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The story
A thread titled “Cooking for yourself feels pointless when you’re single” popped up on 5ch’s News VIP board. The thread starter argued that cooking at home—from shopping to cooking to cleanup—takes 1 hour 20 minutes, while eating out only takes 30 minutes, effectively saving an hour. Home cooks pushed back with “eating out or grabbing food is way more expensive” and “it’s additive-free and healthy,” but the eating-out camp held firm with “I have no energy to bother saving money” and “if you live alone, the cost of eating out doesn’t even hurt.” Partway through, the debate veered off into a nitpicky argument over how wide or narrow the variety of home-cooked recipes really is.
What people said
Eating out: 30 minutes.
That's about an hour saved.
I cook because it's more worthwhile than the time I'd spend browsing 5ch.
I want to save money, sure, but I have zero energy to actually do the work for it.
Even if it doesn't hurt, you could put whatever you save toward other fun stuff instead.
Not a bad deal, is it.
Either way, a few hundred extra yen a meal doesn't hurt at all.
Shouldn't you be judging by quality, not just price?
Same goes for cooking at home though.
The degree is totally different, isn't it? Unless you've got a set-meal place with a huge menu near your house.
Not at all.
If anything, home cooking has less variety.
Well, home cooking sometimes just comes down to whatever's in stock or on sale.
If you can eat at the same place every day, then having like ten dishes in your home-cooking repertoire should be plenty, no?
Unless you live 5 minutes from a busy downtown, I guess.
I'm saying the range for building that repertoire is narrow.
I don't eat out so I wouldn't know, but with takeout you can pick whatever you like off the menu.
Home cooking is limited to whatever you can easily make yourself.
Eating out also has a huge menu, so you can choose whatever you like.
Once it's limited to what you personally can cook, it's pretty restricted.
I'm not doing it to save money.
I enjoy taking my time with ingredients and seasonings I like.
Can't do the poor-man's-savings thing.
That's just you—home cooking CAN be done cheaper, you know.
What's the point of doing it cheap?
I get the point of home cooking if it's about avoiding additives, but
you're probably still loading up on additives while calling it 'home cooking.'
Unhealthy.
The 'point' is different for everyone.
'It's meaningful because it's additive-free' is just your personal opinion.
Can't you get that?
Doesn't the company you work for do cost-cutting or anything?
do you not realize you're just a slave to the state?
That's just, like, your opinion.
That's beside the point, isn't it?
With home cooking you can get a meal down to 100-200 yen, you know?
Don't you think it's contradictory to save for the future while shortening your lifespan? (lol)
Re: #58
What's the company got to do with it?
Why not just earn more instead of cutting costs?
A company and an individual are the same thing though.
Does your company think it's fine to skip cost-cutting as long as it earns more than that?
That's also just your personal opinion.
Why do you assume everyone else shares your personal values and go 'don't you think so? (smug face)' demanding agreement?
Like 'what I think is obviously what everyone thinks'?
No matter how many recipes you pick up, the range doesn't change.
Why do you think just knowing the method widens your range?
If you have the recipe, you can make it, right?
Maybe you don't have the skill to cook, but cooking at home every day is exactly how you build that skill.
Even with the recipe and the skill, you can't make it without the time, stamina, and energy to actually do it.
And on top of that, you're saying the skill only comes from cooking every day? That's no good.
We're talking about range here.
Because the conversation had drifted into 'even with the skill, you can't make it without the time, stamina, and energy'—Re: #82
that's why I said we're talking about range.
I'm not that serious, so I don't think about stuff like that.
Are you really living life that desperately? (lol)
Re: #66
I wasn't asking for agreement or anything…?
I just said it's a weird way of thinking.
The moment you call it 'a weird way of thinking,' it's obvious you're assuming 'what I think is naturally what everyone else thinks.'
Everyone's living life desperately, you know.
You've probably never had to think about cutting costs at work or in your personal life because you've got the money for it.
Must be nice.
Sure, for chain places that just microwave pre-packaged stuff.
But that's not tasty, is it?
Cooking isn't really that big a skill when you get down to it, though.
Right, and if you cook at home every day, your recipes keep growing and your skill keeps improving.
Which basically means you HAVE to cook at home every day, doesn't it.
Eh, cooking's fine even if you're sloppy about it.
The conversation hasn't changed.
We're talking about range here, right? Nobody's talking about whether you're technically able to make something or not.
You're the one who shifted the conversation with 'even with skill, you can't make it without the time, stamina, and energy.'
I'm talking about range, not about people who lack time or stamina.
You don't need to reply anymore.
What changed?
We've been talking about 'range' from the start.
'I'm talking about range, so I'm not talking about people who lack time or stamina'—sorry, but your Japanese is so broken I can't even parse that.
The concept of 'range' still applies to people without time or stamina too.
And nobody asked for your opinion on whether replies are needed or not.
You're getting put on my ignore list next, so there's that.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
Whether cooking at home actually pays off compared to eating out comes down to how much you count your own labor—cooking time, ingredient costs, cleanup effort—as a cost. As the thread itself shows, with figures ranging from “700-800 yen per home-cooked meal” to “100-200 yen per home-cooked meal” appearing side by side, the gap depends heavily on the grade of ingredients used, which makes a simple price comparison against chain restaurants unreliable. The claim that “home cooking is healthier because it has fewer additives” doesn’t necessarily hold up either, if you’re using store-bought seasonings and processed ingredients. The back half of the thread strays from the main topic into a circular argument over how to define the “range” of home-cooked recipes, and readers should note that the discussion loses steam as an argument about economic rationality well before it wraps up.
※This article is an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (News VIP) thread “Cooking for yourself feels pointless when you’re single.”
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