Weeknote 2025/47

November 23, 2025December 1, 2025 / Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment

A woman walks down a city street with a small robot on her back, showcasing a blend of technology and urban life. — *Exploring Tokyo and the future of the work*

This week was spent under Tokyo’s pulsating screens, where the pavements hum, the escalators chirp, the traffic lights sing, and you’re permanently one missed step away from being swept into a tide of humanity. The city doesn’t so much greet you as flip your settings to 11 and leave you buzzing like a faulty transformer.

If you’ve never experienced it, it’s hard to explain the sheer scale of the sensory assault. It’s immediate and total. Visually, the city is a chrome-and-neon deluge: vast video boards loop hyper-real animations that bathe the crowds in shifting washes of cerise, cobalt and electric green. Every surface is broadcasting something — a brand, a warning, an offer, a jingle — all competing for your attention at once.

The soundscape is its own kind of madness: pachinko parlours spilling manic 8-bit cheer into the street; “don-don-donki Don Quijote” worming its way into your skull; the rhythmic clatter of the Yamanote line overhead; clipped, polite announcements issuing instructions you’re too overloaded to follow; the constant shuffle and thrum of tens of thousands of footsteps. It’s a multi-layered wall of noise you feel as much as hear.

Even the air has texture: a metallic tang of exhaust, the savoury steam of yakitori stalls, the strangely comforting detergent-clean fragrance that leaks from department stores every time their doors sigh open.

It’s an unrelenting, high-definition reality that demands attention. Your brain simply cannot keep up with the bits-per-second being hurled at it. You become both anonymous and hyper-stimulated. You’re a single vibrating nerve ending plugged into a city-sized nervous system.

As a dyed-in-the-wool city girl, I was both in love with it and completely exhausted by it. Exhilarated one minute, brain-fried the next.

But every night, as my circuits started to smoke, I slipped back to Shimokitazawa: a low-rise pocket of sanity I’ve stayed in so often it feels like popping on a familiar jumper. Gentrified? Absolutely. But still human-sized, warm, and (crucially) horizontal. After a month in slow, sloping Nagasaki, Shimo was the space I needed to transition into Tokyo without short-circuiting entirely.

Evenings in Shimo were the antidote to Tokyo’s intensity: smoky teppanyaki counters frying okonomiyaki bigger than your face; tiny wood-panelled izakayas with fogged-up windows; a six-seat local bar where the drinks are strong, the welcome quiet, and the conversation optional. In a city that overwhelms by design, Shimo made the whole thing survivable.

The rest of the week unfolded as a tour of contrasts — human, urban, sensory and technological. The kind of juxtapositions Japan does with unnerving ease.

I went to two gigs: one in Shimokitazawa, one in a suburban burger restaurant, both showcasing that deeply Tokyo magic trick of creating tiny, intimate worlds inside the sprawl. There’s a particular joy in finding these pockets where no one cares that you’re foreign; you’re just another person there for the music.

I finally made it to the Yayoi Kusama Museum (worth the booking hassle, worth the hype, worth the wait). I wandered through Tokyo’s parks in full autumn drag, riotous maples showing off under cold blue skies. I slurped heroic amounts of ramen in small rooms filled with smoke and laughter.

I made the pilgrimage to TeamLab Planets, something I’d avoided for years because on paper it is precisely the sort of place I should hate. Big Influencer Energy. The kind of venue where you fully expect to be elbowed aside by someone wielding a ring light like a weapon. I arrived ready to roll my eyes so hard I’d sprain something.

Wading through warm water in a mirrored room has no business being as good as it is. Nor does being surrounded by giant drifting flowers; on paper it’s pure gimmick, yet there I was, perilously close to having feelings. It’s sensory overwhelm with actual depth: playful, deliberate, and mercifully not designed solely for people who say “content creator” with a straight face.

A dark room filled with colorful, illuminated patterns on the floor, as visitors wander through the space, experiencing an immersive art installation.

A person standing in a colorful, illuminated room with projections on the floor, surrounded by other visitors.

I also did something rather lovely: a walking tour of Tokyo with a palm-sized robot perched on my shoulder, remotely operated by someone with a disability, working remotely from elsewhere in Japan. Fun, surprisingly polished, and a little glimpse into a future of work I’ll write much more about another time.

A person is walking with a small robot on their shoulder, with a view of tall skyscrapers in Tokyo in the background.

A woman stands on a city street with a palm-sized robot on her shoulder, set against a backdrop of modern buildings.

And then there was Kagaya. I genuinely don’t know how to describe Kagaya Izakaya without sounding unhinged. It’s nominally a dinner, but in reality: a one-man piece of performance art that veers between slapstick, surrealism and something approaching group therapy. At various points there were puppets. There were costume changes. There were props I’m fairly sure violated several fire codes. The man has the timing of a seasoned comedian and the energy of someone who’s drunk six cans of Monster and made peace with chaos.

The food was excellent, but also completely beside the point. If David Lynch ever opened a pub, it would be this: unsettling, hilarious, oddly tender, and impossible to explain to anyone who wasn’t in the room. I’m still trying to process it tbh.

He asked that we don’t put videos on the internet, and I absolutely respect that. Some experiences deserve to stay unmediated, uncaptured, held in the moment rather than flattened for the feed. Kagaya is very much one of those. So this one solitary snap it is.

Kagaya sitting at an easel, looking at the viewer with a surprised expression, wearing a green checkered shirt and a black hat, in a cozy, wooden interior.

Amid all this, I published my first reflection from Nagasaki: an article for Reworked on what organisations can learn from the digital nomad movement. It’s the first of what will no doubt be many pieces. Now that I’m briefly still, I finally have space to breathe, process, reflect and write. This whole experience has given me a lot to think about; I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface.

I also made a reel summing up my month — forty-odd one-second clips stitched into a fever dream of trains, temples, islands and neon. The algorithm seems determined to bully me into becoming better at video, so… apparently that’s a 2026 project.

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Between it all: the shopping. So much shopping. Tokyo retail isn’t an activity; it’s an endurance sport. One minute you pop into Don Quijote “just to have a look”, and two hours later you’re on floor 5 of 8, dehydrated, overstimulated and clutching two baskets filled with matcha KitKats, face masks, Totoro purses, Super Mario bag charms, Ichiran ramen kits and a hair towel you saw on TikTok. You’re seriously considering upgrading to one of those little basket trolleys so you can start a third.

You have lost all sense of time. You have no idea if the sun is still up. The shop jingle has played for the 756th time and permanently lodged itself in your skull. Every surface flashes something at you; every aisle whispers “buy me.” You are borderline delirious. You reach — helplessly, inevitably — for another Hello Kitty coin purse. Bic Camera, Yodobashi Camera, Donki… they’re all the same fever dream: capitalism at its most chaotic, joyful and unhinged.

And then — abruptly — Amsterdam.

Back home, I battled the jetlag and stayed awake long enough to see The Hives at AFAS — a band I’ve been going to see for over two decades. I’ve seen them in a tiny venue in Malmö, a community centre in Warsaw, a big corporate venue in London, and everything in between. Pure, chaotic rock-and-roll energy that hasn’t dimmed a watt in 20 years.

And honestly, after six weeks in Japan, stepping out into the Dutch winter (a hard, unfriendly zero degrees) and trying to remember how to be a person in my own life again… that helped. A reminder that some rhythms — loud guitars, shared joy, a band giving absolutely everything — travel with you.

And that’s it. My final weeknote from Japan.

Six weeks that shifted how I think about work, community, belonging and pace. A reminder that cities are laboratories, that culture is generous, that work has a future if we’re imaginative enough, and that slowing down long enough to notice is half the point.

Not quite the end of the story, I suspect. But definitely the end of this chapter.

This week in photos

View of Tokyo skyline with modern buildings and clear blue sky, showcasing the urban landscape.

An immersive art installation featuring bold pink hues and black polka dots, creating a visually striking environment of swirling patterns.

Weeknote 2025/46

November 17, 2025December 1, 2025 / Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment

A wooden torii gate leading into a lush forested area, with people walking beneath it, symbolizing a traditional Japanese threshold. — *Torii gates: thresholds between worlds*

There are weeks that feel like a straight line, and weeks that feel like a series of thresholds. This one was the latter: a chain of quiet crossings, each nudging me from one state of mind to another.

Japan has physical markers for these moments: torii gates. Step beneath one and, in theory at least, you leave the human world and enter the realm of the kami. But what I’ve learned this month is that thresholds don’t have to be dramatic to matter. Sometimes they’re a shift in perspective; sometimes they’re the soft double-click of a chapter ending.

My week has been full of these liminal moments. Some planned, some unexpected, all adding up to a sense that I’ve stepped from one space in my life and work into something else. I can’t name the new thing yet, but I can feel its outline.

At the shrine where I took that torii photo, it wasn’t the gate that caught me so much as the details: the heavy shimenawa rope; the tassels; the zig-zag shide strips hanging like paper lightning. I learned they symbolise rain, renewal, and the hope for a good harvest. Not a passive hope, but an active one: may what begins here find nourishment enough to grow.

I don’t yet know what will grow out of the past month, but the soil is definitely shifting.

A traditional torii gate adorned with shimenawa rope and tassels, surrounded by dense greenery, symbolizing a threshold between the human world and the spiritual realm.

The first threshold of the week wasn’t spiritual, though; it was the lobby of a Fukuoka hotel, where my husband David arrived after a long flight from Amsterdam. After a month on the far edge of Japan — working odd hours, accumulating tiny cultural recalibrations — seeing him appear felt like briefly stepping back into my own life. Or at least the version of it that comes with an Irish lilt and knows how I take my tea.

But before that, Fukuoka delivered a different kind of homecoming.

I met up with my friend Tony, whom I first encountered on the intranet scene in the early 2010s, back when we were all swapping SharePoint hacks and governance war stories. It was a rooftop bar in Singapore in 2015 that shifted us from acquaintances to friends, and we’ve crossed paths in London, Berlin (their adopted home), and now, improbably, Japan.

We spent the evening eating ramen, hammering Taiko no Tatsujin in an amusement arcade, and laughing with the sort of abandon you reserve for people who have witnessed your more ridiculous professional eras. The universe also arranged for us to turn up in almost identical outfits, resulting in a “fit check” video under the glow of claw machines. I even won a Taiko plushie, prompting an entirely undignified amount of joy.

It reinforced something I keep relearning: home is, more often than not, people rather than places.

And once David arrived, Fukuoka became another kind of home. We did what we always do in a new city: walked, talked, ate too much, and tried to understand the place through its smallest details. Fukuoka is warm, open, generous — but after Nagasaki’s sleepy intimacy, even a soft re-entry into big city life was A LOT.

And then: sumo. I’d expected drama, ritual, weight. And I got it. But I hadn’t expected quite so much theatre. Watching the wrestlers step into the ring felt like watching a centuries-old operating system running beautifully on modern hardware. Ceremony and precision, every movement carrying the residue of repetition. The crowd swung between reverence and sudden, explosive joy. One of the most choreographed human experiences I’ve ever seen.

Sumo wrestlers walking down a corridor with a directional sign in Japanese indicating 'East' while preparing to enter the ring.

A sumo wrestling ceremony taking place in a circular ring, surrounded by an audience. Participants in traditional Japanese attire are engaged in conversation, while spectators watch eagerly from seated positions.

Sitting there, I realised sumo isn’t really about the moment of impact. It’s about the build-up — the stamping, the salt, the slow escalation toward inevitability.

Another threshold. A step, a breath, a brief clash.

Fukuoka reminded me that not all thresholds mark endings. Some are reunions, reconnections, or simply the recognition of who you are when you’re with the right people.

A few days later I was back on Gunkanjima — Hashima, the Battleship Island — for the second time in three weeks. The first visit had been full of big narratives: industrial rise and collapse, whole communities uprooted, the human cost of rapid change. The story you expect the island to tell (and which, indeed, I did in weeknote 45).

This time I tried to notice what doesn’t make the documentaries. The angles of collapsed staircases. Plants punching their way through concrete. The wind’s low hum as it threads through broken windows. The guide’s almost affectionate way of describing buildings on the verge of collapse. A single gull perched on the rusting rail of a former school, as if taking attendance.

Gunkanjima isn’t just a monument to abandonment; it’s also a lesson in what remains.

The first time, I saw it as a symbol of disruption — what happens when the world changes faster than people can adapt. This time, it felt like a study in endurance. Not resilience in the motivational-poster sense, but the plain, unsexy persistence of things that refuse to disappear.

The walls crumble, but the city is still legible: market square, shrine, apartment blocks. The sea eats the edges, but the island keeps its shape. Even absence has structure.

Thresholds aren’t always about stepping forward; sometimes they’re about looking again. A second reading. A different angle. A willingness to listen for the other story.

Gunkanjima, this time, wasn’t a cautionary tale. It was a reminder that endings — even violent ones — don’t erase what came before. Some places, and some experiences, leave an imprint that outlasts their usefulness.

Another threshold crossed. Not forward this time, but deeper.

And then it was time for the nomads programme to end. The final days had that familiar end-of-term energy: admin, emotion, last lunches, shared folders, and the sudden urge to squeeze in just one more conversation with people you’ve only known for a month but who now sit firmly in the rhythm of your day.

I’ve done enough programmes to know most are neatly bounded. This one wasn’t. It was lived. Embedded. Threaded through Nagasaki in a way that made leaving feel like stepping out of a parallel life.

We’d spent a month meeting city officials, entrepreneurs, artistans, students, elders watching demographic change unfold, and families who opened doors tourists never find. A decade’s worth of experiences in four weeks. Not in a TikTok bucket-list sense, but in the sense of having been allowed inside something special.

The team behind it all — industrious, warm, omnipresent without being intrusive — created a space where curiosity sparked easily. Where conversations stretched from marketing tactics to the future of urban economies without anyone blinking.

And then came the final night: a goodbye dinner with speeches — the heartfelt, slightly wobbly kind that only happen when something genuine has happened. Laughter in corners. That soft ache that sits under any meaningful ending.

In that moment, I realised we’d all adopted a very Japanese habit: the long goodbye. All month, whenever we visited workplaces or workshops, people would bow and wave until we were fully out of sight — round the corner, down the road, onto the bus, they’re still waving.

On our final night, we did exactly the same. Waving, hugging, bowing, waving again, stretching the goodbye because no one wanted it to end.

But naturally, it didn’t. Nomad cohorts don’t do tidy exits. We spilled into the night and ended up in a bar: karaoke massacred with enthusiasm, pool played with debatable competence, photos taken that we’ll be grateful for later. Messy, joyful, perfect.

These aren’t just programme peers now; they’re the sort of friends you’ll bump into again in Berlin, Bangkok, Lisbon, or some godforsaken airport you never meant to be in. Nomads orbit like that.

By the time the evening finally fizzled out — karaoke ringing in our ears, pool balls still clacking — I could see how many storylines were quietly forming. New collaborations. Ideas not quite ready to declare themselves. Questions hitching a ride into the next phase of the book.

Not outcomes. Just beginnings pretending not to be beginnings.

So yes, bittersweet. Sad to leave, of course. But I’m also carrying an inconvenient amount of… hope? Perspective? Mildly chaotic inspiration? Whatever it is, it’s coming with me.

Another threshold crossed. Not grand, but the sort that matters later.

Leaving Nagasaki for Tokyo felt like stepping out of a quiet room and straight into a speaker stack. One moment I was waving increasingly ridiculous goodbyes in a café — then crying in an airport like a woman in a low-budget travel documentary — and the next I was in Shinjuku Station trying to remember how to function in a city built entirely from escalators and LED screens.

Tokyo is always a jolt, but after a month of islands and low-rise neighbourhoods, it hit differently. Buildings stacked on buildings. Trains layered like geological strata. Enough neon to power a small European nation. My brain, still tuned to Nagasaki’s warmth, tried to cope and promptly threw an exception error.

But in the middle of all that intensity was a tiny moment of calm: a visit to Kanda Myojin Shrine, where Tokyo’s tech industry goes to have its ventures blessed. In Akihabara’s chaos — all anime billboards, maid cafés, shops selling cables of brief but unquestionable necessity — I bought a charm for digital safety and asked for a blessing for my business. A thoroughly modern pilgrimage: startup meets Shinto.

Oddly grounding, too. A reminder that even in a hypermodern city, people still seek rituals to mark beginnings or ask for protection as they step into the unknown. Another threshold, just with better branding.

The rest of Tokyo unfolded as it always does: exhilarating, overwhelming, impossible to process in real time. Even buying water felt like an extreme sport. Every sign shouts. Every pavement pulses. Every crossing demands confidence you may or may not possess.

But beneath the sensory overload was something gentler. A sense that this, too, was part of the transition. If Nagasaki was the month-long inhale, Tokyo was the exhale — abrupt, glittering, impossible to ignore, but ultimately part of the same breath.

And somewhere between Shinjuku’s chaos and Meiji Shrine’s calm, I realised I wasn’t overwhelmed because Tokyo is too much.

I was overwhelmed because the past month had meant more than I’d let myself admit.

This week in photos

A person standing in front of a traditional Japanese shrine gate, flanked by decorative lanterns and colorful banners, with modern buildings visible in the background.

A Pikachu figurine wearing a headband, holding a bowl of ramen on a wooden display, with a red banner in the background featuring Pokémon-themed designs.

Weeknote 2025/45

November 10, 2025November 10, 2025 / Sharon O'Dea / 1 Comment

A distant view of Gunkanjima, also known as Hashima Island, featuring abandoned concrete buildings and a rocky hill under a clear blue sky. — *Gunkanjima, or Battleship Island (photo by me)*

I began the week on a boat bound for Gunkanjima, a ghost island that was once the most densely populated place on Earth. From the deck, it looks like a floating city, a tangle of concrete blocks rising from the sea. A century ago, thousands of miners lived here, stacked in dormitories above the tunnels they worked in below. Coal fuelled Japan’s industrial revolution, and this tiny island was its engine room.

Then the coal ran out. Within months, the residents were gone, leaving behind schools, cinemas, playgrounds — lives interrupted mid-sentence. Nature has reclaimed it now: trees sprout from window frames, waves gnaw at stairwells, concrete smashed by annual typhoons. The tour guide called it “a monument to progress” though it looked more like a cautionary tale. Every industrial revolution leaves ghosts. You wonder what ours will look like. Server farms in the desert, perhaps, or data centres left humming to themselves long after we’ve moved on.

The week turned from from ruins to road trips. On Monday, on a whim, we headed north. First, the glass sand beach at Omura, the most Wes-Anderson train station imaginable glowing under a pink sky, then dinner in a tiny onsen town where hot-spring footbaths line the street. At one point I found myself perched at one with my laptop — the most literal interpretation yet of “working from anywhere.”

Finally we set off to catch the final night of teamLab: A Forest Where Gods Live, an installation we’d only discovered the day before. The exhibition had been running for months in the ancient Mifuneyama forest, but Monday was its very last evening. So we threw plans to the wind, piled into a rental car, and drove through the dark.

By the time we arrived, it was pitch dark, save for the moon hanging over the park — a vast garden of ancient stones and trees, half-swallowed by mist. teamLab had transformed it into something otherworldly: waterfalls of light cascading down boulders, azaleas blooming in digital colour as you passed, and koi fish made of pixels swimming in rippling ponds.

It wasn’t just beautiful; it felt sentient. The light shifted as you moved, responding to your presence. A trunk would glow, then fade. A rock would bloom briefly, then fall dark again. The boundary between nature and code dissolved. The forest felt alive; half divine, half designed.

A vibrant digital waterfall illuminated with colorful lights cascading down a rocky surface, surrounded by dark foliage and trees in a misty forest setting.

A nighttime view of a forest illuminated with colorful lights, showcasing vibrant green and blue hues among the trees and shrubs.

And because we’d arrived at the very end (the last night, actually the very last hours) there was an added sense of fragility. Soon it would all vanish. The lights dismantled, the cables packed away, the forest returned to its unlit self.

Tuesday brought another hidden world: a private bar tucked inside a 200-year-old house. The barman, dressed entirely in black, spoke softly through an interpreter, his enthusiasm and knowledge palpable. He talked us through his gin collection, explaining why drinks taste better from crystal glasses — not as a gimmick, but as a philosophy. I’m not entirely convinced. But each pour was deliberate, reverent even. The house itself was a work of understated beauty: all tatami mats, dark beams, and the scent of cigarette smoke and stories.

Experiences like this keep catching me off guard here. Not curated, not for show, just shared out of sheer generosity and pride. The kind that make you feel lucky to have stumbled into them.

Wednesday was back to work: an interview with a journalist from the Asahi Shimbun about global nomadism, the future of work, and this curious experiment I’m part of. Then a meeting with a digital workplace vendor (because I am, unapologetically, a massive nerd for such things) before rounding off the day at Stadium Onsen for a sauna and cold plunge. A uniquely Japanese ritual I’m fast becoming addicted to; equal parts mindfulness and mild masochism.

At a community gathering that evening, Ryota (one of the programme team) told us about okagesame: the unseen labour that allows things to happen. The work that doesn’t seek attention. The shadows that make the light visible. The concept lodged in my head and hasn’t left since.

Thursday might have been my favourite day so far. A group of local women invited us to dress in yukata (lighter, day-wear kimonos) and even did our hair before taking us on a photo walk around town. There’s something special about seeing a place through someone else’s eyes, especially when they’re so proud to share it.

I did find myself wondering, briefly, whether this edges into cultural appropriation. Everyone here insists it doesn’t, but no one can quite explain why. Perhaps context matters: who’s offering, who’s receiving, and whether the exchange is rooted in pride or parody. Either way, it felt genuine.

I felt radiant for once. And, having weighed myself at the onsen the day before and realised I’d quietly hit my target weight, it was nice to see a photo of myself and not immediately wince. Small victories.

A person smiling while wearing a floral kimono, showcasing a half-dressed traditional outfit in a modern kitchen setting.

Person wearing a colorful floral yukata with a green obi, standing outdoors under trees.

That evening we drove back to Omura for a taiko drumming workshop. Loud, joyful, and communal. You can’t play taiko alone: it’s about rhythm and synchronicity, trust and timing. Again, that theme of unseen coordination. The collective effort that makes something beautiful look effortless.

A diverse group of people poses together in a community taiko drumming workshop, holding drumsticks and displaying cheerful expressions.

A person playing a taiko drum enthusiastically in a practice space, holding drumsticks and wearing a black outfit.

By Friday, Nagasaki had been overrun by Pokémon Go players. Thousands had flown in for an in-game event, chasing digital creatures through real streets. I didn’t have a ticket, but it was fun to watch the city buzz with people of all ages.

That night, a “quick drink” with my fellow digital nomads — people I’ve only known a couple of weeks — turned into a late night out, which turned into ramen at 3am. Connection happens fast here. Different languages, different backgrounds, but the same impulse to stay up too late laughing and being heroically bad at darts. Proof, maybe, that even in a world intently staring at its phone, what we crave most is still human connection.

Saturday unfolded in two acts: a morning of small, personal triumph (I bought my first pair of UK size 8 jeans in about twenty years and cannot stop smiling), then a remarkable evening. Our group met the Mayor of Nagasaki to share feedback on making the city more nomad-friendly — the visible, civic part of this grand experiment — before heading to dinner hosted by kenban, Nagasaki’s geisha. The food exquisite, the music ethereal, the laughter unguarded. A glimpse of a world few Japanese people ever see. Another gift, freely shared.

Three women in traditional Japanese kimonos performing a dance on stage, holding colorful folding fans and flower arrangements, with decorative lanterns hanging overhead.

Five women in traditional Japanese kimonos seated on tatami mats, smiling and interacting in a traditional setting.

Now, as I write this, I’m on the shinkansen slicing across Kyushu, fields and mountains blurring past, heading to Fukuoka to meet my husband for our anniversary. I’m thinking about how much of life — and work — runs on okagesame. The invisible scaffolding. The people who hold things up without ever being seen. From the miners who built Gunkanjima to the engineers who built TeamLab’s dreamscape; from the barman who polishes crystal glasses to the local women who tie silk sashes just so; from the quiet work of Ryo, Shelly, Tam, Nanami, Doy-Chan and the Nagasaki Nomads team to the simple pleasure of a shared meal, everything depends on what’s hidden.

It’s funny, really. You come halfway across the world to think about the future of work, and end up learning from a miner, a barman, and a forest full of lights. Turns out the future isn’t an app. It’s appreciation.

This week in photos

A view of the crumbling remains of a building on Gunkanjima, with overgrown vegetation and partly collapsed concrete structures under a blue sky.

Abandoned buildings on Gunkanjima, an island once known for its coal mining, with remnants of brick walls and concrete structures against a clear blue sky.

Weeknote 2025/44

November 2, 2025November 9, 2025 / Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment

A person stands next to a fruit-shaped bus stop designed to look like a pineapple, with a coastal view in the background. — *Joyfully waiting for a bus* *on the Kyushu coast*

This week began, and ended, where Japan once met the world.

On Monday I joined a walking tour that began on Nagasaki’s Holland Slope, a steep street lined with stone houses built in a vaguely Western style. Unlike the northern half of the city, flattened by the atomic bomb, this area survived intact. From there we climbed to the old foreign settlement, where those same European influences linger in a scattering of beautiful but increasingly unfashionable hillside homes. Two centuries ago this was a rare pocket of openness. A place where Japanese and Westerners co-existed, warily but productively. The air smelled of camellias and salt. The views were heartbreakingly pretty. But many of the houses stand empty now, their owners long gone. Beautiful places without people.

That night I walked up to Glover Garden and looked out over the harbour as the city twinkled below — one of Japan’s three best night views (though I’ve yet to find a Japanese city that doesn’t make that claim). From up there, Nagasaki looks vast and alive, not a place quietly losing its young to Tokyo and Fukuoka.

On Tuesday I visited the Twenty-Six Martyrs Museum, which marks the spot where 26 believers were crucified after Japan decided foreigners were less opportunity than threat. Even for someone as devoutly irreligious as I am (I got ‘ungraded’ in my RE GCSE, which I suspect makes me a statistical anomaly in both Britain and Japan) it was oddly affecting. The museum is small, restrained, and unmistakably clear in its message: at times, this city welcomed new ideas; at others, it nailed them to a cross. “Openness”, it turns out, has always come with terms and conditions.

Later, from a co-working space overlooking the football stadium, I met a local entrepreneur building clever, local solutions for a future with fewer people. Our conversation — and a viral LinkedIn post that followed — circled the same theme: how societies adapt when the gates start closing.

The rest of the week blurred between rooftops and basketball games, onsen and Halloween costumes. Proof that even in decline, a city can still have fun. One afternoon I took a trip up the coast to see a series of fruit-shaped bus stops (mandarins, strawberries, melons) built in the 1990s for no reason other than civic whimsy. A perfect, pointless joy.

A person standing in front of a whimsical fruit-shaped bus stop designed like a watermelon, with a clear blue sky and trees in the background.

A person standing inside a fruit-shaped bus stop designed to look like a yellow orange, wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, with sunglasses on a sunny day.

At a weekend Halloween party, a swarm of small, costumed children buzzed with ideas, enthusiasm and an excessive intake of sugar. Watching them, I couldn’t help wondering: when does that curiosity wear off?

Group photo of adults and children dressed in various Halloween costumes, posing together in a festive environment.

The next evening brought Nagasaki Canvas, a monthly gathering of locals trying to re-imagine their city’s future. The facilitator shared a statistic that stopped the room: Japanese adults spend just 13 minutes a week learning (compared with more than 100 in China). Over half do none at all. After graduation, curiosity apparently clocks off. In a culture where jobs are secure but unfulfilling, and advancement depends more on age than ability, perhaps there’s little incentive to keep learning.

It struck me because, just last month, I spent an hour on a podcast — The Company You Keep — talking about my own wiggly career path and all the people who’ve nudged, mentored, or occasionally derailed me along the way. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that curiosity is rarely efficient but always generative. I can’t imagine giving it up after graduation.

That same evening, someone at Canvas pointed out that the Digital Nomads programme I’m part of exists precisely to counter that — to bring in outsiders, new ideas, and different ways of living and working. A kind of 21st-century Dejima experiment, but with better wifi and a flawless Instagram aesthetic: drone shots of beaches, latte art, and neatly captioned transformation stories. We’re here to model a different future; one where you can work from anywhere, learn constantly, stay open.

Still, it made me wonder how easy it really is to escape deeply held expectations and culture, even when the door’s wide open. Because openness isn’t just physical; it’s mental. And those gates can be harder to spot.

Maybe that’s the quiet tragedy: when curiosity stops being rewarded, we don’t just lose new ideas —we lose the muscle that made them possible.

By Sunday I was walking through the reconstructed streets of Dejima, the man-made island where foreign traders were once confined. The exhibits are immaculate, the streets spotless, the story neatly told. Even curiosity has been restored, curated, and contained.

Everywhere I went this week, Nagasaki seemed to ask the same thing I ask myself more often than I’d like: how do you stay open in a world that rewards staying safe?

This week in photos

Colorful lanterns hanging over a dark pond, reflecting on the water's surface amidst lush greenery.

A nighttime view of Nagasaki, Japan, showcasing a cityscape illuminated with colorful lights, featuring a mix of modern buildings and traditional architecture against a mountainous backdrop.

Weeknote 2025/43

October 26, 2025November 9, 2025 / Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment

Group photo in Nagasaki, Japan, with a statue in the background and participants posing together in a relaxed outdoor setting. — *Nomads at the peace statue, Nagasaki.*

This week swung between solemnity and silliness. Running down hills like a kid one day, weeping in a peace museum the next. Japan has a way of pulling you into the present: the light shifting over the Onidake hills, the hum of the ferry engine, the precision of a plastic lettuce leaf. I’ve realised that wonder doesn’t live in grand gestures, but in paying attention. To history, to people, to the unexpected joy of learning something new every day.

On the Goto Islands, I learned about the Hidden Christians who practised their faith in secret when it was banned. Centuries of silence, survival, and small acts of defiance, told through the weathered walls of Gozaki Church. Then, an hour later, I was in a tiny distillery tasting gin and running down a volcano at sunset, laughing like a child. That’s Japan in a nutshell: reverence and play, often in the same breath.

A scenic sunset over rolling hills and a body of water, with vibrant orange and pink hues illuminating the sky.

That evening, at Ako House (the beautifully restored old home we’d been staying in) I somehow found myself running an impromptu workshop. The team needed to gather feedback from our digital nomad group for the programme organisers, and fast. So out came the flipchart paper and markers; within minutes I was scribbling objectives, framing questions, and herding participants like it was a Tuesday in a London boardroom rather than a tatami-floored home in rural Japan. It reminded me that the craft of facilitation — starting with the outcome, working backwards from the constraints, adapting to the people in the room — works anywhere. I prefer more than an hour’s notice, but it turns out I can pull it out of the bag if I have to.

A person sitting on the floor of a wooden room, working on a flipchart with sticky notes, while surrounded by cups and snacks.

A group of three individuals sitting on a tatami mat in a traditional Japanese room, engaging in a workshop while writing on a large sheet of paper and discussing ideas.

When bad weather cancelled our ferry, we took the slow boat back to Nagasaki instead — a cavernous hall where everyone simply curled up on the floor with blankets and napped. Absurd, communal, oddly peaceful. Plus as a bonus I caught another stunning sunset over the islands as we left.

A woman lays on a pillow, looking perplexed, while others are seen resting nearby wrapped in blankets on a floor in a communal space. — *Weirdest ferry ever*

Back on the mainland, I toured Nagasaki’s improbably numerous coworking spaces, then spent the evening listening to Dr Brian Burke-Gaffney trace the city’s long history as Japan’s window to the world. He spoke about how trade made peaceful coexistence possible — how exchange, not isolation, sustained the delicate balance between cultures during the Meiji period. A timely reminder, as barriers to trade seem to rise again elsewhere: Brexit, tariffs, walls, and fears.

At the Atomic Bomb Museum, that idea of coexistence shifted from something I’d read about to something I could feel and relate to.

My grandmother was born just after the First World War; my grandfather, a lifelong conscientious objector, shared her pacifism. They met at a Communist peace rally in Hungary — that strange, hopeful post-war moment when people still believed a fairer world was possible. They didn’t stay married long, but both spent decades campaigning against nuclear proliferation. I remember Grandad’s “Nuclear? No thanks” badges scattered across his coat like small, stubborn acts of hope.

Standing there in Nagasaki, I thought of them. Near the end of the exhibition, a display on the global anti-nuclear movement caught my eye. One photo showed the Aldermaston marches he’d told me about going on. Another placard read No More Hiroshimas — the same title as a writing competition I entered as a teenager. I wrote about my grandparents’ stories and won a modem. My first gateway to the internet.

It occurred to me that it was that prize which set me on the path to working in digital. A path that that’s brought me, improbably, here: three generations, three threads — a peace rally that led to my grandparents meeting, a writing competition that launched my career, and now this moment in the city that connects them both. History has a funny way of looping back on itself sometimes.

View of a skylight with a geometric glass design, allowing sunlight to illuminate the interior space.

An antique octagonal clock with faded numbers and hands, displayed in a glass case. The time is frozen at 11.02 - the moment the atomic bomb hit.

The rest of the week unfolded with lighter lessons: football chants with strangers at the Peace Stadium, and a day in Hasami making sampuru, the hyper-realistic wax food that adorns Japanese restaurant windows. My wax tempura prawn and lettuce are ridiculous and perfect, symbols of the care and craft that run through everything here.

The rhythm of the week has been all contrasts: reverence and laughter, reflection and running downhill. I’m learning (still) that wonder hides in the small stuff: a shared laugh, a wax prawn, a quiet moment in a crowded room.

This week in photos

Weeknote 2025/42

October 19, 2025November 9, 2025 / Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment

A tranquil view of a bay surrounded by lush green islands under a cloudy sky, with large, smooth rocks in the foreground. — *Goto, Japan. Photo by me.*

I’ve been in Japan for a week, but it feels like at least three already — the kind of week that’s so full it bends time a little. So, I’m abandoning my usual weeknote format and just trying to catch the highlights before they blur together completely.

I’m here for a month on a Digital Nomads programme in Nagasaki, living and working alongside a small United Nations of place-independent entrepreneurs, founders and freelancers. We’re here to explore new ways of working. Or at least that’s what the brochure said. In reality, it’s a mix of workshops, late-night chats, questionable karaoke, and the occasional existential crisis about Wi-Fi speeds.

It’s been equal parts exhilarating and exhausting: a reminder that throwing yourself into something completely new is as disorienting as it is energising.

Somewhere between shaking off the jetlagged fug and learning to navigate Nagasaki’s trams, I found myself at a welcome dinner with local founders and civic leaders. I ended up deep in conversation with a financial-services comms exec who told me that while Japan was once the global gold standard for employee engagement — with workers showing legendary commitment — it now ranks among the lowest.

That chronic low engagement, they said, reflects deep cultural, structural and managerial issues rather than any lack of worker motivation. To tackle it, the government has launched a series of work style reforms (働き方改革) since 2019 — ramped up again this year — aimed at modernising corporate culture and improving well-being.

Among those efforts are initiatives like the one I’m on, inviting nomad workers to spend time in Japan and share new perspectives on work, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Two days in, our group boarded a ferry bound for the Goto Islands — a scatter of green peaks rising out of the Japan Sea, two hours off the coast of Kyushu. It’s the kind of place that makes you lower your voice without quite knowing why: quiet fishing villages where boats creak gently in the tide, camellia flowers nodding in the wind, the air scented faintly with salt and cedar.

A serene beach scene featuring soft sand and shallow water, with a person walking along the shore under a clear blue sky.

A person sitting on the beach next to paddleboards and a kayak, with a calm sea and blue sky in the background.

Nizo Yamamoto, the artist behind Studio Ghibli’s most iconic painted backgrounds, was born here. One of his final projects was a series of a hundred landscapes of these islands — misty forests, fishing harbours, weathered temples — all rendered in his delicate, dreamlike style. Being here feels a little like stepping inside one of them; like living in the set of Princess Mononoke.

We explored an ancient castle, ate dinner in a local izakaya, then I ducked into The Pier coworking space to join calls with colleagues and clients in the UK, Spain and Bangkok. Truly putting the “remote” in remote work.

A lively dinner gathering at a wooden table in a Japanese izakaya, filled with various dishes, including fried foods and sashimi, as people engage in conversation. — *Izakaya dinner*

The next morning began with a swim off a completely deserted beach — the kind of stillness that makes you hyper-aware of your own breathing. The water was clear and just the right level of cold, the sand so fine it squeaked underfoot.

Afterwards we popped into to a tiny community library built from villagers’ three favourite books, donated. Inside, the shelves were uneven, the labels hand-written, the air carrying that faint, papery scent of places built for love rather than profit. We chatted to the owner about his plans to publish nice things — a beautiful coffee-table periodical paean to local design and craft — in English and distribute it overseas.

A wooden shelf displaying various books, featuring titles in Japanese, with a warm and inviting atmosphere.

A stack of magazines titled 'nice things.' displayed on a wooden table, featuring an image of a chair and lamp on the cover.

A welcome dinner taught me how to correctly accept a drink from someone else, then pour them one in return, in traditional Goto Islands style. A skill I soon put to use in a karaoke bar, where our group and another of Japanese salarymen took turns to murder western pop hits and anime theme tunes.

A person smiling while holding a sign that says 'Goto's Way of Drinking Yattatottu' and a glass of beer, in a restaurant setting.

A group of people having fun at a karaoke bar, with one person energetically jumping on stage while another sings into a microphone.

I’m fairly sure Bohemian Rhapsody has never been sung with quite that level of enthusiasm or linguistic uncertainty.

The next morning we swapped chopsticks for circuitry. A handful of us boarded a boat to visit a local wind turbine, before heading inland to meet a drone-delivery startup. From a small base on the largest island, a three-person team at Sora-iina fly medicines to pharmacies and hospitals scattered across the archipelago — cutting journeys that once took a day by sea to under an hour. It’s a fascinating glimpse into how automation and demographics are quietly reshaping work and logistics in real places.

A tall offshore wind turbine with a yellow and white base, standing in the sea under a cloudy sky.

A group of people on a small boat in the ocean, wearing life vests, with a wind turbine visible in the background and a cloudy sky overhead.

I even made a short video about it — my first real attempt at doing this kind of thing for social. Be kind! I’m just learning!

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While my co-founder Jonathan was presenting our recent SEFE case study at IntraTeam in Stockholm, I was visiting a local blacksmith to see traditional metalworking, tapping away at Teams in the background while avoiding stray sparks. A call later that day saw our Japan-Sweden collaboration expanding to a four-way including folks in the UK and Iceland.

An Israeli couple in the group offered to cook dinner for everyone — my first Shabbat dinner, unexpectedly hosted in a far-flung corner of Japan. They improvised with whatever they could find in the local supermarket, and somehow managed to conjure a proper feast.

There was homemade challah, baked in a rice cooker(!), soaking up stews made from recipes carried in memory rather than written down. We passed dishes, poured wine, and shared stories about where we’d come from and what had brought us here, and some of the places we’ve seen along the way. Each of us on our own version of a journey, all momentarily paused in the same place.

It struck me how food is the great leveller and connector: you don’t need a shared language or background to break bread, just a willingness to sit down together. In that tiny corner of Japan, between the sound of waves outside and the hum of conversation, it felt like we’d built a small, temporary home. The kind that only exists when people choose to show up and share.

The next few days blurred into a mix of work, wandering and wonder. Long walks through the Ghibli-esque landscapes — all misty hills, moss-covered walls and winding lanes — where it’s easy to imagine forest spirits just out of sight. Bowls of ramen at tiny counters where the steam fogs your glasses. Even more baffling visits to convenience stores that somehow manage to sell everything from umbrellas to octopus on a stick.

Each day brings a small surprise, a reminder of how far from home I am, yet how familiar human rhythms are everywhere. Eat, talk, laugh, work, repeat.

But it’s not all ’gram-worthy hotels and beaches. Working like this isn’t without its challenges. I’m struggling with timezones — trying to join calls late in the evening because I’m eight hours ahead. Working from sub-optimal setups (my MacBook + iPad Sidecar combo is no match for the optimised, three-screen standing-desk setup I have at home). And there’s the constant need to reassure clients that I am, in fact, working here and not on some kind of extended holiday.

No routine anchor either. Without a stable base, habits like workouts, meals and focus blocks fall apart easily (I haven’t worked out since that epic one in Paris, nine day ago, and I miss it).

And the environment whiplash is real: one day you’re in a serene co-working space, the next you’re hunched over a kitchen table with a wobbly chair and bad lighting, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes during stand-up.

Still, it’s worth every moment — and every insect bite — for the change of pace, the conversations with people building weird and wonderful things, and the chance to see work and life from a completely different angle.

Somewhere between the sea breeze, the stand-ups and the sake-fuelled karaoke, I’ve remembered why I love this work. It keeps the world feeling big, keeps me curious, and reminds me that the edges of the map are the places worth exploring.