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Why the craze of moving to live in Japan?

 Given the advanced economy of Japan and the high standards of living, buying a home there is surprisingly inexpensive compared to places like Singapore and Hong Kong. No wonder I keep seeing YouTube videos recently of people moving there to settle down, mostly to retire or do some laid back work to gain residency status.

There’s even this chap from SG who vlog his relocation of him and his wife and young kids to Japan. 

Why?

I do enjoy visiting Japan. It’s clean, safe and convenient. And food is good and suits my palate. But I am still not into their culture and norms, as I find it very rigid and intimidating, at least on the surface. I am sure if these are peeled off, they are not much different from us in Singapore. There will be ugly sides. Just that in Singapore, we don’t hide it as well haha.

But I can imagine living a very nice life there as a retiree. You won’t have to deal with corporate Japan, or general work culture there. You just enjoy the fruits of their hardwork and high quality outputs by paying your way through them. 

With about $700k SGD, one can get a decent 500sqft single bed apartment there at prime locations in Tokyo or Osaka, smacked right next to major JR stations. Of course there will be other upkeep costs but I don’t think those will be sky high. 

So imagine having such an apartment to your name, and you can just take a backpack and fly over whenever you want, using one go the various budget airlines (you won’t need check in luggage since your stuff are all in your apartment!), and spend up to 3 months each time there without requiring special residency status. You can experience the seasons (except the hot summer which Singapore can give you anytime). And you don’t have to hustle to hotels. You can even whip a simple meal in your apartment if you want. 

This sounds really enticing for a retirement plan. 

So what’s the catch?

TBH, I don’t know yet but I’ll find out. I can imagine the apartment will be a sunken cost, without expectation of appreciate in value over time. It won’t go to zero but it will definitely be a loss when it’s time to sell. Another concern is the issue of upkeeping it. But I think a small 500sqft apartment should be easy to clean and maintain. 

Say you spend 180 days per year. If it’s a hotel, say $200 per night, that’s $36,000 per year. So you will break even after 14 years, that’s quite a long time to break even. But as said, your apartment value don’t go to zero when selling. So break even time should be lesser at say 7-8 years. After that, it starts to pay.

Question is if you will get sick of staying in Japan for so long. You must have plans to travel out to see places. Or you really have something to do there each time you stay for 3 months. Like attending a class or doing some project (working from home in Japan?!)

Alas, this is an expensive journey, taking a chunk of funds meant for retirement. But it’s an option, made possible by cheap flights and inexpensive property prices there. And weak yen. 


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