
I lived in a Tokyo coworking space - prostoalex
https://www.curbed.com/2018/9/28/17910536/tokyo-coworking-midori-so
======
dsfyu404ed
>Many of us leave our 9-to-5s for freelancing with the expectation that it
will give us back work-life balance

I think "many of us" don't know any small business owners.

>it didn’t take long before I gave up on professionalism and slipped into
oversharing the messier parts of life that I usually don’t put on display for
coworkers—being hungover, braless, binge-watching Terrace House.

This sort of "oversharing" is normal in pretty much any blue collar industry
that provides housing for workers.

~~~
xaranke
So random to bump into a fellow Terrace House fan on HN.

~~~
dmix
It's being promoted all over Netflix... not quite rare.

------
civilian
I found one link with some pictures-- it really doesn't show the sleeping area
though

[http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2012/09/06/midoriso-
collaborativ...](http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2012/09/06/midoriso-
collaborative-workspace-tokyo/)

~~~
jacquesm
That looks totally different from what my mental image generator conjured up
as I read the story. I was imagining a we-work with a dividing wall behind
which people could nap.

~~~
darren_
There's at least three locations - the Aobadai one is the one pictured in that
spoon-tamago link, it's pretty ramshackle and basically converted apartment
space, but the other two look a bit more standard working-space.

I'm pretty sure from the details in the story that she was at the Nagatacho
GRID one.

------
PhasmaFelis
> _After this three-week experiment, I think that work-life balance—a balance
> that might not even exist in traditional workplaces anymore—might look more
> like leaving our work, physically or metaphorically, at our desks when we go
> home._

This is so important to me. Working from home sounds luxurious, but when I
tried it it felt more like living at work. You need to be able to draw a hard
line between the times and spaces where you work, and the ones where your time
is your own.

~~~
sixstringtheory
Before I went fully remote, I would always leave my laptop at work when I went
home for the day (except for on call rotation). It always surprised my
coworkers, almost all of whom took their machines home nearly daily. I won’t
judge people for that, but can’t help but feel like an outsider with that kind
of social pressure.

~~~
_red
I don't really have an opinion on whether or not you should take your laptop
home, but I just wanted to point out this imaginary line between "work" and
"home life" is a total modern construct.

Tell your distant great grandfather, you know the small farmer in rural europe
in the 1700s, that the cows just escaped the pen and see if he says "But its
saturday evening, I'm off the clock".

~~~
jeromegv
The farmer typically owns their business, which is different. As for the old
farmers in Europe that were paying "rent" to a landlord to use their land,
this was almost considered slavery according to modern standard.

As for the farm worker that is hired, you can be sure they don't bring the
cows home with them.

~~~
Aeolun
I think you should hire more _passionate_ farm workers.

------
innocentoldguy
One part of the article I'd like to point out is that people fall asleep at
their desks in Japan's open-offices all the time and nobody says anything or
cares. If you did that in one of America's new hipster code corrals, you'd
most likely be fired.

Personally, I cannot handle Japan's stringent work culture on an emotional
level. To paraphrase George Goebbels, I feel that Japan is a tuxedo and I'm a
brown pair of shoes. However, I do respect the fact that in small ways, like
_inemuri_ (sleeping during work), Japan treats their employees like humans,
rather than resources. They may suck in other areas, and do, but in this
regard I think they have the right attitude.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _in small ways, like inemuri (sleeping during work), Japan treats their
> employees like humans, rather than resources_

Preferring that your employees be exhausted and asleep at work, rather than
having a work-life balance, is treating your employees like humans?

~~~
Aeolun
As opposed to working them to death _and_ requiring that they are able to stay
awake all the time? Yes.

At least they realize the employees are still human.

~~~
pavel_lishin
That's a false dichotomy

------
mavdi
I personally enjoy what the article described work and life being mixed
together. I do what's expected of me in a lot fewer hours than 8 and get to
enjoy my day instead of being stuck to a desk pretending to do work.

------
Markoff
used to do this in open space office in Beijing, not much reason to return to
my rented room after dinner and drinks with colleagues, chatting with PM
staying late until 22-23 and watching movies/tv shows on decent internet at my
work computer, so why even bother going to sleep back home if i have sofa here

extremely work lunch break with drinking and not much work after lunch, not
that bad for someone young and single, in other offices they even encouraged
people to sleep on mats under their desks, at least they can work longer hours
and start earlier than hours

though after buying computer and renting better room with better internet i
stopped doing it, can't say it would change much about my work/life balance

------
curiousgal
No pictures.

~~~
wodenokoto
You get the idea at [http://midori.so](http://midori.so), but of course you
miss out on how the "activating the brand" actually looked.

~~~
EB66
Holy moly! My browser has been loading that page for the past 2 minutes. Over
100 separate HTTP requests, nearly 15MB of data downloaded thus far and
several dozen entries logged to the console.

~~~
whamlastxmas
Doesn't even load at all without first enabling JS hosted by a third party.
And even now it loaded with a lot of broken images and styling. Can't be
bothered to look what's causing it. The modern web sucks sometimes.

------
trhway
I guess you can't do it in Bay Area and US in general - zoning I think
preclude living in the office.

~~~
lev99
I've meet people living in their office for a period of weeks/months. It might
technically be against zoning laws, but it happens frequently.

------
cockofthewalk
They let you actually live here? What's the equivalent USD rate?

~~~
TylerE
If I'm readying the page right (Not sure how much I trust Google Translate
here) you're looking at roughly a $100 initiation fee and then ~$530/month.

~~~
lev99
Sounds great, can we get nap pods in US based coworking spaces?

