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Homes & Offices

Today's office is an office.

Situated on the 17th floor of a modern building located in a fairly non-descript part of the city. The view of Mt Fuji lies straight ahead but is usually shrouded in clouds even if you can see it through the smog, to the left in the far distance Yokohama, far left the Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo bay, and on the other side of the building a view towards the shopping meccas of Roppongi Hills, Shibuya and, in the near distance Shinjuku.

When I'm in town the places and spaces with emotional meaning start about 10 minutes bike ride from the research lab. So many strangers that are sufficiently familiar to not be strangers, but sufficiently unfamilar to be not friends or aquaintances. The anonymity of large cities.

Our research lab used to be located in Akasaka, an area known for its office complexes, being close to the Japanese parliament and packing a staggering amount of small bar and restaurants into an area about 500 m square and 6 stories high. If you happened to roll into work around 6 or 7am you would see very drunk salary men staggering out of the many drinking, singing and schmoozing bars looking for somewhere to freshen up, grab a bowl of stand-up ramen before heading to another day at the office. On a few occasions at that time of the day yakusa, or at least wanna-be-yakusa trying to walk four abreast on a narrow street, tattoos showing through open shirts under white vests, dodgy suit jackets slung over shoulders and on the arm of the wanna-be-boss, what most of you would probably describe as a moll. Yes I know - stereotypes, stereotypes based on experiences. Its hard to have serious attitude when you're very seriously wasted. I recall once being warned off trying to interview a yakusa gentleman for one of our user studies. (Sometimes during ad-hoc research studies team members like to interview the hardest looking person we can find - thus far its works out fine - you just need to pick the right starting conversation topic).

One early summer's morning a salary man in a suit was lying fast asleep in a semi-fetal position on the pavement, his head snuggled up to his briefcase, shoes off his feet and placed perpendicular to the curb. I like living in a city where he perceives that sleeping on a curb is a safe enough thing to do. I like that the reality is close to the perception.

One more week at home before the next study begins.

Writing from Tokyo | January 19, 2006 | Permalink