Japan Survival Guide - Saving Money

Japan, which is very close to Taiwan, is the most popular tourist destination for Taiwanese. About 5 million people set foot on Japanese soil a year before the epidemic. What is the concept of 5 million people? Nearly 1/4 of Taiwan's population, I think no other country can achieve such a record.

For tourists, Japan is a tourist destination, but if you want to live in Japan for a long time, it is another story. Especially if you plan to settle in big cities such as Tokyo and Osaka, you should have enough budget. After all, it is a Japanese metropolis with high prices. I still remember that Bai Juyi, a great poet of the Tang Dynasty, was once said that it is not easy to live in Chang'an!

What if the budget is not enough? Nothing more than open source, throttling two aspects. Open source depends on its own ability, and here we focus on how to save money .

Japanese supermarkets usually put discount labels on fresh food before closing time, and clothing stores will also sell out the out-of-season products at low prices before the season changes. I think these should be considered basic common sense. XD

So is there any other way to save money? First of all, we recommend 100- yuan stores , especially large-scale chain 100-yuan stores, such as DAISO, Seria, CAN DO, and Watts, which are very large in scale. Each branch has more than 1,000 stores, which can basically be seen in all counties and cities in Japan. their sign. Their competition is becoming more and more fierce, and each company has to compete to develop more value-for-money products. If you visit a few more stores, you will definitely be able to dig treasures. Let me introduce another big treasure store, the business supermarket [Japanese name: business スーパー] was originally a place for catering business to purchase goods, and now individual customers are also welcome. Because they are self-operated and self-sold, many intermediate links are omitted, and there is almost no advertising, and the decoration of the store will not be beautiful. , the price is cheaper. The text description is not easy to understand how cheap it is, and it is more interesting to go directly to the example.

A bottle of natural mineral water has a capacity of about 550ml (the capacity of the most common bottle of beverages), and the price is about 110 yen. The business supermarket has a special price of 68 yen (73.44 including tax), and the larger capacity is 2L (2000ml).

In the past, these supermarkets were almost always opened in the suburbs, where the rent was cheap, and it would be very inconvenient for people without a car. Now these stores are gradually gathering in the urban area, and the transportation is more and more convenient. If there is no business supermarket near your home, you can also pay more attention to the special flyers of local supermarkets and drugstores. In Japan's early business model, these stores would print flyers, clip them into newspapers, and deliver them to subscribers' homes with the newspapers every day. The flyer will list which special products are available on which days, and customers can go to the store to buy them according to the map. Friends who often watch cartoons such as Cherry Maruko and Crayon Shin-chan should have seen such scenes. The housewives in these dramas will look at the supermarket flyers at home, and then go out to buy vegetables after comparing the prices. Even some hard-working mothers will go to a few more supermarkets to buy the specials only available in the store, such as eggs and meat in the A supermarket; fish and vegetables in the B family...

Fewer people are subscribing to newspapers now, and the Internet has become popular, but the habit of printing flyers has not changed. Some smart platform operators have adopted a compromise method to collect and organize these flyers and put them on the website for those who need it. Check. It can also be seen from this point that it is difficult to completely overthrow and renovate an already ingrained business behavior in Japan. The quick-thinking industry can see the pain points and create a new business model.

The above mentioned are the ways to save money on food and drink. There are also ways to save money on household items such as furniture and electrical appliances. If you don’t mind using second-hand goods, you can take a look. In my own experience, most Japanese have good usage habits, and although they are second-hand, they are well preserved. I just bought a physical version of the novel for 300 yen a few days ago. The outside shows signs of aging, but the inside pages are almost the same as the new ones. Now the very popular second-hand trading platform " mercari ", the old "ヤフオク! " can get good items. If you want to save more money, people who don't even want to spend a dime can go to platforms such as "ジモティー" to dig treasure.

Speaking of which, when I came to study in Japan in the early years (far eyes 😆), although Japan had just experienced the burst of the economic bubble at that time, the impact of the general Japanese people was not too big, and their lives were still very rich. At that time, there were no strict restrictions on the disposal of large household garbage (referring to furniture, home appliances, etc.), and furniture of good quality was often seen in the garbage concentration areas at the streets and alleys. The poor I have also picked up some, and the most impressive one is a Macintosh personal computer! It feels like getting a MacBook Air for free now.

Now, if you want to remove large-scale garbage, you need to pay for it to be collected by an operator commissioned by the local government. Some people think that this is too troublesome, so they log in on a platform such as "ジモティー", and as long as someone wants to give it away for free or sell it at a very low price, Conditions usually only need to be picked up by themselves. "ジモティー" is the largest operator of this type of platform. There will be all kinds of people haunting it. Some people want to clear the items, and there are also professional second-hand operators. Those who want to pick up leaks should see it clearly.

I don't know how many people my article can help, but I think it should only be helpful to those who live in Japan. If anyone has feedback, I will continue to write the next one. XD

2021/12/02 posted.