Nagoya is not a terribly expensive city to live in if you live like a Japanese person. (The starting salary for engineers is about $2,200, and for a single young man that makes one comfortably middle class.)

If you live like a Western executive, though, it can be kind of pricy. (My friends and I sometimes talk -- mostly jokingly -- about the English tax: if you need somebody to explain things to you in English, you are almost certainly paying a premium over market for that service. On high-end apartments, for example, the difference between going to the place I know which markets itself as foreigner friendly and walking into the apartment service and asking for the comparable apartment next door is about 50%.)