I probably made the longest restaurant list I’ve ever made for this Japan trip, but sadly, we have gone to only one listed place in our 2.5 days here so far. I suppose it’s actually not that sad considering that every meal has been very enjoyable and has exceeded expectations not just for quality but also for price.

Three years ago when I was in Singapore, I met a friend’s friend who was American and working for Delta while living in Tokyo. We spent quite a bit of time together for the few days he was in Singapore, and he told me that while of course, Tokyo was not a cheap place, he said he felt that most people’s depiction of how expensive it is wasn’t very accurate. He said that he paid less for his shared apartment, where he had his own bedroom and bathroom, than most of the people he knew living in Manhattan, and if you wanted to eat Japanese food in Tokyo, it could be had for quite cheap and in most cases, less than eight to ten U.S. dollars. Sure, you could spend $500 for dinner if you wanted (and there are quite a number of restaurants to do that at given that Tokyo has a large number of Michelin star restaurants), but you could also spend less than $5 for dinner at hundreds of places. Hotels are expensive in Tokyo, but they’re in the same ballpark as hotels in New York City.

Everything he told me was right. On our first night, I had a delicious pork katsu curry over rice with miso soup for less than $7 USD, and today, we had ramen for lunch for about $6 USD each. As I slurped my delicious tonkotsu broth, I thought about how we’d normally pay $12-20 for good quality ramen in New York City and felt a bit sulky. Everywhere you go here, there are so many overwhelming options for food. It’s like being in New York, except everyone here is extremely polite and well mannered, and all the writing is in Japanese. And there’s probably no high fructose corn syrup in every product here.