Drop-In Coworking Spaces in Tokyo(tokyocheapo.com) |
Drop-In Coworking Spaces in Tokyo(tokyocheapo.com) |
The one which I know off the top of my head is Nakameguro Lounge, about one minute from Nakameguro Station. The effective price per hour is 600 to 1,000 yen. Also their lunch menu is really fantastic for only about 1,200 yen.
Also, as it is about two minutes from my apartment, if you're ever passing through Tokyo drop me a line and your coffee/lunch is on me.
Overall Tokyo is not a digital nomad, coffee-shop working friendly city (or at least not like other major international cities), which was both surprising and disappointing, for me.
EDIT - I'll add the co working spaces I dropped by were all simply terrible. I only went to a few, Open Source Cafe, and Jelly Jelly, and then gave up. I wish I had Tokyocheapo's list at the time. One of them was playing pop music over a speaker system to everyone who was working... I mean, seriously?
I find Tokyo 10x better than SF or LA for places to hang. In SF or LA they are either all full, or you have to by stuff every 2 hours which makes me fat, plus I can't leave anything out so after a coffee or two I need to use the restroom and I lose my space because you can't leave a notebook unattended in the USA. The only exception is maybe the Workspace Cafe in SF.
In Tokyo there's co-working spaces everywhere, they are cheap (especially when you take into account free drinks). Have worked from plenty of starbucks as well, except on weekends when they're full. The one behind roppongi hills that's open till 4am has been great. The one at the corner of Meiji-dori and Omotesando on the 6th floor is huge and been great too. Just don't go on a weekend / holiday.
I'd be curious to know which cities you think are good. I traveled to a bunch of cities in Europe last year and my luck was like yours in Tokyo. I looked up places, checked them out, all were horrible. But I was only in each city for a week or less so maybe I just failed to find anything like you did in Tokyo.
+1 Fuglen — gets crowded though, and is quite small.
I spent most of my time at FAB Cafe in Shibuya. They have WiFi, 3D printing, and laser cutters, but I'm looking for somewhere new.
This weekend I discovered Alaska, a cafe in Nakameguro. The coffee was great, although my latte was price-y at 700yen. But food seemed to be around the 1,000 yen mark and it wasn't busy enough for me to feel guilty about hogging a table.
With that said for non-chain places with wifi, Streamer Cafe was a short walk from Nakameguro and was a nice place to spend an afternoon. Timeout cafe (Ebisu above liquid room) was reasonable as well, modulo a sales guy using it for an office.
Would be great to sponge a lunch off you someday ;)
The Terminal - Harajuku (where I'm posting this from ;) http://theterminal.jp/about.html
ii Office - Ueno https://iioffice.liginc.co.jp/
Jelly Jelly Cafe - Shibuya http://jellyjellycafe.com/
Open Source Cafe - Shimokitazawa http://www.osscafe.net/en/
The Terminal is around ~$13 a day if you pay ~$20 for a year membership. Includes free soft drinks. Yea, just $20. Or you can get a monthly pass for ~$160
II Office is around ~$10 a day also including free soft drinks
Jelly Jelly is really tiny and the one time I went it was 100% full so I haven't actually used it.
Open Source Cafe is also pretty tiny. It's 2 small rooms, both hold maybe 7 people though I've seen them cram in 15+ for a meeting.
I've been to a few on the list
co-ba I signed up for a year ago. Plus, if you become a member they give you a security card and it's open 24 hours. Minus, it's pretty minimal, especially the 2nd floor. Feels like I sitting in an elementary school class.
kokemasaz feels like someone decorated their garage. Nice DIY vibe. The guy making Voxatron (http://voxatron.com) who goes by Zeb online says he sometimes hangs out there.
I guess I should mention he runs the picopico cafe (http://picopicocafe.com) in Kichijoji. It's only open 3pm to 10pm Saturday and Sunday and even then only if they haven't rented the place out (check their calendar) but, possibly because he's an indie game dev a lot of other mostly non Japanese indie game devs hang out there.
What kind of shocks me is how much more expensive co-working spaces are in SF and LA. They claim you'll get networking but they're usually > $500 a month for just an unassigned seat at an open table.
It's in Shimokitazawa, really cool neighbourhood not far from Shibuya.
I'm mainly interested in co-working spaces for cross-pollination of ideas, and friendly challenges.
So, if anyone in Tokyo wants to meet up to work on some stuff (together or separately, but in proximity), let me know.
Also if you're in Tokyo, don't forget to check out the Hacker News Tokyo community meetup events.
The next one is on the 13th of May. Hope to see you there !
Coworking spaces are pretty hit or miss. There's also Academy Hills (http://www.academyhills.com) on the 49th floor of Mori Tower in Roppongi that runs you 10,000yen/mo.
Other options:
Jiyugaoka — Robek's Juice — no WIFI, but spacious and has lots of power.
Near Jiyugaoka — Radio Plant Cafe — free wifi, but quite small.
Fuglen and Maruyama are my two go-to places though neither are great for "working"
Streamer/Lattest I would say are not really appropriate for 'working' either. Sure, I've sat in them for an hour or two on occasion, but it doesn't feel exactly appropriate.
I'm in and out of TKO a lot. (Live in Shanghai) Will happily trades beers and coffees for tips on good cafes. ^^
Interesting that people mention Shanghai as having a good cafe scene; I like a few of the places here okay but I'd never choose them over a bunch of the better options in tko or the US...
Oh, and you should also post this over at http://www.startjapan.org/ :)
Streamer Coffee Shibuya -> http://streamercoffee.com/shibuya Lattest Omotesando -> http://tokyocheapo.com/place/lattest-omotesando/
What I need to find though is a proper co-working space / shared office. While I love hanging out in coffee shops I need a place where I can reserve a desk ;-)
There's a lot of variety in Tokyo so I should be able to find something.
Also emailed opensource cafe, but no reply. We do mention them on a previous article though.
Jellyjelly either their contact form is broken or they didn't want to respond.
(all messages were sent in Japanese)
I'll see if I can get in touch with iioffice...
https://ja-jp.facebook.com/burritastesgood
Staff and owner are very nice people, burritos are good, and they have a variety of hot sauces.
Then how does Starbucks make money then ? Most of the clients in Starbucks in Japan come for a drink with their computer or iPad and stay an hour or even more without consuming anything else - and they have their own internet access via tethering anyway. Yet Starbucks makes huge profits.
I have a beat up moleskine with some random doodles that I carry around for exactly this reason. Need to use the restroom at a coffee shop? Leave my disposable moleskine and a pencil on the table to claim the spot. If someone jacks the table, easy to ask them what they did with your notebook.
Works in: Bushwick, Denver, Seattle, SF, Austin
You would have to list names of specific places, apart from the ones I listed, because I just don't believe it's a matter of me not looking enough. You would also have to list names of co working spaces too that are good, because as I mentioned, the ones I went to were quite bad.
For SF, I have a map of ~20 hacker friendly coffee shops I frequent there. There were maybe 4-5 coffee shops in all of Tokyo of a comparable standard. (Fukuoka, even Sapporo, had better spots than Tokyo for laptop workers.)
Shanghai is an example of a city that is actually 10x better for working from cafes (if you use a VPN).
I would be thrilled if you would list a good cafe or two, as I am always on the hunt.