Money
The city you pick costs you twice what the school does
"It is expensive" is the most common complaint international students make about Japan — 71.4% of them, ahead of language, ahead of culture. But broken into its parts, the number that moves most is not tuition. It is where you sleep.
Ask international students in Japan what they struggled with after arriving, and one answer beats everything else. Not the language. Not the customs. The prices.
Multiple answers allowed. These are shares of students (7,867 respondents) — unlike some other tables in this survey, they do not sum to 100.
Worth noting before going further: this figure has fallen three surveys running — 75.0%, then 74.3%, now 71.4%. The survey does not say why, and we are not going to invent a reason. But the complaint is softening even as it stays in first place.
So what is actually expensive?
The same survey asks people to itemise their spending. Two things are worth separating: how many students pay for a thing at all, and how much it costs the ones who do.
| What | Share who pay it | Their average |
|---|---|---|
| Food | 96.4% | ¥34,000 |
| Rent | 94.1% | ¥44,000 |
| Study and research | 85.9% | ¥61,000 |
| Electricity, gas, water | 82.7% | ¥9,000 |
| Insurance and medical | 77.7% | ¥4,000 |
| Leisure | 63.0% | ¥9,000 |
| Money left over | 53.2% | ¥24,000 |
| Commuting | 51.8% | ¥8,000 |
Two rows in that table are worth stopping on.
Only half of all students pay anything to get to class
51.8%. Japan has famously good trains and famously expensive fares, and half the international student population is not using them to commute at all. They walk or cycle.
That is not thrift for its own sake — it is a housing decision. Living within walking distance of your school costs you in rent and saves you in fares, and half of all students have made that trade in the same direction.
More than half finish the month with money left
53.2% report a surplus, averaging ¥24,000 a month. Held next to the 71.4% who call Japan expensive, that looks like a contradiction. It is not. "Expensive" describes the effort required to stay level, not the outcome. People are managing — they are just working hard at it.
Now the part that decides your budget
Here is where the survey gets genuinely useful. Total monthly spending, by region:
Yen per month. National average ¥170,000. Tokyo is counted separately as well as inside Kanto.
Tokyo to Tohoku is a gap of ¥66,000 a month — ¥792,000 over a year. Rent alone accounts for about half of it: ¥57,000 in Tokyo against ¥26,000 in Tohoku. The rest follows, because food and everything else move with the city too.
Now compare that against the other big lever, the institution:
Choice of city
per month, Tokyo vs Tohoku. Nothing about your degree changes.
Choice of institution
per month, private university vs national (tuition: ¥73,000 vs ¥40,000).
The city is worth about twice the school. And unlike tuition — which buys you a specific institution, a specific department, a specific supervisor — the city premium buys you proximity to Tokyo and nothing else you can put on a CV.
Before you conclude that Tokyo is a mistake
Nearly three in ten of the students in this survey live in Tokyo (2,315 of 7,867), and they are not all making an error. Part-time work pays more there, the job market after graduation is deeper, and more programmes are taught in English.
The point is not that Tokyo is wrong. It is that Tokyo costs ¥792,000 a year more than Tohoku, and that number should appear in your decision explicitly — not as a surprise you discover in month three.
One more line in the tuition table
Tuition is paid by 78.6% of respondents. The remaining fifth are not paying it — through exemptions, reductions, or scholarships that cover it. That is a larger group than most people expect, and it is the single biggest variable available to you after the city.
Which means the honest ranking of what moves your budget is:
- Where you live — up to ¥66,000 a month
- Whether you pay tuition at all — up to ¥73,000 a month at a private university
- Which institution — around ¥33,000 a month between national and private
- How you commute — around ¥8,000 a month, and half of students have already got it to zero
Sources. Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO), FY2023 Survey on Living Conditions of Privately Financed International Students. Table 4-11 (difficulties after arriving; 7,867 respondents). Tables 7-3, 7-4, 7-5, 7-6 (spending; 7,599 respondents who gave valid income and expenditure answers). Survey PDF (Japanese). On reading the percentages: Table 4-11 gives shares of students and does not sum to 100. Table 7-5 gives, for each item, the share of students who spend on it and the average among those students — so the averages cannot simply be added into a monthly total. Table 7-3 totals include everyone.