People often asked me why did I not stay and work in Japan? Actually there are a lot of reasons, personal professionally, and economically. But I definitely won't go into the personal reasons on this post, and focus on the economical reason. aka salary, and living cost etc.
Sure working in Japan sounds fun. One of the most advanced countries in the world. A heaven for an engineer such as me, and you are being paid in Yen, an even stronger currency against Malaysian Ringgit(MYR) as compared to SGD. To make a comparison, I will use a fresh graduate engineer salary in both country.
Japan : 160,000-200,000JPY (SGD2137-2672) 1000JPY = SGD13.36
Singapore : SGD2200-SGD2800
From the basic salary, I think we can say that they offer about the same amount. However, in Japan you have to go to the big cities in order to get the higher end of the salary. And the simple math is that living in a big cities in Japan equals to da bomb. Whereas in Singapore, it is quite a flat rate since the island is quite small. It might be a bit different, but I can tell you it is not as huge as Japan. I remember me and my room mate paid 45,000 yen/month for a 2 room apartment. But in Japan's big cities like Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe etc, it would cost like 70,000yen/month for a small 1-room apartment.
In Tokyo if you are earning 200k yen, and you spend 70k yen on your apartment, that's 35% of your salary gone in a blink. Whereas in Singapore if you are earning 2800k and spend 600 on your apartment, it is only 21% of your pay. That's 10% different and that is a lot. I could go on and write about how your gas bill will hike to about 10k yen/month during winter but I think I have already made my point.
Then there is tax issue. Well let's take a look at Japan's tax rate. I think their federal tax is 5% for the lowest bracket. Hey that's cheap right, 5%? Yeah right..that's only the federal tax. There is a prefecture tax that's gonna ninja another 15% of your money. 20% total goes to tax, and you don't even have get a free medical. Still have to pay insurance about 5k yen a month I think. The lowest bracket tax in Singapore is about 3% I think, I'm not really sure, you guys can confirm it yourselves in the IRAS website, but it sure as hell not 20%.
Anyway, this is just a simple writing, nothing too technical, and the way I write it may be bias against working in Japan, co I have never really liked the idea of it. Feel free to leave any feedback if there is any. Maybe there is actually good reason to work in Japan, money wise (keep in mind that I am talking about money wise, not many cute girls, easy to get AV etc). But with the recent trend of ever depreciating Yen value, I think I have quite a strong argument.
