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Once you have a place to live, the next thing to think about is day-to-day expenses. Tokyo has a reputation for being horribly expensive, but compared to roughly equivalent cities such as London or New York it can be remarkably cheap! Of course it is possible to spend lots of money if you frequent fancy shops and restaurants, but you’ll be surprised how low a normal lifestyle costs to upkeep here. And if you’re on a budget then it’s possible to live extremely modestly.
Consumption/Sales tax is 10% (8% for food and daily necessities). Shops are required to display the post-tax price, but it is often the smaller number displayed!
Federal income tax starts at 10% for annual income between 1.95 million and 3.3 million yen, and local residence tax is 10% of the previous year's income. A good rule of thumb for the vast majority of tax brackets is that after income & residence tax, pension, and health insurance payments you will be left with around three-quarters of your monthly salary.
Please be aware that if you are in Japan independently, rather than as an employee, you are responsible for settling residence taxes, health insurance, and pension payments yourself.
Compared to the past, low-cost carriers have emerged in Japan, with cell phone plans costing about 3,000 yen per month and allowing for 20GB of data transmission. Internet usage fees average 4,000-7,000 yen per month. By choosing inexpensive SIM cards and providers, you can save on communication costs without a notable drop in service.
Depending on the number of people in your household, monthly utility expenses are usually in the region of 10,000 each for electricity and gas, and around 3-5,000 for water. Gas and electricity are paid monthly, while water is paid every six months.
More and more houses and apartments are being built all-electric, but the vast majority use gas for cooking and heating water.
Tokyo is cold in the winter and hot in the summer, so depending on the climate you’re used to you might see big fluctuations in your utilities throughout the year as you crank the heating or air-conditioning respectively (or both, if you’re unlucky).
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Public transportation in Tokyo is inexpensive compared to other countries, and famously reliable. Commuter passes greatly reduce the cost of transportation to and from the office, and allow you to use them to hop on and off at any station between — so if you live along a good line you might not ever need to pay for trains outside that! Most companies pay for their employees’ commuter passes.
In Tokyo there are JR trains, which are mostly aboveground and go further; subways; and several private train lines. They vary in cost, but most journeys within the city will cost between 200-500 yen. If you take a long journey and hop between different lines a lot, though, it can get quite a bit higher.
Buses run in Tokyo — especially in the suburbs — but it is definitely a train-first city; unlike, say, Kyoto, where the opposite is true. Most people who use a bus as part of their commute are likely to use it to get to the train station. Most bus rides will come in around the 200-300 yen mark.
Most payment for transportation is done with rechargeable IC cards. Commuter passes can be put onto the same card.
Taxis in Tokyo start at 400-750 yen for the first 1-2 kilometers and increase by around 80-100 yen for every additional 200-400 meters traveled or two minutes spent idling. Prices go up later at night, usually after 10pm — generally a 20% surcharge will be added.
Owning a car in Tokyo isn’t rare by any stretch, but most people do not own one. In addition to the car itself you will have to pay (potentially quite a lot) extra for a parking space — street parking in residential areas is not allowed. Added to high tolls, high prices for parking at the destination, bi-yearly maintenance inspections, and of course the level of traffic make public transportation a far more cost-effective option for Tokyo residents.
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This will vary the most depending on your individual preferences and which part of Tokyo you live in! The average Tokyoite spends 38,000 yen on groceries and sundries per month, but if you move to Japan without a family then that will probably drop quite a lot — if only because you’ll be eating out more.
Tokyo offers countless restaurants and cafes for dining out, as you are probably aware! An average lunch will cost around 1,000-2,000 yen, and dinner with a couple of drinks 3,000-5,000. Lunch boxes can still be found for 500 yen (although they are becoming rarer every year), but a nice one from a food truck will be around a 1,000. Drinks and yakitori from a local izakaya will probably only set you back 3,000 yen for the whole evening, even in 2024.
As for the upper limit? Like they say: if you have to ask, you can’t afford it (that’s a roundabout way of saying I don’t know — I’m not rich).
One funny thing to point out that most people notice after living in Tokyo for a while: it’s usually cheaper to eat at a cheap restaurant than to make the same meal at home. It’s not uncommon for younger salarimen to go literally years without cooking anything at home more complicated than instant noodles.
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