And I lived in the north for decades. So, I kind of know the general comparison.
But, all good. Taipei does have its advantages if one can afford it.
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That’s why I live in the suburbs. The jobs that I am most compatible with are in Taipei.
When it comes to ease of life in the LGBTQ communities, Taipei is pretty clearly the winner here.
Perhaps to help make this work the OP simply needs to find a wonderful reliable committed Taiwanese partner. 
Guy
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I guess you have some Chinese background, or even a Taiwanese citizenship.
But have you considered the EU? The Portuguese D7 visa is getting popular lately.
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To this I would provide the same response as above. Things can work elsewhere, but for LGBTQ folk Taipei is really in a different league.
Guy
Is the OP LGBTQ?
Far from clear.
This is he first time I’ve heard that on Forumosa.
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I agree with this.
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Taiwan isn’t a utopia. Taiwan is my home and I don’t regret the move. I have my own business and struggled for 4 years. This struggle had nothing with the environment in Taiwan but was because I didn’t know how to build a business.
Taiwan has many old-fashioned values that are much more archaic than the States. They are a homogeneous people and will ask you when you’re going home. People will assume you failed in your home country to make sense of it.
Almost every place in the world has great aspects and a few shiitty ones.
You need to be tough to move to a foreign country, and learn the language enough to take care of basic stuff.
If you have your business on solid ground, it can be a lot of fun to live here. Kids pick up language quickly so I’d get her into public school. She’ll speak English and Chinese with no accent.
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Plenty of kindies under 20k. Debatable if they are good, but kindergartens are definitely one area where more money doesn’t guarantee better quality so 30k is too much.
I personally do not think America is going to get better anytime soon. The national will isn’t there and the society is far too adversarial to effect meaningful change. Any effort to fix healthcare will only result in private insurers hijacking it and making coverage more expensive while fixing nothing. America is very right wing no matter which of the two parties you are talking about, and it’s only getting worse.
That said, you might have to consider ESL teaching as you won’t get a visa for doing a business without pretty high capital, but I’m not expert in that because I’m not a foreigner so never worry about that. So the ESL teaching will likely be your means to stay in Taiwan.
Taiwan I find is very lassez faire about pets, meaning landlords don’t generally care about it, but it also depends on how opulent the apartment is. If you live in a shoebox apartment with nothing but the property, bare minimum decorations, you can expect they wouldn’t care unless you have like 200 dogs in it. On the other hand more opulent properties will likely have restrictions. But finding pet friendly apartments in Taiwan isn’t hard. Taiwanese are very “live and let live”. If you don’t bother anyone nobody cares if you’re gay, straight, or whatever.
But that said there are going to be a lot of things you must overcome, biggest of all is children’s education, as you would probably not be sending them to an international school (their tuition is expensive even by American standards). So that means local schools, and there’s going to be a lot of adjustments you have to keep in mind. Particularly they value rote memorization very much.
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I think also Japan is good option, it really depends on where you will live and what you like. For example the weather. Japan has four seasons for the most, so if you do not like a cold winter then Taiwan is an option. Japan has hot summers south of Sendai some places hotter than KHH in the summer. Sapporo gets a lot of snow (the most in the world for a large city) meanwhile Okinawa has somewhat Hawaii like weather. So a big difference.
As far as people. For older Japanese I think are less tolerant but this is fast changing with more immigrants recently. Some areas like Nagoya have more immigrants so easier to mix and services for immigrants.
As far a costs, Japan rents/housing is less in general, easy and cheaper to get a car (but not needed the big city centres and smaller cars than Taiwan). Food can be less if you eat local in Japan. As far as office work I think Taiwanese work longer hours. I do think Taiwanese are friendly others and more so to me but this may vary depending on where your from.
As far as crime , both places are very safe as is most of East Asia.
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I agree with others advising against Taipei, mostly due to cost. But offer another, less conventional, city. Also I don’t have kids so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Miaoli
I earn about $55,000NTD a month teaching English with my scheduled classes between 4-9 but I finish earlier 3 out of 5 days. My boss is a nice guy, one of the 安親班 teachers brings her 3ish year old to work every day, I imagine he would allow me to do the same for me if I had kids. I don’t think this would be acceptable in bigger cities. You probably wouldn’t need to pay for childcare if you find a good job with a good boss.
My rent is only $9,000NTD a month for 2 bedroom apartment, full kitchen, full living room and dining area. I am 10 minutes walk to Miaoli train station, Hsinchu and Taichung are about 30 minutes by train. It isn’t new but it’s nice, well looked after, decent furniture. My landlord is great too (they have a bad rep here)
There are LGBT people around here, I’m a man married to a man and have never had any issues. My colleague is also gay but for context he isn’t comfortable coming out to his family.
I know another Australian/Taiwanese family with a young daughter around here too.
It’s quiet and most of the people around here will want to talk to you because there aren’t many western looking foreigners. It would be a great way to promote your business but you would need to speak a little chinese. Although I think your business would be difficult to run here. Teaching English is definitely the easiest route to take.
I’ve thought about moving o taipei and had a job offer of $75,000 a month but i would be working twice as much and be paying 2-4x as much for a similar apartment. So, I decided against it.
Also I’m Australian (which has health care, woman and LGBT rights are generally respected and no gun violence) and I still prefer staying here because I find life more cruisy than Australia… i think it would feel even cruisier for someone coming from the US.
Edit: you wouldn’t need an ESL certificate as you have a Bachelor degree but it’s nice to have.
I’m not sure what public education is really like in the US but I have said that if I ever had kids that I would move back to Australia for them to go to school.
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Many places will say they don’t accept pets but you can negotiate with the landlord. As others have said though, helps if you speak Chinese.
I agree with your assessment but would only add that school isn’t such a grind here in Japan for kids as it is in Taiwan. The students I know seem to have plenty of free time for extracurricular activities. Also every two years I have to pay around $2,000 US for car registration (shaken) and several hundred dollars per year road tax. Buying a car is cheap though.
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But you should understand that cars are not a requirement in Taiwan, perhaps with children this is a little different (so I may not be so reliable in this area), but car ownership is basically a requirement even if you are single in the US.
I never been to Japan, but even if I wanted to immigrate to Japan there is no legal way for me to. I would prefer the cooler weather for one thing…
Taiwan has very strict regulations on brining animals.
You should check on this. We had to wait 6 months before we could bring our dogs and than they had to quarantine when they got to Taiwan.
This is true a lot of the times. “Why did you move back to Taiwan?” I always feel embarassed when I get asked that question. It’s a super judgmental society.
Cats are better… they smell nice all the time. If they start smelling bad it’s time to take them to the vet (because it means they stopped grooming).
Yea my dad said that any Taiwanese who went to the states and moved back to Taiwan is assumed to have failed or committed a crime. Taiwanese basically assume that Taiwan is a shithole, and that the US is the promised land, and they can’t understand that they have problems or that Taiwan is actually better in many ways.
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