For whatever reason, people in our generation seem completely unaware of how often they cite things from 15-20 years ago.

I've taken to pointing out that it's like if someone in the 90s used advice from the 70s. For whatever reason, it tends to put things in perspective timeframe-wise.

Yeah, that's $2,102.58 in 2024 dollars due to a 40.2% cumulative rate of inflation since then according to usinflationcalculator.com

Pretty much all non-luxury housing in Tokyo is built to a much lower standard than equivalent housing built in say Canada or the US in the same time period.

Much thinner wall insulation, single glazed windows (until recently), much smaller elevators in high rises, etc…

So on a quality and square footage adjusted basis it’s still quite expensive.

I just left an apartment in Shanghai that was two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen for $700 / month. I was advised that prices have come down over the last year, so that if I was planning to renew my lease I should negotiate a lower price.

And that's on the cheaper end of California!

Studio in BC for over $2500 a month.

Well, yeah, I bet that studio was substantially cheaper in 2011, though, which was the date on the Tokyo apartment.

Those are "grills". If you want to bake stuff, you can get real ovens, but they're fairly small, and not built into the apartment, and usually combined with a microwave oven. Any decent appliance store sells them for around 30,000 yen. You're not going to cook a turkey in it, but if you want to bake a small cake it's perfect.

Yes, unlike Americans who apparently absolutely need to bake a whole turkey on a regular basis, Japanese don't normally bake stuff at home, so Japanese homes (at least in the big cities) don't normally come with built-in ovens. There's no space in Tokyo apartments for the comically-large ovens that are common in America, and the cuisine people make here doesn't normally need one, just a stovetop. For baked goods, people usually just buy them at the grocery store or bakery or other specialty shop.