LIVING STANDARDS IN JAPAN: Any long-term foreigners packing things in and leaving Japan for good due to living standards?

33 comments

1. This is the 4th country I’ve lived in (US, UK, Taiwan, now Japan). I have by far the best standard of living and quality of life here. Even though my salary is the lowest of the four countries, I have the most disposable income.

   I have never experienced an outrageous workload (I average less than 30 hours a week) and have never been power harassed. The only harassment I’ve experienced in Japan was other foreigners who had miserable, shitty lives and wanted to inflict that on me, too.

2. WHAT LIVING STANDARDS ARE YOU REFERRING TO?

3. No.

4. I noticed self-employed foreigners are enjoying life here more than regular workers. Some even had plans to be in Japan only for a couple of years and ended up becoming lifers once they started working for themselves.

   I’ve been self-employed for 16 years so I don’t deal with toxic work environments, forced-nomikais, office politics, etc. I give my employees a lot of freedom which is why they’ve been with me for so many years. I don’t want them to feel like they’re working for a ‘Japanese’ company.

5. Pack up and go back to the UK? No thank you.

6. No.

7. Nah, I quit my job last year and have had an improvement overall. Cost of living here is dirt cheap compared to my homeland. If anyone is getting overworked, seriously look at changing jobs and companies. No one needs to deal with that.

8. Yes, I hear people talk about it and even making inquiries (Japanese people!), but they don’t seem to be trying too hard to actually flee the nest.

   As for me, I’m being treated for a serious medical condition right now, and I’d probably better not switch horses mid-stream. It’s exhausting to think of starting again, even back in my home country surrounded by supportive and sympathetic friends (one of them even offered me the use of her second home and second car for as long as it takes me to find my feet).

   I’m not really happy right now with my standard of living. But another thing that is starting to worry me more and more is the geopolitical situation, which is pretty much a non-issue back in my home country. I’m actually surprised that it rarely comes up for discussion.

9. I’ve lived and been all across Canada, mainly in Vancouver and Toronto.

   There is no fucking comparison between living standards in Vancouver and Toronto. Tokyo stomps any city in Canada for overall living standards. While I miss being in Vancouver from time to time, my living standard is way better and MUCH cheaper in Tokyo than in those two cities in Canada.

   1. I work in tech in a non-engineer role, and my salary is higher, and my work-life balance is better. I work 37.5 hours a week here and have not been told once to work overtime because of the strict laws on overtime. With that being said, I regularly volunteer extra projects and decide and register for overtime voluntarily – I choose to do it, and I get paid anywhere from 1.5 to 2x per hour, depending on the date and time I OT. I like my job and have decided to do this, but it is never required of me. Comparatively, I’ve worked overtime in Vancouver for multiple companies and was discouraged from registering that OT time because I was salary. Fuck, is anyone even really paid to OT in Canada? Let me know if you did.

   2. In general, food is better and cheaper here. It isn’t even a comparison.

   3. Pricing and availability of homes are better here. How much is a detached single-family home in Vancouver nowadays? 2 Million CAD? I can comfortably get a detached single-family home close within a 10-minute walk to a train station within the 23 wards in Tokyo for around 450k to 750k. Don’t even get me started on comparing mortgage rates for buying a house here. A Flat35 mortgage is I think 1.5% from what I last checked – again that’s FLAT over 35 years. What is it in Vancouver these days? I’m checking some credit unions and I see a 6.84% APR that you have to renegotiate every couple of years hahaha.

   4. List goes on and on, walkability, transit, safety, everything.

   If there’s anything I feel is lacking in the standard of living, getting a car here is prohibitive, but that’s because I love driving. I will say though that buying a used car here is outright laughingly cheap but everything else like insurance, maintenance and parking is expensive. Oh – and for some reason, Vietnamese, Filipino, and hong-kong style Chinese food isn’t as good here as it is in Vancouver. << For the love of God, somebody gets me some good recommendations

   Edit: Also while I support the country’s tough stance on crime and drugs here, man can we somehow take marijuana out of that equation? I feel like weed and Japanese culture would do really well together. Can you imagine watching the local baseball games, going to one of the many local cafes, or even visiting Nakano broadway/Akihabara high as a kite? Yes please.

10. Hint, living standards are falling all around the developed world right now(and in a lot of less developed places too, though that is much less uniform). I think Japan has weathered the crises of the past few years relatively well all things considered.

11. Sounds like you’re in a foreigner bubble. You should leave it, or you’ll turn like that yourself.

12. I’ve been here 16 years, people packing up and going home is the expat life cycle and I don’t think that is particularly new.

    Often people stay for family, personally I am self-employed and I am much happier than when I was a seishain. It gives me a lot of freedom to pick and choose and limit sucky work hours, and I can enjoy a modest lifestyle with a low tax rate. But we will see come next year’s price hikes haaaa. I don’t think I would be better off in the UK though.

13. That’s not really living standards. That’s work culture and social environment, both of which vary around the country. The standard of living is very good imo

14. We have a good life here. The US is so crazy these days I have no desire to return there.

15. Been here since I was 19 (from UK) so nothing to compare it with but I know that if you get your shit together it’s an easy life. I have a detached house, a car, a dog, rabbits and I’ve almost finished elden ring. 👍🏻

16. Can’t say I have, no.

    My standard of living here is fine.

    I have enough. Life is better now than it’s been in a long time.

    I lived most of my adult life on the West Coast, and while I regret not being as physically close to family there as I would like.

    After seventeen years here, I can’t ever see myself returning to Vancouver for anything other than the occasional visit.

    The Archipelago. Its people, its language, its gods.
    Have been, for the most part, very good to me.

    I feel grateful to be living here.

17. Lots of people are moving from everywhere.

    I know plenty of people leaving the UK, US, China and Singapore.

    The last 5 years have forced many to rethink their priorities. Work is changing. The economics are changing.

    What you’re experiencing isn’t a Japan thing, it’s an everywhere thing right now.

18. Been here 15 years, with my Japanese wife for 8, and we are moving back to my home country next month. I adored my life and career here, and will make less money back home, but we will have a larger house on a couple acres where we can walk through the trees and hold hands. It’s not perfect anywhere of course, but we’re going for peaceful mountain life amidst all this other madness going on. Hope it’s the right play but you never know. Just be open, honest, and communicative with the ones you love!

19. I’ve greatly enjoyed not being accosted by random homeless people having psychotic episodes, so I think I’ll stay here a while longer.

20. One of the most common (and sometimes agitating) conversations I get with new Japanese friends/coworkers/acquaintances is the “falling standard of living” in Japan. Most of these people have only seen the world through NHK segments where everything looks amazing is a foreign country. And usually the question everyone asks after talking about Japan’s problems is “when are you going back home?” They are shocked when I tell them Japan is my home now. I own a house, a car, I work 8-5 mon-fri, I have insurance, and I have disposable income. Am I wealthy? Hell no. But I could never get all of this AND the social safety of knowing my kids won’t be caught in a mass shooting. Japan is far from perfect. I hate dealing with “shouganai” culture to every problem. But I’ll take that over what my friends are struggling to do in America.

21. I did notice it during the beginning/mid of covid.
    But that’s not unique to Japan itself.

    However I do think that many people considered other options because of the way Japan treated foreigners. Let’s not forget that in the beginning, even people that already lived here couldn’t come back for months.

    I would probably make more money in my home country and my standard of living would definitely be higher but! The lifestyle would be different.
    As much as I despise certain parts of japans way of things there are many things that I love.

    I love going to an izakaya on a Thursday, listening to the buzz, inhaling the secondhand smoke whilst drinking a shitty beer.
    I love the fact that Shinkansen departs every 10-15 minutes to the destination I want to go to.
    I love the food, I love the people (for the most part) and overall, despite the many annoying parts, I do love it here.

    I only wish that I could work less, but hey, maybe in the future.

22. Sounds like you work at a shit company?
    The foreign people around always coming and going.

    It’s what you make of it for yourself. I make great money , work very little and have awesome vacation time. Most of my friends work for themselves also. Great for triathletes and other outdoor people like us.

    I’m here for quality of life for my family. No crime , no gangs, no drama , no drugs. I like boring and quiet now.

23. I haven’t noticed this.

    I have heard more concern from people about the long term future of Japan but things are not much more rosy looking in many other countries either so….🤷🏻‍♂️

24. Workwise, I have been very fortunate to find a job I like with decent pay and good work life balance. That alone is enough to keep me here.

    Personally though, I did go through a very rough emotional patch having fallen out with my wife. When that I happened, I did spend a bit more time at the HUB and making some friends with some more foreigners mainly because other foreigners who were in the same boat as me were a bit easier to relate to.

25. The only people I’ve seen do that were people with children and a salary that wouldn’t allow them to pay the huge costs of education in Japan, so they went back to their country where education is almost free.

26. Biggest exodus I saw was after 3/11/2011.

    Other than it’s the usual ebb and flow.

    Living standards are great IME.

27. I’ve been here almost 20 years, it used to be a lot better. Or at least more comfortable and exciting. On a recent trip to the US for the first time since COVID I realized I could make a much better standard of living just working at Costco or something in the states. I have a masters degree, have 10 years exp, etc, but it’s a different world now. The US seems to have made huge strides (while being far from perfect) while some salaries in Japan have actually gone down since I started working here. I’d go back if not for helping take care of family here.

28. I am seriously contemplating moving back to the UK. (I am visiting for 2 weeks this month to feel things out). The main reason being work. I work as a junior software engineer in a Japanese company in the inaka and earn 16万 a month. I can barely save any money and inflation is making it worse. It’s seriously isolating being the only foreigner at the company and the long hours are beginning to take a toll on me. I guess most Japanese in my position would be living at home still, not having to pay rent and splitting house chores.

    I believe I could double my salary by moving back, have much better career prospects, have a much better work-life balance (lower hours, 25 paid days holiday(?) vs 10 I have now), have a better social life and be close to family. I am fortunate enough to have a supportive family that I could move back in with, to avoid throwing money away renting. That being said, I haven’t had been back in almost 5 years and never had a full-time job in the UK, so perhaps I am out of touch with reality, especially as most info I read online about the UK is very negative. Still, I am not happy with my current situation and need a change.

    I remember reading a comment on here once that said unless you plan on being here for life, staying here is like being a boiling frog, as living costs (housing etc) rise in the west slowly overtime, but salaries here remain stagnant.

29. Don’t perpetuate the ‘silent/quiet quitting’ lie. It’s just doing your job as you’ve been contracted to do.

    With the cost of living rising and wages essentially going down I won’t be surprised if foreigners won’t be able to afford to live here anymore though.

30. Grass is greener. Some people are going to be miserable wherever they go. It’s a big reason why people come to Japan in the first place

31. The key is to work for a foreign company that operates mostly abroad. No Japanese customs and you get the opportunity to travel alot. Plus the salary will be in USD. In my case usd and CHF.

    I never wanna live here forever. But given how cheap things are here compared to the outside its better for now. I’ll probably head back to switzerland at some point because I don’t see a reason to stay forever when my home country is much better.

    So it comes down to the job I guess. Either choose a foreign company or be self employed

32. I think that if you’re poor/havr an average income then Japan gves you more bang for your bucks than many Western countries. I don’t think that holds true for higer income earners. I pay 25man a month in rent an live in the most attractive area in Kansai and while the apartment is nice and all the lack of greenery etc. is just depressing. I’ve been here for 20 years but yes I think a lot about going back to Scandinavia.

33. I imagine the pandemic and the economic effects which have been exacerbated by by the energy crisis, the war in Ukraine and so on have had a huge influence in this. Many foreign colonies or companies with shared interests down sized directly as a result of covid (especially during the states of emergency) and there has been a consolidation and ongoing change in the herbal economy and logistics.

    For one, the commercial ESL market in Japan has literally been decimated. A freeze on new teachers coming into the country and the customer base cutting classes and their extraneous expenditure lead to smaller and medium sized business closing schools or stopping growth.

    Tourism has shrunk considerably, and only have the big spenders from China been let back in, and by no means at the volumes they previously did, buying up all the high end products in Ginza and downtown Tokyo.

    With exchange rates going against the Yen, many people will also be considering the long term viability of remaining in a country where they my losing out on pensions and investments. So, it shouldn’t be surprising to see a lot of people moving now to secure a better future, even it doesn’t work out, elsewhere.