21:00

Today Shiho introduced me to Luis, a Spanish illustrator based in Tokyo, who offered to show me around the Midoriso 2.0 coworking space. Despite being located in the fancy and fashionable area of Omotesandō, this place has a cool, relaxed and slightly hippie vibe. Before entering the Midoriso building you must walk through an entrance garden filled with food and booze stalls named Commune 246, akin to my favourite street market: Broadway Market, in East London.

More friends joined us before entering Midoriso. Diana, João, David and Adrian. Diana and João are friends from Portugal, recently moved to London and aspiring to switch to Tokyo. David and Adrian are two very talented illustrators based in town.

I had a glance at Luis’, Adrian’s and David’s work. They were making sketches of dogs and discussing how dogs never appear in traditional Japanese illustrations. They were all sketching dogs because Luis’ current client was a company Dog&Walk. His sketch of a Drever wearing yellow rain boots was particularly adorable.

I was inspired by the friendly environment of the working space. Everyone from creative disciplines works under one roof, independently, and quite often collaborate with each other. Luis mentioned that once you work at Midoriso you can get about 50% from within Midoriso. This seems like a great place for freelancers settling in.

We had a baguette from a small stall nearby. I spotted some interesting looking coffee shops while we strolled, including the California coffee chain Blue Bottle. We checked out some art exhibitions that were happening that night. It was a relaxed quality time evening.

Luis invited me to sign up for a website called Canvas (canvas.co.com), built by a Tokyo-based designer to give the community a place to post their details and work. I sign up at the end of the day.

On the group photo above you can see us in front of the baguette stall. From the left to the right there is David, Shop Owner 1, Shop Owner 2, Shiho, Mika, João, Diana, Luis and me.