I'm spending 3 months in Japan. I'm not on vacation, so I'm not spending money like a tourist.
This is about the cost of living a somewhat normal life in Japan, or as normal as possible while being here for only 90 days.
I'm in Fukuoka, often praised as the best city for digital nomads and tech workers.
Some prices (accommodation mainly) will be slightly cheaper than in Tokyo, but I think it balances out because Tokyo has more types of accommodation to choose from, such as co-living hotels and websites like Oakhouse.
Accommodation in Fukuoka & Japan
This is definitely my biggest expense in Japan.
As a foreigner, you won't have access to many of the cheaper short-term rentals for locals unless you speak Japanese well and have some kind of foothold in Japan already - a Japanese phone number, bank account or old address.
So, as a digital nomad, you're competing with tourist accommodations like hotels and Airbnb.
The options narrow down even more if you're looking for an apartment and not just a hotel room.
A hotel room means you can't cook at home, and you won't be spending much time working there. I always prefer an apartment because I need at least a small kitchenette and a desk where I can work from occasionally, and take calls/meetings.
There are three main options for apartments here in Fukuoka, and there are many more in Tokyo and Osaka.
Apartment hotels
Across Japan, there are apartment hotels that cater to longer stays than the average hotel. They will offer a small room equipped with a kitchenette, washing machine, a desk and other daily essentials.
If you're looking in Fukuoka, check out these options:
Out of these, Access Tenjin seems to be the most affordable - just under $900 USD per month. Others are around $1500 per month.
I highly recommend booking at least 2-3 months ahead of time. I contacted Access Tenjin about 6 weeks in advance, and they had nothing available so soon.
Besides Access Tenjin, the above options are usually booked through Booking.com or other hotel sites, because they are hotels. Unlike the next option:
Weekly/monthly Mansions
Don't get it confused with the English word 'mansion'. This isn't a billionaire celebrity's home. A 'mansion' in Japan is just a modern apartment building.
Weekly/monthly indicates they are available for a short-term, as opposed to the normal 1 year contract.
This is where you will get the best deals for a place that is quite large, modern and comfortable, and yet very cheap by Western standards.
Many listings in Fukuoka will be under $1000/month.
However, these short-term rentals are still treated as proper rental agreements.
These are not like Airbnbs.
There is much more formality involved and hoops to jump through.
- Searching on Japanese language sites like weekly-mansion.com
- Contacting and communicating with the owner or real estate agent
- Providing the necessary documents and doing paperwork.
- Paying the guarantor fee and possibly 'key money'.
- There won't be pillows, bedsheets, towels, etc, so you need to invest in all these yourself.
This is quite a hassle, almost not worth it if you're staying in the country for only 90 days. I think I'd only use this option if I had a local friend or an English-speaking real-estate agent to help me.
Leopalace
An exception to this might be Leopalace. This seems to be targeted at foreign students or short-term workers. They have lots of small flats of the exact same layout.
It might be easier to rent for foreigners. However, reviews claim these apartments are very low quality, with thin walls and flimsy furniture.
Airbnb
I found that Airbnb is still the easiest and most widely available option for digital nomads who want an apartment.
Here in Fukuoka, a reasonable budget for Airbnb is around $2,000 per month. Any lower, and it will be very small and uncomfortable for longer stays.
I paid $2,400 for my first month here in Fukuoka, which is more than I expected to spend in a relatively cheap city like Fukuoka.
I'm overpaying because I booked rather late - only 6 weeks before arriving, and the location is right next to Ohori park during the sakura flowering period (March-April), so prices are up during this time.
My Airbnb studio in Fukuoka.
I recommend booking at least 3 months in advance if you want the best places at the best prices. You should be able to find something decent for between $1,500 and $2,000 USD.
Airbnb also has last-minute deals if you are booking less than a month in advance, but keep in mind that you might not like anything you find.
Food - my diet in Japan
Possibly the best part of Japan - delicious and affordable food, available 24/7!
I was surprised to see that the price of food here in Fukuoka is around the same as in Thailand.
It's easy to find lunch for around ¥500 ($3), and dinner for around ¥1200 ($8).
Surprisingly, I'm spending less on food in Japan than I was in Bangkok!
The reason is that in Bangkok, I was going for more premium options like health-focused cafes. The cheaper food in Thailand meant poor-quality ingredients and questionable hygiene.
This isn't a problem in Japan, where all the food meets high quality standards.
Embracing local food culture
I noticed that many busy working Japanese don't fuss about food.
They will often eat breakfast, lunch, and sometimes even dinner from convenience stores (conbini). This isn't as bad as it sounds. The food in Japanese conbini is often quite fresh.
Other times they will eat in izakayas or noodle shops. I think single people in Japan don't cook much, but I'm guessing this changes once they have a family.
Japan also shares the general Asian attitude towards eating out as a casual and common occurrence, much more common than in the West.
Europeans tend to view going out to dinner as something you do on a special occasion, for restaurants to be a bit of a luxury. That's why it can be significantly more expensive than cooking at home.
It's different in Asia (and some southern European countries) where inner city apartments often completely lack kitchens, so eating out is more of a necessity.
Restaurants, cafes and izakayas often fill that gap. They provide a place where you can grab a cheap meal on a normal weekday and drink beer with your neighbours. Sort of a community kitchen.
Out of this necessity, the cost is often reduced and eating out can become just as cheap or even cheaper than cooking at home. Leading to more people eating out, and the restaurant industry booming.
Anyway, I eat out probably 80% of the time in Japan. Whereas in Poland and Australia, I only ate out 1-3 times per week.
Here is what my diet looks like in Japan.
Breakfast
Breakfast for me is usually around ¥500 ($3.50).
I'll usually have something I bought at the convenience store the previous night. This could be a ham and egg 'sando' (sandwich), or an onigiri (sort of a big triangular sushi).
In case I didn't buy anything the previous night, I always keep some easy breakfast in the fridge, like Yoghurt and muesli, eggs to boil, or even just a banana.
Lunch
The classic lunch in Japan is bento - a compartmentalized box meal consisting of rice, meat or fish, and a couple of sides. It provides a balanced and relatively healthy meal that I could eat every day.
Bento boxes can be found in every conbini or supermarket for about ¥600 ($4).
If health is your priority, just choose options with grilled or raw fish, rather than the karaage chicken or other deep-fried foods.
You can also find various noodle shops for a hot lunch - udon, ramen, yakisoba - all can be found for around ¥800 - ¥1200 ($5 - $8) per person.
Dinner
For Dinner, we will either cook something simple in our rice cooker, or go out to eat.
My favourite option for a normal weekday dinner in Japan is Teishoku restaurants.
Teishoku means a "set meal", consisting of:
- a main protein
- rice
- miso soup
- 2-3 sides (usually pickled vegetables)
It is the quintessential Japanese meal. Healthy and varied, and often fishy.
Teishoku restaurants in Fukuoka mostly charge in the range of ¥1,200 to ¥1,600 ($8 - $10) for a set meal. This usually includes unlimited refills of rice and miso soup.
Teishoku is our go-to because it's healthy and affordable, but of course, this is Japan - you can find plenty of delicious restaurants for any kind of food you want.
Our weekend favourites are tonkatsu or gyukatsu, and on cold days, a thick ramen hits the spot.
24/7 restaurants
If you're coming to Japan, you have to know these 3 franchise restaurants:
- Matsuya
- Yoshinoya
- Sukiya
Someone told me they are "the Japanese McDonalds" but I'm not so sure - they serve your food quickly but it's more like home cooking, not junk food.
They serve simple meals like teishoku sets or donburi (meat on a bowl of rice).
The amazing thing is that most of these will be open 24/7.
So if you land in Fukuoka in the early morning, or get back to the city really late after some outdoor adventure, you can always visit one of these for a solid and filling dinner.
In the worst case, you can fall back to conbini food, those are also open 24/7.
In Japan, you'll never be hungry!
Cooking in an Airbnb
For cooking in a small Japanese apartment, a rice cooker is an absolute lifesaver.
It's not just for rice. You can cook balanced meals with rice, meat, and vegetables in one of these.
A rice cooker is much more convenient than stove-top cooking because there is less cleanup and less space required. Just pile your ingredients into the rice cooker, switch it on, and come back in 40 minutes.
By the way, you might have heard that fruits are expensive in Japan. I think it's true, but the prices are not ridiculous, I'd say they are around 20% more expensive than what I would expect in other countries.
Only some fruits, like watermelon, might be unusually expensive.
The quality makes up for the price. The strawberries, for example, are flawless, they almost look fake 🍓, but you can smell them from a distance, and they are sweet!
For vegetables, just stick to what's locally available and common, such as cabbage, carrots, daikon radish and sweet potato.
In any country, it's important to adapt to local diets. If you keep trying to eat Western food in Asia, you're going to be overpaying.
Working from Cafes in Japan
Japan is a hard-working culture, probably the hardest-working in the world. So it shouldn't be surprising that it is common to work from cafes in Japan.
It's refreshing to see that, unlike in Southeast Asia, it's not only nomads doing this. In Japan, most of the people working in cafes will be locals.
The cafe culture and atmosphere is consistently great. It's actually hard to find a bad cafe here in Fukuoka. They are all clean and aesthetic, many have charging ports, and they aren't too crowded during the day. It is a pleasure to work here.
Oh, and the coffee is world-class. Recently, I've been binging 'dirty' matcha lattes - a coffee/matcha mix, infusing the already fantastic coffee with some extra Japanese flavour.
A cup of coffee costs around ¥600 ($4) usually. This is more than reasonable in exchange for a couple of hours working in a cafe.
Often, I'll spend a day cafe-hopping rather than going to a single workspace. Just make sure they're large enough and not so busy that you're hurting the business.
Here are some great laptop-friendly cafes in Fukuoka:
- SHIROUZU COFFEE 警固店 (our favourite)
- CAFFÈ OTTO.Piu
- dot.
- ViTO Akasakakeyakidoriten
- LAMP LIGHT BOOKS HOTEL fukuoka
Coworking spaces in Fukuoka
There are also plenty of dedicated coworking spaces across the city, and they are surprisingly affordable.
For drop-ins, most spaces charge by the hour, with about 2-3 hours being equivalent to the all-day rate.
In other words, if you plan to stay more than 2 hours, then you may as well stay the entire day.
the from
the from charges ¥1300 per hour, capping out at ¥2600 ($17) per day.
You'll find many co-working spaces in Fukuoka use the same pricing model.
However, the real bargain is in the monthly packages.
At the from, you can get all-day access Mon-Fri for just ¥9,800 ($65) per month. The catch is you need to buy 3 months minimum.
Both drop-in and monthly packages also include unlimited snacks, cold drinks, tea and coffee. They didn't cheap out on this - you'll find some nice pastries, energy drinks and sodas, Japanese cheeses and meats, and a huge variety of Japanese sweets.
dot.
This is free co-working space, as long as you buy a coffee (¥600).
It's actually two businesses sharing one space.
At the front is a normal cafe open to the public. It has a lovely, well-lit interior and great coffee, by the way.
At the back is a co-working space funded by Oita prefecture. It's part of their initiatives to foster a start-up culture and help university graduates find jobs.
It has desk space for around 20 people and a very relaxed vibe. Although, one weird downside is the Supreme clothing store on the floor below. The bass from their music is so loud that you can feel it through your seat, even though you can't hear the music.
You can sit in either the cafe area or the coworking space. The cafe will be a bit louder and more crowded at certain times of the day.
Diagonal Run Fukuoka
This is the cheapest co-working space in the city, with a day rate of just ¥1,650 ($11) or ¥550 per hour.
The location is very central, and you'll have a nice view towards Fukuoka Daimyo Garden City Park.
The nice thing is that if you pay for the day, you get a keycard so you can leave for lunch and come back. This is a problem at the from where you cannot leave if you paid the drop-in day rate and you're not a member.
My review of Fukuoka for digital nomads
I felt at home immediately when we arrived in Fukuoka, despite the language barrier.
I can't quite explain it, but there was something familiar about the streets, buildings and parks. Perhaps it reminds of Australia a bit.
The attitude of people here is very similar to my own personality - people are introverted, but not as much as in Tokyo.
I’ve already met so many people here doing their own thing — building businesses, chasing their passions, and avoiding the 9-to-5 grind.
Contrary to what I've heard, I find Japanese people quite friendly in general. I feel less like a foreigner here than I did in various European countries.
Ignoring these subjective feelings, Fukuoka is for sure, a great city for digital nomads.
It is very compact, making it easy to walk to many places. It has an abundance of working spaces, and delicious food options.
The public transport is also really good - it's easy to use the metro if you download the Suica mobile app. First add some Yen to your balance, and then you can just tap your phone on the metro gates. It's usually ¥260 ($1.77) per ride.
It's also surrounded by nature - one thing I didn't mention in this article focusing on cost of living.
Fukuoka, being so compact, is easy to get out of. The mountains are always visible on the horizon, and there is a lot of coastline if you love beaches and swimming, surfing or fishing.
So it's not just a city to work from, it's also a place where you can easily enjoy the Japanese countryside and nature.
The difficulty and cost of accommodation is the biggest downside of Fukuoka, and Japan in general.
There are lots of nice apartments on the rental market, but most of them are not suitable for digital nomads because of the difficulty of renting them, meaning we compete with tourists for hotels and Airbnbs.
Perhaps if Japan's digital nomad visa was extended to 1 year instead of just 6 months, this problem would be mostly solved. A 1 year rental would be much easier to find and would make it much cheaper to stay in Fukuoka.
I would certainly live in Fukuoka for a year or more if I had the chance.
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