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> The housing space metrics seem very far off from my experience

I have friend living in Tokyo paying <10万円 in rent for a (very small) single unit. A couple other friends share a larger unit and pay similar per person. All are in the 23 wards. This is unimaginable for other friends living in Paris (one of the 20 Arrondissements) and New York (one of the 5 boroughs), regardless of size. I have no anecdata on London.

Regarding size, I was far more comfortable living in a ~550sqft 1LDK in Japan than I ever was in 800sqft-1000sqft apartments in North America - everything is geared to living in tighter quarters (from furniture to fridge to food packaging) making it much more convenient than trying to fit a full size couch into a small western apartment, or trying to save by bulk buying ingredients when you don't have the space to store it.

So I think the title of the article is half right (rent is cheaper than you'd think), missing some key info (wages are also cheaper than you'd think), half of it is roughly incorrect (housing is not any more spacious than you'd think), and the article itself doesn't back it up well.

I never mentioned anything about prices though :)

550sqft (52sqm) for a single person is unheard of here. Look at the article I shared, unfortunately it cuts off at 30sqm, meaning ALL the houses of 30sqm or more make up 22% of the total. Assuming a normal distribution that peaks around 20sqm/person, you should've lived in the top 1-2% of Tokyo.

I feel like Paris' 20 Arrondissements is too small, comparable to Zone 1 of London and "Yamanote area" in Tokyo, while New York 5 boroughs is a lot bigger and more comparable with 23 Wards. But anyway let's go with it, since at least it's much better than comparing it with Tokyo Metropolitan. With Airbnb (which is usually a lot more expensive than long-term rental) I can find a bunch of places for under 1k USD:

https://imgur.com/a/FIODYlo

For London I could literally not find any, and for Tokyo also a bunch of places (you might notice that these are way further from the center than the area of Paris, but hey I said that was fair):

https://imgur.com/a/0XEvBcT

So it seems that London is particularly expensive, similar to Tokyo's Yamanote; while Paris 20 Arrondissements are at a similar place as Tokyo 23 wards.

C'mon mate you can't be for real, you can't just look at Airbnb data and make any conclusions about rent from that. They literally target different audiences.

People living in Tokyo don't check AirBNB to find apartments to rent

Unfortunately, the sites they DO use are entirely in Japanese, so you're not going to be able to get usfeful infographic data in a few minutes

AirBNB is extremely unpopular in Japan, it's not a good comparison for anything. Searching on Suumo I can see over 100,000 apartments over 50m^2 listed (which doesn't prove much of anything, but gives an idea).

Run SUUMO or Homes through Google translate and you’ll probably get a good idea of the rent level

Yes, my 550sqft (was a very rough size approximation, 5 yrs ago from memory) was certainly not in Tokyo, and the 4万 (plus utilities) that I paid for rent was seen as expensive. I was just using it as a basis to show that straight space comparisons between japan residences and north american residences aren't reasonable, as everything is geared to smaller living.

I live in a 95sqm apartment in the city for 26万/m, and I'm in an expensive area. When I was looking for apartments, I found lots of 60+sqm apartments for <20万/m even in some of the pricer areas. For standalone houses, you can find plenty of 70+sqm houses for purchase at ~5000万, which would have a mortgage of around 15万 a month.

It's important to note that you can get a mortgage at a rate somewhere between 0.6-1.6%, which means that even for seemingly high prices, you can buy something and have a surprisingly low mortgage cost.

Yes, the numbers are a bit skewed by the fact that more people live alone in Tokyo than Paris or NYC, but it's definitely true that you get more square meters per $ in Tokyo. Also, it is true that people on Tokyo on average earn less than NYC, London and Paris, but they also spend a smaller percentage of their total income on housing, so housing is cheaper in PPP terms too. I'll dig out the exact numbers tomorrow if anyone is interested, but now I'm out in one of Tokyo's extremely cheap bar districts having skewers and beers for less than $10

Do you know numbers about how much housing is sponsored by the companies in Japan? Maybe that's what is making the difference since it's not counted neither as salary, nor as the price of the house? I know some large companies sponsor partially or totally the housing of thousands of their employees, again skewing prices greatly.

For example if Tanaka's salary is $500 lower because the company is partially paying for their place, that means on paper his salary is lower, the price of the place is MUCH lower, and the ratio of housing/salary is also lower, than if he received those $500 and then used it to pay for the house.

In Tokyo, you can work as a part time janitor and make enough to live in a 500 square foot place within a 30 minute commute by train

No, you can’t.

50sqm is a large apartment for a single person. Without checking, I’d guess somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 man per month.

A part time janitor would gross half that.

My place in an extremely desirable area in Setagaya ku (56m2, 5 mins from Shimokita by foot) is 25man, same size in a equally centrally located part of Suginami ku (Koenji) would be around 15man, bump it out to Mitaka and you’re looking even cheaper, go 10-15 mins from the station instead of 5 and it’s dirt cheap.

I paid 13 man/month for a 47m^2 apartment, and that was in a pretty nice area (Mitaka) and without searching particularly hard.

Our place is two floors, 54 square meters, desirable area, ¥150000/month, within the 23 wards (inside the Yamanote line as well). We started renting it two years ago.

That's weird then, since I know someone in that boat. You can easily get out into Setagaya-ku from Shinjuku with less than a 30 minute commute, and there are plenty of cheap places to live out there

They aren't from my experience working in two major Japanese companies. Sometimes they'll pay your network bill if WFH is allowed, but that's basically it. Not sure about smaller companies, but honestly, I'd be surprised.

They definitely do, I was paid for it working at a Japanese company, and I know multiple personal cases where that happened as well (one was a dormitory, another full housing, and another partial housing). The internet is full of evidence that it happens, so my question is "how often?".

e.g. https://www.gtalent.jp/blog/japanwork-en/social-insurance-we... or https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/54fjgf/how_much_...

Maybe it's a thing in foreign company and foreign employees. Plus, note that reddit thread is 6y old and already plenty of answers say are getting nothing from the company. I've never heard of Japanese company paying Japanese employee for rent, even partially. Nor I would expect it to be a common thing. As said, though, I just worked in two companies and just have a bunch of friends, which makes it purely anecdotal.

I specified Japanese company for a reason... I've worked in 3 Japanese companies, 2 being "foreigner" (where they did not offer that) and one traditional Japanese (where they offered that).

I know 3 Japanese people (nothing to do with foreigners or foreign companies) that had their house paid by the company totally or partially, and they told me it was common in their company/industry. And those were large industries (train company, hospital, manufacturing).

Mine is anecdotal, but from how they described it it's an anecdote involving hundreds to thousands of people indirectly, so I'm very confident that it's not an isolated thing.

One of the apartments that I used to rent was owned by a large Japanese firm, specifically for the purpose of renting out at a substantial discount to its employees.

There's a tax savings thing that companies do, where the lease is done in their name, and your rent is deducted from your paycheck. It's beneficial for both you and the employer, so it's pretty common.

I don't think it's extremely common to live in actual employer provided housing.

I lived 3 mins from Asagaya station (10 mins to Shinjuku) with my wife in a 23m2 apartment for 70k yen ($475) and loved it, very sunny apartment in a bustling neighborhood, tons of great street life, with everything I needed arranged very compactly. It requires an adjustment that location, not space, is the luxury (don’t invite friends over, go places with them). Probably part of why there are always so many people on the streets everywhere.

I lived in 250sqft with a shared bathroom in NYC for 2 years and loved it. Loved in 800 sqft in suburban America for 4 months and couldn’t handle it. In a big city with affordable Third Spaces you can simply live outside of your apartment.

The thing is that you’re not living in your apt. You live in the city with all the buzz.

In the suburbs you’ll have to get that buzz in your house somehow

Generally you move to the suburbs to get away from the buzz.

In my experience if you hate people the city is actually the best place to live. Yes you're surrounded by a million people but they all ignore you. In rural areas nobody has a personal bubble and you're supposed to do small talk and give a shit. Folks gossip. They know you. The horror...

Who said anything about hating people?

Cities are busy and noisy, suburbs are slower and quieter, and rural areas even slower and even quieter.

You have to interact with people at some point, even if it's just when you get groceries. In rural areas, everyone knows everyone: you can't stay anonymous. In a big city, you probably don't even know your neighbors, and you choose your own friends.

10万円 = 100,000 yen, which is about:

USD 675.18

EURO 683.40

GBP 588.43

For anyone who is interested but too lazy to search

To be clear, in the last one year, the Japanese yen vs US dollar has declined by about 23%: 148 JPY/USD vs 114 JPY/USD. As a result, "dollarised" Tokyo real estate suddenly looks very cheap. For foreign investors / foreign captial, yes, this is true. For local residents / local investors, there is still almost zero inflation here. As a result, local real estate prices are mostly unaffected by USD/JPY FX rates.

When looking at real estate expenses from perspective of local residents, it is always best to look at local currency median income. If median income or real estate prices are unchanged relative to local currency median income, who cares(!). The rest is just an article in a financial newspaper!

We need a disclaimer since from ~last month FX has gone crazy, whether we are using old or new numbers. For me I'm still thinking 10万円 is:

USD ~1000 (a bit less, but just insignificant)

EUR 800~900

And virtually all articles you find today regarding real estate, USD vs JPY, etc. will be talking with old numbers. It's important to talk about the new numbers, but I'd wait a bit for them to stabilize before being "acktually the yen now is" in articles (I'm not saying parent comment is doing that, just warning that those people are everywhere).

In terms of costs of living and salary percentage, 100,000 yen feels like it's around $1000 or so.

For context, a new grad will probably end up making around 200,000 - 250,000 yen (before taxes) a month at a lot of places.

Note that the JPY lost about 30% of value this year, while rent (nor wages, nor cost of living) haven't caught up to those figures. For the past few years, the JPY/USD rate was around 110.

I don't know about NY or Paris, but the comparison against London seems fair enough. They seem to be using a Tokyo metropolitan area of about 2000 km^2, and comparing it with Greater London at 1572 km^2.

And indeed, people throughout Greater London are entirely used to living in small, damp, shared boxes.

The geography of the "cities" is very different though (look at the density of population maps provided), where "Tokyo Metropolitan" is one third pure mountains, then one third low-density living (think L.A.) and then one third what people normally thinks of the city of Tokyo, all of these in a sausage-like shape, while "Greater London" grows in a circle and so it's a circle-ish area.

See this image with the labels, we should compare the green one instead of the 3 of them. Ideally "Tokyo" would be something more like the purple one, but the purple one is nothing. So we have "23 wards" (green), or Tokyo Metropolitan (the 3 together), neither of which is the best comparison, but def the green one vs London is much better than all of them (the purple dashes are how I think London would look like approx):

https://imgur.com/a/nCmkE80

To complement your post: To be clear, no one with a deep understanding of Tokyo area considers anything outside the "23 ku's" as Tokyo. Really, Okutama, Tokyo (two hours west of world's busiest train station: Shinjuku) is comically rural -- literally, there are big mountains and small family farms that grow wasabi (delicious!). Yes, the province of Tokyo is enormous and includes lots of protected nature (and lovely hiking trails!), but when most people say "Tokyo" they mean the central 23 cities ("ku's"). If you want to get more specific, Tokyoites sometimes discriminiate between inside and outside the loop train line called Yamanote line. It is definitely the sense of urban and ex-urban in Tokyo.

Yeah, every "city" has a point at which you're clearly "outside the city" but what you count changes depending on who you talk to.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Okutama,+Nishitama+Distric...

The "gray areas" on a map like this might be a decent "rule of thumb" but even those can be misleading. The best way to determine it is talk to a local.

The other amusing thing is that if some city is famous tons of areas around it will often claim it in name if not address; you'll find "New York Shop" in New Jersey from time to time, especially if doing mail-order business.

And even for the "green" area, a good part of it is not that dense. I mean, it is still packed, but most of it is made of small 2 story houses rather than large apartment complexes and high rise buildings.

The real dense part that looks like the pictures of Tokyo you have most likely seen is around the Yamanote line, a train line that circles an area that is about 1/10 of the green area.

I see it everyday since I live here, no need for pics :)

But yeah I agree, one of the first things that surprised me is that you can walk for 20 mins (in the right direction) from any major train station and find yourself in a tiny 1-2 stories houses area.

If you want to take a more principled approach to size here, you should use a metric that corresponds to how humans interact with the region. Pick a point to call the center and find all the points with a round trip time less than some number.

I’ve had the good fortune to visit Tokyo several times, and visited a few apartments of friends who have regular middle class jobs: animators, cooks, tailors. Every apartment was tiny. Like less than half the size of any apartment I've ever lived in at any point of my life living in Los Angeles or San Francisco.

I’ve stayed many times with a friend whose father is a well-known Japanese movie actor and even they live in a house which would be modest by any US suburban standard, in a quiet part of a nice neighborhood (kichijoji) but still an 8-10 minute walk to trains and very bustling, active parts of town.

The thing I’ve found remarkable with Tokyo is how walkable it is and how, despite how crowded and dense it can seem, the street level experience can feel very accessible and not at all overwhelming. Many good parks, walking paths and general accommodations for people not in cars.

I'm sure you've researched this and sure some apartments in Tokyo are small. I'd like to touch upon the big-house comment, though. It may be that your Japanese friends say that simply because it is polite, and very common, thing to say when you visit someone's house for the first time.

Thanks for the additional info, I found it a rather terrible article. Even taking its numbers at face value, it makes me sad for non-Americans. The difference between the NY average of 43 sqm vs the rest is essentially an extra room.

When I thought I was going to be living in Tokyo for work for a couple of years, I had started to spend some significant time looking for places to rent, and yeah - I had to go out to Saitama or Chiba to find anything that I would be comfortable living in without paying absurd prices.

Which, honestly, wasn't the worst. 40 minutes to an hour on the JR is 10-30 minutes more than my current commute, but I could have dealt with that in exchange for more space.

> The housing space metrics seem very far off from my experience, looking at numbers it seems "Tokyo" means "Tokyo Metropolis", which includes the countryside, mountains, etc. So it's not really comparing the city.

Yep. In that case half of Berkshire, Hampshire, Kent, Surrey etc. should count as well.

It is the price one has to pay for living in the city and being fashionable.

I see this in Amsterdam: rich expats who barely grasp that there is a country outside the city.

If they are considering Tokyo Metropolis, they might be including Ogasawara, which is 1000km from downtown Tokyo.