RResidents in Japan

gym recommendation? people who’ve experienced or heard please help!

  • November 16, 2025

as the title states are there any gym recommendations? ive heard of anytime fitness, chocozap, and few others but I want to hear peoples experience with them and if there are any other chain gyms

by Espadiegul

16 comments

  2. Check with your local city hall if there’s a community gym. The town I used to live in had one that was 3000 yen per year.

    It was run down, but it had everything I needed. And most importantly it was mainly full of serious people who were happy to chat about lifting.

    Fit365 is great for the price, especially if you have a family.

  3. are you a beginner?

    Chocozap is targeted a beginners so they dont got free weights.

    You got alot of newbies coming in, sometimes they are done fast but often they take a long ass time between sets looking at insta/tiktok

    It’s good if you are also getting back into it but you will graduate from it with a few months. I used it for maybe half a year before switching to a real gym but I wished I had done it sooner.

    Anytime fitness, Fitness place, etc any gym with free weights and not far from you would prob be better

  8. If you want to get serious muscle gains, it is important you chose a gym with free weights.

    In my experience Anytime Fitness in Japan are generally good enough for 99% of gym goers.

    I would avoid machine only gyms.

  9. Make sure you check the operating hours, especially if you work out in the morning. A lot of the chains don’t open until 10 am.

  10. I’ve used Anytime Fitness, Golds and Jexer in Japan. All good, with lots of free weight and power/squat racks.

  12. Anytime is good.
    They also don’t have dumb rules about having to change to indoor shoes.
    Dramatically increases my chance of using the gym when I don’t need to carry spare size 14 shoes to work with me

  13. If there’s a fitplace near you, I recommend checking it out. It is usually better equipped than anytime and costs about half the price. It was opened a couple years ago by a bodybuilding YouTuber, so tends to have some more professional equipment.
    Anytime is really hit and miss depending on the location. Chocozap is… the less we say about it the better tbh.

  14. I am going to Anytime Fitness. Reasonable price, with a decent amount of machines and weights, opens 24/7, and comes with a shower also. Plus, most of them are within walking distance from the station, so it is quite convenient also. The gyms here in Japan are normally much smaller compare to the ones I went to in my home country, however, I think as long as you are not going on peak hours like 6pm when people all go to the gym at once after work (which is a problem for any gym in the world), most of the time you wouldn’t have to wait.

    Another good point of Anytime Fitness to me is that they are available pretty much everywhere, therefore, for some days that I was traveling far, I can still hit the gym normally if I want to.

  15. Golds gym good of course but expensive. Useful for me as been using for 10 years and can use any branch in the country. They have heavy bags too which is great for me.

    There is an Anytime Fitness next to my new house so tempted to switch as it’s half the price. (Not heavy bags though)

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