Published

生まれた場所だけで、
就活のスタートラインが違う。

By the KIBOU editorial team

updated

Job hunting from outside Tokyo burns through tens of thousands of yen in transportation and lodging alone. Simply being born outside the city can put your starting line for a Tokyo interview one step further back. Plenty of people have felt that. Before you get to show what you're capable of, the math already starts at just getting to Tokyo.

いくらかかっているのか

According to a 2024 survey by Jokatsu on the cost of job hunting from outside Tokyo, the average total comes to about ¥277,000. Around 60% of students spend more than ¥50,000 on transportation and lodging alone, and students from outside the major cities pay roughly ¥55,000 more on average than students already living there.

For a first-round interview, you fly or take a bus, then sleep in a hotel or a capsule. You pay tens of thousands of yen just for that room and that ride, then head home again. Some students repeat this at every stage of the process. Job hunting is supposed to be about who a person is. In practice, the transportation and lodging it takes just to arrive does the screening first.

Among the applications KIBOU actually receives, the most common concern by far is travel and lodging cost — a place to stay standing in the way, financially. It isn't just a number. It's the closest worry to students heading for Tokyo right now.

Chipping away at a scholarship or a part-time paycheck, a little more each time there's an interview. For a student who can't lean on money from home, that weight stays weight. Simply not having chosen where you were born ends up changing how much money you can put toward job hunting at all. That's a gap that has nothing to do with what a person is capable of.

KIBOUだと、こうなる

A KIBOU stay costs nothing for lodging. You can stay at a host's home for up to two nights, three days.

To be honest about it, we can't cover transportation. Shinkansen and highway bus fares are still on you, same as always. Even so, when one large line item — lodging, an expense that can recur again and again through a job search — simply disappears, the hurdle of getting to Tokyo drops a lot.

It is also more than a bed. Time with a host may return new words about yourself to you first. Company connections are in preparation and may support a work introduction only when you choose the content and recipient. The stay itself is not a selection process.

Why KIBOU chose "a stay" over "an interview" is something we wrote about elsewhere — how what becomes visible changes between one night and two.

→ Why three days?

Make just one line item — lodging — disappear, and the view of job hunting changes. Start with ninety seconds and see what a KIBOU stay actually looks like.