November 2025: Apartment in Osaka - Bryan's Briefing

Hey friend,
it's been another month. I quit working at the hostel in Osaka, I cancelled my plans to work at the hostel in Tokyo as well. Working at the hostel was a nice experience, and I'm happy that I tried it, but ultimately I didn't feel like it was worth it for me, but what was I even doing there?

There are platforms like Worldpackers (which I used) and WorkAway which connect you to hostels and other places. The most common type of deal you will find on these are hostels which are looking for people on a Working Holiday visa, offering you to stay there for "free" in exchange for working there, e.g. cleaning and preparing beds for guests. Ultimately I didn't feel like it was worth it for me in my current situation, a lot of working time I would rather invest elsewhere.

So now I got my own apartment in Osaka, so finally sunlight and I can stand again, but it also came with it's own ups and downs. One of these downs was a sudden 200% price increase for wanting to stay another month, which they since then have backed down on (only a 20% increase now).

Now focusing on working as a freelancer and other projects. Getting my own apartment also gave me the opportunity to relax a bit again, maybe too much, but how I spend today will be how I spend tomorrow, so I got to work.

I still plan on going to Tokyo after Osaka, but unsure when right now.

🌱 Cool Content I Made

I posted Thank you for joining my e-mail newsletter, a shorter post that also mentions why I even have this and what I like about it.

But that's not all!

I worked on Game.ToLearnKorean.com, an (web) app to learn Korean vocabulary quickly. You will need to be able to read Hangul to use it. You are very welcome to try it, but it's not finished yet! Your progress might reset, and many things could still change, but the core of the experience is already there now. So I'd love to hear feedback, is this something you could imagine using? What worked well for you, and what didn't?

❤️ Cool Stuff By Others

📝 Blog Posts

• Feeds, Feelings, and Focus: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Examining the Cognitive and Mental Health Correlates of Short-Form Video Use by Lan Nguyen, Jared Walters, Siddharth Paul, Shay Monreal Ijurco, Georgia E. Rainey, Nupur Parekh, Gabriel Blair and Miranda Darrah
• Managing contexts for (coding) agents by Drew Breunig
• Don't regret your time spent, spend it wisely
• Reflecting on becoming an indie dev by Danijela Vrzan
• Someone At YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled by Jayden Milne