What Japan Has Taught Me About Love

What Japan Has Taught Me About Love and Life

Japan is expensive. It’s far. It’s difficult to get to. So why do I keep going there?

That was a question my producer asked me when I told her that I was once again taking a family trip to Japan, this time with my 4-month-old son.

Now, on one hand, I clearly just love it. But it’s also a place that I have learned a lot from. So I thought I would make the kind of video I never make in a sea of love-life videos and actually share with you what Japan has taught me about love and life.

I also hope you’ll keep in mind that I am not an expert on Japan and that I am well aware of how easy it is to romanticize a place as a visitor. This subject remains a deeply personal one to me, so I wanted to share it with you.

As always, if you clicked on this video, please give it a like so that other people can find it too, and hit subscribe so that you and I can stay in touch.

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Here is a summary of the transcript from YouTube, slightly edited with AI.

The Craftsman’s Approach

One thing I learned from Japan is the craftsman’s approach.

I love how much people care in Japan when it comes to the things they do or make. It feels like there’s an obsession with doing the job well and taking pride in the work.

You might have seen references to this in things like sushi making, but it extends to everything. People disproportionately seem to take pride in what they do, no matter what it is.

Whether it’s a kissaten, a traditional Japanese coffee house where the owner has spent 40 years making the same cup of coffee, or a tiny Neapolitan pizza place where one person has devoted their entire life to perfecting dough, you can see it everywhere.

You can see it in the way a shopkeeper meticulously wraps your purchase or in the business that makes artisanal cola that is mind-blowingly good.

One of my favorite films is Perfect Days. It’s about a man who cleans toilets in Tokyo, but the film treats him almost like he’s a sushi master. He approaches his work with this quiet devotion, this insistence on doing even the smallest thing beautifully.

My experience with Japan is not that this film is an exaggeration, but an accurate portrayal of what I have witnessed in how so many people go about their work.

Now, it’s not that I don’t see excellence in England, where I’m from, or in America, where I live presently. It’s that in those places, when I see an obsession with excellence, it is often pursued as a means to an end.

Excellence is a vehicle to growth, scale, or conventional success.

But so much of what I see in Japan is excellence pursued at the expense of those things. I have come across hundreds of small businesses where it feels like the goal isn’t necessarily to build an empire, but to do something really, really well.

The Lesson

So what’s the lesson here?

Well, for one thing, there is a cost to trying to be too many things at once.

In my life, I have done a lot of things. I coach, I make videos, I write books, I lead an organization, and I want to be present with my family. Of course, I want to do all of these things brilliantly.

But in reality, excellence comes from doing less.

If we care about quality, we have to care about reducing the number of things we try to do, which is something I’m doing in my life right now.

Collective Well-Being

Japan also instilled in me a different sense of collective well-being.

Something ironic about Japan is that, despite its lack of public trash cans, there is almost no trash on the streets, and it is one of the cleanest countries on Earth.

When trash cans were removed, people got used to disposing of trash at home.

Something about this rubbed off on me on a deep level.

I have long held the philosophy that you should try to leave people better than you found them. I say that about dating all the time, but it also applies to any kind of relationship.

But I have since added to that philosophy the idea of leaving places better than you found them.

I’m not saying I’m a saint who always lives up to this, but in small ways it has made a profound difference in the way I approach life.

When I’m in a coffee shop, I don’t just see it as the coffee shop owner’s responsibility to make the place nice. I started to see it as my responsibility too, at least in whatever corner of that coffee shop I occupy.

It might be as simple as putting my chair back the way the owner intended when I stand up and leave, or returning my cup to the counter.

I even apply it to public toilets. I try to leave the toilet cubicle a little better than I found it.

I obviously don’t do this for recognition. I’m not even sure I’ve ever said this out loud before.

And it doesn’t really matter to me if the next person comes along and trashes the cubicle after me. I mean, I’d like them not to, but it doesn’t make me wish I hadn’t made it nice.

There is something about this practice that has been good for my soul.

I have become more proud of the way I move through life, of the way I influence the spaces I’m in. It feels more conscious, and it’s a practice that has strangely made me like myself a little bit more.

Invest Where You Are

Japan also taught me to invest where you are.

Japan inspired me to care about design and, even more so, how much love we give to the design of our own home.

One of the shocking things about Japan is how intentional spaces are.

You walk into a random coffee shop that has no business being so aesthetically pleasing, and yet there it is with intentional cups, dishware, indoor plants, and a carefully curated theme.

Whether it’s Japandi minimalism, cottagecore vibes, or retro nostalgia, this rubbed off on me.

Inspired by the listening bars in Japan, where you literally go to order a drink, sit at the bar, and listen to records, we designed a wooden shelving nook in our home to resemble aspects of that design.

We replaced what had been a lot of bachelor-style metal furniture in the house.

As Audrey describes my design choices before she came along, they were basically the four things men really want in the bedroom.

Number one: a 65-inch flat-screen on the wall. Number two: a fish tank. Number three: a lava lamp.

We replaced those choices with earthy colors, natural materials, and wood, and created bright, clean spaces for ourselves to live and work in.

But more important than exactly what we did with our house was the fact that we were putting love into it.

We were putting ourselves into it, considering the kind of space that we’d really love to live in—one that would spark joy for us.

And it felt like that really paid off when we came home this time because I had my typical post-Japan melancholy.

But then we walked into a space that instantly made us feel excited to be home.

That felt validating because all of that care and all of that love we had poured into our home the year before suddenly made sense.

Yes, Audrey and I had left a place we loved in Japan, and that made us sad.

But we had returned to a place we love—a place that made us feel happy and calm—which consequently softened the blow immensely.

So much so that I feel genuinely excited to be home.

The Relationship Parallel

There’s a comparison there, by the way, with romantic relationships.

When we invest in the home that is us—whether it’s our confidence, our love for ourselves, the way we expand our mind, our friendships, our family relationships, or our own life—at the same time as being in love with somebody else or dating somebody else, we insulate ourselves against the worst kinds of heartbreak.

Those heartbreaks happen when we build a home in someone else.

I think this lesson is just as transferable to romantic relationships.

When you invest where you are, when you invest in the home that is yourself, you actually protect yourself against future heartbreaks, against the relationships that inevitably you have to leave, or the ones that leave you.

The Reality Behind the Romance

All of this, of course, is an incredible romanticization of a place I love.

I am well aware that there is an underbelly to Japan that I do not interact with and that every trait has its inverse.

The cultural norms that make Japan so fascinating and novel to visit make it oppressive for many who live there.

The preoccupation with maintaining a national identity creates both a Japan that feels highly distilled—making it a wonderland to visit—while also making integration extremely difficult, even for many who have lived there their entire lives.

I’m also not a Japanese woman existing within a deeply patriarchal society.

I know that I do not know Japan. I visit Japan.

That is a big difference.

And not only do I not live day-to-day life in Japan, I don’t even live my own day-to-day life in Japan.

My Japan is filled with days of ambling along tiny streets with no pressure to be anywhere or do anything.

My Japan is filled with consequence-free beers, consuming vast quantities of carbs and sugar, and drinking coffee in a way I would never do back home.

My weeks there do not resemble my real life.

Not just because I’m in a foreign land, but because I take a foreign version of myself with me when I go.

Were I to be living my actual day-to-day life in Japan over a long period of time, I may have a completely different perspective.

It’s not unlike a long-distance relationship with a person, where we don’t truly know how compatible we would be with them until we find ourselves living in the same place as them—maybe even under the same roof.

In my extended honeymoon with Japan, I never truly get to know what my real life would feel like if it were lived there.

It may even be more akin to an affair that is exciting precisely because the person remains on the outside of the relationship, where their worst habits and character traits are never truly experienced.

Reality never hits, so the fantasy stays alive.

What Japan Really Represents

To be clear, I’m not saying that the things I love about Japan are not authentic or that they are just figments of my imagination.

It’s more that they are viewed through a pristine and carefully curated lens that I have created through repeated but intermittent exposure.

Being aware that my version of Japan is an idealized one doesn’t take away what I love about it, but it does restore a kind of balance.

It insulates me against the kind of catastrophic thinking that says I will never be happy unless I can live over there.

I also have to recognize that part of what I love about Japan is who I allow myself to be when I’m there.

It is a place I go to feel things that I rarely give myself permission to feel in my everyday life:

Safe
Carefree
Easy on myself
Spontaneous
Anonymous

Which, I suppose, begs the question: Is this a mode that I could allow myself to enjoy a little more where I live the rest of the year?

Perhaps not the unhealthy habits, which would be unsustainable in everyday life, but the freedom, the lightness, and the sense of spontaneous exploration.

Final Thoughts

I could easily go on for another hour about this. This was a bit of a passion subject for me, so thank you for indulging me.

I truly hope you enjoyed it.

But let me know what it brought up for you.

Is there a place that you have a love affair with? What do you love about it? What has it taught you?

I’m sure there will be so much variety in these responses. They may even inspire the rest of us reading them to visit the places that mean so much to you.

So, I can’t wait to read and respond to them.

Thank you for watching. I’ll see you in the comments.

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This post was previously published on YouTube.

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