Small offices in Tokyo are not a niche — they are the bulk of the market. Listings in our Tokyo catalogue run from 4 m² up to 720 m², and the median is 27 m². The median listing, in other words, is a room for a small team, not a floor for a department.
What the sizes mean in practice
Japanese offices are planned more tightly than European or American ones, so square metres translate into more desks than newcomers expect. As a rough guide: under 10 m² suits one or two people, 20–30 m² works for a team of four to six with a meeting corner, and 50–70 m² covers eight to twelve with storage and a small meeting room.
Note that Japanese listings are also commonly quoted in tsubo — one tsubo is about 3.3 m². A building quoting "10 tsubo" is offering roughly 33 m².
Three ways to take a small office
A private room in a managed centre is the most common route for small teams. You get a lockable office with the building services, internet, reception and meeting rooms already running. Our Tokyo catalogue lists 459 private office options on this basis.
A fixed desk in a coworking space suits one to three people who need an address and a reliable place to work more than they need a door. There are 170 coworking options in 170 buildings in the catalogue, with entries from ¥40,000 a month.
A conventional small lease — a room in an older mid-rise building, taken directly — is usually the cheapest per square metre and the most demanding in every other way: deposit, your own fit-out, your own internet, your own furniture, and a restoration obligation at the end.
The deposit question
For a small team this is often the deciding factor rather than the rent. A conventional Tokyo lease typically requires a security deposit of several months' rent, and a portion is retained. Managed and coworking contracts ask for much less up front. Two offices with a similar monthly figure can therefore differ by a large multiple in what you must pay before moving in.
Where small space is easiest to find
Smaller units concentrate in the older mid-rise stock rather than the towers: the Kanda and Jimbocho side of Chiyoda, Shimbashi in Minato, and the areas around Ikebukuro in Toshima (9 buildings, 62 listings). Managed centres, by contrast, cluster in the central wards — Minato (63 buildings) and Chiyoda (40) lead — so a small private room at a prestigious address is usually available through an operator even where a small direct lease is not.
Shortlisting
Filter by size band first, then budget, then station. The Tokyo office listings cover 1,251 options across 188 buildings with photos, monthly price in yen and walking minutes from the nearest station, so a 20 m² room in Shimbashi and a 25 m² room in Kojimachi can be compared directly.