Living expenses in Japan and farming

Today morning me and Jackie went out to do a cycling around the village to explore a little. It is an hour ride out and we manage to reach Teramae and stumble into a supermarket. Grocery shopping is expensive for us. Just simple 2 meals and some snack will cost us $30 - $60. It don’t even last us 2 days. Living in Japan can quickly add up I think $150 for a week or $600 a month would be decent amount to put aside. A side note is that being vegean is difficult in Japan due to the high price on vegetable and fruits. 

Rental is kinda expensive too. I believe $1,500 a month you can get quite a small single apartment. The basis is that we can only find daily apartment at the lowest of $30 given only if it was low season. On weekend the price run crazy as much as 10x the usual price. Crazy right. Don’t think I am exaggerating as the hotel can really go into $300 - $400 range on weekend like Friday and Saturday. Last time i asked it was due to the crazy amount of traveller coming in to Japan as they claimed that “Japan is cheap”. I don’t know where they got the idea from. So our solution to spend the night on weekends are using their spa during the night and sleep at their sofa area. Also some recommended us to use mange cafe to spend the night although we hasn’t try that yet.

“Sorry Sensei, we are wrong” , Bow before me~~~

Today our job is to do some quick gardening and the thing I worked on is compost, which is mixing the green and brown so they get to compose to some great stuff for the soil. What we are doing is the cold method which need least attention but longer to convert. We just find some weed and bad grass, cut them and throw it to the compost area. Layering chicken shit in between them and give them little watering down and sunlights. In time this will provide soil for us to grow more fruits :) 

I start loving the farming way of life and will want to learn more on permaculture for days to come.