The short version
- The parking space comes first. A standard car generally cannot be registered until the police issue a shako shoumei (garage certificate), and that certificate depends on a document from whoever controls the space, so the parking search sits ahead of the car purchase rather than after it.
- What you hand over is usually smaller than people fear: a copy of both sides of your driver's licence and a copy of the shaken-shō (vehicle inspection certificate) are the two near-universal items. Some operators also ask for a jūminhyō, a seal certificate, or proof of income.
- An individual co-signer is now uncommon for parking contracts specifically, according to Japanese industry sources, though an emergency contact is usually requested and some operators use a guarantee company instead. Practice differs by operator, so confirm rather than assume.
- Rent varies enormously by location. The government's Retail Price Survey put the national average monthly parking fee at ¥10,622 in June 2026; one operator's own listing data for May 2025 showed a Tokyo average of ¥16,760 and a Minato ward average of ¥44,859. Budget roughly three to five months' rent for the initial payment.
- Reservation apps such as akippa work in 15-minute and daily units. akippa's own help centre states it does not take monthly-style long-term contracts and cannot issue a garage certificate, so treat these apps as a complement for short stints, not as the space your car registration rests on.
There is a small chicken-and-egg problem sitting between you and a car in Japan. The dealer generally cannot finish registering a standard car until the police confirm you have somewhere legal to keep it. The parking company, meanwhile, usually wants to see the vehicle's inspection certificate before it will hand you a space. Neither side is being difficult. Both steps are just designed around the assumption that you already know how the other one works. This guide is about the half nobody explains in English: how a getsugime (月極, "monthly") parking contract actually gets signed, and what the app-based alternatives are genuinely good for.
Why the parking space is step one, not step five
Japan generally requires proof of a storage location before a vehicle goes on the register, in the areas where the requirement applies. For a standard, non-kei car that proof is the shako shoumei (車庫証明), issued by the police station covering wherever the car will actually be kept. If you rent the space rather than own the land, the application generally needs a hokan basho shiyō shōdaku shōmeisho (保管場所使用承諾証明書), a consent certificate from the landlord or management company. There is also a straight-line distance standard, commonly around 2 km between the space and your registered address.
Our guide to the shako shoumei and shaken checklist covers that certificate in detail, including the distance rule, the kei-car exception, and the seal certificate you may not have yet. The point worth carrying into this guide is the sequence. You cannot get the consent certificate from a landlord you have not signed with, and you cannot file with the police without it. So the parking search is upstream of the registration paperwork, and often upstream of choosing the car.
One timing detail catches people out in the other direction. A shako shoumei has a short shelf life once issued, commonly cited as about a month, and a consent certificate's validity generally tracks the parking contract period. Mitsui no Repark warns applicants who need a garage certificate to pay attention to their chosen contract start date for exactly this reason. Starting the parking contract months before you buy the car is not free of consequences: you pay rent for an empty space, and you may need the paperwork reissued.
Four ways to find a getsugime space
There is no single national listing site, and the four routes below turn up genuinely different inventory. It is normal to use more than one.
- Parking search sites. At Parking, Times' monthly parking search, Mitsui no Repark, Park Direct, and Monthly Parking.com all list spaces by area. Coverage is broad in cities and thin in some rural areas. As far as we could find, these sites publish in Japanese only, with no English interface.
- Local real estate agents. Small neighbourhood agencies often hold parking inventory that never reaches a listing site, particularly single spaces attached to a residential plot. This is the route Japanese-language guides recommend most often when the search sites come up empty.
- The large operators directly. Times and Mitsui no Repark run their own contract flows online, which removes the agency fee and the posting-documents-back-and-forth. Repark states that use can begin as soon as about eight days after application, though this depends on the space and on your documents being complete.
- Signs on the lot itself. Empty spaces frequently carry a board with a phone number and the word 空車 (kūsha, "vacant") or 月極. Unglamorous, and still the fastest way to find something within walking distance of your own front door.
If reading Japanese listings is the bottleneck, the practical workaround is usually a person rather than a tool: an agent, a bilingual colleague, or the management company for your own building, which may have a space or know who does.
The documents you actually hand over
Compared with an apartment lease, a parking contract is light. Two items come up almost everywhere.
- A copy of your driver's licence, usually both sides, since the reverse carries any address changes. This does identity and address verification in one.
- A copy of the shaken-shō (車検証, vehicle inspection certificate). The operator uses it to check the car physically fits the space and to see the registered owner and user.
If you have not bought the car yet, that second item is a problem with a known workaround. Repark accepts a catalogue or dimensions sheet for a car on order, and the previous owner's inspection certificate for a used purchase. Ask before you apply, because the answer varies by operator.
Beyond those two, requirements diverge. Depending on the operator you may also be asked for a jūminhyō (住民票, residence certificate), an inkan tōroku shōmeisho (印鑑登録証明書, seal registration certificate), or, at stricter operators, a copy of your voluntary car insurance or proof of income. The application form itself often asks for employer, annual income, and your reason for needing the space. One quirk worth knowing: Repark's published document list accepts a driver's licence or a health insurance card for individual applicants, and specifically excludes the My Number card as identification for this purpose.
What about requirements aimed at foreign residents specifically? Published Japanese-language document lists do not mention residence cards or residence periods at all, and one English guide for Tokyo notes only that some landlords may ask to see a passport or residence card. We found no source establishing a general rule either way. Treat it as an operator-by-operator question, ask when you enquire, and bring your residence card along in case. Do not assume a refusal is a legal requirement, and do not assume the subject will not come up.
Guarantors: the part that has quietly changed
Foreign residents who have been through Japan's rental guarantor system tend to brace for the same fight over a parking space. Industry sources suggest that fight is largely gone. Japanese parking-management commentary describes individual co-signers as increasingly rare in parking contracts, for a commercial reason rather than a kind one: chasing guarantor paperwork slows deals and leaves spaces empty, and parking contracts are often short. Japan's 2020 Civil Code revision also requires an individual guarantor's liability to carry a stated cap (極度額), which made that route less attractive to landlords.
Two things did not disappear. An emergency contact is still commonly requested. And some operators use a rent guarantee company instead of a co-signer, with a fee typically set as a percentage of the rent. The same Japanese source notes that guarantee companies serving parking specifically are relatively scarce, because parking rents are low and contracts short, so whether one is involved at all depends heavily on the operator. None of this is a rule you can rely on for your own application. Ask the operator whether a co-signer, a guarantee company, or only an emergency contact is required, and get the fee in writing if a guarantee company is used.
What it costs, and why the range is so wide
Monthly parking rent in Japan is not really one number. The government's own Retail Price Survey, run monthly by the Statistics Bureau, tracks the monthly fee for an uncovered, asphalt-paved space for a small car. Its national average was ¥10,622 in June 2026, and that figure has moved remarkably little over a decade, ranging from ¥10,281 in April 2023 to ¥10,664 in April 2015.
That national average conceals almost everything useful. Park Direct's figures from its own listings as of May 2025 put the Tokyo average at ¥16,760 and Osaka at ¥13,971, against ¥5,295 in Tochigi. Inside Tokyo the spread is wider still: ¥44,859 on average in Minato ward versus ¥14,147 in Adachi. English-language guides describe similar bands, with outer Tokyo around ¥5,000 to ¥15,000, central residential areas around ¥30,000 to ¥40,000, and prime business districts higher again. These come from different datasets and different dates, so read them as rough shape rather than a price list, and check current listings for your own street.
The bigger surprise for most people is the initial payment. A Japanese parking search site suggests budgeting roughly three to five times the monthly rent up front, built from some combination of a deposit or hoshōkin (typically one to two months), one month's rent in advance, sometimes reikin (key money, around one month, and sometimes waived), and an agency fee of about one month if you go through a real estate agent. The deposit is often refundable at the end and reikin generally is not. Which of these apply is set per property, so ask for the full breakdown before you commit.
Going direct to a large operator rather than through an agent is the simplest way to shrink that initial figure, since it removes the agency fee. Payment afterwards is commonly by bank direct debit; Repark, for instance, debits individuals on the 27th of each month, which means a Japanese bank account is generally part of the picture.
Where reservation apps fit, and where they don't
A second kind of parking has grown up alongside the getsugime lot. Services such as akippa are reservation platforms: individual owners and parking operators list spaces through the service, and drivers book and pay for them online in advance. akippa takes bookings in 15-minute and daily units, prepaid, with each listing showing its own price and conditions before you book. How far ahead you can book is set per space rather than across the whole platform: akippa's help centre describes a cap of either 14 or 30 days ahead, counting the current day, depending on the individual listing. Availability and pricing are likewise set per listing and change over time, so what exists near your address today may not tomorrow.
This is genuinely useful, and it is not a substitute for the thing the first half of this guide is about. akippa's own help centre states that because it accepts only temporary reservations in daily or 15-minute units, it does not take long-term contracts of the monthly kind, and consequently a garage certificate cannot be issued for a space booked through it. The company did launch a "periodic use" matching service back in 2019, though it no longer appears in the service's current line-up. The restriction is not unique to one platform either: Times states plainly that its own subscription-style parking cannot be used for a garage certificate application, while most of its getsugime lots can.
Read together, the picture is fairly clear. A shako shoumei rests on a continuously available storage location and a consent document from whoever controls it, tied to a contract period. A per-hour or per-day reservation does not produce that, however many days in a row you book. If you want to know exactly what the police will accept for your own address, the police station covering the parking location is the authority on it, not a platform's terms and not this page.
Two different jobs, side by side
| Getsugime (monthly) contract | Reservation apps (akippa and similar) | |
|---|---|---|
| Booking unit | Calendar month, ongoing until cancelled | 15-minute or daily units; on akippa, bookable either 14 or 30 days ahead, depending on the individual listing |
| Usable for a shako shoumei | Generally yes, via a consent certificate from the operator; confirm per lot, as some exclude it | No. akippa's help centre states a garage certificate cannot be issued for its temporary reservations |
| Up-front money | Commonly around three to five months' rent in total, depending on which items apply | Prepay the individual booking; no deposit or key money involved |
| Paperwork | Application form, licence copy, shaken-shō copy, sometimes jūminhyō, seal certificate, or income proof | An account and a payment method |
| Certainty of a space | A named space held for you for the contract term | Depends on what owners have listed near you and on the dates; listings and prices change |
| Suits | Owning a car and registering it at your address | A bridge while a monthly search is running, visitors, a business trip, an occasional second car, or a day out |
Both columns describe general patterns, not a specific lot or listing. Terms, prices, and what a given operator will certify are set per property and change over time.
Checking what is listed near you: akippa is a platform where individual owners and parking operators list spaces for drivers to reserve. If you want to see whether anything is listed near your address for the dates you need, you can search on akippa. Listings, prices, and availability are set by whoever owns each space and change over time, so check the specific listing's own conditions, including vehicle size limits, before you book.
For the monthly route described above, the search sites and operators named earlier in this guide are the place to start. We have no commercial relationship with any of them.
Disclosure: the akippa link above and the button below are affiliate links. If you use the service after following either, this site may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. That relationship did not change the comparison above, which says plainly that a reservation app cannot serve as the storage location for a garage certificate. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or an official channel of akippa or any other company named on this page.
akippa A reservation platform for parking spaces listed by individual owners and operators
- Individual owners and parking operators list spaces through the service; drivers book and pay online in advance
- Bookings run in 15-minute and daily units, prepaid, with each listing showing its own price and conditions
- Not a substitute for a getsugime contract — akippa's help centre states it does not take monthly-style long-term contracts, so a garage certificate cannot be issued for a space booked through it
Reading the contract before you sign
Parking contracts are short documents, which makes it tempting to skim them. Japanese parking-industry guidance points at five clauses worth finding first.
- Cancellation notice. One month's advance notice is the common pattern, and some contracts attach a penalty if you leave without giving it. Check too whether a part-month is prorated or charged in full.
- What you are liable for. Damage to the surface, the fence, a neighbouring vehicle, or the mechanical lift in a stacked lot.
- What the operator is not liable for. Theft from the car and weather damage are frequently excluded, which is a reason to look at your own voluntary insurance rather than assume the lot covers it.
- Special clauses. Property-specific rules, for example vehicle height or width limits, whether washing or maintenance on site is allowed, and whether a second car or a motorcycle may share the space.
- Return condition. What the space must look like when you leave, and what happens to the deposit.
If a clause is unclear and the stakes are real, that is a question for the operator in writing, or for a legal professional. This page cannot tell you what your particular contract means.
One thing not to improvise: parking somewhere other than your registered space
Once the certificate is issued, the space on it is meant to be where the car actually lives. Keeping it somewhere else routinely has a name in Japanese, shako tobashi (車庫飛ばし), and it is treated as an offence rather than a technicality. The amounts sit in Article 17 of the Act on Assurance of Car Parking Spaces (Act No. 145 of 1962). Submitting a false document about the storage location, and obtaining the registration decision that way, carries a fine of up to ¥200,000 under Article 17(2)(i). Failing to file a required notification, or filing a false one, carries a fine of up to ¥100,000 under Article 17(3)(i). The notification that catches most people is the one for a change of storage location, due within 15 days under Article 7. The practical reading is simpler than the citations: if you move house or change parking, the registered storage location needs updating rather than quietly ignoring.
What this guide does not cover
This is a general description of how parking contracts and the surrounding paperwork usually work. It is not legal advice, it cannot tell you whether a specific application will be approved, and it does not evaluate or recommend any operator, agent, or platform. Requirements differ by prefecture, by municipality, and by the individual landlord or management company, and they change. For an authoritative answer on the garage certificate, contact the police station covering the parking location; for contract terms, the operator; for anything touching your residence status, your local immigration bureau.
If you have not decided to buy yet
Everything above assumes a car is coming. That assumption is worth testing once you see the numbers together, because a space in central Tokyo can cost more per month than the occasional-use alternatives do in total. Our comparison of car sharing and car rental in Japan covers what your licence actually allows, which is the question that decides whether those alternatives are even open to you yet. And if ownership is settled, the next document in the chain is the certificate itself, in our shako shoumei and shaken checklist.
There is a smaller vehicle question hiding behind the same problem, too. Plenty of people conclude that what they actually needed was a bicycle, in which case the paperwork changes completely: no garage certificate, but a registration step people skip and a prefectural insurance requirement they have not heard of. Our guide to bicycle registration and insurance covers both.
Sources
Consulted 2026-08-19, with the parking-fee figures, the parking-space law citations, and akippa's booking window re-checked 2026-08-20. Direct page retrieval succeeded for most sources below. It was blocked (HTTP 403) for akippa's help centre, so the akippa booking-unit and garage-certificate statements were taken from search-engine result text quoting that help centre, and cross-checked against akippa's own site and independent English-language guides describing 15-minute and daily booking. The garage-certificate restriction was additionally checked against Times' published position on its own subscription parking. The fine amounts under the parking-space law were read from the Japanese text of the Act itself; the Ministry of Justice's translation database lists the Act but publishes no English translation of it.
- Statistics Bureau of Japan, Retail Price Survey (小売物価統計調査) via e-Stat, the monthly-parking-fee item: e-stat.go.jp — Retail Price Survey, city-level prices. The ¥10,622 June 2026 national average and the 2015–2026 range are as compiled from that survey by jpmarket-conditions.com.
- Park Direct — prefecture and Tokyo-ward monthly parking rent averages from its own listing data as of May 2025: park-direct.jp — monthly parking rent averages
- At Parking (management-company column) — documents required for a monthly parking contract and the contract clauses to check: at-parking.jp — contract documents and clauses
- Getsugime Parking Connect — document list, including when a jūminhyō or seal certificate is requested and how rarely guarantor documents are: mp-connect.jp — required documents
- Mitsui no Repark — published application-to-use flow, accepted identification (and the My Number card exclusion), substitutes for the shaken-shō when the car is not yet purchased, the roughly eight-day minimum lead time, and the 27th-of-the-month direct debit: repark.jp — monthly parking application flow
- Times Parking Search — its statement that a garage certificate cannot be applied for with its subscription parking, that most monthly lots can, and what the consent certificate package contains: times-info.net — storage-location notification
- Getsugime Parking Dot Com (unit of Fudosan Kobo) — guarantee companies in parking contracts, the decline of individual co-signers, and the 2020 Civil Code liability-cap change: parking-m.com — guarantee companies for parking
- Car Parking (search site column) — initial-cost breakdown and the three-to-five-months-of-rent budgeting figure: carparking.jp — initial costs
- akippa help centre — booking units, the per-listing 14-day or 30-day limit on how far ahead a space can be booked, and the statement that monthly-style long-term contracts are not accepted and a garage certificate cannot be issued (accessed via search-result text; direct fetch returned 403): support.akippa.com
- akippa — service overview, reservation model, and the Value Plus membership: akippa.com
- PR TIMES / Impress Watch — the 2019 launch of akippa's "periodic use" matching service, which no longer appears in the service's current line-up: prtimes.jp — periodic use service launch, watch.impress.co.jp
- E-Housing (English) — finding a parking spot in Tokyo, the cost bands quoted, and the note that some landlords may ask to see a passport or residence card: e-housing.jp — getting a parking spot in Tokyo
- Goo-net and Gyosei Shoshi Hayashi Office (Japanese) — shako tobashi and how the false-application prohibition under the Act on Assurance of Car Parking Spaces is described in practice: goo-net.com — parking-space law and penalties, gyosei-kyoka.com — shako tobashi
- e-Gov Law Search (Digital Agency) — Act on Assurance of Car Parking Spaces and Other Matters (自動車の保管場所の確保等に関する法律, Act No. 145 of 1962), Japanese text. Article 17(2)(i) and Article 17(3)(i) are the source of the ¥200,000 and ¥100,000 figures, and Article 7 is the source of the 15-day change notification: laws.e-gov.go.jp — Act No. 145 of 1962
- Japanese Law Translation (Ministry of Justice) — the same Act's entry in the government translation database, which states that the law is not translated, so there is no official English text to cite: japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/802