The subway of the silent
Last week, during a business trip to Tokyo, I looked around the subway car. Everyone—and I mean everyone—was hunched over, staring silently at their smartphones.
I recently heard a tech startup CEO say, “Looking at such a tiny screen is a limitation. I want to change this world by embedding chips into the human brain so that whatever you want to see is projected directly onto your entire field of vision.” But think about it: the current sight of everyone doubled over their phones is eerie enough. Can you imagine a world where everyone sits upright, looking straight ahead with hollow eyes, each person completely immersed in a private world that only they can see? To me, that sounds like a landscape from the end of the world.
While the current silence is a testament to Japanese politeness—the discipline of not bothering others—I couldn’t help but feel it was a tragic loss of opportunity. When did we become so afraid of the world outside our own heads?
The Pokémon professor
We weren’t always this way. Do you remember being a child? Children are the undisputed masters of connection.
I remember my sister (twelve years my junior) used to corner my friends—total strangers to her—and launch into an exhaustive lecture on Pokémon. She didn’t care if my friends looked confused or completely uninterested; she had a story to tell, and she shared it with pure, unfiltered joy. Somewhere between childhood and “becoming a professional,” we traded that courage for a shield of silence.
The “once upon a time” icebreaker
If you need to get your human intuition back, I highly recommend watching a project called “Mentos Mentors.” In these videos, shy adults are sent into public spaces with earpieces. They think they are being guided by “communication experts,” but in reality, the “experts” are five-year-old kids.
In one of my favorite scenes, a nervous man approaches a woman sitting alone at a cafe. Following the prompt from the little girl in his ear, he says: “Can I tell you a story? Once upon a time, there was a goldfish. He was all alone. The end.” The woman didn’t call security. She smiled and said, “That was really unusual.” It’s a beautiful reminder: connecting with others isn’t as dangerous as our “adult” brains make it out to be.
The flash mob in the forest
At CondeHouse, we don’t just make furniture; we create spaces where these lost connections can happen. Every year during Asahikawa Design Week, we host a party for designers and architects from around the world.
I know that for many (especially for us shy Japanese), walking up to a stranger at a party feels like jumping off a cliff. That’s why we design “programs for connection.” One year, we organized a flash mob. Guests who seemed to be just mingling suddenly burst into a performance of “This Is Me” from The Greatest Showman.
The energy was electric. By the end of the song, strangers were dancing together and hugging each other with tears in their eyes. In that moment, the “Tokyo Subway” version of ourselves vanished, and the “Pokémon Professor” inside us all returned.
Next year, why not leave your smartphone—and your brain-chips—aside and join us in Asahikawa? We have a seat—and a story—waiting for you.
A great piece of design should be a conversation starter, not just an object. Our “Hatsune Miku Art Chair” is the ultimate icebreaker. It’s impossible to sit in this chair and stay silent—someone is bound to ask about its unique fusion of digital culture and Hokkaido woodcraft. Like my sister’s Pokémon stories, it’s a bold expression of “This Is Me.” Why not bring a piece into your home that encourages people to put down their phones and ask, “Tell me the story behind this chair”? It’s the perfect antidote to the “end-of-the-world” silence.
Shungo Ijima
Global Connector | Reformed Bureaucrat | Professional Over-Thinker
After years of navigating the rigid hallways of Japan’s Ministry of Finance and surviving an MBA, he made a life-changing realization: spreadsheets are soulless, and wood has much better stories to tell.
Currently an Executive at CondeHouse, he travels the world decoding the “hidden DNA” of Japanese culture—though, in his travels, he’s becoming increasingly more skilled at decoding how to find the cheapest hotels than actual cultural mysteries.
He has a peculiar talent for finding deep philosophical meaning in things most people ignore as meaningless (and to be fair, they are often actually meaningless). He doesn’t just sell furniture; he’s on a mission to explain Japan to the world, one intellectually over-analyzed observation at a time. He writes for the curious, the skeptical, and anyone who suspects that a chair might actually be a manifesto in disguise.
Follow his journey as he bridges the gap between high-finance logic and the chaotic art of living!