Inuyama in Aichi Prefecture Photo: Wikipedia/Bariston
lifestyle

People willing to move away from Tokyo to be paid ¥1 mil by Aichi government

12 Comments
By Casey Baseel, SoraNews24

There’s a lot to like about Tokyo, as Japan’s capital city is also its biggest and most vibrant. But on the flip side, Tokyo is also the most crowded, and the most expensive, place in the country to live.

So as exciting as living and/or working in Tokyo might feel in the beginning, some people eventually start daydreaming of a less hectic and congested lifestyle elsewhere in Japan. To help make that daydream a reality, Aichi Prefecture, in central Japan, is launching what it calls the Aichi Migration Support Project, which offers a huge payment to Tokyo residents who are willing to relocate to Aichi.

Singles who make the move will be given 600,000 yen to make the move, while families with two or more members will score an even more generous grant of one million yen. What makes the deal especially sweet is that you don’t necessarily have to be moving to Aichi’s rural backwoods either. The grants are being offered to people who move to one of 49 cities in Aichi, including both the prefectural capital of Nagoya (Japan’s fourth-largest city) as well as historic Inuyama, which boasts one of Japan’s oldest original castles, and Toyota, where the car maker of the same name is headquartered.

As a matter of fact, you don’t even have to be living in Tokyo itself to qualify for the grants. The Aichi government is offering the financial support packages not only to people who are residents of Tokyo’s 23 central wards, but also to people who live elsewhere in Tokyo or in its neighboring prefectures of Kanagawa, Saitama, or Chiba and commute into the 23 wards for work. To be eligible for the grants, applicants must have lived/worked in Tokyo’s 23 wards for at least five years and intend to live in Aichi for five years (though how the second requirement will be confirmed, if at all, remains unclear).

The promise of all that extra yen in your pocket makes the deal very tempting, especially since that money will go farther in Aichi, where prices are generally lower than in Tokyo. The average cost of a 50-square meter apartment in Tokyo, for example, is 129,727 yen, while the same living space in Aichi averages just 74,530 yen. Aichi’s more geographically central location within Japan also makes it an attractive base from which to explore the western reaches of the country, including Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, and Hiroshima, and should you find yourself missing Tokyo now and again, the Shinkansen connects Nagoya and Tokyo in just about 90 minutes.

Source: Livedoor News/Radi Chubu via Otakomu, Aichi Prefectural Government

Read more stories from SoraNews24.

-- Six professional ninja jobs being offered by Japanese tourism board, women and foreigners welcome

-- Japanese government may soon start bribing people three million yen to move out of Tokyo

-- Aichi man discovers he is the legendary “Ghost Trumpeter of Lake Iruka”

© SoraNews24

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

12 Comments
Login to comment

Singles who make the move will be given 600,000 yen

Not that it concerns me anyway, as I don't even live near Tokyo, but it would take a lot more money to make me move to Aichi. I lived there for a year and a half, and hated everything about it.

It's pretty telling that the 4th biggest city in Japan has to bribe people to come live in it...

8 ( +12 / -4 )

Not sure why people would complain about this. The ONLY downside to this deal is that you'd have to live in Aichi.

6 ( +8 / -2 )

Not sure why people would complain about this.

Well, it encourages local authorities to give people handouts, rather than do better things to make themselves attractive, like improving schools, planting more greenery, supporting local businesses etc. It also encourages people to expect handouts and game the system to go to the place with the biggest one. Many of these handouts will be funded by the national taxpayer in the form of "help the provinces" schemes.

If the government has money to hand out, it should be as universal basic income, meaning it would also go to people already living there.

4 ( +6 / -2 )

Now Reckless, you speak my language. Free land, interest free loan, now we’re talking bag packing.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

One of the major points that the article leaves out is that to qualify for the money, you have to move here and take a job that Aichi is advertising for through a recruiting service. You can’t simply transfer to a Chubu branch of your existing job. You also have to be under 50 years of age. I work with several major companies here and their HR departments all say the same thing - recruiting, especially for software engineers, is competitive these days, and companies are setting up pipelines to get talent from overseas to fill vacancies. This seems like another way to get talented people here.

I’ve lived in Nagoya for over ten years, and I love it. Good location relative to the rest of the country - a fairly large airport nearby for overseas travel - free healthcare for children under 16, many companies hiring and lots of $$$. Transportation is convenient and the commute to work for most people is short.

4 ( +5 / -1 )

"The average cost of a 50-square meter apartment in Tokyo, for example, is 129,727 yen, while the same living space in Aichi averages just 74,530 yen."

Many places in Kanagawa average about ¥55,000. I know because I own and rent them.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Many places in Kanagawa average about ¥55,000. I know because I own and rent them.

Are they old and dirty?

3 ( +3 / -0 )

I have lived in Aichi for 7 years, its not bad. As bfarm says, the article should have made clear the details: this is just a high end head hunting subsidy for some businesses. Its not like those promotions designed to attract people to rural areas in terminal demographic decline. The Chubu Metro region has about 8 million people and is the third biggest urban region in the country.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Login to leave a comment

Facebook users

Use your Facebook account to login or register with JapanToday. By doing so, you will also receive an email inviting you to receive our news alerts.

Facebook Connect

Login with your JapanToday account

User registration

Articles, Offers & Useful Resources

A mix of what's trending on our other sites