[staringback]

Ah yes, a micro-apartment the same size as the average American kitchen [1], how affordable!

For comparison, Seattle WA has a minimum wage around 2.5x higher than Tokyo. Here is a larger apartment [2] that is only 1.33x more expensive than your Tokyo broom closet.

Go ahead and find something more akin to the American sized apartments (500sq+ for 1 bd) and you'll see that the prices are almost the same, with much lower wages across the board.

[1]: https://kb.nkba.org/2016/11/new-nkba-research-defines-averag... [2]: https://www.apartments.com/amherst-micro-studios-seattle-wa/...

[decimalenough]

The key difference is that microapartments are actually an option in Tokyo, whereas they are against code in virtually the entire US.

[cyberax]

Well, duh.

As a result, the US also doesn't have such a collapsing population as Japan.