Which zone this page means. CST means US Central Standard Time (UTC-6) and also China Standard Time (UTC+8) — fourteen hours apart. This page means the US zone. For the Chinese zone see China Standard Time. Japan does not observe daylight saving, so JST applies all year.
CST is behind JST by 14 hours today
On 19 August 2026, Central Standard Time (US) is on CDT at UTC-05:00 and Japan Standard Time is on JST at UTC+09:00. The gap between them is 14 hours, with JST ahead. So 9:00 am in CST is 11:00 pm in JST, and 5:00 pm in CST is 7:00 am in JST. Going the other way, see JST to CST.
The gap is not constant, and that is the part that catches people out
Central Standard Time (US) is currently observing daylight saving and changes next on 1 November 2026, when clocks go back an hour. Japan Standard Time does not observe daylight saving at all, so the whole of the seasonal change comes from the CST side: the gap moves by an hour twice a year even though nothing changes in Japan Standard Time.
When you can actually both be at work
Taking a working day as 9:00 am to 5:00 pm local at each end, there are 0 overlapping hours in a normal day. There is none: the two working days do not touch at all, so any live meeting between Central Standard Time (US) and Japan Standard Time has to sit outside somebody's normal hours. The table above shows which end has the shorter stretch to give up.
Zone rules are set by legislation and change, sometimes at short notice. This page is built against tzdata 2026a, last reviewed 2026-08-18. Quarterly. Zone rules change by legislation, sometimes at short notice. Version and review date are shown on every zone page. The converter above reads your browser's own copy of the zone database, so if a rule has changed since this page was built the live answer follows the new rule.
Every convention used above — whether the start date counts, how month ends are clamped, which holidays close an office — is written out on the methodology page, including the daylight-saving rules behind the 14-hour gap above.