With plate lunch and burger prices in Hawai’i rising to the $10 USD mark, let’s see what I got for lunch today from the Seicomart convenience store in Japan. Seicomart is one of the few chains that have actual service kitchens in the back of the store, so they produce hot meals instead of only having cold lunches that the register staff can microwave for you. It took me the entire time it took me to eat my entrée to figure out what the heck it was being called because of the katakana on the label. Let’s see… that’s a “he” with a handakuten mark, followed by a little “tsu” and a “ha” with a handakuten mark and a long sound mark… “Pepper-burg don.” It was essentially a deconstructed loco moco. The flavor was really good. There was even a nice little piece of broccoli and a ragout of onions and carrot as a concession to nutritional balance. For 450-yen, equivalent to around $5.75 USD, it was a good value, considering it was between “mini” and full-sized plate lunch in size, but priced less than a mini.
My dessert was a “mo-tira”, a cow-themed tiramisu for 170-yen. There really isn’t an equivalence to a small, single serving dessert back home, but that works out to around $2.20 USD. Rounding out my meal was a 500ml oi-ocha tea for 108-yen, around $1.40 USD. You’d probably pay almost double for the exact tea in Hawai’i, and probably more on the CONUS. So for a grand total of 728-yen, that’s like $9.35 USD, I got a complete meal. If I skimped on dessert, I’d probably have enough change back from my 1000-yen bill for a pau-hana beer, even more if I was total dirtbag and didn’t buy the tea.
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