Comparing cities to live in: Musashino vs Mitaka vs Koganei

We decided to build our own house in Tokyo. We narrowed down our area to the following stations on the Chuo line: Mitaka (Mitaka City), Musashi-sakai (Musashino City), Musashi-Koganei (Koganei City). We also considered Kichijoji, but it was way out of budget (also it gets very crowded on weekends), and Higashi-Koganei (the station between Musashi-sakai and Musashi-Koganei), but currently it lacks the shops and amenities that we got used to. It is being actively developed, so it might get there in the next 5-10 years, but it’s also between two pretty well developed stations, so chain stores might pass on opening their stores there (e.g. both neighboring stations have Ito-Yokado shopping malls, making it unlikely that there would be one in Higashi-Koganei in the future).

Choosing where to live is one of the truly life-altering decisions, especially for our children (as it affects which school they go to, their friends and also influences their career). While big part of this can’t be foreseen, I decided to take a look at the data available to compare these cities. I believe the same data is published for most cities in Japan, so even if you are looking at other places, this post might be able to help you make your own comparison.

Tech that helped us during the first months with a newborn baby

I work in tech, and while I try to maintain a healthy work-life balance, I still use many gadgets, so I thought to share which tech solutions helped us during the first month with our newborn baby.

Japanese alias name (通称名, tsūshōmei)

Japan allows foreigners to register a legal alias (通称名, tsūshōmei) and use it as their name in some situations. In this post I’ll describe why and how I did this, and what it changed for my everyday life.

My Tokyo travel recommendations

I often get asked by friends visiting Tokyo what they must see/eat/experience, so in this post I’ll summarize my top recommendations. This doesn’t aim to include all the cool places, but rather highlight some of the less known parts of Tokyo that I really like.

All photos were taken by me in this post.

Medical expense tax deduction in Japan (医療費控除)

In Japan if one pays more than 100,000 yen of medical expenses in a calendar year, they can deduct it from their pre-tax income (usually leading to an income tax refund). In this post I’ll attempt to summarize the rules of this.

As with all my posts, this is not tax advice and do your own research before making any decision. Also if you find any inaccuracy or mistake, please leave a comment at the end, so that I can correct it.