¥900,000 is almost exactly what I spent on average over a 5 year period from 2007-2012 living in rural Japan (Shizuoka prefecture). A couple of caveats: I was single at the time. I had subsidized housing (worth about ¥250,000 yen a year). I didn't have a car. That was the money I spent, and I made considerably more than that so was able to save quite a lot. However, I was very comfortable with that level of expenditure and I can't think of anything basic that I lacked.

I think you would have to budget fairly tightly and it would be pretty easy to get into trouble. Especially in the north where you have to pay for heating it might be dicey. But it's not impossible to live relatively comfortably. I ate out a lot and drank expensive beer a lot. If I cooked more at home, ate more fish and drank shochu I could have saved more money. Getting rid of the TV (and thus the monthly NHK bill) would be fairly substantial.

I have a lot of single friends in the area who make ~¥2,000,000 a year and they are absolutely fine on that salary. It's a different lifestyle from what people in the west are used to, but I wouldn't say they are less happy.

For context, ¥900,000 is about $8,000

Out of curiosity, are there any such rural areas with an expat presence?

Virtually every rural area in Japan has expat English teachers. In my immediate area there are probably 10 or 20 people who are native English speakers. I think that's typical. I tend hang out with Japanese people since I speak Japanese and my wife is Japanese, but it's not terribly difficult to get by without much Japanese language skill, especially if you are young.

I agree ¥900,000 is not much and it would be very hard to live on that money. They say though it's the income of the poorest. So I'd hope a typical family would do better.

What job did you have during that time? Living in rural Japan sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.

I was teaching English at the time. I'm currently in the same area programming on contract. It is quite wonderful. To be honest I'm hoping to expand and hire people, but haven't got everything sorted out yet. It occurred to me that it might be possible to find good people who want to live in rural Japan :-). Probably won't get my act together for another year or so...

Things must've changed a bit since I spent a year in Fukoka in 97/98 while in secondary school, if people can live comfortably on 2M JPY/year. That means I should be able to easily save up enough to stay comfortably in (rural) Japan for the length of a tourist visa without any problem!

Please do send an email (see profile) if/when you're interested in expanding -- it would be great to be able to move to Japan! :-)

Currently living in Tokyo (8 years) .. Interested in hearing from you when you have something more solid worked out!

I'd be interested to chat anyway. Please send me a email to my userid @gmail.com. I'm especially interested in people who are already in Japan because part of my delay is that there is a capital requirement for sponsoring visas. I have work available for the right candidate(s). I'd be happy to provide more details privately.

Write me an e-mail when you do, please: [email protected].

Sent you an email. If you don't get it, check your spam :-)

From what I know, you can get a job as an English teacher pretty much everywhere in Japan if English is your mother tongue (I haven't done myself that but my wife is Japanese so I spent some time reading how foreigners can work in Japan).

Being poor relative to your peers sounds benign, but it's not a great feeling when you are much worse off than your parents were at the same age, and you realize that your kids will likely be worse off still.

There's a reason this study focused on households with kids. As a single person without kids asking what's the minimal liveable income is, is not the heartbreaking question it is when you have kids.

Moving is also a different beast if you have kids. (If you're divorced and have kids, God help you.)

> ¥840,000

That's INR 8,597,047 in India. I think only top execs at a well established company make that much in India. Amazing.

Your calculation is a bit off, it's around INR500,000(USD $7500)/year. No doubt it's still a lot of money for a lot of people in India, but after adjusted for prices, it's really very little. Even cheap takeaway food would cost at least ¥300 ish.

That value is in Japanese Yen (JPY), not Chinese Yuan (CNY).

Sorry, lazily I just copy pasted into google, and didn't check the currency google understood it to be.

You mean 502,323 INR (as of now, using xe.com/ucc). Once you start factoring in living expenses (depending on location of course) the amount will seem really low.

You're off by a factor. ¥840,000 = INR 500,000

See what ¥840,000 will buy you in Japan. :-)