alt Hacker NewsI watch one of those “apartments for rent in Japan” channels and I’m consistently shocked how inexpensive apartments are in lower tier cities / not Tokyo. Like a studio in an inconvenient part of Fukuoka for $200-250 a month.
I guess the salaries are lower, but it’s hard to imagine such cheap rent in the equivalent American city.
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Think I've heard anecdotes about Tokyo being pretty affordable as well. Quick search shows less than 1/3 of income typically spent on housing, which is much better than major US cities.
Part of that is that Japan actually builds housing, while literally every major US metro area has a massive self-inflicted shortage of housing (https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives...).
Tokyo is massive, you can literally be living rural and still be in Tokyo. Could be an hour or more commute till you get into the metro area.
Not all of Tokyo is nice either. They also probably won’t rent to “outsiders” without giving any explanation so…
https://www.ft.com/content/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3...
> Here is a startling fact: in 2014 there were 142,417 housing starts in the city of Tokyo (population 13.3m, no empty land), more than the 83,657 housing permits issued in the state of California (population 38.7m), or the 137,010 houses started in the entire country of England (population 54.3m).
I mean... You are looking at a place that is about 250 square feet? There isn't an appetite for offering units that small in the US.
It's hard to compare to the US as a big part of this is the very weak yen.
I spent a couple years traveling the world and punctuated my travels with a 2 week stop in Japan (Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto) in May '24. I was not prepared for how inexpensive everything was... much less than several eastern European cities I had just come from, more on par with places like Mexico City.