This is a really bizarre claim. Tokyo, like Japan is special in it's own right, but it, like the rest of Japan, is very homogeneous, you are pretty much getting the same thing everywhere (or slight variations thereof). And, as a non-Japanese, much of what the natives can experience is somewhat closed to outsiders, or simply doesn't appeal to them. And no, Tokyo doesn't list in the actual ranked most livable cities list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_most_liveable_cities
> Tokyo has the most number of Michelin stars for a single city.
Because we all like to eat at Michelin starred restaurants...
This article reads like the author has misinterpreted his own personal preferences as some gospel truth that should apply to everyone. Which really isn't of much use to anyone.
But Monocle is a magazine put out by and aimed at wealthy urban professionals with mucho disposable income. Their priorities and idea of liveability is not the same as other groups'.
That may be. But smegel's claim was that Tokyo does not appear on any rankings list. And the evidence presented for this was a page which in fact had Tokyo first on a rankings list.
Overreacting much? The author clearly states that it's his own personal opinions.
> Because we all like to eat at Michelin starred restaurants...
No, but having a lot of Michelin restaurants says something about the quality of their food culture, which anyone who has been to Japan can agree is one of the best in the world.
Some of the hippie-ish street kids like patchouli. But it's not actually a prevailing smell here in SF. I smell pot in the streets everyday, patchouli only rarely.
Tokyo has a lot more foreigners than say Beijing or even Shanghai. It is quite amazing to me that almost everyone seems to speak some English (coming from China, where foreigners are as rare as pandas and English is not common at all).
I only spent 15 days, I did not feel that I am getting the same experience there every day, it's quite the contrary.
For example, I wouldnt call the difference between tsukiji, asakusa, kabukicho and ginza slight variations.
Interesting read! I think the biggest advantage / disadvantage is the double-edged sword of there just not being a lot of startups in Tokyo. It's really easy to cut through the noise and stand out, but at the same time, there's not as much of a high-quality community of people doing interesting things.
For anyone looking to experience the Tokyo startup community first-hand, we're going there next month with Hacker Paradise (hackerparadise.org) and will be throwing a number of events with the local tech scene.
Caser i would be very interested in joining you for a drink. Currently me and a friend are running a small event for the startup/tech community in Tokyo. Check us out on slack/doorkeeper.
One detail worth mentioning, and a few other bloggers have touched on this as well is that Japan, from a business perspective, can still be very xenophobic. Kind of a cultural and racial version of the "not built here" problem. If it's a problem for foreigner workers, it is likely a compounded problem once you throw in the high-risk nature of start-ups and the extremely risk-adverse cultural preferences.
A lot of people like to talk about Tokyo as the next start-up city for some reason.
I love Tokyo, but I imagine places like Shanghai or Shenzen to be much better. Cheaper cost of living, better economic environment (that is, despite the recent crack, China is still growing their economy tremendously)
When I went to an embassy networking event in Shanghai there were plenty of people starting new business or new offices, but a networking event in Tokyo for the same country could only muster people who worked for the big old companies for a long time.
"eat some of the healthiest cuisine known to man, and hack away."
I love Japanese food, specially fish. But I don't know if the above statement is true after Fukusima. I try not eating fish in Japan now just in case, is a constant effort, because I like it so much.
"Tokyo is the world’s most livable city."
Most people I know in Tokyo does not live, they just work, and work. Lots of people there seeing their families(kids if they could afford to have them) on weekends. Extremely expensive place to live.
I prefer the German or Swiss model of work.
Japan is getting older and older, it is already a gerontocrazy, and very nationalistic. There are more opportunities for young foreigners in the future in Asia in places like Vietnam or Thailand.
Old people have something in common, they HATE change, and startups are change.
I would recommend living in Japan for lots of things, but never for startups. For me they are the antithesis of it(I worked there when I was younger).
Even where you can eat the fish, much of Japanese cuisine is far from healthy. Fried this, insane sodium that, etc. not to say I don't absolutely love it, or that they don't have plenty of healthy food, but let's not kid ourselves.
"Putting aside all other variables (changing skill-sets, technology trends, etc.), if you’re financially responsible and even if none of the 15 startups is a unicorn, at least one is bound to have a decent enough exit to pad a good nest-egg."
What? So 1 in 15 startups makes a big enough exit for not only the executives, but run of the mill engineers to have a good retirement? What universe is this guy from? I want to live in that universe!
Not really retirement, but 200k in equity payout for a senior engineer isn't exactly rare.
I'd call 200k a "decent enough exit to pad a good nest-egg". It's not fantastic, it's not going to create a nest-egg, but it will "pad" a good nest-egg.
Lifestyle factors: Tokyo is a wonderful place to live and work. (Much, much better than I had expected prior to moving there.)
Relevant to startup factors:
a) Unbelievably bad fundraising environment as compared to the Bay Area. The absolute amount of money available is pretty large, but for a variety of pipeline reasons, I would not assume it was easily accessible for a variety of firms that would have an easy time accessing Meaningful Amounts of Money in the Bay Area as of 2015 (or any time for the last 10 years, for that matter).
b) Talent market: with specific regards to foreign entrepreneurs hiring in Tokyo, I often find that they have... interesting expectations. "Hey I'd like to find a bilingual Japanese/English engineer who has startup-compatible risk tolerances, is comfortable working in a bicultural environment under a minimum amount of supervision, can solo-ship code in one or more modern programming stacks, and is willing to work for $2.5k per month." I think if you also have this expectation, you will not find the Tokyo labor market to be accommodating of your desires.
Assuming one is reasonably clueful with regards to looking for folks who actually exist... I think one would be a bit disappointed with regards to who actually exists and it what quantity. It's a minor miracle that one can reliably staff a team of 20 engineers to build a never-before-seen highly scalable application out of nothing to do something which is actually meaningful. You can accomplish this miracle in the Bay Area. It will be expensive, but it is doable, and you'll be one of hundreds of firms doing it at the same time. In Tokyo... you're going to find that individual pieces of that 20-strong team are very, very hard to find. A CTO who has done it before? An architecture lead who is both capable of making good choices and will also happily actually touch an AWS account with their own two hands? An intermediate Rails or Python developer who can both ship code and is willing to work for you? Times five? Every hire there is a fun adventure which might end in "And then despite everyone's best efforts there was no engineer available for hire and the company died ingloriously."
c) Ambient competence levels among Tokyo entrepreneurs and other people associated with the startup ecosystem are... how to be charitable here... lagging ambient competence levels in Silicon Valley. By at least a few cycles, if not more. Stuff which is way-the-heck-below table stakes for e.g. a YC startup which is N weeks old is treated here like PhD thesis level black magic. (Specific example: "Your cost of customer acquisition is actually highly sensitive to your conversion rate if you're using paid acquisition sources." "That doesn't sound right." "sigh Alright, let's go to the whiteboard for a minute." 15 minutes later "WHOA.")
As a "bilingual Japanese/English engineer who has startup-compatible risk tolerances, is comfortable working in a bicultural environment under a minimum amount of supervision, can solo-ship code in one or more modern programming stacks", I indeed have had to check on a few occasions whether the stated salary was monthly or daily. Generally a good sign that the talk is not going anywhere...
I highly agree that Tokyo is a great place to live and work. As long as you can fit in with the culture. I would also strongly agree with the other points.
We have a small slack channel with a few startup members here however its not very active. Join us there and also at tech crawl tokyo later this month to meet some more of us.
As a digital marketer that last example had my jaw on the ground. What do you think that knowledge gap can be attributed to? There is just so much info online these days that I find that pretty shocking.
On the flip side, I'm curious about any differences on the product development side for physical products. Japan has quite the reputation for obsessive (in a good way) attention to detail, quality, and elegance and I wonder if that trickles into any startups making physical products.
> Talent market: with specific regards to foreign entrepreneurs hiring in Tokyo, I often find that they have... interesting expectations. "Hey I'd like to find a bilingual Japanese/English engineer who has startup-compatible risk tolerances, is comfortable working in a bicultural environment under a minimum amount of supervision, can solo-ship code in one or more modern programming stacks, and is willing to work for $2.5k per month." I think if you also have this expectation, you will not find the Tokyo labor market to be accommodating of your desires.
Are you sure about this? Honest question.
I read a lot of posts, especially in threads like this one on HN and other places, by developers typically in their early twenties, who want to go to Japan and work for a few years and experience something different, before heading back home and getting a proper job. Some of them are going to be fine with pretty much any salary that pays the bills (and $2.5k can pay the bills for a twenty-something with no responsibilities in Tokyo - this is a typical salary for an English teacher here). I don't know how serious they are but surely some of them find their way over here.
Of course it sucks to compete with this if you're an engineer who wants to stay here long-term and earn an actual living - but from the perspective of an entrepreneur it's great. It's sort of like being a games developer, except you're not limited to making games.
I'm an undergrad in US and have thought about going to Japan to work after graduation.
However, according to my Japanese teacher many people in Japan have to work until 8pm or later on a regular basis, and sometimes overtime. Does anyone have those kind of experience in Tokyo's tech industry?
One detail missing from their overtime situation is a lot of companies do not practice interval between work hours. This basically means you can be forced to work until 5AM and then expected to show up 9AM in the morning.
There seems to be some talk about the regulatory amendment to fix this, but considering current "service overtime" already crossing legal limit, I don't know how effective that will be.
Ummm language?
It's easy to underestimate communication because it is hard to quantify but when you cannot express the value of a startup clearly or develop deep relationships due to language barriers its going to affect your success.
This was my first thought - I can't imagine how someone could feasibly start a company here without being at least somewhat bilingual.
I've seen people found and run successful companies with only moderate Japanese ability, but only when they'd already lived here a long time and had lots of contacts. (And folks in that position will have their own opinions about the startup climate...)
FWIW, these guys (Gengo) show up on Glassdoor/Tokyo now and then with a role description in English, but based on this blog post they seem to be looking exclusively to pull Japanese engineers out of e.g. "Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic". You'll find good engineers there of course, but you won't find them with a listing on Glassdoor in English. It's good to know what their target is, since I apparently wasted my time applying there about a year ago, and again earlier this year, without even so much as a follow-up "thanks but no thanks" stock email - just total radio silence.
(Anyway, Glassdoor is not very active in Tokyo.)
I wouldn't take what this author is saying to mean "Tokyo is attractive for engineers". It basically is not, at least not compared to the Bay Area, or really any tech-focused metro area in North America or Europe. Especially considering Tokyo's large population (>35 million), it is not a global tech hub by any stretch. Entrepreneurs might be a different story.
They forgot to mention the weather; Tokyo has seasons and an oppressive summer with snow in the winter. The Bay Area's climate is much more moderate and liveable, in my opinion.
I agree that the summers are moist and rainy, followed by heat that can kill. But I don't think you are right in describing the winters as snowy, in six years I remember about four instances of snow. Also, it lasted for at most two or three days. The Tokyo winter is horrible in that it is grey and windy, but certainly not snowy.
Note for tour Sets visiting in August...don't think the cooling centers are just for children and elderly. You WILL be using them. I'm from Chicago which has hot and humid summers and nothing prepared me for that weather.
It "snows" every year in Tokyo but it often does not stick around very long. 2012 and 2013 both had a lot of snow (by Tokyo standards) on separate occasions.
If you are looking for connections and opportunities in Japan, we are running community of over 300+ members (319 to be exact as for now) from tech/startup scene in Asia.
File this under "doable but not easy." If you need specific instructions, they're often situation-specific and outside the scope of an HN comment. Email me and I'll data-dump about it. (Offer open to any HNer at essentially any time.)
The high percentage options are a) spouse of Japanese national, b) engineering status of residence (need to be able to demonstrate approximately ~3 million yen a year in income and an ongoing contract with one or more Japanese companies, and it is highly to your advantage if they're established old-line companies), and possibly, c) intra-company transfers (easiest to accomplish for established startups with significant ex-Japan operations), and possibly d) the new point-based immigration system.
Is it that tough? As a freelancer, I'm sure it's not easy, but as a funded company hiring engineers with college degrees, I thought it was relatively straightforward either with the Engineering visa or by somehow classifying the work under the Specialist in Humanities visa.
(btw will be back in Tokyo in September, would love to buy you coffee)
I believe it is easy to hire people with the Engineering visa. I was looking into it recently, as I was considering hiring someone, but it looks like I don't need to at the moment, so I haven't looked at the details closely. My understanding is that the main issue you might have is a small capital requirement and/or income to show that you can support the employee. I've talked with people who have sponsored foreign English teachers and they have told me that they had absolutely no difficulty (though this was several years ago -- things might have changed).
I haven't actually read the fine article yet, but I'm not really sure what would attract people to doing start ups in Japan. Hiring locals is difficult because of the way the job system works -- people don't change jobs every few years. It's quite a bit cheaper to live here than many other places in the world, but it is culturally very different. I spent 5 years here teaching English amongst many young (mostly American) colleagues. I wouldn't bring people over here unless you are prepared to help them out a lot when they inevitably get in trouble (shuddering recalling the experience of having to help my colleague who punched a police officer). It's a big commitment. Also, unless you have a lot of experience with Japanese culture yourself, it can be a bit tricky to handle all of the business issues. For my business, I write code and leave all the business issue to my Japanese wife (even though I am quite fluent in Japanese). Without her and my accountant, I would be lost.
But, of course, Japan is an amazing place if you are the kind of person who fits in here. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.
Actually, they have combined "Engineering," "Specialist in Humanities" and "International Operation" into one category now.
From what I know, it sounds like it is relatively simple to hire someone with college degrees, as long as receiving company can demonstrate they will be able to support (e.g. Company's big enough, making profit, etc.), but having even one factor outside of these parameters can severely make this complicated or impossible.
If you have a degree in STEM, it is easy for a Japanese company to get a VISA for you.
But you need to find a company that is willing to sponsor you, and speaking Japanese is a requirement for most of them. I mean if is not impossible to find a tech job where only English is required, but you will have to compete with a lot of other candidates from different nationalities; whereas if you are bilingual and you have an acceptable CV, finding a job is extremely easy. In some cases, maybe even easier than for a Japanese who is monolingual.
Well delete your tumblr account, because "white male" is not a useful concept in Japan. They might assume what country you're from, but if you're not too blonde, loud and fat they'll charitably assume you're French or Russian. And it won't get you further than being black, African, Chinese or anything.
Japanese landlords are openly racist, though, and will ban whole categories of people at will. They might have a problem with one tenant and just stop accepting any Chinese person or sailor or whatever for a year.
This is a really bizarre claim. Tokyo, like Japan is special in it's own right, but it, like the rest of Japan, is very homogeneous, you are pretty much getting the same thing everywhere (or slight variations thereof). And, as a non-Japanese, much of what the natives can experience is somewhat closed to outsiders, or simply doesn't appeal to them. And no, Tokyo doesn't list in the actual ranked most livable cities list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_most_liveable_cities
> Tokyo has the most number of Michelin stars for a single city.
Because we all like to eat at Michelin starred restaurants...
This article reads like the author has misinterpreted his own personal preferences as some gospel truth that should apply to everyone. Which really isn't of much use to anyone.