My Japanese is better… 🇯🇵

In April I was in Japan — my first trip there in 12 years. And as I drove around in a rented Toyota Prius, meeting people, admiring their culture and heritage, one Placebo lyric from “Pure Morning” song kept looping in my head: “My Japanese is better…”

Note: this is a transcript of the email Newsletter I sent to my 1500+ subscribers a while back. If you want to be one of them, sign up for my free Newsletter. You can unsubscribe anytime! or if you use LinkedIn, you can subscribe there, too!

Because so many things there are simply… better. Here’s the nutshell — the full post has all 19 observations, photos, and the song at the end.

🌸 Timing is everything. Visit at the end of March and cherry blossoms make every photo look better. Every memory feels better. Flights and hotels might cost more but it’s worth it. So worth it.

🛒 The convenience store is your best friend. Family Mart, 7-Eleven, Lawson — fresh food, great coffee, ATM, clean toilet, 24/7. Book accommodation next to one and you’re set. (Fun fact: 7-Eleven is now Japanese-owned.)

🚽 Even the public toilets are glorious. Free public restrooms with built-in bidets that leave you feeling like it’s Christmas morning. I liked them so much I installed two at home.

📦 Space and order are a religion. Tiny boxy cars, fuel pumps that drop from the ceiling, trays for your coins (so you don’t pay like a Neanderthal), boxes for your backpack (so you don’t put it on the floor like an animal). Marie Kondo didn’t invent anything — she just wrote down what Japanese already do.

🪪 The tech that actually helps a traveler: add a Suica transit card straight into Apple Wallet, top it up with Apple Pay, register on Visit Japan Web before you fly for painless tax-free shopping, and grab an eSIM (25GB for ~$25). One warning: don’t screenshot your QR tickets — they must load live, and a bus driver will shout “no screenshot!” at you.

🧭 One productivity tip from the road: Apple Maps was the only navigation app that consistently showed me directions in English. Waze was useless, Google Maps was random. If you’re driving in Japan as a foreigner — default to Apple Maps and save yourself a few wrong highway turns.

❤️ And the real reason I went: to reunite with my friend Zono-san after 12 years. Some friendships — like some habits — are forever.

👉 Read the full post (with photos + the Placebo song): at michael.team/japanese

Their Japanese is definitely better 🤪

Yours productively,

マイケル (Ma-I-Ke-Ru = Michael)

P.S. Work isn’t a place you go to — it’s a thing you do. Even from a tiny rental Prius between Kyoto and Osaka. If you want to keep your work and life organized as simply as the Japanese keep their rooms, give Nozbe a try.