Moving to Japan: Crunching the costs involved

Moving to Japan and wondering how much it might cost and how you can make it work for you? In our case it's a move that financially will enable a better lifestyle. Read on to learn more.

In this post I will cover:

• Selling up in our home country
• Variables that affect amount of funds
• Costs in getting setup in Japan
• Income in Japan

By an improvement in lifestyle, I mean not having to work full time for another 25 years, opting instead to live life now, spending more time with our daughter as she grows up. The amount of times I've responded to someone with 'living the dream' when asked how I am, well I'd actually like to mean it for once.

If you need a comprehensive recap on why we are planning to move, see this post. 

Shimatori arcade, Kumamoto

My musings

With Japan's notoriously bad work culture you may be thinking I am misguided, alas no. It's how the numbers stack up that enable us to do this. The NZ property market is one of the most expensive in the world, but the only way you win, is if you cash out and leave. You could downsize of course if you are at the top of the market, but we are not, and despite liking the idea of living in a tiny house on a hill in the countryside mortgage free, New Zealand is still an expensive place to live. Not to mention that setting is not ideal to raise a child, you need to be near stuff, and being near anything in NZ means the property will be horrendously overpriced. 

I surmise that the majority of foreigners headed to Japan from developed countries tend to be the younger generations, on an adventure of a lifetime with little more that the clothes on their back and a job offer, having not a whole lot to lose if they end up going home, but the excitement of finding their way in a new life if they decide to stay. Journeys such as this are well documented on the internet, but what I struggled to find was experiences similar to what we are attempting to do, let alone the numbers to go with it. Not that no-one has done it, but there is usually a lot of key information omitted about how they did it, their starting cash, incomes etc. Probably because as westerners we tend to be quite private with our financial situations.

Auckland median house price history

Cashing out

So we cash out of the overpriced NZ housing market, and instead buy into the depreciating Japanese housing market. This is the main factor in this working, and the numbers do stack up rather well as you will see. Numbers are rounded up and generalised for simplicity's sake, and I guess we can revisit later on to see just how it all planned out.

• House sale +$350k to $450k  My estimates based on how the market may be at the time (low to high), minus real estate agent fees and less what our outstanding mortgage is expected to be in 2026.
  
  
• Selling our stuff +$50k  We have two newish cars and a house full of furniture. Maximizing what we sell our cars for is paramount given the depreciation hit you take on a new car. Furniture probably has to get auctioned off in a hurry when we have a settlement date so not expecting much there, may even sell the house as furnished just to avoid that headache.
  
  
• Savings +$130k  With Tomomi having a year off for maternity leave, it gives us just 1 whole year to save hard on top of any existing savings. Tomomi being Japanese, naturally is a saver whereas I'm not so much. Luckily spending will be down as we aren't going to be making big purchases unless we plan on taking them with us.
  
  
• Kiwisaver +$160k  Our estimated combined Kiwisaver (voluntary superannuation) balances as of 2026. After one year out of the country and not planning on returning, you can withdraw in full. We will likely leave them invested if they continue to grow (they are managed investment funds afterall), and wait for a super favourable exchange rate before bringing the money to Japan.
  
  
• Moving costs - $15k  This is a really general estimate. I'm planning on sea freighting just 1 pallet of belongings over, then we have flights for 3, plus the cost of sending our 2 cats (quoted at $4k for both just to Tokyo). 
  
  
• Total $675k to $775k  All up, we can walk out of NZ (counting Kiwisaver withdrawal a year later) with quite a bit, and quite a bit is what provides options.

The Yen is high currently but volatile

Variables

The housing market is one of the two large variables. A $100k potential price spread between a bad and good market is substantial. Waiting for the market to improve if it's not in a good place is not an option,  so we will take the hit (or the gain) and cut ties. 

The second large variable is the exchange rate. Since 2016, when I've been monitoring the rate it has spent plenty of time as low as 74 Yen to the dollar, and recently well into the 90's. That's a 20% spread!

Biding our time will be the strategy, waiting for a good exchange rate, and 'good' will be defined depending on when we need to exchange I suppose. We saw 98Y recently but I doubt we will see that again for a decade. After the recent interventions and increase of interest rates by the Bank of Japan, it appears to have stabilised in the high 80s, and we would definitely take that a few years from now.

Initially we will be living with the in-laws, and we were prudent enough to exchange around $50k into yen when it was around 96Y. That should tide us over for around year before we need to start exchanging more, or if we happen to find the perfect house sooner rather than later.

So with the potential variable in house sale price and exchange rates, the pot we can end up with would be between 50M and 70M yen, that's a massive difference, 20M yen, you could buy a house with that! 

Decent large properties are plentiful. This one is half our budget.

Japan costs

So onto the Japan setup and living costs. Once again, these are very general numbers rounded up for simplicity.

• Buy a house -25,000,000Y  That's a maximum budget I would say based on my research of properties. There are plenty of options of good sized houses (120sqm+) in good and sometimes freshly renovated condition, and often for far less. Plenty of fat in the budget for renovations if needed, as would like to make the house more efficient by adding things like solar. 
  
  
• Buy 2x New Kei cars -5,000,000Y  As we are not planning on living in an urban area, two cars will be essential, though we could probably make do with one for quite a while. I recently wrote about the benefits of Kei cars here, and that's what we shall buy - cheaper to buy new, cheaper to run, cheaper to Shaken and still packed with all the features you need.
  
  
• Furnish the house -3,000,000Y  A very high arbitrary figure because we don't know what we will need, but really there is not a whole lot that you must have. With that budget I doubt we would be left wanting for much. 
  
  
• Ongoing monthly expenses -250,000Y  My brother in law with a wife and young daughter shared his living expenses with us. He is a policeman stationed in a Koban, so he has no housing costs, just like us, so it's a fair comparison of what we would expect to spend on a monthly basis.

There are always new places to explore

Income

You can see from all those numbers that it works. Security and zero debt. Having anywhere from 16M and 36M left over we could essentially live for a decade without working, clearly that is not a wise strategy though.

An income of some form will be needed, ideally to cover at least our monthly expenses. Considering most entry level jobs in Japan pay around 230,000Y per month it certainly seems feasible for one of us to work full time or both part time. If we don't enjoy the work, we aren't trapped into sticking with it necessarily because we have that security. One stress most working people with debt could do without.

Normally, when it comes to Jobs you either have to choose between doing something you want to do, or something that pays enough. It's rare you get both. I will genuinely have the option of choosing the latter and not the former and would be delighted if I can spend my time exploring Kyushu, taking photos and writing about things. Starting our own business is also an option we will explore, we just have no idea what at this stage, but we will have the capital to pursue whatever it may be.

As for leftover cash, it's not particularly useful sitting in a Japanese bank. Best to keep as much as possible in NZ as even a modest term deposit will grow it. 

Once we are in Japan there is no rush to go out and sort all of this out. In the meantime we can spend time enjoying Japan as a family, and that is the whole point.

Do you experience similar to what we are planning? Please send me an email, I would love to hear from you!