Living in Tokyo

Living in Tokyo must not be a fearful experience full of hard rules attached. I must admit however and before anything that I go about life in a way that has raised eyebrows to say the least. Eyebrows raised perhaps by the way I defy the social rules most people consider written in stone. In any case though, my personal take at the core of the experience is that the more freedom you add to your life, the more you get to have the kind of life you want to have here.

As a foreigner in Tokyo I used to agree with the belief that one must be better than anyone else, behave better than anyone else and go by the rules of the locals better than anyone else in order to succeed. OK, I do for once agree with one thing, I think I have something to offer that is better than anyone else's and in fact this is what has granted me the right to live in Japan permanently. Beyond this point however, I don't believe in that I must live by the local rules in a much stricter way than anyone else's. Nor do I believe that a certain expected behavior should prevent me, or anyone else for this matter, from doing things in a special way.

I work my ass off for the most part doing 6-day weeks and spending some 10 to 12 hours at work, but don't get me wrong, work has nothing to do with having my ass glued to a chair and looking at a screen for that amount of time. Nor does it have to do with taking a train to work and doing 9:00 to 6:00 at a particular location. Working my ass off and defying the rules has to do with the new world; a new world that incidentally is proving my behavior right after the East-Japan earthquake of 2011 and its nuclear aftermath.

I wake up at about 7:30 or earlier, much earlier sometimes to find myself checking E-mail and working at home, coffee shop, park or wherever I feel like doing so. Get to work to my clients and do work on site and/or off site while using my cloud tools. At any given time whatever I do from wherever I do it goes to the cloud and I'm always in synch with my work no matter where I am or whatever happens in between tasks. Lunch is usually with good wine. Dinner is usually wherever happens, sometimes at home. Always in the company of good business and often interrupting the day for a regular trip to the gym about twice a week, this is my typical life. All put together I spend about 4 hours or less at a desk and many more hours maximizing my day without ever touching a train during rush hour.

So, some may say I take Tokyo as a playground and they are right. I do consider it a playground where I am an individual of unique ability which I gracefully provide to as many people as possible. I live in Tokyo, a place where there are no rules I fear, where I am exercising the new way of working, and where achieving happiness doing what I like and love can too be a realizable dream. I'm just a part of the new Japan.