I have a cell provider with a pretty small data limit, but I almost never use it. They no longer even take new customers. ~2400/mo. My internet is with NTT and fiber to the home at 5500 a month + servicer fee -> about 6500 a month after price increases in 2027 they announced.
When I lived in a sharehouse in 2013, it was over double what you were paying and about 12 minutes from a station in suburban tokyo. My first apartment about 8 minutes away was 115,000 ish plus all utils just inside the 23ku and was 33sqm IIRC.
Cost of living including groceries and such have gone up like crazy since corona. Everything is undergoing shrinkflation and raises aren’t keeping up unless you’re at a really good company.
Even living in the countryside now, costs are still way over what they were for Tohoku. My prices here are more than even Tokyo when I moved here for a lot of groceries and such.
My mortgage on its own is over 85,000 in the deep countryside almost an hour walk to a station. I’m sure apartments are cheaper, but this is on a used house built in '96 IIRC (though with some rennovation and a new roof not long before I bought it).
That may sometimes be the case. However, companies like mine (and no I won’t name it since I don’t want to be sued) say “work from anywhere in Japan” and then go "J/K, we now require you in the office with no relocation expenses and a monthly travel budget of 20k JPY (which is less than a single trip for me which also takes 8 hours round trip with buffer). My union is fighting this and we are willing to go to court since I was never required to be in the office except for about 3 days of orientation. The results are spotty in cases like this with some courts favoring the contract which, as a permanent employee, has traditionally means the company more or less owns you. On the other hand, there are protections against undue hardship which is one way in which we would fight it. However, because of things like this, no one is willing to move to the middle of nowhere with zero job opportunities.
I got a subsidy to move with my wife and buy a house. 1.3 million JPY to be paid back if we leave in < 5 years. Families could get more. We used it to buy a used car since I was a bit optimistic in thinking my motorbike and taxis would get us by. Almost no taxis after 6pm without prior reservation. No easy rental places right in the area to go that route when we would need a vehicle.
The lip service doesn’t change, but concrete actions, especially for people not doing low-paid manual labor, is missing. Add to that that companies still abuse laws and hope not to get caught, it’s worthless. Much like many places in the US, we have lots of other immigrants, particularly from SE Asia, moving in to do ag work as well as nurses and carers for the elderly that are in high demand.
Yeah, that’s a thing. The LDP was trying to pay back the loyalty of those that worked with them. I don’t have any problem in principal with Osaka functioning more like Tokyo in terms of governance (though this is not definitely Osaka last time I heard, but I don’t follow it closely), though I don’t know what this accomplishes other than people saying “yay, Osaka is great!” feel better and maybe solve some redundancy (which is not necessarily bad). Then again, I’m not following closely.
My problem with things like this: Osaka also has big natural disasters; the world is getting hotter all the time, why not do this somewhere more north; it’s still performative more than anything as best I can tell (though I’m just a dude who can’t vote living on the other side of the country). It doesn’t actually decentralize and take pressure off the real estate market and other things that are facing increasing difficulty, and causing foreigner backlash (specifically AirBnB-type places and (often allegedly Chinese) illegal short-term accommodations buying up buildings illegally).