- ADDress — what it means
- ADDress is a home subscription service in Japan: a monthly fee lets you stay at houses all over the country. There are more than 200 houses nationwide, utilities and internet are included, every house has Wi-Fi, and rooms are private so you can bring a companion.
Here is what this article answers.
I used ADDress, Japan’s home subscription service, to travel all the way around Japan. So when people ask “What is ADDress actually like?”, I can answer from the inside.
Note: this article is a first-hand account of using ADDress between 2022 and 2023. The plans and prices described are those of the time.
I also cover the security worries and the other questions we had before signing up. I post ADDress updates on YouTube as well, so please leave a comment.
Review: a year on ADDress as a couple — the good and the bad
We used ADDress as our lodging for a trip around Japan from early April 2022 to April 2023. We are still members today.
ADDress showed us new people and new places. It also showed us the hard parts, and the flaws in the service.
Below I split the experience into upsides and downsides, for anyone still deciding whether to use ADDress.
If you want to start ADDress at a discount, this article is the one to read.
ADDress Japan Referral Coupon: How to Claim Up to ¥15,000
The upsides I felt using ADDress
Personally I think ADDress is a superb service. Here is why.
- Over 200 houses across Japan, so you can circle the country while working
- You meet all kinds of people — other members and the house keepers
- It costs less than city rent, so your living costs drop
- Rooms are private, so you can use it with a partner or a friend
- You get taken to places only locals know
I will take them in order.
1. You can circle Japan while working
“Traveling all of Japan” usually conjures up quitting your job, or sleeping rough and living out of a car. With ADDress you stay in a house every night, work on weekdays and sightsee at weekends — you get around the whole country without dropping your current job or standard of living. (Strictly speaking ADDress is a rental contract, so the official word is “staying” rather than “lodging”.)
Some members earn on Uber Eats at weekends and sightsee in the gaps during the week. We also met people who moved around while earning through Timee, a Japanese day-work app.
2. You meet all kinds of people — members and house keepers
ADDress encourages contact with the local community and between members, so if your stay overlaps with another member, “Shall we go for a drink tonight?” is a common occurrence. You compare notes on ADDress life, swap tips on sights and food, and meet people from lines of work you would never normally cross.
My favorite topic is “What is the best ADDress house you have stayed at?” Awaji Island, a high-end inn in Gifu (since withdrawn from ADDress) — I make a point of going to every house someone recommends.
3. It costs less than city rent, so your living costs drop
ADDress was ¥44,000 a month for unlimited nights. That is far below city rent, and there is nothing else to pay for utilities or internet (every house has Wi-Fi).
You still pay for travel and food, but compared with city life — where rent, utilities and food came to about ¥150,000 — it is considerably cheaper.
ADDress has since moved to a ticket-based system. It suits people who use it only at weekends, or roughly four nights a month. One approach: use the referral coupon on your first sign-up to get into a larger plan cheaply, then hold the tickets and spend them when you need them.
Note: the plans and prices may have been revised again since. Check the official ADDress site for the current ones.
The coupon terms change over time, so check the article below. I keep it updated.
ADDress Japan Referral Coupon: How to Claim Up to ¥15,000
4. Rooms are private, so you can use it with a partner or a friend
A companion stays free — an extraordinary deal.
The companion can be a friend or a girlfriend. An update also raised the limit to five registered companions, so staying together on a single ticket is a real bargain.
5. You get taken to places only locals know
The yamori — the house keeper — will sometimes show you around. Getting into the popular spot only locals know, the kind that never appears on a website or in a magazine, is something only ADDress gives you.
At one house we were handed freshly brewed coffee every morning and driven to the local soba festival, a dinosaur museum, a temple famous for its moss and a tour of local crafts — more kindness than I can repay.
When I featured the house on TikTok, which I was posting to at the time, it went viral. Word spread among ADDress users too, and I hear it is a popular house now. (We were there in its opening week, so I hope we helped the publicity a little.)
The downsides I felt using ADDress
Here are the parts of ADDress I found hard going.
- Parking is expensive
- Laundry and heating cost extra
- Bookings are hard to get
- No kitchen means a bigger food bill
- Some houses have slow Wi-Fi
I will take them in order.
1. Parking is expensive
Watch out if you are traveling by car. Some houses have no parking at all, and some charge for it (¥500 to ¥1,000 a day).
Where there is no parking you end up hunting for a coin lot nearby, and honestly, this wears you down. Say you stay a week near a station and use a lot capped at ¥600 for 24 hours: that is ¥4,800. Even at that compromise, a month of it is ¥19,200. Add ADDress on top and you are over ¥60,000.
For those of us moving by car, parking is a permanent headache. We use services such as Toku-P and akippa to keep it down.
Note: thinking about it properly, that is not expensive at all. But being charged an extra ¥500 out in the countryside where there is nothing around does take the wind out of you. You realize it once you start using ADDress — once you have paid a subscription, you do not want to pay anything more on site.
2. Laundry and heating cost extra
I only noticed this after I started using it.
ADDress includes utilities and internet in the price, but each house charges in its own way. Laundry, shampoo and conditioner, seasonings — there are collection boxes here and there, in the spirit of “pay if you would like to”. There were two types: a set “usage fee”, and a donation box.
In some places it is not compulsory and is left to the guest’s conscience. Some houses also charge a heating fee per night.
Calling it a downside may not be quite right, but not knowing leaves you thinking “I am already paying ADDress for all this”, so go in expecting some extra costs.
(Honestly, I would rather pay everything up front and have the ticket cover the lot. But the service is a cousin of private lodging, so it cannot be helped.)
3. Bookings are hard to get
You cannot always book the house you want on the day you want. Bookings are first come, first served, and popular houses fill immediately.
If you try to circle Japan on ADDress alone, “everywhere is booked out” is a common experience. At the time we were spending about ¥60,000 a month — ¥44,000 for ADDress plus other lodging on top.
With the ticket system, I suspect popular houses will fill up while rural houses and old folk homes sit empty.
4. No kitchen means a bigger food bill
We cook for ourselves as a rule, so a house without a kitchen is rough.
Three meals out costs about ¥3,000 a day, and over a week that is ¥21,000 per person. When we stayed in a hot-spring town, the restaurants were all shut and I remember eating nothing but convenience store food. For houses with no kitchen, I recommend keeping the stay short.
5. Some houses have slow Wi-Fi
We work online as a rule, so slow Wi-Fi does real damage.
For emergencies we carry an unlimited data SIM and get by on tethering more often than we would like.
6. Strangers walking into your private space is stressful
This rather undermines the whole idea, but when someone appears while you are eating breakfast half-awake with bed hair, it is hard to flip into “time to be sociable” mode and the conversation does not go well. Meeting someone you do not know the moment you step out of your room, in that state, is genuinely tiring.
In a share house the people in the common areas are your housemates; on ADDress they are complete strangers, and after a year of that you start wanting a break. Ha.
What a year of ADDress gave us
Here is what ADDress gave us.
- More friends
- A client project
- Sightseeing all over Japan
- More followers on social media
- Liking myself a little more
I will take them in order.
What ADDress gave us 1: more friends
This was the best part for me. Before ADDress my friends were people from my hometown and colleagues from work, and not much else. Now it is barely an exaggeration to say I have a friend in every prefecture we passed through. Probably.
Next time I visit, I will definitely get in touch. That is how I feel about it.
What ADDress gave us 2: a client project
I build websites for a living. (2026 update: I am now based in Sendai, running website production and AI development as Webharu Inc.) So when I grew close to the owner of one of the houses, the work followed.
We stayed in touch after the trip and even went to Cambodia together.
What ADDress gave us 3: sightseeing all over Japan
Circling the country, or heading somewhere purely for the sights — you can get around a great deal. Honestly, partway through I tired of temples and shrines and decided that “the best sightseeing is in town”, but if you are into collecting goshuin seals, the countryside would be fun too. We reached every famous sight in Japan on that trip, so I have no complaints at all.
You also meet people who went to an unknown town simply because there was an ADDress house there, found it far better than expected and moved in for good. I loved a town called Tsuwano — no tourist attractions, but a wonderful town. Sabae and Mojiko are also places you would never pick for a holiday, so I recommend using ADDress as the excuse to see them.
What ADDress gave us 4: more followers on social media
We post about traveling around Japan as a couple, mostly on TikTok, though Instagram is the one on a roll.
We are nearly at 1,000 followers. Follow along if you like.
From 2023 the main updates moved to Twitter.
What ADDress gave us 5: liking myself a little more
This sounds like a poem, but here goes. Before circling Japan on ADDress, I worked every day and spent my days off sleeping, drinking or gaming. “Is this really it? Not much of a spark,” I vaguely thought.
The “what about the future?” feeling has not vanished entirely, but now I can genuinely feel that I am enjoying my life to the full.
The problems I found with ADDress
Problem 1: security
On ADDress your room is private as a rule, so most houses have a lock on the room door.
But at some houses that lock is a very small one, and a rare few have no lock at all — just two houses across our entire trip around Japan.
There is no safe in the room either, so security felt a little loose to me. Sometimes the house as a whole is loose too: the front door left unlocked, or windows left open overnight.
Part of me thinks “this is the countryside, it will be fine”, but coming from city life it does feel slightly unnerving. If security worries you, raise it when you book.
Problem 2: you cannot get a booking?
“You cannot get a booking on ADDress” is a review you hear a lot. In practice, if you are not fussy about where, you will get a booking almost 100% of the time. The real issue is that you cannot always stay at the house you wanted. Personally I think “of course the popular places fill up”, so it does not bother me. Our goal was to circle Japan, and we were happy without the popular houses. Ha.
I suspect the people writing “cannot get a booking” are the ones using it only around Tokyo. ADDress exists to bring empty rural houses back into use, so using nothing but the Tokyo-area houses is presumably the last thing ADDress wants.
Problem 3: honestly, there are bad houses — and bad rooms
I cannot lie, so here it is: a rare few ADDress houses and rooms are duds. What counts as a dud is the important part, so here is what I personally ran into.
- Walls so thin you hear everything (one house had only sliding paper doors)
- Management so careless that the fridge had rotted
- Cooking equipment rusted through and unusable, with a bad smell
Back when I was using it, the house keepers were paid what amounted to volunteer money, so a rare few properties were poorly kept. But guests paid very little then too — about ¥600 per person a night when staying as a couple — so even in that state we simply thought “the previous guest was the dud” and cleaned it all ourselves.
Two years ago that was normal. Even so, it is a good memory. Oddly, any house becomes comfortable once you pass the one-week mark. I still remember cleaning alongside someone who happened to be staying the same night, and then heading to the next house together.
When we cleaned that fridge, a pile of good sake turned up at the back. We contacted the owner, who said “please drink it”, so we finished the cleaning quickly and earned ourselves a nightcap. And as I said, there are excellent houses too, and they are wonderful. Houses built for meeting people, houses with marine sports, a house in a former primary school, a house on Sakurajima — experiences no hotel can offer are exactly what ADDress is for.
In summary: a year of ADDress as a couple
Honestly, that year was the best.
Picture it. Endless paths between rice fields, a clear stream, a chorus of frogs at night, local sake waiting at the house, and ADDress friends gathering around it.
Then the walk home along the moonlit paddy path, warm from the drink, talking through a first, tentative night.
I still remember it now.
If you want to know what the houses are like, follow us on Instagram, where we introduce ADDress houses too.
Another article covers how to use ADDress for up to ¥20,000 less, so read that one alongside this.
I will keep publishing articles about ADDress on this blog, so look forward to them.
See you again.
FAQ
How much does ADDress cost?
When I was using it, ¥44,000 a month bought unlimited nights. Nothing else was charged for utilities or internet, and every house has Wi-Fi. As covered in the article, it has since changed to a ticket-based system.
Can I use ADDress with a partner or a friend?
Yes. Rooms are private and a companion stays free, so the companion can be a friend or a girlfriend. An update raised the limit to five registered companions, so staying together on a single ticket is good value.
Is anything charged on top of the monthly fee?
Depending on the house, you may pay for parking (¥500 to ¥1,000 a day), laundry, shampoo and conditioner, seasonings, or a heating fee per night. Budget for those extras in advance.
Is ADDress secure?
Your room is private as a rule, and most houses have a lock on the room door. But at some houses the lock is very small, and a rare few have no lock at all — just two houses across our entire trip around Japan — and there is no safe in the room. If you are worried, raise it when you book.
Is it true that you cannot get a booking on ADDress?
If you are not fussy about where, you will get a booking almost 100% of the time. But bookings are first come, first served and popular houses fill immediately, so you cannot count on the house you want on the day you want. When I was using it, other lodging on top of the monthly fee sometimes pushed our spending to around ¥60,000 a month.
How is ADDress's subscription lodging different from a normal hotel stay?
Contractually it is treated as a rental, so it is called a “stay” rather than lodging. Every location has a private room and Wi-Fi, and life there assumes a house manager (yamori) and interaction with other members — the biggest difference from staying anonymously at a hotel. The author used it to travel all of Japan for a year while keeping a normal standard of living, working weekdays and sightseeing on weekends.
What is ADDress actually like, according to reviews?
After one year, the author's verdict is “the best.” It brought new friends, work orders and more social media followers. At the same time there are real weaknesses: extra costs such as parking and heating, hard-to-book popular locations, and the occasional disappointing house — details are in the pros and cons sections of this article.
