You would be surprised at how low wages are in Japan and how frugal people are to save to supplement their employer pensions. You would also be surprised at how

You would be surprised at how low wages are in Japan and how frugal people are to save to supplement their employer pensions. You would also be surprised at how many poor people there are in Japan. The stereotypical wealthy Japanese salaryman has pretty low salaries by American standards. There are also homeless people in Tokyo who sleep quietly in the streets and then clean up after themselves, disappearing completely from sight so you wouldn't know there was an encampment there. There was one famous case of an older person starving in Japan. He had a very touching diary where he wrote he dreamed of eating just one rice ball. He went to the unemployment office but they turned him down.(source: https://asiancorrespondent.com/2012/02/starving-to-death-in-wealthy-japan/ https://asiancorrespondent.com/2012/02/starving-to-death-in-...) In Japan 2/3 of the average person's retirement income is pension benefits and 1/3 is savings, so Japanese augment their frugal pensions by saving a lot. Even so, 1 in 6 Japanese live in poverty, and 1 in 5 seniors live in poverty, suggesting that the low pensions play a role and that some Japanese are suffering because of this (https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/06/04/business/financial-markets/japans-pension-system-inadequate-aging-society-council-warns/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/06/04/business/financ...) In terms of Japan being expensive to live in, it depends on your lifestyle. You can certainly spend a lot of money in Japan, but the median household income in Japan is about 40K (source: http://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/Distribution_of_Yearly_Household_Incomes_in_Japan_2016 http://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/Distribution_of_Yearly_Ho.... more salary breakdowns here: https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/average-salary-japan-occupation-age/ https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/average-salary-jap...) so assuming 2 people, that's about $1700/month per person, so a pension of $1000/month is completely unsurprising. Private consumption in Japan, as a share of GDP, is about 10% less than in the U.S. E.g. they consume about 57% of GDP and we consume about 67% of GDP. This includes consumption of fixed capital. If you back that out, the median Japanese household is just much more frugal than the median US household, and it's not all increased out of pocket healthcare spending (source: https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-6/how-do-united-states-consumer-expenditures-compare-with-the-united-kingdom-and-japan.htm?view_full https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-6/how-do-united-states-c...). They really are more frugal and more risk averse than US households.