[cgarrigue]

It's only cheap if you come to Japan for holidays, or if you're an expat detached by your company to Japan. If you're living in the country, receiving the same salary as any Japanese person, Tokyo is an expensive city. And I'm not even talking about language teachers, who cannot really live in Tokyo or all the Japanese people who are part-timers

Everywhere in the world salaries, rents and prices go hand in hand. Unless you're living on one side of a border and working on the other side (which is possible in EU) which allow you to game the system, rents and prices are based on supply and demand. Don't take it personally, but it does not make much sense to compare what you would get with a salary from one country while living in another country.

[rtpg]

Yeah salaries are pretty low in Tokyo for a lot of jobs, if you're on the lower end of the skill hierarchy you're going to be in pain.

But ... it's not like low-skilled workers in SF are getting paid much either.

The average HN reader might be in a better negotiating position w.r.t. salaries in Tokyo

Some things to consider about Tokyo:

- No need for a car, insurance that comes with

- Your company will (in almost all cases) be paying for your daily transportation by car

- If you're willing to suffer in the morning with travel/take a bus to the train station, you have a range of prices for renting

- There are a lot of people living on low salaries, so there are a lot of services on the low end. 100 yen shops with high quality stuff, all things considered.

For 60,000 yen/month you can get 20m2 studio appartments (25-year-old buildings) within 15 minutes of stations like Nippori or Otsuka. If you follow the "1/3rd of salary" rule, it's reasonable if you're making a bit over minimum wage (not sure what the going rate for English teachers are)

[autokad]

that contrasts with the reality that the average commute time in tokyo is 66 minutes (2011). I suspect the median is probably longer then that.

SF is cherry picked, the most expensive place in the US. I live in Philadelphia and the commute time and cost is substantially lower. NYC would be the most appropriate comparison, and they get to work with nearly 20 minutes less commute.

I bring up commute because many people have long commutes because they simply cant afford to live closer.

[patio11]

I assert that you can find an apartment considered appropriate for a middle-class person in Tokyo for approximately $800~$1,200 in virtually any district of the city in under one day of looking. This is not true of Manhattan or San Francisco.

If you strongly believe this is unlikely, name a neighborhood and I'll show you three apartment listings.

[Sukotto]

If you want a 1K ~ 2DK [1] for 1 ~ 3 people I think you are right.

For larger families? I dunno. We're a family of 5 (1 in jr high, 2 in elementary) and really struggling to find a place to move up into from our current 2LDK. :(

I admit, we have a bunch of constraints, but I don't think they are too unusual. (want to be reasonably near to work, school, and in-laws)

[1] For those that don't know, apartments here are typically listed by number of rooms, plus if the space includes an "L" living room, "D" dining area, "K" kitchen. So "1K" would be a single room with a place to cook. 2DK would be 2 rooms, with an eating area and a kitchen.

[Nadya]

>If you strongly believe this is unlikely, name a neighborhood and I'll show you three apartment listings.

I don't believe it is unlikely but I'd like to take you up on your services. ;)

Got anything for the Harajuku or Akihabara districts? You seem to be more knowledgeable on how/where to search for this info and I'm a bit lost. (Still have over a year to properly research this stuff on my own, but I really want to move to near one of those two districts next year.)

[othello]

Even in Shibuya? That's interesting, because depending on the size of the apartment you consider middle-class, this would make it cheaper than Paris. Definitely not what I remember from living in Japan 10 years ago.

Has prices softened that much since then?

[hudibras]

Anybody who lives in Manhattan would be thrilled to get a Tokyo-sized apartment at Tokyo-sized rent.

[brianwawok]

What is the delta between a wall-street programmer salary and Toyko programmer salary? I think it is 5x or 10x last time I checked...

[Dunan]

But would they still be so thrilled on a Tokyo salary? People here (I live and work in Tokyo) have a much narrower pay band than you would see in NYC or any American city. You might make $25~30k to start, and $40~50k at age 40.

I'd love to move back to my native NYC, but I've been priced out forever, as the cliche goes. There are entry level people earning more than I earn as an 18-year veteran in Tokyo.

[lacampbell]

Everywhere in the world salaries, rents and prices go hand in hand.

Not true. There's huge variations in OECD countries. Here's a graph showing house price to income ratio. I know this intimately because I live on the far left :'(

https://www.imf.org/external/research/housing/images/priceto...

[billforsternz]

That's a rather weird graph - it doesn't show house price to income ratio at all, even though that's its title. It shows change in that ratio since 2010. Tells you essentially nothing about the actual house price to income ratio.

[baby]

> Everywhere in the world salaries, rents and prices go hand in hand

Check r/London and look for topics like "how much of your salary are you paying on your rent?". I've seen a lot of people spending 50% up to 70% of their salary on rent.

[vinceguidry]

I pay 50%, used to be 35% before I went full time and shifted part of my salary to an end-of-year bonus.

It will move up to close to 70% if my roommate moves out in August. It's a little shocking to consider that I would actually consider paying that much to stay here. I seem to really like Midtown Atlanta that much.

Once you get used to it, it's not that bad. Out of all the things you could spend your money on, having an utterly sweet pad in the dead middle of town isn't the worst thing.

[droidist2]

The old rule of thumb used to be not to spend more than 30%, but I imagine that's changed greatly in recent times.

[etherael]

I recently started a full time job after getting recruited to a company in Tokyo, the wages are pretty damned good, and the cost of living is very low. By comparison I've worked in Sydney where the wages were comparable, potentially a little higher (less than 10%), and the cost of living was about three to four times higher. And done the digital nomad thing where cost of living was slightly cheaper still than Tokyo, but not by a lot, and average income was (variable, admittedly, but generally speaking) enormously smaller.

It does appear to be an optimal combination for both good wages and low cost of living in my experience having traveled and lived extensively all over the world.

The single caveat I'd make on saying this is that the way that I prefer to live might be uniquely suited to Tokyo, and uniquely unsuited to Sydney. That being; I hate commuting, I want somewhere small and comfortable but otherwise as cheap as possible to live, but as close to work as possible so I can just walk to and from every day. In Sydney working in the CBD this means you'll be stuck with some status signalling lifestyle apartment coupled with the already significant premium on rentals in general which is applicable to all Sydney real estate, and it's stupidly expensive (average 2250 - 2500. You could probably get away with a rundown roach palace for a little cheaper, but the floor on Sydney rentals in my experience is just absurdly high.

By comparison I got a no frills apartment that is perfectly useful, comfortable and serviceable within 300 meters walk to my office in Shibuya no problem at all, 1100 USD per month, and everything else on top of that with the bountiful microwave dinners, amazon, and roadside eating joints by the dozen, extremely fast and cheap internet (gigabit for < 40 USD pm) doesn't increase the price by much at all.

[baursak]

I'm curious to find out more about looking for and getting a tech job in Japan, as well as the overall working environment. Did you look at specific jobsites? Do you speak Japanese? Are tech companies in Japan similar in culture to your usual stereotypical long hours salaryman jobs in mainstream corporate Japan?