Is Nagoya the best place to live in Japan?

No. Unless you enjoy boiling every summer.

We like Hyogo where we have lived for 22 years.

Interesting question

nagoya often gets overlooked.

Ive lived in Tokyo for over 30 years. Every time I go to Nagoya on business I have a great time and it is cheaper. It certainly has its merits.

I'll second the comment about summer. Not nice. Tokyo's by comparison is merely unpleasant; Nagoya's is actively trying to boil you.

Lived there for a little over a decade, and apart from the heat in summer there wasn't much to complain about. Doesn't have Tokyo's bustling vibe, which may or may not be a selling point to you, and doesn't have Kyoto's old-world feel, but most places are within a reasonable distance by bus / subway / bicycle.

I get why people call it boring, but as a place to live? There are far worse.

Nagoya has long had the reputation of being a place where people do not want to live.

The linked article has some weird takes such as

Food in Nagoya has a mild taste and can be enjoyed by pretty much anybody.

Nagoya food is the complete opposite. Misokatsu uses very punchy red miso on top the cutlet. The same red miso makes Nagoya style miso soup or nikomi udon much heavier than miso soup from Kansai. Nagoya style tebasaki chicken wings taste like they have been rolled in salt and white pepper. The same favouring is used for dengushi deep fried skewered chicken skin. If you want mild tasting Japanese food, go to Kyoto.

The article also praises the airport for serving many foreign destinations,even though few European carriers use it. Kansai has the same problem.

The article also praises the airport for serving many foreign destinations,even though few European carriers use it. Kansai has the same problem.

Good point

almost any where is better than Osaka Nagoya Tokyo,

as long as you get out of the cities. I live in a semi rural are about 1 hr from Osaka, I say semi rural there are still 60k people living in my area. driving, parking is easy and free. rents are cheap compared to Osaka,

Ive seen 2LDK as cheap as 35000yen a month.

more space , bigger plots of land , meaning far more places to park your cars for free. My home/building is 440m2 3 stories, enough parking for 5 cars , I have a pool in back yard. Ground floor is my business space , top 2 floors my residence about 290m2. back in my home country Id only ever dream of living in a place this big, it would be crazy expensive , easily over $1 million

even though I dont work in the city, Id happily commute the 1hr each way if I had too. I do need to go there 1-2 times a week on business. My mortage is less than a 3LDK rental in Osaka. plenty of large parks around for the kids, never overcrowded, except maybe for festivals and fireworks.

I have lived in the outskirts of Nagoya for ten years now and I think it is alright.

It is definitely cheaper than the other big cities and the city center is quite concentrated which makes it easy to get around. The city itself is a bit bland though and despite having lived here for ten years I can't think of a single place I would call beautiful. It has its share of nice events though and on the whole I think it is a reasonable place to live.

Not sure what planet, island the author is on, but you will boil to death. There is nothing really here. All the big concerts skip Nagoya. As for the airport, it’s just a hub, very few direct flights to Europe.

and you’ll struggle to live on 148,000 yen a month. Survive…. Maybe. Live. Nope!!!

stickman1760Today  07:59 am JST

Interesting question

nagoya often gets overlooked.

Ive lived in Tokyo for over 30 years. Every time I go to Nagoya on business.

overlooked for sure. No big artists come here. Very few theme parks but has ghibli and lego. So apart from business, that’s about it.

I have more than a decade experience living in Nagoya and while I think its not a bad city, I also think the linked article is being quite disingenuous in trying to sell it as the "best place to live in Japan."

A few specific problems with the article:

1) Nagoya isn't as cheap as the article makes it out. The article says the cost of housing and living in Nagoya are cheap. It does this by comparing the price of things in Nagoya to the price of those things in cities that are bigger than Nagoya (Tokyo and Osaka mostly). Do the opposite - compare it to slightly smaller cities like Hiroshima, Sendai, Sapporo, etc - and you get the opposite result, Nagoya seems expensive.

Nagoya isn't particularly expensive for a city its size, but it is more expensive than most places in Japan outside the Kanto/Kansai regions.

2) The things it cites as evidence of Nagoya's high quality of life are either generic features you could say about any big Japanese city (it has restaurants and shopping, has a university next to a subway station, and food that has "mild taste") or just plain misleading.

Like it touts "Lots of beaches" as a Nagoya selling point but this is absolutely ridiculous. There are no beaches in Nagoya. There are some beaches south of Nagoya but these are very far from the city itself. The article cites Utsumi beach as having been selected as one of the top 100 beaches in Japan without mentioning that it'll take you almost 2 hours by public transport from Nagoya station to get there (much longer from other parts of the city).

I lived in Fukuoka before moving to Nagoya. Fukuoka HAS beaches. In the city itself. If you are at Hakata Station in the middle of downtown and hop on a bicycle you can be at a nice sandy beach within about 15 minutes of pedaling. Doing the same in Nagoya will require about 4 hours of pedaling. This is NOT a beach city.

3) The list of points of interest is pretty unimpressive for a city this size. Yes, it has Legoland and Ghibli Park. If you want to go from one of these to the other it will take you two hours on the train. The other stuff on the list is mostly just modest parks (Shirakawa Park is definitely not "huge") and the sort of thing that you would expect in your typical rural prefectural capital city with a population of 400,000 or so. Its just quite underwhelming.

rainyday very great points. I agree, Sendai and Hiroshima are extremely underrated. Sendai has really turned around over the years and the city is looking nicer every time I visit. Fukuoka is probably one of if not the better places to live, can't beat the food, atmosphere, ability to find work, beaches, ahem beautiful ladies (don't tell my wife), and living cost (though I hear it is going up). Can't say for Sapporo because I still need to visit Hokkaido but I would imagine it being really nice there.

I personally haven't lived in any of these places but I would love to move to Toyama if my work allowed me to. Because of work, I would have to say the best places to live if your hands are tied are the outskirts of any major city because you get the benefits from both worlds.

Nagoya's best export is Komeda coffee. They do a good sandwich. Delish.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komeda_Holdings

I like Nagoya

But it's too spread out

I much prefer Fukuoka or Hiroshima

Nagoya has a very modern street infrastructure. Way better than Tokyo, with the large boulevards and streets. Also they have toll less expressways within the Aichi area, which is also nice.

Subway not as crowded as Tokyo also they have a lot of private railway companies.

Yamachan, one of the best izakaya, with the branded delicious fried wings.

They also have Legoland, Maglev train museum, Nagashima Spa Land, and also Suzuka circuit is very close by.

I’ve lived in a lot of places in Japan ever since I decided to settle down here. Chiba ranks pretty high on my list. Close enough and far away enough from Tokyo, and pretty much all leisure options other than snow sports.

Rent is still reasonable. I rented a dog-friendly, 3 room apartment with 70sqm space for 55,000 just a 10 minute walk from Chiba station.

Okinawa would be my second choice, because it was first place I lived in Japan.

Then, maybe a smaller city in the Kanto, Tokai region.

The big 7, Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Sapporo, Osaka, Sendai, are not on my list.

After visiting Japan from the US many times, I can definitely say arriving at Chubu Centrair in Nagoya is sooo much easier for us foreigners than Haneda and Narita. The airport is so easy to navigate, and transportation options are easy by bus or train into central Nagoya.

The smaller size of Nagoya vs Tokyo makes everything less stressful. Even though train/subway stations can be busy in Nagoya, it's not nearly as bad as what I've experienced in Tokyo. The people in Nagoya don't seem to get upset that us foreigners may need a moment to understand what to do or where to go. In Tokyo, they seem irritated very quickly if we pause anyone else. I understand they are in a hurry, but they must understand we are in a system we may have very little experience navigating.

Nagoya seems to be a big city with more small-town feeling. I like it.

Based solely on the music scene, I have to give this a big NO. Tokyo and Fukuoka have much more inclusive love houses that let anyone play. Nagoya won't let you play unless you are on a real record label. But, Nagoya's food is definitely the best. The seafood in particular.

Aside from the hot summers, I like living here in Nagoya. Winters are mild vs what I'm used to and no need to smell someone's arm pits in a sardine packed train.

We're literally in the middle making it easy to travel to Kanto or Kansai regions and thanks to a lot of people's negative image of Nagoya, it's a big city but without the big city sticker prices.

Nagoya might be "boring" but that's ok. Eat some ふうらいｂ

I lived and loved Yokohama, but it was expensive the rental.

I also lived in Asaka, Saitama, nice cozy small city, low cost of rental.

Since 2022 I am living in Komaki, close to Nagoya, quiet city, a small LeoPalace apartment rental costs 48,000, affordable.

Would recommend Nagoya region for working and living, if someone wants to find low cost housing it is possible to find bargains, perhaps will demand a car.