A few years ago, I had the girls in one of my classes make mini presentations, the purpose of which was to learn how to present data. One student gave a short presentation on how the typical Japanese student spent her money. It contained some surprises.

 As you can see from her pie chart above, the two largest expenses are social (drinking, dating, hanging out with friends) and food. The third largest expense was clothing and beauty products. What struck me as odd was that rent accounted for only 4% of their expenses, the same as what they were spending on their phone bill.

I'm not sure how the data was collected or who conducted the survey, but I assume that the reason rent does not amount to very much is because the average student even if he is living alone does not pay for his own rent. His parents do. Such is the rough life of the typical student in Japan. (Best of all, they don’t really have to study, either.)

My own college experience couldn't have been more different. 

In my second year of college, three of my friends and I shared a two-bedroom two-bath apartment in the tony neighborhood of La Jolla just north of San Diego. The rent was $800, which came to $200 each. (Peanuts today when you consider that rents in La Jolla Village are way over $4000 today.) At the time I had a "part-time" job, working 32-plus hours a week (M-Th, swing shift, and occasionally the graveyard shift as well) at the La Jolla Cove Hotel, a real dive, that paid about four bucks an hour. I took home around a hundred dollars a week after withholdings, half of which was gobbled up by rent. The remaining half had to somehow cover all my extra expenses. It was no day at the beach, let me tell you.

According to the Department of Industrial Relations, the minimum wage in California in the early 80s was $3.35 an hour. In 1988, it was raised to $4.25.

I remember taking the job, one, because of the location--it was just a few blocks down the street from the apartment--and, two, because I thought the pay and work schedule were pretty good.

One of the interesting things about the job was that in an age when computers were starting to take off, the hotel continued to do everything in completely analog fashion. For instance, we had several large boards, measuring about a two and a half feet by two feet on which all the bookings were recorded. If someone called to reserve a room we would first have to ask when and how long the guest intended to stay and in what kind of room. The usual questions, right? But, then we would have to go over these boards and see if there was an availabilty. It would sometimes take five minutes just to confirm whether a room was available or not. If we had a room and the price was right, the guest would reserve it, which consisted of my physically writing down the guest's name on the board. Surprisingly, there weren't many mistakes. Guests weren't always happy with the room they got, but we seldom forgot a reservation.

4% for rent. Sheesh. What I would have done to pay $16 to cover rent in those days.