Matthew Hussey: 

Japan is expensive. It’s far. It’s difficult to get to. So why do I keep going there? That was a question my producer asked me when I told her that I was once again taking a family trip to Japan, this time with my four month old son. Now, on one hand, I clearly just love it. But it’s also a place that I have learned a lot from.

So I thought I would make the kind of video I never make in a sea of love life videos, and that I would actually share with you what Japan has taught me about love and life. I also hope you’ll keep in mind that I am not an expert on Japan, and that I am well aware of the fact that it is so easy to romanticize a place.

As a visitor, this subject remains a deeply personal one to me. So I wanted to share it with you. As always, if you have clicked on this video, please give it a like so that other people can find it too, and hit subscribe so that you and I can stay in touch. One thing I learned from Japan is the craftsman’s approach.

I love how much they give a shit in Japan when it comes to things that they do or make. It feels like there’s an obsession with doing the job well and taking pride in the work. You might have seen references to this in things like sushi making, but it extends to everything. People disproportionately seem to take pride in doing what they do, no matter what it is.

Whether it’s a Kissa ten, a traditional Japanese coffeehouse where the owner has spent 40 years making the same cup of coffee, or a tiny Neapolitan pizza place where one person has devoted their entire life to perfecting dough. You can see it in the way a shopkeeper meticulously wraps your purchase, or in the business that makes artisanal cola, which is mind blowingly good.

One of my favorite films is Perfect Days. It’s about a man who cleans toilets in Tokyo, but the film treats him almost like he’s a sushi master. He approaches his work with this quiet devotion, this insistence on doing even the smallest thing beautifully. My experience with Japan is not that this film is an exaggeration, but an accurate portrayal of what I have witnessed in how so many people go about their work.

Now, it’s not that I don’t see excellence in England, where I’m from or in America where I live presently. It’s there in those places. When I see obsession with excellence is often saw as a means to an end. Excellence is a vehicle to gross or scale or conventional success. But so much of what I see in Japan is excellence saw at the expense of these things.

I have come across hundreds of small businesses where it feels like the goal isn’t necessarily to build an empire, but to do something really, really well. So what’s the lesson here? Well, for one thing, there is a cost to trying to be too many things at once. In my life, I have done a lot of things. I coach, I make videos, I write books, I lead an organization.

I want to be present with my family. And of course I want to do all of these things brilliantly. But in reality, excellence comes from doing less. If we care about quality, we have to care about reducing the number of things we try to do, which is something I’m doing in my life right now. Japan also instilled in me a different sense of collective well-being.

Something ironic about Japan is that for its lack of public trash cans, there’s almost no trash on the streets, and it is one of the cleanest cities on Earth. When trash cans were removed, people got used to disposing of trash at home. Now, something about this rubbed off on me on a deep level. I have long held the philosophy that you should try to leave people better than you found them.

I say that about dating all the time, but it also applies to any kind of relationship. But I have since added to that philosophy the tenet of leaving places better than you found them. I am not saying I’m a saint who always lives up to this, but in small ways it has made a profound difference to the way I approach life.

When I’m in a coffee shop, I don’t just see it as the coffee shop owners responsibility to make the place nice. I started to see it as my own, at least in whatever corner of that coffee shop I occupied. It might be as simple as me putting my chair back, the way that the coffee shop owner intended it. When I stand up and leave or returning my cup to the counter, I even apply it to public toilets. I tried to leave the toilet cubicle a little better than I found it. I obviously don’t do this for recognition. I’m not even sure I’ve ever said this out loud before, and it doesn’t matter to me really, if the next person comes along and trashes the cubicle after me.

I mean, I’d like for them not to do that, but it doesn’t make me wish I hadn’t made it nice. There is something about this practice that has just been good for my soul. I have become more proud of the way that I move through life, of the way that I influence the spaces I am in. It feels more conscious, and it’s a practice that, strangely, has actually made me like myself a little bit more.

What’s up guys? I know we are talking about Japan today, but I also know that the broader goal of so many of you watching this channel is to find love. Well, I did an event back in January called The Year of Love. You may have heard of it. Thousands of you came to it. Thousands more missed it and then complained about missing it.

So I am doing this event one more time, live on the 21st of April, and I am going to show you in this event a four step, simple, intentional plan for finding love in 2026. If this is one of your big goals in your life, right now is to have an amazing, healthy relationship. You have to be there.

It’s free. Thousands are going to attend, but it’s only happening once. So go to join YearOf Love.com to sign up. It will take you 10s and I will see you on April the 21st for the Year of Love. Now back to talking about Japan. Japan also taught me to invest where you are. Japan inspired me to care about design, and even more so how much love we give to the design of our own home.

Me and Audrey. One of the shocking things about Japan is how intentional spaces are. You walk into a random coffee shop that has no business being so esthetically pleasing, and yet here it is with intentional cups, dishware, indoor plants, a carefully curated theme. Whether it’s Japan, the minimalism, cottagecore vibes or retro nostalgia. This rubbed off on me. Inspired by the listening bars in Japan, where you literally go to order a drink, sit at the bar and listen to records.

We designed a wooden shelving nook in our home to represent or to resemble aspects of the listening bar’s design. We replaced what was a lot of Bachelor metal in the house. It’s kind of, you know, Audrey describes my design choices before she came along. As for things men really want in the bedroom. Number one, 65 inch flat screen on the wall. Number two. Fish tank. Lava lamp.

My design choices before she came along. As with earthy colors and materials and woods and created bright, clean spaces for ourselves to live and work in. But more important than exactly what we did with our house was the fact that we were putting love into it. We were putting ourselves into it. Considering the kind of space that we’d really love to live in that would spark joy for us.

And it felt like that really paid off when we came home this time, because I had coming back from Japan my typical post Japan melancholy. But then we walked into a space that instantly made us feel excited to be home. And that felt validating because all of that care, all of that love that we had poured into our home last year suddenly made sense.

Yes. Audrey and I had left a place we loved in Japan that made us sad, but we had returned to a place we love. A place that made us feel happy and calm and which consequently softened the blow immensely. So much so that I feel genuinely excited to be home. There’s a comparison there, by the way, with romantic relationships that when we invest in the home that is us, whether it’s our confidence, our love for ourselves, the way we expand our mind, our friendships, our family relationships, our own life at the same time as being in love with somebody else or dating somebody else.

We insulate ourselves against the worst kinds of heartbreak that can happen when we build a home in someone else. So I think that this lesson is just as transferable to romantic relationships. When you invest where you are, when you invest in the home, that’s yourself. You actually protect yourself against future heartbreaks, against the relationships that inevitably you have to leave or the ones that leave you.

All of this of course, is an incredible romanticization of a place I love. I am well aware that there is an underbelly to Japan that I do not interact with, and that every trait has its inverse, the cultural norms that make Japan so fascinating and novel to visit make it oppressive for many who live there. The preoccupation with maintaining a national identity creates both a Japan that feels highly distilled, making it a wonderland to visit while also making integration extremely difficult even for many who have lived there their entire lives.

I’m also not a Japanese woman existing within a deeply patriarchal society. I know that I do not know Japan. I visit Japan. That is a big difference. And not only do I not live day to day life in Japan, I don’t even live my own day to day life in Japan. My Japan is filled with days of ambling along tiny streets with no pressure to be anywhere or do anything.

My Japan is filled with consequence free beers, consuming vast quantities of carbs and sugar, and changing coffee in a way I would never do back home. My weeks there do not resemble my real life. Not just because I’m in a foreign land, but because I take a foreign version of myself with me when I go where I ought to be living my actual day to day life in Japan over a long period of time.

I may have a completely different perspective. It’s not unlike a long distance relationship with a person where we don’t truly know how compatible we would be with them until we find ourselves living in the same place as them. Maybe under the same roof. In my extended honeymoon with Japan, I never truly get to know what my real life would feel like lived in Japan.

It may even be more akin to an affair that is exciting, precisely because the person one is having an affair with remains on the outside of the relationship, where their worst habits and character traits are never truly experienced. Reality never hits, so the fantasy stays alive. To be clear, I’m not saying that the things I love about Japan are not authentic or that they are just figment of my imagination.

It’s more that they are a pristine and carefully curated lens that I have created through repeated but intermittent exposure. Being aware that my version of Japan is an idealized one doesn’t take away what I love about it, but it does restore a kind of balance that insulates me against the kind of catastrophic thinking that says I will never be happy unless I can live over there.

I also have to recognize that part of what I love about Japan is who I allow myself to be when I’m there, that it is a place I go to feel the things that I rarely give myself permission to feel in my everyday life. Safe, carefree. Easy on myself, spontaneous, anonymous. Which I suppose begs the question is this a mode that I could allow myself to enjoy a little more where I live the rest of the year?

Perhaps not the unhealthy habits which would be unsustainable in everyday life, but the freedom, the lightness and the sense of spontaneous exploration. I could easily go on for another hour about this. This was a bit of a passion subject for me, so thank you for indulging me. I truly hope you enjoyed it, but let me know what it brought up for you.

Is there a place that you have a love affair with? What do you love about it? What has it taught you? I’m sure there will be so much variety in these responses. They may even inspire the rest of us reading them to visit the places. That means so much to you. So I can’t wait to read and respond to them.

Thank you for watching. I’ll see you in the comments.

*This transcript was whipped up with the help of AI. While it does a pretty impressive job, it may have the occasional typo, mix-up, or moment of creative interpretation. If you spot anything that looks a little . . . adventurous . . . thanks for your patience (and your sense of humor).*