A Day in The Life of a Minimalist in Japan

I normally wake up between 5.30am and 6.30am during weekends. This is how I start my day. Not functioning at all. Nah, I'm just joking. I feel like the word minimalism goes really well with Japan somehow. I think it's probably only me who thinks that way, but this video is going to be about a day in the life of a minimalist in Japan, and I'll show you what my day looks like. I've watched some YouTube videos about a day in the life of a minimalist, and I was like, these guys are so productive from the beginning of their morning, like doing cleaning, workout, yoga, etc. On the other hand, I don't do anything. Oh, but I love drinking coffee, so the first thing that I do is to brush my teeth and start making my first coffee of the day. I also make my breakfast, which is always a toast. Maybe I should drink coffee first, then brush my teeth so that my teeth won't stain if I think about it, but well, I've never thought of doing it the other way around. I used to drink coffee twice almost every single day, but after moving back to Japan from New Zealand, even my coffee intake has decreased, and I only drink coffee once or twice on Saturdays and Sundays. I'm telling you, Japan has some sort of a spiritual aspect that makes you feel like wanting these things. Oh wait, we sell more than 300 flavors of KitKat in Japan, so never mind about wanting these things here. After having my breakfast, I take a shower to freshen up. I pretty much did and can't function properly until I finish having a shower. I'm sure a lot of you can relate to that. Some of you guys might be wondering why I decided to become a minimalist in the first place. Well, let's be honest, I used to be completely different. I used to want to purchase a lot of things because I thought having nice and expensive tangible things would make my life better and happier. Yes, that's true to a point, but we all know that having more than enough becomes unnecessary and wasteful. It's like when you eat food. When you're hungry, you eat and you get more and more satisfied, but once you start to get full and if you keep eating, it doesn't make you feel any better. It actually has the opposite effect. When you eat too much, well, obviously it makes you feel like throwing up and sick. The person who changed my perspective and introduced me to this concept of minimalism was my partner, Nadia. When she introduced me to an idea of having these things in life, I felt really uncomfortable at first to be honest, but this is just a secret between us, so don't ever tell her that. I even thought that she was trying to destroy my dream of pursuing success that society has defined, although I never considered why I was trying to chase that dream in the first place. After having several tough conversations with her, I was finally able to ask myself a question, which was why am I thinking that success is only measured by how many things that I own. Then I slowly started owning these things. I really appreciate Nadia for being so patient with me because I know that any other women would have left me if they had known that I'm such a stubborn person. After having a shower, I normally call my family or friends and talk about what's been happening in our lives. Let me give you my honest opinion here. You look like Eminem. Or like the guy from Prison Break. Then I go to the gym for a quick workout. For weekdays, I always wake up at 5am and go to the gym and work out before work. It's not because I'm trying to become this amazing person that gets things done early in the morning, but because I love working out and I don't think I have the energy to go to the gym after work. So the only time that is left for me is before work and hence I go to the gym early in the morning no matter what. For weekends, I only go to the gym and do a light workout if I feel like it. Well, I guess today is one of those days. After coming back from the gym, I make my lunch but I don't spend much time because I'm not that passionate about cooking. I really love eating though. Did I normally work on my YouTube videos? It may be to come up with new content ideas, write scripts, film or editing videos. One of my current goals is to become more professional at creating YouTube videos. In my opinion, if you want to become a professional at something, you need to show up and do the work every day no matter what. In general, although many people do not like their jobs, they still become such professionals with a tremendous amount of knowledge in their fields because they show up at work every single day except for weekends for many people. So I thought to myself, what if we are doing something that we love or are passionate about? I believe that the result will be extraordinary and many of us will feel excited waking up every morning to do what we actually care about. For me, I love creating videos and share my perspectives and opinions about things on YouTube. To become a bit more professional, I have created more time to think about YouTube since last October and it's been working for me really well. I normally write scripts for YouTube for weekdays and film during weekends. I edit videos whenever I can and I feel like I'm becoming better at this whole YouTube thing than before. After spending some time on YouTube, I spend a bit of time cleaning. I've never liked cleaning. In Japan, it's common for students to clean their classrooms and obviously I did that too since I started going to elementary school. I remember I would always seek ways to get out of it because I hated it so much. The whole point of this story is just to let you know that I was never a fan of cleaning. But since I don't have a lot of things in my apartment, it is so easy when it comes to cleaning this place. This is what I love about being a minimalist. This area is definitely the messiest so I'm gonna get rid of most of these card boxes today. But as you can see, it's not like I've got nothing in this apartment, right? But I just wanted to let you know that I have things and I'm not trying to be an extreme minimalist or anything like that. After I finish cleaning my apartment, I pick up my Kindle and start reading. The more I read, the more I acquire. The more certain I am that I know nothing. One of the reasons why I love reading books so much is because reading books makes me feel like I know nothing like this quote. And this feeling makes me feel humble and it encourages me to keep discovering new things through reading books. When we become adults and spend years and years building our professional careers, it's so easy for us to feel like we know a lot about what we do and we might get arrogant along the way due to our high confidence. But I believe that all of us need to be aware that you're great at one thing doesn't mean you're amazing at other things. In fact, we tend to be good at only a few things and really terrible at the majority of things. So by reading books and knowing how little I know about things or finding out about things that I'm not good at, it reminds me that I need to constantly learn about new things and improve myself as a human being. Minimalism is not about having nothing in your house or apartment but for me, it's about being conscious about what you have in your life and living a simple lifestyle. At the end of the day, you have to do what makes you feel happy not because everyone else is doing it but because you really want to do it for yourself. I'm hoping to become a better minimalist in the future and I'm really excited to find out new perspectives by living this simple lifestyle. That's the end of the video today. I hope you guys enjoyed this topic. If you like this video, please give this video a thumbs up because when you hit the like button, the YouTube algorithm helps my channel grow and reach people that are interested in the topics that I discuss on my channel. If you haven't subscribed to my channel, please consider subscribing then I'll strive making videos that are worth your time. If you have any questions or comments, please let me know in the comment section box below. And if I find any interesting questions, then I'll make a video answering your questions or might make a video based on your questions. I hope you have a good rest of your day and I'll see you guys later. Bye.