I thought I could keep my life’s momentum up during this trip. I was writing lyrics and practicong guitar and just got two new students.
I wanted to try being a digital nomad for two months. Teach my students 3 hours a day and practice music every day as I did at home, plus explore the city.
It didn’t work like that at all.
It was way too much
Travelling alone is not the same as travelling with a partner. Their sleep time effects your sleep time. You have to adjust eating time and travel time to another persons speed. Things take longer. Plans go slower.
There were also two friends we wanted to meet and catch up with. And while I thought we’d meet once, they ended up having more time and more plans to take us along for. Plus another friend was in town so it became a group.
Of course I’m not complaining, but I will have to rethink how I approach trying to balance travel with work in the future.
Nothing went according to plan in the beginning. Our original plan was to go to two spots many peiple recommended and gather information about where we might be able to hold events in the future.
The first spot turned out to be so vastly different from our expectations and not our style at all. The second was closed, not once but the first second and fourth time we went there and it was not easy starting a conversation with people there. People don’t open up easily in Japan.
Because it’s a tourist town, many shops hours are elas reliable in the off season. And shops were where we planned to connect. We wanted to find a shop we’d be able to work with. Not so easy.
I realized we will need more connections somewhere and work together with local friends before we organize such events. We will need them with us, otherwise we are just throwing darts blindfolded, hoping to hit a bullseye.
It wasn’t fruitless. We definetly learned a lot. We learned Osaka is a lot easier to break into than Tokyo but we hardly had any time there. I’m on my way right now for my last day in Osaka.
As close as Kyoto and Osaka are, to treat them as one destination was foolish, because my goal isn’t sightseeing, it’s building a relationship and not only are the cities a one hour trip but they have very different culture and ecosystems.
Working ehile travelling was a disaster, due to everything happening at night, same time as my classes. Even though it was a full week, it was still only one week. It wasn’t enough time to be able to check out everything and still work as usual.
To spend a month or three in the countryside or just enjoy the beach while living the life of a digital nomad would be one thing. To be in a busy city (or 3) with tons of leads, tons of places you want to check out and people you want to meet for just a week is different.
I do think I have a future here though. I’d love to spend 2-3 months a year in Kansai! I think this is the ideal second base, not only cause the atmosphere and the people, but also because you reach Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, Nara and Shiga all in the same trip.
I wasn’t able to build a relationship with each of those cities in one week, but once I build a relationship with each of thrm, it’d be great for us to come and organize events in each of them.
I could easily book 5-10 shows during the course of a few weeks and use a single location as a base while going to perform in each of these places and my girlfriend could sell hats too.
It would be ideal for us to have a place we could stay for a month there. Next time I think we will stay longer and focus on one city more than the others.
I’m sad we couldn’t stay longer this time, but we definetly gained a lot of information from the trip and we got to see some of our favorite people for the first time in a two years!
Dystopian Dreams.
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