Having lived in Tokyo for years, the elephant in the room is "cars". The whole city is full of pleasant mixed use neighborhoods that are more or less car-free, and centered around public transport hubs that have everything you need around them. People, including unaccompanied children, can and do safely walk and ride bikes everywhere at all hours of the day, including when grocery shopping etc. The world can learn a lot from this.
Before anyone chimes in saying "nO tHeRe r cUrS iN tOkYo tOo" - of course there are! The point is the city isn't designed around cars. (and the parts that are are the least pleasant)
I lived in Tokyo for almost five years, and owned a car while I was there ... I don't think this is a question of the city being "designed around cars".
There's a lot more "design for cars" in Tokyo than there is in, say, New York City - look at the Shuto expressway with its multiple rings of highways that run around the city and the radial routes that join them together; its elevated sections and tunnels through the most densely populated parts of the city...
There are also many areas in the urban core with multilane roads, but these always seem to be complemented with pedestrian over/under-passes.
Driving in Tokyo is very much more pleasant than driving in the NYC metro area. There is no street parking (by law), but there is often masses of underground parking to compensate: go to Akihabara, for example, and you'll find a five-story deep parking garage with >500 spaces under the Yodobashi Camera store.
One thing that Tokyo does have is a regulatory regime that means that cars are unavailable to the less well-off. That awesome Shuto expressway is a toll road. You have to provide documentation of owning a parking space in order to be able to register a vehicle. The biennial safety inspection (shaken) and taxes are very expensive by comparison with U.S. standards. Gas costs the best part of $6 per gallon.
This is honestly the thing that bothers me most about cities the US. Having grown up in Europe, I find many (I'm sure there are exceptions) US cities to be plain ugly and unlivable. The reason is obvious to me. It's that they are designed around cars. It makes such a huge difference.
I also live there and one interesting bit that, in retrospective is OBVIOUS, is that there are also no cars parked on the streets! Like, if you look at pictures or walk down the street it feels so pleasant for some reason but difficult to put your finger at it, until you realize there's no huge cars piling on the sides.
I prefer European Architecture for downtown buildings, but the no cars bit generally overpowers this preference in making Tokyo at a similar level of beauty for me, and the bits where there are particularly beautiful buildings in Tokyo or Japan well that's just perfect.
(also warning like parent, there is some street parking, but it's just minuscule)
You really notice it too, walking around the city feels very quiet even though there are so many people and a decent amount of noise from businesses. When you make it to a busy road, there's a notable lack of businesses nearby and you really notice the noise difference. That said, car speeds in Japanese cities are slow, and cars are heavily regulated so they're just not as loud as other cities.
Cars add a sort of tense background track to life, perhaps because we perceive the danger subconsciously as a pedestrian. Sitting in my house in the burbs I can hear the highway out the window, in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, there was a type of quiet I just wasn't expecting from a city.
I think the enabling features for this to occur are of course public transport and mixed use streets, mixed use sets the stage for a sensible compromise between cars and people. The majority of streets do actually allow cars, but you barely see any using them because they'd be incredibly slow, like walking speed. This means that if you decide to use one, you must really need it and so you can, but if not then you'll just use a road more suited to fast cars.
In many western cities - and I won't name names - the downtown area is not pleasant due to anti-social behaviour. So even when they do make it walkable, I don't want to walk there, I'd rather drive to a suburban mall and reduce my chances of an altercation.
I live in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and while it has many issues the general "not designed around cars" makes everything feel much more human scale which is something I miss when I visit the US.
Unfortunately, cars are a status symbol and becoming increasingly prevalent, which then puts pressure on government officials to design around them. It doesn't help that government officials all have cars and clearly see cars as superior and a sign of being a rich country.
Another Japanese city that would be quite livable without a car is Osaka. I myself have lived carless in Tokyo and Yokohama for nearly forty years without any problem. About ten years ago, I started going to Osaka several times a year and have found it similarly easy to get around on foot and public transportation. The center of Osaka is quite flat, and a lot of people there also use bicycles. If I weren't settled in Yokohama, I would be happy to live in Osaka.
I think Tokyo still has too many cars (and plenty of two or three lane roads) and Japan as a whole isn't really bicycle friendly. The city is very dense however and the cost of parking spaces makes cars only accessible to upper class families.
I generally do not like cities, at least not to live in, but I really liked HK, Shanghai, Phnom Penh, Chiang Mai and Bangkok. Tokyo and Melbourne are often mentioned as the greatest and I spent months in both; it really depends what you want, situation you are in, what period in your life etc. I though Melbourne was dead; after midnight the city is just a graveyard. And so was Tokyo. I like cities that are alive: in HK , Shanghai and Bangkok you can do whatever 24/7. It is lively. If I wake up at 3 am craving something or wanting to see a band, chat with someone, I can walk outside and get all of that in many places (not so sure about Shanghai now: that was the longest time ago since I worked there, well in Suzhou, but went to Shanghai all the off time). Even small towns in Asia have that but a mega city like Tokyo was dead; the apartment we were in was in a popular district and friends invited us to craft beer things and such; they shut down at 11pm. In my village (with 100 people) bars are open until 3 am or until the last guest leaves (often after 9 am).
It really all depends what you want from a city. As I do not have or want kids, and I work 12 hours a day (by choice!), when I finish, I don't want to hear kitchen is closed etc. No clue why I would pay the money to live in a city then (and I don't as there are no real 24/7 cities that I like in the EU; Berlin but too cold; for the atmosphere I would live there though).
Moscow is 24/7 city as well. Shanghai is promoting nightlife economy on the city level. Both are insanely pedestrian-friendly with one of the best public transportation infrastructure in the world.
I love Tokyo but I know lots of Japanese people that love suburban America. They love the space.
I quick search suggests the average size house in Tokyo is 66sq meters where as in LA it's 167sq meters or nearly 2.5x larger. And that's just LA. My guess is plenty of other suburbia cities the average is even larger.
I lived in Tokyo for 15 years. My last place was 54sq meters. I like there are more options in sizes than most cities I think USA and I don't believe that everyone needs a huge place.
But, I so am envious of people who have space. Space for workshops, craft rooms, etc. My mom is into Love it or List it, and people have enormous houses with yards in suburbia. I'm jealous even though at the moment I prefer carless city lifestyles
Tokyo, and most big Japan cities, are probably the only cities I could visit regularly without getting bored. Whether it's cuisine, the shops, or the people, it felt like a home away from home. It's surely super crowded in some areas, but you don't have to go there either. There are plenty of areas where you could enjoy a quiet (literally) afternoon sipping a good coffee without having to queue up. Also, it's so damn clean compared to other major cities in the world.
Just avoid the train during peak hours, and you'll enjoy every moment staying there.
It’s been notably less pleasant for the last two years, for reasons shared with substantially all cities (ex-China, I suppose). Would heartily recommend it otherwise, which would have surprised me when I was younger. In particular, the neighborhoods allow you to pick your vibe, pace, and sense of scale at multiple points along the continuum, so if e.g. the Shibuya scramble crosswalk is not your idea of a good time you can live five minutes away by train and enjoy tree-lined streets and cozy bistros with a bit of outdoor seating instead.
Chinese cities haven’t been doing much better. You have to wear a face mask everywhere, lots of mass people events are curtailed, domestic and international travel is restricted, and your city can go into lockdown at any time (like Xian right now).
Many posters have already mentioned some of the great things about Japanese cities: walkable neighbourhoods, good public transport, life without cars. I agree with all of these.
However, you can't get something for nothing. Even in the suburbs there are essentially no gardens (a friend of mine lives way out of town and has a 10m by 10m garden which is enormous and unusual). Houses and apartments are significantly smaller too.
I think the tradeoff is worthwhile. You can meet friends at a restaurant instead of at home. You can go to the park instead of play in the garden.
> Tokyo comes joint fourth, but its population is larger than the combined populations of the others (Adelaide, Auckland, Osaka and Wellington).
Having lived in Adelaide and visited Toyko, Osaka and a bunch of other Japanese cities, I can take a crack at the difference:
Adelaide is a great lifestyle city, if you don't actually want to live in a city, love car enabled lifestyles and the outdoors. Tokyo would be great if you just love city life and have an insatiable desire to discover city culture, and you want to spend most of your time as a pedestrian. You just can't run out of things to discover in Tokyo or Japan in general, and everything is easy to get to in Japan from Tokyo.
In Adelaide, you need a car to get out of the burbs, it's very car centric, and because you'll eventually run out of stuff to do in the city since it's quite small, you'll need the car to drive out to new places. Public transport is spotty, or non-existent. Trains aren't too bad, if you move here, move near a train.
I would recommend Adelaide if you're pretty content with a median lifestyle, and just want to focus on hobbies, sports and don't mind going to the same handful of cafes every year. I think you'd get more mileage out of Tokyo if you want to dive headfirst into city life and city culture.
The other difference is that with a low population, hobby groups in Adelaide are small, and what you love may not even be in Adelaide, getting supplies for things can be difficult. Lots of new things don't make it there due to that issue as well. It can feel a bit dead-end in that way. In Tokyo, if you like it, there's a group for you somewhere, and what you want is probably sold nearby.
I honestly don't understand how "cities" like Adelaide, Auckland and Wellington keep making these lists of "most liveable cities".
Their low populations mean they just don't have much of the things that make cities desirable. (like, lots of culture, lots of diversity, lots of options for dining and activities etc etc)
Granted, that can make them comparatively pleasant and peaceful, with good access to outdoors and fresh air, but yeah, it's disingenuous to even include them in a comparison that includes Tokyo, London, New York, what have you.
In case anyone thinks this is me being uncharitable, I currently live in Brisbane Australia, which is hardly a cosmopolitan global elite city either, so this isn't me throwing shade, I'm just saying.
What I've come to appreciate the most is how easy it is to get around by foot. Everywhere I lived previously seemed to have been built with pedestrians as an afterthought. But in Tokyo you can easily tune out with little chance of coming into contact with traffic. Public transport is also great provided you're ok with crowds, although not as big an issue for me now everything's remote.
I thought about getting a job there as a dev. However certain things like culture, low pay, the language, and making new friends has held me back. I really loved the city when I visited a couple years back.
Does anyone live in Japan as a dev and not really know how to speak japanese? How has the experience been?
I didn't speak Japanese when I first moved there. In larger cities (especially Tokyo), there are plenty of people who speak English, so it's generally not a huge problem (although you'll find things easier if you do speak the language).
The biggest issues are crowding and racism. Don't expect to get into any role of importance, and don't freak out when you hear "gaijin dame" (no foreigners allowed) in some places, or people sudenly moving to seats and tables further from you. On the other side of the coin, you won't be expected to understand how things work, so they'll be very forgiving (in a condescending way) of social gaffes and the strange way you act (after all, you're a foreigner; they all act that way). Many rules won't apply to you, unless you make an effort to have them apply to you (don't do this). You'll make few (if any) friends of the same gender. You will alway be an outsider. If you can live with this, you'll have a fun and interesting time there.
Edit: Also, make friends with some oldtimers in the expat community (as long as they're not the jaded kind). They are a treasure trove of information and help.
Edit 2: Don't learn Japanese from someone of the opposite gender (unless they're a trained language teacher). You'll sound ridiculous when you speak otherwise, because men and women use very different words and turns of phrases in many cases (nothing worse than hearing a man say "atashi" or the up-pitch "ne" unless he's in drag). Reading Japanese comic books can be helpful here because they tend towards hyperbole, which makes it easier to pick out the differences. I've found that female artists tend to play with language more than male artists.
Edit 3: DO NOT BREAK THE LAW. Getting arrested in Japan is a hellish experience, and prison is even worse. Their justice system is still quite medieval. Quoting a friend of mine: "Japan is the most advanced 3rd world country I've seen."
Living in Tokyo is amazing, but working for a Japanese company as a dev is probably not a great career move if you're relatively young. Software Engineering in Japan is many years behind the rest of the world, the pay is relatively low, and it isn't considered as desirable of a career as it is in other countries. It would be much better if you could find an international or remote company that allows you to live in Japan. Then you can get the best of both worlds. If you don't speak Japanese you probably wouldn't be able to get a job at a Japanese company anyway.
> However certain things like culture the language, and making new friends has held me back
I think it's really hard to generalize because it's different from person to person. However, I think it's a very different experience if you speak Japanese. Roughly 95%+ (if not more) of the population in Tokyo does not speak English more than a few words. You can certainly get everything done in English, make contracts, find housing, find friends, there is a big enough community, but your social life will be extremely limited if you don't speak Japanese.
I am an expat living in Tokyo for 5 years. My language skills is limited - I haven't given any JLPT. I can understand some conversation but can't speak. I depend on my wife for most official paperwork. I have lived in US, China & India before.
I work mostly in MLOps. Life is really not that bad. I would probably never go back to US. I work in niche ML & robotics domain and there is enough scope for growth and making new things.
About life in general, what expats miss is that Japanese people forgive you for not knowing the language, but they do take offense at not following the general customs of the place. Being loud, making hand gestures, acting aggressively, talking on the phone in a public space & metro etc are big no-no. Too many foreigners feel unwelcome because they refuse to blend in & want to be the sore thumb sticking out.
Once someone blends in their society and manages to have japanese folks invite you in their inner circles, you become as thick as a family member. It all boils down to being respectful of the local way of life. If you live in Japan as a Japanese, (and maybe speaking some Japanese e.g N4 level), life is really comfortable & easy
As others have pointed out, you probably don't want to be working for businesses that are run in the Japanese way, but there are plenty of both expat and native run businesses that aren't. The pay will be low but Tokyo is incredibly cheap so it's not really a problem locally. (but it is a problem in the sense that whatever you save won't be worth much elsewhere if you move back to the states or whatever later years later)
It goes without saying your experience will be incomparably better the sooner you learn Japanese, and it's nowhere near as hard as popularly portrayed.
I've been working for a large US company in Tokyo for several years now. No need to know Japanese for work; I know a lot of people that speak it very poorly (though I wouldn't recommend that if you're staying here long term).
The pay is good (~35M JPY/300K USD at L5) but there are very few companies with this level of compensation so the real cost is in the limited opportunities.
Like everywhere, there's good and bad parts to living in Tokyo, but I've enjoyed it for the most part. It's friendly, clean, safe, and relatively cheap. On the other hand, there's sometimes discrimination against foreigners (especially in housing) and I don't appreciate how cramped apartments and houses are.
I worked there for two years as an engineer for a multinational without speaking Japanese. The primary language of my team was english so the workdays were fine. I eventually was able to speak enough broken Japanese to order at restaurants, cafes, etc but anything beyond that was impossible for me. I know there are a few companies (Google, Facebook) that are hiring engineers in Japan where English is the primary language used. I have heard that there are also some native Japanese companies, like Mercari, where a significant amount of English is used as well.
I found that not speaking Japanese was not that big of a deal especially if you live in central Tokyo or one of the suburbs that have a lot of expats. Most businesses that you would likely frequent will have english menus or speak enough broken english to get by. I had a few health problems while I was out there and there are several clinics that have native english support.
The thing I found the most difficult about Japan is making Japanese friends. You will always be an outsider and in general Japanese folks just have different expectations when it comes to "work" friends vs "real" friends. You might think you're super close to a colleague from work but in reality you're a total stranger. It's not uncommon to not even know if someone is married or not. On the other hand if you're okay with having mostly expat friends, the community is very welcoming.
Pay isn't that bad provided your expectations are reasonable. For reference I'm making more here than I could expect to make in NZ/AU/UK but nothing close to what's on offer in SV.
I've lived here for two years and my Japanese is still not great, though getting better all the time.
Both the highs and the lows have been bigger than I expected. I've loved the place on the whole but there have definitely been significant downsides too. If you don't like the culture I'd be very cautious about coming here.
Don't need to speak to be a dev. Pay is low, rakuten imports devs regularly. Japanese prefer South East Asia/West Europeans vs Americans (North, Central & South.)
Learning the language isn't hard either, I passed JLPT N4 within 3 months of just showing up in Tokyo.
Max pay would be 40-60K/yr until you get PR &/OR N1/N2. Then it may balloon up a bit but not so much. You should be able to score a free apartment though.
Just as an existence proof, I interviewed for a team at Apple in Tokyo. The job was all in English and the team members had varying levels of Japanese language ability. I did not get far enough in the interview process to discuss comp.
I had the pleasure of visiting Tokyo years ago, but after having visited many more cities since I only retrospectively realised how great it really was. I've been making plans to head back since 2019 and am excited to see how my experience changes now smartphones are accessible.
If you dont have to work there and commute 1h30 each way per day just to avoid living in a too small apartment and instead spend time in a bedtown where there's nothing around your house. Did you capture that, the Economist?
Someone commented that people hate each other in the US more than elsewhere, thus need more space apart from other people.
This made me think: how does this supposed US hatred for itself compare with European hatred for "the other"? Living in Moscow I heard from a German girl that she was scorned for being German; in another situation I heard form a Russian man that he felt unwelcome in Germany for being German. I'm not even getting into ancient Spain x Portugal, Poland x Germany kind of enmities.
It’s interesting to look at Tokyo from space, what you’ll see is a type of sprawl but it’s an dense urban sprawl. In the us we have taken to trying to constrain growth to small specific areas to drive up density, but that wasn’t needed in Tokyo to achieve density. It tells me that in some ways our attempts at urban planning through zoning have been ineffective. The reason why a location 5 miles from a city center can only house a single level big box store isn’t due to cars or the great expanse of America. That piece of property could be put to better use if people were able to build as they do in Tokyo.
On the other hand, if we aspire to be like Tokyo, we might consider what the Tokyo area originally looked like as a natural environment and how the unchecked growth in density turned most everything to concrete.
Going to Tokyo once was enough to make me hate American cities. We got things so wrong, and we invested so heavily into the wrong infrastructure that we'll never change.
Coming home from Tokyo to New York in 2018 was depressing. You get so used to living in a dysfunctional society that you forget it's dysfunctional, but getting off the plane at JFK, I was reminded of Biden's comment that our airports are like stepping into a third world country [0]. The next week in New York, I felt like I saw nothing but broken things and lost people.
How many places in America:
* have good schools and offices within walking distance
* have such good public transport that you don't need a car
* provide easy access to nature and parks
* are affordable to midde-class people?
I think the answer might be zero places -- those that meet the first three criteria (Berkeley, parts of NYC, and Seattle) don't meet the fourth.
This kind of thing comes back once a while. You know what? Japan has extremely low birth rate! And very high suicide rate! No. It’s not a pleasant place to live. Not any big city, for a family with 2+ kids.
It is unbelievable how true this is . Ive almost got some sort of trauma where living in cities gives me a lot of anxiety and Tokyo is the only exception
[+] [-] bedobi|4 years ago|reply
Before anyone chimes in saying "nO tHeRe r cUrS iN tOkYo tOo" - of course there are! The point is the city isn't designed around cars. (and the parts that are are the least pleasant)
[+] [-] NovemberWhiskey|4 years ago|reply
There's a lot more "design for cars" in Tokyo than there is in, say, New York City - look at the Shuto expressway with its multiple rings of highways that run around the city and the radial routes that join them together; its elevated sections and tunnels through the most densely populated parts of the city...
There are also many areas in the urban core with multilane roads, but these always seem to be complemented with pedestrian over/under-passes.
Driving in Tokyo is very much more pleasant than driving in the NYC metro area. There is no street parking (by law), but there is often masses of underground parking to compensate: go to Akihabara, for example, and you'll find a five-story deep parking garage with >500 spaces under the Yodobashi Camera store.
One thing that Tokyo does have is a regulatory regime that means that cars are unavailable to the less well-off. That awesome Shuto expressway is a toll road. You have to provide documentation of owning a parking space in order to be able to register a vehicle. The biennial safety inspection (shaken) and taxes are very expensive by comparison with U.S. standards. Gas costs the best part of $6 per gallon.
[+] [-] makotobestgirl|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] franciscop|4 years ago|reply
I prefer European Architecture for downtown buildings, but the no cars bit generally overpowers this preference in making Tokyo at a similar level of beauty for me, and the bits where there are particularly beautiful buildings in Tokyo or Japan well that's just perfect.
(also warning like parent, there is some street parking, but it's just minuscule)
[+] [-] ehnto|4 years ago|reply
Cars add a sort of tense background track to life, perhaps because we perceive the danger subconsciously as a pedestrian. Sitting in my house in the burbs I can hear the highway out the window, in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, there was a type of quiet I just wasn't expecting from a city.
I think the enabling features for this to occur are of course public transport and mixed use streets, mixed use sets the stage for a sensible compromise between cars and people. The majority of streets do actually allow cars, but you barely see any using them because they'd be incredibly slow, like walking speed. This means that if you decide to use one, you must really need it and so you can, but if not then you'll just use a road more suited to fast cars.
[+] [-] LAC-Tech|4 years ago|reply
In many western cities - and I won't name names - the downtown area is not pleasant due to anti-social behaviour. So even when they do make it walkable, I don't want to walk there, I'd rather drive to a suburban mall and reduce my chances of an altercation.
Until that's fixed it's a non-starter.
[+] [-] ErikVandeWater|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freddie_mercury|4 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, cars are a status symbol and becoming increasingly prevalent, which then puts pressure on government officials to design around them. It doesn't help that government officials all have cars and clearly see cars as superior and a sign of being a rich country.
[+] [-] tkgally|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flor1s|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tiktaalik|4 years ago|reply
Meanwhile in NA the market has shifted to ever larger and larger pick up trucks, which are more and more dangerous for pedestrians.
[+] [-] jsiaajdsdaa|4 years ago|reply
Communicable diseases?
[+] [-] tluyben2|4 years ago|reply
It really all depends what you want from a city. As I do not have or want kids, and I work 12 hours a day (by choice!), when I finish, I don't want to hear kitchen is closed etc. No clue why I would pay the money to live in a city then (and I don't as there are no real 24/7 cities that I like in the EU; Berlin but too cold; for the atmosphere I would live there though).
[+] [-] xvilka|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greggman3|4 years ago|reply
I quick search suggests the average size house in Tokyo is 66sq meters where as in LA it's 167sq meters or nearly 2.5x larger. And that's just LA. My guess is plenty of other suburbia cities the average is even larger.
I lived in Tokyo for 15 years. My last place was 54sq meters. I like there are more options in sizes than most cities I think USA and I don't believe that everyone needs a huge place.
But, I so am envious of people who have space. Space for workshops, craft rooms, etc. My mom is into Love it or List it, and people have enormous houses with yards in suburbia. I'm jealous even though at the moment I prefer carless city lifestyles
[+] [-] karterk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bllguo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unbanned|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ipiz0618|4 years ago|reply
Just avoid the train during peak hours, and you'll enjoy every moment staying there.
[+] [-] patio11|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanmcdirmid|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] njwi332|4 years ago|reply
Do you refer to Daikanyama here? Easily my favourite neighbourhood of Tokyo (so much so that I just bought an apartment to move there in two weeks!)
[+] [-] laurieg|4 years ago|reply
However, you can't get something for nothing. Even in the suburbs there are essentially no gardens (a friend of mine lives way out of town and has a 10m by 10m garden which is enormous and unusual). Houses and apartments are significantly smaller too.
I think the tradeoff is worthwhile. You can meet friends at a restaurant instead of at home. You can go to the park instead of play in the garden.
[+] [-] newuser94303|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ehnto|4 years ago|reply
Having lived in Adelaide and visited Toyko, Osaka and a bunch of other Japanese cities, I can take a crack at the difference:
Adelaide is a great lifestyle city, if you don't actually want to live in a city, love car enabled lifestyles and the outdoors. Tokyo would be great if you just love city life and have an insatiable desire to discover city culture, and you want to spend most of your time as a pedestrian. You just can't run out of things to discover in Tokyo or Japan in general, and everything is easy to get to in Japan from Tokyo.
In Adelaide, you need a car to get out of the burbs, it's very car centric, and because you'll eventually run out of stuff to do in the city since it's quite small, you'll need the car to drive out to new places. Public transport is spotty, or non-existent. Trains aren't too bad, if you move here, move near a train.
I would recommend Adelaide if you're pretty content with a median lifestyle, and just want to focus on hobbies, sports and don't mind going to the same handful of cafes every year. I think you'd get more mileage out of Tokyo if you want to dive headfirst into city life and city culture.
The other difference is that with a low population, hobby groups in Adelaide are small, and what you love may not even be in Adelaide, getting supplies for things can be difficult. Lots of new things don't make it there due to that issue as well. It can feel a bit dead-end in that way. In Tokyo, if you like it, there's a group for you somewhere, and what you want is probably sold nearby.
[+] [-] bedobi|4 years ago|reply
Their low populations mean they just don't have much of the things that make cities desirable. (like, lots of culture, lots of diversity, lots of options for dining and activities etc etc)
Granted, that can make them comparatively pleasant and peaceful, with good access to outdoors and fresh air, but yeah, it's disingenuous to even include them in a comparison that includes Tokyo, London, New York, what have you.
In case anyone thinks this is me being uncharitable, I currently live in Brisbane Australia, which is hardly a cosmopolitan global elite city either, so this isn't me throwing shade, I'm just saying.
[+] [-] tjpnz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deltaonefour|4 years ago|reply
Does anyone live in Japan as a dev and not really know how to speak japanese? How has the experience been?
[+] [-] kstenerud|4 years ago|reply
The biggest issues are crowding and racism. Don't expect to get into any role of importance, and don't freak out when you hear "gaijin dame" (no foreigners allowed) in some places, or people sudenly moving to seats and tables further from you. On the other side of the coin, you won't be expected to understand how things work, so they'll be very forgiving (in a condescending way) of social gaffes and the strange way you act (after all, you're a foreigner; they all act that way). Many rules won't apply to you, unless you make an effort to have them apply to you (don't do this). You'll make few (if any) friends of the same gender. You will alway be an outsider. If you can live with this, you'll have a fun and interesting time there.
Edit: Also, make friends with some oldtimers in the expat community (as long as they're not the jaded kind). They are a treasure trove of information and help.
Edit 2: Don't learn Japanese from someone of the opposite gender (unless they're a trained language teacher). You'll sound ridiculous when you speak otherwise, because men and women use very different words and turns of phrases in many cases (nothing worse than hearing a man say "atashi" or the up-pitch "ne" unless he's in drag). Reading Japanese comic books can be helpful here because they tend towards hyperbole, which makes it easier to pick out the differences. I've found that female artists tend to play with language more than male artists.
Edit 3: DO NOT BREAK THE LAW. Getting arrested in Japan is a hellish experience, and prison is even worse. Their justice system is still quite medieval. Quoting a friend of mine: "Japan is the most advanced 3rd world country I've seen."
[+] [-] makotobestgirl|4 years ago|reply
> However certain things like culture the language, and making new friends has held me back
I think it's really hard to generalize because it's different from person to person. However, I think it's a very different experience if you speak Japanese. Roughly 95%+ (if not more) of the population in Tokyo does not speak English more than a few words. You can certainly get everything done in English, make contracts, find housing, find friends, there is a big enough community, but your social life will be extremely limited if you don't speak Japanese.
[+] [-] srvmshr|4 years ago|reply
I work mostly in MLOps. Life is really not that bad. I would probably never go back to US. I work in niche ML & robotics domain and there is enough scope for growth and making new things.
About life in general, what expats miss is that Japanese people forgive you for not knowing the language, but they do take offense at not following the general customs of the place. Being loud, making hand gestures, acting aggressively, talking on the phone in a public space & metro etc are big no-no. Too many foreigners feel unwelcome because they refuse to blend in & want to be the sore thumb sticking out.
Once someone blends in their society and manages to have japanese folks invite you in their inner circles, you become as thick as a family member. It all boils down to being respectful of the local way of life. If you live in Japan as a Japanese, (and maybe speaking some Japanese e.g N4 level), life is really comfortable & easy
[+] [-] bedobi|4 years ago|reply
It goes without saying your experience will be incomparably better the sooner you learn Japanese, and it's nowhere near as hard as popularly portrayed.
Give it a shot, you only live once.
[+] [-] devilsbabe|4 years ago|reply
The pay is good (~35M JPY/300K USD at L5) but there are very few companies with this level of compensation so the real cost is in the limited opportunities.
Like everywhere, there's good and bad parts to living in Tokyo, but I've enjoyed it for the most part. It's friendly, clean, safe, and relatively cheap. On the other hand, there's sometimes discrimination against foreigners (especially in housing) and I don't appreciate how cramped apartments and houses are.
[+] [-] leicapowerball|4 years ago|reply
I found that not speaking Japanese was not that big of a deal especially if you live in central Tokyo or one of the suburbs that have a lot of expats. Most businesses that you would likely frequent will have english menus or speak enough broken english to get by. I had a few health problems while I was out there and there are several clinics that have native english support.
The thing I found the most difficult about Japan is making Japanese friends. You will always be an outsider and in general Japanese folks just have different expectations when it comes to "work" friends vs "real" friends. You might think you're super close to a colleague from work but in reality you're a total stranger. It's not uncommon to not even know if someone is married or not. On the other hand if you're okay with having mostly expat friends, the community is very welcoming.
[+] [-] tjpnz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lmm|4 years ago|reply
Both the highs and the lows have been bigger than I expected. I've loved the place on the whole but there have definitely been significant downsides too. If you don't like the culture I'd be very cautious about coming here.
[+] [-] rootsudo|4 years ago|reply
Learning the language isn't hard either, I passed JLPT N4 within 3 months of just showing up in Tokyo.
Max pay would be 40-60K/yr until you get PR &/OR N1/N2. Then it may balloon up a bit but not so much. You should be able to score a free apartment though.
[+] [-] MarkSweep|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spoonjim|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Prcmaker|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekianjo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lbrito|4 years ago|reply
This made me think: how does this supposed US hatred for itself compare with European hatred for "the other"? Living in Moscow I heard from a German girl that she was scorned for being German; in another situation I heard form a Russian man that he felt unwelcome in Germany for being German. I'm not even getting into ancient Spain x Portugal, Poland x Germany kind of enmities.
[+] [-] twobitshifter|4 years ago|reply
On the other hand, if we aspire to be like Tokyo, we might consider what the Tokyo area originally looked like as a natural environment and how the unchecked growth in density turned most everything to concrete.
[+] [-] niklaslogren|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kadomony|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] setgree|4 years ago|reply
How many places in America:
I think the answer might be zero places -- those that meet the first three criteria (Berkeley, parts of NYC, and Seattle) don't meet the fourth.[0] https://abc7ny.com/laguardia-airport-improvements-renovation... -- though technically he was talking about LaGuardia
[+] [-] temp8964|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kgin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anm89|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Giorgi|4 years ago|reply