Hey r/movingtojapan,
I am planning to move to Sendai next year to study in one of the universities . I will get paid \~140,000 yen/month as a part of the funded educational program. Can someone share if they know this will be enough to live on? I have tried to find some info about what the cost of living in Sendai is, but thought I’d ask here if anyone has any resources on what (finacially) to expect.
Thanks!
3 comments
It’s doable as long as you know how to budget.
The good news here is that you (probably) won’t get taxed on that money, so you will at least have all of it available to spend.
The bad news is that that’s still not a huge amount of money. You’ll be able to live on it easily, but you’re not going to be living the high life.
From a (admittedly brief) search of rental listings, average rent in Sendai is ~50,000/mo. You can reduce that a bit by living in a share house, or by a bit more if you live in the school dorms. You’ll have between 70-90,000 yen after rent.
That’s not a lot. You’ll spend 10-20,000 of that various bills (Utilities, cell phone, student commuter pass, Netflix, etc) every month.
So you’re looking at like 60-70,000 in disposable cash. How well you can live on that depends on your personal preferences. You’re not going to have a lot of “fun money” regardless of how frugal you are, though.
It’s enough to pay rent eat out every week and occasionally travel to different areas in Japan.