[practicalpants]

I'm not disputing Tokyo is full of Starbucks. Judge me if you want but I just won't work from Starbucks. (For the record, the Starbucks at Daikanyama in the T-Complex is actually very cool and is worth a mention; didn't like the Starbucks you mentioned much, which I also worked from a little, by necessity... also if you're in Roppongi go work from the art museum cafe, or for a great spot open late, there's a stylish lounge/cafe in Shibuya a block by Zanmai Sushi open until 7am, really can't think of the name)

You would have to list names of specific places, apart from the ones I listed, because I just don't believe it's a matter of me not looking enough. You would also have to list names of co working spaces too that are good, because as I mentioned, the ones I went to were quite bad.

For SF, I have a map of ~20 hacker friendly coffee shops I frequent there. There were maybe 4-5 coffee shops in all of Tokyo of a comparable standard. (Fukuoka, even Sapporo, had better spots than Tokyo for laptop workers.)

Shanghai is an example of a city that is actually 10x better for working from cafes (if you use a VPN).