Onigiri · No. 5
Bite-size Japan real estate
Japan's big cities, head to head — and the capital costs 4.3× the cheapest.
Morning. "A condo in Japan" can mean a million yen a square meter in Tokyo — or a quarter of that a few bullet-train stops away. Today, the big cities, head to head. Let's snack.
Among Japan's big cities, a used condo in Tokyo runs about ¥1.13M per square meter — roughly 4.3× Sapporo (¥265k). Even Osaka, the clear #2, is only about 64% of Tokyo. The capital isn't leading the pack; it's in a different race.
The takeaway: every other big city in Japan is a fraction of Tokyo per meter.
Per-square-meter overstates it, because outside Tokyo your yen buys space. The median Sapporo condo is about ¥18M total for a bigger home; the median Tokyo condo is ¥37M for a smaller one. Same word — "condo" — very different room.
The takeaway: leave the capital and the money buys square meters, not just an address.
Here's the one that surprises people: Nagoya — Toyota's hometown, one of Japan's biggest metros and its manufacturing engine — has some of the cheapest big-city condos going, about ¥427k a meter, roughly a third of Tokyo. Big-city jobs, small-city price tags.
The takeaway: the boring, wealthy industrial cities are where the value hides.
By the numbers
Sources: MLIT transaction-price records (不動産取引価格情報). Figures are 2025 median ¥/m² and median total price for used condos (中古マンション等) by city, minimum 80 sales per city; latest year preliminary.
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