Tokyo is a must-see, but the city is becoming a vast turn-off for wealthy foreign residents and investors. According to Expat Insider’s survey, Tokyo ranked in the bottom 10 cities for expats to live in 2022 owing to its onerous work culture as well as its “unfriendliness and language barrier”.
Even as Hong Kong continues to haemorrhage its moneyed classes, the ultra-wealthy are flocking to Singapore, not Tokyo, despite the city’s many charms, including its innumerable Michelin-starred restaurants.
Tokyo’s road widening policy turned the main thoroughfare of Tokyo’s French expat quarter – Kagurazaka – into a slum-like eyesore. Life in Tokyo for the 1 per cent can be surprisingly low-key. And now their homes are on a flight path, perhaps as irksome as in Heathrow-blighted Hounslow.
City airport jets now thunder deafeningly close, just 500m over some of the most expensive real estate in the world in Tokyo. Unthinkable over Chelsea, but somehow it’s become the norm since Tokyo changed its flight regulations.
Unlike London’s influential rich lobby, the prosperous denizens of even the ritziest – and now noisiest – Tokyo enclaves, such as Azabu, are powerless against the intrusion. Japan offers £6,000 cash and ‘free’ house in scheme to move young families out of Tokyo, but few are buying it. The uglification of what used to be “the world’s most beautiful city” before westernisation does not stop there.
Despite its riches, by international standards, Tokyo has a record shortage of green space and poor urban landscaping. Japan’s ubiquitous baleful, black-spaghetti-like power lines are exposed aloft in even the swankiest neighbourhoods.
Where there are green lungs, many are under threat from development, making Tokyo a hard sell to the pampered rich used to smarter, leafy environs. Accordingly, most upscale neighbourhoods, although peppered with pricey exotica such as Ferraris, are very modest – even tawdry – compared to London.
Some say Japan’s rich are in love with poverty. Enjoying the benefits of wealth discreetly without advertising it and “putting on the poor mouth”, as they say in Ireland – resulting in perhaps the least demonstrative wealthy streets in the world. Or perhaps the average rich Tokyoite, bumbling along with nose stuck firmly in phone, is oblivious to Tokyo’s urban blight. No one is sure.
One of the most expensive areas in Tokyo’s centre is filled with unsightly car parks, dangling power lines and no pavements. Such attitudes could be at the root of the degradation of once-charming traditional neighbourhoods. The village-like Kagurazaka, favoured by French expats, has fallen victim to a road-widening scheme. Over a decade, its bijou shops and restaurants have been bulldozed in favour of a new six lane highway.
Some super-rich foreigners do want to live in Tokyo, says Zoe Ward, director of Japan Property Central. But they are stymied by the lack of spacious, well-designed housing at the upper end of the market.
Tree-hugging tycoons might also be put off by the lack of adequate cycle lanes that forces riders on to pavements – if they can find any. Tokyo’s governor, Yuriko Koike, has promised to fix the issue and bury unsightly powerlines, but progress is slow.
Expats say they are unimpressed with the lifestyle in Tokyo’s richest districts, where homes can cost £10m. Tokyo is losing out to cities such as Singapore, where expat and financier Hao Wang washed up after a 10-year stint in Tokyo. He’s not surprised his former base is bleeding investment and wealthy expertise.
With tax taking around 65 per cent of top-earners’ salaries, an opaque visa system, little English spoken and few chances of local friendships, the well-to-do are saying “sayonara” to the Tokyo dream in droves.
