14. Tokyo, Japan
I was honestly expecting Tokyo to be higher on this list, considering just how much there is to do in Tokyo and the amount of things that come out of Japan. Japan is the birthplace of Nintendo, not to mention a ton of other tech companies like Sony. We owe a lot to Japan, so I was honestly thinking that Tokyo, the capital, would end up somewhere in the top five. Much to my surprise, it’s not quite so expensive to live in Tokyo, but it is still pretty expensive.
While the numbers themselves look pretty scary when you consider just how big they are, they start to look a lot less scary when you take into account the conversion rate for Yen, which is 0.00947 USD / JPY. That means that Yen are worth a fraction of what US dollars are worth. Sure, ¥979 looks like a ridiculous amount of money to spend on lunch in a nice part of town, but in all honesty, ¥979 amounts to about nine dollars, which actually looks cheap compared to some other places on this list. Sydney ranked lower than Tokyo on this list and lunchtime there actually costs a bit more. Basically, the numbers make it look like you’re making it rain, but you’re not really. It’s the same for just about all of the other prices in Tokyo: the numbers are big, but it’s not quite so bad. For most of us, it’s just getting to Tokyo that would be the problem.
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