Chiyoda Sports Center — Local services in Tokyo

Decent cheap option for foreigners looking to work out, just prepare for some rather arbitrary strictness.

Using the gym only costs 500 yen, plus you'll need to pay 300 yen to rent indoor shoes; you're not allowed to use any shoes that have been worn outside. Both of these are easily done at the front desk. No Visa / Mastercard cards are accepted from what I can tell. You can rent a locker for your stuff with 2 10-yen coins; you get one of the coins back after you're done with the locker.

The gym has most of what you'd likely expect except for a decline bench and pec deck / reverse fly machine. It has:

1 power rack 2 bench presses Preacher curl setup Preacher curl machine 2 adjustable incline benches Cable crossover machine Lat pulldown / row machine Bench press machine Leg press Hip abductor / adductor machine Leg curl / leg extension machine Dumbbells from 1kg to 40kg 2 ellipticals 3 treadmills 2 or 3 exercise bikes 2 decline situp setups And a couple other machines

Deadlifts are ok as long as you use a mat and are quiet on your descents. To use the cardio equipment, bench presses, power rack, or smith machine you need to sign up on a whiteboard located near them, with 30 minutes max allowed per machine.

For the cardio equipment this makes some sense, but they honestly should just encourage people to share the weightlifting equipment as the current setup is pretty inefficient, with people standing around waiting for a machine that is only used 1 minute out of every 4 in some cases.

We went twice (7-9pm and 1-3pm) and each time there were maybe 5 other people using the weightlifting equipment, which didn't feel too crowded.

Equipment-wise, the gym is pretty good, but there are a few people-related things that you should be aware of. First, women don't work out much in gyms in Japan, and my partner felt like she got a lot of side looks and even thinks that one of the lifters was filming her at one point, so if you're a woman just be aware of that.

Second, the workers can be strict about some rather odd things. For example, I was told to use weight clips even when warming up (e.g. with like 10 pounds on the bench press), and every time I finished a set on the lat pulldown machine a worker came and reset the pin to the top / lightest weight. It can definitely feel like the workers are hovering over you and looking for things to nitpick on, and this isn't something we had experienced in the other gyms we'd visited in Japan. I don't think it's malicious; it's just an odd micro-management thing. Just be prepared for it and try to remain patient.

Overall, it's a decent option and way cheaper than a private gym. Even with the caveats against it, I'd use it again if I were...

Check website CAREFULLY before going or call up to check - whole center or certain facilities can be randomly unavailable. Availability is not immediately obvious on website.

Pool - 3.5 stars. Cheap in at 500 yen. Not too busy when I went at 5:20pm on a weekday, although was really starting to get packed when I finished my session an hour later. Has three lap swimming lanes, which is a relief. Unfortunately has the same list of needless rules that most pools do here, although you ARE allowed to wear sports watches as long as you cover them up and register (lol).

Gym - 3 stars. Does the job, I guess. Very old, slightly dubious equipment. In terms of free weights, has a smith rack, power rack, two bench press racks (one with safety bars), a punching bag (extremely rare for gyms here), and a few other bits of gear. No weights are loaded onto the power rack itself, meaning you have to carry them across from elsewhere, which is pretty annoying, especially if you're lifting three or more plates on each side. Staff were friendly. The sign up system for free weights is good in principle, although the half-hour windows make it very annoying when waiting around for people to finish (and if you're already using a piece of equipment, you can't put your name down for...

Lots of interesting spaces for archery, judo, swimming, etc. BUT! Three reasons why I'll probably not go back 1) The gym/workout room itself was fairly small, limited, and extremely old equipment. 2) It's aparently required to wear only white sneakers in the building even though my active shoes were 10x better than their rental shoes. Similar for pants. Shorts are mandatory so I had to pay extra for that too. I had activity long pants and with psoriasis on one of my legs that was extra fun too. 3) There's a result of 1 park with chinup bars that I'll check out next time instead.

It was something different but in all I had to pay ~1,200 yen, change into worse workout clothes, and for only about 10 minutes of working out in a junk gym :/

Kinda suprised that with how much Tokyo invests in its infrastructure that this municipal center is...