Housing in Tokyo has insanely skyrocketed in the past three years. It’s always been overpriced since a long time ago, but the absurdity of it has reached a whole new level. A newly built 25 square meter apartment in Tokyo costs around 140,000 yen a month (around $930? Why do Japanese Yen suck so bad). A fresh-graduate’s salary is only around 200,000 yen after taxes. Opting for an older unit could be cheaper, but it won’t show much of a difference unless it’s like a 20-40 year old building with bad insulation and old interior (and a chance of having unwanted little critters lurking somewhere in the cracks of the building walls). So, cheap rent with unwanted bonuses, or a decent unit but have you’ll only be able to afford cup noodles for your meals. Pick your poison.

(Oh, the rent obviously does not include water, gas, and electricity bills, which would probably cost you around another 10,000 yen.)

This was the reality that hit me like a truck while I was apartment hunting a couple of weeks back. I had to search for a new place to move into because they want me to live closer to the HQ office. I never expected to see monthly rent of 100,000 yen and above to be normal these days, though. (My previous apartment was around 80,000 yen.) Also, these are the rent of apartments that are located 30 minutes away from Tokyo station by train. I’m guessing the the ones near Tokyo station must have a lot of zeros.

After spending around two weeks stressing out about rent, I decided that there’s nothing I could do about it. Searching for a new place that meets my current standards is going to be impossible because I have no money for it. So this time, I’m going to sacrifice space in return for access. My new apartment is going to be significantly smaller (the kitchen being the worst victim), but I’ll have a better access to the station for commute. The kitchen is so small that it’s almost unusable, so I’ll have to think of some tricks to make it work. Perhaps I’ll update on that in another post.

For now I’ll have to declutter a lot of stuff to make it fit into my new space.