Best city to live in?

[Anonymous]

Which city do you think is the best to live in? Why?

[Anonymous]

Osaka. It has everything Tokyo does, but friendlier people. There is less foriegners around and its close to Kobe and Kyoto. Its also close to areas like Nara and Wakayama. There is a lot of great cultural things, plus this huge, extreamly modern city. I love it.

[DJ]

How about the job situation (ELT) in Osaka?


I would also pick Osaka....although I only spent a week there (versus a year in Tokyo), you have all the benefits of the big city with the ability to get out and enjoy the countryside. I also found that people in Osaka were a little more open and easy to talk to......

[Anonymous]

Originally I wanted to go to Osaka, however, after hearing that Osaka and Tokyo were the most expensive cities on the planet, I decided it might be better to go elsewhere. Are you finding that your salary is allowing you to live comfortably enough?

I'm not going to Japan with the intent to save money, just pay off a small debt, shop and travel travel travel.

[DJ]

That poll is BS. Get used to normal Japnaese life, and you can live quite cheaply no matter what city you are in. My friend was living on ni-man en (~$174) a month after paying rent and that was in Tokyo.

[Coin-Operated-Clown]

I rather agree with dj. Don't be put off by those polls. They give a misleading impression of the cost of living because included in the calculations are a set of costs which are both peculiarly high in Japan and not applicable to most short-term-staying foreigners (land prices, school fees, car-parking etc.).

These things apart, Japanese cities (though expensive) seem to me, and for my purposes, cheaper than London or Paris.

COC

Oh! Kobe is the best city to live in. Kyoto and Osaka tie for second. Whatever,......it HAS to be Kansai.

[Coin-Operated-Clown]

It's a peculiar (and perplexing) point of pride among many Japanese that the country should be recognised as expensive by the foreingers living here. One "question" you'll grow tired of being asked is "Nihon wa takkai ne?". I put "question" in scare-quotes because this is not a question, you are only being invited to affirm that this is the case. Dissenting from this opinion (as a Londoner or New Yorker living in, say, Yamaguchi-ken might feel inclined and entitled to do) will lead to obviously hurt feelings.

It's strange, and strange twice. Strange first because "being expensive" is plainly not a good thing, it seems akin to a man's insisting that you recognise his wife as a nag or his daughter as a slut. Strange second because, since I live in Japan, my salary is of course paid at local rates and in yen. Do they imagine that we're paid in our own currencies or at whatever pay-rates they imagine obtain in out home countries? Or that we always convert prices back into sterling/dollars/CDN$ etc.?

Squirrel,

When you come to Japan, you'll be paid a wage which, though far from princely will allow you to live in modest comfort even while saving and travelling a little. In point of fact the standard salary for Eikaiwa teachers is rather higher than a graduate salaryman with a blue-chip company would expect to earn until he reached 30 (thereafter his earnings will increase while yours remain essentially static and he will ultimately far out-earn you).

The big schools recognise that there are differences in the costs of living between places in Japan and typically pay a weighting to accommodate this. Living in Tokyo or Osaka is more expensive, yes, but on the other side of the coin those cities offer far more, and more lucrative, earning opportunities. You really oughtn't to allow concerns about money to be a determining factor in your deciding where to live.

COC

[Coin-Operated-Clown]

Hello,

More on cost-of-living concerns. A Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry report issued on Monday and reported in the Japan Times (Tuesday, Feb 4th. '03) reveals that last year the average monthly income of full time salaried workers across all industries in Japan was \343,688 (annually, this is stlg22,000, US$33,500).

Of course, statistics aren't to be trusted. This was a mean (not median) figure and so gives a (here, twice) distorted picture. First it is artificially adjusted upwards by its including the salaries of chief executives, consultant surgeons, and so on. Second, it is artificially adjusted downwards by the inclusion of (that 'peculiar to Japan' phenomenon) the legions of 'office ladies' who are working in the 4 year window between leaving college and getting married, and whose salaries reflect the fact that they're expected to be living with their parents.

Still, let's suppose that these two factors essentially cancel each other out such that the figure given can be understood to represent a median income, what does this say about the cost of living in Japan as it pertains to a soon-to-arrive Eikaiwa teacher?

If you're to work for a chain school in a big city, your monthly package (including benefits such as paid health insurance) will likely cash-out at a little over \300,000. With the couple of private students most teachers have, the 'working median' figure can be straightforwardly reached from here.

Now consider what else is true in analysing the statistics. First, it remains the case that most households in Japan are supported by a single income, such that the median figure is in many cases being used to support a family. Second, you're 22 or so, but the median figure includes the earnings of workers already at the peak of their lifetime earning potential. And, these people survive in Japan.

Seriously, for a 22 year old with \300,000 yen a month the choice isn't between lving in modest comfort in the boondocks and struggling to get by in a metropolis; rather, it's between living in modest comfort in a metropolis and living the life of Reilly (Riley?) in the boondocks.

Japanese are often rather disconcertingly direct about money, don't be surprised to have some of your students ask you how much you earn. My tactic has always been to knock about a third off the true figure so as to leave them only agreeably scandalised rather than actually shocked.

[Anonymous]

Dear Clown,

Thank you for all your help. I do want to live in Osaka, but I spent two
years living it up slinging beers (aka Waitressing). Now I've taken a
considerable pay cut to work with special needs children to bulk up my grad
school CV. But basically, I still wish I was raking in insane amounts of
cash for getting a bunch of guys drunk (so easy it should be out-lawed!)

ECC pays 252,000 a month, so less than the mean. However, I definitely can
pick up some students. I don't have dependents, and I probably will only
crave McPukes maybe once a month.

So basically - I'm asking - do you really really really think that I will
reasonably get by on this salary? I want to travel, shop, and get tanked.
Oh yeah, and pay off a loan and pick up a laptop (maybe).

Thanks again for all your help,
"Donnie, the Badass Squirrel"

PS - I bought a 500 page grammar work book that I am plowing through. Damn
tests!

[Coin-Operated-Clown]

Donnie,

My feeling is that for a single person to "live comfortably"in a big Japanese city, as opposed to just getting by, you need \120,000 a month in your pocket after all fixed outgoings.

Do the maths on this: [your salary] - (your rent) - (your bills) - (your loan repayments) = ???.

If the amount left is more than \120,000, you will be able to live comfortably in a big city. If it isn't, you'll have to choose between scrimping a bit in the week so as not to be left out at the weekend or getting some private students, something you'll easily be able to do in one of the big cities.

For what it's worth, today's spending to give you some idea of prices:

Sliced Loaf \200
Orange juice (liter) \200
Cigarettes \280
Coffee at cafe \350
Newspaper \150
Canned soft drink \120
Laundry detergent \400
Train fares "as" \700 ("as" because I have a train-pass)
Lunch at restaurant \900
Snickers \120
Birthday card for sister \300
Stamps \260
Spaghetti sauce for dinner \380

A bit over \4000, but my sister has a birthday but once a year, and several of the others are plainly non-essential or not-everyday purchases. I didn't drink today and that IS more expensive than at home.

Look, there are lots of ECC teachers in Osaka and Tokyo and they're all surviving. And, there are lots of Japanese who earn less than you'll be making. I'm not advising you to choose a city, only saying that you oughtn't to be put off by financial worries. It's your adventure, go where you WANT to go.

COC

[Anonymous]

The messages regarding cost of living in Japan are perplexing, especially the 'shopping list' of individual items (as if all we eat, drink and do the same things).

Tokyo and Osaka are two of the most cost effective and efficient cities on the planet. The only major consideration as to expense is the cost of your apartment. A nice place in Tokyo, for example, will cost between 80,000 and 100,000 yen per month. This is still much cheaper than, say, London, New York or Paris, and guaranteed to be in much better condition.

Everything else, food, transport and shopping is much cheaper. Plus you have a greater range of cost effective choices (for example, ramen, isakayen and yakitori, 100 yen shops and places like Uniqlo for clothes).

As a teacher, it would be difficult to earn less than 250,000 yen per month. Therefore, the economics work quite well. Private work will then boost your earnings considerably.

[Anonymous]

Mark Lammerton wrote>>>"The messages regarding the cost of living are perplexing."

How so?

That's how much those things cost. We don't all like the same things but we most of us launder our clothes, drink canned drinks, read newspapers, eat chocolate bars and etc. Bread and orange juice are far from peculiar tastes. Sending a card internationally DOES cost \260. Cigarettes cost \280. A coffee (at Starbucks, hardly an outlandish expense) costs about the price quoted.

What's perplexing about any of that?

[Coin-Operated-Clown]

Hi Mark, (and, hello 'Hello', at the risk of arrest for impersonating a police officer),

I think we're singing from very much the same hymn sheet. I agree with you, it's quite possible to live comfortably on an eikaiwa salary even in one of the big cities.

Excerpts cut-and-pasted from my previous posts on this thread:

>>>>Seriously, for a 22 year old with \300,000 a month the choice isn't between lving in modest comfort in the boondocks and struggling to get by in a metropolis; rather, it's between living in modest comfort in a metropolis and living the life of Reilly (Riley?) in the boondocks

and:

>>>>Look, there are lots of ECC teachers in Osaka and Tokyo and they're all surviving. And, there are lots of Japanese who earn less than you'll be making.

and:

>>>>When you come to Japan, you'll be paid a wage which, though far from princely will allow you to live in modest comfort even while saving and travelling a little.


As for the list of prices. I DID try to stick to what could be - in so far as anything could be - understood as everyday, commonplace necessities, and to things which have fixed prices, such that there's no possibiltiy of buying cheaper by shopping around (newspaper, stamps, snickers bar, can of coke, etc.). Not everyone will want those things, but even those who don't can use them as a rough, thumbnail, guide of prices in general.

I'm a bit worried the squirrel has disappeared from these pages. I hope he hasn't been scared-off.

Come back squirrel!

COC

[Anonymous]

I wasn't responding to your individual message (see rules section) but to the discussion as a whole. It's perplexing because much of the information given is irrelevant (because it is highly personalised), and misleading.

The only things worth mentioning are major expenses, such as accomodation/mortgage and car/travel, which unless you have debt, leaves disposable income. Loan repayments (and other personal circumstances) are an individual liability, nothing to do with living in Japan. Whatever you spend it on is then a personal choice, and those costs are pretty much the same in any major city, including developing countries in SE Asia.

When an economist looks at a cost of living index he doesn't look at chocolate bars or birthday card for sister, he looks at interest rates, the cost of borrowing, GDP per head, income tax, etc. Japan, Taiwan and Korea are well established as the most profitable places to teach worldwide.

As this is a relatively new site, it would be useful to populate it with useful and, as far as is possible, objective information for genuine people who are 'coming to Japan'.

[Anonymous]

Hi COC,

Oops.. Ignore the somewhat more direct message I just posted below!

I agree with your messages in the other postings. Everybody I know who hasn't actually been to japan has the same impression, that it is prohibitively expensive. But I can't think of anywhere I would rather be for a high standard of living.

mark

[Coin-Operated-Clown]

Mark,

This site is visited by comparatively few economists looking for information on debt or borrowing. It's chiefly visited by people who wonder whether chocolate bars or birthday cards or newspapers will be very much more expensive here than in their home countries. Donnie, I think, was one of these.

There is precisely nothing "personalised" about the cost of a can of cola, a packet of cigarettes, a newspaper, or the costs of international postage. These are the same for everyone wanting them. They seem to me supportable as "relevant" to someone asking whether s/he will be able to live day to day on a given salary.

I wonder how a "cost of living index" is composed except by comparing prices for equivalent products across countries? So far as I'm aware, this "basket of goods" approach is the one typically employed for the compiling of such comparative indices.

Incidentally, there is nothing in the rules which proscribes anyone's replying to anyone else's posts. It's sledging that's banned, such that if I were to say "you are a bumptious ninny", I'd have stepped out of line.

COC

[Coin-Operated-Clown]

Wow!

sorry. Cross-postings 8see times). Should have refreshed.

COC

[Anonymous]

Well thank you for your feverish debate on this topic.

COC, when you said "It's your adventure, go where you WANT to go." I decided, hell yeah its my adventure! I'm going to Osaka!

I figure it's worth the risk, I just like to over-plan everything. I'm just a nice version of that type A personality, without the anger management issues and heart problems.

Mortgage rates and interst and such doesn't really concern me. More of what concerns me is can I buy a laptop? Can I buy a Vespa? Can I go shopping? Can I travel to China, Thailand, India and New Guniea? (sp?)

Above all, I want to come home with no savings! So thanks for the confirmation that I will be ableto swing it (well, maybe not all of it but at least some of it.)


Incidently, I have my interview with ECC on friday, and I'm hard at work plowing through my "Basic English Grammar" workbook. Boy it's exciting!

[Coin-Operated-Clown]

Donnie wrote>>>>"I decided, hell yeah its my adventure! I'm going to Osaka!"

Good for you, kid!

And, good luck at the interview. I'm sure you'll have no problems.

COC

[Anonymous]

Hello and COC are the same person no ?

[Anonymous]

Okay, I followed this thread for a while and it seemed to trail off the deep end very fast. Maybe I could start to get it back on the right track. I too am interested in an EXCITING FAST PACED career as an english teacher WOOHOO (and please, if i mispelled something, keep it to yourself, no smart comments about "maybe you need to know english before you can teach it" because I seem to get alot of that and its not very nice, but I digress)!!! So let me tell you a bit about myself and then you guys/girls/gals/people can give me your opinions on where i should move.

I'm going to have a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and a TESOL certificate.
I like snowboarding and the beach, I don't care which one I have as long as one of them are within reach.
I don't mind living in a small apartment
I really really want to become fluent in Japanese. It's always kidna been my dream to be fluent in 2 languages and since I plan on moving to Japan, maybe it wouldn't be too big of a wish to learn Japanese to a fluent level.
Cost of living doesn't really bother me because I'm sure the sallary ajustments will balance that out anyway.

So..... where should I live? (oh and what is Roppangangi or Roppangi.... or whatever that word is that I keep seeing around these threads?)

[Anonymous]

Have to disagree.

Kobe is a cool place - if you can find work that suits your travel regime to where you live.
I'd live there if I had the chance, but, Osaka, well... I had the worst four months of my life in Osaka. It is a sprawly dirty city, crowded, badly designed and expensive with no real style. The people are friendly - well, some are - and the food is good, but it is nothing like Tokyo. You can't compare it to London, Paris, Sydney, whatever in terms of price and, most importantly "quality of life".

It depends on what you are looking for I guess.

If you are lucky and get to live somewhere with a little bit of grass like Ryokuchi-koen, or in the direction of Kobe or Nara, it could be great. However, when you have to travel an hour on a crowded subway every day, live in Nishinari-ku and pay 60-70,000yen for a tiny ancient apartment, teaming with cockroaches, you could do a lot better.

I packed up to move to Matsumoto - its a little dull, but Tokyo isn't far away, but its cheap and the air is clean and there are loads of beautiful traditional Japanese places a stones throw away and the weather is fantastic, very seasonal. Nowhere near as sickly hot as Osaka or Kyoto in the summer.

I'm not trashing Osaka outright - I had some good times there too; but I would be sure that you are the kind of person who can deal with the madness of a big Japanese city before you move to one. If I were to choose city life, there are any number of cities around the world I would head to before coming to Tokyo or Osaka. Great to visit, but live there only if you get a particularly cushy deal in terms of work and accomodation.

If you've come to Japan for the culture. Head to a country town within reach of a big city. That way, you can have the best of both worlds...

In my humble opinion.

[Anonymous]

Have to disagree.

Kobe is a cool place - if you can find work that suits your travel regime to where you live.
I'd live there if I had the chance, but, Osaka, well... I had the worst four months of my life in Osaka. It is a sprawly dirty city, crowded, badly designed and expensive with no real style. The people are friendly - well, some are - and the food is good, but it is nothing like Tokyo. You can't compare it to London, Paris, Sydney, whatever in terms of price and, most importantly "quality of life".

It depends on what you are looking for I guess.

If you are lucky and get to live somewhere with a little bit of grass like Ryokuchi-koen, or in the direction of Kobe or Nara, it could be great. However, when you have to travel an hour on a crowded subway every day, live in Nishinari-ku and pay 60-70,000yen for a tiny ancient apartment, teaming with cockroaches, you could do a lot better.

I packed up to move to Matsumoto - its a little dull, but Tokyo isn't far away, its cheap, the air is clean and there are loads of beautiful traditional Japanese places a stones throw away and the weather is fantastic, very seasonal. Nowhere near as sickly hot as Osaka or Kyoto in the summer.

I'm not trashing Osaka outright - I had some good times there too; but I would be sure that you are the kind of person who can deal with the madness of a big Japanese city before you move to one. If I were to choose city life, there are any number of cities around the world I would head to before coming to Tokyo or Osaka. Great to visit, but live there only if you get a particularly cushy deal in terms of work and accomodation.

If you've come to Japan for the culture. Head to a country town within reach of a big city. That way, you can have the best of both worlds...

In my humble opinion.

[Anonymous]

Has anyone lived in the North? Tohoku? It is nice and peaceful. You can live on 60,000 a month with rent, utilities and food.

[Luke]

You were all talking Osaka their's 1 problem in the Kansai area their are not many jobs now

[Jackie Treehorn]

Hmm.....I hope you aren't teaching English.......

[Nige]

Hi all,

What about reommendatons for areas to live in say around 30 mins from Tokyo Railway station? I have been told apartment rent can be quite a bit cheaper that real inner city living?

Any thoughts greatfully taken on board, basicly I'm looking for something not overly flash but not crawling with roaches either. My employer is two blocks from Tokyo staton which should open up a few more possibilites.

I am not in to the club scene at all, I am more interested in just having a reasonable standard of living without too high a cost although my lack of wishing to go out drinking every night may be seen by some as a social failing.
This is head down arse up, make as much money as I can then blow out of there asap. That's the theory anyway!

Alternatively do many ex-pats (read Australian or NZ) do any apartment sharing? The whole job thing has dropped on my plate out of the blue so I am working feverishly trying to gain info, get my head around the whole deal etc etc. Large amounts of grog may help though...

[trip_hop]

30 minutes from Tokyo - Try Funabashi/ Tsudanuma to the East on the Sobu/ Yokosuka line, or Matsudo/ Abiko out on the Joban line. Both reasonably crowded in the morning.

Nakano to Kichijoji on the Chuo line is also within 30 minutes by train, good place to live, but very crowded in the morning.


For flat sharing, try www.tokyonoticeboard.co.jp

For getting about, you'll need Kodansha's Tokyo City Atlas - a Bilingual Guide - with details of major areas and stations.

[Nige]

Thanks for the heads up, now at the orther end of the field which areas should I avoid? Always a trap for the un-weary new to a city experience not to be repeated excersize.

If I was any greener about Tokyo / Japan you could use me for chop sticks...