Renting & Moving Guides
Choosing where to live based on a station name alone is how people end up regretting the move. These guides cover how to work backwards from the places you actually go every day — your office, your supermarket, your gym — plus the contracts and paperwork that follow.
How to Find a Rental in Japan｜Choosing Where to Live from the Map
A timeline of everything you need to do before signing. Stop searching by station name and start working backwards from the places you actually go — your office, your gym, your supermarket — using Sumu Machi's map search.
Read→Choosing a Tokyo Neighbourhood｜Train Lines and the Character of Each Area
Inside versus outside the Yamanote loop, the character and rent bands of the major train lines, and why choosing by station name has a hard limit. Plus how to derive your own answer from overlap on a map.
Read→Reading Japanese Floor Plans｜1R, 1K, 1DK and 1LDK Explained
What actually separates a 1K from a 1DK, how many square metres a jō is, and what the symbols on a floor plan mean. The basics you need to read a Japanese listing correctly, with a real sense of the sizes involved.
Read→Move-in Costs in Japan｜A Full Breakdown at ¥80,000 Rent
Deposit, key money, brokerage fee, advance rent, fire insurance, guarantor company. Every line item with its going rate, and which ones you can actually negotiate, worked through on an ¥80,000 apartment.
Read→Moving to Tokyo｜A Checklist from Two Months Out to Moving Day
Signing the lease is where the work starts. Ward office paperwork, utilities, movers — organised into a chronological checklist, with the steps that can only be done before you move clearly marked.
Read→Renting in Japan as a Foreign Resident｜Documents, Guarantors and Screening
Residence card, guarantor companies, emergency contacts, and finding landlords who accept foreign tenants. The parts of the Japanese rental process that trip up non-Japanese applicants, and how to prepare so screening goes through.
Read→Apartment Hunting as a Couple｜Finding the Real Midpoint Between Two Commutes
How two people with different workplaces decide where to live. The compromise usually ends with one person absorbing all the pain — here's how to settle it with a map and numbers instead.
Read→Is a 15-Minute Walk to the Station Really Too Far?
Insisting on being near a station raises your rent and shrinks your options. What actually changes between a 5-minute and a 15-minute walk, and who can live comfortably further out — judged by daily movement, not by the listing filter.
Read→Apartment Hunting for Remote Workers｜Where to Live When You Don't Commute
If you're not going into an office every day, there's no reason to optimise for station distance. What remote workers should actually check — connection, sound insulation, daylight, and what's within walking distance of home.
Read→Apartment Hunting with Young Children｜Where Nursery, Work and Shops Overlap
Whether the nursery drop-off works determines your options almost entirely. How to narrow down areas around the morning route, nursery competition by municipality, and distance to a clinic.
Read→Now try it on the map
Drop up to five places you visit regularly onto the map and let the overlap tell you where to live. Every search is stored in the URL, so you can bookmark and compare candidates.
Search listings on the map