Homegrown veg, cheap substitutes: Japanese get creative to fight soaring food prices

Tokyo: Japanese homemaker Kirina Mochizuki has always considered "okonomiyaki" savoury pancakes the ultimate comfort food: simple, satisfying and cheap.

These days, though, it's a struggle to get the dish, a favourite among Hiroshima natives like herself, on the table. With the price of cabbage - a key ingredient - tripling recently, Mochizuki makes daily trips to the supermarket in search of discounted produce, or resorts to using dried seaweed.

"I never imagined that okonomiyaki would become a delicacy," the mother-of-two said, adding she had also taken to re-growing leek in a glass of water using the usually discarded root base.

With inflation taking hold in Japan after a generation of stagnant prices, many consumers are facing a similar plight, and looking for creative solutions to ease the pain. Data on Friday showed the average price of cabbage more than tripling this month in the capital, Tokyo, from a year ago.

The Bank of Japan hiked interest rates to the highest in 17 years last week citing confidence in the outlook for salaries. But inflation-adjusted wages have fallen in 29 of the last 32 months while the Engel's coefficient, or the share of households' spending on food, hit a four-decade high last year.

The price of a head of cabbage reaching 1,000 yen ($6.43) in Tokyo - roughly equivalent to an hourly wage - had already made headlines even before Friday's data, and the central bank noted last week that rice would probably stay expensive until the spring of 2026. Wholesale rice prices surged 60% in December from the same period a year earlier.

As the price of agricultural products has risen, Japanese have also been eating less of them. The average intake of vegetables among Japanese adults fell to an all-time low in November, the most recent government data shows.

Meanwhile, cheap "furikake", or dried condiments sprinkled on rice, are being used as a substitute for other dishes on the dinner table. Sales last year are expected to have reached a record high, according to research firm Fuji Keizai.

"A 10-yen rise in our daily goods might seem small but it adds up," Mochizuki said, noting that she had already shaved what she could from other spending.

Worried about the impact of rising prices on voter sentiment, the government last year compiled an economic stimulus package that includes cash payouts to low-income households.

And in a first, the farm ministry is considering drawing up new rules to allow the government to sell stockpiled rice to agricultural cooperatives with the aim of bringing down retail prices.

LIVING ROOM FARMING

For YouTuber Kazuki Nakata, the recent price trends have proved to be a boon.

Having started indoor farming at home as a hobby during the pandemic, the 37-year-old now has nearly 90,000 subscribers eager to learn how to stretch out store-bought vegetables and grow new ones in containers of water, without soil.

"I've seen 4,500 new followers in the past two weeks," he
told Reuters at his home in Kawasaki, outside Tokyo, this week.

Nakata quit his job at an electronics retailer in 2023 to
focus on the 47 types of vegetables he currently grows all over
his house. Everything from shiso leaves, onions and daikon
radish thrive in empty plastic bottles, beer cans and even the
basket of his bicycle.

Growing vegetables at home isn't without its challenges.

Nakata's family has had to sleep without air conditioning on
sweltering summer nights, and his wife complains that she can't
breast-feed her newborn in the living room because the curtains
need to be open to ensure the leafy greens get their sunlight.

Still, with vegetable prices so high, Nakata says the
sacrifices have paid off. He recently succeeded in cultivating a
robust patch of cabbage leaves in a kitchen bowl using the
inedible core and liquid fertilisers - the subject of his next
video on YouTube.

"Home gardening has really helped us slash our spending on
food, so I want to share my findings," he said.