Convert PDT (Pacific Daylight Time) to JST (Japan Standard Time)

Best time to schedule a meeting

Standard 9–5 working hours do not overlap at all between PDT and JST. Someone has to take an early or late call — or use asynchronous communication instead.

PDT to JST conversion table

About PDT

Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) is UTC−7. It is used in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle from March to November.

Pacific Daylight Time is UTC−7, the summer clock for Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver. It is the zone most product launches and software release times are quoted in, and it is worth converting rather than eyeballing: PDT is eight hours behind British Summer Time, not seven, because both sides have moved.

About JST

Japan Standard Time (JST) is UTC+9. It is used in all of Japan, with no daylight saving.

Japan Standard Time is UTC+9 for the whole country and has had no daylight saving since 1951, when the occupation-era experiment was abandoned. Proposals to reintroduce it, most recently before the 2020 Olympics, have failed each time. The offset is shared with South Korea, so Tokyo and Seoul never differ by even a minute.

Does this gap change with the seasons?

This gap is seasonal. The abbreviations themselves are fixed offsets, but the region on PDT switches to PST (UTC−8) from November to March. So the 16-hour figure on this page is correct for the part of the year when both places are actually on these abbreviations, and changes by an hour outside it.

JST does not shift, so the whole change comes from one side. A recurring meeting fixed in JST will appear to move by an hour for everyone on the other side, twice a year, without anyone changing anything.

This is the reason scheduling systems store an IANA zone such as Region/City rather than an offset or an abbreviation: the zone knows its own rules and the offset does not.

Frequently asked questions