> Please say "non-East Asians" when that's what you mean. There were already loads of Chinese and Koreans around in Tokyo 7 years ago. it wasn't 7 years ago, i

> Please say "non-East Asians" when that's what you mean. There were already loads of Chinese and Koreans around in Tokyo 7 years ago. it wasn't 7 years ago, it was 20 years ago, 7 years up to 2006 there were some Chinese, but really few and far between and in the Kanto area, mostly in Yokohama i was studying Chinese back then, and I struggled to find people to practice > The cultural adaptation you're talking about applies just as much to China and Korea, yet there's a huge reason for Europeans (not Americans, but they're the sole outlier) to work there as SWEs - post-tax + post-big-city-CoL, salaries are a lot better until you get to 10+ YoE. probably it does - certainly Korea, China not as much - and also differently, and the topic here is Japan > People tend to look at London or Amsterdam stated salaries and think this is impossible, but the tax and housing cost differences completely change the equation. 40k EUR at 40% tax is the same as 30k EUR at 20% tax. 40K is extremely low in tech, and where are you paying 40% tax on 40k?? >In big European capitals, for 800 EUR/month you get a parking space or a place to share with 3 others. In China or Korea in a tier 1 city for the same money you can rent a nice, newly built place for two (so 400 EUR/month/person) in a central location with private indoor parking and great transit links. I can't speak of living in China or Korea, I have only visited. It wouldn't cross my mind to live in China, for reasons beyond the scope of this post. RE in Japan is currently much better than in say the UK or SanFran or NYC. MUCH better. This wasn't the case when I was there, it was comparable or even more expensive. However the yen was stronger and salaries in tech were, although lower, much closer than they are now. If you are a computer scientist or an electrical engineer, you will easily make double or triple the salary, so rent doesn't make up for it. This is a volatile situation though, right now the situation for juniors seems to have deteriorated massively everywhere, so it's really hard to tell how it would work out either way. But unless you really want to learn the language and the culture and are willing to make strong sacrifices for it, moving to Japan in order to work in tech sounds like a crazy proposition.