For a moderate two bedroom in a cool neighborhood? As well as office space. And how is the availability of gigabit residential fiber options. Say, comparable to Verizon FIOS (~$150/mo)?
In short, if anyone has set up a remote office for 2-3 months or even permanently I'd love to hear their experiences ;)
A short term stay in an AirBnB of 2-3 months might be possible, but you’ll only be able to get a tourist visa, so no earning an income locally and be really careful of overstaying.
Investor visas are not so hard to come by compared to US (lower monetary bar) but you’ll still a handsome sum to get one.
It was 10 years ago, so I wonder how much the situation changed. For me this was a pretty severe issue.
Below 120,000 yens/ month, even with a long term visa, years of residency and a stable employment covering 3x the monthly lease amount and a co-signing by a Japanese spouse, getting the landlord to even see the application was hard.
We would show up at the agency, and whole swaths of offers would just be set apart under a 'no foreigner' policy, and the rest was direct negotiation with the landlord.
Above 150,000 I felt we had more choice, but then we were into mildly premium territory.
When I got my current apartment in Japan I thanked the estate agent profusely and said that he'd been a great help and that it's often difficult to find a good place. He said "No worries, you're not Chinese like him!" gesturing towards a Chinese customer sitting on the other side of the shop.
The flipside of this is that when you're in you have a lot of rights as a tenant.
Are you talking about super countryside or something? My searches have always been in Tokyo.
I moved about 6 times for various reason, including pure curiosity. Everytime I had the issue.
Now, the vendor might not explicit the restrictions. Sometimes we talked for 10~20 min, I ask for the full binder of offers to look for myself and am told some of them won’t be available.
Or some of the agency people woud pre-filter the offer they hand over, and when you ask to see some they removed they’ll explain those “were burned by previous foreign renters” (that’s the canned response)
Also your friends and co-worker might be part of other demographics where they are exempted. For instance single white women in their 20s will get a pass on basically most conditions (except revenue of course).
Also working in a super top tier national company (i.e NEC, NTT, Sony, softbank etc.) will open a lot of doors. You are asked upfront about your employment so you won’t hit further roadblocks at this point.
I think some estate agents are a lot more smooth about it than others. They'll only show you pre-vetted "foreigner ok" apartments. My experience is that if you go on a property site, draw up a list of places you're interested in then prepare to be disappointed.
- 1 bedroom in a quiet neighborhood, small designer appartement: $1100/mo
- 1G fiber: $23/mo (special 1 year price, need to change vendor yearly, ~$40 otherwise. Search on kakaku)
- monthly expenses: $400 restaurants & groceries, $100 subway
(Source : I've been living in Japan for two years)
When I was first starting out I ran into a few opportunities in Japan, but it looked like the salaries were very thin compared to expenses. (US $40-50k starting.) I never got as far as looking into Tokyo taxes, but for entry-level work it seems like they'd make the difference between awkward (>1/3 income on rent) and concerning (>1/2 income on rent).
Taxes are high for corporations, not that high for individuals usually below a quarter of your salary, including insurance, pensions and local and national taxes.
Overall Japan is not the country to go to if you want to maximise your salary.
* office space (3 people) somewhere central, shared facilities, private office: $2000/month
* residential gigabit (min 1 year contract): $60/month
* food for one month, either eating out or buying decent groceries and cooking: $800/month
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Those are off the top of my head. I'm not very interested in living in a cool neighborhood and rent where I live is more like $1400 (office space is presumably correspondingly lower).
Obviously cooking at home or snacking ($1-3/snack) from convince stores lowers that amount.
Most prices include tax and there is never a tip.
Rent and bills for a 1 bedroom 1 kitchen room apartment: 500 USD
Fiber connection: 40 USD
Food: 200-300 USD
Transport: 100 USD or less ( I walk to work).
Office space(1-3 person) subsidised by the city: 200 USD
All in all very liveable.