paid 3,599 yen for a 1.5 liter yoghurt machine that also makes nattou, amazake (rice + kouji = sweet liquid + sweet rice), sprouted rice and whatever else you can ferment at a range of 20-55 degrees C. it claims 1 hour will only cost HALF A YEN in electricity bills. btw japanese people are always shocked when we say we make our own nattou even though it's sooo easy... i'm getting comments like "you're more japanese than us japanese people!". they're also shocked if you like koto, shamisen and rakugo.

https://www.amazon.co.jp/ROOMMATE-%E3%81%84%E3%81%8D%E3%81%84%E3%81%8D%E3%83%A8%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B0%E3%83%AB%E3%83%88-%E7%B4%8D%E8%B1%86%E5%AE%B6%E6%97%8F-EB-RM700A/dp/B016W5U1OG

paid 530 yen for a bag of soybeans that didn't seem like very much at all... but half that bag (after soaking + cooking) ended up being almost more beans than the yoghurt machine can fit. a 3-pack of store nattou costs 75 yen and i add one pack, so together with electricity costs let's say it's 300 yen for 1.5 liters of home-made nattou. that's at least 5x what 300 yen of storebought nattou would be.

i bought a 3 liter pressure cooker for 3,110 yen, cook the soybeans for around 50 minutes before starting the nattou fermentation. pressure cookers can also make oden (some kind of soup; it's the season right now so i want to try making it), rice (instead of a rice cooker) and all kinds of crazy stuff i had no idea it could do. you can literally cook rice in FIVE MINUTES with a pressure cooker. anyway you can cut like 10 hours of cooking down into 1 hour with a pressure cooker and probably save a ton on electricity!:

https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B01787KOD0/ref=pe_1807052_198774502_tnp_email_dp_1

i have a bunch of plans to try... ex. dango is just rice flour so we can eat it, i'll try making a sauce out of amazake and rice flour (thickening agent) then making dango... also thinking about miso rice, miso fish...

our regular costs that i want to cut down are:
— grocery store onigiri (100-150 yen each); been eating these for lunch at school / when wandering out in town
— grocery store sushi (500-1,000 yen each) / eating these for dinner when out wandering
— grocery store kimchi (300 yen each) / japanese kimchi is SWEET. i don't like it
— pre-made green tea (120-150 yen each) / 150 for a normal water-bottle sized one in a vending machine, 120 for 2-3x that at a grocery store.
— dried sweet potato strips (300-500 yen per pack) / eating these a lot. the cashiers keep telling us that you're supposed to roast them on the stovetop. we finally tried it and it was good!
— mincemeat (300-600 yen each) / my wife wants to eat this like every day and it's really annoying

btw if you eat out for a meal, it's going to be 1,000-2,000 yen on average. you CAN get stuff for cheaper but it's going to be like noodles without any toppings!! if you eat just a snack (ex. meat on a stick) it'll most likely be 400-1,000 yen. and despite japan being the land of green tea and how just 10-20 years ago tea was always free in restaurants, in many places ordering green tea is like 300 yen now it seems... museums have ranged from 300-1,200 yen so far; apparently the movie theatre is like 1,800. small shops usually don't have any real price difference from big grocery stores, it's just 1-2 items that'll be really different, ex. my local tiny shop often has grapes super cheap (200 yen) compared to other shops (500-800 yen).

the tea, sushi + onigiri i just need to figure out how to make at home, have to figure out where to buy cheap fish. can't make kimchi until i find out how to get the kimchi spice + buy a fermenting container, but lettuce is often on sale for 100 yen a head. can't dry sweet potatoes at home (unless i make some weird contraption for it) but we should really just be eating regular sweet potatoes that we cook, normally one sweet potato is around 100 yen and you get that same amount or less in a bag of dried sweet potato strips... btw sweet potatoes are apparently super healthy, way healthier than all normal potatoes, and japanese sweet potatoes are said to be extra healthy. i think normal potatoes in japan are actually more expensive than sweet potatoes, could be wrong.

it'd really help if we could cut down our transportation costs too but we obviously can't do that until we get more used to getting around town and stuff. a friend i just made THREE DAYS AGO said he might have found a place that'll hire me so i have to hurry up and get that work permission and start working!!