Only in Japan: Expenses

31 Responses

1. Funeral expenses are typically pretty high – think about 3 million yen is average, but some entrepreneurial types are thankfully trying to establish cheaper options.

   1. Eeek. Does that include the special, shiny Buddhist name that will get you respect in the afterlife?
      I have left instructions that I want to be cremated and dumped in the sea. Hopefully my family will do that instead of wasting my money by giving it to the funeral industry (which, if they are anything like the wedding industry in Japan, don’t deserve it).

      1. I don’t think it does include the name thing. That seems so ridiculous to me but it’s very hard to put your foot down and refuse when it comes to grieving relatives! I want to be put out with the burnable trash on a Wednesday or Friday.

      2. I imagine there is some kind of surcharge 😉

      3. Hi,
         Does that mean you made a will?
         Are there any posts about Wills? Id be interested in that.

      4. Hi Jon
         There are a couple of posts about wills, but I haven’t gotten around to making a will in Japan yet. Check these out:
         http://www.retirejapan.info/wills.html
         http://www.retirejapan.info/blog/interview-wilhelmina-penn
         http://www.retirejapan.info/blog/dying-in-japan

2. Shichi-go-san: photo studio cost me 116,000 last month.
   Respect for the aged day – shelled out 60,000yen worth of gifts for grandparents and grand-aunts who had given money to my daughter during the year.
   Can’t believe you didnt mention shakken, given your general opinion about cars. 😉

   1. Ouch, ouch, ouch.
      I wasn’t surprised by the idea of shaken, which is why I didn’t include it. Having a road-worthiness test makes sense to me, even if the Japanese version seems designed to make people buy more new cars…

3. I get the feeling a lot of Japanese question these expenses and also don’t pay. No reikin contracts are becoming more common, and there are also sharehouses and guesthouses etc. that offer much more flexible terms, although they are still nowhere near as common as the normal two-year contract. I know a few people that got married and the registry office and dispensed with the ceremony all together, making do with a small private party at much more reasonable expense. Another friend told me the story of his bridal fair, where the guy after dropping a draw-dropping figure, said that actually you’ll get about 3万 from each guest, so that brings it down to “only” xx(x?)万. So much for that being money to help a new couple get a good start, it’s all just allowing the wedding ceremony company to increase their minimum prices.
   I can see the difficulty though when there’s a large societal pressure to conform. Being the only kid in class without the proper bag, not turning up to a wedding etc. doesn’t look cool. I keep about 6 months of expenses in cash as an emergency fund. Hopefully that should cover things like this. Just have to not get fired at the same time as a daughter coming of age, getting married, and moving into a new house.

   1. We did our wedding on a ‘pay for your meal’ basis (7,000 yen per guest). Luckily I haven’t attended that many weddings, but have been expected to pay (and paid) 30,000 or 50,000 yen a time as a couple.

4. @Adamu
   I know your autocorrect changed “draw-dropping figure” ‘jaw-dropping’, but I chuckled when I actually read it as ‘drawer-dropping figure’, or in other words ‘bend over and take it.’ 🙂

   1. Haha, I even proof-read it and didn’t notice. Good catch.

5. And if you get your kid into a public school, even Todai, at ¥267,800 per term, I think it all evens out.
   I’m budgeting ¥4M for any funeral. We’ve always taken our own pics of shichi-go-san (there might have been something, but nowhere near as much as the above).
   We’ve owned for decades, so no rental fees/complaints. Older kid got married on the cheap (simple city hall registration), tho they did have a simple party 6 months later, which we helped with.
   Overall & altogether, it’s been cheap. (I guess ages ago what we were paying for daycare seemed steep, but still far better than what equal care would have been in the US.)

6. Additionally @retirejapan, I think you’re click-baiting in this post–playing to the stereotypes of this kind of thing instead of looking at it rationally or looking at what people have experienced.

   1. I think that’s a bit harsh, CS 😉
      The post isn’t saying life in Japan is awful or expensive, it’s just talking about specific expenses I find weird.
      The idea of the post was suggested by someone else, and I thought it would make a nice fun weekend post.
      Going down the list, I have paid key money several times (1), am currently involved in shopping for a randoseru (2), have given all sorts of people random envelopes containing more money than I want to think about during my seventeen years here (3), have not experienced (4) yet myself but have heard the same thing from several people I know, and have paid for three daughters’ coming of age experiences (5).
      I guess it could be seen as click-baity, but just “the diet coke of clickbait”, surely -“just one calorie! Not clickbaity enough!”

7. Money gifts–I look at these as paying it forward especially weddings and funerals. For each one that you slip a few ‘man’ into an envelope to give to someone, there’s a fair chance that it’ll come back someday. E.g. one of our daughters had a wedding party, but she’s also been to others (before and after). So she’s given money to a number of friends, but has received from that same circle, too. Some talk is that wedding parties are a zero sum thing–that you’ll possibly receive as much as it cost you to put it on. (exclude the Hawaii extravaganzas!) For funerals I’m not very well connected, so my wife may not receive much; OTOH, she is, and I think hers would be very well attended.
   Weddings in the states can be pretty $$$. I have a niece who spent several thousand dollars on her dress; our daughter spent 5万. And the venue/banquet was much more lavish for my niece (I didn’t go).
   Our kids received but never used their ‘otoshi-dama’–straight to the bank and saved for uni.
   Elementary school bags–our first did get one, a ‘present’ from her grandparents. By the time the second was ready for school, everyone had realized that any backpack would do. And those randoseru were part of the uniform, which a lot of schools in this part of Japan have done away with. (My guess is that 1 in 5 schools here still go with a uniform, and even at those the need for that traditional bag is probably weaker than a generation ago.)
   Key Money–We’ve paid this once. My first job in Tokyo (where I met my wife, a co-teacher) we had apartments on campus for a whopping ¥20,000/month. No key money, not even a damage deposit or the last month’s rent up front. And after paying key money that one time…
   House-building Gifts– We bought an existing/used house. Even with the various remodeling we’ve had done (kitchen was ¥2.6M long ago) there’s never been any ‘tipping’ for the 業者.
   Lesson? Don’t buy new. 😉
   Or, buy new, and eat those costs–with the understanding that the cost of your loan here is less than almost anywhere.
   ***
   There really are some great values in Japan. I haven’t had any accidents for so long that my insurance rates are a bargain. I now pay ¥37,000/year for full coverage–max numbers or 無制限 (except for my own car, which I don’t buy coverage for). That’s unheard of in the states.
   Gas is expensive, but the flip side is that we don’t drive US distances. My commute used to be 8km each way (and I’d bike it some, too).
   I said above that daycare seemed expensive, and 5万/month did seem so. But that was for two kids in 保育園 (not 幼稚園). The intangible there was that it became the modern version of the extended family. Our kids grew up then with 8-10 other kids who kind of became their sibs (rather than being isolated in a house or apt.). We haven’t been for a few years now, but even after our kids ‘graduated’ we’d go back each July for the summer bazaar, and eat, drink and reminisce with the parents we went thru that period with.
   Another aspect of parenting is having a baby in the first place. Isn’t it nice that you get about ¥400,000 from the gov’t for that? And that it’s typical that the mother will spend 5-7 days in the clinic, getting help & advice, rather than going home the next day? And that maternity leave from work is set at six weeks before the due date and eight weeks after? And that you can extend that leave for half pay? (Our daughter is adding 7-8months on.)
   Food can be expensive, and nights out, too. And taxis. Flip side is that there’s no tipping, an extra 20% tacked on at the end. And if you skip evenings out and go for lunch sets here–what a true bargain! You can cheap out for less than a thousand yen, but our sweet spot seems to be about 1500–you can get a great meal for that.
   ***
   And of course, health care…! As an american this is a no-brainer. Yes, rates depended on my salary, so I paid more than average. But it’s just so different (and so much better, more civil) than the US.
   Ben, I’d willingly pay all the ‘expenses’ you listed just for this. Given good health cover, why worry about a randoseru, a one-off cost that will make your kid feel good and fit in (if you actually need one!).
   ***
   I’m US, so if you’re Oz/NZ or european, our opinions may differ on housing, healthcare, and so on.
   Some good reading on a closely related question, with a really wide variety of viewpoints, is: https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/747i9i/do_you_think_life_here_is_expensive_how_does_it/

   1. I completely agree Japan offers excellent value in a lot of areas (especially eating out!).
      But that’s a different post. This wasn’t supposed to be a balanced analysis of COL here, just a list of things I find weird 🙂

8. And of course with those money gifts the receiver then has to spend time & energy organizing a return gifts which may be a great way to keep money flowing into the economy but it sucks in terms of having one’s house fill up with unwanted gifts. Even the ones that send you a catalogue to choose your own “gift” are unsatifying – a waste of paper for starters and after that a waste of time poring through them to find something you could bear to possess. How much easier to cut the amount from the start. That said, I also find wedding and baby shower lists in the west to be a huge bore!!

9. We completely avoided any house building gifts. Most people do give to the local temple, but being Christian we didn’t and it was a non-issue. First I’ve ever heard of providing money, snacks, and drinks to the work crew, though. Is that a special Sendai thing? I know several people who have built houses in Yamagata, including us, and never heard a word about this before.

   1. Mainly from blogs of people that built houses (not in Sendai). Maybe it isn’t a thing here either? Like I say, not personal experience 🙂

10. Thanks Ben for all of this – I am looking forward (!!) to the ‘will’s section! Was quoted 400,000 for a will legal in both Japan and the UK where I’m from. Someone needs to go through this – and it might as well be you 🙂 All in the name of research of course. Cheers

    1. Hi Julian
       I made an online will for the UK: http://www.retirejapan.info/blog/dying-in-japan
       Making a will here is on my to-do list. Stay tuned!

11. At largish private universities, donations are required every so often. I have paid several times towards new buildings and general funds. Mostly to the tune of 150,000 yen. I haven’t heard of anyone who has refused. Actually, they can hardly be called donations as you have to pay up. No choice.

    1. Is that not just the facilities fee? My three daughters went to private universities, and the facilities fees (for heating, using computers, etc.) were ridiculous (several hundred thousand yen a year).
       Maybe it’s just a different way of describing the same thing?

12. Actually, what I was referring to was money paid by members of staff at the university to the university. So as a teacher there, I was expected to cough up every time there was a special fund for a new campus or something. It was always called a donation. It included office staff as well as teachers. It was based on your salary and could be declared when doing your taxes .

    1. Oh, wow! That is extremely ballsy of the university. Not sure how I would react to my employer asking me to ‘donate’ to their capital project… maybe better when I was younger 😉
       That’s incredible. I wonder if anyone else has had similar experiences?

    2. “It was based on your salary and could be declared when doing your taxes .”
       This is the key point. Your 人事課 and/or 経理課 have calculated the amount that each given person can ‘donate’ towards a new facility >>that will also reduce your tax burden by an equivalent amount.<<
       For you, as the donor, you can either pay it in tax, or make the donation and reduce your tax by an equivalent amount.
       ***
       But that is for specific projects. I’ve heard on one private uni locally that asks teachers to return a part of their bonuses just for the heck of it, without the attached tax benefit.
       The first case is a bookkeeping trick that doesn’t hurt teachers at all while helping the school fund their project. The second is a shakedown.

       1. Interesting! So it’s an accounting trick. That makes it a lot less cheeky, but it seems the university could have explained it better 🙂

    3. Additionally, these “donations” at my school were voluntary. There’ve only been a couple, and the last one I said no. Reason was that they’re assuming they are your only income, so their calculation is based on their idea of your donation-tax reduction balance. I have some passive income, so their calculation of what I could donate would be incorrect.

13. My J-wife has done some deals with her relatives to nix the money gifts. It was getting a bit ridiculous. Sending each other money for our children.

    1. Sounds like a good idea! We’re still doing the money gift dance 🙂