My wife is Japanese (from northern Japan) and we have a 1/yo kid. We plan on getting out of the US within a few years (We are both in early 20’s). We did our budget (just recently got a promotion) and we can comfortably save about $200,000 before we move in 5 years.
One thing to note is we want to build a house there. But we can wait on that if we need to.
And pay to move our car (sports car) and furniture there too.
We will both be working.
Is that enough?
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We’re looking at building a house ourselves in Northern Japan and a house on the ‘cheap’ side is about 20 million yen which is about 150k dollars right now. Leaves you with 50k? It’s probably enough but is there a reason you need to bring the car with you? If it’s a left hand drive then if I was you I would save the money and just get a car when I arrived.
Where do you want to build a house? Which prefecture? Northern Japan is kind of vague. Do you have relatives that own land, or are you paying for that, too?
Why is it necessary to bring your car and furniture?
Enough to move? Yes, enough to build a house, no. Even if you move somewhere with super cheap land, you’re still looking at a 15 to 20 million yen to build a house.
We just bought a house and just the house price excluding the land was 15 million yen. This is for a built by the construction company and put on the market to sell. Building a house means you are picking sizes of rooms, layout, finishing materials and all that so it will likely be on the higher end.
Like the other poster asked, why bring your car over? And why furniture? Sell everything except what can be fit in 20 or 30 boxes and buy new stuff in Japan.
Why move the car and furniture? It will cost thousands of dollars. My brother-in-law was moved by his company, the budget was 10k$ and he only moved from a small apartment. Unless the car is something of high value in Japan (Corvette, Mustang, Camaro, etc.) and plan to sell it there, it is not worth it. You can get a cheap Kei car instead, an AWD one would be great for northern Japan.
Sell everything, only bring essential things and valuables. Nothing is really worth moving.
Budget about $8-10k to move your things, minus the car. Sell the car and buy one in Japan suited for the climate, right hand drive, with Japanese features etc. Having that domestic navi will be a godsend with kids.
For the people who ask, “Why move your furniture?! Just buy in Japan!!” I can only share my experience: If we had sold everything and opted to buy in Japan, we would never been able to find anything of comparable size and quality. We have a lot of vintage furniture, and it’s often sold for a 3-5x markup in Japan. Also, our 1960s sofa is large enough for my husband (tall) to lay on, I have custom credenzas for my record collection, some things were heirlooms, and having our American mattress (which was only ~1 yr old when we moved) has been nice.
There’s some point, especially in established couples or families, to bringing your household items. For a single 20-something? Not that smart.
Enough to move for a couple years maybe. Not enough to build a house.
I just moved to Japan from Canada. I can’t reply to the house question but regarding costs of moving the furniture, I shipped about 12 boxes (600 x 400 x 400) of household items, clothes, and personal documents, etc. using Yamato, which cost about $1400 CAD. I didn’t ship furniture because it would add another $3000, at least, to the cost and in Japan we are able to buy new furniture with the money we saved. I also off-set moving expenses by selling my furniture before I left.
In my experience it made more financial sense to sell everything before leaving and then buy just what we need later. Something else to think about: the shipping of your furniture would be by sea so you would be waiting possibly a few months for it to arrive. I suggest not taking furniture. Moving is a great opportunity to de-clutter your life.
People in this thread acting like you’re going to be buying your house with cash for some reason… $200k should be plenty for what you want to do.
1. Do not, under any circumstances, try to ship your foreign car to Japan, especially a sports car. You will suffer delays and forced to pay for expensive compliance mechanical changes on your car. That is rule No. 1. Money pit extraordinaire. Used cars are not expensive here and you will just need good, cheap transportation. Trust me.
2. Forget about your furniture. Most of it won’t fit and the cost is exorbitant. At least make up your mind after you move here.
3. Norther Japan? That’s good. Aomori is a great place but Hokkaido is even better. You are lucky in that respect. Good recreational opportunities, good food, and cheaper land.
4. Best thing to do is rent a place and get the lay of the land. There are many abandoned houses in Japan. Mostly in rural areas. They are called akiya. Your wife understands this. When you get here look into it and see if any of these are suitable for you. Raw land and house lots as well as used houses.
5. I’ve been here for 40 years and own two houses. One in Yokohama and one in Okinawa. The Okinawa house was cheap as I lease the land instead of owning it. Good luck and watch your spending carefully.
Sell the car. Sometimes you have to give up your old dreams for new ones. All the best.
Ignore those telling you to sell you car – if it’s meaningful to you and you can afford to ship it, do so.
I don’t regret much in life, but selling my 911 before moving here is something I will never forgive myself for! Going from a fun car to a cheap Kei car with an awful interior and no performance is super depressing.
Do take a look at what it would cost to buy the same car here though, but factor in the likelihood that modifying it here may be more expensive.
And factor in buying an SUV with AWD for winter, you don’t want to be running a sports car in deep snow.
Sure, money won’t be a huge problem.
But there could be a lot of problems not related to money if you aren’t prepared.
Not enough… 100percent
200k usd means 26100k in jpy. So you can rent out good apartment with furniture in center of tokyo, buy good vehicle and live normal life.you can invest rest of your money for extra income. I moved in 2013 as a student, having 1500 Usd and survived.
$200,000 will be more than enough to let you move comfortably, get a car, etc.. (I originally read it as 200,000yen which would be laughable but not surprising).
It will not be enough, even in the wilds of Hokkaido/Aomori, to build a house. But you won’t be getting a loan for 3 years anyway at which point you’ll qualify for PR and be able to get a proper mortgage here.
I would think very carefully about moving your car. Cars are expensive to get converted over and other than the novelty of a LHD car LHD is frankly inconvenient. Chances are you can find the same domestic car cheaper and a quick flash of the ECU will get it back up to full power (what I had to do with my last Benz since they’d depowered it like you wouldn’t believe).
IIRC moving our household including a shipping container and delivery/customs service cost about $14k 11 years ago. YMMV because a lot of the expense is trucking to the ports the actual container rental/shipment was amazingly cheap (which I’ve heard is not currently the case with all the shipping issues – I heard something about $10k just for a container/shipment which is nuts ours was like $3k).
The car is going to be a pain in the ass and even more so since you modified it. My car is just sitting in the states right now since I couldn’t justify the price for shipping. When I had another quote about two years ago it was 10k + parts to conform to Japanese standards. (side blinkers, changing headlights, reverting to stock config, etc) If you really want to bring it over then you can, but if there is a better car you want in the future you might be better off selling it.
My family and I moved here for <$30,000 CAD. That’s moving, storage, flights, rentals, used car purchase, all new furniture and household stuff, etc. We only shipped 1m3 and bought everything else new. It actually would have been cheaper to ship some more things we ended up buying again, but live and learn.
$200,000 should cover you, depending upon your level of consumption. It could even leave you with enough left over to purchase a house outright, depending upon your expectations and location. I’m not even kidding.
We moved as a family of 3 (parents and toddler) with about $20K USD and that has been comfortable. We’re not buying a house soon (both foreigners), but we have a nice and comfortable 3LDK mansion that will do for now.
We did not move a lot of stuff though— no car, no major furniture. We just used the Yamato flat rate (from West Coast US), that was a couple grand. Other major expenses included almost 2 months at a serviced apartment while we house hunted, apartment startup costs (rent and furnishing it), new electric mamachari, and initial fees at yochien.