3/25/2005

Although never noticed by polite Japanese or mentioned by the Japanese news, Tokyo’s legions of homeless manage to retain their dignity in the face of a trials of living in most expensive city in the world. In some ways Tokyo is the cheapest city in the world: many convience stores provide past-epiration-date box lunches free for the taking, the climate is mild enough to live outside nine months of year, and the city parks look the other way at the homeless camps.
It ain’t an easy life—it’s living rough—very rough since the average age of homeless person in Japan is over sixy,

Japan has costliest cities
Tokyo, Osaka and Kobe have preserved their status as the world’s most expensive cities to live in, while Manila and Bombay are among the cheapest…[according to] the bi-annual Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) survey of more than 130 cities.
New York, assigned an index reading of 100 and ranked the 23rd most expensive city in the world, down from 13th a year ago, served as the basis of comparison. Tokyo stood at a whopping 141 and the Osaka-Kobe zone’s was 136. London, in seventh place, was on 121.…more…

I often recomend Tsukuba University just outside Tokyo as a good place for foreigners to go to the university in Japan in terms of generous grants and I was pleased to see that the cities of Omuta, Kastuyama, Tsukuba, and Yokkaichi scored highest in Asia (joint 14th place with scores of 112.5) As an added note, the quality of life survey deemed Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver rank top in North America, in joint 18th place (score 112).