I didn't wake up well this morning. I was able to sleep a lot, but after getting up I was groggy, took a shower in the shower room, and returned to my room.
I woke up close to noon. The Ukrainian kid was already gone.
The two French people, surprisingly, met in Berlin three days earlier, hit it off, and have been traveling together. I was surprised that that can happen. Very open. One of them attends a university in Switzerland, and it made me want to try living in Switzerland too.
Conversation about the future at a local eatery
I went to a nearby local restaurant for lunch with my friend from Hong Kong. It felt like a canteen.
The atmosphere was like a time slip back thirty years. There were tourists, but also a lot of elderly people, and it felt traditional. The architecture felt very old, and the register system and the way you ordered really reminded me of an old diner. You chose what you wanted from a board that was displayed and ordered that way.
I ordered pork, potato salad, and soup. 212 CZK, about 1,200 yen. Expensive (lol).
The taste was… well. I guess it was inevitable after eating so many good things every day in Paris (lol).
Among all the friends I've had so far, he smiled the least during conversation. But we had very, very deep talks.
We talked almost entirely about the future of AI. He talked about sensors and said he wants to develop a device that can keep running on just solar energy and motion without using batteries. That's apparently the idea for his startup.
He said that in the future, AI will take over, so jobs that require no skills, simple jobs—everything—will soon be replaced by AI. Repetitive jobs will disappear, physical labor will disappear, and life will get easier.
But at the same time, what will happen to people who lose their jobs?
His idea was that vocational schools would increase and there would be places to learn. But I wondered: when people are fifty, will they still have the capacity to learn something for work? We discussed that.
We also talked about taxis, cars, and buses becoming AI-driven. When I asked how AI is in Hong Kong, he said it's behind China. In China apparently nobody even carries yuan anymore; they shop with QR codes. They're really advanced. Everything is fast and the processes are simple. He highly praised China's growth into an economic powerhouse, and I agreed.
We talked about English too. He started studying two years ago and focused on speaking through an app. He said English will be important in the future.
I felt the same. If you can speak English you can break out of Japan and your world expands. Business opportunities spread beyond Japan to the world. You can do anything. Meeting like this is possible because we can both speak English, right?
He said he no longer gets along with friends from high school and junior high. That's a sign of growth—people change. It's natural to stop fitting with old friends; it's a good sign. I feel the same. Actually, I don't really have any friends at all (lol).
I was really glad to meet someone with that mindset. It was the first deep conversation I'd had with another Asian person. I had been avoiding Asians, but I thought he was truly someone to respect. I'm sure he'll do a very interesting business.
An incident at the hostel
Because I slept until noon I couldn't sleep at night. I was thinking about business card designs and reading the news, and before I knew it it was three in the morning.
New people arrived at the hostel—two from Australia. They were apparently going to a club and left here at 9pm. The two French were invited and went too. My friend from Hong Kong and I didn't have the energy and stayed behind.
Around 3:30 in the morning, someone came in. They were wearing a down coat. They weren't wearing glasses, so I don't remember them clearly. I thought it was one of the Australians and went back to sleep.
In the morning I woke up and attended a regular work meeting for my job in Japan. Then when I returned to the room, the French girl's iPhone was gone.
I immediately thought of the shadowy figure I had seen around 3:30.
We concluded it was likely the Australians' doing and asked the front desk to check the security cameras.
But there was one puzzling thing. The Australians' backpack was locked, their pajamas were left in the same place as yesterday. The bed covers were very neatly arranged and clean. The girl who should have been sleeping there in the morning was gone.
Normally, if someone got up early, would they make their bed that neatly and leave their pajamas in the same place?
The front desk camera was broken and couldn't be viewed, but the entrance footage showed the silhouette of a man. In other words, the person who came in yesterday was an unknown man.
In the end, feeling very uncomfortable, the two French moved to a hotel. My friend from Hong Kong left for Amsterdam. The Australians came back and were asked, but they said, "It wasn't me." However, on reflection it sounded staged. I still sometimes think it might actually have been her.
At times like this, if you ask a negative question like, "You didn't come back after going to the bar yesterday, did you?" it's hard for the person to lie. I read that in a book. If you phrase it negatively and lead the person to say "that's right," you can easily spot a lie. But the French girl asked in a different way, so we couldn't use that.
In the end the room emptied. I moved to a hotel immediately. The two Australians packed up and moved right away too. It felt creepy. It made me wonder if the two of them were accomplices. But if a stranger really did come in, that's extremely unsettling. All the door locks were unlocked, so it wouldn't be strange for someone to have entered.
Fortunately I was sleeping at the far end by the window from the door and had tucked my phone under the bed, so I was fine. But she had left hers on a desk a bit away, and it was stolen.
Hug and farewell
I think experiences like this are important. You shouldn't think you're lucky just because you weren't a victim. This can happen overseas. I felt deeply that you must exercise the utmost caution when staying in hostels.
At the end I gave my business card to my friend from Hong Kong and said thank you. We hugged and said goodbye.
I hope I can meet him somewhere again in the future.
