Tokyo Cost of Living: Overview
What it costs to live and work remotely from Tokyo, broken down by category.
Tokyo runs expensive relative to most destinations on this site, closer to Dubai than to Bangkok, with the added planning wrinkle that Japan's Digital Nomad Visa is capped at six months and non-renewable — this is a stay to plan deliberately, not an open-ended base.
- 1BR apartment, city area — ¥130,000-200,000/month (~$870-1,330 USD) in central wards (Shinjuku, Shibuya); every additional minute further from a train station meaningfully lowers rent, and moving to a ward like Koto or Suginami can cut this substantially without losing real access to the city
- Coworking, monthly — genuinely scalable from around ¥1,200-2,200/day passes up to premium monthly memberships exceeding ¥50,000 (~$330); buying focus only when needed via day passes is a real, commonly used strategy here rather than committing to a full membership
- Eating out, per meal — convenience-store meals and casual chain restaurants run genuinely affordable (a few hundred yen), while central-neighborhood dining or Western-style restaurants cost meaningfully more
Run your own numbers
Every figure above is a starting estimate. Plug in your real budget with the Cost Calculator.
Open the Cost CalculatorThis is informational, not advice. Visa, tax, and immigration rules change, and a general guide can't account for your specific situation. Before you act on anything here, confirm current details with the relevant embassy, consulate, or a licensed immigration or tax professional. See our editorial policy for how we verify what we publish.