237 - inspired by japan 🏢🗾🦖
Hey there, !
Yes, get it twisted, we are weebs now. Japan 4eva and every post here is going to be Japan inspired until the day I forget the taste of beautiful wagyu don and kobe beef from my taste memory.
Which is never.
Anyway, just things I observed that I thought would be good to bring over to Australia and also WHY hasn't it happened yet?!
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Hotel luggage transfers: okay, perhaps our cities aren't close enough together, and we don't have as many touristy locations (you're usually going to be staying in one city if you're a tourist) but it was still a gamechanger for us when we were in Japan. Not having to lug the luggage (lol) around between cities and on public transport was super useful, and, I thought, very helpful that it was automatically sent to the next hotel location. It helps both the people who need the luggage transferred (because they don't have to bring it with them) and also the people they're sharing public transport with (because who wants big damn luggages on the train / bus / whatever). Great problem to solve.
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PERFECT FRUITS: perfect apples. perfect strawberries. perfect oranges. perfect WHITE strawberries. perfect avocados. Surely there's a premium supermarket waiting to happen?!
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Personalised EVERYTHING: In a lot of places we went shopping - I think I remember this most distinctly in the Harajuku area - there were options to personalise anything you wanted; every store had an offering for personalisation. Hyper-personalised; you could get a bunch of designs printed on a t-shirt, or shoes, or a dress, or a cap, or embroidered - and everything was done within like 30 mins! Such a cool thing to do - should we have more of that here in Australia?
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Gacha machines: This is probably more successful in Japan because it's cheap, people love plastic, and the merch tie ins are awesome - but I do wonder why it seems to be a South East Asian thing much more than in Australia. They've got every anime, manga, cute animal, coin, whatever you can think of toy that you can get. Now that I think about it though, there are those 'Million Life' places I see in Box Hill that might be like those gacha stores? They just don't look as fun...
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Round 1 / Spocha: looks like it's in the USA too - it's an all-in-one entertainment centre with literally every type of entertainment you went to when you were 7 - a roller rink, a bucking bull, arcades, a batting cage (!!!), a bowling alley, billiards, darts, table tennis - EVERYTHING. The child inside me wants moreee.
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Efficient public transport: LMAO you have to put a pipe dream in somewhere.
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Hotels with dinosaurs as their concierges: because why not?
Chat soon :)
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✔️Real Life Recommendations
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Bar Totti's: yeah, it's in Sydney, but the place slaps. I went on a Wednesday night and UMMM excuse me how come there are so many PEOPLE waiting outside at 7:30PM on a SCHOOL NIGHT like ????? But I get it, because the share plates are amazing, the pasta was delicious, and the vibe was immaculate. REC-REC-RECOMMENDED.
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Scriptnotes - a podcast for screenwriters, but specifically there was an episode with Neil Gaiman that I absolutely loved. I wish I had heard from him when I was younger - his advice for younger writers who were looking for stories to write, after they had done all the technical work of finishing things, writing constantly and practicing...but thinking they had nothing to say at such a young age, was just...
'Go and live. Stop trying to write. Go out into the world. Get a job. Get your heart broken. Go and see things. Get stranded a long way from home. Have things go wrong. Have stuff happen. You don’t have anything to write about yet. What you’re saying is you’ve got the chops. You just don’t have anything to say.'
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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The History of Tetris World Records - YouTube - did you hear about Blue Scuti who got to the Tetris Kill Screen for the first time? Watch how the story unfolds from people going after the world records! It's fascinating! literally new tech after new tech after new tech. The way Summoning Salt (the channel) explains things is so captivating. 2x speed, of course - go have fun.
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Why don't we change? - a great piece that breaks down the three components of change - commitment, competence and structure. Something I am thinking about at the moment through a behavioural lens - how do I change? Which part of these three components am I lacking?
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Take another look at where they put the guardrail - I didn't realise it, but it's so obvious when you look at it this way