Chitose (pop. 98k), though remote, is about 45 minutes by train -- with frequent service -- from Sapporo (pop. 2 mil), which is a fairly big city.
This is similar to the commute from Chicago (pop. 2.7 mil) to Downers Grove (pop. 49k), which was my commute. I didn't care to live in the Chicago suburbs, but I didn't mind working out there while living in downtown Chicago.
I can see a young family living close to Sapporo, but parents working at TSMC.
The other TSMC facility in Kumamoto (pop. 738k) on the other hand is 2 hours from the nearest big city, Fukuoka (2.5 mil). Kumamoto is actually a less tenable location for talent. Yet things seem to be working out (the current workers there are mostly Taiwanese expats though).
> Chitose (pop. 98k), though remote, is about 45 minutes by train -- with frequent service -- from Sapporo (pop. 2 mil), which is a fairly big city.
> I can see a young family living close to Sapporo, but parents working at TSMC.
The Chitose factory is not being built by TSMC, it is a Rapidus venture (IIRC Toshiba/Kioxia is one of the partners). They just received delivery of first EUV from ASML this week.
No one with young family will live in Sapporo, too far specially during 5 months of winter when train disruptions/cancellations are frequent due to excessive snow/blizzards. For example, just this week, every day JR trains were cancelled and/or fewer trains were in operation, it snowed every day and temperature below zero.
Most permanent workers will likely live between Kita Hiroshima (Ohtani's Japanese Pro baseball team new stadium located there) in the north and Tomakomai in the south.
Sapporo population is less than 2 millions and declining (1,969,058 in March 2024 declined from 1,972,381 in April 2022). All municipalities within Hokkaido prefecture have declining population, only exception recently was Eniwa (near Chitose) where population increased by couple of dozen people, increase attributed to enrollment of international students in the area after lifting of COVID restrictions.
> The other TSMC facility in Kumamoto (pop. 738k) on the other hand is 2 hours from the nearest big city, Fukuoka (2.5 mil). Kumamoto is actually a less tenable location for talent. Yet things seem to be working out (the current workers there are mostly Taiwanese expats though).
Kumamoto is actually better/preferred location for Taiwanese expats, from proximity to Taiwan and warmer weather perspective, only little over an hour away from Fukuoka by Shinkansen. In comparison, Hokkaido is too cold and isolated, no high speed rail link to Chitose/Sapporo area or to mainland (Honshu).
Source: Live in Sapporo, also have lived in Ottawa, Toronto, and Seattle; was approached earlier this year by someone on HN for onsite role with a Rapidus US supplier.
> The other TSMC facility in Kumamoto (pop. 738k) on the other hand is 2 hours from the nearest big city, Fukuoka (2.5 mil). Kumamoto is actually a less tenable location for talent.
To be blunt, this is a ridiculous comparison. Kumamoto is a large city in its own right, with a very high quality of life. It may not be as close to Fukuoka, but it offers plenty for residents itself.
On the other hand, Chitose, while close to Sapporo, is much smaller and doesn't offer the same level of living quality. Sapporo itself, though big, is pretty isolated compared to other parts of Japan, too.
Also most people would probably prefer the milder, more temperate weather of Kyushu over Hokkaido's harsh winters.
Having lived in Japan, there is something of an attitude there that anywhere other than Tokyo -- or maaaaaybe Osaka if you're feeling generous -- is the sticks.
Having been to Sapporo and Kumamoto -- and many other medium-size Japanese cities -- this attitude can seem awful silly when you're walking around their downtowns. But it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy: if people in charge of "opportunities" leave for the biggest cities, then that's what matters.
Indeed, on my trip to Kumamoto I was visiting a fellow academic, and when I got there he told me he was trying to move so he could be closer to his family in Tokyo. He has since moved to Nagoya, and apparently is happier there.
I think people like medium-size cities in general. Kumamoto in particular is attractive, is decently convenient, good climate, and while Kyushu in general has a conservative image ("Kyushu danshi") it has been changing for the better.
But given all of that, Tokyo basically has its own economy, it's own rules, and isn't just "big", it works differently enough that people's choice isn't on which city, but whether they live in the Tokyo area or not.
For instance if you're gay, the Tokyo administration will give you an equal marital status. Kids's private school tuitions are partly covered (they're ragingly expensive in the first place, but you get prime access to very competitive schools). Health care will usually be completely free for kids. Remote working is usually treated differently if you're vaguely in the area or if you need a flight, living in the mountains in Okutama will land a better deal that living in Shizuoka, even if commute wise it's probably the same.
This is of course an issue, especially as national policies need to fit both worlds which is a pretty hard (the whole discourse on the spouse wage limit is basically centered on this divide)
I mentioned it in another comment: I am working in Aomori and my company struggles to find qualified engineers because few people want to live here. The climate is a MAJOR issue.
Aomori pop 270k is different — it is somewhat less desirable to someone like me than somewhere close to Sapporo. I don’t think it’s the weather. It’s the isolation.
Most Asian people love living around others. We crave the human energy, the hustle and bustle of economic activity, the opportunities, the food, etc.
Climate is something one lives with. Given the choice between Bakersfield CA and Chicago, I’d choose Chicago any day, only because the opportunities are greater in Chicago. I absolutely loved living in Chicago. Even Seattle where I live now is too small for me.
> Most Asian people love living around others. We crave the human energy, the hustle and bustle of economic activity, the opportunities, the food, etc.
Any statement starting with "Most Asian people" that doesn't end with something like "have two arms and two legs" can be discarded. 4.6 billion people, many of whom are culturally as close to each other as they are to someone from Sweden.
Even here in Seoul, one of the more populous cities, so many people would move in a heartbeat if they could keep the same job and e.g. education for their children. They certainly don't love it.
> Even here in Seoul, one of the more populous cities, so many people would move in a heartbeat if they could keep the same job and e.g. education for their children. They certainly don't love it.
That's interesting -- because Seoul is one of the most overwhelming examples of city preference (perhaps not internal desire, but opportunity seeking behavior) in the world. Korea has a problem in that the population is in fact too concentrated in Seoul, which creates distortions in the economy, and the government has been trying to get people to spread out more (Sejong City is an attempt). People are frustrated with things about Seoul but they still stay for the opportunity.
Let's flip the question this way: if apartment ownership was affordable, opportunities were good, air was clean, most things in life like healthcare, education, etc. were affordable, would people naturally seek to move to a big city?
Tokyo is such a city and the answer for many people has been yes. It may not be the preference of most people you meet online, but empirically the numbers reveal preference.
One of the most common reasons (probably number 1) people here would rather not live in Seoul if they could keep their job and educational opportunities is in fact straight up "too many people, too crowded".
This is nicely worded but I'm not sure what to make of it. No offense, but doesn't make a lot of sense.
Younger populations tend to get attracted to cities, tolerating worse living standards in exchange for better wages and shorter commutes. But higher commodity prices negate benefits, and also lower standards of life suppress offspring, which is politically highly problematic. Isn't that the fundamental defect in concept of a city since the industrial revolution?
A typical luxury condo in Tokyo costs $1m, offer 100m^2(1k sqft) of single floor dwelling, with 300 individual properties on average spanning couple dozen floors. That might be a 0.1% lifestyle, relatively speaking, but objectively and especially in comparison with historical descriptions of opulent life, I can't exactly see how it compares.
Cities did not use to suppress offspring. When countries were developing, and even in developing countries today, cities had high-fertility slums. Look at pictures of New York in the 1900s with multigenerational families sharing a room.
If anything higher standards of living (and higher expectations of what children should get) suppress offspring. Easier access to medical care and family planning in cities also plays a factor.
2) The weather is definitely a big factor. The cold, some of the highest amount of snow fall in the world, strong winds, and houses without insulation make for a poor combination. It is so nasty that even the colleagues from Northern Europe were complaining. But it doesn't matter if you like or not; what matters is if the average Japanese person likes it, and they don't. When I travel around Japan and tell people where I live, they are always shocked and ask me what am I doing in such a cold place.
> Climate is something one lives with. Given the choice between Bakersfield CA and Chicago, I’d choose Chicago any day, only because the opportunities are greater in Chicago. I absolutely loved living in Chicago. Even Seattle where I live now is too small for me.
The data on population changes in the USA indicates the people want to avoid freezing temperatures over hot temperatures.
>The data on population changes in the USA indicates the people want to avoid freezing temperatures over hot temperatures.
That data is probably at least somewhat biased by retirees who turn the air conditioner on and don't want to deal with some of the inevitable physical demands and transportation difficulties associated with snow.
But they do if that's the reality of where they need to live for where they work. It's long been the case that some number of people in the US migrate south when they retire.
To note, the climate isn't just whether you enjoy snow or not.
It's pointed in other comments as well, but winter in the north means trains getting canceled, flights delays if it's really bad up there.
Aomori is land connected so there's still other options, but in the event of an earthquake in the middle of winter you're playing the survival game in hard mode.
Even if it's a smallish shake and you just need your gas checked and restarted by a technician, you might be out of hot water for a few days while it's freezing outside. Elderly for instance regularly die during these kind of disruptions, and you'd think they know what they're doing.
That happened during the Great Tohoku Earthquake of 2011. There is an excellent Netflix series about the Fukushima disaster called The Days which depicts the family of a powerplant worker from Mutsu struggling with the winter weather after the power cuts.
About elder people, we heard from the emergency services that, due the lack of insulation and central heating of most houses here, the most common type of emergency during the winter is elder people moving from a warm room to a cold room like the toilet and suffering from thermal shock.
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I personally would love to live in Hokkaido. The snow is perhaps the best and most reliable in the world. And the summers in the rest of Japan are miserably hot and miserable, while they're just pleasantly warm in Hokkaido.
Eh. Sapporo goes down to -10C (14F). That’s nothing for anyone who’s ever lived in Canada or the northern US (apart from Seattle).
Source: personal experience.
Taiwanese people will move to where the opportunities are. You’ll find many of them in the northern US states, which are, if not snowier, are definitely colder than Sapporo.
There's probably something of a California (or at least West Coast) bias on this board. But much of the US is less moderate in overall climate, towards both cold/snow and heat at various times of the year.
A large portion of the US has real winters. (And some of those areas get pretty hot and humid in the summer--like, umm, Tokyo.)
Yes. Most northern US cities are snowy and cold in the winter and hot and humid in the summer.
Even NYC, the largest city in the US has real winters (though moderated by being on the coast, it can dip down to 14F easily). And humid summers of course.
I spent a summer in NYC once as an intern. And, not having a Hamptons option, I was definitely reaching out to Princeton and Greenwich friends on August weekends to visit.
And Northeast cities, even into mid-Atlantic, are nothing especially delightful in the winter if snow isn't your thing.
That's what I've lived with most of my life and I've been mostly fine with it. But if you're with some version of a Bay Area climate or bust, you may not consider it acceptable. (And even a "Mediterranean climate" gets pretty hot in a lot of places in the summer many places.)
There's a reason that people who can afford to and want to put the energy into migrate locales from summer to winter.
2mil isn't a small town but it's not that big a city, especially if it makes up most of the metro area around it.
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_in_... the Sapporo metro area is 2.7M. Is that correct? Looking at the map the area between those two places looks a lot sparser, so it seems like definitely more of a small town by a small-to-mid-size-city vibe.
Sapporo is denser than an American city would be with the same population, for cultural and geographic reasons. And in Japan it's common to have a train commute of 30-60 minutes, though living in Sapporo and commuting to a suburb might be considered more of a "reverse commute" (other direction is more common here IME).
Not to mention that Chitose is where Sapporo's international airport is located, so someone who travels often might find it more convenient than living in Sapporo proper.
Sapporo/Hokkaido is traditionally where many people in Japan flee from various of life’s foibles and circumstances, so it’s a wonderful city with many colorful characters and great food.
Kumamoto is in the same ballpark as many European capitals, such as Athens, Helsinki. Most people don't consider those cities "too small to attract talent"
The pandemic was not a normal situation. There are centuries of evidence about cities, pre- and now post-pandemic.
Some clear empirical data is housing prices: People are willing to pay far more to live in many cities than anywhere else, often for much smaller residences.
Different strokes for different folks. There's an attraction to having more space/less noise/etc. and being able to travel into a big city for activities without too much hassle/time. There's also an attraction to having a probably smaller place and just walk/cab/transit to those activities.
I ended up mostly gravitating to the former but I understand the attraction of the latter and, who knows, I may change my preference some day.
This is similar to the commute from Chicago (pop. 2.7 mil) to Downers Grove (pop. 49k), which was my commute. I didn't care to live in the Chicago suburbs, but I didn't mind working out there while living in downtown Chicago.
I can see a young family living close to Sapporo, but parents working at TSMC.
The other TSMC facility in Kumamoto (pop. 738k) on the other hand is 2 hours from the nearest big city, Fukuoka (2.5 mil). Kumamoto is actually a less tenable location for talent. Yet things seem to be working out (the current workers there are mostly Taiwanese expats though).