EDUCATION JOURNEY ☆幼児教育世界の旅☆ 

LOOKING for UNBELIAVABLE moments...and CHILDREN's SMILE.

Would it work?

2010-10-18 | My work of art
I saw something interesting on TV the other day.
A woman who is known as カリスマ主婦 "Carisma" housewife says
she only spend 6000yen a week and still can have wonderful, delicious meal, (they showed what she actually cooked and it looked amazing)  家族四人 6000円以下でおいしくて素晴らしい料理ができる方法

As a foregin exchange student from China once asked me
" Why do Japanese TV always talk about food? there are quiz shows particularly about food, and so many commercials features food."
I answered... "because we loooooooooove food and we love it to be delicious and still reasonable." 

I admit, we love food. we love of course,  the eating part, cooking part, and even "growing vegis for the ingridience of varieties of dishes" part.

日本人は、食べるのが好き。作るのも好き。
 おいしいものを食べるためにおいしい野菜を育てることさえも好き!
 

There are so many blogs and websites made by "house wives"- on "how to make delicious meals -for only less than 6000yen (about 50 dollers) for a week, for a family of four" some blogs got so popular it even got published recently.  
最近では、そういうカリスマ主婦たちによる料理のブログが増えて本に出版されたりもしています。
"Everyday meal @ Takahashi's"
If I were a full time housewife, I dont think i can put my 100% commitment to housework like cooking, looking after the children, cleaning and writing a blog about how good my dishes look.

  もし私が主婦なら、掃除や料理など家事に対してそこまで一生懸命やれないと思う。

 but these days there are so many Japanese women who decided to share this wonderful cooking skill with others.
Because a lot of women quit their jobs after marriage, I am sure, they have been dealing with the feeling of anger and frustration for having no choice but home making every single day- maybe at first it's great to take care of precious baby and cook dinner for a wonderful love of her life- but when noone knows how hard they work and get nothing in return? It's sad! 
So one stood up to brush up this wonderful skills and decided to share with people through blogs- which i think is great- some end up making money :)

日本人主婦は、頑張りすぎ?
育児や家事に追われて 誰からも褒められたりしない時が続くときっといらいらしたり悲しい気持ちになってどんどん閉じこもりがちになる人って多いんじゃないかな。 でもそんな人の中でも自分の料理は素晴らしいし、こんなに安くおいしいくできるのなら他の人にも見てもらいたいと
立ち上がって行動に移す人が増えてる。


So as Mrs Fujiwara revealed her secret on economizing the cost of gloceries-
買い物は週に一度だけ
Glocery shopping-only once a week
well, thats pretty much what i call "Indiana Style" hehehe

In addition, discuss with your family what you wanna eat the following week and make a shopping list, only get what you need.

Now, THAT is extremely rare for Japanese housewife since local supermarket has special offer on certain items like every other days- it attracts customers to always want to come couple times a week, buy food for few days and come back again for some more. So you just go shoppin, then if fish happened to be on sale, then you kinda decide you will have fish for dinner that day of the next day. (In fact, at my local supermarket, Today was パンの日 "bread day" and all kind of bread was really cheap. tomorrow is "egg" day, sometimes there are fish day, fruites day, just one of the marketing strategy i guess)

i dont know well about other places in US and also maybe it was only
"my" style when i was in college- maybe people do shop every single day, but i found it more reasonable and useful to do glocery shopping every week, not every other days when i lived in インディアナ州 Indiana (my second home :). in Japan most gloceries are sold in small portion- especially vegis, you buy one of this and one of that to make something particular, but in US everything is so much cheaper when you buy in a box, a package etc, so i would buy a lot and shared or just freeze everything- the room is so much bigger, and the fridge.

だから私は今日1週間分!と思ってたくさんの買い物をした。
so I went to the supermarket today for one week gloceries!

Here they are -


it WAS around 6000yen. So let's see if we don't have to go back to the store any more this week and cool delicious food! and, no dining out!!!




and tonight menu was THAI CURRY, fried chicken, salad, and eggs :)
 

Yum Yum!





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8 コメント

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Unknown (Unknown)
2010-10-19 22:01:55
Holy shit! That's a lot of food for one trip to a Japanese grocery! Actually, I think my grocery style is in between Indiana and Japan. I don't buy as much as other Americans, but it's more than Japan. What I don't like about here is that if you are one single person, it's more expensive to buy food. America likes buying a lot for a cheap price, right? So if you have a family, you can buy a lot at a cheap price and use all of it before it spoils. But I'm only one, so if I buy the package for "single people" it actually costs more because the company is making more effort to have the smaller size. But if I buy the normal size package, I know that food will go bad before I can eat all of it. It's really frustrating! -_-*

タイ料理!さすがあずさ!^^
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Unknown (Robin)
2010-10-19 22:02:37
Oops! Above comment is me! Haha!
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Unknown (Mellissa)
2010-10-19 22:54:29
Interesting point Azusa! I also found it hard to shop for a week in Japan due to food size, fridge size, and mainly lack of preservatives in food (which is a good thing! although expensive...) I remember buying bread, which can be eaten for weeks sometimes in the US, and in Japan it went bad in a few days. Of course the whole package was only 5 slices, but still. Also milk would go bad so quickly! In the US (I've heard) we have excellent freezing techniques and thus our frozen foods generally taste better (esp veggies). That combined with all the preservatives and other chemicals in our food make it easy to only shop once a week (or less!) Of course (in my opinion) our food doesn't taste nearly as good or fresh, nor is it healthy. All of those chemicals lead to serious diseases, like cancer and heart disease, or so they say. So the Japanese style may be a pain and expensive, but the American style is literally killing us....
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:) (Robin)
2010-10-20 15:13:28
I think its good if you are in between!!
Thats the good point of experiencing different cultures, you try it in a different way and try to come up witha while brand new idea-!!
certains things are so much cheaper in US, like cereals or boxed food like angel hair pasta roni! i love those. i have that here in careffor or costco but so much more expensive. so, that gives us the excuse to travel, just to go to the local supermarket in a foregin country!
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Hi, Mellisa (Azu)
2010-10-20 15:18:45
Thanx fo ur visit and comment!! im delighted:)
Yah, i realized the bread never go bad in US and when my mama visited me she was so surprised and scared that the americans put something special chemical to prevent food from spoiling and it is extremely unhealthy... it is i guess up to the consumer, to choose the right food and make our own decision to be healthy- but when we are under economical crises or something we are more attracted to cheaper stuff, arent we?
So today carrots were so cheap and even though i bougt food for a week i already added " a carrot". haha.. but vegis are extremely expensive these days and today was the miracle day. so forgive me hehehhe
and- you are right about the frozen vegis- i always thought it was cool that in every movies from us, when people get into a fight they use frozen pea to ice their injury or something, and my friends actually had frozen peas in their freezer all the time, it also tastes good, in Japan frozen food are kinda "lazy housewife's rescue" item!! haha
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Unknown (Helena)
2010-10-21 12:27:51
Interesting, never knew about the small amount of food preservatives in Japan. Natural is always better. Just not that practical though...
And how did u go with your 6000yen/week? Did the food last? Were u able to stick up to that?
I was laughing, liked your Chinese friend's comment.. Here there's this japanese show on tv, very popular: The Iron Chef :) it seems like you really appreciate your food:)
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to helena (dazu)
2010-10-21 18:17:46
yah- iron chef used to be very popular like 10 years ago here? but now many people are cooking at home and more and more "carisma" housewifes appear, not so much professionals are respected as much as before?
but we do love food- :) and they better be delicious. hehe
my 6000/yen a week is going pretty well actually!! but i dined out with friends two days in a row so it was more than that i guess.... but for glocery shopping to eat at home, i havent gone back to the store!
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keep us posted! (chuchuchie)
2010-10-21 22:26:12
when we were living in Yokohama (5 weeks), i had to go to the grocery store almost every day, and we spent so much money on just eating at home :( i'm not much of a smart shopper, so that's a skill i have to work on when we really start living there for good.

in TW, i usually shop once a week, but that's only because i usually eat out when i teach (5 times a week). the best thing about TW is that you could eat out and it's still rather cheap! :)

anyway, keep us posted about your 6000 yen plan! sounds interesting and we could learn a lot from it! :D
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