| 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. |