Apartments Near Tokyo University: Where Todai Students Actually Live

Last reviewed 26 Aug 2026 · 30 min read

Tokyo University sits on a hill. That single fact shapes almost everything about finding an apartment near it, and almost nobody tells you before you arrive.

The Hongo campus occupies a plateau in Bunkyo Ward, and the ground falls away on three sides.

Walk east from the Yayoi Gate, and you drop into the old valley of Nezu. Walk southwest toward Kasuga, and you lose about 16 meters of elevation in a few hundred meters, which one Bunkyo resident describes as the difference between the 1st and 6th stories of an apartment building.

Rents fall as you go down. So does your enthusiasm for the walk home with two bags of groceries.

This guide is for people who will live near Tokyo University, not visit it.

Incoming exchange students, degree students, postdocs, and visiting researchers, as well as the parents helping them sort out a lease from six thousand miles away.

We have written it around the three things that actually decide where you end up: which campus you are assigned to, what you can realistically afford, and whether you get a dormitory place.

All three are less obvious than they look.

One warning before we start. If you are an incoming undergraduate, you are almost certainly not going to Hongo. First- and second-year students study at Komaba, in Meguro Ward, which is 40 minutes away on a completely different set of train lines. Searching for apartments near Tokyo University and finding Hongo is the single most common mistake we see.

Main campus	Hongo, Bunkyo Ward (文京区)
Campus stations	Hongo-sanchome (Tokyo Metro Marunouchi M21, Toei Oedo E08), Todaimae (Tokyo Metro Namboku N12), Nezu (Tokyo Metro Chiyoda C14)
To Otemachi	About 5 minutes, no transfer, from Hongo-sanchome
To Shinjuku	About 20 to 25 minutes
Average 1K rent, Todaimae	~¥96,900
Average 1K rent, Hongo-sanchome	~¥140,400
Average 2LDK rent, Bunkyo Ward	~¥226,300
Best for	Graduate students, researchers, anyone who values a short walk over a lively night out
Not ideal for	First- and second-year undergraduates, people who want nightlife, anyone who dislikes hills

Is Living Near Tokyo University Worth It?

Yes, if you are at Hongo and you can absorb the rent. No, if you are at Komaba and assume Hongo is where you belong.

Here is the short version. Bunkyo Ward is quiet, green, unusually safe, and full of hospitals, universities and secondhand bookshops. It is also expensive relative to what you get, thin on nightlife, and hilly in a way that punishes cyclists. Students who live within ten minutes of the Hongo campus consistently say the same thing: the walk is the whole point. One second-year who moved from Komaba to Hongo put it plainly in a University of Tokyo interview, saying that the money you save on a commuter pass by living within walking distance is money you can reasonably add to your rent.

That reasoning holds up. A commuter pass from a cheaper suburb costs real money and real time, and the time is the expensive part when you have a 5th-period class, a lab that runs late, and a supermarket that closes.

The catch is that the headline rent figures for Bunkyo are misleading.

Japanese rental market data puts the average Bunkyo 1K somewhere between ¥108,500 and ¥125,900 a month, depending on which portal you read. When the University of Tokyo Peer Support Room surveyed students who had recently moved, the most common answer for rent actually paid was ¥80,000 to ¥90,000 a month, and more than 15% answered ¥30,000 or less.

Those are not contradictory numbers. They describe two different things, and the gap between them is where this guide earns its keep.

Where Is Tokyo University? Three Campuses, Three Different Problems

The University of Tokyo runs three main campuses, and they are nowhere near each other. Before you look at a single listing, work out which one you will actually attend, and for how long.

Hongo Campus, Bunkyo Ward

Hongo is the campus in the photographs: the Yasuda Auditorium, the ginkgo avenue, the Akamon. It holds most of the undergraduate faculties from third year onward, most of the graduate schools, and the university hospital. The address is Hongo 7-3-1, Bunkyo Ward, and the campus is big enough that walking from one end to the other takes about 15 minutes.

If you are a master's or doctoral student in Engineering, Science, Letters, Law, Economics, Medicine, Agriculture or Education, this is your campus, and this is where you should be looking.

Komaba Campus, Meguro Ward

Every undergraduate at Tokyo University spends their first two years at Komaba, in the College of Arts and Sciences, regardless of which faculty they will eventually join. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is here too. The station is Komaba-todaimae on the Keio Inokashira Line, and the campus is directly outside the ticket gate.

Komaba's geography is the opposite of Hongo's. It's flat, it's four minutes and ¥140 from Shibuya, and the surrounding streets are some of the most expensive residential real estate in Tokyo. Meguro Ward's Komaba, and Shibuya Ward's Shoto, Tomigaya and Uehara all press up against the campus.

Kashiwa Campus, Chiba Prefecture

Kashiwa opened in 2000 and houses the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences plus a cluster of research institutes: the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research, the Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, the Institute for Solid State Physics and several others. It's in Chiba, about 30 kilometers north-east of central Tokyo.

Frontier Sciences is not a small program. As of 1 May 2026 it hosted 749 international students, the second largest international cohort of any graduate school at the university after Engineering. If you have been admitted to Frontier Sciences and you are budgeting for Bunkyo rents, stop. You will pay roughly half.

How Many International Students Are There, and Why That Matters for Housing

As of 1 May 2026 the University of Tokyo had 30,469 students, of whom 5,383 were international students, or 17.67% of the whole university. That figure is published twice a year by the university's academic affairs division, in Japanese.

The distribution is what matters for housing. Only 446 of the 14,316 undergraduates are international, about 3%. Among graduate students the figure is 4,927 out of 16,072, or 30.66%. Nearly one graduate student in three at Tokyo University is from outside Japan.

By country, China accounts for 3,457 students, or 64.2% of all international students. Korea follows with 438, then Taiwan with 205, France with 117, Indonesia with 109 and the United States with 106. And 4,869 of the 5,383, or 90.5%, are privately financed rather than on a Japanese government scholarship. That last number is the one landlords implicitly care about, because it means most international students at Todai are renting on their own money without a state stipend behind them.

If you're arriving from overseas and haven't yet worked out the sequence of visa, bank account, phone number and lease, our guide to moving to Japan as an international student covers the order those need to happen in, which is not the order most people guess.

The Gate Problem: Why "Near Campus" Depends on Your Faculty

Hongo campus is ringed by three stations, and each one is closest to a different gate. A third-year Law student writing for a Todai student media account laid the geography out about as clearly as anyone has:

Todaimae, on the Namboku Line, serves the Yayoi campus, which is mainly Agriculture, plus everything west of the Main Gate, which is mainly Engineering.

Hongo-sanchome, on the Marunouchi and Oedo lines, is what he calls the most orthodox station, with the easiest access to most of the campus, and the natural choice for Medicine, Economics, Education, and Pharmacy.

Nezu, on the Chiyoda Line, is good for the Asano campus and is where he places Science, but he's blunt that for most undergraduates it's far and inconvenient, and you have to climb a long slope from the station to campus.

Law and Letters sit in the middle of campus and are equally near, or equally far, from everything.

Two more stations exist that nobody counts as Hongo stations. Kasuga, on the Mita and Oedo lines, is about the same distance to the Main Gate as Hongo-sanchome, but the same student notes there are slopes, so it's quite tough. Yushima, on the Chiyoda Line, has the same problem and fewer users.

This is the practical takeaway. Before you sign anything, find your building on the campus map and count the minutes from your candidate apartment to that building, not to the campus. A second-year interviewed on the university's own student site gave exactly this warning: Hongo campus is big, so think about which part is closest to the faculty you want to be in.

One current complication. The Akamon, the famous red gate on Hongo-dori, has been closed to pedestrians since 2021 after a foundation survey found its seismic performance was low. Renovation work began on 5 November 2025 and runs until 30 September 2027, with scaffolding covering the gate, the guardhouses and the surrounding walls. Older guides that tell you to walk in through the Akamon are, for now, wrong.

Transport Access and Commute Times

Commute Times From Hongo-sanchome Station

Destination	Train Line	Approx. Time	Why It Matters
Otemachi	Marunouchi, direct	5 min	Japan's densest concentration of corporate head offices
Tokyo Station	Marunouchi, direct	7 min	Shinkansen, and the route to almost anywhere in Japan
Ikebukuro	Marunouchi, direct	9 min	Department stores, cinemas, cheap eating
Shinjuku	Toei Oedo, direct	About 20 min	Nightlife, and every job interview you'll ever have
Shibuya	1 transfer	About 25 min	Where your Komaba friends are
Haneda Airport	Toei Oedo to Daimon, then Asakusa and Keikyu, 1 transfer	About 65 min	Domestic flights and most Asian routes
Narita Airport	Toei Oedo to Ueno-okachimachi, walk, then Keisei Skyliner, 1 transfer	About 60 min	Long-haul, and your first arrival

Times retrieved from a Japanese transfer-search service on 26 August 2026, based on off-peak weekday departures. Treat them as ballpark figures rather than rush-hour times.

Three of those seven are direct with no transfer, which is unusual for a residential neighborhood this quiet. The Marunouchi Line is the reason. It runs down the eastern spine of central Tokyo and hits Otemachi, Tokyo Station and Ginza without you moving from your seat.

Todaimae is a different story, and this is worth knowing before you choose it for the cheaper rent.

The Namboku Line serves none of Shinjuku, Shibuya, Tokyo Station, Ikebukuro, or Otemachi directly. Every single one of those journeys costs you a transfer.

Otemachi runs about 18 minutes for ¥180 via Korakuen and the Marunouchi Line; Shinjuku about 22 minutes via Yotsuya; Shibuya about 24 minutes via Nagatacho and the Hanzomon Line.

None of that is painful. It's just consistently one change more than Hongo-sanchome, every day, for years.

Getting to Haneda and Narita

From the Hongo campus area, Haneda is best reached by taking the Toei Oedo Line to Daimon and changing to the Toei Asakusa Line, which through-runs onto the Keikyu line straight to the terminals. About 65 minutes, one transfer, ¥650. It's the cheapest and simplest option, and it's the one we recommend to clients with luggage.

Narita is faster than most people expect at about 60 minutes, but it costs ¥2,760 because it uses the Keisei Skyliner from Keisei-Ueno. There's a short walk between Ueno-okachimachi and Keisei-Ueno. If you're arriving for the first time with two suitcases and no Japanese, budget 90 minutes and take the Airport Limousine bus instead.

Station Passenger Numbers

For a sense of scale, Tokyo Metro's published figures for fiscal 2025 put Todaimae at 28,284 passengers a day, 115th of the 130 stations it ranks, and Nezu at 28,781, 114th. Hongo-sanchome's Marunouchi Line platforms handle 52,058, ranking 76th, with a further 22,043 on the Toei Oedo side in fiscal 2024 according to Toei's own passenger tables. Komaba-todaimae handled 35,787 a day in fiscal 2025 on the Keio Inokashira Line, per Keio's published figures.

Those are small numbers by Tokyo standards. Shinjuku moves more people in an hour. What they tell you is that Todaimae and Nezu are genuinely local stations, and your morning platform will not be a scrum.

Rent Near Tokyo University

Rent by Layout in Bunkyo Ward

Layout	Average Rent (per month)	Best For
1R (ワンルーム)	~¥100,500	Singles on a tight budget, one open room
1K	~¥108,500	Singles wanting the kitchen separated from the sleeping space
1DK	~¥129,000	Singles who cook properly, or need a desk away from the bed
1LDK	~¥179,000	Couples, or postdocs who want a real living room
2DK	~¥184,400	Two students sharing, or a researcher with a visiting partner
2LDK	~¥226,300	Couples with a child, or a family of three
3LDK	~¥317,700	Families, or academics on a long posting

Source: Japanese rental market data for Bunkyo Ward, retrieved 26 August 2026. Different Japanese portals report the Bunkyo 1K average anywhere from ¥108,500 to ¥125,900, because some average every current listing and others average the last three months only. Treat these as asking-rent averages rather than what you will pay.

That footnote is the most important sentence in this section, so we'll expand it. A portal average is the average of what landlords are asking for properties currently listed within a short walk of a station. It skews toward newer buildings, larger units and addresses close to the ticket gate, because those are the properties agents advertise hardest. It is not the average of what tenants sign.

Students at Todai systematically live below that average, and they do it in three ways.

They walk farther from the station and closer to campus.

They accept older buildings, including wooden and older reinforced-concrete stock.

And a meaningful number of them go through the University of Tokyo Consumers' Co-operative, which keeps its own listings from landlords who approach the co-op directly, and does not advertise on the big portals at all.

The Ten Minutes That Save You ¥45,000

Here is where the geography turns into money. These are average 1K asking rents by station, from the same dataset, retrieved on the same day:

Station	Average 1K	Walk to Hongo campus
Hongo-sanchome	~¥140,400	Closest, straight into the Akamon side
Komaba-todaimae	~¥121,900	Outside the Komaba campus gate
Hakusan	~¥98,600	About 12 to 15 minutes
Nezu	~¥97,000	About 7 minutes to the Yayoi campus, uphill
Todaimae	~¥96,900	About 1 to 4 minutes to the Yayoi and Main gates
Sendagi	~¥95,400	About 15 minutes
Kashiwanoha-campus	~¥69,500	Free shuttle bus, Kashiwa campus

Read that table twice. Hongo-sanchome commands ¥140,400 for a 1K. Todaimae, which is closer to the Main Gate and the entire Yayoi campus, averages ¥96,900. That's a 31% difference for an address that is, for many faculties, more convenient.

The premium at Hongo-sanchome isn't buying you campus access. It's buying you the Marunouchi Line, a livelier street of restaurants, and a five-minute ride to Otemachi. If you're a graduate student whose life happens on campus and in the library, you are paying a substantial monthly sum for a convenience you'll use on weekends.

Actual listings back this up.

On the day we checked, one-room apartments a two- to five-minute walk from Todaimae were advertised at ¥57,000, ¥69,000, and ¥83,000.

Those are individual properties rather than a market average, and they will be small and probably not new. They are also entirely real, and they are roughly what the Peer Support Room survey says students actually pay.

Students paying rent in Japan face a set of rules that don't apply to salaried tenants, from income proof to what counts as a co-signer. Our breakdown of what students really pay in rent in Japan covers the numbers and the paperwork side by side.

Move-In Costs

Japanese leases front-load the cost. Budget four to six months of rent to get through the door. On a ¥95,000 apartment near Todaimae, an illustrative breakdown looks like this:

• First month's rent: ¥95,000
• Shikikin (敷金), a refundable security deposit, typically 1 month: ¥95,000
• Reikin (礼金), non-refundable key money paid to the landlord, typically 1 month: ¥95,000
• Agency brokerage fee, 1 month plus consumption tax: ¥104,500
• Guarantor company fee, commonly 50% of one month's rent up front: ¥47,500
• Fire insurance, 2 years: ¥20,000
• Lock and key replacement: ¥16,500

That comes to roughly ¥473,500, or about five months' rent, before you've bought a futon. Figures vary by building and agent, and plenty of Bunkyo landlords now waive reikin to compete for tenants, which is the single largest saving available. Ask about it directly.

Two costs students routinely forget. Japanese rentals almost always come unfurnished, meaning no light fittings, no curtains, no fridge, no washing machine and sometimes no gas cooker. And if your lease starts before your old one ends, you pay both. A senior quoted in the Peer Support Room survey put it bluntly: don't let your rent double up, be careful, and even if you're careful it can still overlap.

Renting Near Tokyo University as a Foreign Resident

There's a change here that most English-language guides have not caught up with, and it matters.

The University of Tokyo used to act as institutional joint guarantor for international students through its own scheme. That scheme stopped accepting new applications at the end of January 2025. From 1 February 2025, applications are accepted only to renew an existing lease, in the same property, on unchanged terms, for a student who already used the scheme. If you're arriving now, the university will not guarantee your lease. It points students instead toward the co-op's own rent-guarantee service.

Even under the old scheme, there was a trap worth knowing about, because it still describes how the market works.

The university's page warns that if your contract obliges you to join a guarantee company designated by the estate agent, the university will, in principle, not provide a joint guarantee. Most agents do exactly that.

In practice, this means nearly every international student renting privately near Tokyo University will go through a commercial guarantor company, pay its fee, and pass its screening.

That screening is where applications fail. Guarantor companies want to see stable income or a funding letter, a Japanese phone number, a residence card with enough validity left on it, and often a Japanese-speaking emergency contact. A scholarship award letter usually satisfies the income test. Savings alone sometimes don't. If you're privately financed, which 90.5% of Todai's international students are, expect to be asked for a bank balance and a sponsor letter.

If you've never dealt with a Japanese guarantor company and want to know what they check and why an application gets refused, our step-by-step guide to guarantor companies in Japan walks through the process. We handle this part for clients every week, including for students arriving before their residence card exists.

The other thing to know is timing. Japanese leases for a spring start are signed between January and March, and the good stock goes early.

The same student survey found that the most common answer was that people started gathering information less than three months before moving. A senior's advice in that survey was to move during the summer vacation of second year, and at the latest by around December, because it is hard to find good properties during the spring holiday.

For international students arriving from overseas, the practical version of that advice is: start looking two to three months out, and be prepared to sign on a video viewing. It works. A second-year interviewed on the university's site searched online during the August break, did an online viewing, and completed the whole contract remotely.

Tokyo University Dormitories: What They Cost and Why You Might Not Get One

Todai does run dormitories, and international students are eligible for most of them. Two things people get wrong: there aren't nearly enough places, and the newest one is more expensive than a private apartment.

The university's student dormitory index lists three facilities currently open to students.

Toshima International Student Dormitory, Toshima Ward

Two buildings in Nishi-Sugamo, mixing Japanese and international students, with residents required to join the dormitory's self-governing association.

Building A has 200 individual rooms at ¥10,000 a month, plus a ¥50,000 refundable deposit and ¥1,500 a month in association fees. Utilities are on your own contract. Each room has a desk, chair, bookshelf, bed frame, closet, toilet, air conditioning and a mini kitchen with an IH hob. There's no mattress, so bring bedding.

Building B has 300 rooms arranged in shared units of about ten, at ¥36,300 a month plus ¥7,000 management, a ¥50,000 deposit and ¥900 association fees. Students assessed as being in serious financial hardship get ¥26,300 a month of university support, bringing the effective cost down to ¥10,000.

At ¥11,500 to ¥45,000 a month all in, Toshima is far and away the cheapest housing any Todai student will find. It's also in Toshima Ward, not Bunkyo, so you're commuting.

Mitaka International Student Dormitory, Mitaka City

The Mitaka dormitory is the Komaba-oriented one: it's open to College of Arts and Sciences students, Mathematics students in the Faculty of Science, and international students in the later undergraduate years and graduate school. The split is roughly 70% Japanese to 30% international students.

There are 605 single rooms of 13 square meters, of which 197 are reserved for international students. The stated rent is ¥4,700 a month, plus ¥2,550 base utilities, ¥500 common fee, ¥1,000 repair fee and ¥100 exchange fee, with a ¥60,000 restoration charge collected once on move-in. Those figures are the ones posted as of 1 April 2021 and may have been revised, so confirm with the Housing Office.

The reason it's that cheap is that it's in Mitaka, out west. From Kichijoji station it's a 20-minute bus ride and then a 5-minute walk. One Komaba student's summary of it, writing about where her friends lived, was that it's just cheap, that's all: shabby, 15 minutes from the nearest station, and being in Mitaka it isn't especially near Komaba either. She added that her friend who lives there is satisfied, and wondered whether he'd simply got used to it.

Mejirodai International Village, Bunkyo Ward

Mejirodai International Village, which opened in September 2019, is the newest and the one prospective students hear about most. It houses around 1,000 students and researchers at Mejirodai 3-28-6 in Bunkyo, combining 704 shared-type rooms, 151 independent studios and one barrier-free unit, alongside university research facilities. It has resident assistants, three resident faculty advisers, a concierge at reception and a lunchtime food truck.

It's also expensive, and this is where the picture turns. The published fee table puts the standard shared A and B room types, which are 10 square meters, at ¥55,300 a month in facility fees, plus ¥12,000 for management and ¥15,000 for utilities and internet.

That's ¥82,300 a month, all in, for a 10-square-meter room where the kitchen, shower, and toilet are down the corridor. The larger shared types at 15 square meters come to ¥96,800.

Independent studios range from ¥102,800 for 15 square meters to ¥173,000 for a 42-square-meter couple's unit. There's a move-in fee equal to roughly one month's rent, and the same amount again each year you renew.

A resident writing in November 2025 confirmed the numbers from the inside and was frank about the rooms, calling them extremely small and noting that the bed takes up about half the floor area, with the main storage being the drawers built in underneath it. The smallest type has no closet. She rated the contracted cleaning of shared areas highly, and was less enthusiastic about laundry congestion on good drying days and a rubbish schedule limited to Monday, Wednesday and Thursday between 06:00 and 15:00, which she contrasted unfavorably with the 24-hour disposal at Mitaka.

Her assessment of the location is worth repeating because it contradicts the name. Mejirodai is about 7 minutes' walk from Gokokuji station, roughly 30 minutes to Hongo campus and about 45 minutes to Komaba. It's a Bunkyo address, but it is not near Tokyo University in any walking sense.

Roughly 60% to 70% of residents are international students. Anyone enrolled at Todai can apply, applications close on the 25th of each month, results come around the 15th of the following month, and if a room type is oversubscribed the university allocates by straight lottery. No priority, no waiting list, just a draw.

The Honest Verdict on Todai Dormitories

Apply anyway. It costs you nothing but a form, and Toshima at ¥11,500 a month changes what a student budget can do.

But do not build a plan around getting one.

Between Toshima's 500 rooms, Mitaka's 605, and Mejirodai's 855, the university has fewer than 2,000 student beds for 30,469 students. Allocation at Mejirodai is a lottery.

And the supply has recently shrunk rather than grown: the Oiwake International Student Dormitory in Mukogaoka, an 11-minute walk from the Main Gate, stopped taking new residents after the fall 2021 intake and, from April 2025, reopened as Oiwake International Village, a facility restricted to researchers, doctoral students, and resident physicians. Master's students and undergraduates who would once have lived there now compete for the remaining stock.

There's also a specific scheme worth flagging. The university runs housing support for female students entering the College of Arts and Sciences whose commute from home to Komaba would be 90 minutes or more, worth up to ¥30,000 a month for up to two years, capped at ¥720,000. It applies to more than 100 designated rooms, including at Mejirodai. The catch is written into the rules: if you find your own property, you get nothing.

Best Neighborhoods Near the Hongo Campus

Todaimae and Mukogaoka

The most obvious answer, and often the right one. Todaimae station puts you a minute or two from the Yayoi Gate, roughly 4 minutes from the Main Gate, and the surrounding Mukogaoka and Nishikata streets are quiet residential blocks of low-rise apartments and old houses.

Rent averages about ¥96,900 for a 1K, which is 31% below Hongo-sanchome for a shorter walk to most of the campus. The trade is the Namboku Line, which forces a transfer to reach anywhere you'd go on a Saturday. For a graduate student in Engineering or Agriculture, that's close to the ideal compromise.

Hongo-sanchome and Yushima

The lively end. Hongo-sanchome has the Marunouchi and Oedo lines, a real high street, and the highest density of cheap food anywhere near the campus. It's also the most expensive address in this guide at about ¥140,400 for a 1K.

Worth it if you're at the Medicine, Economics or Education buildings, if you commute into central Tokyo regularly, or if you know from experience that you need a street with people on it to stay sane. Yushima, just south, is slightly cheaper and gets you closer to Ueno.

Nezu

Down the hill on the Chiyoda Line, in the old shitamachi (下町), the low-lying merchant-and-artisan districts of eastern Tokyo. Nezu is about 3 minutes from the Yayoi campus and 5 from Asano, but that's misleading, because you have to climb a long slope from the station to get there. The Chiyoda Line is genuinely useful, through-running onto the Odakyu and Joban lines.

Nezu averages ¥97,000 for a 1K, and the neighborhood has better cheap restaurants than anywhere else near the campus. Two honest caveats. The area has a lot of old wooden buildings and narrow streets, which raises its fire risk, and Nezu 2-chome carries the highest disaster-risk ranking of any block in Bunkyo Ward. We cover both below.

Sendagi

The cheapest of the walkable options at about ¥95,400 for a 1K, and the one we recommend most often to students who want to spend less without leaving the neighborhood. It's about 15 minutes on foot to campus, which is a real walk, and mostly uphill on the way in.

Sendagi sits in the Yanesen area, the strip covering Yanaka, Nezu and Sendagi, which is one of the few parts of central Tokyo that still looks like pre-war Tokyo. Old shopping streets, temples, cats, coffee. It's a nice place to be a graduate student.

Hakusan

On the Toei Mita Line, about 12 to 15 minutes from campus, averaging ¥98,600 for a 1K.

The specific tip Japanese student housing guides repeat about Hakusan is worth passing on: the old Hakusan-dori corridor through Hakusan 1-chome and 5-chome runs to the Hongo campus without a hill, it has a lot of student-oriented buildings, and it's a main road, so it's well lit at night without carrying heavy traffic, because the newer road takes most of it.

If the hills are your main objection to Bunkyo, this is the answer.

Where Komaba Students Live: The Inokashira Line, Station by Station

If you're an undergraduate, this is your section.

Komaba-todaimae is a local-stop-only station on the Keio Inokashira Line, one stop from Shinsen and two from Shibuya. Students commuting from Shibuya routinely get on the express by mistake and watch it sail past, because the express doesn't stop anywhere between Shibuya and Shimokitazawa.

Living at Komaba-Todaimae itself is close enough to go home between classes, and it's quiet because it borders some of Tokyo's most expensive residential districts.

Two students who wrote about it independently gave the same two warnings. First, you'll misjudge how long five minutes takes and be late anyway. Second, your apartment becomes the default hangout after club activities.

One of them was harsher about daily life: there are no food places, seriously none, and no supermarket either, so living there is inconvenient.

That's the case for looking further out. Average combined one-room, 1K and 1DK rents along the Inokashira Line, retrieved 26 August 2026, tell the story clearly:

Station	Average rent	Note
Shibuya	~¥176,500	The premium end of the line
Shinsen	~¥149,300	One stop from Komaba
Ikenoue	~¥128,900	One stop the other way, and not cheaper
Komaba-todaimae	~¥127,700	The campus gate
Shimokitazawa	~¥120,600	Two local stops, the student favorite
Meidaimae	~¥107,800	Express stop, the commuter-pass boundary
Eifukucho	~¥97,000	Express and local connect here
Kugayama	~¥84,600	Express stop, about 15 minutes to Shibuya
Inokashira-koen	~¥77,400	Cheapest on the line, next to the park

Source: Japanese rental market data for the Keio Inokashira Line, retrieved 26 August 2026, based on properties within a 10-minute walk of each station and excluding management fees.

Three of those deserve a comment.

Shimokitazawa is the one students name first. It has a proper shopping street, a large supermarket, and more restaurants than anywhere else on the line. The Odakyu Line also stops there, so you can reach Shinjuku directly or change at Yoyogi-Uehara for the Chiyoda Line and central Tokyo. It's only two local stops from Komaba, so even an apartment well away from the station is under 20 minutes door to door. The counter-argument, from a student who loves it: the rent is far too high, it easily goes over ¥100,000, and a rich friend of hers lives in a ¥140,000 new-build.

Eifukucho is the value pick, and the reasoning is specific. It's the only station on the Inokashira Line where the express and the local wait for each other. So you take the local toward Komaba-todaimae and the express toward Shibuya, Shimokitazawa or Kichijoji, and everything is inside about 10 minutes. At roughly ¥30,700 a month less than Komaba-todaimae, that's a meaningful saving with almost no cost in convenience.

Meidaimae is the boundary students are told to respect for commuter-pass reasons. If you want to keep the pass cheap, live somewhere up to Meidaimae.

One caution about going too far out. A student at Kugayama found that in the morning the Inokashira Line runs locals only, so she rode ten stops to Komaba and it took more than 20 minutes. Cheap rent, slow mornings.

There's also a strategy some students use deliberately: pick a station roughly between Komaba and Hongo from the start, so you never have to move at third year. Moving costs a lot of money. The trade-off, in the words of a student who watched friends do it, is that the commute gets tiring later on.

Living Near the Kashiwa Campus

Kashiwa runs on different economics entirely, and it deserves an honest hearing rather than a footnote.

All three nearby stations are more than 15 minutes' walk from campus, so the bus is standard. From Kashiwanoha-campus station on the Tsukuba Express there's a shuttle bus that Todai students ride free by showing a student ID. The Tsukuba Express reaches Akihabara in 34 minutes with no transfer, and Tokyo Station in about 45 minutes with one.

The obvious move is to live at Kashiwanoha-campus station. A master's student in Applied Physics who lived out there wrote a detailed warning against it: the area around that station is an upmarket residential district and there are almost no apartments a student could afford. The rent data agrees. Kashiwanoha-campus averages ¥69,500 for a 1K, which is cheap against Bunkyo but is the most expensive station in its own neighborhood, roughly ¥19,900 a month above Kashiwa-tanaka one stop away.

His actual recommendation was Edogawadai on the Tobu Noda Line, which, in his opinion, is where most Kashiwa-campus people live. Above all, the rent is cheap, he wrote, and you can normally find places in the ¥30,000s. There's a supermarket, convenience stores, and a home center, and a Tobu bus runs from the station to Kashiwanoha-campus Station and stops right in front of the university, so on wet days you can take the bus rather than cycle.

Hatsuishi and Unga on the same line are livelier for eating and shopping, a notch more expensive, and about 20 minutes by bike from campus.

His verdict on the whole area, which we'd quote to any client considering Kashiwa: the only advantage of living around Kashiwa campus is that rent is far cheaper than around Hongo, prices for everything else are much the same, so you live richer by the rent difference.

That's a real argument. A doctoral student on a modest stipend who spends most waking hours in a lab, and who has no particular need for central Tokyo on a Tuesday, will be substantially better off in Kashiwa than in Bunkyo. A student who came to Japan partly for Tokyo will hate it.

Supermarkets and Daily Shopping

Bunkyo's shopping is adequate rather than good, and the hill is the reason.

Near Hongo-sanchome, there’s a Life, a Maruetsu Petit, and two Maibasuketto, all opened within roughly the last decade, which makes the Hongo-sanchome and Yumicho side of campus the easiest for daily food.

Further north along Hakusan-dori, there’s a Maruetsu and a Queen’s Isetan for the more expensive end.

A local writing about the neighborhood adds the point that matters: those are at the bottom of the slope, so walking back is hard going.

If you buy heavy things, that sentence is your future.

For late nights, the Don Quijote near Kasuga and Korakuen works as a supermarket and is open 24 hours, and there's a 24-hour Daiei beyond the Yanagicho Nakadori shopping street. In LaQua on the west side of Hakusan-dori there's a Seijo Ishii and the Naritaya fish market.

The Okoji shopping street on the south side of Yumicho toward Hongo-sanchome is the one honest disappointment. The same local writer says it seems to have been lively before, but there's no denying it feels run down, and the drop in foot traffic has been marked since Lawson 100 pulled out.

For anything Bunkyo doesn't have, Ueno is one stop away on the Chiyoda Line from Nezu, and Ikebukuro is nine minutes from Hongo-sanchome. Neither is a hardship.

Food and Local Character

This is where the neighborhood earns its reputation, and where our research turned up the most enthusiastic writing.

A sixth-year Engineering doctoral student at Hongo wrote a guide to eating around the campus that reads like someone describing their own kitchen. Her regular is Moriyama, a set-meal shop near the Main Gate whose sign reads "with Todai students since Meiji." She eats there about twice a week, recommends the menchi-katsu and the katsudon, and notes you can order a small rice for ¥50 less.

Her other picks, all within walking distance: Menya Nemuru for ramen, about 15 minutes from the Faculty of Engineering, where the squid-and-niboshi broth is the famous one, but she prefers the lighter shio. Spiga in Nezu, a small fresh-pasta place partway down the slope. Yah-Yah-Yah on Hongo, which she calls the place she eats at most and which stays open late, standing in a row with IZASA, Sesamitei, and Isshin, four ramen shops in a line. Suiten in Nezu, a small Chinese restaurant at the bottom of the slope, which she says is popular among the university's Chinese international students. Ichiban Gyoza between the Akamon and the Main Gate, where the ramen, fried rice, and gyoza set is the value order. Meshi Wako on the Nezu back street, an old-style set-meal shop that gets busy at dinner. And Nakaka Soba Nishino in a back alley near Hongo-sanchome, a Michelin-listed ramen shop with a sansho-scented clear broth.

For something other than Japanese food, Fire House is about 10 minutes from Hongo-sanchome and has been making burgers since 1996. Akamon Gyozaken is directly across the lights from the Akamon, does a weekly-rotating lunch menu, and its owner told the university newspaper that many Chinese international students come. Tonteji, on the second floor of a building right by Hongo-sanchome station, does Korean lunch sets under ¥1,000 with free rice, soup and salad refills.

Prices at the last three were reported in December 2022 and will have moved since. Everything else is where it was as of April 2024 and January 2026, but restaurants close, so treat the list as a starting point rather than a guarantee.

On campus, food trucks have run at Hongo since 2014, currently at five points on Hongo campus plus one at Yayoi, rotating daily on weekdays. The University of Tokyo newspaper reported in June 2026 that they average about ¥1,000 a meal, which is more than the co-op canteen. Convenient, not cheap.

One study note, since it comes up constantly. From 1 April 2026 the Library Plaza in the General Library Annex opens weekdays from 9:00 to 22:30, and 9:00 to 19:00 at weekends, with shorter hours in August and March. The General Library itself gets mixed reviews from the people who use it most. A third-year Economics student wrote that it looks magnificent and he can't concentrate in it, that the grand chairs have no casters and aren't padded, and that the inside gets incredibly muggy in a way that goes past the limit. He also noted it's almost always full.

Parks and Green Space

Bunkyo is better supplied here than its density suggests.

Koishikawa Botanical Garden, run by the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Science, is about 16 hectares of research garden open to the public, roughly 15 minutes from Hakusan station. It's one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world, founded as a medicinal herb garden in 1684, and it's the sort of place you go with a book.

Koishikawa Korakuen, next to Tokyo Dome and about 10 minutes from Korakuen station, is a Edo-period stroll garden and one of the two designated as both a Special Place of Scenic Beauty and a Special Historic Site. Rikugien, further north at Komagome, is the other great Bunkyo garden.

Closer to campus, the Sanshiro Pond inside Hongo campus is the one students use, sitting below the Faculty of Law buildings, and Ueno Park is a walk or one stop away from Nezu.

Komaba has a different advantage. Komaba Park is a few minutes from the campus, and the Inokashira Line runs all the way to Inokashira Park, which is one of the best in Tokyo and the reason the cheapest station on the line is not a bad place to live.

Safety and Disaster Risk

Crime

Bunkyo Ward has the strongest safety record of any of Tokyo's 23 special wards, and it isn't close. A ward committee document ranking recognized crime counts across all 23 wards places Bunkyo 23rd out of 23, meaning the lowest count, in every single year from 2003 to 2022. In 2022 the figure was 898 offences. For scale, the ward's resident register recorded 237,534 people in 133,160 households as of 1 August 2026, of whom 16,971 were foreign residents, a little over 7% of the population.

The trend since then has been upward rather than downward, which the ward says so itself. Recognized offences rose to 1,104 in 2023 and 1,194 in 2024, with non-intrusive theft, at 619 cases, the largest category. Bunkyo's own strategic review document states plainly that recognized offences and losses to special fraud are on an increasing trend.

The ward's monthly crime page had 730 offences for January to June 2026, up 80 on the same period a year earlier, with 83 special fraud cases and losses of roughly ¥822 million. Special fraud is a phone-and-bank-transfer scam aimed overwhelmingly at elderly residents, and it's not a risk profile that affects a 24-year-old graduate student. Petty theft is.

The practical advice we give every client is this: bicycle theft is the crime you're most likely to experience in Bunkyo. Register your bike, lock it properly, and use paid bicycle parking.

When you're viewing apartments, ask whether the building has bike parking at all. A student writing for a Todai group made the point sharply: many people who rent near the university cycle in, and if you pick a place with no bike parking, you may end up parking on the road in front of the building, and in the worst case, it gets impounded as an abandoned bicycle.

Flood Risk

Bunkyo publishes two separate maps, and the difference between them matters.

The statutory flood hazard map, issued in March 2024 and covering the Kanda River and the Arakawa, models a maximum-assumed rainfall of 690 millimeters over 24 hours with a peak hour of 153 millimeters. The mapped inundation depth bands run from 0.1 meters up to a top band of 5 to 10 meters, and the map also shows how long water is expected to stay above 50 centimeters, from under 12 hours up to more than a week. These pages are published in Japanese.

The second map covers inland flooding, meaning sewer backup and water pooling in low ground during heavy rain, and the ward is careful to say that portion is not based on the Flood Defense Act.

Its own explanation of urban flooding is the honest one: when rain exceeds what the rivers and sewers can carry, water collects in low places and inundation happens within a short time.

This is where the hill comes back. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government classifies ground type block by block, and the pattern around the campus is clear.

Hongo 1 through 7-chome, Yayoi 1 and 2, and Mukogaoka 1 and 2 are all classified as plateau. Nezu 1 and 2, and Sendagi 2, 3, and 4, are classified as valley-bottom lowland.

Elevations printed on the ward's maps range from 5.8 meters at the low end to 30.3 meters on the plateau.

You can walk between those two worlds in four minutes. Check the map for the exact address before you sign, not for the neighborhood.

Earthquake Risk

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government's ninth Community Earthquake Risk Assessment, published in September 2022, ranks all 5,192 chome in Tokyo's urbanization promotion areas from 1 to 5 on building collapse risk, fire risk and a comprehensive measure, where 5 is worst. The Bunkyo table is published in full.

Reading it produces three findings that should change where you look.

Hongo 7-chome, which is the campus itself, ranks 5,080th of 5,192 for comprehensive risk. That's effectively among the safest ground in Tokyo. Yayoi 1-chome, immediately north, scores rank 1 on all three indices and sits 4,167th. Hongo 1, 2 and 3-chome are all rank 1 comprehensive.

Nezu 2-chome is the opposite end. It carries rank 4 on all three measures, and its building-collapse ranking of 331st of 5,192 is the worst in Bunkyo Ward. Sendagi 2-chome and Sendagi 5-chome are also rank 4 comprehensive. This is the wooden-building, narrow-street problem that Japanese housing guides raise about Nezu, quantified.

And the contrast is between adjacent blocks. Yayoi 1-chome, rank 1 on everything, shares a boundary with Nezu 2-chome, rank 4 on everything. Nothing about the neighborhood name tells you which side of that line an apartment is on.

For what it's worth, reading all 69 Bunkyo rows, no chome in the ward reaches rank 5 on any index. That's our own reading of the published table rather than a statistic the metropolitan government issues, but it's a fair summary: Bunkyo's worst blocks are Tokyo's middling ones.

For earthquake safety, ground type and building age matter more than ward reputation. Our guide on how to tell whether your Japanese home will survive the next big earthquake explains the 1981 building-standard cutoff and what to ask an agent.

What's Changing: Tuition, Dormitories and a New Faculty

Three things have shifted recently that affect anyone budgeting for Tokyo University.

Tuition went up for the first time in twenty years. On 24 September 2024 the university decided to raise undergraduate tuition from ¥535,800 to ¥642,960 a year, applying to students entering from academic year 2025. Master's and professional degree tuition stays at ¥535,800 and doctoral tuition at ¥520,800 for now, with the increase reaching master's entrants from 2029 and doctoral students left at the pre-increase level. The admission fee is ¥282,000. Research students pay ¥28,900 a month.

The decision was contested. A media report in May 2024 broke the plan before the university announced it. The Komaba undergraduate self-government association demanded disclosure and student participation, and the President's Dialogue that followed was held once, online, for under two hours, with only 13 students allowed to speak.

The university expanded fee waivers alongside the increase, raising the household income threshold for full exemption from ¥4 million to ¥6 million and adding a partial exemption for students from outside Tokyo and its three neighboring prefectures with household income up to ¥9 million.

If you're a self-funded international student, check whether you qualify before you set a rent budget, because a waiver is worth more than any rent savings in this guide.

Dormitory supply shrank. The Oiwake conversion described above removed a Bunkyo dormitory from the student pool and reassigned it to researchers and doctoral students. Nothing has replaced it.

A new faculty arrives in 2027, and it comes with a housing rule. The UTokyo College of Design opens in September 2027, the university's first new faculty in about 70 years, taught entirely in English with fall entry, an intake of 100 split roughly evenly between international and Japanese students, and no written entrance exam. Recruitment opens in fall 2026. Its base will be a renovated building on the Asano campus in the Hongo district. The detail relevant here, reported by the University of Tokyo newspaper: first-year students will be under a full residential system, using the Mejirodai International Village.

If you're applying to that program, your first-year housing is decided for you. Budget the Mejirodai figures above, not a private apartment.

Pros and Cons of Living Near Tokyo University

What works

Bunkyo has the lowest recognized crime count of Tokyo's 23 wards on the longest published run of data. The Marunouchi Line puts Otemachi five minutes away with no transfer. Rents drop 30% within a fifteen-minute walk of Hongo-sanchome, so you have real choice at real prices. The campus itself sits on some of the safest ground in Tokyo for earthquakes. The cheap-eating scene around the Akamon and down in Nezu is unusually good. And the neighborhood is quiet enough to work in, which is not nothing when your job is thinking.

What doesn't

The hills are genuinely tiring, and a normal bicycle is not enough. Nightlife is close to non-existent, and you'll travel to Shibuya or Ikebukuro for it. Bunkyo is expensive for what you get, because you're paying an education-district premium. The valley blocks around Nezu and Sendagi carry meaningfully higher fire and building-collapse risk than the plateau. Dormitory places are scarce and allocated by lottery. And the university stopped acting as a guarantor for new international student leases in January 2025, which pushes you toward commercial guarantors and their screening.

Who Should Live Near Tokyo University

Graduate students and postdocs at Hongo, without much hesitation. Your life happens on campus, the walk is the benefit you're paying for, and the neighborhood suits sustained work.

Researchers with families, if you can afford a 2LDK. Bunkyo is one of the better wards in Tokyo for schools, it's quiet, and the parks are good.

Anyone whose funding is tight and who is willing to take an older building fifteen minutes from the gate. Sendagi, Hakusan and Todaimae are all real options in the ¥80,000 to ¥100,000 range, and students find things below that.

Couples where one partner works in Otemachi, Tokyo Station or Nihonbashi. That Marunouchi Line commute is one of the best in the city.

Who May Not Like Living Near Tokyo University

First- and second-year undergraduates. You're at Komaba. Read that section instead.

Anyone who wants a social life within walking distance. Bunkyo shuts early and always has.

Frontier Sciences students at Kashiwa. You'd be paying Bunkyo rent for a commute you don't need, when Edogawadai exists at a third of the price.

People with limited mobility, or anyone who'd struggle with the slopes. This is a specific and serious point. The elevation change between the campus plateau and the surrounding valleys is real, and a wet January walk up from Nezu is not fun.

Bargain hunters. Bunkyo is not cheap and never becomes cheap. If your priority is maximum apartment for minimum yen, look at Kita or Arakawa, where 1K averages run around ¥99,000 to ¥105,200, and accept a longer commute.

Hongo vs Komaba vs Kashiwa vs Living Further Out

Area	To Shinjuku	Average 1K Rent	Character	Best For
Hongo-sanchome, Bunkyo	About 20 min	~¥140,400	Academic, quiet, well connected	Anyone who needs central Tokyo daily
Todaimae / Sendagi, Bunkyo	22 to 30 min	~¥95,400 to ¥96,900	Residential, old streets, hilly	Graduate students at Hongo on a budget
Komaba-todaimae, Meguro	About 17 min	~¥121,900	Affluent, leafy, no shops	First- and second-year undergraduates
Eifukucho, Suginami	About 20 min	~¥97,000	Suburban, express and local connect	Komaba students who want value
Kashiwanoha-campus, Chiba	60 min plus	~¥69,500	New town, shopping mall, quiet	Frontier Sciences researchers

Rent figures from Japanese rental market data retrieved 26 August 2026. Eifukucho is a combined one-room, 1K and 1DK figure rather than a 1K-only average.

Practical Advice From E-Housing

Count minutes to your building, not to the campus. Hongo campus takes 15 minutes to cross. An apartment that's 8 minutes from the Main Gate can be 23 minutes from the Faculty of Medicine. Find your building on the campus map first.

Look on the plateau if you can, and check the chome. The metropolitan government's risk table is public and searchable by block. Comparing two apartments a few hundred meters apart can mean comparing rank 1 with rank 4.

Move in summer, not spring. The advice Todai students give each other is to move during the summer vacation of second year, or at the latest by December. Spring is when everyone else in Japan is moving, prices firm up, and the good stock disappears. Arriving international students should start looking two to three months ahead.

Sort the guarantor question before you fall in love with an apartment. Since the university's scheme closed to new applications in January 2025, you'll be going through a commercial guarantor company. Get your funding letter, bank statement and residence card details in order first, so a viewing doesn't turn into a two-week delay.

Ask about reikin. Key money is one full month you never see again, and in a soft month plenty of Bunkyo landlords will waive it. It's the largest single saving on the table and nobody offers it unprompted.

Check the bike parking, the gas rings, and whether the bath and toilet are separate. All three come up repeatedly in what Todai students say they wish they'd checked. Separate bath and toilet typically adds ¥15,000 to ¥20,000 a month, so it's a real budget decision rather than a nice-to-have. One gas ring means you can't cook a main dish and soup at the same time.

View online if you must, but ask for video of the water pressure and the corridor. Remote contracting is normal now and works. The complaints we hear afterward are always about things a photograph can't show: sound insulation, drainage, and what the building looks like from the outside.

Final Verdict: Should You Live Near Tokyo University?

If you're at Hongo, live in Bunkyo. The premium over cheaper wards is roughly ¥20,000 to ¥30,000 a month against a Kita or Arakawa address, and what it buys is an hour or more of your day, every day, for the length of your degree. Over a two-year master's that's a trade almost everyone should take.

The version of this decision that goes wrong is the one where people trade for the wrong thing. They pay ¥140,000 at Hongo-sanchome for the Marunouchi Line they use twice a month, when ¥96,900 at Todaimae would have put them closer to their own lab. Or they take a ¥70,000 apartment 40 minutes out and spend the savings on the loss of every evening.

The right answer for most Todai students is a fifteen-minute walk and an older building. That's what the survey data says students actually do, it's what the rent gradient rewards, and it's what we'd advise a friend.

At E-Housing, we work with foreigners, expat families, international students and working professionals across greater Tokyo every day. We know which Bunkyo landlords will accept a student on a scholarship letter rather than an employment contract, which buildings near Todaimae and Sendagi come up in February, and how to get a guarantor application approved when you don't yet have a residence card in your hand. We can arrange video viewings before you land and have the lease ready for the week you arrive.

If you're coming to Tokyo University and want a straight answer about what your budget will actually get you within walking distance of your building, tell us your campus, your faculty and your start date, and we'll show you what's available.

FAQ: Apartments Near Tokyo University

Where is Tokyo University located?

The main Hongo campus is at Hongo 7-3-1, Bunkyo Ward, in north-central Tokyo. The Komaba campus is in Meguro Ward, next to Komaba-todaimae station on the Keio Inokashira Line, and the Kashiwa campus is in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture.

What is the nearest station to Tokyo University?

It depends on your gate. Todaimae on the Tokyo Metro Namboku Line is closest to the Main Gate and the Yayoi campus. Hongo-sanchome on the Marunouchi and Toei Oedo lines is closest to the Akamon side and most convenient overall. Nezu on the Chiyoda Line is closest to the Asano campus, but you climb a long slope from the station.

How much is rent near Tokyo University?

Average asking rent for a 1K runs about ¥140,400 at Hongo-sanchome, ¥96,900 at Todaimae and ¥95,400 at Sendagi, as of August 2026. Todai students surveyed by the university's Peer Support Room most commonly reported paying ¥80,000 to ¥90,000 a month, below all of those averages, because students take older buildings further from the station.

Does Tokyo University have dorms?

Yes, three: the Toshima International Student Dormitory in Toshima Ward, the Mitaka International Student Dormitory in Mitaka City, and the Mejirodai International Village in Bunkyo Ward. Together they hold fewer than 2,000 beds for a university of 30,469 students, and places at Mejirodai are allocated by lottery.

How much do Tokyo University dormitories cost?

Toshima Building A is ¥10,000 a month plus ¥1,500 in association fees and a ¥50,000 deposit. Toshima Building B is ¥36,300 plus ¥7,000 management, reduced to an effective ¥10,000 for students in serious financial hardship. Mitaka is ¥4,700 a month plus about ¥4,150 in other monthly charges, at the rates posted in 2021. Mejirodai's standard shared room is ¥82,300 a month all in.

Is Mejirodai International Village cheaper than renting?

No. At ¥82,300 a month for a 10-square-meter shared room, it costs more than the average 1K near Todaimae, where you'd get your own kitchen and bathroom. It buys you a furnished room, no lease paperwork, no guarantor, cleaning of shared spaces and an international community. Whether that's worth the difference depends on how much you value not dealing with a Japanese rental contract in your first year.

Can international students rent an apartment in Tokyo without a guarantor?

Not usually. You'll go through a commercial guarantor company, which charges roughly half a month's rent up front plus an annual fee. The University of Tokyo's own guarantor scheme stopped accepting new applications at the end of January 2025 and now handles renewals only, so incoming students cannot rely on it.

Is Bunkyo Ward safe?

Yes, and by a wide margin. Bunkyo recorded the lowest recognized crime count of all 23 Tokyo special wards in every year from 2003 to 2022, according to the ward's own published table. Recognized offences have risen since, reaching 1,194 in 2024, with theft the largest category. Bicycle theft is the crime students are most likely to encounter.

Is Bunkyo Ward at risk of flooding?

Parts of it. Bunkyo splits between plateau and valley-bottom lowland, and the difference is sharp. Hongo, Yayoi and Mukogaoka sit on the plateau. Nezu 1 and 2-chome, and Sendagi 2, 3 and 4-chome, sit in valley-bottom lowland where water collects in heavy rain. Check the ward's flood hazard map for the specific address.

How far is Komaba campus from Hongo campus?

About 40 minutes door to door, on completely separate train lines. There's no direct route. This is why undergraduates typically move house between their second and third years, and why some choose a station midway between the two from the start.

Where do first-year Tokyo University students live?

Near Komaba, in Meguro or Setagaya. The stations students name most are Shimokitazawa for the shops and food, Eifukucho for value, and Komaba-todaimae itself for the two-minute walk. Komaba-todaimae has almost no shops or supermarkets, which surprises people.

What is the cheapest place to live near Tokyo University?

For the Hongo campus, Sendagi at around ¥95,400 for a 1K is the cheapest of the walkable options, with individual listings near Todaimae found at ¥57,000 to ¥83,000. For Kashiwa, Edogawadai on the Tobu Noda Line, where a graduate student who lived there reports 1Ks in the ¥30,000s.

When should I start looking for an apartment near Tokyo University?

Two to three months before you move, and preferably not in March. Todai students advise each other to move during the summer vacation or by December at the latest, because January to March is peak moving season across Japan and the good properties go quickly.

How much does Tokyo University cost per year?

Undergraduate tuition is ¥642,960 a year for students entering from academic year 2025, up from ¥535,800. Master's and professional degree tuition is ¥535,800 and doctoral tuition ¥520,800. The one-off admission fee is ¥282,000. Fee waivers were expanded alongside the increase, with full exemption now reaching households up to ¥6 million in income.

Do I need a bicycle to live near Tokyo University?

It helps, but buy an electric-assist one if you can. The Hongo campus is ringed by steep slopes, and a Law student who cycles it himself describes the commute as punishing and advises anyone not confident in their fitness to live within walking distance or take the train instead.

Is it worth living near Tokyo University rather than commuting?

For most graduate students, yes. The rent premium over a suburban address is roughly ¥20,000 to ¥30,000 a month, and it buys back an hour or more of every day. One Todai student's rule of thumb, given in a university interview, is that the money you save on a commuter pass by living within walking distance is money you can reasonably add to your rent.