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Need advice on spending food budget

Well then, your not a very good example for these people who only have 20,000 for a month.

My 2 suggestions are eggs and rice, that way you'll get lots of protein and carbs and wont do too bad. Plus eggs are super cheap.
 
Wow... thanks for all your ideas guys.

I did just double check to see if I had misread. Not at all.

30,000 yen a month is for pocket money, and 20,000 yen for food. They also mention underneath "Previous volunteers have found this very adequate".

Yeah right. Anyway, I hope I go over there and they all shower me with yen saying it was a typo and the wages are labelled for every week, not month. That way at least I'll be able to save up enough to stay on in Japan travelling after my six month placement is over, be a shame not to use my full 12 month volunteer visa.

And I would need to save up because you can't work with that visa.

This sucks... I know the Japanese people can be very thoughtful and would really help me out a lot if they thought I needed it, but it would hurt my pride so much to be accepting food donations, I'd rather starve to death than face people who I feel see me as a charity case.

I previously thought I might be able to live on this, and I'm hoping you guys are a little off, for my sake. But on the upside, I could stand to lose some weight, it would probably help my double daily dose of cardio in doing so

EDIT: I know the extra 30,000 yen pocket money would really help the food side of things, but then what money would i have to spend on going out, buying stuff like cd's or dvd's, and travel to places around Kumamoto for the duration of my placement? Maybe I can live on that then, I guess I'll see in ten days.
 
Hey you can live off 50 000yen a month!! Personally I would consider my health first and use that 50000yen for the food that I need. Anything left over after the food you can save or buy whatever you want, but food comes first. I think the previous volunteers found it adequate because they used the 30000 yen for food and probably didn't go travelling. I am currently doing a volunteer type thing in Japan at the moment and the company gives me 110000yen for expenses such as food and stuff and I can't seem to be able to save enough to travel!
 
Honestly, good luck saving...

30,000yen is quite limited, you will be hard pushed to do some big ticket things. If you're lucky you could 40,000yen saved by March and go on an off-season jaunt to Okinawa (I did).

Witht the money you get you can easily live in Japan, but I'm not sure if you can really LIVE in Japan. It'll be a meager life.
 
jet_dee said:
30,000 yen a month is for pocket money, and 20,000 yen for food. They also mention underneath "Previous volunteers have found this very adequate".
Click to expand...

Did they provide a space for previous volunteers to offer rebuttals to that statement? If not, what message might one infer from it? Hint, hint, hint.

I sort of wonder why they have this sort of volunteer program at all. Valid arguments about the quality of medical care and facilities aside, Japan is not a third-world country. Looks like they're just trying to get work done on the cheap.
 
If all else fails, become an English teacher. Private lessons don't really come under any legal scrutiny, and you can make upwards of 4000 yen per hour. Friends of mine would sacrifice their time during the day to be able to go out at night. I'm sure that SOMEONE will want lessons...
 
MeAndroo said:
I'm sure that SOMEONE will want lessons...
Click to expand...

Think about who would want lessons and where they would be during the day time... you've just killed off about 80% of your possibles there
 
Ewok85 said:
Think about who would want lessons and where they would be during the day time... you've just killed off about 80% of your possibles there
Click to expand...
Bored housewives, college students, the unemployable...
 
Hmm. That's a decent idea for after I finish my placement, I reckon. It would probably be possible to stay in Tokyo after having been sightseeing around the rest of Japan for a little while, and to go to a gaijin bar for information. I could teach english, they expect me to help the japanese nurses and their children with their english skills anyway.
 

Bingo! I knew it!

You're getting shafted big-time on this whole deal.
 
Haha. Well if I am, I don't care too much for these 3 reasons:

-Japanese women a plenty
-It'll most definitely be a booster to my Japanese language skills
-It's a year away from my parents, and I couldn't really get any further from their rules and regulations :-D
 
Think about who would want lessons and where they would be during the day time... you've just killed off about 80% of your possibles there
Click to expand...

Not sure what you mean. I did all my teaching between the hours of 5-9. Teaching over a meal is a fanatstic way of making friends as well as making money, and sometimes they'll spring for the food too. Like FHP says, there's tons of people who have little to nothing to do that are willing to plunk down hard earned yen in exchange for a little convo.
 
Theres gotta be MUCH better ways to do this than being a free english teacher.
 
budd said:
500/600 yen per day
Click to expand...
Frankly thats impossible.

I jsut spent taht much this morning without leaving my house as I had to do laundry.

Hope you like conbini bentos washed down with tap water. Only one a day!
 
I spend way too much money on takeaway food (am a pizza addict) but if I stick to supermarket shopping and cooking my own meals I can do 5,000 yen a week, especially if I hit the supermarket late at night. Friends of mine are sticking to a food budget of 4,000 yen/week. If you always cook your own meals, bring lunch, don't buy drinks/snacks etc at the combini all the time I think you'll be fine on 20,000/month.

Oh, and also try not to shop at supermarkets near train stations. Go a bit further away and you'll probably find significantly cheaper prices.
 
LOL, a single pizza will blow your budget for a week in a single blow! Ah the memories, but they taste so NICE after that long without eating any
 
"Hope you like conbini bentos washed down with tap water. Only one a day!"
i do LIKE it A LOT actually. do it here too (my kidneys do not like soda)
pampered wusses were posting their limits, so i chose to post mine as well (if i sleep most of the day, i don't eat AT ALL)
 
well im a pretty skinny guy and for me the activity of consuming food is a chore....... i think i only ate about 30,000 yen of for 2 months...

my diet consisted of 300 yen bentos,onigiri (i can feel the perservatives in my liver...)
100 yen instant noodles
and 450 ramen at a local ramen store
and ofcourse various snacks!!!

if you can cook/make food yourself it will be a whole lot cheaper!!! i would of made stuff but the kitchen was so old, nothing worked...

mostly i skipped breakfast because i was sleeping like a racehorse
yeah this isnt a healthy way to live.....

when i came home i was about around 115 pounds, and right now im in the good ole US wieghing in around 120~125
 
20,000 per month food = tough...

This sounds like some problem you'd have to solve in a class about living single & on a budget, lol...
 
Get instant noodles! There's lots of variation, you only need hot water for the preparation, and they're cheap, so you'll still have some left for the important things (like doujinshi and ero-games )
 
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