Originally Posted by
joejones
I've been using a Japanese website called spacemarket.jp for short-term booking of workspaces. They have everything from hot desks to cubicles to meeting rooms to entire apartments, and their rates tend to be very reasonable (e.g. 500 yen/hour for a booth or 1,200 yen/hour for a conference room in central Tokyo).
The station booths are pretty expensive for what they are.
Oh, I quite agree that they're not the best value for money as an actual shared workspace. That said, as a casual visitor, I find that they're a convenient walk-up option inside railway stations whenever I feel like having a bit of quiet time to write on my iPad or relax.
Indeed, the first time I ever used one of these was when I had hours to kill ahead of a sleeper train ride from Takamatsu to Tōkyō. Didn't want to stay in a café or restaurant (too public and full of strangers for comfort as I suffer from social anxiety), and the station benches were hardly the best place to idle around in (no table to prop my iPad on, no air conditioning outside of the waiting rooms, etc.). Saw one of these and thought to myself, "fine let's have a go at it", paid for one-time use and found the experience very pleasant indeed.