[nihonjon]

A bit sensationalist IMO. From my experiences costly Tokyo rentals are optional.

During college I lived in central Tokyo on a budget that was much less than what I had in the States (120,000 jpy) - working near full time mind you.

Started out by living in a few different netcafes for a month and moved into a humble flat with initial costs under 100,000 jpy.

Now with a non-Japanese wife and no guarantor, we pick places where these fees are non-existent and landlords or organizations are okay with foreigners working non-traditional jobs using guarantor companies (monthly guarantor fee of around 2600 jpy). More so than the deposits, it sucks I get discriminated against for my race.

[Paul_S]

> More so than the deposits, it sucks I get discriminated against for my race.

I used to consider Japan as a potential destination country. The xenophobia will come back to haunt them. The cost of integration is outweighed by the economical benefits of a bigger workforce pool.

[gaius]

A country with any level of unemployment, already has a bigger workforce pool than it knows what to do with.

I am not saying that xenophobia isn't bad, but it's a bit of a leap to say that Japan is in any danger of a shortage of workers.

[fulafel]

You can argue that countries should aim for full employment, so any unemployment by definition means they're mishandling things. But certainly increased labour supply doesn't automatically increase unemployment rate in market economies - it often has the opposite effect. Otherwise, smaller countries would tend to have low unemployment and populous countries would have high unemployment!

[amyjess]

Why do you think Japan's population is in a death spiral?

Birth rates are falling across the board in the first world, but unlike the west, they have few immigrants to make up for it.

[erikb]

Where are you from? What job(s) do you do?