The Japanese kanji character that was picked as character of the year in 2023 was “zei”.

It means “tax”, and perfectly reflects the mood in the country amid tax hikes and increasing concerns about the cost of living there.

And perhaps nowhere does it bite harder than when it comes to decisions about what to put on one’s plate.

This has meant more modest lunch options for Japan’s sarariman, or salaryman – the white-collar workers employed in businesses or government offices.

With food prices rising, many of these salaried workers are turning to the cheapest options available to fill their stomachs.

These include a regular-sized bowl of rice with beef from Japanese fast food chain Yoshinoya, which costs around 468 yen (S$4.25).

Before October 2021, the same dish cost around 390 yen. That month, Yoshinoya raised its price for the first time in seven years due to surging costs of beef imports, The Guardian reported.

Yoshinoya’s beef bowl has been popular among office workers due to its affordability, daily newspaper Asahi Shimbun said in its September 2022 report about the price increase.

The war in Ukraine, supply chain issues and the lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are some of the factors that have spurred the increase in food prices.

A July 2023 survey of 1,120 salarymen aged between 20 and 50 showed nearly half of them were spending less than 500 yen a day for lunch on average.

The survey was conducted by Lendex, a Tokyo-based social lending service. The poll revealed that many white-collar employees were trying to save amid rising costs, the Mainichi newspaper reported.

Around 40 per cent of respondents said they budget about “500 yen to no more than 1,000 yen” on average for one lunch.

However, 26.1 per cent of those surveyed said they bring their own boxed lunch, while 22.6 per cent said they spend “less than 500 yen”.

Similar findings emerged in another survey of workers in their 20s to 50s conducted by the Japanese unit of Edenred, a payment services provider.

In the poll of 600 workers conducted in December 2021, 29.5 per cent of respondents said they skipped lunch on working days. Almost a third of these respondents said they skip the meal two or three times a week, according to a report in the Asahi Shimbun.

About 60 per cent of the respondents also said they would choose not to eat something they like, so that they could save money.