Tokyo

There’s just so many things to do and eat, the city is comfortable and human friendly to walk around in, public transit is convenient and reliable, even sketchy neighborhoods are safe and clean relative to the vast majority of other cities, and there’s so many interesting and friendly people.

I had pretty tempered expectations based on what I read online before moving there, but every difference from expectation has been positive.

It’s not perfect. The salaries could be a lot better. The work life balance could be more French and less American. The long term future could be less gloomy. People could be more interested in improving things instead of just going with the flow. The English speaking community could be a bit less useless with advice.

unless you have a dumb handle that can be opened from outside without a key

Having a door handle that cannot be opened from the outside without a key is considered locking the door, at least in Japan. Probably Korea too.

Also, using the rear wheel obstructor built into the bike frame is also considered locking your bike in Japan. Actually locking your bike to a sturdy object is considered weird.

There was also an absurd fashion trend of having really long wallets that stick out of your back pocket. I can’t imagine such a fashion trend working in any other part of the world.

People regularly leave valuables unguarded in cafes, in even well known sketchy neighborhoods in Tokyo. Sketchy neighborhood means “you can probably buy sex” and “there’s a lot of gambling” not “if you leave your laptop out on the cafe table when you use the bathroom it will be stolen.”

I don’t think Tokyo is unique or impossible to reproduce though. Osaka, Seoul, Singapore, Hong Kong, are all great cities. I think Tokyo is better, but Tokyo is also bigger, so that’s almost to be expected.

The only infrastructure that is a real pain point for modern rich cities as population increases is transportation, and I don’t think any modern city is actually anywhere near the limit. Trains in Tokyo in 2019 were significantly less crowded than they were in 1990 despite continued population growth, and with telework becoming more common, crowding today is barely a problem at all.

Housing is a big pain point for a lot of cities, but that’s because regulations make it too difficult to build new housing, especially when it replaces existing buildings with something taller. Despite an increase in population and stagnant economy, residential floor space per person in Tokyo is up like 50% since 1990, because people are actually allowed to build more housing to fit all the new people, and then some.

If you commit to building the homes for everyone to live in, and the railways for everyone to get around in, I think modern technology would allow for cities in the much larger than Tokyo pretty comfortably. One of the sad things about population decline in Japan is that I probably won’t get to see a Tokyo with 60 million people.

Maybe I’m pretty jaded with my experience in the SF Bay Area where both problems were very bad, but most of the problems with modern cities can be summarized as entrenched anti-transit and anti-housing interests.

The lowest crime city I’ve ever lived in by far is Tokyo, a city of almost 40 million people. It’s even low crime, relative to the rest of Japan, with Tokyo proper having the lowest homicide rate of all prefectures.

The infrastructure is great since the costs can be shared by more people. In fact, even though taxes nationwide are technically roughly equal, taxes in Tokyo are effectively lower, since you can make “donations” to rural/small town areas in exchange for “gifts” and a tax deduction. The government in Tokyo effectively pays you back some of your taxes to buy food/vacations/etc. from the outlying areas.

I don’t think I could live long term in a city smaller than ~5ish million people. I enjoyed my brief time living as a digital nomad in Freiburg im Breisgau and my years as a university student in Ann Arbor (both 300k ish population metro areas), but I’d never be able to stay there for many years. The lack of culture, entertainment, food, etc. options is pretty suffocating.

Hardest: SF, though it sounds easy compared to many of the experiences in Europe in this comment thread. As long as you have tech money, you should be able to find some shithole to live in. Even recent immigrants were fine as long as they came for good jobs.

Easiest: Tokyo, even with the famous (exaggerated imo) discrimination against foreigners I was able to find more nice apartments walking distance of my office within my budget, who said on the phone they were okay with a foreigner, than I could realistically look at in person.

Eventually the world at “home” moves on without you so far, that when you visit, you realize moving back wouldn’t be “returning” home, but starting over in a new home where you happen to have a lot of connections.

Whether this is sad, bittersweet, or happy, is up to you.

At this point I kinda give up, though, because spending money on stuff doesn’t just doesn’t feel that good anymore.

I relate with this so hard. I just ran out of things to spend money on that I didn’t end up thinking “that was dumb, I should have just dumped more money into stonks” a week later. So I left.

Maybe not in gratefulness and appreciation, but words aren’t money and tangible recognition. The US leads by far in pay. The US is a great place to be a professional career oriented workaholic.

While I think the US is a terrible place to live overall, I’d still strongly recommend any young eager professional consider living there if they can.

The glasses already weren’t rosy when this was happening, but knowing people whose family members were assaulted for being Asian during the pandemic, and seeing the desperate efforts of the white left to try and argue that they weren’t hate crimes, definitely made me dislike living in the US even more.