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VPS in Japan: two hubs, earthquake-proof buildings and local rules
Japan is the second-largest hosting market in Asia and one of the few countries in the region where servers are not concentrated in a single city but split between two equal hubs. Almost all data centres sit around Tokyo and Osaka, roughly 8–10 ms apart. For a server owner that is convenient: the primary node in one city, the standby in the other, and both inside the same jurisdiction.
Tokyo and Osaka: why the country has two hubs
Japan has frequent earthquakes, so data centres are built on seismic isolation, with fuel reserves for generators and two independent power feeds. Even the best building, however, cannot protect against a whole region losing power, as happened after the 2011 earthquake. That is why large companies and clouds keep copies in Osaka in case Tokyo has problems, and the other way round. The same logic works for a small project: if the service is critical, put the backup or a second server in the other city, not in the next hall of the same building.
The Tokyo metro area offers more choice and better connectivity to North America, while Osaka is usually a little cheaper and closer to the west of the country. Details on the capital, its suburbs and routes are on the VPS in Tokyo page. Carriers exchange traffic through JPIX, JPNAP and BBIX, and each of them has nodes in both cities.
Latency from Europe, the US and neighbouring countries
From Western Europe expect roughly 220–260 ms: traffic goes either via the US and the Pacific or through the Middle East and the Indian Ocean, and the exact figure depends on your provider's route. North America is much closer, and within the region the picture looks like this:
- Seoul about 30–35 ms, Taipei and Hong Kong 30–50 ms;
- Singapore about 70 ms;
- the US west coast about 100 ms and the east coast around 150–170 ms — Japanese data centres are linked to California and Oregon by many Pacific cables.
A server in Japan does nothing for a site whose visitors are in Europe, but for a remote administrator the delay is mostly noticeable when typing in a terminal and hardly matters for deployments and monitoring.
What people use a server in Japan for
- Websites and apps for a Japanese audience. Users are used to fast pages and mobile apps, and search results and app stores take the region into account.
- Game servers for players in Japan, Korea and Taiwan: from Tokyo all three countries are within 50 ms.
- An East Asian node in a distributed project. If your main audience is Korean, compare with VPS in South Korea; if it is in Southeast Asia, compare with Singapore. All Asian countries are collected on the VPS in Asia page.
- A Pacific edge for a US or European company whose staff or customers work in Japan and nearby countries, so they do not have to reach a server on another continent.
Unlike in Korea, bandwidth in Japan is relatively inexpensive, so plans with large traffic allowances are more common here.
Laws that affect a server owner
Personal data in Japan is protected by the APPI, supervised by a dedicated commission, the PPC. The law also applies to foreign companies that collect data on people in Japan, and transferring data abroad requires the user's consent or equivalent safeguards on the recipient's side. Serious breaches must be reported to the regulator and to the people affected. Japan and the EU recognise each other's data protection as adequate, so data can move between them without extra GDPR contracts.
If your site serves Japanese users, note the rules on "external transmission": third-party analytics and scripts that send visitor data to other companies must be disclosed on the site. Copyright is strictly enforced, and under the Provider Liability Act hosts review complaints from rights holders and affected parties and may restrict access to the material. A commercial communications service, such as your own telephony for customers, may need registration or notification under the Telecommunications Business Act; an ordinary website or a company's internal services do not.
Sign-up and payment
Local Japanese hosts often ask for a Japanese phone number, address or company, and the contract and support may be in Japanese only. So most foreign customers rent from international providers that list Tokyo or Osaka as one of their locations. These accept international cards, often PayPal, and invoices for companies; some hosts also accept cryptocurrency as a payment method. The "Payment" column in the table above shows the options for each plan, and prices are converted from yen and dollars into your currency. Mind the time difference: Tokyo is 8–9 hours ahead of Central Europe and 13–17 hours ahead of the US, so check when the host's support is staffed.