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.)