Proper Nutrition While Living In Japan
 

I'll preface my post by saying that I will be spending the next 3 months of my life in Japan for school and will be entirely responsible for my own diet (the closest thing we have to a cafeteria is a Cocos connected to our school). My mother in particular has not been very happy to hear that most of my meals so far have been entirely rice, so she's been insisting that I insert something more into my diet. Being that this is my first extended stay in Japan and my first time managing my diet in japan, I'm at a loss for a cheap way to stay healthy in japan. This isn't to say I couldn't just spend a few hours in a grocery store and find some things myself, but I was just wondering if anyone had some suggestions of things I could buy that would allow me to have some of the fruits and vegetables or their associated nutrients without breaking my budget.

As a side note, I believe tofu has protein, in which case I've got both tofu and eggs for protein, so I'm really more interested in vitamins etc. Anyone help would be greatly appreciated.

Here are two brief but useful blogposts - with photos:

Grocery Shopping in Japan @ Irrational Exuberance
Reliable Mealtime Friends @ Irrational Exuberance

Also, check out Bento.com

Often the economics of cooking for one mean it's less expensive to just eat out or get takeaway.

Two readily available fruits sold 'reasonably' at most grocery stores are bananas and mikans.

Hanamasa is a chain of wholesale foods stores that are often open 24 hours.

Another 24 hour store worth keeping an eye out for is LAWSON 100:

Most items are priced at Y100 and they include groceries including fruits, vegetables and convenience foods; pretty good for student who is on their own...

^This. I save a lot of money myself by eating out or only buying grocery necessities. Often times Japanese homemade meals are a lot more intricate than their western counterparts, requiring a lot of ingredients that either aren't very versatile in their cooking means, or aren't really standalone foods. Essentially, you'll probably end up spending more money to obtain all of the ingredients of a proper Japanese meal than it would have been to eat out or whatever. Also, I myself am quite an impatient person, so time to cook said meals is also a factor for me.

It's not neither Japanese nor authentic Italian, but for inexpensive student-budget eating out, another chain restaurant you should keep an eye out for is Saizeriya

The menu is here.

try a suppermarket, I hear they have a lot of food there:mtongue: