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Work is one half. This is the other.
I first went to Tokyo in 2001. I was seventeen, travelling with my parents and sister. I spent most of that trip in Akihabara, completely overwhelmed by arcades stacked five floors high and electronics stores selling things I didn't even know existed.
I came back several times between 2007 and 2009 as a games journalist covering Tokyo Game Show, then again in 2010 for a telecoms project. By 2014 I was spending extended periods there, working remotely for UK clients for weeks at a time. That's when it stopped being somewhere I visited and started being somewhere I lived, even temporarily.
These days you'll usually find me staying in Roppongi. It's my base in the city, the area I know best. But Omotesando is my favourite part of Tokyo. Calm, design-led, beautifully proportioned, and somehow never trying too hard. If Akihabara was the Tokyo that first pulled me in, Omotesando is the Tokyo that keeps me there.
My interest has shifted over the years. Less about videogames now, more about the culture, the food, the music, and the way the city is designed. Roppongi Hills fascinates me. The scale of it. A mixed indoor and outdoor complex with absolutely everything, and it feels alive. Not constrained to a mall, not purely outdoors. Something in between that just works.
One of my best trips in Japan was to Naoshima and the surrounding islands in the Seto Inland Sea. Art installations that sit inside the landscape in a way that changes how you see both. I'd put it alongside Omotesando as one of the most memorable things I've experienced in the country.
I'm still in Tokyo often. The city that felt electric at seventeen now feels like somewhere I go to think clearly and slow down. London is home, but Tokyo shaped how I see the world.
I run. Not competitively, just regularly. It's how I clear my head and how I get to know a city when I'm somewhere new.
I love rooftop bars. Finding one in a new city, ordering a drink, and just watching the world below as the sun goes down. Whether alone or with company, it's one of my favourite ways to arrive somewhere.
James Turrell is one of my favourite artists. I first encountered his work on Naoshima, where he manipulates light and space in ways that change how you experience a room. That fascination has followed me since. I had a similar feeling visiting the Guggenheim in Bilbao and experiencing Richard Serra's The Matter of Time. Massive steel sculptures that distort sound and your sense of scale as you walk through them. I'm drawn to work that changes how a space feels, not just how it looks.
I gravitate towards places where someone has thought about how things come together. Not whole cities, because cities grow, but pockets within them. Roppongi Hills in Tokyo. Battersea Power Station in London. Places where architecture, public space, and daily life feel considered rather than accidental.
I like music festivals and small venues with decent sound. It's not part of my daily routine and my Spotify Wrapped would be embarrassing, but put me somewhere with good live music and I'll completely switch off from everything else.