Houses in Tokyo

I've heard a lot about apartments in Tokyo, but can you build or buy a house in the Shitamachi (especially Ueno) And is it possible to have a backyard or is there just not enough room? General info about living in Tokyo will also help me ^_^

forget about building a house with a backyard in tokyo. if you're asking that question you will never have enough money to afford it. sorry to be harsh there. it's certainly a possibility in other areas outside of the cities. japan is remarkably undeveloped as you get towards the mountains, and also the extremities like kyushu, shikoku, aomori, iwate, akita, hokkaido, etc have space in abundance if you don't mind living a few minutes drive from the cities.

I'm kind of surprised that someone would consider buying/ building a house in a city they haven't spent that much time in.

Are you sure you can deal with the crowds/ extremely hot summers/ other hassles of being a foreigner? It seems like a good idea to spend some time in a city before committing to buying property there.

You would have to be fairly well-heeled to afford enough land to have a house and a garden near the centre of Tokyo.

forget about building a house with a backyard in tokyo.

I know people who have built houses with yards in Tokyo. Nothing compared to say US standards, but small "cozy" ones. Though my friends are Japanese and it suits them just fine. Don't ask me how much it costs.
However, when I say Tokyo, I'm thinking on the larger scale of Tokyo (eg in the view of outside the 23 wards) in the "cities, towns" of Tokyo vs the "-ku's"/wards in Central Tokyo.

for the record:
I just checked a couple of places in the Meguro area on the internet. each had 3 floors, 3 bedrooms and a sliver of land around the house, just enough for a few flower pots and the parking spot for 1 car. price: 500 000 to 750 000 US$. 2 houses had a roof top terrace that would make a small but nice "garden". These houses also have small balconies. A 4th house, for nearly 1 million US$, has 3 floors, 2 bedrooms, a huge bathroom, an elevator and a yard the size of a living room. I live in Canada and most new townhouses selling around 1/2 million don't have a backyard either. Houses in the suburbs, for 1/2 million and up, do have big lot--sort of--but people buying them tear down the "old" house from the 1960s and erect as big a house (in plywood!!) as possible.

winterwolf- I certainly can't afford to buy any house now, since I'm still in high school. When I graduate I'm planning to go to Tokyo University; I know it will be hard to get in but I won't give up. When you say "you will never have enough money to afford it," how much money are you talking about? Normal people with high income or multi-millionaires? A small garden behind my house is what I was talking about, not a vineyard. I currently live in the rural part of a large town and hate the feeling of being alone that I get, so that's why I want to live in a big city.

Sira- Crowds won't be a problem for me because I feel safe with people around. Heat is nothing to me, I've dealt with it all my life. As for being a foreigner, the town I live in has a high Hispanic population and, being white with blond hair, the looks I sometimes get make me feel like a foreigner. I have read about the good and bad of Japan from many places, and I still want to live there.

I think the person who said "you will never have enough money to afford it" was exaggerating, but be aware that it is a very long way into the future for you as foreigners are not given housing loans in Japan unless they are permanent residents, which usually means a) you have lived in Japan for 10 years, or b) have married a Japanese citizen and then lived here for 5 years or more. If you have the cash to buy a house then you can just go ahead, but that's not an option for most people!

I'm not trying to be negative but for many the realities of living in Japan turn out to be quite different than they thought- I'm just saying take it one step at a time. Buying a house here is something you probably won't get around to until at least your 30s, which is a long way off for you. Remember prices are likely to have gone up by then.

First of all it's better to focus on what kind of work you want to do in Japan, what kind of visa you will come over on and what you should study in order to get here, then how to live day to day in a foreign country when you do get here.

Worry about buying a house later!

I really don't have any idea what kind of work I'll be doing XD For a while I wanted to be an anesthesiologist, but several articles persuaded me against it. I can't seem to find much about jobs in Japan besides teaching english or running a business. Does anyone know about high income careers in Japan?

Josh, in most big towns--think Paris, London, New York--it cost a fortune to have a house close to downtown with a sliver of a backyard the size of a small living room. As for a high income..being a foreigner, even one who speak the local language of the new country fluently and has lots of diplomas, working experience etc. has a very hard time making a go a it. I came to North America many years ago as a legally landed immigrant. Like the majority of other immigrants,it took me 10 years more than a local person with less education to make a decent living. And I was lucky! some of my staff were former doctors, engineers etc. who had no hope of ever doing these jobs as their education wasn't recognized and their English too basic. One of the architects we used at work was from the UK. He had to go back to university for years in North America, re-learning what he had done years ago, before being allowed to practice. His wife had been lucky to get a good job at once and supported him financially but it took them over 7 years to finally get a decent life back and be able to buy a rundown house that took them several more years of working in their spare time to fix. This shouldn't deter you from moving to Japan but it will be harder for you to make a good living than in the USA. And you will always be a foreigner, even when you go back to the USA for a vacation. I am very happy where I live, and made my life with a wonderful Japanese person there. There is more to happiness than lot of money and a backyard! If some of us give you unpleasant facts it is because we have been there and know that visiting a country for a couple of weeks/ months and trying to make a living there are too different things.

Higher income jobs for foreigners here are mostly in the finance industries (working for foreign investment banks with offices in Japan), and the management levels of IT at foreign companies with office here. Friends of mine in these industries earn 10 million yen a year or more, which is pretty good pay.

English teaching is the low end, you're right- you won't be buying a house in downtown Tokyo on a teacher's income.

If you really want to have a well-paying job in Japan, you will need to study either an economic subject or computers, and then get some experience in the industry in your home country as entry level jobs are rare.

Very, very few foreigners have ever been able to work in the medical field here, unless you are a native speaker of Japanese that isn't a realistic option.

I've gotten a lot of good advice! Thanks, everyone!

Okay-- getting looks all the time doesn't make me feel outside the loop at all. In fact, you really do just start to ignore it. I went to Japan for a week and when spending time with my fiancee, who is Japanese, I got probably double the looks because we were usually holding hands and that's not common.

I like to think that they're checking me out ^_~ It's a little sad, but I look different to somebody who was born and raised around everybody who had similar features, so I don't mind people looking at me. I just stay empty-headed and unoffended about it. No harm, no foul. It's really not as bad as everybody goes on about.