February 2025: Reunion

traveling for a month in Zhangjiakou, Beijing, Niseko, Tokyo, Hakone, and Kyoto

A quick note: My last update about the group coaching circle had a broken link - my bad! Since spreading the word, I’ve had founders, product leaders, and other ambitious professionals reach out. But this is honestly not about job titles or career goals—at least not entirely. This is about making big decisions despite loud fears and cultivating human agency despite heavy doubt. I’m meeting with each person 1:1 over the coming weeks to curate a committed group.
Learn more here and reach out if you’re interested!

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Last month, I was skiing in the Wasatch mountains of Utah with a basecamp nestled in the comfort of Salt Lake City’s suburbs. I’ve spent this entire month in Asia, specifically China and Japan. This trip has had four distinct chapters, each with its own unique pace, focus, and setting.

Before diving in, I’ll admit that taking an entire month to travel felt both necessary and indulgent. I stressed about maintaining my coaching practice while away. I worried about "wasting time" that could be spent building something. Yet this journey reminded me of something I often share with others but struggle to embody myself: the value of creating space. Stepping away from daily routines and constant doing can counterintuitively accelerate progress. When we slow down and reconnect with ourselves, we zoom out of the day-to-day and tap into our intuition that has always been there. We remind ourselves what matters most and take action from a place of stronger alignment.

China

I started out by flying into Beijing and immediately heading to my dad’s hometown, Zhangjiakou. After six years away, it was overwhelmingly exciting to reunite.

The time with my family simply flowed, with long conversations, daily errands together, shared meals, and a visit to my cousin's hot pot restaurant. No tourist attractions, just being together. In these moments, I felt deeply connected to my ancestry. My family treats me like the baby since I'm the youngest cousin by over a decade, yet there's an unspoken acknowledgment of the privilege and potential I carry. They root for me while also counting on me in ways that create a beautiful complexity.

There was so much to catch up on and yet, it still felt familiar. The most noticeable changes weren’t in my aging aunts and uncles (they are all in great health), but rather the younger ones. My cousins’ kids now have full personalities and possess far better Chinese skills than mine.

Being in the place where my dad grew up—a city with the small town feel of neighbors greeting each other contrasted with the population density of NYC—always reorients my perspective. Life is simpler here. There’s no mention of finding your calling or solving existential problems for all of society. The expectations of a good life consist of just three things: having a family, eating good food, and making money.

my cousin’s restaurant, the logo is their two kids

Coming back to Beijing, I reunited with a few more relatives. My eldest cousin’s son is in his last year of high school, which means intense studying for the gao kao, an exam like the SATs but on steroids because it’s the sole factor determining the college you end up at. In China, dating is discouraged at this age not because of conservative values or filial piety, but because it would distract from studies. The pressure weighs on each individual student and the whole system is in on it. For this final year, the school shifts to a 6-day schedule with extended days that end at 9pm.

On the other side of the family, my cousin is studying computer science at Tsinghua University, China’s MIT. For him, it’s even more intense than studying for the gao kao because of the caliber of his elite peers. It’s not hyperbole to say they’re the smartest students in the country.

None of this is culture shock to me considering I’ve been to China several times already. Yet this time was different given the stark contrast to my pathless path. In many ways, I had it easier, graduating from Berkeley in six semesters without ever having to pull an all-nighter. Then landing a job that flew me literally around the world and later working remotely in ski towns and on tropical islands.

I’m not aware of a Chinese word for sabbatical or coach. Explaining what’s unfolded over the past six years and what I do for work now took some translating and lots of roundabout explanations. Despite the cultural differences in work, my relatives were surprisingly supportive of my path. They understood the value of self-exploration while young and helping people with their sense of wellbeing and mental health. And, they also lovingly nudged me to get a job so I can get back to making good money again, which I’m not completely against.

While I was visiting my relatives, my girlfriend was visiting her own. After a week, we reunited in Beijing and had a few days together to cosplay as local residents and wander the hotspots together. For both of us, we’ve traveled to China several times, but only as children or with our parents. We did some touristy things like visiting the Temple of Heaven (built in 1420) and the Lama temple (Beijing’s largest Buddhist temple), but we also made space for less-touristy things like walking around the local park, exploring the mega-malls, and trying an Erewhon copycat called Bluegrass Yogurt.

One peaceful memory stands out above the rest. My girlfriend and I visited a sprawling park in Beijing on a sunny winter day. The park was designed into orderly compartments, each revealing different scenes of community life. Grandparents pushed strollers with bundled-up grandchildren. Groups gathered to play games or exercise together. The harmonious rhythm of intergenerational living displayed itself before us. I felt inspired by this natural way of people taking care of each other, across ages, existing together in shared space. This intergenerational living was both beautiful to witness and yet, practically necessary—many families simply can't afford to raise children without pooling resources together.

Ri Tan AKA Temple of the Sun

I also noticed the impact of the Great Firewall by the lack of western media, brands, and celebrities. In previous years, a billboard would display Tom Cruise promoting Levi’s. Now it shows a Chinese celebrity advertising a domestic luxury brand.

Despite the divisiveness, we share more similarities than our respective media narratives suggest. American media portrays us as being worried that our phones are wiretapped and feeding the CCP secrets every time we use TikTok or DeepSeek (some truth). Chinese media portrays America as riddled with school shootings and governed by an explosive dictator (also some truth). Yet the daily reality in both countries tells a different story. If you observe how people are actually living, there’s very little mention of geopolitical conflict. Most people in China and the US are focused on the same things: making a living, following celebrity gossip, family time, and taking pictures of the latest seasonal Starbucks drink.

Japan

After family time and exploring Beijing, I flew to Sapporo, Japan for a weeklong ski trip. Skiing in Japan has always been a bucket list item for me. After attempting to ski in Japan—and by attempting I mean skiing the only open run while it was raining in early December 2019—I was determined to do it right.

Despite only a couple days of real Japow (technical term for Japanese powder), which I had hoped for daily, I made the most of the situation. I skied seven days straight, pushing past the soreness by refueling on ramen, curry, and 7-11 pitstops.

While the skiing was memorable, the moments between runs created true camaraderie in our group of nine. We did group stretching to pump up tunes before hitting the slopes, shared meals, and swapped stories about the best runs of the day. Within our eclectic bunch was someone with a deep love for carrots, another who kept losing things but somehow miraculously finding them, and a third with the energy of the Energizer Bunny after two shots of espresso. Everyone seemed to be feeding off the collective excitement of just being in Japan—eating ramen on the slopes and discovering the magic of convenience store food that puts American versions to shame.

Mount Yotei peeking out in the background

After skiing, we'd drive to a nearby onsen, gender-separated hot springs where you soak fully nude in mineral-rich waters. There was something ritualistic about immersing in steaming hot water after being in the cold all day. Other memories stand out too: the first night when a Japanese man who knew English refused to let us pay for our meal, sharing a giant bowl of edamame at the mid-mountain restaurant with friends, and riding those quirky single-person pizza box chairlifts. These tiny moments, along with the skiing itself, are what defined our collective experience.

During this portion of the trip, I reconnected with a part of myself that loves the pursuit of adventure. It's been a while since I've felt so drawn to exploration—hiking up mountains to chase smooth ski lines in deep snow. This feeling stayed with me beyond the trip. Now I find myself ready to pursue new ventures and connections that bring me most alive, even if that doesn't mean constant novelty-seeking.

skiing with a bigger group of friends who were also in town

After the ski trip, I reunited with my girlfriend in Tokyo for the next leg of our monthlong travels. Before heading into the city from Haneda airport, I paid a luggage forwarding company to store and ship my ski bag. For just $27, they not only stored my ski bag for nine days, but they also shipped it to Narita airport. On the night of my flight back to the US, all I had to do was go pick it up, right by the check-in counter on the arrivals floor.

Together. we traveled from Tokyo to Hakone to Kyoto before coming back to Tokyo for our flight home. I accidentally left my camera at a restaurant in Kyoto and came back three hours later to find it still there. Not only was it there, but it was right by the door on the staff's counter, so anyone could've grabbed it on their way out. This small moment captured something I noticed repeatedly about Japan—a deeply ingrained respect for societal norms and collective responsibility.

Throughout our travels, we moved through Japan with curiosity rather than an agenda. We wandered through Tsukiji fish market, letting our eyes and noses guide us to stalls serving the freshest sashimi, tamago, or fruit smoothies. At the Open Air Museum in Hakone, we played hide-and-seek in a maze sculpture. These spontaneous explorations felt freeing—a refreshing change to my tendency to optimize every moment.

reveling in the Symphonic Sculpture at the Open Air Museum in Hakone

The memories of my last time in Japan six years ago came flooding back in. We visited a tsukemen restaurant that was so good that I went twice last trip. I felt sad that the eccentric blond-haired old man wasn’t there anymore. I wondered what happened to him. I remembered the handpan street musician outside Harajuku station and Meiji Shrine. I even saved some of his songs on Spotify.

Throughout our travels, the little everyday discoveries kept surprising me. Japanese 7-11s are nothing like the ones back home—they have these smoothie machines where you grab unblended frozen fruit and yogurt from the freezer to make your own on the spot. While they couldn't compete with my homemade smoothies, they were perfect fuel during long days of exploration. Even more delightful were the strawberries, which are treated as luxury items with prices that made me hesitate until I tried one. The taste justified every yen—supremely sweet with deep strawberry flavor that makes American ones taste like watered-down imitations. It's these familiar-yet-different experiences that sometimes tell you more about a place than the temples and tourist spots. When something as simple as a strawberry becomes a revelation, you're seeing a culture through an entirely different lens.

What continues to stay with me is how deeply inspired I am by the level of craftsmanship in Japan. People demonstrate a serious devotion to their work that goes beyond the stereotypical examples like tea ceremonies, knife making, or specialized restaurants. This dedication permeates everyday interactions. At a Lawson convenience store, when I needed help, the single worker organizing items in the back apologetically rushed back to the front to assist me. At a gas station, I accidentally threw trash into the wrong bin, and the worker—slightly frustrated—wouldn't let me leave until I had sorted it properly. While annoying in the moment since I can’t read Japanese, I later appreciated his unwavering commitment to doing things right.

The Japanese seem to genuinely care about how they show up in the world and in their work. Yet I wonder if this cultural commitment to excellence comes with trade-offs. If you're raised to pursue mastery in everything you do, at what point can you consider changing careers or taking a break to explore something new? For all its beauty and precision, Japanese culture appears to breed excellence while potentially stifling the kind of experimentation that has shaped my own journey. This tension between perfection and exploration left me contemplating my own relationship with excellence and the freedom to wander.

This month of travel moved at a different pace than my normal life. Every day contained something to do or see or taste. I found myself oriented outward, taking in information rather than processing my inner landscape. While this meant slipping up on my daily routine and practices, it offered a different kind of nourishment. Sometimes it can actually help to flood our senses with the external world before returning to stillness and reflection.

I'm glad to be home now, ready to slow down again. But I'm grateful for this period of movement and connection. The trip wasn't about finding myself or having profound revelations. It was about reuniting. Reuniting with family whose roots and branches extend far beyond me. Reconnecting with the part of me that craves challenge and adventure. Remembering that sometimes the most meaningful experiences come from the simplest moments of connection.

Quick Shares

• I published the first of my AI x human agency letter series with my friend Cissy. The next piece will explore how voice-based AI interaction is already transforming our relationship with technology—and ourselves.

• Recently, I recorded several profound conversations with Brian Whetten, a coach with decades of experience. While I'm still integrating his insights into both my coaching practice and personal life, I recommend checking out Tom Morgan's podcast featuring Brian or his book Yes Yes Hell No if you're curious to learn more.

• As mentioned earlier, I’m launching a Group Coaching circle in the coming weeks! I invite you to learn more here and reach out if you feel called to join us.

and here’s a video from day 3 in Niseko: