Apartment rent

Yes, Tokyo's apartment rental fee is expensive especially when comparing with other cities both in the world as well as in Japan. However, it's a lot cheaper than New York, at least. The fee depends on where you live in Tokyo, of course. The nearer the station, the higher the fee tends to be. Many people or majority of women, prefer to live in apartments that have auto lock system (you need to have a key or know the pass code to get into the apartment building) for security reasons. People normally rent apartments via brokers. Initially, when you make contract, you usually need to pay for 1 or 2 months of rent fee, Reikin (key money equivalent to 1 to 2 months rent fee, Shiki-kin (deposit equivalent to 1 to 2 months rent), and broker fee that is normally equivalent to 1 month rent fee. Usually, the contract term is 2 years, and when you want to renew, you sometimes need to pay for renewal fee in addition to monthly rent, which could be equivalent to 1 month fee. Therefore, you normally need to have amount of at least 4 to 7 months rent fee, when you make a contract. Not a small amount of money. It won't be as much as what is in NY, though, again. The most popular amount of range for 20s and early 30s would be, I assume, 75thousand to 120thousand yen (about 750 to 1200 dollars), monthly.