High summer is an awful time to be in Tokyo, when temperatures exceed 30ºC on a daily basis. What makes it even worse this year is the non-stop noise from outside our apartment.

From 8.30am to 5pm we have the demolition crew, who have been clearing the land next to our apartment to make way for a new car showroom. They expect to finish everything by March 2009:

Then from 7pm to 3am we have the roadworks posse, who are laying new gas pipes underneath the main road. They have at least five light-sabre-wielding traffic monitors along a 50-metre stretch of road, one of whom you can see here:

Thankfully I usually don’t get back from work until after 7pm on weekdays so I miss the demolition. However, the $#&%ers insist on working Saturdays: I’m currently struggling to hear myself think over the noise of drills, diggers and crushing concete.

Our final post in the series covers probably the single biggest living expense: accommodation. Tokyo, and London especially have a reputation for being two of the most expensive places in the world in terms of rent, so they will be our “test sites”, as it were, for investigation today.

As in earlier posts I’m going to compare the cost of living in two areas: Southgate in north London and Kichijoji in western Tokyo. Let’s begin by finding two relatively decent-sized flats:

For Southgate, I’ve chosen a nice little place in Haddon Court (N1), 0.4 miles from Oakwood station and 0.7 miles from Southgate station:

For Kichijoji, I’ve chosen this imposing-looking flat in the Honcho 1-chome area, just 7 minutes walk from Kichijoji station:

For Southgate, we have the added bonus of a nice selection of photos of the inside:

Sadly, the website I’ve used to search for flats in Tokyo (apamanshop.com) doesn’t usually post photographs of interiors. They do, however, always have a floor-plan. People often search for places to live in Tokyo by the overall size of the flat (in square metres) and their proximity to the station. The closer to a train station you get, the more expensive rent becomes.

Let’s look at the floor-plans, starting with the Southgate flat, which is 56 sq m:

And the Kichijoji flat, which is slightly bigger at 56.4 sq m:

As you can see, the layout of both is quite different. The Southgate flat has a proper kitchen, where the Kichijoji flat has a combined kitchen and living room (known as a LDK, or “living dining kitchen” – bit of a mouthful). Personally I prefer the separate kitchen offering, as watching TV while someone else (ie the wife) is doing the cooking in the same room is a pain in the arse.

One important factor to note is that the Southgate flat comes fully-furnished at no extra cost. For those who have no furniture of their own this is a great bonus. Unless you’re coming across to Japan with a company your Tokyo flat is highly unlikely to be furnished. People who have been transferred to Japan do very well in this regard, as they are usually placed in ridiculously expensive serviced flats in Azabu-Juban; for those coming across as English teachers, well, you’re not quite going to have the same level of luxury; and with some English schools you may find yourself sharing accommodation with one or two others.

But how about the cost? In basic terms, this is how much each flat will cost you per month:

• Southgate: £964 (£225 per week ÷ 7 days = £32.14 per day)
• Kichijoji: £926 (JPY168,000 for rent, plus JPY3,000 for management fees)

So, that’s pretty even, but! there’s one nasty surprise in store if you want to move into the Kichijoji flat: two-months rent in advance as a security deposit! Actually, this flat is much better than many others, which often require an additional two-months rent as “key money”: a non-refundable “thank  you” to your landlord, leaving you paying out a total of four-months rent before you even have your foot through the door.

With regard to discrimination against foreigners renting flats in Japan, I can’t deny that I have heard of it happening, but most of the (single) people I know who rent flats in Tokyo have managed to do so without too much trouble. Obviously it helps to know Japanese, or have a Japanese-speaking friend help you out, but it’s not impossible to do it without either of these.

That brings the “Is Japan Expensive?” series to a close for the time being. In the future I will look at the taxation system in Japan and how it affects foreign residents, but this is a very complex issue and I simply haven’t got the time to do it at the moment!

Exchange rate used correct as of 19 July 2008 (£1=JPY213.69).

On Thursday morning we had to take part in an earthquake drill. With Japan being one of the most, if not the most, earthquake-prone country in the world, drills like this are routine. I had expected there to be a grand system set in place in order to swiftly whisk people out of their office and onto the (relative) safety of the street - yellow inflatable slides that pop out from under the windows, for example. The reality was, unfortunately, far plainer: at 12.00 the loudspeaker announced that there had been an earthquake. Five minutes later we were informed that the lifts were out of order and that everyone was to congregate in the basement car park. With all the speed and alertness of sloths everyone left what they were doing and proceeded downstairs.

In the basement a large blue sheet had been strung between the walls; a cardboard sign with the kanji “fire” was stuck in its centre. In front of the sheet stood twenty small fire extinguishers and ten triangular buckets of water; in front of them stood two middle-aged, beige-overalled men with megaphones. They were… The Instructors.

The instruction was far from rigorous. One of the men asked for volunteers to spray the “fire”. People were hastily pushed out from among the crowd by their friends or superiors. Some of the older salarymen, relishing the opportunity to muck about like ten-year-olds, had already scrambled for the fire extinguishers.

The instructors gave one blow of their whistles: the volunteers sprang to life!

The older salarymen took to it with gusto, waddling towards the sheet, shouting “Kaji desu!”, deftly removing the safety clip then, bracing themselves for the expected recoil, aimed the nozzle at the (imaginary) inferno before them and squeezed the trigger. The result? One wet sheet, and several very smug-looking salarymen. Annual earthquake drills appear to be one of the high points of their otherwise routine working life.

Next up for demonstration: the buckets. They were strange, triangular-shaped things with one circular hole in the corner. Was this to help direct the water? Was it stronger? Was somebody having a laugh? Nobody seemed to know, but I’m sure thousands - if not millions - of test buckets had been created, debated, blown up and prodded with weasels in order to reach this final design

At any rate, more volunteers came forward and the buckets were duly put through their paces. Despite the strangeness of their shape they performed admirably, dispensing their moist goodness in a consistent manner, which was the best you can expect from any bucket, really.

With the demonstrations over, one of the instructors concluded by muttering something incomprehensible through his megaphone. Knowing my luck, it was probably the most important part of the training, something along the lines of: “If there’s an earthquake don’t forget to leave through Door X because all the other doors will be closed and you will die a horrible painful death and nobody will come and help you at all, so there.” Nobody else seemed to be listening, but of course they’d heard it a thousand times before and probably knew it by heart.

While the whole experience is difficult to sum up in words, this scene from Big Train sums it up very well indeed:

Is the UK more expensive than Japan these days? Over the next few posts I’ll be exploring just how much things cost in both countries. Let’s start with travel:

Travel by car:

First off, we’ll need to buy a car to get around in. I’ve chosen two examples here: the VW Golf R32, which is a beast of a machine; and a Honda Civic, which is your general pootling-about vehicle.

Japanese road tax varies from ¥10-50,000 (approx. £50-250) depending on engine size; in the UK road tax can be anything from £35 to £400. Our sample cars would probably fall into the higher and medium-range tax brackets, respectively:

Golf R32 (Same model in both countries - 3-door MT)

• UK price: £24,950
• JP price: £19,610 (¥4,114,286)

Honda Civic (Japan - 1.8G, 5-door MT; UK - Civic 1.4S, 3-door MT. Both were the cheapest possible models I could find)

• JP price: £9,231 (¥1,937,250)
• UK price: £13,410

So for a simple purchase, Japan wins on both counts. Of course, Japan’s motorways are tolled, whereas the UK is - with one or two exceptions - free, which is something to take into account when thinking about travelling long distances. And there’s the added cost of a parking space, which would probably cost somewhere in the region of ¥30,000 (approx. £150) per month around where I live (western Tokyo).

Fuel prices are easy to compare. I’ve chosen a representative suburb of London and Tokyo from which to work on: Southgate in North London and Kichijoji in Western Tokyo. Both are around the same distance from the political and financial centres of their respective cities:

Petrol (regular unleaded, per litre):

• UK price: £1.13
• JP price: £0.83 (¥164)

Blimey, that’s quite a huge difference!

Commuting:

First off, I should point out that most (95%+) Japanese companies pay for the cost of their employees’ commute to work, which is usually by train. This may happen with some companies in the UK, but is far less common.

For our sample journey, I’m again going to use Southgate (London) and Kichijoji (Tokyo) as our representative suburbs. I’ve picked Southgate to Westminster and Kichijoji to Ichigaya as our routes (the latter because that’s my route to work, and therefore have a pass handy!). Both take approximately the same length of time and cover the same distance, travelling from the outer suburbs to the centre of their respective cities. Let’s start with a monthly rail pass:

• UK price: £132.90 - Southgate to Westminster, Zones 1-4
• JP price £42.01 (¥8,890) - Kichijoji to Ichigaya

The big difference with both of these passes, apart from the huge gulf in price, is that with a pass in London you would be able to travel anywhere within Zones 1-4. With the Tokyo pass you would be able to travel anywhere between Kichijoji and Ichigaya for free, provided you use the same train line (in this case the JR Chuo-Sobu line). That’s good if you want to travel to, say, Shinjuku, but for the other “centres” of Tokyo you’d have to pay a little bit extra each time.

To make it a bit fairer, let’s compare the price of a one-way journey along the same routes:

• UK price: £2.50 - Southgate to Westminster
• JP price: £1.38 (¥290) - Kichijoji to Ichigaya

Tokyo still comes out on top, but the price difference isn’t quite as enormous.

Long-distance rail travel:

Japan is famous for their shinkansen (bullet trains), so I couldn’t write a post about travel without mentioning them at some point, could I? I’ve personally never had that much trouble with high-speed trains in the UK, but I’m sure there are millions who have, and who would be more than happy to recount their horror stories.

For high-speed trains, I’ve chosen London-Newcastle (270 miles) for the UK, and Tokyo-Osaka (343 miles) for Japan. Despite the extra 130 miles covered by our Japanese train it still manages to reach its destination more than 20 minutes ahead of its British counterpart (2hrs 36mins for Tokyo-Osaka and 2hrs 59mins for London-Newcastle).

Pricing is a bit different for both countries. In the UK it’s possible to get hugely discounted high-speed train tickets provided you book well in advance; in Japan shinkansen tickets are - in general - the same no matter how far in advance you book. To make it fair, I’ve compared the price for an open-single ticket for both (travel at any time of the day, on any train):

• UK price: £124.50 - London King’s Cross to Newcastle, standard open single ticket
• JP price: £66.07 (¥13,850) - Tokyo to Shin Osaka, reserved seat

The shinkansen looks much cheaper here, but bearing in mind the booking-in-advance rule in the UK, it really isn’t: I could get a return ticket from London to Newcastle for £66 provided I sorted it out a week or two in advance.

That’s all for this post. Look out for “Part 2: Household Goods”, where I’ll be comparing the price of TVs, sofas and other assorted gubbins!

(Prices based on 11th June 2008 exchange rates: 1GBP = 209.55JPY)

Golden Week is here! Let’s do some mountain climbing!

Ah yes, the smell of the wet earth, the sour tang of fern trees - this is nature at its finest. It’s so nice to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city and just, you know, get back to my country roots.

Whoa now, what the bloody hell is going on here? Where did all these lot come from? It’s not the queue for the toilet, is it?

Ahh yes, this is more like it. Trees, and sky, and… erm… birds, perhaps?

Just look at those clouds. Full of malice, they are.

Oh now come on, be fair. I wanted just one day of peace and quiet and look what happens - three thousand people follow me and then decide to have a picnic on the summit. I want an Alsatian, then I could say…

“You lot! get your fat little behinds off my mountain and back to Hachioji, or Steve (good name for an Alsatian, I think) will be going round the summit snipping off some scrotes.”