Tokyo's definitely cheaper than the bay area or NYC, but it's still not exactly cheap. The median monthly rent is low, but you have to figure that the median apartment is tiny by American standards.

So many comments about big houses, I'm wondering if buying a big house in the suburbs that you have to commute hours to work from and therefore rarely enjoy is (to quote Homer Simpson) both the solution and the cause of all America's problems.

It's certainly a problem that American suburbs lack the local services that typically exist in European cities, which is currently exacerbating the issue of suburban poverty:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/suburbs...

I see this comment a lot in threads about quality of life - people say American life is better than the 60s because houses are bigger. Why do you want that?

I'll accept "having more than one child" but not "having a bigger TV".

You'll have to ask someone else, I don't want a huge house and have strongly pro-density political leanings.

Cost of living, for the same sized apartment, in Tokyo is more that San Francisco by my calculations.

Emphasis on the "same sized apartment" there: American-sized apartments are quite rare in Tokyo and priced to match. In Tokyo, unlike SF, there are tons of tiny but perfectly livable "one-room mansion" apartments at non-insane rents ($500-1000/mo, depending on how small and how far away from the city).

Hmm, yeah, thought so, but I wasn't sure.