[etdev]

Cost-of-living comparisons get complex, but I can give you my personal opinion.

Let's assume SF vs Tokyo.

To live the same lifestyle and have the same amount of disposable income as someone earning $170-230k in SF, you'd need to earn ¥12-18M or so in Tokyo.

You can live in a nice apartment in the center of Tokyo and still save a lot of money as a single person earning ¥12M a year.

Also the yen is super weak against the dollar right now (historically so). So converting to dollars doesn't give an accurate value imo. As long as you earn and spend yen, what matters is purchasing power parity. Not the exchange rate.

To me, living in Japan, ¥9M still "feels" roughly like $90k despite the exchange rate.

[kaashif]

> To live the same lifestyle and have the same amount of disposable income as someone earning $170-230k in SF, you'd need to earn ¥12-18M or so in Tokyo.

The same amount of disposable income, measured in dollars or yen without PPP adjustment? That's a big gap and I don't think it can be made up with cost of living savings.

> So converting to dollars doesn't give an accurate value imo. As long as you earn and spend yen, what matters is purchasing power parity. Not the exchange rate.

If you ever want to leave Japan, then the value of your savings does matter. Your savings don't get PPP adjusted down if you move.

[etdev]

Yeah these are good points, I guess if the yen never recovers you'd take a hit. The current exchange rate is an outlier though. At least historically, you've had the chance to convert back at between 100-110 JPY:USD every few years.

There are tons of caveats with cost-of-living. But for me personally, I worked for a company HQ'd in Palo Alto from Japan. And I looked into moving. I calculated that I'd need an extra $50k or so on top of my Tokyo salary to maintain the same lifestyle in Silicon Valley.

That's for me though. If you want a car no matter what, or you buy all your food at import markets, or want a huge apartment in the center of town exactly like the one you had in the US, Tokyo gets expensive. International schools for your kids can also get really pricey.

But if you live relatively closely to how locals do, it's cheap as hell. Seriously. The rent for my nice, new 2BR in central Tokyo is ¥190,000 a month. That's $1,416 at the current exchange rate.

The going rate I saw in Silicon Valley for a similar place was around $4k. And you absolutely need a car there, which means gas and insurance too. Here you can get anywhere super quickly via train, and companies pay your commuting costs if you're not WFH. Plus food is WAY cheaper here in my experience (I paid ¥950 for a big lunch today, tax included, no tip. 7 bucks all-in.)

So YMMV but that pretty much covers the $50k for me.