People like to say that "Tokyo is so cheap!", but it really isn't if you compare it to 5+ years ago.
Sure, a bottle of water is sill maybe 1/4th the price of a bottle in the US… but for food? It's impossible to get around the energy costs, and labor costs are killing restaurants.
And before I continue, I don't want to hear any "hurr durr you just don't know where to go I know this amazing soba place that costs 150 yen for all the food you can eat xyz". No, you know nothing.
I went to an omakase restaurant that was around 14,000 yen. It was literally inedible. I suspect the reason is that the top sushi restaurants, which are charging 45,000 yen+, are vacuuming up all the high quality fish.
I went to Kojimachi Nihee's new location, and was impressed. It was very good, HOWEVER, you would have been able to obtain this quality of omakase for aroune 30,000 yen just 5-6 years ago. The price has nearly doubled.
Japanese are very good at masking the economic disaster they're facing. The shrinkflation doesn't feel too egregious, but it's noticeable. Food has been hit the hardest. Chicken, beef, etc, are all lower quality now and in smaller quantities, and I suspect much of the good seafood is being sold to other countries because the price you can get is just so much higher than what locals can pay.
Anyone else feel like this?
by RedMoonLanding