General Admission
Tokyo at its cheapest
By Al S. Mendoza
(Happy birthday to Fiscal Boni Sison, Nov. 30)
TOKYO – It is winter here but minus snow.
The so-called nippy weather hasn’t embraced the world’s third largest economy, after the US and China. N’yet.
The yen is weak, but no worries.
President Abe has designed it that way in consonance with his “Abenomics,” which is to encourage domestic spending in one of his desperate bids to resuscitate Japan’s ailing economy.
It makes also for good tourism.
I see the city crawling with tourists of all shapes and sizes.
Once described as the world’s most expensive city, it is not so today for this home of the fabled samurai.
Food has become not that expensive anymore.
Whereas before when a cup of coffee would cost P800 and a boiled egg peddled at P400 per, it is not so today.
A cup of coffee costs P100 and a boiled egg roughly P60.
Now this: A bowl of pork ramen—about P1,000 in the not-so-distant past—costs only roughly P300.
Anytime, that’s a steal.
You eat at Shinoya, that Japanese counterpart of Chowking, and you could order pork-rice at roughly P300 per bowl.
It was no less than P600 a bowl only last year, in November 2013 to be precise.
I was here also at that time and my budget had been that tightly guarded.
And the good thing today is, despite slashed down prices, the quality has never changed.
In this city and anywhere in this so-called Land of the Rising Sun, you can never go wrong when it comes to food.
Always, you are satisfied to the hilt as every order is almost equivalent to two servings.
I had ordered ramen three times (tonkatsu, pork and tempura) and each time, I couldn’t finish the serving.
So generous today are the restaurants here that tourists have started calling this city as suddenly the food capital of the world.
The city has never had this boom in tourism for decades.
Even Filipinos now flock to this city and I saw many of them in shopping malls, restaurants, parks, at temple areas.
Akihabara, the city’s world-famous electronics center, is crowded seven days a week.
My stereo compos (Sony, Philips & Kenwood) are still working many years after purchase at Akihabara—the first one was in 1995 and the last one in 2003.
My misfortune, though, is when I tried to buy five transistor radios (I am a radio man since grade school) not in Akihabara but in Ginza.
When I brought the items at the counter, the sales lady said, their radios are not compatible with our frequency.
“You can buy your radios, sir, in Akihabara because they sell products there for overseas customers,” she said. “Here, we only sell stuff for local use only.”
I never knew about that as I thought all radios were OK anywhere in the world.
Indeed, you learn a thing or two everyday.
And, yes, travel broadens our horizons.
Share your Comments or Reactions
Powered by Facebook Comments
