Experience from a Digital Nomad Family, part 2: Our Summer in Tokyo, the preparations

Digital nomad, our concept

As I explained in the previous article (“Starting as a Remote Worker, and how we failed“) , my husband and I have been talking about spending long periods in other countries since we met. As vacations don’t stretch, we would have to work remotely. After the two failed attempts described in the article, it was time to try again for longer and now with our 5 year old son.

Purpose and destination

My goal in being a digital nomad is simple, to travel and experience other places and cultures in a closer and longer way. My husband’s, in addition to agreeing with mine, has to make sense at a professional level. Now, this drastically reduces the options for destinations. When we started to talk seriously about it, the destination that came up at the top of the list for being perfect at all levels, was Japan, Tokyo to be more precise. In November 2018, we only had the idea of ​​going in the summer of 2019. The exact dates would be decided later.

Why Tokyo?

It’s not really a common destination for a digital nomad, it’s not a cheap country, nor a heavenly place with coconut palm beaches. Tokyo is multiple times (I have no idea how many) more expensive than Sofia and we didn’t go to any beach or go into the sea. However, it made sense for Adrien as he would like to release the games he produces in the Japanese market. Also, we would both like to live there temporarily. As he went to work, the company helped with some of the expenses, which was fantastic.

Planning as a family: what will each one do?

He would speak to the company to define the travel strategy and start activating contacts to meet in person. At that time, however, they were already in contact with a Japanese platform where a game would be released in a few months.

I was leading the design team at another online game company at the time, and my idea was really to take a vacation, possibly even take a leave of absence. In fact, I didn’t really think I was a digital nomad. I would prepare the team well, follow projects from afar, and be available when needed. I really wanted to explore the city to the fullest, maybe participate in a workshop and get to know a little more about Japanese design up close. It didn’t turn out quite like that, but I’ll tell you later.

As for the child, none of us could spend all our time with him, so he would have to have his own show. So I started looking for summer camps. Spending every day visiting a city like Tokyo wouldn’t be fun for any of us.

When to go and for how long?

Our son was going to change schools, to enter pre-school at the beginning of September. We would also like him not to miss classes at the kindergarten that would be important to start the new year more confident. Later, when I started researching summer camps in Tokyo, it also became evident that there were more options in the summer, during the local school holidays.

As for the exact dates, they were conditioned by constraints before and after. School would start on September 5th in Sofia, and on the last weekend of July Adrien would participate in a LARP in Belgium. A live roleplaying game where he has been playing for over 10 years and he didn’t want to miss.

Conclusion: we are going to Tokyo in August. Even though it is one of the least recommended times of the year due to the unbearable heat. I confirm, it was really hot, even with air conditioning on everywhere.

Looking for a place to rent and a holiday camp. Where to start?

I decided to start with the summer camp, and then look for a flat in the same area. Feeling lost in the google world, I turned to friends with kids who had lived there and to facebook groups for recommendations. Based on what I was told and what I found on Google and according to the possible dates, I ended up choosing a school in the Minato-ku area. Super central and good for families.

Being super central and good, of course also means super expensive! The search for a flat was painful. We weren’t finding anything even remotely decent without being mega exorbitant. I looked on Airbnb, on Booking, on Facebook, on blogs, on real estate… nothing. We finally found accommodation (on Airbnb), only, at an exorbitant price. It was a very typical small house, with one room per floor and tatami mats in the rooms, a 15-minute walk from the school. Perfect, we thought…

Flights, visa, roaming, transport. Oh, and babysitting?

All that remained was to book flights and check the entry visa system. Both Portuguese and French can stay in Japan for up to 90 days without a prior visa. We also checked that our passports were still valid for more than 6 months, and one of them, our son’s, had to be renewed before the trip. The booking of the trips went very well, we got good prices and good schedules with Qatar airways. On the way out, we had a 6-hour stopover in Doha and it would be perfect for leaving the airport and going to dinner with friends.

I always look for, before traveling, the best way to get from the airport to the accommodation. In the case of Tokyo, taxi would be very expensive, so after some research I decided on the JR line from the airport to Shimbashi station, without changes. Then we would take a taxi to the house.

Roaming, always important to check. My Bulgarian operator has prepaid data packages, for use outside the EU, where 1GB is a fraction of the regular price. I added one to my plan. Another alternative, in Japan, would be to rent a “Pocket-WiFi”, a small portable device to which we connect our devices to WiFi, anywhere. I still thought about buying it right at the airport upon arrival, but as we were going to arrive late, after a long trip with a child, and as I already had the data package, I left it for later. And that’s just as well, because the second apartment we stayed in had portable WiFi to use at home or on the street, without paying extra for it.

I also started to think that it would be good to find a babysitter in case we needed it. Through recommendations in another facebook group I found carefinder.jp and it couldn’t have gone better. The site worked perfectly (the best I know of its kind), with several profiles of people that would be good options. I did some video call interviews before going and I ended up choosing a French girl who was studying/working and didn’t live far from where we were going to stay (important for returning by taxi at night, if there is no transport anymore). She was fantastic and very helpful, way more than initially planned.

And the Japanese? I have to learn!

The Japanese are not known for fluency in other languages. I thought it was good to start learning Japanese right away with Duolingo, which I recommend. Also started looking for a private Japanese teacher in Sofia. I found it a little late, but I still had 1 and a half month of classes together with other interested friends. Although I thought at first that it wasn’t very difficult, even with three alphabets and not separating the words with spaces ( :O ), close to the date of the trip I discovered that the way of saying the numbers in Japanese varies depending on the object to which it refers!

At that time I got rather unmotivated and I thought I wouldn’t be able to learn a minimum to communicate. As it turned out, when I got there, everything I learned evaporated from my memory. I used maybe only half a dozen words during the whole month. But I didn’t feel the need to say much to understand or be understood. Even though they speak little English and I don’t speak Japanese, I found the Japanese to be very helpful, which helped to make me feel welcomed and understood, at least as a tourist.

This was the start to our amazing experience in Tokyo, if you want to know more, have a look at the second part of my story.