To start, rents are high—as I’ve already written about. Here, the price of a one-bedroom apartment (what we’d call a 1LDK in Japan) is about 200,000 yen a month (shudder). If you don’t mind living with other people, it’s a good idea to homestay through something like a language school (which probably isn’t cheap when you factor in tuition) or get a room in a share house. If you’ve got your heart set on living alone, you can get a studio apartment (where the kitchen and bedroom are all in one room—what we’d call a 1K in Japan), but even then, you have to be prepared to pay 100,000 yen a month for it.
Another thing that’s expensive here is raising children.
Preschools in particular charge as much as 150,000 yen a month to keep children from morning until evening five days a week. Of course the parents may get a subsidy depending on their income, but honestly it doesn’t help that much. And aside from the cost, they’re all full. With later schooling as well, you can’t get your child into the popular ones without making arrangements well in advance. A friend of mine who had a baby last October was told that she should start thinking now about getting her child into a school five years from now! (lol)
Those are probably the two most expensive things… but yeah, everything else is about the same as Japan! These photos should give you an idea of the cost of food, for example, if you eat at home.
Starting at the top left, this is broccoli, avocado, carrots, and lettuce. The prices are in cent, meaning they’re all about 100 yen. (lol)
Starting at the top left here are beef, pork, and salmon fillets.
While some vegetables are cheaper than they are in japan, meat and fish tend to be a little high. I talked about this when I posted about food in Ireland, but the meat and fish sections in Irish supermarkets tend to have a limited selection and aren’t cheap, so you’ll be a lot happier with both the quality and the prices if you can get to a butcher or fishmonger. Particularly with meat, it’s definitely worth making a trip to the butcher if you’re going to go a little out of your way to make a stew or something.
I made a point earlier to say “if you eat at home”, but let’s talk about eating out too. If you go out to a Spanish tapas restaurant, you can order a bunch of relatively cheap, small plates to share, but you won’t end up spending less per plate than you would at a Japanese pub, so the bill can get pretty high if you’re trying to get full. The Irish don’t really share larger plates of food, so everyone ends up ordering a single dish for themselves (while asking for bites from each other’s plates… lol). As long as you don’t go to a really fancy place, the price of a main dish averages around 1,700 or 1,800 yen, which ends up around 3,000 yen once you add a drink and an appetizer. So that’s about the same amount as it would be at a Japanese pub where everyone orders together and splits up the bill.
Like Japan, the price of clothing and miscellaneous items runs the gamut, but as long as you don’t insist on handmade or designer shops, the prices aren’t much different here. Fast fashion stores like Zara and H&M are quite popular, but if you by a dress, for example, at another clothing store, you’ll probably pay between 6,000 and 8,000 yen for it. Unfortunately, Ireland doesn’t have Uniqlo, but they do have this place that originated in China.
I guess you have to be able to read Japanese to realize that the English and the katakana don’t match (lol). The name sounds like Daiso (the Japanese 100-yen shop), the logo looks like Uniqlo, and they sell a similar assortment of things as Muji. Apparently they’re spreading to quite a few countries.
So as you can see, the cost of living isn’t too bad here aside from housing costs. With minimum wage at about 1,300 yen, it’s even more expensive than Japan. But that’s why you can live here even though rent is a bit expensive. Even if you’re planning on coming to Ireland on a working holiday visa, you don’t have to worry too much about getting by—just be prepared!
