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. -
Best overlap: 8:00 AM to 2:00 PM in Sydney is 12:00 PM to 6:00 PM in Honolulu.
Both teams are at their desks between 8:00 AM to 2:00 PM in Sydney and 12:00 PM to 6:00 PM in Honolulu. Plenty of room to work with: 6 hours of daily overlap means you can prioritise people's preferences over the clock. Keep the date straight: Honolulu is on the previous day versus Sydney, which can trip up Friday or Monday meetings. Note the seasonal wrinkle: when Sydney is on daylight saving and Honolulu isn't, the gap between them grows or shrinks 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Sydney Australia/Sydney | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Honolulu Pacific/Honolulu |
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. -
Long-distance relationships, parents working overseas, grandkids in Auckland and grandparents in London. The work guides do not really apply. Here is a practical playbook for keeping family relationships strong across time zones. -
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. -