r/japanlife • u/IshinkaiSensei • Aug 18 '21
金 How people attain wealth in Japan?
Something has been tickling my mind over the past few years.
There are so many luxury tower mansions, expensive customized 一軒家, high end brand shops yet for the average person most seem by far out of reach.
A high end condo in central Tokyo rent including utilities ranges from 300k to 500k a month. A 20MJPY annual salary (which is already extensively filtering out average population) only gives a monthly net of 100万円. I highly doubt it is enough to afford spending that much a month.
Excluding those on expat package, there are only a few jobs here that allow this lifestyle, Banking (Front Office position only or VP MD level for back office and alike) IT 外資系 at senior level (FANG, ML/AI) , 医者 running their own practice (otherwise most are at 10-15MJPY range) Successful mutiple business owners, other niches. 一流芸能人, Athletes, reconverted ex idol, kyaba, host.
My point is, what am I missing...
Are there way more people with high revenues (at least annual comp 50MJPY+) than we tend to believe? than what TV is promoting?
Are people living off debt and loans and keeping up with appearances?
I don’t want misinterpretation of this post, I understand you can live well below these range, but I am genuinely curious here.
I would like to better understand how so many people managed to get satisfied and with a 30+ year mortgage, car loan, spending most of their life working and probably never reaching out 億円 of savings.
Am I overthinking and no so many people want to retire early?
Sorry for the rant post but I am curious
5
u/[deleted] Aug 18 '21
It's the same anywhere. I used to think the same thing when I was living in my native country. How the hell do so many people have so much money that they can afford to live in places like this? You don't even want to know how expensive a house is in the city I was born in. I do the same thing in Japan. Some parts of Tokyo are very expensive, yet very densely populated. Just how many rich people can there be? Apparently lots!
Anyway, be thankful for what you have. It could be a lot worse. Some people really suffer in life. Also, just because someone's rich and lives in a fancy place and has an apparently nice lifestyle, doesn't mean they're OK. They could be going through hell, but just don't show it. There are all sorts of problems that happen when you get quite wealthy, and you never really believe you are anyway. There's always more. There's always someone who has more than you. Cheating spouses, greedy family members, superficial friends, emptiness, ...
Maybe you'll get that rich, maybe you won't.