Tokyo
Tokyo beat out Hong Kong this year as the most expensive city in the world, according to the annual Mercer survey. Japan is experiencing deflation, but the cost of living there went up anyway, largely because of stratospheric housing costs. Monthly rent on a Tokyo apartment can easily run to $10,000. Moscow; Osaka, Japan; Hong Kong; and Beijing rounded out the top five cities, followed by several European cities. New York, the highest-ranking U.S. city, came in at No. 10 this year, down from No. 7. The survey measures the comparative cost of housing, food, clothing, transportation, and entertainment in 144 cities around the world.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
5 fact-checked cartoons about Meta firing its fact checkersCartoons Artists take on playing chicken, information superhighway, and more
-
NCHIs: the controversy over non-crime hate incidentsThe Explainer Is the policing of non-crime hate incidents an Orwellian outrage or an essential tool of modern law enforcement?
-
Islamic State: the terror group's second actTalking Point Isis has carried out almost 700 attacks in Syria over the past year, according to one estimate
