From an upvoted comment:
Size of an apartment isn't very good measure of how rich some is. Let's say a house that would make you filthy rich in Tokyo might be considered tiny rathole in Australia.
(It's comparing a capital city against a country, which isn't a fair comparison)
For the same size, and for for a vaguely comparable city population (comparing Tokyo against Sydney, rather than Bourke), is residential real estate in Australia significantly cheaper than real estate in Japan?
Reasons why I'm skeptical about this claim:
- People have stereotypes about asian people living in very crowded conditions.
- People have a stereotype about the "real Australia" being the outback, even though Australia is a very urbanized country. By contrast, people's stereotypes about Japan usually feature metropolises such as Tokyo.
- People have a stereotype about prices in general in Japan being very high, probably based on reports about Japan during the bubble economy. Including the oft-cited claim that the land under the Imperial Palace had an estimated value greater than all the real estate in California.
- My experience with real estate in Sydney! (That, and the experience of a Japanese person also living in Sydney, who mentioned that she'd also heard westerners claim that Japan real estate is very expensive)
Another examples of people claiming Japan real estate prices are expensive: link.