About Japan
Tokyo concentrates more interconnection than any other market in Japan, and it does so on three fronts at once: the domestic exchange fabrics JPIX, JPNAP, and BBIX, the carrier backbones of NTT, KDDI, and SoftBank, and the hyperscaler cloud regions clustered around the capital. Submarine cables land on both coasts, which places the country on the direct path between North America and the rest of Asia.
Zenlayer runs 16 data centers in three Japanese cities: Tokyo (11), Osaka (3), and Chiba (2), the prefecture that holds the Inzai data center corridor east of the capital. Across that footprint the portfolio covers bare metal cloud, colocation, IP transit, Cloud WAN, Cloud Connect, CDN, and public cloud access, each recorded in a different number of sites rather than in every building.
Japan sits in Zenlayer's East Asia region alongside South Korea, China, and Taiwan. The Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI) pushes teams handling Japanese user data toward in-country hosting, and the usual pattern is to start in Tokyo, which holds most of the inventory, then add Osaka once a second site is warranted.
Compute in Japan
Compute in Japan runs on bare metal cloud from two data centers, with colocation in four more for teams bringing their own hardware. Dedicated servers are the common request here: performance is predictable, the machine sits on Tokyo peering paths into the domestic access networks, and single-tenant hardware is easier to account for when a Japanese customer asks where their data physically lives.
The workloads that follow are familiar ones. Game servers for Japanese and North Asian player bases, API endpoints for domestic SaaS, and video origins serving the local market. Public cloud access from three data centers puts those systems next to the public cloud regions operating in Japan rather than inside them.
Enterprise hardware
Intel Xeon Scalable. Up to 384 GB RAM. NVMe and SSD storage tiers.
Premium network
100+ Tbps backbone with dynamic, latency-optimized routing.
Instant provisioning
Deploy via Terraform, REST API, or the point-and-click zenConsole.
Flexible billing
Hourly pay-as-you-go with discounts for longer commitments.
Networking in Japan
Interconnection is the reason most teams land here. IP transit is available from six data centers, Cloud Connect from five, Cloud WAN from four, and CDN from one. Those services sit in a market where JPIX, JPNAP, and BBIX carry domestic peering, and where NTT Communications, KDDI, and SoftBank operate the backbones that reach most Japanese subscribers, so transit bought in Tokyo is a short path to the audience rather than an upstream handoff.
Cloud Connect gives enterprises private circuits to cloud platforms instead of routing that traffic over the open internet, which matters for steady throughput on backup windows, replication jobs, and analytics pipelines. Cloud WAN joins the Japanese sites to Zenlayer's software-defined backbone, useful in a country that already terminates a large share of the traffic moving between Asia and North America.
IP Transit
Blended carrier routes tuned for the lowest real-world latency.
Cloud Connect
Private, dedicated links into AWS, Azure, GCP, and Oracle.
Cloud WAN
Software-defined backbone spanning 290+ points of presence.
Edge protection
Layer 3 and 4 DDoS mitigation with real-time traffic filtering.
Colocation in Japan
Colocation is offered in four of the 16 Japanese sites, which span Tokyo (11), Osaka (3), and Chiba (2). It suits enterprises that already own hardware, or that have licensing and audit reasons to keep particular systems on their own machines, while renting network and managed compute from the same operator in the same metro.
Where that space sits has shifted over time. Power and land in central Tokyo are constrained, and newer capacity has moved east into the Inzai corridor in Chiba, so Japanese footprints often span the metro core and the outer corridor instead of one campus. Certifications recorded for the Japanese footprint include SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001; confirm the standards held by a specific building before committing a regulated workload to it.
Carrier-neutral
Access to 400+ carriers and major regional peering exchanges.
Flexible power
Standard and high-density rack configurations on request.
Secure access
Biometric entry, CCTV, and 24/7 dedicated remote hands.
Rapid turn-up
Cage-to-production cross-connects in days, not weeks.
Cities in Japan
Tokyo
TYOJapan's financial and technology capital and the largest peering fabric in East Asia.
Osaka
OSAJapan's western commercial capital and a secondary cable landing zone balancing Tokyo's traffic load.
Data Centers in Japan
16 totalTokyo
Japan's financial and technology capital and the largest peering fabric in East Asia.
13 DCs
Tokyo
Japan's financial and technology capital and the largest peering fabric in East Asia.
| Services | ||
|---|---|---|
| AP-Tokyo11(DRT_NRT10)TYO11 | Telx | Colo |
| AP-Chiba1(CUG)TYO8 |  | ColoCloud WANCloud Connect |
| AP-Tokyo1(NTT_TYO1)TYO1 |  | Colo |
| AP-Tokyo10(Equinix_TY15)TYO10 |  | Colo |
| AP-Tokyo12(NTT_TBN1)TYO12 | | Colo |
| AP-Tokyo13(Equinix_TY9)TYO13 | | Colo |
| AP-Tokyo2(Equinix_TY8)TYO2 | | ColoBMCIP TransitCloud WANCloud ConnectCDN |
| AP-Tokyo3(Equinix_TY4)TYO3 | | ColoIP Transit |
| AP-Tokyo4(Equinix_TY2)TYO4 | | ColoIP TransitCloud WANCloud Connect |
| AP-Tokyo5(Colt TDC1)TYO5 | Colt Technology Services | ColoBMCIP TransitCloud WANCloud Connect |
Osaka
Japan's western commercial capital and a secondary cable landing zone balancing Tokyo's traffic load.
3 DCs
Osaka
Japan's western commercial capital and a secondary cable landing zone balancing Tokyo's traffic load.
| Services | ||
|---|---|---|
| AP-Osaka2(Equinix_OS1)OSA2 | | ColoIP Transit |
| AP-Osaka4(DRT_KIX13)OSA4 | Telx | Colo |
| AP-Osaka5(DRT_KIX11)OSA5 | Telx | Colo |
FAQs
Common questions about deploying compute, networking, and colocation infrastructure in Japan.
Where are Zenlayer's data centers located across Japan?
<p>Zenlayer operates 16 data centers in three Japanese cities: Tokyo (11), Osaka (3), and Chiba (2). Tokyo holds most of the inventory because the metro concentrates Japan's peering fabrics, carrier backbones, and cloud on-ramps. The Chiba sites are in the Inzai corridor east of the capital, and Osaka provides capacity in western Japan.</p>
What cloud and network services are available in Japan?
<p>Availability is recorded per facility, not per country. IP transit is available from six data centers, Cloud Connect from five, Cloud WAN and colocation from four each, public cloud access from three, bare metal cloud (BMC) from two, and CDN from one. Because no single service covers all 16 buildings, confirm the specific site when a deployment depends on one product.</p>
Should enterprises choose Tokyo or Osaka for a deployment?
<p>The split is about weight rather than capability. Tokyo holds 11 of the 16 data centers and the bulk of the interconnection, so first deployments and anything peering-sensitive usually start there. Osaka, with three sites, is the conventional second location for teams that want standby capacity in a different part of the country. Running both is a common shape.</p>
How do Japan's cable landings affect transpacific latency?
<p>Japan is a terminating point for a large share of transpacific submarine capacity, with landings on both coasts. Traffic between North America and much of Asia already crosses these systems, so an origin placed in Japan sits near the cable head rather than behind an extra regional leg. That shortens the physical path, which is the part of latency no amount of tuning recovers.</p>
Which other East Asian markets does Zenlayer serve from this region?
<p>Zenlayer places Japan in its East Asia region with South Korea, China, and Taiwan. Data centers back that grouping in Seoul and across mainland China and Hong Kong. Taiwan adds facilities in Taipei and Kaohsiung City. Teams building East Asia coverage commonly anchor in Japan first and add markets as demand appears.</p>
Deploy Infrastructure in Japan
Zenlayer's team can scope a Japanese footprint against your traffic profile, whether that means one Tokyo deployment or capacity divided between Tokyo and Osaka.