What's wonderful about Tokyo?
5x price increase, small apartments (instead of houses), higher babysitter costs -- these are all downsides.
What is better in Tokyo than in, say, Austin, TX?
5x price increase, small apartments (instead of houses), higher babysitter costs -- these are all downsides.
What is better in Tokyo than in, say, Austin, TX?
Its high density and superb transportation mean you don't need a car -- go almost everywhere with your kids by walking, bicycle, or extremely frequent convenient train. Riding in the car sucks for kids (and adults, IMO).
There is access to all kinds of world-class health care, and all of it is free for your kids.
Tons of great educational institutions from the best universities down to preschool (and although the preschools can take some time to get into due to capacity, they are by and large terrific).
Great food of virtually every variety except Mexican. Most of Tokyo is extremely clean, safe and crime-free. Multiple always-open industry-redefining convenience stores, same-day Amazon prime deliveries, synchronous 1Gbps fiber optic Internet connections for $50 a month, a regular taxi system that is better than the Uber you always hear Americans raving about, one-hour cold beer delivery... in other words, the kind of fundamental lifestyle convenience level that is good when you are single, but becomes way more important once you have kids.
Source: I live in Tokyo with my wife, 2-year-old, and 2-month-old.
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[1] http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/japans-fert... Tokyo has the lowest fertility rate in Japan by far, hovering just above 1.0.
Tokyo is pretty awesome, but you do have to be able to afford it. I would assume it's a lot more expensive to live here than Austin, TX, but I know it is cheaper (and IMO way better for raising kids) than say, San Francisco.
Are you saying that for the same $120K/year a family would be better off in Tokyo than in Ogaki (or Austin)?
Lower cost of living means that you can afford other things, such as bigger house, better neighborhood, better doctors, babysitter, better car etc.
I see though how Tokyo could be better than San Francisco or NYC - thank you for your explanation.
To some people, a smaller house is a good tradeoff if it comes with abundance of extremely awesome restaurants, shopping, and riverside parks nearby. For others, having a big personal space is more important.
Some people get a lot of satisfaction from having a Porsche or (more likely, with kids) a well-appointed Audi Q7. I think the best car is not having a car at all (at least until the robo-cars arrive) -- but to me that means public transit + bicycle is literally so good that I can get where I am going faster than I could with a car. The only cities I have lived in where that is true are Tokyo and Amsterdam.
So yeah, depending on what you value most, you might be better off in Tokyo even on $120k. But if you want the car and big personal space, then probably not.
Let me know when you visit Tokyo. I'd be happy to show you around. Any HN user is welcome to ask me for Tokyo advice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_most_liveable_cities#M...
Tokyo is #2.
But fine, let's consider just Ruriko's family: they are mostly in Ogaki, not in Tokyo.
I understand that Tokyo has some advantages (any city in the world would have some advantages), but overall it seems to be a sub-optimal choice.
My goal here is to disassemble Patrick's choice, learn from it whatever I can, try to make a prediction about the effect of that move on his life, see what Patrick thinks about the move to Tokyo 1-3 years later and learn again.
So far I think the move would have slightly negative impact, mostly because increased cost of living. That would force Patrick to deviate from his goals more, do more enterprise consulting (as opposing to product development) and add more stress to his life.
I'm not against Tokyo in particular. Patrick moving to NYC, Washington DC, Singapore, London etc. would also surprise me.
I never lived in Tokyo and it was interesting to learn from veidr that Tokyo could be safe and comfortable for a family [that has significant income].