Hey guys moving to japan for teaching very soon. great thing is i have a huge say on where i want to be placed.
i want a fun vibrant city with great nightlife. but not as packed as Tokyo and Osaka. i find them to be a bit crowded especially with tourists. There both great but i feel like the people in especially Tokyo or almost like robots (nonstop work), definitely somewhere i don’t want to live. i’m looking for a city that’s both beautiful and vibrant. Also more relaxed than Tokyo if you know what i mean. They being said i’m 23 and i like to have fun on my days off.
Can anyone recommend not as packed cities as Tokyo and Osaka but just as vibrant. i’ve heard Sapporo and Kobe but i’m not sure. Any recommendations from people that actually reside or have been to Japan would be great, been stuck on choosing for quite a bit.
3 comments
I know YouTube/The Internet would have you believe that Nagoya is a wasteland but it is a very nice city to live in and only an hour away from Tokyo and Osaka/Kyoto if you want to visit. Also close to Gifu prefecture which has a lot to offer especially if you are into anything outdoors(Camping, Cycling, Rafting, Skiing, boating, Onsens etc.)
People always overlook Japan’s second largest city, Yokohama. The people there are definitely a bit more relaxed than Tokyoites. Parts of town are positively sleepy, full of people who live off their investments and spend their time taking care of pets. But there are many things to do in the city and you can explore nearby towns along the coast of Kanagawa Prefecture.
Hiroshima and Fukuoka would be my go-to non-Tokyo cities. Sapporo and Kobe are both cool too, especially Kobe if you’re keen on being close to much of the rest of “vibrant” Japan.
Tokyo is so crowded with Japanese people that it’s hard to feel the tourist effect, especially if you stay outside of touristy areas. Can’t argue with your concerns about the bustle of nonstop workers though.
Also worth considering living *near* a big city, but not actually in one. There’s a lot of niceties about living in a smaller-but-still-substantial city (150-300k population), especially if you can manage a car.
*Also* worth considering that until you’ve actually been and lived in Japan for a bit, it’s actually quite hard to know how you’ll feel about living in larger/smaller cities. I find them really hard to compare to similarly-sized cities in the U.K. for example.