Eric Siu tours a Tokyo luxury hotel and breaks down what makes Japan so efficient: mask-wearing as standard practice, subway systems that handle extreme crowding, designated smoking areas that keep streets clean, and obsessive attention to order. He frames these as lessons for business travelers balancing work and vacation.
Okay, we're here.
We're here in Japan. I was just staring at myself.
Look at that. Look at that.
So we are here at the Prince Gallery Hotel. I had a 12 AM flight. The plane that I got on was a BB-8. Literally, it was an A380 plane basically wrapped in a Star Wars BB-8, well, wrap. So basically we flew over in a droid. So I wanna show you this hotel 'cause I think this is one of the best hotels I've been in, you know, this year so far. So let's do a quick tour really quick. So here's the shower. Right, look, it's see-through. Right, everyone likes see-through. If you get emo, you can also sit in the chair over there, and then you can also get in the tub too. And then this is my favorite.
Oh, look at that. Look at that. See?
Come poop in me. That's what it's saying. We can do room controls from here too, so let's try this out. So let's try— what would happen if I press this? Oh, lo and behold.
Look at this.
Look at this tea set over here. This looks too good to be like not touching it. Yeah, maybe I will make some hot tea tomorrow.
There's more. Look at this.
See, this is overdoing it. Like, who's gonna use this? Um, well, that's a nice shot.
Look at that.
So, uh, yeah, I'm excited. I'm gonna go out and explore.
三十六階です。 Thirty-six floors.
下にあります。 So you noticed that? I wanna talk about Japanese efficiency today. That one girl wearing the face mask, that's just an example, right? Like today in the morning, maybe like 50% of people were wearing face masks, and that's because everybody's sick. And so it's not efficient or effective to get sick, right? They make sure that they take some preventative measures so they don't get other people sick or they don't get sick too. So I think that's beautiful. During rush hour, the subways are worse than than anything I've ever seen. Like, much worse than New York. It's just funny how people squeeze in. Anyway, I'll get some examples of it, but I just love, so far, how efficient this city is. It's good for me. I love it.
I have no idea where the fuck I am.
Let me give you another example of efficiency.
That's a smoking area. That's how efficient they are.
Instead of people throwing cigarettes everywhere. But you don't see a lot of trash on the ground. See the cop behind me?
Traffic guy?
It's efficiency. I have no idea where I am, but this looks nice. So I'm in this garden right now in the Meiji Shrine, and I thought I'd tell you a little story. So I'm in this group called Entrepreneurs Organization, and it's worldwide, and I met up with 2 Japanese people yesterday. They've both been running their companies for a long time. We're talking one guy for like 23 years, another guy for like 24 years or so. Yeah, one guy's like 52, the other guy's like 46 or so. One guy's company, he's got 400 employees, company's public. Other guy is doing really well too. And they're just really well put together. So what I learned that's different from Americans is that Americans tend to sell their businesses pretty quickly. They're looking for a quick exit, right? And I'm just talking about in general. But these guys just I was like, why do you stick with this? It's because one of the guys said, you know, Japanese people, they don't really have— it's not easy for them to sell companies, so they just kind of stick with it and it just gets bigger and bigger and starts to snowball. What I also learned is like the older they get, the less sleep they get. You know, we're talking like 4 hours. Used to sleep like 7, 8 hours. Now they're only sleeping 4 hours because that's just how they are. And final thing I'll mention, so, you know, A, it's consistency, and then number 2, when they're talking about their employees, they call them Japanese soldiers because they work really, really hard. Yeah, I was like, so how often do your employees— I mean, what's like the timetable for them? And they work from 7 AM to 10 PM, right? And he says like, you know, the ones that are up for promotion, if they can't hang afterwards, like they'll work and they'll go drink afterwards, if they can't hang, they're not gonna be up for the promotion, right? And he's kinda like half joking, but you can tell he's kinda half serious too. So anyway, I think, you know, I talk about consistency all the time with like podcasts, things like that, but running the same business for 20+ years, You know, that's pretty admirable and just shows that you stay consistent, you can make really big things happen. And again, this guy has 400+ employees, like 14+ offices, and it's a publicly traded company in Japan. So yeah.
