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Housing in Tokyo is cheaper and more spacious than people think

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Re: Housing in Tokyo is cheaper and more spacious than people think

#171

Post by diziet »

franciscop wrote: post #10
diziet wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okutama, Tokyo is part of "Tokyo Metropolis". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okutama,_Tokyo . The furthest I've been is Hachioji, which was about 1 hour by train from 23-ku. Hachioji is roughly half as far as Okutama. In New York City terms, getting to Hicksville, NY takes about 1 hour by train. For Bay Area folks, both Dublin / Pleasanton and Bay Point / Pittsburg ... or even Antioch are about an hour away by BART.

Not fair comparison, Okutama is literally in the middle of a mountain range with no much around, but you can get there combining a bunch of express trains in a very straightforward combination, which seems pretty hand-picked. Hicksville to NYC is 56km by car. Okutama from Tokyo Station is 96km.

I actually compared train-to-train distance to Hachioji, not Okutama.

Re: Housing in Tokyo is cheaper and more spacious than people think

#172

Post by bombcar »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #143
franciscop wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The geography of the "cities" is very different though (look at the density of population maps provided), where "Tokyo Metropolitan" is one third pure mountains, then one third low-density living (think L.A.) and then one third what people normally thinks of the city of Tokyo, all of these in a sausage-like shape, while "Greater London" grows in a circle and so it's a circle-ish area. See this image with the labels,…

To complement your post: To be clear, no one with a deep understanding of Tokyo area considers anything outside the "23 ku's" as Tokyo. Really, Okutama, Tokyo (two hours west of world's busiest train station: Shinjuku) is comically rural -- literally, there are big mountains and small family farms that grow wasabi (delicious!). Yes, the province of Tokyo is enormous and includes lots of protected nature (and lovely h…

Yeah, every "city" has a point at which you're clearly "outside the city" but what you count changes depending on who you talk to.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Okutama,+Nishitama+Distric...

The "gray areas" on a map like this might be a decent "rule of thumb" but even those can be misleading. The best way to determine it is talk to a local.

The other amusing thing is that if some city is famous tons of areas around it will often claim it in name if not address; you'll find "New York Shop" in New Jersey from time to time, especially if doing mail-order business.

Re: Housing in Tokyo is cheaper and more spacious than people think

#173

Post by namdnay »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #146
Danieru wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tokyo's building codes do require bathrooms. Plus minimum sunshine for a room to count as a bedroom, along with shutters on all windows. What caught my eye about your comment is central heating. Japan in fact penalizes central heating. Not just not requiring it but going so far as to increase property taxes slightly. In Japan's case it is a desire to reduce energy intensity in a country dependent on energy imports.

You wrote: > I belive it. Japan housing is so inefficient for a wealthly / highly industriaslied country: It is bizarre! I tried to Google about this topic, but I did not find anything. Can you provide a hint about your source?

what do you mean by inefficient? japanese houses are remarkably energy-efficient for their climate. they are very breezy, which cuts down on AC use in the summer, and in winter you heat specific objects instead of the entire house

Re: Housing in Tokyo is cheaper and more spacious than people think

#174

Post by triceratops »

logicalmonster wrote: post #125
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think the cause is for the differences? I strongly feel that a lot of that latter “strength” for the USA chart after 2009 was made up of money printing. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL https://inflationchart.com/gdp-in-m3 I guess we will see if USA can continue up only. I have my doubts. Fertility rate needs to be 2.1 to remain stable and we dipped below 2.0 around 2010 and are at 1.64 now (Japan…

> The previous US administration clown show also drastically cut immigration. What if restricting immigration for a time is what is needed to start to stabilize the birth rate which ultimately takes care of the economy? Many Americans aren't focusing on making babies because they're hopeless about their future and ever having a home so they put off thinking about having a family until as late as possible. What if a m…

I suspect that home prices and ownership rates don't explain birth rates. Who says you can't rent and have children? A large part of the world already does it.

Birth rates go down with economic development, and the growth of freedoms and opportunities for women. It's a tale seen everywhere. And all the other fun stuff and distractions available for young people today - dating apps, video games, pop culture, avocado toast, too many hobbies to name - competes with child-rearing for time, attention, and money. Even as a parent, I sometimes long for a more carefree life. I'm sure a lot of people see their peers with children and decide, rationally, to not pursue parenthood.

(This is without even getting into the climate crisis).

Re: Housing in Tokyo is cheaper and more spacious than people think

#175

Post by scelerat »

franciscop wrote: post #35

The housing space metrics seem very far off from my experience, looking at numbers it seems "Tokyo" means "Tokyo Metropolis", which includes the countryside, mountains, etc. So it's not really comparing the city. If we look at the numbers for Tokyo 23 wards[1] (what would traditionally be called "the city"), we can see they are virtually half than those from Paris or London: 16.5-19.7sqm/person is the range that fall…

I’ve had the good fortune to visit Tokyo several times, and visited a few apartments of friends who have regular middle class jobs: animators, cooks, tailors. Every apartment was tiny. Like less than half the size of any apartment I've ever lived in at any point of my life living in Los Angeles or San Francisco.

I’ve stayed many times with a friend whose father is a well-known Japanese movie actor and even they live in a house which would be modest by any US suburban standard, in a quiet part of a nice neighborhood (kichijoji) but still an 8-10 minute walk to trains and very bustling, active parts of town.

The thing I’ve found remarkable with Tokyo is how walkable it is and how, despite how crowded and dense it can seem, the street level experience can feel very accessible and not at all overwhelming. Many good parks, walking paths and general accommodations for people not in cars.

Re: Housing in Tokyo is cheaper and more spacious than people think

#176

Post by saalweachter »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #28
HWR_14 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because you're comparing all of New York State including housing in Buffalo etc with the 20 arrondissements of central Paris. But isn't the entire Tokyo Metropolis under an hour by mass transit? That's a far cry from Buffalo. Like, Buffalo cannot commute to NYC by anything other than private aircraft.

If you replace "Buffalo" with "an hour out of NYC" his point still stands.

Technically NYC commuter rail goes out about 1.5hrs.

Re: Housing in Tokyo is cheaper and more spacious than people think

#177

Post by saalweachter »

HWR_14 wrote: post #75
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know - an hour out of Penn Station takes you as far as places like Wyandanch on Long Island with the LIRR, or Stamford, CT with the MNR.

I specifically looked at Stamford when I wrote that. Tokyo is in the 350-600sq ft range by the article. You can currently get a fairly spartan 600 sq ft in Stamford for the price listed (one vacancy). That's more than the average the article cites, but in the same range. After all, you'd have to compare the outskirts of Stamford with the outsirkts of Tokyo.

Well, yeah, if you take the commuter rail line along the densely populated coastline.

If you take the Harlem Line up to the middle of nowhere, you can get to Katonah in an hour on the express trains during peak hours.

Re: Housing in Tokyo is cheaper and more spacious than people think

#178

Post by seanmcdirmid »

franciscop wrote: post #100
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, there's no littering, virtually no homelessness (nor their encampments, etc) and finally no cars on the street, which makes the city look a lot cleaner. Last time I visited Tokyo in 2016 there was clearly an encampment at the Ueno park. And that wasn’t the first time I saw an encampment in Japan (visiting Tokyo in 2008 I saw a few in Tokyo and Osaka). However, Japanese homeless encampments are al…

That's why I said virtually; in Tokyo you know where you saw one at some point as a curiosity. In many European cities just walking around aimlessly you have high chances of seeing some homeless people. In SF I had to literally jump over homeless' people stuff to walk down multiple streets in my last visit.

I wasn't looking for encampments in Japan but found them anyways. Ueno train station and the park behind it is obviously a high traffic destination. And in Osaka, we were just walking around randomly. Homelessness is common and visible enough that to say it virtually doesn't exist is not really accurate.

Re: Housing in Tokyo is cheaper and more spacious than people think

#179

Post by seanmcdirmid »

namdnay wrote: post #173
throwaway2037 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wrote: > I belive it. Japan housing is so inefficient for a wealthly / highly industriaslied country: It is bizarre! I tried to Google about this topic, but I did not find anything. Can you provide a hint about your source?

what do you mean by inefficient? japanese houses are remarkably energy-efficient for their climate. they are very breezy, which cuts down on AC use in the summer, and in winter you heat specific objects instead of the entire house

That really isn't true. A lot of older housing in Japan has really bad insulation, you are basically stuck with a kotatsu in the winter not by choice.

Re: Housing in Tokyo is cheaper and more spacious than people think

#180

Post by golemiprague »

franciscop wrote: post #35

The housing space metrics seem very far off from my experience, looking at numbers it seems "Tokyo" means "Tokyo Metropolis", which includes the countryside, mountains, etc. So it's not really comparing the city. If we look at the numbers for Tokyo 23 wards[1] (what would traditionally be called "the city"), we can see they are virtually half than those from Paris or London: 16.5-19.7sqm/person is the range that fall…

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