> it's pretty dead simple and cheap to make some miso soup, some kind of stir fried veggie dish, sear a piece of fish and throw in some tsukemono from the market
Sure if you are going for the lowest of low effort you can make something edible, but that doesn’t mean it’s tasty nor something one would like to eat everyday. The miso soup meme is funny once a week but let’s be honest and not pretend it has good nutritional value. The pork soup is a way better upgrade but it already requires two times more ingredients and more step and doing a steak and fries. One time a friend cooked a ratatouille plus some meat aside for three persons and it’s cost us 2000 yen each... (ok I could have lowered the price by 500 but not more given how expensive vegetables are)
In fact your message hints at the root of the problem when mentioning your wife: the Japanese cuisine is based on the model of the housewife who had a full day to go shopping for various ingredients, do many processing steps, use various sauces and let things soak in it to prepare the 3-4 side dish of a Japanese meal for a family. This kind of organization is impossible for a working people living alone.
If I dont make breakfast for my boyfriend he'll make 一汁三菜 for breakfast or miso with a tsukemono and TKG. None of these things take an abundant amount of time to buy or prep for. We both work full-time jobs. Again, this sounds like a lack of knowledge about meal prep rather than a actual time issue.
Huh? Not only is my wife a working engineer, but I do this same kind of meal all the time on my own as a full time working person, and it takes about 5 minutes of bumping around the supermarket and yaoya that are across the street from each other conveniently located next to my station. It really is not hard to put together a nice meal of a hot pot or whatever. Miso soup isn’t literally just miso and water, you can put whatever you want in it, including boiling vegetables, tofu, fish, soy milk, whatever - crazy simple, I some variation almost every day and it’s neither boring nor a meme.
Meta point, you sound very bitter and defensive about this. How about give some of the suggestions people have made a shot? Like I mentioned, can you read some Japanese? Cookpad has tons of simple recipes.
Sure if you are going for the lowest of low effort you can make something edible, but that doesn’t mean it’s tasty nor something one would like to eat everyday. The miso soup meme is funny once a week but let’s be honest and not pretend it has good nutritional value. The pork soup is a way better upgrade but it already requires two times more ingredients and more step and doing a steak and fries. One time a friend cooked a ratatouille plus some meat aside for three persons and it’s cost us 2000 yen each... (ok I could have lowered the price by 500 but not more given how expensive vegetables are)
In fact your message hints at the root of the problem when mentioning your wife: the Japanese cuisine is based on the model of the housewife who had a full day to go shopping for various ingredients, do many processing steps, use various sauces and let things soak in it to prepare the 3-4 side dish of a Japanese meal for a family. This kind of organization is impossible for a working people living alone.