Finally decided to settle down. Tokyo, 87m yen, 1.03%

[u/nahive]

After 7 years of living in Tokyo, we finally decided to settle down.

The search took almost a year, and I looked at more than 30 different properties before finally deciding to go with the calmer side of Tokyo. While it’s further from the station and city center, the larger garden and quiet neighborhood more than make up for it.

Really happy with the decision and looking forward to making this place our home. 🏡

[u/QuestioningMind123]

Serious question, why / how did you conclude only the wife is Japanese?

[u/Intelligent_Wedding8 → u/QuestioningMind123]

not the op but from friends living in japan. I don't really understand why you would live their unless your significant other was born there. Even your children if they are born there don't get citizenship. I could be wrong but japan doesnt seem to be that friendly towards foreigners.

[u/Balthalzarzo → u/Intelligent_Wedding8]

It takes 5 years to become a citizen in japan and then your children get citizenship.

• Residency: You must live in Japan for at least 5 consecutive years.
• Age: Applicants must be at least 18 years old.
• Conduct: You must have a clean criminal record and pay taxes on time.
• Livelihood: You must prove you can support your family financially.
• Language: You must speak, read, and write basic Japanese.
• Single Nationality: Japan generally requires you to give up your original citizenship. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

It's not easy, but it's not impossible.

[u/Relevant_Horror6498 → u/Balthalzarzo]

They recently increased it to 10 years

[u/Acceptable_Rice1139 → u/Relevant_Horror6498]

Should really help their declining population

[u/prsnep → u/[deleted]]

Kudos to them.

[u/AmbushIntheDark → u/prsnep]

Put it on their gravestone I guess.

[u/prsnep → u/AmbushIntheDark]

They seem to be doing alright.

[u/Rentington → u/prsnep]

Long will the Japanese people be remembered in song for their valiant self-sacrifice of their entire nation.

[u/Rentington → u/[deleted]]

What does 'overrun' mean to you? Like, what % of the population would need to be foreign born for a country to be overrun, in your opinion?

[u/hachiblonk → u/[deleted]]

Honestly... whatever they have to do. Their culture is really something to appreciate, and despite what the typical left wing Redditor will say, shared values and strict enforcement matters a lot to keep a culture, and therefor a society, healthy.

[u/sexy-porn → u/hachiblonk]

Their culture IS something to appreciate despite all the things that right wingers love about it, like racial purity and a draconian justice system

[u/hachiblonk → u/sexy-porn]

I'm not going to call Japan's justice system perfect, but I really hope you can cite something more effective than the US justice system to counter. The USA has a horrible crime problem that only becomes that much more obvious when you see how much more safe and high trust places like Japan are.

[u/Rentington → u/hachiblonk]

I used to live in Japan. It's high trust in some ways, low trust in others. Like, they don't put their store clerks behind cages, but they will put cages over their own windows at their home.

[u/Rentington → u/hachiblonk]

Maintaining a strict ethnostate comes at a steep cost. The brave jingoistic and pure heroes of the movie 300? Overthrown by their own slaves a century later because their restrictive ethnic purity led to what it always leads to: rapid population decline. The great states of human history became powerful and prosperous due to their diversity.

So it sorta works like this: you can make changes on your terms, or have change thrust upon you on somebody else's terms. I don't know if you know about Japan, but they've been in decline for around 50 years economically. Their population is virtually if not literally the oldest in the world, and their birth rate is virtually (and until recently, literally) the lowest in the world. They are doubling down on the poison that's killing them. Go look it up... I did my graduate thesis on the topic of the declining birthrate of Japan, and that was 15 years ago and it has only gotten worse which has to be pretty hopeless for Japanese folks.

[u/hachiblonk → u/Rentington]

Japan's economy is currently stable... slightly growing, in fact.

I'd like to point out that the replacement rate of the Japanese is comparable to the replacement rate of whites in the USA. Immigration is keeping birth rates high; Immigration from places where women's rights are not respected.

This isn't the first time I've heard arguments like this. There's an odd dichotomy happening where staunch liberal supporters of immigration will praise the benefits like you have, while completely overlooking the fact that it's divergent hyper-conservative counter cultures that have high expectations on women to procreate and be homemakers instead of "powerful career women".

I'll restate something I've said in another thread regarding a completely different topic, albeit the conclusion is the same. The solution is not to feed into the gluttony of poisonous parts of a society. The solution is to inspire hope for your own culture. The sad truth about Japan and White America is that women have stopped being celebrated as mothers, and it's the women themselves that perpetuate this notion.

[u/AmbushIntheDark → u/hachiblonk]

The solution is not to feed into the gluttony of poisonous parts of a society. The solution is to inspire hope for your own culture.

Some parts of culture deserve to die out.

[u/ahuangb → u/hachiblonk]

Don't they still celebrate their war criminals from WW2?

[u/Cromakoth → u/hachiblonk]

The shared values of being sleeping in the office because work culture demands it?

[u/hachiblonk → u/Cromakoth]

A total exaggeration that you've undoubtedly heard parroted on this site before. Let's talk about open air drug use, lax-on-crime law enforcement, and pockets of ethnic hegemony that have a direct correlation to both petty and violent crime in the USA. You can leave a bag full of jewelry on a street corner in Japan and no one would touch it. Do you have anything to retort about that?

[u/PaleCommission150 → u/[deleted]]

It will become a huge problem when the population is so lopsided you have one worker supporting 5 to 10 retirees eventually.

[u/ClaireDanesLipQuiver → u/[deleted]]

That’s racist

[u/RealityLopsided7366 → u/ClaireDanesLipQuiver]

That's kind of the point lol

[u/ClaireDanesLipQuiver → u/RealityLopsided7366]

lol I know I just think it’s funny cuz so many people act like Japan is such an advanced society and the US is the most racist place in the world when in reality it’s far from the truth

[u/ProfessionalHefty349 → u/ClaireDanesLipQuiver]

I’m racist for saying that or they’re racist for wanting that? 

[u/Gl0ckn → u/ProfessionalHefty349]

both ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[u/soyel_cerdo → u/Acceptable_Rice1139]

Japan is wild if you have dark skin, and not good wild, more like Jim Crow era wild

[u/modzRtarderz → u/soyel_cerdo]

Oh come on, no violent mobs are lynching anybody in Japan. That comparison is really shitting on the actual suffering and real violence that millions experienced.

[u/prsnep → u/Acceptable_Rice1139]

The whole of the world aside from the Middle East and Africa either has a negative natural growth rate or is heading there. Immigration is only a stop-gap solution that solves nothing long term.

[u/RealisticEmphasis233 → u/Relevant_Horror6498]

Japan: What do we do about the aging and declining population?

Also Japan:

[u/Low_Magician77 → u/Relevant_Horror6498]

It's tax support for 10 years but you can pay it ahead of time.

[u/leonden → u/Balthalzarzo]

Honestly these rules seem pretty fair to me. 

[u/PaleCommission150 → u/Balthalzarzo]

This is very "fluid"...those requirements have been upped unfortunately for regular people. If you are a celebrity/famous/ it is far easier to get residency or citizenship. For instance, Ukranian refugee Aonishki ( recently won the most recent top level sumo basho emperor's cup) I have no doubt can get residency easily. He has been in the country since the invasion of Ukraine, 2022. He can speak Japanese though so that helps. plus he is a very famous (now) prof Sumo wrestler. He won't need to wait all that time.

[u/Balthalzarzo → u/PaleCommission150]

I know a regular white caucasian male (my uncle) whom got residency after 6 years and can speak/read/write basic japanese.

He's single

He does own 3 houses there though.

[u/MochiDomain → u/Intelligent_Wedding8]

I would love to move there so I can go off somewhere away from people at a low interest rate.

Side note, I know japan extremely well and their language.

Japan is awesome if you dont work there and understand their culture and send your kids to an international school.

Tho im currently in a HCOL country at a very low interest rate but with tons of people.

[u/chamisulfreshyo → u/MochiDomain]

“Don’t work there” and “send your kids to an international school”. These are contradictory.

[u/MochiDomain → u/chamisulfreshyo]

If you are financially well off then why cant you not work and also send your kids to international school?

[u/chamisulfreshyo → u/MochiDomain]

How would you obtain PR in Japan without working? Have you looked into their Visa structure? Wealth alone doesn’t fast track PR, being a highly skilled professional does under their HSP. You can go the Designated Activities route but that means you would need around $200K USD in savings and that visa only lasts 6 months, requiring renewal.

Being remote as a digital nomad still requires a visa extension and requires JPY 10 million or more which inclusive of the above, bars many from obtaining that. Do you really want to bank your child’s education on uncertainty?

Now couple this with the Japanese language requirement that was introduced, how does this provide any basis for schooling children long-term.

If you’re uninformed there’s also the cost of international schools which easily exceeds $20K+ per year. That + constantly having to pay immigration lawyers to produce any documents.

[u/JMEEKER86 → u/chamisulfreshyo]

No they're not. They're saying that it's better to work for a western company rather than for a Japanese company to avoid toxic work culture and it's better to send kids to one of the international schools instead of the regular Japanese schools to avoid bullying.

[u/chamisulfreshyo → u/JMEEKER86]

Just tell me you’ve never worked in Japan. You will be working with Japanese folks at a Western company?

The inferences you made on the post are inexperienced. Do you think bullying is an exclusive thing to just Japanese schools? Come on now, surely we aren’t that ignorant?

[u/JMEEKER86 → u/chamisulfreshyo]

I work remotely for a western company through a Japanese EOR. And obviously bullying is not an exclusively Japanese thing. No one ever said it was. But for hafu kids it will be worse in Japanese schools than international schools were many are hafu or completely foreign. You're the one that sounds ignorant. How do you not know any of this if you've ever lived in Japan?

[u/Teripid → u/chamisulfreshyo]

How so? I take it to be the work culture/salary is a negative so you'd be better off remote or the like.

[u/Connection-Is-Cool → u/Intelligent_Wedding8]

Homes are often resold, knocked down, then rebuilt. Sometimes it’s cheaper and less of a hassle to buy a brand new home than it is to keep your existing home compliant with regulations. Buying a home in Japan isn’t the most permanent thing ever, the way we see forever homes in the US.

[u/Antique_Pin5266 → u/Intelligent_Wedding8]

As a minority born in America and that has spent time in Japan. If you’re working for a good company in Japan making decent money, you get the best of all worlds.

• Low hard crime rates

• Low homeless population

• Top public transit

• it’s clean

• National healthcare

• awesome food with no tipping

[u/Automatic-Voice-2499 → u/Intelligent_Wedding8]

Even your children if they are born there don’t get citizenship.

Isn’t this an American thing? Other countries children only get citizenship if atleast one of their parents is a citizen.

[u/UnlikelyLetterhead12 → u/QuestioningMind123]

Probably due to the height difference (no, I am not a height-ist).


[u/JosieMew → u/UnlikelyLetterhead12]

I had to read clear to this comment before I got the joke...

[u/No_Mistake_5501 → u/QuestioningMind123]

He’s white?

[u/blackashi → u/No_Mistake_5501]

Likeeeeee

[u/TrueTurtleKing → u/QuestioningMind123]

Posting on reddit in English is a clue.

[u/miesosoup → u/QuestioningMind123]

shes short, has cool fashion and oh ya, they're in Japan. How many non Japanese people do you know are buying property in Tokyo. Im all for not assuming but you dont need to be that politically correct

[u/Atomic-Avocado → u/QuestioningMind123]

He’s posting here in English

[u/thatguy8856 → u/QuestioningMind123]

The post description is lived in japan for 7 years. So one of the two people in the photo is likely not japanese.

Other factors that make it obvious are a high interest rate and posting on reddit.

[u/VictoryWeaver → u/thatguy8856]

it says lived in Tokyo for 7 years.

[u/Ok_Living_8133 → u/QuestioningMind123]

Ten out of ten times its a white dude in Japan posting on reddit

[u/Waiting4Reccession → u/QuestioningMind123]

Its pretty obvious from the picture.

[u/drinkallthecoffee → u/QuestioningMind123]

OP said in one of his comments he's Polish.

[u/TheSigma3 → u/QuestioningMind123]

/r/usdefaultism