And I’m honestly not sure what to make of the whole thing.

So, quick recap first: von der Leyen proposed a flat fee of some 350-450 Euros per month. The main arguments are: everybody should pay into the pool, and it’s a way to make sure freelancers don’t live in absolute poverty at old age. Criticism was harsh, including a petition against the proposal, signed by some 45K people as I’m writing this. The main arguments against the new default are that joining the pension system should be voluntary, that the amount is too high particularly for job starters and young freelancers, and that a flat fee is inherently unfair.

Now what to make of it? It’s not as easy as it sounds. I was a freelancer for quite a few years, and thought about pension plans etc etc for a long time. Here’s the dilemma: As a freelancer you’re exempt from a lot of both the obligations and the protections employers have. That’s both boon and bane. On one hand, you’re free to decide how to plan ahead, and you save some taxes. On the other hand, you enjoy a lot less protection, say if you have no clients, and you won’t get a state pension unless you setup a private plan.

And as always, that’s the core: Do you believe in the state to protect the weakest, or do you believe in the individual’s choice and responsibility?

1. I’m not defending von der Leyen’s proposal, I’m trying to form an opinion and share my experiences in case they’re useful for anyone. I do this after having been a freelancer (Freiberufler, to be correct), and being a full-time employee of my own company these days.

2. A flat fee is probably a bad idea. There’s a certain elegance in flat fees, and frankly the amount isn’t all that high if you compare it to any private pension plan, pension fund, life insurance and all the other flavors. I looked into it, and trust me, if you want to get a somewhat decent pension, it’s not going to be cheaper than that. Yet, a percentage-based fee is probably fairer, or maybe an extemption for the lowest income freelancers, or the first year of your business, or some other more flexible entry level rule. But that can be done, as it is for almost every other relevant field, like part time employment and a sliding tax level for low incomes. (Just don’t be surprised if you end up paying more once you earn a decent salary.)

3. For freelancers it’s often hard to plan ahead for the next few months. (As it is for small companies, come to think of it.) Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. Once a new expenditure is established, it’s part of the system and everyone will live with it just fine. And even though I’ve struggled with it myself quite a few times, I do believe that if your business – freelance or not – doesn’t bring in enough cash to pay for a pension than it’s not a business. We’re not talking about full time hobbies, but full time work. (If you freelance on the side it’s a different matter altogether of course, but that’s not what my post is about.) If after a year (or two, or whatever) you can’t pay for it, chances are you never will be. And pension plans work by leverage over time. If you start paying in by 35 or 40 it won’t work. It can’t work. The earlier, the better, and the later, the worse. Much worse, in fact.

4. The argument that we, as a generation, won’t get our fair share out of the system, is in my eyes highly problematic. I’ve done my fair share of ranting about collapsing pension systems. And I still rant about it. As a generation, it feels like we’re well and truly screwed at least in Germany and in regards to the pension system. The system was built for a very different demographic distribution and we’ll end up paying more and getting less. Yet, I’m not just yet willing to give up the social contract that I also profited off massively, like my free university education for five or six years. I got a lot out of the system, I feel I should put a lot back in. Let’s figure out the details along the way.

That’s it, really, those are my thoughts. I really don’t think that an obligatory system a unified system necessarily has to be a bad idea. I’m also quite sure that the current proposal won’t work out as it seems like a bit of a short-sighted implementation. But as a fellow former freelancer I can tell you from my experience that starting the pension thing is hard, and while it might be easier later, don’t count on it. Whichever system you want to join, you’d better do it today. Otherwise you’ll be debating the same issues again 40 years from now, but not have a chance to change anything.

I don’t usually think about acquiring new clients, but I do believe that it’s important to build trust and relationships and, bluntly, to simply be a good person, and the rest will take care of itself.

If there’s anything that from today’s point of view has helped me, it’s this: I try to listen to people, try to figure out what their problems are, and if I can help (note: actually help, not make them believe I can help if they hired me, not saying things like “we offer solutions for…”. Actual help.) I do it, or point them to people I think can do it. In turn, if I need help, I ask folks for tipps, and am constantly surprised how much most people are willing to help if you just ask them. Out of this kind of exchange, over time, you build trust. This might, or might not, directly or indirectly lead to a working relationship. What’s I find beautiful about it is this: It’s so vague, so unreliable, so hard to trace, that you can’t fake it just to sell some crap. Unless you mean it, it’s not going to work.

Also, it’s not really traceable. In our company we thought for a bit if we could track our client acquisition. We gave it up quite quickly. It’s not how it works for us at TW, and it’s not how it ever worked for me during my freelance years.

In the end, I guess everyone needs to figure out for themselves how to do this thing, however we might call it, that leads to a client hiring someone. Personally, I’m quite happy it doesn’t include tracking it in a spreadsheet.

Insane, exhausting, exhilarating, fantastic week full of conferences and conversations with smart and lovely people. 1. FiveElephant beans 2. A thank you note to someone who really deserves it 3. Fun hack: Schrittzähler @ Digitale Selbstvermessung 4. Kreuzberg street art 5. Ben H. trying out a particularly flawed future 6. Lovely mid-conference dinner 7. my stage at Next12 8. Lovely post-conference dinner 9. Matt P’s Panama hat 10. A’s cat

That said, let’s dig into some of the bigger questions that I’ve faced at pretty much all the events I’ve been involved with, ever.

Diversity: Too few women, always.

What can I say? It’s true! And as a curator I’m as responsible as anyone, if not more so. If I say I’m aware of it and I try to get a diverse and gender-balanced lineup, you can only take my word for it. The fact that the panels aren’t gender-balanced still holds true, no matter what my intentions were. Whenever events I’m involved in I do try to get things as diverse as I can, and I can tell you: It’s not easy. At all. It’s not like there aren’t many smart and interesting women out there who could tell a great story. There are, of course there are, and I feel happy and honored that so many fantastic, smart, engaging women agreed to speak at Next12. But we were far from 50/50, and picking a speaker line up there’s a million aspects to consider. Among them: availability, experience, name recognition, willingness to speak, internal politics, sponsoring deals and last but not least: a good chunk of pure luck. Do I know the right person? Can they make it at that time?

I won’t name any names, and I’m writing this to my best recollection without going back and double checking the exact numbers. As far as I remember, three or four speakers (and a curator among them) dropped out because of health-related issues; two or three of them happened to be women who were awesome and considerate enough to propose a replacement, in at least two instances men. Several people had conflicting engagements and had to drop out (in this case, mostly men, some of whom made it eventually, some who we replaced on short notice). The list goes on. Please note that these are just some of the reasons I remember most vividly, and that no gender arguments should be made regarding the reasons for these cancellations! Let me repeat just to be clear: I’m not indicating that more women cancel due to health related issues, and I strongly recommend not to fall for some stupid argument like this – this just happened to be the stats in this very instance, no more.

In many other cases, the people on stage are on stage because they are considered experts in their fields, and in many instances this recognition as an expert is a function of being in a senior position. In a corporate context, this often means that the person has moved up a corporate career track, which statistically means significantly more men than women. Sadly, I’d like to add, for all the wrong reasons. Corporate careers are still ridiculously male-oriented. Or men just play along with it, or whatever the reasons might be, the stats are pretty clear on this one. You can see how that doesn’t apply where I invited speakers from less established fields: design, research, UX, startups, IoT. Here, younger people often are the experts, and once you take the corporate structures out of things, you get a much more diverse mix of experts. Look at the track called Experience at Next12, and you’ll find that it’s a lot more diverse in many ways. No gender balance, but a tad more diversity.

I once read, and sadly can’t remember where, a tip for men in tech: If you’re offered a slot to speak or join a panel, ask who else is on the panel. If it’s only other guys, propose a woman to replace you. I’m kinda liking it, and want to get into the habit of doing that more.

Speaking of which, we have a few events coming up, and we’ll try even harder to get to true gender balance. In fact, checking the lineup just now, for our event on the quantified self and personal analytics today (link) it was exactly 50/50. So there’s a start.

Politics are part of the game

Any organization has some level of internal politics to work around. No point in bitching about it, just get used to it. It’s part of the game.

Budgets are never what they appear to be.

I want you to re-read that sentence slowly and repeat after me: Budgets are never what they appear to be.

I’ve attended uncountable conferences and have been involved in quite a few in different roles – lead organizer, speaker, live blogger and many more. Events always (!) look like they have more budget than they really do. All events I know are less profitable than they might seem, or at least that’s my understanding of things. I can’t remember the details, so don’t quote me on that, but I think we put together CoCities for less than 50K. If you’ve ever organized anything at scale, you know that that’s ridiculously little money. Bigger commercial conferences probably run on a different economic model, but consider that the budget pays for speakers (travel, maybe fees), location rent, insurance, food & drinks, staff, rent for tech and people to handle it, logistics of shuttling all kinds of stuff back and forth, wifi (even if it turns out not to work flawlessly), printing etc etc etc. It’s a long, long list, and it keeps growing. Events are expensive to run, even if you bootstrap them. So before I say something like “how hard can it be?”, I take a deep breath and think for a moment of the things that could have gone wrong but didn’t, and I think a moment about how hard it might actually be, and usually by that time I don’t feel like that sentence should be uttered, ever.

Language barriers are tricky

International conferences are always a bit of a challenge from a language perspective. Mixing languages is possible, but hard to do well. Excellent (!) signage is the least you can do. But really I’d opt for going all English. In fact, I believe that’s what I’ve always done so far. If in doubt, go for common ground. Most conference attendees will speak it well enough to understand what’s going on, and your pool of potential speakers is many, many times larger than otherwise. There’s different philosophies on this, so it’s a bit of a personal question. In the French-speaking part of Canada for example, things tend to be bi-lingual instead of English. That’s perfectly fine too, as long as people are used to handling that kind of thing. Make sure that every speaker, moderator, sponsor and organizer speaks enough of whichever language you choose that there’s no awkwardness. And make sure that everybody knows what to expect, then things can’t really go all that wrong.

The Fuelband is smooth, feels nicely heavy and well made. The rubbery surface is comfortable to wear, if maybe a bit too clunky, especially if you work on a computer a lot.

The display lights up only if you press a button, so usually you just walk around with a black wristband. The display is a set of LEDs and can show time, steps, calories as well as Nike’s own “currency”, the so-called “Fuel”. Below the display you see a status bar that starts with a single red dot and grows with your activity, going from yellow to green until you reach your daily goal. It’s fairly subtle and works intuitively. Having a watch on the wrist was a pleasant change as I usually don’t wear watches much.

Starting out, the Fuelband shows just a red marker: Go get a move on!

The battery lasts for a few days before you have to recharge via USB. Data upload works through USB, too, so it’s simple but not terribly elegant.

To set your goals, you enter your desired activity levels through an app on your desktop or iPhone (I use Android, so no mobile app for me). The default “normal” active day is set so low that I reached it even though only starting my test at 4pm the first day. Ramping it up to “active” days helps a bit, so you actually have to at least walk a bit during the day to meet the goals. I assume if you commute by car and work at a desk all day, it might be a challenge. If you’re somewhat active anyway it feels like you have to set the goals somewhat inflationary. Or maybe I just happened to have a particularly active week.

Over time, you can gather a number of stats, accessible through the Fuel app. Examples for the kind of stats you get, besides some graphs to indicate the overall development, would be Best Month, Best Wednesday, Average Activity etc. It’s intuitive, but doesn’t go very deep it seems.

I expect this will change if the API ever really opens up and more developers can play around with it. If you could use alternative interfaces like the Pebble for example that might become more interesting. As it stands, it feels a bit… how do I phrase it… American? I know this doesn’t quite capture it, but it’s this very Nike-ish tonality that I always personally find a bit off-turning. Then again, it’s their product and it’s a fitness product, so I guess that’s alright.

Right now it’s still in the novelty phase, and several people actually approached me at a restaurant to ask about it.

So in short: It’s a smooth, well produced gadget. Having tested it for about a week, it feels like the novelty and effect are wearing off already. I caught myself not even putting it on anymore after 4-5 days. The API might change that once it’s there, if it’s ever going to really open up.

A packed summer week in Berlin with friends visiting, the May 1 parties in my neighborhood, rebublica conference, betapitch and generally just tons of conversations. 1. Soba & veggies 2. Dragon 3. The lucky winners of Betapitch 4. Sunset over Berlin as seen from the PanAm Lounge terrace 5. Stack of Monobloc chairs at Republica 6. First of May in Kreuzberg 7. First of May in Kreuzberg 8. Sky at the Holocaust Memorial 9. Holocaust Memorial 10. The Green Door

1. Tape. 2. DMZ, one of the very few comics that I still read religiously. 3. Quite excited about the next couple of months. 4. Bird! Streetart in Kreuzberg. 5. Boo! 6. Folded a globe 7. Interview about Startups in Berlin at Deutschlandradio Wissen with Philipp and David 8. Deutschlandradio 9. Club Sandwich at Kuchen Kaiser 10. Working out in the sun.

Five years from now, looking back, most likely it is going to be painfully obvious how our work can be coined, framed and talked about.

Now, there’s a certain kind of client that it’s a dream to work with, the gold standard of client work, so to speak, for the context I’m most interested in. This type of dream gig is a top level strategic project inside a highly innovative organization:

Mostly, this is the kind of gig that requires a long-standing, trusting relationship, and often a personal connection. Yet, additionally it should be as easy as possible to find out for any potential client who fits that description who to call for a project like this, based on their background, goals and overall situation. So I always try to make it as easy as possible to understand when it makes sense to call my company. In other words, answer the question: “In my given situation, is it worth calling Third Wave? Will they be able to add enough value to make it worth my time?”

From today’s perspective, I find it a quite useful mental model to look at what we do through different lenses depending on the context. Depending on who I’m talking to and what the context is, it helps to use one lense or the other to explain what we do and how we can add value. As a potential client, this is how to figure out why and when it would make sense to call us, and when it wouldn’t.

Personally, I visualize these lenses as a six-sided die.

It’s a mental model I use for myself, and a work in progress at that. Let’s see how it will evolve over time, and how it will hold up looking back five years from now.

Six ways to look at what Third Wave does

I’ll try to capture the meaning of these lenses in some lead questions that help triangulate where we most effectively can add value. Some of these questions overlap, and depending on the organizational structures one might fit better than the other. Taken together, they help guide the initial exploration and get the right people to sit down and start the conversation.

1. Organizational

This is who we connect with inside a company.

The lead questions to ask are:

• Which department or part of the company hires us? CEO, marketing, communications, product development?
• Which budgets are we paid out of? Innovation, R&D, pilot projects, marketing?
• Which functions are we augmenting? Do we pitch in to optimize internal structures? Get the teams to leverage new technologies? Do we help develop products?

2. Service portfolio

This is the what.

Lead questions:

• What kind of services do we offer?
• What can you hire us for? Are you looking for support in product development, helping you set up a new internal unit, or an impulse workshop to open up minds for new ideas?

3. Formats

This is how we add value.

Lead questions:

• How do we work? We like to kick things off with some proper research, typically by looking closely at your competition, what’s being said about an organization, and – maybe most importantly – we believe that talking to the relevant teams inside the company surfaces a deep and valuable knowledge.
• What do typical deliverables look like? Typically we run workshops, compile and present reports for the teams, or top level executive reports. Some of this is standardized, often times we highly customize deliverables to clients’ needs.

4. Innovation curve

This is when in the process we can add most value.

The lead question here is just one:

• When do you hire us? The answer depends on your industry. If you build a product for the web, during the early ideation or concept phase would be a good time. If you provide a service of some sort, the moment you realize you want to seriously embrace social media or the web in general is the best moment – before you have made any concrete decision on how to best procede. Rule of thumb: We develop strategies, so the earlier we get on board, the more value we can add.

5. Topics

We spend a lot of time thinking about where things are headed.

If your company aims at always having a competitive edge over the competition, good questions to ask are:

• Which topics are you currently working on?
• Where do you think things are headed in our field right now?

Scribbling like this helps me sort out my thoughts, and hone my arguments. That said, feedback is always appreciated.

6. Value

Maybe the most relevant angle, this captures why you we get hired.

Lead questions:

• Why would you hire us? Is it because your people and our people share the same mindset and beliefs? Because we can serve as a connector between the US and Europe? Because we can give impulses for innovation?
• How can we add value? Do we add value through our skills (strategy development, analysis etc), through topics we know well (future of cities, quantified self, digital communications), through our network?

Spent the week in Berlin, with lots to do and some family visiting over the weekend. Here’s a few things that crossed my path. 1. Ferris wheel at Potsdam 2. Chinese House at Sanssouci 3. The things we do for family. Sigh. 4. Cigarette art? I never found out. 5. View on Bebelplatz from Hotel de Rome. 6. Testing the Fuel Band (not entirely convinced yet) 7. Ryoji Ikeda’s data.anatomy at Kraftwerk, Berlin 8. Posters for this have arrived. 9. Street art in Kreuzberg 10. Octopus & bell

After the out-and-about day yesterday, we took it slow today. Slept in, got snacks from a lovely bakery on our street, and strolled along a small canal that is densely framed on both sides by cherry trees in full bloom – in fact, they’re already peaking and slowly starting to shed leaves again. It’s a gorgeous sight, and there are many people walking around enjoying them at any given time, and taking lots of photos. Which makes me feel slightly less awkward for doing the same. Since the sun was out and it turned out to be almost an early summer day, we opted for more walking in the guise of a shopping tour (no success on that front, but plenty of sun and fresh air), interrupted by lunch at a small and quite lovely vegetarian place, Annon Cook (2F 2-25-1 Jingumae, Shibuya), and a pick-me-up at Streamer Coffee Company before slowly ambling over to Shinokitazawa again for the afternoon that lead us straight to drinks with yakitori and another veggie dinner. Early night in to finish off the relaxing day. Tomorrow the museums will be open again (most are closed on Mondays) and there’ll be a business meeting in between.

Day 13

The weather is still holding up, so it’s bright and sunny. One of M’s friends is involved in a Fab Café in Tokyo, which turned out to be just around the corner from our apartment. It’s a lovely community space and quite a nice café, too, so we stayed quite a while and had their trademark marshmallow man coffees and had some coasters etched with good ol’ Fuji-san.

Fab Café

Fab Café

Fab Café’s signature drink

Etching coasters

I’m sure Hokusai would have approved that his wood print motifs are now cut into pieces of wood directly, by means of mass customization.

A quick swingby meeting at Hario HQ allowed me to meet the good folks behind our favorite coffee equipment maker and marvel at a violin made fully from glass. I forgot to take a photo, but I’m told it fully works, and concerts have been played on it before. Then we’re back off to explore, this time Ueno Park, a lovely large park full of museums and the university of arts. Having underestimated the lure of the cherry blossoms, for which Ueno Park is famous, the place is so packed with visitors that we stay on the outskirts and take a leisurely stroll through Ueno proper instead, before giving the Mori Art Museum over at Roppongi Hills a shot. This part of expat-heavy Roppongi is a bit like a direct transplant from a cyberpunk movie – imagine the headquarters of the Umbrella Corporation or something – a big complex of high rises and underground floors of corporate HQs and shopping malls, all woven together with escalators, a couple of big video screens, and the ever present Starbucks. It’s a bit horrible and a bit fascinating at the same time, yet seems quite popular. Also, it’s the home of the Mori Art Museum, which I’m told is a fantastic museum for modern art and includes a viewing platform that looms over downtown Tokyo. Today though, we’re too late and the museum is closed, so we postpone for another day and recharge in one of the many cafés.

Another swing by Piss Alley for some tonkotsu (pork belly) ramen and gyoza (dumplings), and (at last!) a round of karaoke in Shibuya makes me feel like I’m adapting well.

Day 14

Eventually, the rain caught up. Indoor day! Akihabara, Mori Art Museum, 360 view & bar. Then, soaked from a sudden downpour and underequipped on the umbrella front, Shibuya for a dessert of crepe and cheese cake.

Night view at Tokyo from Mori Art Museum

Drinks at the bar in Mori Art Museum

Day 15

The fantastic, cute local bakery in our street, Tolo, keeps giving me presents: For every item I buy, I get a sample gift for free, of the most awesome kind – based on curry, on cheese & bacon, on anything savoury, really. So the sweetness of the cinnamon rolls is nicely balanced out. It’s a really nice gesture, and gets me to try things I wouldn’t necessarily get for breakfast.

Met with Chris, who investigates urban spaces with a focus on actual liveability, like how well can kids play here, or how can commercial and non-commercial spaces co-exist in a city that is so consumption driven? First, he took me to Omotesando Koffee, a fantastic coffee shop which was set up as a temporary space inside an old residential house. Think a tiny traditional building that you enter through a just as tiny traditional garden, only that instead of the living room you encounter a symbolic metal cube that contains the coffee shop proper, barista and all. My words don’t capture the atmosphere, which is both serene and friendly:

Across the alley, there’s an empty lot with tall grass – also a rarity, as it’s big enough so that the owner could try to make a fair bit of money by turning it into, for example, commercial parking lots, which seems quite a common practice.

Lot opposite Omotesando Koffee

We took a walk and Chris showed me what he called the Pearl of Tokyo, Aoyama Toei, a small area of old (post WWII) public housing that is being slowsly phased out. About half of the apartments are already empty and won’t be rented out again, yet the area is anything but abandoned: The residents have turned the space between the houses into beautiful little gardens, and in between the green you can see cats, birds, bumble bees – all of which are otherwise quite rare in the hectic Tokyo urban landscape.

Ironically, the public part is the only part of greenery that’s fenced in.

It’s also a truly non-commercial, residential area, and so it feels like a laid back little island inside the city, even though it’s just a few blocks away from one of the major shopping streets. I find it fascinating that this area, that was built on the cheap and I imagine not exactly a desireable place to live 20 years ago, now has this new life of a completely different sort, which the architects most likely hadn’t planned for. A quick dash back to the coffee shop to pick up Michelle and another shot, the off to a picnic for Hanami, the enjoyment of the cherry blossoms. The good folks of AQ Works & Tokyo Art Beat had invited us along, and so equipped with snacks and drinks we headed to Aoyama Cemetery, where we chatted, ate and dranks for a couple of house between cherry trees and shrines. It’s great to hang out with your tribe in a completely different context, and we felt right at home:

Also, thanks to Chris and Paul I had the chance to get a tiny bit of a better understanding of the nature of wabi-sabi, part philosophy, part design aesthetic. Instead of even trying to give a half thought out definition around embracing flaws and finity, I’ll refer to this quote: “One does not lament for the fallen flower, one loves it.” Dinner with our friend Ryo brought us back to Shinjuku, or rather to Hot Pepper, a restaurant themed around local organic food. While most of the food was quite yummy and everything was incredibly fresh, I’m still not entirely convinced of – but fascinated by – chicken breast with white strawberry sauce.

Dinner at Hot Pepper

Map of local food sources at Hot Pepper

That said, it’s fantastic to see these locally produced and absolutely fresh goods prepared with so much love, and had we not have to transport the stuff across a whole continent, I’d have stocked up on all the things they had. One more stroll around Shinjuku that ended in some arcade time, and time flew until we just barely caught the last train back to our HQ. Since it was a week day, no Tokyo Metro staffer was there to push us into the subway with white gloves, a practice I’m told is not uncommon for the last trains leaving the city on weekends.

Day 16

Our friend Tam came down from the North-East to join us for a day in Tokyo. Still tired from last night, we resorted to a desperate Starbucks Coffee before going on a nice, long stroll. Kappabashi-dori is a street full of professional restaurant equipment. In Japan, that means a fascinating mix of pots, top notch knives, arcane coffee equipment – and the (in)famous plastic food that is used to display the menu out in front of the shop instead of pure text or photo based menues in the West. No plastic food for us though, but a bag of freshly roasted coffee beans.

Looping back through the older, more traditional neighborhood of Asukasa, and we hop on a boat down the river. Fun fact: The Philippe Starck-designed Asahi Beer company HQ is built to look like a glass of beer, and next to it there’s what was supposed to look like a big golden flame on top. Yet, something went wrong, and now the flame was adapted to lie on its side, looking like some horrible, huge, golden, steaming pile of poo, which is why it’s often referred to as the “golden turd”. The boat ride ended at a gorgeous park that first was the Emperor’s, then a Shogun’s hunting grounds, before being opened to the public for good just after WWII.

Hamarikyo Garden

Hamarikyo Garden

Facing the water on one side and a busy office neighborhood on the other, this time of the day it was quite quiet. Like an island of calm in the middle of the city. On the mono rail, which took us on a loop through Tokyo Bay and right into town, where after another cup of drip coffee in another vaguely French-/Euro-themed café we met the lovely Mozilla Japan team. Did you know that Japan has an alternative Firefox logo, Foxkeh, with a more kitten-like, manga style fox. Also, I learned about an Arduino hack that gives you ambient awareness of the data passing through your browsed by type (user-requested, cookie, other, I believe were the categories) by means of either blinkenlights or drips of spirits into a cocktails glass. At dinner, Tetsuya blew our minds, when it turned out he had asked the restaurant to bring us not just any random dessert platter, but instead on with well-wishes for our engagement and a big, chocolate-and-strawberry drawn Mozilla on it. Check this out!

Mozilla Japan HQ

Mozilla dinner

Another night in Japan, another cultural notion: ichi-go ichi-e, a popular Japanese idiom. It is often translated as “one opportunity, one encounter” or “treasure evey meeting, for it will never recur”. Thanks, Tam, for the explanation! It still is somewhat mindblowing how deeply engrained in Japanese culture the ideal of hospitality is, and how much meaning is conveyed in this one expression – so much so that it even transcends the language barrier that I have been hidden behind all this trip. If I can manage to adapt even a shadow of these principles I’ve learned about on this trip, I’d be a better person for it.

When I mentioned this to a friend, he pointed out the closest German equivalent to this: So jung kommen wir nicht mehr zusammen!, roughly translated as we’ll never meet again this young, maybe doesn’t go as deep, as it’s mostly used to enjoy an evening with friends and stay out a little longer.

And on this note, Michelle and I headed home, first to the apartment to pack and catch a few hours of sleep before catching an early flight in the morning.

In fact, I’m writing this on the plane, to be posted when I’m back in Berlin. I’d like to once more thank all the people who made this trip so special for me. First and foremost Michelle, of course, and also Tam, Ryo, Ryohei, Tetsuya, the good folks at the Fab Café and all our hosts. And last but not least the lovely people I had a chance to meet along the way, and our friends who sent us all the lovely notes I’ve mostly not yet gotten to respond to – you rock.

Rokusuke + Hachi

That said, I don’t want to end on a melodramatic note, so I recommend you plan a trip to see the country for yourself, and if you want to get into the mood for it and don’t mind its focus on organized crime, Jake Adelstein‘s book Tokyo Vice is at the same time a primer on Japan, its media and crime scene, written with an international perspective and it’s quite frankly hilarious. Go get it over at Amazon!