Monday, August 28, 2006

Tokyo on the cheap

After Obon week and spending a grip of cash, it's time to start saving. Japan isn't anymore expensive than back home for normal everyday shit in most cases. But like back home, it's easy to eat out everyday, overspend on alcohol, and blow your budget on transportation. During the week, just cook for yourself as much as possible and you will be in the clear. I haven't started playing pachinko yet, so there really isn't any big money sink.

But it's the weekend where you gotta plan. On a "normal" day to Tokyo, you can spend 1500 on train fares, 2000 on an izakaya for lunch, another 1000 for some sort of tourism type entertainment (museums, attractions, w/e), another 3000 for dinner, and then easily 4000 for drinking or clubbing or whatever you get into at night. Tokyo is all about shopping, so throw in another whatever huge amount you can think of for that. I know that's only around $100 for a good time out, but it adds up if you do it every week. I'm on a mission to save a certain amount, at which point I will reward myself with a nice little 400cc motorcycle out here. But not until I hit my goal. Gotta think about the future here people!

So 2 weekends ago I headed into Tokyo and just did some street drinking. Beer is pretty cheap at the convini over here. So grab a tall one and hit the streets. There's always some random shit happening. We wandered all over and ended up at some bboy thing in Yoyogi park. We caught the tail end of it, ut it was tight none the less. Total price, about a thousand for some beer, and the rest ain't shit. We hit up the 100 yen sushi joint after that, and got filled up on toro for like 700. I crashed at Eric's place that night and met up with Tracy in Ikebukuru the next day. Free Toyota museum / showcase place. Free parks. Free whack shopping malls to wander around. Yeah, they had a Vegas themed Hello Kitty thing going on...



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