I work in electronic factory and often bring home leftover rice and stews from cafeteria. The cafeteria owner is kind enough to pack all the leftover in several plastic bags and put it on the table for the employees before he closes the shop. Thankfully my wife and daughter are not picky about food. It saves me a lot of money each months. If only more people could do this, we'd end up having less food wastage problem

This will not only benefit his savings, but it will help him be healthier!

Actually this is a very SMART MOVE! That's how our great great grandparents stay alive when things got tough. Hats off to this young man!

My husband and I started doing this so we can spend more time with our son during the work week. We didn’t even think about the financial benefits but it’s cut our grocery bill significantly. We can’t believe we weren’t doing this before.

Cooking and eating at home should be something obvious. I was born and raised in a east Europe country. My both parents had 2 jobs, we always cooked at home. During my entire life with my parents they ordered only once food. Now I live in West Europe. I cook at home every day, because I learnt that at my parent’s house. My coworkers can’t understand why at work I always have my own food from home, and I don’t want take a way with them. At the office, they complain about take a way food prices, but it’s not enough for them to cook at home. They say that they are tired, they don’t have time. They prefer to bing watching Netflix and scroll tiktok than spend 15mins a day by cooking something simple and healthy. A lot of my coworkers are obese of eating out.

This is very true. I also recommend following a very set cooking routine like using instant pots, rice cookers, etc. This will save you so much time. My current routine is as follows: 1. Buy bulk meat for the week 2. Use my large instant pot to batch cook the meat 3. While #2 is going on, use my rice cooker to cook rice 4. Distribute cooked meat to containers 5. Cook other vegetables or make stock from the leftover juice from #2 6. Distribute vegetables to containers 7. Distribute rice to containers Boom done. This works for majority of foods. The cleaning is also very easy with an instant pot since it's high pressure cooking and so doesn't leave any food stuck to the stainless steel pot. Rotating meats keeps your body from getting allergic to one type of meat. Then, since you don't use much oil, it's also very healthy. Not to mention, pressure cooking and steaming is very healthy as well. You can cook hot dogs, minced meat, chicken, dimsum, soups, and so on with an instant pot. And all the work only takes at most an hour for a whole week's worth of food.

Kenta, its the same here in the US brother. I have been cooking my meals and eating out less for years. Even though I am saving a lot, I do see the price increases when I go to the supermarket. I like pepper steak for instance but I'm only able to have that like every couple months and I have to go to a Japanese supermarket to get the cheapest cut of meat to make it. Its more than inflation, the money is going somewhere and our wages remain stagnant. The rich just keep getting richer and we are supporting these pointless wars abroad.

Interesting to me how people don’t learn from the past. 60 or 70 years ago we just called it eating leftovers. I grew up doing it in the 80’s and have done it most of my life. Cook a big meal then eat it for days until it’s gone. It saves time and money. Now people think it’s a new phenomenon called “food prep”.

Yes, by cooking my meals, not only i lower my food expenses, i eat more healthier... When i cook in a day , i divide my meal for lunch & dinner as well

My mother always said, "Cook once; eat twice!"

Oh that was actually a really good tip he mentions: plan to spend time not spending money.

For the last part:Just add oyster sauce. It will make a lot of difference. Or even some dashi.

True, previously I worked 5 days a week, and I spent 2 offdays to shop for grocery and food preppings. When I have more free time, I will visit my brother in the same city to share the foods with him. Food prepping saved me a lot of time on weekdays, and I spent less money eating out during meal breaks.

As humans we eat daily. So it's best to focus on minimizing this spend.

Smart. 8 hours of work a month he saves at least $133 a month, or $16.60 an hour or more. And it’s healthier too.

I live in the countryside, so I always make my own meals. I buy groceries from Gyomu Supa, and buy only discounted meat / vegetables or whatever is cheap that season. My yearly food bill is around 1/5th of my friends' who live in Tokyo. I also try to buy products that have a longer shelf life (i.e. rice, flour, etc) in bulk.

There is only room for growth 🙌🏻 great mindset

Lol, I felt his last comment. I tried the whole making multiple meals in advance on the weekend thing to help me save on time but storing in the fridge, the food starts to taste worse day by day and some things are just not edible, and in the freezer, some foods just don't defrost well and become mush/soggy when heated up. In the end, I just skip breakfast and try to make an extra large portion that will last for 2 -3 meals so at least I'm not spending the whole evening every day after work cooking.

As a Japanese, he should move to country side of Tokyo or Saitama prefecture or Chiba prefecture ( because Meguro is very expensive for living) He went to supermarket that not normal price for food. Anyway, that’s good idea for making lunch ( and dinner) By yourself. Good luck all of you 😊❤

Very proud of this young man. This is something we have done most of lives with take away being only once a week on payday as a treat when we were doing very well.

Why does he have such great skin 😭😭😭

This is what my grandmother from both sides and my mother do also when I and my siblings are still younger.they cook a food that last for 2 days and we eat just enough for meal ,and until now I adapts these culture of my family as working here in other countries i prepare extra food during my day off and it last for 3 days and it saves me time and money too.❤plus it’s healthier food than buying food outside

He can still save more, maybe around 10-20%, by buying from discount supermarket or local shops.

Cooking at home and packing lunch for work is not only cheaper but also healthier and helps you grow up as a person with new knowledge about how to make tastier, cheaper and nutritious meals!

There are a lot of lessons from this video. For me I'll meal prep on the weekend, take care of routine tasks like laundry, and so some self study. It makes the work week easier when all I need to do is put food I prepped in the microwave.

Ppl always say they are too busy to cook. But meals can be prepared easily like Overnight Oats also.. containers of oats and yogurt and fruits can be prepared at night and just bring them out to office for lunch instead of expensive cai fan and meals.

I started doing something similar to this (making batches for lunches and dinners for the week ahead on Sundays) around November last year and apart from being able to save more, it's also much healthier (my cholesterol levels went down).

as I aged now 50, I ate out less, not because I do not have the money, but to be more healthy, with the money I can buy the best ingredients and cook nutritious meal. moreover, I can control the amount of sugar, salt and msg that I can consume. I cook using olive oil, well if you know Spanish they will tell you those said dont cook with olive oil is nonsense, buy the fresh salad and even for beef, we can get good one and cook delicious one.

I would spend close to $40, just myself, a day in the US if I eat out. That equals to $280 a week. I spend just about $180 a week for grocery for a family of 3.

Everything is going up but not wages. Wages just cant keep up.

Can't believe that as their population is shrinking together with the wages. Won't this make younger peope struggle more in life and stay away from marriage due to the commitments it has 😢 married women there also not treated well in work because them being pregnant is seen as a liability

So much better eating your own cooked meals. It’s healthier and more cost effective.

Simplicity and Energy . . . Please and Thank You : The Magic Words . . . 😺😺😺

Actually, it’s healthier. Though cost saving is

Budgeting is important.

I do intermittent fasting for health benefits. Unsurprisingly, I saved money too.

He is doing great, keep it up!

I know he has to max out the budget however the way he prepared his capsicum, oh man.

Eating outside in SG cost about USD3 a meal. Cooking wont save much money. If want to save money, skip breakfast and ask for extra rice for lunch and dinner.

I also know that I can't afford only eating out. The other reason I cook for myself is that I am sensitive to many foods that are usually put in store-bought or cafeteria lunch meals (like bell peppers, for example, they're almost everywhere). P.S. Ha-ha, the last comment is really on point! It took me a few years of practice to be satisfied with my own cooking!

Im from Singapore where canteen and food prices are okay. But i also meal prep due to health. Caifan are super oily, yellow vegetables and long queue. the oily air and warm environment make me break out in sweat and acne

Meal prepping leads to huge savings if you have a large family or if you eat like a professional bodybuilder. If you live alone, the saving may not be that much. But if you have the time, can take advantage of bulk buying and enjoy cooking then all the better.

My life and I live in Arizona USA. We do an Americanized version of this for our weekday lunches. We both work corporate. We have been doing an Americanized version of this for the last 10 years. This is our way to rein in costs and live without debt. We all should adopt a version of this. This is similar to a Mumbai India thing called the dubba wallah. Except there is no wallah...just the dubba. The worker schleps the dubba to work.

I used to live in the same area as him, went to that same supermarket, and just down the street there is a discount supermarket with white label products. A lot cheaper and the quality isn't bad. To keep costs down, I would suggest him to shop there. I feel the inflation here in Tokyo, but I end up going to different supermarkets for different products because praice varies from store to store, and obviously from neighbourhood to neighborhood. Takes a lot longer just to save 500 to 1000 yen, but it's savings at the end of the month.

looks so good and healthy man!

its important to invest the left over money from savings so it can start working for you and upgrade your future life

Food prep or bento or whatever you called... Important is can save more money as inflation is getting higher year by year.

A good cookbook might help make his meals tastier. I cook everyday but have to have a cookbook. I envy people who can cook delicious meals just from memory. He’s got the right idea though!

I am a man but raised by my Mom to be a scratch cook. I do enjoy eating out. But I literally paid for my last month-long vacation in Vietnam by cooking all my meals for 2 months. I stayed in five star hotels for 1/3 of my stay. And all of this was subsidized by simply not eating out. FWIW: An economical meal for two in my Western City is 60 bucks.

My cooking isn’t great either but it’s kept me alive lol

I think Japan has so much contradiction. Used to be the second richest highest GDP country not too long ago but ever since the Japanese economic stagnation, the yen has depreciated, salary has not kept up with inflation... And it seems like the country is going downhill.

I live alone in Brazil and do exactly the same thing: I make a huge meal that yields somewhere around 8 or 10 dishes, freeze them, and then defrost them throughout the week as needed. Do I like cooking? Hell no! But I get to learn how to cook, save money, and appreciate my own food. I also like to alternate between days of eating frozen food and fresh food (either takeout or homemade).

Ive been doing this for quite a While now because I don’t have time to cook everyday so i meal prep life is much easier and i save lots of money for eating out. I meal prep a chef style meal so I don’t need to eat out.

You got no money cause you live in Meguro, bro. Move to Kamata you can live decent or two stations over in Kawasaki and be ballin with 2DK for the same price. Shop at Hamamasa or Gyomu super and 100 yen lawsons

He reinvented the wheel

Food is usually ~30% of a Japanese person’s budget? 😮 I suppose that makes sense when you consider they import most of their food.

I definitely need to learn some recipes from him :(((

the Plaza Accord seems to be working as the US planned even after 40 years

No money just buy at Seiyu lah, still want to buy things at such a higher end supermarket.

the skill of preparing simple, healthy and economical dishes a thing of the past at least in many places. asides the usa consumer throws away 1/3 of the food actually purchased.

Why do i feel the price of food and accomodation he mentioned is cheap. I"m from Malaysia

we become lazy because of easy fast foods and these days using our phone food is even delivered to our doorsteps cook yourself even simple meal can be delicious and healthy and stop buying expensive coffees make your won save you even more money

So at 32 years of age he realised that he would save money by cooking meals rather than buying take out food ? Wow ,he really is the modern day Archimedes.

welcome to my world, japan.

It would make sense for him to get a Costco membership. Those medium supermarkets in the city are the worst value

How is cooking meals at home such a novelty that they need to run a news special on it???

Though this is great, it's sad to need to worry so much to save $129 per month. Salaries in Japan and many other places aren't so high.

How much he spent on the utilities for preparing the meals?

preparing your food and he's storing it for days? thats risky for health and food in fridge for 3 days depending on the food wont be good in taste. go shop for food at least 3 x a week , cook your meal everyday, buy fresh vegetable and it will last longer and add leafy greens on that diet. since he is alone ditch the fridge and that grocery store isnt a cheap place , wet markets are cheaper and you can get discount sometimes if you are a regular customer.

Only a few dishes can taste better the next day (eg. casseroles) but eating some fried/stir fried food, after it has been in the fridge for 5 days😂, is not tasty)

$100 bucks is nothing in the Japanese supermarket. This is why I don't like being in countries with no wet markets.

or he could move a little bit farther away from tokyo which costs cheaper and just take the train to work...or he could also go to a cheap wet market for his grocery instead of going to a higher end grocery store...its a no brainer...

If this is lucrative we must find a way to tske over the business or apply more tax

While there are many japanese youtuber do massive mukbangs and 10000 yen in a day videos!!

🤔 I was always told that the food shouldn't stay in the fridge for more than three days

As a Japanese, the background music was a bit annoying. Very stereotypical.

Called meal prepping or home making, crazy how they treat this like an alien ritual or something…

Thanks to that old man who still dreaming of his great empire.

According to Australian Retirement Trust, we need around $1,000 per person per week to retire (excluding surgery, medical bills and funeral expenses). 

If we live from age 65 to 108 (43 years), 43*52 weeks per year = 2,236 weeks = AUD$2,236,000 per person (excluding inflation, medical surgery costs, lawsuits, prison, victim of crimes, diseases & other uncontrollable, & unexpected financial disasters). What will happen to us and our loved ones when we cannot pay for our life saving medical surgeries? Should we be spending our time and money on activities apart from earning income? Memento Mori. Jianfa Tsai

I rent a room and it is $645 a month.

cringe how he leaves the seeds from the bell pepper

Frugality is just common sense. Of course, it is less expensive to cook, clean, and fix yourself because you aren't paying labor, overhead, and profit costs for someone else. Why is this news?

This is the type of bootstraps video that boomers like.

6:40

didn't Japan have next to no inflation for like a while?

He should go buy meat at Costco. It is cheaper than the little packages that are at the supermarket.

And somehow I just knew that it wouldn’t be a singaporean😂😂😂😂

Why do you normally eat outside, everyone that is smart kooks at home!

Eat a plant based diet and you’ll save even more

He should try living in London 😅

Now you learned this ? This is just some basics here in the middle east 😂😂 have some awesome meals bro ❤

It's called common sense & evidently he didn't use his in the past or wasn't born with any

Merci, rip my usa grandma, telling me not to live in Japan

Women cook a everyday when a man cooks he gets media coverage.

Cute

I had to laugh at this really. Why? Because it's a no brainer. smh Say what you want about my comment, but you know it's the truth. Cooking at home is nothing new ! I'm glad for him that he finally realized this, but if anyone ate all of their meals out, or got some sort of take out, of course it will be more expensive and not as nutritious as cooking at home.

My solution is 1 cup of cat food daily

Everyone is talking about home cooking as if it's a new phenomenon. Before 100 years ago, give or take, people exclusively cooked for themselves, family, or for the community at times. to waste your hard earned money for someone else to cook you a meal, why is this the norm? This should be mandatory in all schools, home economics. Why aren't more people talking about how cheap his rent is?!? $400 and some change? Where can I find that in America? Here the cheapest you'll find is triple that price!

only $400 for rent? you can’t find that anywhere in the US!

As someone who fell in love with Japan's variety of food when I visited, the way he preps his food makes me sad. Sure, he's cutting food costs, but isn't he absolutely miserable eating the same thing every single day? It doesn't look very flavourful either because he isn't using any cooking techniques. I'd rather work a second job than live like that.