I stay at Ueno, nearby the Ueno station, which is an interchange hub to transfer JR line, Ginza line, Hibiya line, Keisei line and Shinkansen. Tokyo is a city on electronic trains. I still don’t know how many metro lines Tokyo has.
I am a little surprised that the prices of resident properties are not high enough regardless of the good location. Let’s assume the price of an apartment with 40 square meters is 30,000,000 Yen. The unit price (per square meters) is definitely higher than in most of areas in the other countries. But, Japan is the country which is the most efficient to utilize the space. The apartment I stayed in is estimated to be only 13 square meters. But it has a kitchen, bathroom, storage room and a balcony. Also all essential amenities are outfit in the apartment, as the Chinese proverb says: a sparrow may be small but it has all the vital organs. When we compare the Tokyo housing price versus other countries, the overall price for an apartment should be applied. The unit price (per square meters) may mislead us to overestimate housing price in Tokyo because the big one and the small one have the same function in different countries. In the downtown of New York City, a common apartment may be priced at 1 million USD. I think that people in Tokyo shall accept an increase in price of up to 50%. The unusual global inflation and Japan’s economic cycle support increase of housing-price. And the most important factor I think is that Japan is quite good at adapting with soaring gasoline prices. If crude oil price reaches 100 USD, its influence against Japan’s economy will be much less than US and other countries.