Accommodation (宿泊) covers work in hotels and traditional inns: reception, guest service, planning and operations.
It is one of the more attractive fields on the list — indoor, urban or resort-based, with real customer contact and career progression. It is also the field where the minimum language requirement is least sufficient for the actual job.
Verify before you act on this. The Specified Skilled Worker system is revised frequently — fields are added, caps are imposed, and requirements change. The Immigration Services Agency of Japan and the ministry responsible for your field are the sources that bind. This page is orientation, not authority.
The two requirements
Language: JFT-Basic at 200+ or JLPT N4+ — the same threshold as every field.
Skills: the accommodation skills evaluation test, covering front desk work, guest service, and hotel operations.
Check the test schedule in your country before planning. See the skills test explained.
The honest warning about Japanese
The requirement is A2. The job is not an A2 job.
You will be dealing with guests, in Japanese, from early on: check-in and check-out, requests, complaints, directions, problems with rooms, telephone calls. Japanese hospitality has high service expectations and a specific polite register that goes well beyond what JFT-Basic tests.
This is not a reason to avoid the field. It is a reason to aim past the minimum before you arrive. Candidates who enter accommodation at exactly 200 points frequently describe a very hard first six months.
Concretely: keep studying after you pass. Target N4 solidly, then N3, and pay particular attention to keigo and workplace politeness, which is the register the job actually runs on.
What the work is
Depending on the property: reception, guest liaison, reservations, restaurant and banquet operations, housekeeping coordination, and general operations.
- Shift work, including nights and weekends. Hotels do not close.
- Peaks around holidays and travel seasons.
- Presentation and manner matter, more than in most fields.
- Location varies widely — city business hotels and rural resort inns are very different lives.
Why it is a good route if your Japanese is up to it
The skills transfer. Hospitality experience and Japanese together are genuinely valuable, and this is one of the few SSW fields where the work builds towards a career rather than a job.
Accommodation is in the SSW (ii) expansion, offering a route beyond the five-year cap with family accompaniment and a path towards permanent residency. Confirm the current position — see SSW (i) versus (ii).
Your Japanese improves fast. Customer-facing work is immersion with consequences. People in this field who arrive at the minimum and survive the first year often progress faster than those in quieter fields.
If food service was your plan
Accommodation is the closest neighbour. Food service has been suspended to new applications since April 2026 — see the food service route — and accommodation asks for similar aptitudes: customer contact, hospitality, service standards.
Your language qualification transfers completely; only the field-specific skills preparation changes.
Questions before signing
- What property, where, and what size?
- What role specifically — reception, restaurant, housekeeping?
- What shift pattern, including nights?
- What is deducted, and is accommodation provided?
- Who is the registered support organisation?
Start on the language, and go past the minimum
More true here than anywhere else on the list. Our free practice test will tell you where you stand today.