Job Discussion Forums

[Tom Highway]

No offence intended if anyone lives here, but through personal experience:

Aomori City: What a dump!
Gunma: The Japanese equivalent of Delaware from Wayne's World ("Hi. I'm in GUNMA!")
Morioka City: Some nice places in Iwate-ken. Morioka ain't one of them.
Much of Niigata is kind of dismal, except for some of the beach areas and Niigata city itself.

And hell, I'll say it...much of Tokyo! Some areas are cool, but a lot of it is austere concrete jungle IMO. There's a big population but not much spirit to accompany it.

[mrjohndub]

Niigata has some excellent skiing.



At least in my experience.

[angrysoba]

[Cshannon]

Places I wouldn't want to live? Any dirty, industrial crap area around Tokyo. For sure the worst place I've been to in Tokyo (Yokohama actually) is a place called Tsurumi, near Kawasaki. Besides being a place with nothing at all to do, it's really ugly, dirty (with maybe the most polluted river in Japan...), it even makes Kawasaki look nice, which is saying something... And for whatever reason there's a lot of really weird people there... My friend who actually had to live there, had an experience awhile back at the local Seiyu dept. store -- smelled something really bad while going up the escalator, it turned out that some deranged Tsurumi-jin had dropped a load right there, it got caught between the teeth at the top of the stairs... Needless to say he wasn't impressed. And lot's of other f*d up things/people there as well. Definately a place to avoid... (unless riding dirtbikes through an industrial themepark is a hobby of yours...)

[nawlinsgurl]

I must agree with the previous poster. Tsurumi is pretty ugly, along with the majority of Kawasaki. I'd much rather throw myself on the train tracks than be in either one of those places. I used to live in Fuji City which is not a city at all, and actually a little pathetic, but the worst place was Yoshiwara--right before Fuji on the JR line. Everyday I could wake up, knowing I was close to my station on the train, because of the horrible smell of rotting cabbage. It was coming from the OJI paper factory!!! A lot of Japanese people think "Oh you can see beautiful Mt.Fuji everyday!" But actually you can rarely see Mt.Fuji because of all the factory and air pollution!

[TokyoLiz]

If you want to wear pinafores fashioned from curtains and sing on the hillsides, I recommend living near Narita, Kimitsu, Kisarazu, Mobara and Kobayashi in central Chiba Prefecture, the Boso Peninsula. You can travel out to the Pacific side for some surfing, and Narita Airport is close. From Narita, it's an hour and a half to get to Ueno, so civilization is still accessible.

It's not for everybody, but if you really like wide-open places, slow pace and low rent lifestyle, then that's an awesome place to be. It's only as exciting as you want to make it.

The Shitamachi part of Tokyo, Ueno Station, Nippori Station and environs, is full of character and charm, and would be a suitable and cheap place to live for someone who can compromise on space for the sake of ambiance. I love walking through there.

I found a link to Frommer's indicating a walking tour through my favorite part of the old town, Yanaka - http://www.frommers.com/destinations/tokyo/0085020036.html

Adachi-Ku in Tokyo is mostly characterless, densely urban and flat, but it has one treasure - Higashi Ayase Park, which straddles two wards and has a lovely park with a stream and towering coniferous trees. It's a relief from Tokyo in summer to sit under the trees with some cold tea.

Adachi-ku - http://www.japaneselifestyle.com.au/tokyo/adachiku.htm

For me though, Tokyo's concrete and lack of open space is too much, and I dread living there. As a consequence, I commute over an hour to my job. I like the drop in pressure when you cross that Tokyo/Chiba border, and on weekends, I'm only 20 minutes by bicycle from rural Japan, complete with tanuki, bamboo, white cranes and the Edo River.

A really gorgeous place to live is around Yokohama, Kamakura and Zushi. But it's a bit upscale for my budget, and too far from my friends. Still, it looks like a great place.

Places I'd really hate to be - I nearly platzed when I saw the south exit of Shibuya Station. There was not a stick or leaf or a patch of soil in sight. I could be on the moon, it looks so unearthly. Another horrible place is Matsudo. Sorry to anyone who lives there. It's Bladerunner without character.

[lalalateda]