The other day I joked that the average household income here is lower than SF average rent. Turns out that if you restrict to sole occupant households, joke is true. Not sure I can laugh at it now.

Sound like Rorschach from Watchmen. "Give me smallest finger on man's hand. I'll produce information. Computer unnecessary."

Which, contrary to popular conception, is actually quite affordable. Trains are pricier but housing is pretty cheap these days and food is about the same if you buy local.

Oh, I know he does. I was talking about me living in San Francisco, thus comparing Patrick's net revenue to salaries around here.

And I did believe that living costs in Japan were higher.

just like in the US, it depends on where you live and how you live.

if you're living simply in somewhere like rural kansas, you could probably easily get by on $15k-ish.

Right. The ramen profitable calculation: $300 ~ $450 rent (single room apartment to 3 room palace in an inconvenient location), $200 a month food bill (if you eat like a single Japanese twenty something), $300 for utilities (water, gas, lights, Internet, phone, TV tax, cell phone, gym membership). No car or train expenses, since I don't need either to get to my kitchen table. Throw in a little extra for taxes/health insurance.

For comparison: starting salaries for an engineer at my company, which pays well for this region, are $2.2k a month. (And most of them live in Nagoya, which makes all of the above numbers higher.)

and even if you are living in a big city like Kyoto, you can get by with 20-24k-ish...

Trains and appartment are expensive... but restaurants and food in general is really rather cheap.