A lot of the recent “cheapness” of Japan is due to the drastic drop in value of the yen. Two years ago these workers would cost like 50% more.
Japan also has better worker protections, so hiring and firing is more difficult I imagine than India. One way I’ve heard American firms fire is to force employees to relocate to another Asia office with more lax protections. The employee gets relocation costs covered but if they get fired within a year they have to pay those expenses back. The employee knows they’re just going to get fired so they quit.
On top of that, English is probably not as good. It’s taught in schools but you don’t need it for most jobs.
A lot of people can’t move to the US. Plenty of my friends were moved to Canada after they couldn’t get H1B renewals and now even non-India/China waitlists for green card applications are so long that you can’t just switch from a student visa to an application for permanent residence like you used to.
Permanent residency has been increasingly easy to get in the past few years, and can be had in significantly less time than citizenship.
One year of residency is enough if you’re young enough and make enough money. Three years if you just miss those standards, or if you’re married (I think).
I'm a little facetious about this because I find it a little galling that the solution is "but if you're rich, it's okay". Yep, everything is much smoother when you have money. I'd sure enjoy it more haha.
But yes, it is becoming much easier over time compared to the old system.
The article highlights some great points about why Tokyo is so livable, but having been in the market for a home here last year, I also think the depreciation of Japanese real estate (at least the physical structures) is a big factor.
New houses and apartments depreciate significantly once bought, and old homes can even trend into negative territory. Land that someone has cleared for you can be more expensive than the same land with an old home on it that they presume you will later pay to demolish.
The land itself in Tokyo can appreciate, but not enough to offset the rapid depreciation of the structure. A lot of the avoidance around old homes is cultural (maybe because of frequent natural disasters), and it’s started a self-fulfilling prophecy where old homes can actually not be livable. People build homes with the depreciation in mind and don’t generally use long—lasting materials, leading to homes that aren’t actually livable a few decades later when they might be sold.
On the bright side, this leads to a lot of opportunities for architects to build new homes, so it’s also part of the reason why you see so many uniquely designed homes out of Japan.
I assume by 'depreciation' you mean prices fall down or don't go up?
Yea, why is that a bad thing? If house prices keep going up it just makes it impossible for young people to start families. Why would anyone want that?
Treating homes as investment kills the social fabric.
That said, houses in Tokyo are quite expensive. Try looking online (like on suumo or sumaiti or lifull homes websites) and you will see that a house for a family with 2 kids costs upwards of half a million dollars. Which I think is insane.
Houses on the country side are much cheaper (half that price or less).
> a house for a family with 2 kids costs upwards of half a million dollars. Which I think is insane.
That's a steal, globally seen. I live in a mid-size city in Germany (500k people) and for a house at the city border you can easily calculate a million euros. And that's for the small ones that need restoration from the ground up. Let's not even get started on larger cities like Munich or Frankfurt.
EDIT: Why the downvotes? While these houses might be expensive in absolute terms, they are pretty cheap for such a large Metropole.
What's an example of a tiny low opportunity city in the US? The median home price in the US is ~$250,000 (under 200k in 16 states), and you'd expect it to be on the lower in tiny low opportunity areas.
> That said, houses in Tokyo are quite expensive. Try looking online (like on suumo or sumaiti or lifull homes websites) and you will see that a house for a family with 2 kids costs upwards of half a million dollars. Which I think is insane.
This is absurdly cheap compared to cities around the world, including in the US.
So true, and that idea is so prevalent to people living there.
This mentally prevents me, who moved from Japan to US, from buying a home. I still cannot convince myself a home can be a investment (or at least meaningful asset.) To Me it feels like buying a exceptionally expensive laptop.
That's probably not true here, but I cannot turn my head around.
The grammar is very similar (use of particles, word order) and a large amount of vocabulary, especially technical vocabulary, is derived from shared Chinese words.
Japan also has better worker protections, so hiring and firing is more difficult I imagine than India. One way I’ve heard American firms fire is to force employees to relocate to another Asia office with more lax protections. The employee gets relocation costs covered but if they get fired within a year they have to pay those expenses back. The employee knows they’re just going to get fired so they quit.
On top of that, English is probably not as good. It’s taught in schools but you don’t need it for most jobs.