Movies or Cheese? September 3, 2008

We’d always heard that Tokyo was an expensive city, in fact, maybe the most expensive city in the world. This fact was repeated to us many times when we would tell others of our plans to move to Japan. Since we are only on one salary, due to the imminent arrival of our bundle of joy in November, we had concerns about this as well. How much would groceries be compared to Berlin (where they are uber-cheap!)? What about utilities? Internet? Mobile phones? It was enough to keep us up at night – that, and my increasingly restless sleeping pattern (as a stomach sleeper, I am struggling a bit with the belly).

Here’s the rundown:

Groceries: a bit more expensive, especially if you are looking to buy favorite items from the Western world (cereal is approx $4.98 for a teeny weeny box!!!). The fruit is different, but still yummy, and a bit pricier, yes…about 2 bucks for one big juicy peach. We’re now on these pear-apple hybrid things, which are also very tasty – but come at $5.80 for about 8 of them. And then there is the cheese. In the grocery store, the cheese stands alone. It seems to be an impossiblity for the two or so years we are here. One tiny package of Emmenthaler, Cheddar, or Mozzarella is about $7.00!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And we eat, or rather, ate, a lot of cheese. Sadness.

Utilities: no idea yet…get back to you on that. But, it is SO hot here, that we are continuously running the air conditioners (which are very cool and quiet, and work more as a thermostat than those giant window units I am accustomed to).

Internet: about $45.00 a month for wireless – and we will get it on SATURDAY!!!! Yay!!!!! What did housewives do before Internet? Seriously.

Mobile Phones: we have attempted to get these twice, but are not having any luck until we get our Gaijin cards – foreigner’s registration card. But it looks like it should run about $50.00 a month.

All pretty doable. We were feeling pretty good…until we decided to go to the movies.

We managed to find the cinema, get in line, and decipher which movies were to be shown in the original language. In the case of our chosen flick “Hancock,” English! But as we stood in line, we saw something that looked like a price list…and it appeared to us that our tickets would cost approximately 1,800 yen apiece. Which is about $18 – per ticket. Or $36!!! We didn’t believe this could be, but true enough, when we asked for our tickets, the price was 3,600 yen. Of course, we paid, because we wanted to have the Japanese cinema experience…and also because it was really hot outside, and it meant 2 hours of good AC.

The movie was pretty decent, and had some really funny laugh-out-loud moments – except that my husband and I were really the only ones laughing out loud…guess that Will Smith’s humor doesn’t really translate into subtitles. In general, it is probably best to dub funny movies, and subtitle the serious ones.

So, two things that my husband and I love – movies and cheese. Not part of our new life here in Tokyo. But I bet with some creative thinking we can come up with reasonable substitutes…

Internet pirated movies will do for the cinema experience. They do have popcorn here, so that won’t be a problem.

But the cheese…there really is no substitute for that.

My birthday is in a month…maybe I will get a hunk of Gouda with a candle in it…