Sydney is UTC+10 (GMT+10) / UTC+11 (GMT+11). Tokyo is UTC+9 (GMT+9, no DST). Tokyo is currently 1 hour behind Sydney.
Best times to meet (Sydney local time): 10:00 AM — 9:00 AM in Tokyo; 11:00 AM — 10:00 AM in Tokyo; 12:00 PM — 11:00 AM in Tokyo; 1:00 PM — 12:00 PM in Tokyo; 2:00 PM — 1:00 PM in Tokyo; 3:00 PM — 2:00 PM in Tokyo; 4:00 PM — 3:00 PM in Tokyo.
Times shown in Sydney local time → Tokyo local time. Based on business hours 09:00–17:00.
Sydney observes Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST, UTC+10) in winter and Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT, UTC+11) in summer. Because Sydney is in the Southern Hemisphere, its summer runs from October to April — the opposite of the Northern Hemisphere. Clocks go forward on the first Sunday in October and back on the first Sunday in April. This means that when London is entering summer (April), Sydney is leaving it; the two cities are briefly 10 hours apart instead of the usual 11 in Sydney's summer or 10 in Sydney's winter.
Sydney is Australia's largest city and its financial capital — the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) opens at 10:00 AEST/AEDT. The city's UTC+10/+11 position means it is one of the first major financial centres to open each trading day, typically before Tokyo. Sydney is 10–11 hours ahead of London, making same-day business calls extremely difficult — an 09:00 call in Sydney is 23:00 the previous night in London. The best overlap window for Sydney–London is early Sydney morning (08:00–10:00 AEST), which corresponds to London's late evening (22:00–00:00).
Australia has a complex DST situation: New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania observe DST, while Queensland, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory do not. This creates internal Australian timezone fragmentation during summer, with Sydney (AEDT, UTC+11) being 2 hours ahead of Perth (AWST, UTC+8) instead of the usual 2-hour difference in winter. International schedulers must check whether their Australian contact is in a DST-observing state before assuming "Australian Eastern Time."
Tokyo observes Japan Standard Time (JST, UTC+9) year-round. Japan abolished Daylight Saving Time in 1951, after experimenting with it during the post-war US occupation (1948–1951), and has not reinstated it since. The fixed UTC+9 offset means that Tokyo's sunrise and sunset times shift significantly across seasons — the sun rises before 04:30 in late June and after 06:50 in late December — but the clock never moves. Japan Standard Time is shared by the entire country, which spans only about 30° of longitude, making a single national timezone practical.
Tokyo is the world's most populous metropolitan area and a global financial powerhouse. The Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) opens at 09:00 JST and closes at 15:30 JST with a lunch break from 11:30 to 12:30 — one of the few major exchanges still observing a midday break. Tokyo's fixed UTC+9 means the trading day never shifts relative to the rest of the world's schedules: TSE always closes at 06:30 UTC, just as European morning trading begins. The lack of DST simplifies scheduling with Tokyo; you never need to check "is Japan currently on DST?" — it is always UTC+9.
Tokyo is 9 hours ahead of London (GMT), 14 hours ahead of New York (EST), and 17 hours ahead of Los Angeles (PST). This puts Tokyo so far ahead of the Americas that a live daytime meeting covering both is virtually impossible during normal business hours for either side. It is 1 hour ahead of Beijing and Seoul, and exactly the same offset as South Korea (KST) in winter. The JST zone also covers South Korea's Jeju island in practice, though Korea officially uses KST (also UTC+9).
Tokyo is currently 1 hour behind Sydney.
When it is 12:00 noon in Sydney, it is 11:00 in Tokyo (based on current offsets — verify during DST transitions).
Sydney observes DST, changing from GMT+10 to GMT+11. Tokyo does not observe DST — GMT+9 is used year-round.