Is 250000Y a good monthly Salary in Japan?

22 comments

1. This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.

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   **Is 250000Y a good monthly Salary in Japan?**

   I live in Canada and I’m looking to move to Japan. I am a corporate trainer working for the government here in Canada and I’m seeing English teaching jobs that I’d be a good fit for in Japan (lots of them are around the 250000 – 270000 yen range)

   Is 250000 yen per month enough to have a decent apartment in a decent part of town? To afford eating out with friends on occasion and the occasional facial or manicure?

   I am willing to make sacrifices to my lifestyle in order to leave Canada but I also don’t want to move to Japan and find myself merely trying to “Survive” and not being able to enjoy my life there.

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2. Im here 30 minutes from Shinjuku in a pretty good apartment, with arround less than half of that and I can have fun 2-3times per month okay ish
   I would say you will not need to do many sacrifices

3. No. Also, there is negative wage growth in those jobs.

   Those jobs are for new grads that can afford a year long vacation in Japan. It’s supplemental income. Most of the companies don’t pay that much and have weird rules to decrease your salary through rentals and fees.

4. It’s not that great. If you want an OK apartment, you’d have to live in the outer Tokyo wards (providing you live in Tokyo). You wouldn’t have an extravagant lifestyle and you’d wouldn’t save a whole lot. But that might not be your goal.

   I’m Canadian and I left Canada, too, and I get that things are bad there now, but teaching English in Japan is a pretty crappy job and wouldn’t be worth leaving Canada for. Maybe OK for a year or so for someone fresh out of school who wants experience in a foreign country, but not as something to do long-term.

   Edit: I checked out your profile page and see you’re female. I definitely wouldn’t recommend coming to Japan as a Western female. Sure, it’s very safe, but most can’t adjust to the culture there.

5. If you’re 19 and are ok with living in a 15 sq/m crappy apartment with no sound insulation and eat cup ramen one meal out of two it’s perfect.

   If you’re 40 with 3 kids and want to live in Minato-Ku, send your kids to private school and go to soapland every week it’s definitively not enough.

6. Assuming this is Tokyo: 250-270k is a livable wage if you are single and young. You can get a room in a nice sharehouse, in a decent location e.g. Shinagawa Ku, starting around 70k~. A nice 1LDK starts around 100k~. Crappier places go for less. Either way, you will still have money left over to enjoy life without needing to be too frugal.

   But that’s basically where it ends. So building up wealth, starting a family, traveling back home etc. will be tough on that salary alone.

   I am not an English Teacher myself, but the industry has a bit of a bad reputation around here. Mainly it being a dead end job. But I’d say, if you just want to live in and experience Japan for a couple of years, it’s perfectly fine.

   Not sure if any of this applies to English teachers, but you should look into bonus payments, holidays (120 per year + 10 private days are standard), and included overtime hours. They are all big parts of Japanese work compensation which can make or break a compensation package. E.g. many corporate workers will not have much more base compensation, but will get something like 2* 1-3 monthly wages as bonus.

7. If you’re young (say recent college grad), it is fine. The pay is crap, but college grads are used to being broke. You should be able to have some fun. That being said, be prepared that your salary won’t materially change as an english teacher over time. Have an exit plan.

8. I guess it’s ok. I had a 440000¥ salary but also I had 320hours a month

9. Nope.

   250,000… Your take home will probably be around 190,000 or so after deducting taxes and some other stuff. Then you have bills, rent, and all the other stuff. You can survive and eat out, but not often and you will quickly run out of money.

10. If you have student debt you basically won’t be able to survive. Even without debt you will be very poor. Maybe take home pay of around 215,000 after taxes.

    I assume this is an English conversation school eikaiwa. So probably not even gonna make 250,000 as they are notorious liars. You will be lucky to afford a 20m2 empty apartment and some ramen.

11. No.

12. Fuck no

13. It should be fine if you can get 1.5-2 month bonus. Otherwise, you can live but not fully enjoy the life.

14. I feel like people are mostly replying to your post title. it’s not a good salary, but you will be able to find a decent apartment and eat out frequently on that wage as long as you live reasonably otherwise. the bigger issue is that English teaching doesn’t have any kind of career path in Japan, so the longer you do it, the more time you will waste. you could be teaching English in Japan for 10 years and still make the exact same wage as when you started out. so if you just wanna come here to enjoy the country for a year or so, then yeah it’s definitely an option. also keep in mind that if you have any money saved up in a foreign currency it will be quite valuable right now due to the weak yen.

15. Don’t you fucking dare. Tokyo is amazing, but not on 250k pre tax.

16. I live in Japan and that is a good wage for recent grad and mediocre for after 3-4 years of working full time. Some of my friends also have 50-70% of their rent covered by their company.

    Many of the comments say its not a good wage, but from a Japanese person living in Japan (Kanagawa, but work in Tokyo) with Japanese friends, that’s pretty standard for someone single, and I also know a married couple with a kid where the husband works and makes around that🥲

17. I moved to Tokyo from Toronto earlier in the year. Have a pre-tax wage of ~2500cad. Tokyo is so much more affordable than Toronto. I rent an older 2-bedroom apartment for about 700cad, in a nice area.

    I took a huge pay cut moving here, but I’m able to do way more things and my apartment is much better. Granted I moved with no debt and some savings for initial apartment fees.

18. Where do you live in Canada? I’d leave Canada if I have a chance. Terrible long winter and astronomical cost of living.

19. I make 250k and do fine for myself but I got kind of a jackpot- 22 teaching hours a week, subsidized apartment (rent is 40k yen incl/ utilities) and 5 weeks paid vacation in Saitama. Most people msking 250k won’t do that well, but on this I can still send home about $700/month and live a little.

20. Big question is if they subsidize your rent. They will pay for your commute and some people will bike to work and pocket that money too. But it’s a tight budget.

21. that’s an absolute shit salary.

22. You will barely get by with 250k a month… yen is like 150 to 1 usd right now. Just 3 years ago it was 100 to 1. All time low in like 3 decades. You can survive on that but you’ll hardly have any savings left over each month.