A Canadian decides Japan works. I have already made that case at length in Living in Japan as a Canadian, so I am not reopening it here. The visas, the tax residency ladder, the schooling trade-offs, the safety and the hazards all still apply exactly as I described them there. Nothing about choosing Osaka instead of Tokyo changes a single national rule.

But once Japan clears that first test, a second question arrives fast: Tokyo or Osaka. I went into this research expecting to answer that question. I came out of it thinking the question itself is slightly wrong.

Here is why. Someone can live in Kobe and be standing on the platform at Osaka Station about twenty minutes later. Someone can live in Nara and reach Namba in well under forty. Kyoto and Osaka are connected by a train fast enough that a Canadian used to commuting across the Greater Toronto Area would barely register the distance as remarkable. Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto and Nara are not four cities that happen to be near each other. They function, for a lot of daily life, as one interconnected region with several downtowns.

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