Danica Davidson
December 12, 2024 
A lot of otaku are also interested in Japan in general, which can include visiting Japan or even living there. But where’s the best prefecture to live in the county if you’re not a native? A new study decided to find an answer.
For the last five years, Ibaraki Prefecture has been holding studies to see how happy its residents are. As a little something different, in 2024 it also decided to see how happy foreigners are living in its prefecture, and then draw a comparison between it and the happiness rates of foreigners living in other prefectures.
Their Foreign Resident Happiness Index looked at three important areas of a person’s life: their work, how they live, and their access to education. All of these were scored, in addition to getting an overall score of happiness. SoraNews24 translated what the study looked for in the different areas. For the work-related part:
Ease of saving money and sending money home (calculated from regional minimum wages and consumer price indexes)
Foreign worker/total workforce ratio
Percentage of companies employing foreign workers
Ratio of foreign workers in specialized/technical fields to total foreign population
Disappearance rate of foreign workers
For the living-related part:
Foreign/native Japanese resident ratio
Availability of foreign resident consultation centers
Local student English proficiency level
Percentage of municipalities with for-adults Japanese language schools
Percentage of medical institutions caring for foreign patients
And for the learning-related part:
Foreign student/total student enrollment ratio for childhood education
Ratio of students requiring Japanese-as-a-second-language support to number of support staff members
Percentage of high schools with admissions quotas or special transfer systems for foreign students
Ratio of study abroad students to total student body
From there, they crunched the numbers and gave their results. In any case, the same prefecture wins for work, life, and learning as well as for overall happiness: Tokyo!
Following Tokyo are the following prefectures for the overall happiness measure: Mie, Aichi, Ibaraki, Shizuoka, Tochigi, Hyogo, Kyoto, Osaka, and Gifu.
Then the top three places were revealed for each category. The work category went Tokyo, Aichi, and Gunma. The life category went Tokyo, Fukui, and Shizuoka. The final category, related to learning, went to Tokyo, Kyoto, and Gifu.
What do you think of these results?
Source: SoraNews24
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Danica Davidson is the author of the bestselling Manga Art for Beginners with artist Melanie Westin, plus its sequel, Manga Art for Everyone, and the first-of-its-kind manga chalk book Chalk Art Manga, both illustrated by professional Japanese mangaka Rena Saiya. Check out her other comics and books at www.danicadavidson.com.
