Two line items on almost every Osaka lease confuse foreign renters more than anything else in the initial cost breakdown: shikikin and reikin, usually translated as "deposit" and "key money." They sound similar, they're both charged upfront, and they're both commonly one to two months' rent — and that surface similarity hides a fundamental difference that matters enormously when you eventually move out. One of these costs comes back to you, at least in part. The other never does, by design.
Shikikin functions much like a security deposit anywhere else in the world: it's held against unpaid rent and against the cost of restoring the apartment to a condition suitable for the next tenant, and whatever isn't used for either purpose is returned to you after move-out. In Osaka, shikikin typically runs to one month's rent, occasionally two for larger units, pet-friendly buildings, or tenants with a thinner guarantor profile.
The refund process is where most disputes actually happen, and it's worth understanding the framework before you move in, not after. Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism publishes guidelines distinguishing normal wear and tear — sun fading, minor scuffs from ordinary living, the natural aging of fixtures — which a landlord cannot deduct from your deposit, from tenant-caused damage, which they can. In practice, how strictly a given landlord or management company applies this distinction varies, and a walk-through inspection at move-out, ideally with photos taken at move-in for comparison, is the single most useful thing a tenant can do to protect their deposit refund. Assuming the full shikikin will simply come back automatically, without documentation on either end, is one of the more common and avoidable disappointments foreign tenants report at the end of a tenancy.
Reikin has no real equivalent in most rental markets outside Japan, which is exactly why it trips up so many foreign renters the first time they encounter it. Historically, key money originated as a gesture of gratitude to a landlord for the privilege of renting a scarce postwar apartment — a one-time payment, non-refundable by definition, that has persisted as custom in some regions long after the housing scarcity that originally justified it disappeared.
Reikin is not applied uniformly across Japan. It has largely disappeared in Hokkaido, Okinawa, and parts of Tohoku and Kyushu, where "zero key money" listings are now the norm rather than the exception. Kansai — Osaka included, alongside Kyoto — sits at the other end of that spectrum: reikin remains a genuinely common feature of the local rental market, typically one to two months' rent, charged and simply gone the moment you sign. Foreign renters who've previously lived somewhere in Japan where key money isn't customary, or who've read general "moving to Japan" guides written without a Kansai-specific lens, are frequently surprised to encounter it here as a live, expected cost rather than a historical curiosity.
Reikin is not fixed by law the way certain other fees are, and there is genuine, if limited, room to negotiate it in specific circumstances: a longer lease commitment, a tenant who can sign and move in quickly on a unit that's been sitting vacant, or a building actively trying to attract foreign tenants and competing on cost against comparable listings without key money attached. A small but growing number of newer buildings, and some Osaka landlords deliberately courting the foreign rental market, now advertise reduced or zero key money outright as a competitive feature rather than something a tenant has to negotiate for. It hasn't disappeared from Osaka's market, but it's no longer universally rigid the way it was a generation ago.
What generally isn't negotiable, regardless of your approach: the guarantor company fee, which reflects that company's own underwriting risk assessment rather than the landlord's preference, and the agency commission, which is capped by law at roughly one month's rent plus consumption tax and rarely moves below that cap in practice. Shikikin itself is also fairly fixed in most cases, since it functions as the landlord's actual financial protection against damage and unpaid rent rather than a discretionary charge.
The initial cost breakdown gets most of the attention because it's what you pay before you even have keys, but the more consequential financial moment for shikikin specifically happens at the other end of the tenancy. A tenant who kept move-in photos, reported damage or issues promptly during the tenancy rather than letting them go undocumented, and understands the normal-wear-and-tear standard going into the final walk-through is in a meaningfully stronger position to receive a fair deposit refund than one who simply hands back the keys and hopes for the best. This is also where a good local agency's ongoing relationship with a landlord or management company can matter — a tenant who has been straightforward and communicative throughout the tenancy tends to get a more reasonable, less adversarial final inspection than one the landlord has no established rapport with.
Between shikikin, reikin, the agency fee, the guarantor company fee, and advance rent, Osaka's stacked initial costs commonly land somewhere in the range of four to six times monthly rent before you've moved a single box in — a figure that catches plenty of renters off guard regardless of how much research they've done, precisely because these individual line items are so often explained in isolation rather than added up together in advance.
If you're budgeting for a move and want a realistic, all-in number for a specific building or neighborhood — including which of those costs might actually have room to move — we're happy to walk through it with you before you commit to anything. We work in English, French, and Japanese.
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