for tomorrow night's dinner.

Part of the daikon went into mushroom-daikon-pork nabe for dinner, and the other two thirds are lurking in my fridge. I already have a big container of kakdukki kimchi in there, but I may have to put another batch on to use it up, and give it away. Carrots were diced and grated - the grated went into a coleslaw made with the cabbage that will serve as a good side dish for lunches over the next couple of days. The diced carrots were boiled up with some olive oil and chicken stock for yet more lunch soup. The leeks were used instead of onions in the curry, soups, and nabe. That 500 yen went a long way!

Everything was cut as finely and evenly as possible to reduce cooking time, and thus my gas bill. The key ingredient, of course, is time. I usually spend one of my days off doing food prep for the week. Others may find that their time saved is worth spending a little more on food.

Neither my husband nor I prefer white rice, so we're happy to cut it with all manner of things.

[smallworld]

Grow-your-own - I've bought a new bucket for EM bokashi and the starter culture, and am pleased to see that the bucket is much easier to use than the old style was. Unless you want to spend a lot of money on electric kitchen composters, I think this is the most realistic way to compost in Japan's crowded housing situation.

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Helen, can you tell us a bit more about this method of composting? An electric composter has been on my wish list for years but meanwhile I've been reluctant to try bucket-style composting on my balcony. With a DIY compost bucket set-up I'd be afraid of attracting a certain ghastly pest (that I don't need to name as I'm sure anyone in Japan is familiar with the beasts), while electric composters seem so nicely hygienic and tightly sealed.

From what I've read so far about bokashi composting it seems like i might be the answer, but I'm just wondering how it works in practice. Does it really stay tightly sealed and odour-free?

[helenjp]

It doesn't seem to attract what my sons call the "6-wheeled carriages", but I suspect it may attract vinegar flies in summer, and I do recall having trouble with maggots (that can't survive in the compost, but are still no fun to see) once or twice while the compost was "maturing" outside (it collects in the container mixed with the EM powder, then you are supposed to let it sit in the container, fermenting and shedding moisture, for a few weeks while you start filling your alternate container, and then finally you are supposed to mix it with soil, at which point it rots down very quickly). The container does shut firmly at the top, and it has quite a fine drainage plate at the bottom, and a little spigot to drain off the liquid...so how flies got to it, I could never figure out.

The smell is not a big problem (less so, I think, than the smell of bagged up kitchen waste awaiting collection day in summer) if you are sufficiently generous with the EM bokashi. At the fermenting stage, I hear that aerating your compost with a layer of torn up cardboard here and there in the container makes a big difference to bugs and smells, so I plan to try that too.

I wondered about mixing the collected waste and EM mix straight with soil, and found a magazine reference to a woman doing just that in small bags on her balcony - turns out she using something called the "Kadota method".

This involves making a batch of soil, rice bran, and in winter a starter such as the EM powder, and either mixing that with the compost. The soil/compost mix is either buried under more soil in a planter or in the ground, or left in in a woven polyethylene sack on a couple of bricks for aeration. Since this skips the problematic step of maturing the waste/bokashi mix before layering with soil, I'm hoping this might be the ultimate solution! It's also done in smaller batches - much easier.

So far I've buried one 20 liter batch in a 40 liter container layered with plenty of soil and EM bokashi, and topped off with plenty of soil, so far so good, but I'll report in another couple of weeks. This will probably house my goya plants this year (last year it was an excellent home for a deep-planted tomato.)

Living in an apartment or small house, I don't think there's any point telling yourself that you will compost ALL waste - it just may not be practical. Any reduction in waste is a good thing, especially if it helps produce food and reduces smells.

[smallworld]

Thanks Helen! So you keep it outside just while it matures, or all the time? And can the spigot be opened and closed, or is it constantly open and dripping? This could be a concern, as what the beasties are after is water more than food and I bet they'd really really like compost juice.

[helenjp]

I normally keep it inside while I fill the container, then outside (preferably out of the sun) while it matures. The spigot closes nice and tightly -- even if you tip the container, it won't leak unless it's open.