
My experience at a coworking space in Osaka, Japan - whosbacon
http://www.whosbacon.com/welcome-to-osaka-n
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patio11
My favorite part about the coworking movement in Japan -- and I don't get much
exposure to it since it hasn't arrived in force in Ogaki yet -- is that it
provides a community and social reinforcement which says "Just because you're
not a salaryman doesn't mean you're a homeless vagabond!" to participants.

Japanese young folks, in particular, can really use that message. It is not a
particularly popular message in Japan, which is largely organized for the
benefit of salarymen and supports a few variants like "stay-at-home mothers"
and "retired people" but institutionally is almost entirely unaware that there
are exotic options like "freelancing."

I generally work out of cafes in Ogaki when not working from my kitchen table,
and have been told _three times_ by well-meaning cafe owners "Don't worry
kiddo! If you hang in there I'm sure one of these days you'll find a job! Just
keep sending those emails!"

~~~
whosbacon
I'm impressed by how many people are working on the side. It's not unusual to
see 5, 10 people coming in around 6, 7 pm to work on their ventures or open
sourced projects. I never got to ask, but I assume they have other day jobs or
duties to fulfill.

~~~
golergka
Well, doesn't the majority of us have some kind of side-projects? If I had a
good coworking space nearby, I'd head there after work too, instead of trying
to anything at home.

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yarri
Osaka, hisashiburi desu!

Thanks for sharing. I really couldn't tell if this was in Osaka until I saw
the pictures of takoyaki being shared. Yup. Only in Osaka!

My favorite co-working space in Japan is Super-Deluxe [1] coworking in the
daytime, bar / event space at night. Wish there were more funky spaces like
that in the world!

[1] [https://www.super-deluxe.com/2014/04/](https://www.super-
deluxe.com/2014/04/)

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greggman
I had a little experience last Nov/Dec coding at/from 2 coworking spaces in
Tokyo

One, co-ba ([http://tsukuruba.com/co-ba/](http://tsukuruba.com/co-ba/)) I
picked mostly because it was closest to where I was staying. They have 2
floors, one of which is open 24 hours. When you sign up full time they give
you an RFID card that lets you into the 24hr floor anytime.

On the non-24hr floor they often organize events that start at 7pm. They also
organize many social outings which I find a huge plus.

Also, as a programmer they invited me to be part of the "programming section".
I'm not sure what all their activities are but one I enjoyed more than I
thought I would. That was, every Friday at 4:30pm, if you wanted to you could
participate in a coding exercise.

Someone would propose a very simple programming problem like "write code to
draw a multiplication table", something that could be done in a few minutes.
Their goal was 30 mins or less. We'd then go over everyone's solutions. I got
exposure to languages I hadn't had experience with. I got exposure to
solutions that hadn't occurred to me. They'd even ask style questions like
"why you name your variables like that" which brought up interesting
discussion as well.

Now that has me wondering if USA based co-working spaces are similar.

I also helped at some friends who worked from one of the [http://co-
lab.jp/](http://co-lab.jp/)

Both of them had rented permanent desks. I just sat at an open table when
helping them out. I don't really know what that place was like other than it
exists. It was much bigger than co-ba.

Not a co-working space but there's also the Pico Pico Cafe in Kichijoji
([http://www.picopicocafe.com/](http://www.picopicocafe.com/)). It's run by
the guy making Voxatron
([http://www.lexaloffle.com/voxatron.php](http://www.lexaloffle.com/voxatron.php)).
It's effectively his office. He opens it 3 days a week as a cafe and works on
his projects those days as well.

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new299
Anyone know if they hold any English/Dual Language events? I'm working for a
Biotech startup in Osaka (www.quantumbiosystems.com) and am interested in
getting to know the local startup community.

Actually, we're kind of interested in starting a hacker space in Osaka too as
a bunch of people we've hired are from the Hacker/Maker/Open hardware
community (Bunnie's novena is our embedded compute). If anyone knows of anyone
else who might be interested in working on that please let me know (address is
profile).

~~~
whosbacon
There's a HN Kansai that's pretty tech and startup oriented. They meet once a
month, rotating between Kobe, Kyoto, Osaka. Most of their events are in
English and attendees cover both Natives and Expats. Worth exploring.
[http://hnkansai.org/](http://hnkansai.org/)

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usaphp
Looking at the photos, I started to think, is there any young developers who
use PCs instead of Mac's, any photo of a coworking space I saw lately shows
that everybody is using Mac.

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PeterWhittaker
Macs just work. I was an Ubuntu user for over 10 years, first on an older
Thinkpad (rock solid but eventually slow), later on a decent HP (with a little
hardware problem).

I bought Airs for my wife and daughter. I would help them with something, then
return to my machine, and feel a little more frustrated each time.

Airs have better hardware, better software, a better user experience, and are
rock solid (if you don't hit them too hard). They don't get in your way, they
just do their thing.

Macs are no-fuss machines that allow you to do your work without requiring you
to babysit the machine. I'm no fanboi, I just recognize quality when I use it.

~~~
w1ntermute
> I was an Ubuntu user for over 10 years

That's impossible. The first Ubuntu release was on October 20th, 2004 - less
than 10 years ago.

~~~
PeterWhittaker
You are correct: I installed Ubuntu on my first laptop, which I bought in 2001
- I forgot that it ran XP for a time, until I finally got pissed at how I
could not access my data the way I wanted to. (Thanks for forcing me to dredge
back up those memories, thank you very much.)

I cannot remember if I started with Breezy or Dapper, but it was one or the
other.

So a long time then: From B or D to September 2013, when my Air arrived.

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hosh
Thinking about Japanese culture ... I would think coworking spaces are
spectacularly more successful than in America. Even misfits in Japan feels a
strong need to bond with their affinity groups, whereas misfits in America can
take it as a point of pride.

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Danieru
This sounds pretty awesome, does anyone know of a co-working place similar in
Tokyo?

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NIL8
"My weapon of choice is Python." Cool way to put it.

~~~
NIL8
Don't know why my benign comment deserved a down vote. Just thought I'd say
something positive.

