Lot of misinformation here, the contract package at Skymark is at $16,300 a month without the contact completion bonus nor overtime pay, they also pay $1,000 a day if you volunteer to fly on one of your days off, this salary is net as opposed to the salary at Copa where you have to pay taxes to the Panamanian government and Japan is one of the countries that has a non double taxation agreement with the U.S. This information is from a close friend of more than 20 years that just started there. Another thing besides the taxes that hasn't been explained to folks about living in Panama is that if you have kids, international schools for them will run you at about $1,500USD/ month each, there are International schools in Japan that are pretty affordable for airline employees and my friends wife is a teacher in one of them so her contract has education for their kids for free (they pay some ridiculous amount like 120yen per kid per month or something like that) but even if you pay for it, their school allowance covers it for two kids. His housing allowance also covers his house because he lives in Nagoya, not central Tokyo, here in Narita for example, you can get a 2,000 sq. feet, 4 bedroom home for $1,500/ month, the same home in central Tokyo would run you $5,000 you don't have to live in central Tokyo, there are options. If you would have spent the same amount of time doing research that you spend spreading misinformation you would have picked another argument than food, food is the one thing that I think is at the same price as in the U.S. I have done many comparisons to what I spend here at the supermarket for groceries and what I spend in the U.S. and besides meat that is about 25% more expensive here, every thing else is pretty much the same and sea food is cheaper actually than what I pay in Minnesota, you can get a greasy burger in central Tokyo as cheap as you get it around your corner, with the same amount of cholesterol on it too, but in one of the most amazing cities on the planet, where you can have an incredible culinary experience, why would you do such a thing?
http://wasinc.net/News/Default.aspx?id=82
They have interviews in Seattle coming up, wonder how many JCAB licensed pilots they will find there