I thought I would for a change share my own personal experience of SAKURA HOUSE, which goes back about 6 years when I first came to Japan and needed a simple way to get settled down.

I stayed in Sakura House’s share houses (4 different locations) for many years and then moved out due to the necessity of finding a place together with my wife. This happened a long time before I finally managed to land a job here (which somehow was just by pure chance).

I look back at that time as one of the best periods of my life.

The photo above is from my first SAKURA HOUSE room (Japanese style) in Yukigaya Otsuka.

When I first came to Japan as a foreigner not knowing the native language many years, this was the perfect place for me to choose to start my new found life at.

This agency is especially targeted toward foreigners so you can expect almost everyone to be able to communicate very well in English. This is usually not the situation at all if your searching for an apartment through ordinary channels. According to my experience and through what I’ve heard from other people, you will in most cases not find English speaking staff at real estate agencies.
This advantage together with the absence of key money, deposit money and agency fee which for a cheap small apartment will add up to about 200 000 ~ 250 000 yen (including first month’s rent), makes for a very attractive service for most foreigners planning to spend more than 1 month in Tokyo.

Sometimes I come across people complaining about that it is way too expensive at SAKURA HOUSE. Yes, comparing the monthly fee for a share house with an ordinary apartment in Tokyo, it is usually a bit more expensive.

I currently pay about 70 000 yen (which by the way is a really good price!!) for a small apartment (everything included).
At some share houses where I previously lived I paid about the same (the cheapest one being 64 000 yen and the most expensive being 83 000 yen).
In other words, a small apartment (very small!!) is about the same as a SAKURA HOUSE share house, sometimes more, sometimes less.
The major difference being that you need to pay the rent times 4 (200 000 yen), before even moving in.
In my experience, Sakura House absolutely eases the process of finding a place for foreigners and is comparatively very cheap.

I used to recommend this agency to anyone new in Tokyo even before acquiring my at the moment arguably biased position at SAKURA HOUSE, but I will wholeheartedly continue to do so with an absolutely clear conscience.