Surviving on £1.25 a day in Japan for 4 days

Here we have a 500 yen coin,

100 yen, 50 yen,

10 yen, 5 yen, and finally 1 yen

coin. These are all of the Japanese

coins you can get in Japan, one of each of

the available coins, and it results in a

total of ¥666, which is going

to be my shopping budget for the next Uh,

how many days? I don't know, we'll see.

So I'll take my coins and

go to the supermarket. Going to the

supermarket.

I'm in the supermarket.

Okay, so I'm back from the supermarket and

look at all of the stuff I got. Can you

believe how much you can buy just from

¥666? Now I did have a problem and

I miscalculated and I went over the budget

by ¥52 because

of tax. I was looking at the price tags on

the shelves and adding them up on my

calculator and I got to a total of ¥661,

and then I went to the checkout, total

came out as ¥7 13,

and I got ¥3 change. So I'm not sure if

that counts because the food— the total

cost of the food was ¥661, which is under

my budget of ¥666, but I went over because

of consumption tax. Do I include the tax?

I thought the price on the shelves

included the tax already. So stupid. So I

got 6 slices of bread so

I can make breakfast or lunch using these

bread slices. And I got

some onions, 3 big fat onions,

can fry those up. And I got a little

packet of ramen.

I'll show you how much each one costs.

Where's my receipt? So the ramen cost,

um, ¥78, and then the— where's the bread?

6 slices of bread cost ¥98. The onions

cost, uh, ¥98 as well.

I've got some potatoes, then I got some

pork belly.

Pork belly for ¥191.

So I can also use that for breakfast

because it's kind of like bacon, isn't it?

And finally, I got some good old-fashioned

eggs. 6 eggs for— I think it was ¥118.

So I need to, um, add that all up

and do like a display thing so it shows

how much I spent. And I also got this

earlier for seasoning. It's beef

seasoning, black pepper, and salt. But I'm

not including this with the ¥666 because I

think everyone already has salt. And the

amount of salt you get in this is gonna

last, I don't know, 500 meals probably.

Okay, so let me try and explain what the

challenge is again. I'm not gonna go

shopping again until I finish all of this

food. Using only these ingredients, I'm

going to find out how many days 661 yen's

worth of food is going to last me.

And the plan is I'm going to boil these

vegetables and then add the meat when it's

soft, when the vegetables have softened,

and we'll make kind of like a vegetable

pork soup, I guess.

Okay, so this is meal number 1,

dinner number 1. I know it doesn't look

very appetizing, but it's just a simple

meal. Simple pork broth with potato and

onions. And when you're very, very hungry,

anything tastes good. So you can add some

more seasoning. Okay, so let's give it a

quick try, see if it's any good. I have to

say it does smell pretty nice.

Potato and onions going in.

Hmm, I don't think that's too bad. It's a

bit like vegetable soup. Try some

of the pork. The black pepper gives it a

nice little kick.

Okay, we've got a nice forkful of potato

and pork. Let's give that a try.

Hmm, hmm,

hmm. It's amazing how good food tastes

when you're very hungry. And we've

only got 3 ingredients in here, and I'm

quite, quite happy with this. It tastes

good. I like it. So this is going to be my

dinner for today and tomorrow, and

hopefully the 3rd day. I know it's a bit

repetitive, but we don't have much choice.

Okay, so it's day number 2 and I've made

something very simple, just scrambled eggs

on toast. I used 2 eggs, half of an onion,

and 1 slice of bread, so I can make this

meal another 2 times, I think. At least

twice. That means I have 4 eggs left and 5

slices of bread, and I have 1 and a half

onions left, so I still have quite a lot

left. I think I could survive for another

few days, maybe. It's now the evening and

I'm preparing my second dinner. This time

I've got onions, potatoes, and pork again,

but I'm going to make it in a different

way. I'm going to make some mashed

potatoes and then I'll just fry the onions

with the pork. So slightly different but

the same ingredients as the soup.

So now we just fry the onions and then

we'll fry the pork.

And it's finished! Ta-da! Wow, this

actually looks pretty good, doesn't it?

Get a close-up. Look at that pork.

Much better than the boiled— much better

than the boiled soup I had yesterday.

Look at that mashed potato. Oh,

I can't believe I made such a good meal

from 3 ingredients.

That's not much, is it? So I'm going to—

going to try some of the pork and the

potato. I'm very hungry. Okay,

going in.

Some of the onion as well.

Oh,

I can't believe it's actually tasty. So

much better than the soup. Much better

improvement. Big improvement here.

Well, I'm very happy with this.

And that's day 2 completed. See you on day

3.

Hello and welcome to day 3. Let's see what

we have left. I've got half of the onion

that I sliced yesterday, and I've got A

bit of the pork left,

and I've got 1 whole onion left. I think I

have too many onions. And I've got 1

potato left and 4 eggs and

5 slices of bread. So I still have quite a

lot even on the 3rd day. And today for

lunch, I'm gonna make the packet of ramen.

I think I should have bought less onions

and maybe a carrot because I am starting

to get sick of onions.

Okay, lunch number 2. We have ramen

noodles with a poached egg on top, which

should be quite nice. We can split the

yolk on top of it and it should add some

extra flavor. Obviously this is

going to be good. I can't see how this

could be bad. It's ramen. Ramen's always

good. Okay, so I'm going in for a bite.

Mmm, delicious.

And here is dinner number 3. So it's the

same as dinner number 2, basically just

pork and onions fried. And instead of

mashed potato, I just sliced the potato

and boiled them. So it's going to taste—

it will taste pretty much the same. I

won't do a taste test on on video because

it's not going to be any different. And

this will be my last dinner because I've

run out of ingredients. So on the 3rd day,

I have 2, 1, 3 eggs left, 1 onion

left, and 5 slices of bread.

What could I make? I could just make eggs

on toast with a bit of onion, but I don't

think I could squeeze another dinner out

of it. So I lasted Lasted 4

days and a half— no, 3 days and a half. 3

full days and then lunch for the 4th day.

Not bad, pretty good. And in total, I only

spent ¥700, which is about $6 or £5.

£5 for 4 days, that's about £1.20.

£1.20 for 1 day. I don't know if my

mathematics and calculations have been

accurate, So let me get my calculator.

No Grammarly, I don't want to. Um,

so I spent ¥712 in total, and I think

it's lasted me about 4 days. I still have

quite a lot of food left to last me

tomorrow. I might get very hungry during

the evening because I don't have enough to

make a proper dinner. So divide by 4 comes

to a total of ¥178 per day, which is about

£1.25 in pound sterling and $1.63

in USD. So if we were going to do this

for the whole month at £1.25 per day,

that would be a grand total of £37.50

for my food bill in a total month. That's

pretty cheap. So I'm going to tuck into my

pork and onions. Hope you enjoyed this

experiment. Next experiment, I want to see

if I could get my food bill even lower

than £37. I think next time I'll get

carrots instead of onions and maybe

spaghetti instead of potatoes. The

possibilities are endless.