Lessons from Japan: Cultivating Vibrant Urban Life

I just wanted to say Thank You to all the caring Profit+ readers who reached out to check-in on me and my family this week.  Thankfully, we are ok.

Many of our friends, though, have lost their homes and businesses.  Our hearts are with them and the many courageous firefighters and first-responders who have been battling these fires all week.

While it’s always great to be home, our trip to Japan has left me feeling even more disillusioned about some of America’s self-inflicted failures. 

Almost as soon as you get on the ground in Japan, you start to feel the profound benefits of a culture that prioritizes collective action and goals over individual achievement. Even in incredibly crowded spaces like airports and subway stations, everything is clean, well-organized, and safe. How they keep it up is beyond me. It’s not like you see armies of people cleaning all day.

For someone coming from Los Angeles, where taking the kids to a restroom at a public park is a top 5 worst life experience and one fraught with danger, the fact that you can walk into a subway station restroom and feel like you are in a nice hotel lobby is incredibly refreshing. I don’t remember seeing a single nasty bathroom on our entire trip. 

Wandering through Tokyo, literally the largest city in the world, it’s not uncommon to see young, elementary-aged children walking around unaccompanied by adults. As you all know, this is an absolute non-starter basically in every single city in America. 

What does that say about us? Are we simply incapable of creating safe public spaces? I don’t know about you but this is something I cannot accept. 

Anyway, what you realize being in Japan is just how good things can be in a city when public safety isn’t a question. In just the few weeks we were gone, there were multiple subway incidents in New York and a terrorist attack in New Orleans. The contrast couldn’t have been starker. In Japan, such worries don’t even cross your mind.

To move through a beautiful modern city like Tokyo without any fear is as refreshing as it is invigorating. It’s an experience that makes you feel a kind of pride and awe at the human condition. Below ground, on the streets, in the sky, a dense urban environment is linked together in the most unique ways. Tokyo, in many ways, feels like one giant interconnected mixed-use urban ecosystem, like a mall, living, and office complex that never ends. You’ll find hotels inside of giant office buildings and restaurants and retail inside of apartment buildings and everything connected by streets, elevators, escalators, moving walkways, and a mass transit system that actually does justice to the name. In fact, just for the widening effect it can have on your life perspective, riding the Tokyo subway during rush hour is a must-do.  

Now, Japan isn’t some magical utopia. In fact, the country has a whole bunch of problems. 

They have one of the highest debt-to-GDP ratios in the world.

Their economy has been stagnant for several decades.

Their population is collapsing.

And while there is much to love and respect about Japanese culture, there are parts of it that can feel constricting and frustrating, especially for someone used to the more individualistic and enterprising American spirit. 

I’ll share one example from our trip. It’s no secret that I’m an early riser. To prioritize reading, writing, and exercise, I start my day around 3:30am just about every day. I keep up this routine even while on trips and vacations. 

This trip was no exception, despite the jet lag. Every morning, I woke up, got myself ready in the dark using the light from phone and trying to make as little noise as possible—No one wants kids up at 3:30am and stuck in a hotel room!—and then headed down to the hotel lobby. As usual, finding coffee was the first order of business. 

Well, on my very first morning in Tokyo, something funny happened. I went downstairs and walked over to the hotel receptionist, smiled, and said: “Hi, good morning. Is there any place that I can get a coffee?”

After pausing for a few seconds—probably on account of trying to process why anyone on vacation would be up this early looking for coffee—the hotel receptionist said something like:

“I’m sorry but it is not possible to get coffee until 6am.”

My heart sank for a second as I realized it could literally be hours before I could have some coffee. In my head I thought: “Wait, what exactly do you mean by ‘not possible’? How can that be?” Not one to make a scene, I just resigned myself to my fate and got to work. 

At 6am, the most curious thing happened. The hotel receptionist walked over to the restaurant entrance about 20 feet away, uncovered a Jura machine, put a cup down and hit the button. 30 seconds later I had my cup of coffee.

I couldn’t help but think: “Well, wait a minute. It was definitely, definitely possible to get that cup coffee two-and-a-half hours ago!” As an American, I couldn’t help but find it incredibly odd that the hotel schedule—the rule, if you will—that says coffee service starts at 6am would be followed without question or compromise, especially since the solution was so easy. 

America may be very hit or miss when it comes to customer service these days but this never happens here. Hotel staff always finds a way to procure some coffee for me no matter what the schedule says. It’s good to remember that there is indeed something special about the American spirit. We may be selfish at times and too individualistic but we are entrepreneurial and have an uncommon degree of agency. There’s power there.

By the way, I figured out later that same day that the 7-11’s there are open 24 hours and serve coffee so I found a way around this little problem for the rest of the trip.  

Since this issue is getting long, I’ll wrap things up here.  Don’t worry though, I will have more to say and share about Japan in a future Profit+, including my top 5 recommendations for a visit there, so stay tuned!

PS. Does anyone else think this is an awesome idea? One of my working theories is that the reaction to the proliferation of digital technologies is that real-life experiences are going to be valued at a premium. Is this an early sign that I might be right? What do you all think?

PSS. As a parent raising kids in Los Angeles with no family around, this idea really resonates with me! It’s delusional to think that two parents living alone in a big city can raise kids without the benefit of a robust family/friend support network.

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