Hello,
I am from Germany and currently working as a software engineer. I hold a master‘s degree in CS.
I have lived in Japan before for a year as an exchange student and worked for a Japanese company as a dev for half a year and returned back to Germany last year in March. Since then I am working in Germany and currently earn 48k euros (about 7.6 mio yen). After taxes (in Germany: income tax, health insurance and pension), I have about 2650€ each month (around 420,000 yen).
I am now thinking to move to Japan and applied since beginning of this year.
I looked for jobs on TokyoDev, Gittap, Daijob and LinkedIn and had several talks with recruiters but none of them could help me and I couldn’t find a job.
I had around 20-30 interviews and some of them made it to last round but got rejected in the end. All of the interviews are in Japanese. I have N3. I am kinda tired of applying but in the end I found one company which can offer me a visa. One thing is: salary is just 3.5 mio yen / year. I know it is so less and this is actually for new graduates with bachelor’s degree, but I couldn’t find any other job offer and tried to apply small companies. This one is located in Roppongi, Tokyo and I have to go to office every day and they don’t do housing support… seems like a hard pass but I really wanna go to Japan. Some people say I should try it for a year and find something else later. Anyways, before I make a decision: I make a comparison about living costs and so on.
The costs in Germany are my current costs and the Japanese one is my prediction, do you think the calculation is correct?
Gross Salary
Germany: ¥640,000
Japan: ¥289,000
Deductions
• Income Tax – Germany: ¥89,600 / Japan: ¥14,450
• Resident Tax – Germany: – / Japan: ¥15,000
• Pension Insurance – Germany: ¥59,520 / Japan: ¥28,000
• Health Insurance – Germany: ¥48,000 / Japan: ¥18,000
• Unemployment Insurance – Germany: ¥7,680 / Japan: ¥1,734
• Nursing Care Insurance – Germany: ¥9,600 / Japan: ¥0
Net Salary (after tax & social insurance)
Germany: ¥425,600
Japan: ¥213,816
Monthly Expenses
• Rent – Germany: ¥160,000 (currently a 2LDK with about 70m³) / Japan: ¥80,000 for a 1LDK
• Savings (ETF) – Germany: ¥80,000 / Japan: – (Won‘t be able to save any money probably.. currently in Germany I invest about 500€ / month)
• Food (Groceries) – Germany: ¥64,000 / Japan: ¥40,000
• Transportation – Germany: ¥16,000 / Japan: ¥16,000
• Mobile + Internet – Germany: ¥8,000 / Japan: ¥8,000
• Dining Out – Germany: ¥24,000 / Japan: ¥16,000
• Entertainment/Others – Germany: ¥32,000 / Japan: ¥16,000
Total Living Costs
Germany: ¥384,000
Japan: ¥176,000
Disposable Income (after all expenses)
Germany: ¥41,600
Japan: ¥37,816
What do you think? Should be manageable the salary? I am okay that my salary is less than in Germany and need to change my living standards but I will survive with that salary, no?
The salary in Germany is ok.. not bad but I can maintain a good living standard and can save money and so on…
I know basically everything is against the working in Japan.. got 30 PTO in Germany and full remote but imo life quality is just better in Japan… I wanna try a new challenge and willing to sacrifice the money I earn here flr a life in Japan tbh..
by zerato2412