For those of us who enjoy living here and have plans to be here long term, answers like “public order”, “lower cost of living”. “public safety” and “good quality of life” are common answers (heavily dependent on location, of course). But how about some of the more atypical reasons?
For me, I absolutely love that there are so many fresh mushrooms readily available. At the supermarket, I always grab some enoki, shimeji, shiitake, maitake or when I’m feeling up for a treat – matsutake. Nutritious and delicious, I’m always looking for new mushroom recipes to try.
Feel free to share your reasons and let’s keep things civilized. Have a great weekend, everyone!
38 comments
The absolutely fuck off, massive carrots that I first encountered in Tokyo blew my socks off.
Special honor to Lotteria, kobinis, and acid-green melon soda.
I don’t have to worry about mass shootings or getting shot.
I like knowing that I’m “mostly” safe if I go for a walk or walk during the night.
Konbini everywhere, it’s super nice having access to affordable and good food in almost anywhere.
Definitely konbinis. It’s just so convenient and they have lots of different services.
Completely unironically love the four seasons where I live. In my home country they were not half as expressive nor as artistic (like a whole microseason dedicated just to hydrangeas in the rain. Ugh. Love it).
When I’m out of Japan, the only thing I miss that cannot be prefaced by “my” is …
easy access to clean public toilets
Endless 2-3 day travel destinations
I like that there isn’t a wide ass gap in the public toilets
in USA I wouldn’t even consider crapping in public
Probably the 100 yen shops honestly. I really do love me some daiso.
I live in Japan for the booooooze and food
I love the public transportation, especially the trains and shinkansen. Sure, sometimes I miss having a car, but for day to day transportation, trains in Tokyo really can’t be beat!
I like Kei cars
Heated toilet seats are a big plus. I’m also a bit of a soft drink fiend and I always appreciated the new drink varieties that would pop up every month or so.
Safety and convenience
I find nice things about everywhere I live. Because everywhere I live will have something I find annoying / unpleasant.
In Japan, I like the low cost of living, low crime, high education standards, great food, excellent healthcare, excellent public transportation and all-around convenience of every-day life. I can see how daily shopping might be a drawback for some, but my wife and I enjoy shopping almost daily and always buying fresh ingredients instead of buying in bulk / frozen.
Aside from washlets and nice clean bathrooms everywhere
Hot drinks being sold in PET bottles in conbinis and vending machines. It’s probably my biggest reason for staying here 🙂
Public transport is “unusual” here, when compared to the, uh, “services” where I’m from back in Great Britain.
Having actual access to trains, buses, and taxis means that we don’t need a bastard car. Which is a huge bonus, because I hated driving.
Funny, my home country has a wider selection of mushrooms at the supermarket and more produce in general.
My most unusual reason is probably the silence. Back home i lived in a dense apartment, it was noisy, there would be people yelling all the time, doors slamming, politicians knocking on your doors. In japan you might have a crazy neighbor if you’re unlucky but for the most part, silence. (one time back home someone pretended to jump off the 16th floor while in an argument with their family, police were called.)
People coming from ‘the west’ probably find tokyo too dense, but as someone from a dense city myself, it’s a good amount of dense without being suffocating. Everyone has their own lives and it’s rare to see people yelling at each other. Plus it’s spread out a lot more and residential neighborhoods are accessible. Being able to travel to neighboring prefectures is also nice.
Chu hais and Famichiki.
I don’t understand why they dont sell famichiki in America. It would be huge.
I think one of my reasons are the same as yours. I LOVE mushrooms. Other reasons… shinkansen (it’s expensive but way more practical and less tiring than plane travel), and fashion? I really like the current fashion trend among Japanese women, I feel like I finally belong aesthetically haha. I also really like the proliferation of secondhand clothes shops!
Personally I like that’s it’s livable as an introvert. I don’t mind the occasional social outgoings, but it can be tiring. I do like how people, in general, leave you alone and you aren’t forced to mingle with others.
Because i’m an hour away from the surf and a couple hours from the snow. No need to choose between these 2
Because I’m an emotional cripple. So I fit in well here and it feels comfortable and unchallenging.
Yeah I got on the wrong plane.
I was trying to go to Australia but the plane landed at Narita and I was all like “Oh God Dammit…. I guess I live here now.”
That was 16 years ago.
Still don’t know what to do.
I like how most of everything is walking distance here, back home in suburban Australia if you didn’t have a car getting anywhere was a massive pain in the ass
HARD OFF, Yahoo Auctions, Mercari. The amount of cool and fun retro tech available for not insane prices that has been kept in immaculate condition. Lots of weird obscure Japanese stuff we never saw in the west too.
Also con-cafe. Canned shochu highballs.
The whole delivery thing, to be able to pick when and where my package to be delivered. Which leads into awesome online shopping experience.
Also coming from potato country, loving that there’s no power outage. Had to live in fear back then, praying for no power outage to happen during online game session.
My number one reason is public transport. In my country, traffic is real hell.
Second, salary. In my country, the minimum wage per day is the same as the minimum wage per hour in Japan.
Ability to get anything secondhand, not just clothes and hobby things but boring necessary stuff like storage containers and cooking utensils, by just biking 10-20 minutes to recycle shops; and if none of them have it I can Mercari it. Almost everything I own is secondhand. Besides food packaging (sad) I never have to buy new plastic or textiles.
I like choo-choos
Bars which you can actually talk to people in rather than relying on hastily improvised sign language.
Also yes, now you mention it seconding the mushrooms, extra points if you can make your overseas friends question your sanity with the aid of an eringi.
I’m autistic and the whole culture is easier to handle than England (where I started). I can keep to myself, have limited social contact and even work environment is more suited to my lifestyle. I’m a lot more comfortable here.
I can’t drive, and am unlikely to ever to be able to do so safely(and certainly could never live with myself if I killed someone while driving). So if I wanted anything regarding a normal life I had to live in one of the few places in the US where I didn’t need to drive or leave the country. I opted to leave.
I like that when interacting with random strangers, the norm is politeness and mutual respect. The exception is rudeness. It’s insane to return to my home country and be told that I’m the weird one to expect people not to be assholes as the standard behavior.
Onsen and sento! I get that other countries have health spa and hot springs cultures, but it wasn’t so common where I’m from (the US) and what is available is very expensive.
Whether you’re in the city or the countryside, having a large public bath with clean hot water available for 400~700 a trip is amazing. Most of the better ones will also have steam rooms, saunas, or outdoor baths for the same price.
I was worried for awhile back in the mid-2010s when Tokyo sentos started closing at dangerous levels, so I’m glad that younger people here have taken enough interest in sento culture to try and save them where they can.
I won’t lie, when I came 15 years ago, I came for Johnny’s and J-Drama. Now that I’m old, married and have a kid, I’m thankful for the healthcare and education systems, seishain employment and the plethora of national holidays ❤️
One thing I have greatly appreciated is how much less depressive winter in Tokyo is compared to back home where it snows a lot. It feels really good to wake up most days and find it sunny outside.
Another reason I like it is just how easy it feels to just get up and go out to do something. It feels a lot easier to do so in Tokyo than where I am from
Finally, to reiterate a reply I sent elsewhere in the thread, I appreciate how it’s not aggressively noisy for the most part. There are things that are definitely that, but overall I feel like the noise in Tokyo makes me a lot less on edge than anywhere else I’ve ever been
Edit: someone mentioned Hard-Off, I can’t believe I almost forgot my favourite store in the world. The junk section is especially my favorite, found an official leather MagSafe case for my phone for 300¥ that still retails for a stupid of money new, just had to give it a really good clean. It’s a really cool store that I like to go every now and then to see what they have in stock
Fast internet and good access to goods in general.
In Australia the only time I had access to >100mbps internet was when I lived on uni campus, but it was so expensive. Before and after that I had 5mpbs down and 2mbps up, and if it rained it was basically unusable. And this was <15km from the CBD of Sydney. Another place I lived at had “fast” internet at 25mbps, but it was a sharehouse with 3 people so if anybody else was using it it was slow.
Here I get 6gps down 2gpbs up for 5000 yen with nuro. We were paying $80-120 AUD for the dogshit mentioned above.
Also the shipping speed, shopping and stock is just insane in Tokyo. I can try all sorts of stuff in stores here before buying, the range is insane, and pretty much everything is next day shipping. The convenience is beyond unreal when comparing buying stuff in Aus. I waited 2 weeks for headphones and monitors CONSTANTLY in Australia, it was terrible. Even for stuff that had a warehouse in Sydney it was usually 3-7 business days.