[culturestate]

> lower quality of life generally

The quality of life in Tokyo can be quite extraordinary, depending on your point of view.

As a westerner imitating the salaryman lifestyle? Absolutely terrible, primarily for work-related reasons.

As a westerner doing basically anything else that doesn't involve employment at a massive Japanese conglomerate? Excellent.

If you can deal with the lack of English and gain some modicum of comfort with Japanese culture, it's a fantastic place to live.

[bschwindHN]

Agreed! Here are some of the quality of life improvements I've observed between NYC and Tokyo:

- Minimal honking for the amount of cars on the road

- Clean, timely trains, subways, and buses

- Clean streets and sidewalks (unless you go to the busy areas of Shibuya/Shinjuku, it can get nasty there)

- No tipping but you still receive excellent customer service

- Modern apartments with things like auto-filling baths, digital temperature control for hot water, delivery boxes at apartments for package delivery when you're not home, contactless IC cards to unlock your door/mailbox, door video monitors, Toto washlets

This isn't to say NYC doesn't have some of these, it's just less common and you'll be paying more. I do wish Tokyo had more NY pizza and bagels though.

[sklinger]

Heath care costs are quite low as well.

Where I lived (in Osaka) there was a cap of 80,000 JPY* / month for hospital bills - no matter how much the procedure cost.

*80,000 JPY = 721 USD

[ensiferum]

And can deal with the racism towards "kaijin"

[culturestate]

I assume you mean gaijin and not actually kaijin, which is a fantastical sea monster ;)

In seriousness, there is a decent amount of racism but it’s really not that much worse than other places in Asia - that’s part of what I meant by adapting to Japanese culture. It also gets much better if you speak Japanese.