Best Meeting Times Between US and Japan Teams (2026)
8 AM Tokyo is 4 PM in Los Angeles the day before. West Coast afternoon windows, the East Coast dead zone, and why the Philippines slot is an hour off. -
There is no standard 8-to-6 overlap. Someone joins early or late.
The 13-hour difference means New York and Shenzhen miss each other entirely during regular office hours. Where you can, lean on async updates and save live calls for when one team is happy to start early or stay late. For part of the year the maths changes: New York observes daylight saving, Shenzhen does not, shifting the overlap by an hour.
| Local time | 12am | 1am | 2am | 3am | 4am | 5am | 6am | 7am | 8am | 9am | 10am | 11am | 12pm | 1pm | 2pm | 3pm | 4pm | 5pm | 6pm | 7pm | 8pm | 9pm | 10pm | 11pm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
New York America/New York | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Shenzhen Asia/Shanghai |
8 AM Tokyo is 4 PM in Los Angeles the day before. West Coast afternoon windows, the East Coast dead zone, and why the Philippines slot is an hour off. -
London to New York is five hours apart, except for the five weeks a year when it isn't. Exact overlap windows for every US zone, the 2026 DST mismatch dates, and where to put the recurring sync. -
Slack converts timestamps automatically and shows everyone's local time, but it can't fix a bare '3 PM' typed into a channel. The settings worth changing and the habits that do the rest. -