Americans in Japan Are Big Spenders--for Necessities
For Americans living in the world’s most expensive city, things have gone from bad to worse when most people thought things couldn’t get much tougher.
In February, 1985, a dollar bought 263 yen. It has sunk steadily since then to unprecedented depths--shedding 12 more yen in the last three weeks alone. Now one dollar buys just 134 yen.
Staying Home
A couple with two children who want an evening out pay 1,900 yen an hour for a commercial baby sitter in Tokyo. That was a manageable $7.25 an hour 20 months ago, or $36.25 for a five-hour evening. That same baby sitter now costs $14.28 an hour--or $71.42 for five hours.
If you’re lucky, you may find a student baby sitter for 800 to 1,000 yen an hour, or $30 to $37 for the evening, plus cab fare home. That’s before you get to the restaurant, where $100 per person for a meal is common, or to the movies, where tickets cost 1,500 yen, or $11.27.
These days, many Americans in Japan are simply staying home, but that’s not cheap either. Rents for three-bedroom apartments designed for Westerners, with 1,728 square feet of floor space, average 720,000 yen a month, said Koichi Kageyu, a Tokyo realtor who deals with foreigners.
That price in February, 1985, was already a stiff $2,737 per month. Now the same apartment costs $5,373 per month.
Last year, Tokyo overtook Lagos, Nigeria, as the most expensive city in the world, according to the Business International Corp.’s survey of business executive costs. And that was before the latest fall in the dollar.
Mike Potterf, Far East director for the New York Port Authority, says that he has taken a 60% pay cut in the past two years in earning power because of currency fluctuations. His cost-of-living allowance hasn’t begun to make up the difference.
Potterf said his biggest shock recently came when he went to buy an ironing board. It cost more than $225. “I now do my ironing on the table,” he said.
When he took 10 people to a moderate restaurant recently, the bill came to 160,000 yen--more than $1,200. Because of budget-cutting measures back home, he pays some company-related entertainment expenses from his own pocket.
Potterf’s weekly grocery bill, for milk, cereal, coffee, and peanut butter and jelly, comes to $200. Potterf is single and eats out frequently, but even a bowl of noodles, he notes, costs $8.
Because of the high expenses and Japan’s virtual cash-only society, he often walks around with up to $1,000 in his pocket.
The declining dollar has hit almost every sector of life for Americans in Japan. Many say they have done nearly all the budget trimming possible, but they still reel from the cost of necessities.
$100 Shirts
Mac Jeffery, a spokesman for IBM World Trade Asia Corp., said the prices become numbing after a while.
“It’s the prices of New York times two,” he said.
Jeffery said he saw a cotton shirt in a Tokyo shop window recently for 14,000 yen, when the rate was 140 yen to the dollar.
“Can you imagine spending 100 dollars for a cotton shirt? And it wasn’t even a designer label,” he said. “I don’t care if I’d won the Irish sweepstakes, I wouldn’t pay that for a shirt.”
Jeffery’s seat to a concert by the group Manhattan Transfer cost $50. And the price for three tickets to the coming tour by the New York Metropolitan Opera is a staggering 100,000 yen, or $250 per ticket.
But Virginia Johnson, a single travel agent who has lived in Tokyo for 18 years, said foreigners would have an easier time if they lived as she does--Japanese style. That means a lot of sacrifices: living in a tiny apartment that measures 650 square feet, eating Japanese food, doing without a car, and very few nights on the town.
Where the Action Is
“If I tried to convert the amount of money it costs to live here, I’d get a stomachache,” she said. “I don’t suffer emotionally, living the way I do.”
Vincent Buck, an attorney for the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, lives in the second most expensive city in the world, Osaka, and he calls the prices there “surrealistic.”
“The biggest shock is going out for dinner for two and a few drinks and getting a bill for $200,” he said. “It makes you go dutch quite a bit.”
