My wife got a job getting her one step closer to her dream one, and we have to move to from my beloved Kansai to Tokyo.
I won’t hide I am not fond of big towns in general. I also spent a single month in Tokyo 20 years ago, so suffice to say my experience is dated.
We are to choose a place to live within the next month, and I have pretty much zero familiarity with the area. If anyone is familiar with the Tokyo area, we would be very glad if you could share some of your knowledge with us!
We were living the past few years in a lovely coast town in the Kansai region, with moutains and jungle accessible by walking 10 minutes, a supermarket and Daimaru store next door and a lot of great food places, especially bakers, although a bit on the pricey side. It has also been the single, most quiet town I have ever known in Japan. Local law prohibits trucks, and even those noisy advertising cars!
It would be unreleastic to look for this all at once, but I am curious to know of some towns in the west of the Tokyo area that are offering at least some green (the places we have inspected so far are incredibly parse), and most importantly limited noise pollution.
We have been told about Kamakura and the Tokyo porttown, but they are remote from the JR Chuo or Tokyo Metro Keio lines, Kamakura being an 1h30 commute away from her job, and Minato-ku being about 1 hour away.
If you know of any safehaven in the middle of this urban jungle, we are totally looking forward to hearing about it!
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Edit: corrections to stuff showing how clueless I am about the region!
My friend who lived there for a couple of years said he’d be hopeless at this but his wife, who’s in Japan at present and about to fly back, may be able to help. He said he’ll ask her over the weekend so I’ll report back as soon as I know anything.
At what station will your wife be working? Kamakura is actually on the east of Tokyo, not West. Did you mean to say east? Kamakura is a very nice place but it’s extremely touristy so it’s not a place I would want to live. The further away from Tokyo you get the more green you will encounter but that also increases your commute. If you want to be in Tokyo but close to mountains I would suggest Takao station on the Chuo line. I basically lived in Tokyo while I was there so my knowledge of the outskirts isn’t great but I can try to answer any questions you might have.
Her work will be split between Kichijoji and Kasumigaseki, which makes it a bit tough to live on the outskirts: which is a shame, that Takao place looks lovely (and oh-so affordable)! While it probably will be a bit too remote for us to get an appartment or house there, I am sure it is a place I will check out on my freetime.
To exploit your knowledge of the town, I would ask simply what was the less busy, busting or noisy part of the capital. Or reversely, what places may have given you bad memories and that you’d suggest us to avoid? (I’ll issue an example of something we were especially sensible to: while I experienced next to zero problem in my year in Kyoto, or my 3 years in the south of the Hyogo prefecture, my 2 years in the north Osaka suburbs were marked by quite a few stalking incidents)
Thank you for your time!
In regards to crime, I wouldn’t really know. What I loved so much about Tokyo (and Japan in general is that I could feel comfortable walking around anywhere and anytime with a wallet stuffed full of cash (not that I generally did of course, but I would often have $200-300 on me. Kichijoji is one of the most popular places to live in Tokyo. They’ve got a beautiful park and lots of interesting “artsy” shopping areas and boutiques. If you can find a place there that you can afford then that would be great. Takao is basically on the Chuo line so it would be fairly straightforward getting to work. I spent a lot of years living in Nishi-Tokyo and I liked it well enough. If you’re looking at the Chuo line, then maybe look for something around Tachikawa or Kokubunji station. Tachikawa is a 20 minute commute from Kichijoji and Kokubunji is even closer. Tachikawa has a huge park close to it, although I’ve never been there. 42 minutes away from Takao mountain, which is not a very big mountain but it’s a nice little hike and definitely “inaka”. The Chuo line is a good line because it goes into Shinjuku and Tokyo which is great but it’s ridiculously crowded during the rush hours and there are often delays due to jumpers. You may be a little shocked by the crowds if you have to commute into Tokyo.
On the thermometer, there is 5°C average difference between where I live and Tokyo, but the humidity is a great equalizer and makes anything above 22°C feel about the same ;)
The horrible part about town is how they conserve heat, and how usually the night doesn’t get much cooler than the day, making it quite hard to bear - another reason why I disliked my time in Osaka.
Thanks for the comments! The distances are so huge, it becomes apparent it will be tough to balance our love for green with her regular need to get in the east of the capital in a process which should imply the dreadful Yamanote. I am definitely not looking forward to the rush hour of a JR line in the capital.
"I don’t think we’re going to be great help with this. I always stayed in one place, deep inside the city (Nakano-sakaue, a short walk from the hub of Shinjuku) and [wife] never really house-hunted plus she also lived in the east of Tokyo with her parents. We were kind of city dwellers.
[Wife] thinks around Yokohama. She mentioned Kamakura and Saitama but these may be too far for work wherever that may be. Tama? [Wife] feels Hachioji is probably a good bet for greenness. Again, depends on commute time…"
Seems both your friend’s wife and Canuck are pointing in the same direction: the far west of the Tokyo special prefecture!
While, sadly, I don’t think we will able to live there (that would turn one of my wife’s two regular commutes into an hour and change trip), both are places we intend to enjoy on our free time, if we indeed move to Tokyo.
We are getting the answer whether we are to move in the next 48 hours.
I’d gladly take you up on your offer, if I wasn’t a gentleman as well and wouldn’t dare to impose such a thing to anybody.
The move is pretty much decided, although actually moving is proving to be tough, as we need to find a place. Doh, I know! but the country is all based on intermediaries, and the Tokyo estate market is such a volatile thing, it has been like trying to catch flies in a fishing net so far.
In local fashion, we are expected to pick a place on a whim, but that’s definitely not something they can ask us, so we will see very shortly if it is a breaking point.
I should probably have named this “Probably moving to Tokyo next month”.
If all goes well, we will move next week.
After visiting a bunch of cute but ultimately uninspiring livings, our agent proved useful and spotted a new offer which looked really promising. We put an option on it and visited it today, and it is as good as we expected it to be. It is located in downtown Tokyo, which is an incredibly noisy place. It just… I can’t even describe the noise in a big street. But I am of those who thinks that you have to do something wrong, you might as well do it right, and it is located in a relatively quiet place, just 30 meters from all the crazyness.
It sure is a change of vista. I also didn’t expect it to be so coooold! Having grown used to the Kansai region’s 32 degrees summer season average, the gap of about 5 degrees in temperature was quite staggering. Our teeth were even chattering (I am not exaggerating) in the train, while we could only witness salarymen ventilating themselves with their fans.
And the crowd. Middle of the morning, all those minor Tokyo stations felt like Osaka’s central at peek time. I am scared to set foot in Shibuya or Shinjuku.
Anyway, when we reached Kyoto on the train back, we felt like we were back home. This move is going to be really hard on the mind. But indeed, there seems to be some really nice countryside merely an hour away from our place, so that thought cheers me up!
