Food and Shopping in Japan - not as expensive as you think!

Whenever I told people I wanted to go to Japan, their first reaction was "but it's really expensive!". While Japan isn't one of the cheapest places to visit, there are a few things where you will notice that not only are they not expensive but they're in fact cheaper.

The biggest one would be food. I'm not talking about groceries, but going out to eat at a restaurant. Let's start with the fact that you do not tip in Japan. This can reduce your bill by 10-20% depending on where you're from. Taxes are also included in the meal so again, the price you see, is what you pay.

When first visiting Japan on a budget, I feel like we all fall into the trap that is convenience stores or "conbini". They offer cheap fast food and you feel like you beat the system by both eating out but not really. The thing is, after you compare conbini food to restaurant food, you really don't want to touch that stuff unless you have to.

There are several restaurant chains in Japan that are not only really cheap but also offer really delicious food. Restaurants like Yoshinoya and Sukiya offer variations of rice dishes with meat, very basic, but also very cheap and tasty. If you can afford to pay a bit more, you can eat at western style restaurants such as Saizeriya, Coco's and Jonathan's. These restaurant offer a large variety of western and Japanese dishes for a decent price. You can also get a "drink bar" which means you get all you can drink on hot and cold drinks. (Coco's and Jonathan's drink bar are bigger than Saizeriya's) or you can add a small sum and get a set that comes with a salad and soup or rice etc. Their menus are all colorful, with pictures for every dish and descriptions in English. Another restaurant worth mentioning is Coco Ichibanya, the famous Japanese Curry restaurant chain. The cool thing about Ichibanya is that you can choose how much rice you want and how spicy you want the curry to be. It's cheap and delicious and they have English menus as well. Finally, if you want to have some delicious cheap sushi, go to Sushiro. This is a conveyor belt style sushi, they have touch screens to order from and have recently added English and Korean menus as well! The exciting thing is that almost all the plates are 105yen! Go crazy!

Moving on from Restaurants to shopping! Japan has the cheapest eyewear I have ever seen. Chains such as Zoff and Jins offer stylish glasses for a cheap price (with lenses included!) and making glasses can take around 30min to make! I recommend going to Zoff in Harajuku as the store is really big and some of the staff can handle some English.

H&M and Forever21 are also very cheap here. I don't know how much cheaper than the U.S but definitely cheaper than Israel and I heard it's much cheaper than Australia too. The variety is also much bigger. The H&M and Forever21 in Harajuku are both 7 floors each! Go crazy!

Harajuku in general is a great place for cool cheap clothes. There are a lot of recycle shops as well so if you're good at digging and finding treasures, you might get lucky.

A walking distance from Harajuku is Shibuya, where you can find even more trendy clothes. While these may not be extremely cheap, you'll be surprised to see that some stores offer very decent prices. Go to Shibuya109 and get lost in its 10 floors of fashion glory. Oh and men, have no fear, there's also a 109men!

Finally, let us not forget the glory that isBook-off! The bigger Book-offs can have clothes and action figures and music instruments, but most of them have books, manga, DVDs, CDs and video games. Book-off is a recycle shop so everything is 2^nd hand. However, 2^nd hand in Japan is pretty much brand new.

Enjoy your shopping and eating!