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.
How to Find a Rental in Japan
The most common mistake in apartment hunting isn't picking the wrong apartment. It's picking the wrong area, based on nothing but a station name.
Filter by "10 minutes from ◯◯ Station" and you will certainly get results. But what actually shapes your daily life after you move in isn't the distance to the station — it's the distance to the places you go every day. Your office, your gym, your kid's nursery, your parents' place, the supermarket you like. None of these are neatly arranged around a train station.
This guide walks through how to work backwards from the places you actually go, translated into concrete steps you can follow.
The overall timeline
| When | What to do |
|---|---|
| 2–3 months out | Set your budget, get a rough sense of areas |
| 1–2 months out | Narrow down areas on the map, shortlist listings |
| 1 month out | Viewings (3–4 per day maximum) |
| 2–3 weeks out | Apply, go through tenant screening |
| 1–2 weeks out | Sign the contract, pay move-in costs |
| Final days | Utilities paperwork, the move itself |
During peak season (January to March), assume every one of these steps shifts one to two weeks earlier. Good listings are gone within days of being posted.
Step 1: Budget by monthly total, not by rent
The usual advice is that rent should be a third of your take-home pay. But rent isn't the only thing leaving your account every month.
- Building management fees (¥3,000–10,000/month)
- Bicycle or car parking
- Neighbourhood association dues (not always included in rent)
- Renewal fee — typically one month's rent every two years
The renewal fee isn't monthly, but divide it by 24 and add it to your monthly figure to get a realistic number. At ¥80,000 rent with a one-month renewal fee, that's an effective +¥3,300/month.
For the full breakdown of upfront costs, see Move-in Costs in Japan.
Step 2: Pick your area by overlap, not by a single point
This is the core of the guide.
Instead of choosing one station and searching outward from it, put every place you regularly go onto the map at once, and look at where they overlap. This is the most reliable method there is.
The actual steps
- Open the Sumu Machi homepage
- Type your office's nearest station or a place name into the search bar (e.g.
Shinjuku) - Once the map moves, a search circle appears centred on that point
- Adjust the radius with the slider in the left panel — anywhere from 500m to 2,000m (default: 1,000m)
Converted to walking time, the radii work out roughly like this:
| Radius | Walking time |
|---|---|
| 500m | ~6 min |
| 800m | ~10 min |
| 1,000m | ~12 min |
| 1,500m | ~19 min |
| 2,000m | ~25 min |
The moment the circle is drawn, listings inside it are searched automatically.
Layering the places you go with "spots"
The spots feature in the left panel lets you register up to five places you want to be near. Each gets its own colour and shape, shown as markers on the map.
| Slot | Marker |
|---|---|
| Spot 1 | ● Deep pink |
| Spot 2 | ■ Green |
| Spot 3 | ▲ Orange |
| Spot 4 | ◆ Purple |
| Spot 5 | ★ Blue |
The shapes differ as well as the colours, so the markers stay distinguishable for people with colour vision deficiency, in print, and when the markers are rendered small.
Register "gym", "supermarket" and "nursery", for example, and three kinds of markers appear on the map at once. Wherever those three cluster together is the area that actually suits you. That's an answer you can never reach from a station name.
Try it: open the map with supermarkets and convenience stores around Shinjuku
Step 3: Narrow down by conditions
Once you can see the area, move on to the apartment itself. The filters in the left panel are grouped into 19 categories.
The ones you'll actually use most:
- Rent — set a floor as well as a ceiling; it filters out suspiciously cheap listings
- Layout — for the difference between 1K, 1DK and 1LDK, see Reading Japanese Floor Plans
- Building type — manshon (reinforced concrete) versus apāto (usually timber) differ a lot in noise and insulation
- Structure — RC and SRC construction tend to be far better for sound
- Orientation — insisting on south-facing cuts your options dramatically. If you're out during the day, deprioritise it
- Security — auto-lock entry, video intercom
- Tenancy conditions — pets allowed, instruments allowed, two occupants allowed
Don't stack too many conditions
Apply every condition from the start and you'll get zero results. Set only the two or three you truly can't compromise on, then add more if you get too many hits. That order is far more efficient.
Step 4: Save and share candidates by URL
Sumu Machi stores your search state directly in the URL. Map position, circle radius, spots, filters — all of it.
Which means:
- You can bookmark each candidate scenario and compare them later
- Send the URL to a partner or family member and they see exactly the same map
When you tell an agent "I'm looking around here", showing them the URL is the fastest way to be understood.