4 Feb 2026
MEMOS/ Studio
Tokyo Offsite 2026: On Observation, Travel, and Intentional Practice
We went to Tokyo for our Yung Studio offsite last week 🇯🇵
Part work, part inspiration. A full week without monitors or desks.
A lot of our work lives inside culture. Culture moves fast, but understanding it usually doesn’t come from keeping up. It comes from paying attention long enough to notice what’s actually changing. We’ve learned that staying too close to familiar environments can quietly narrow perspective. Same cities. Same screens. Same rhythms. Over time, proximity starts to feel like insight. Making more work starts to feel like knowing more.
When we step outside our usual environments, something simple happens. We notice more. We listen longer. We’re slower to conclude. Distance creates space, and space sharpens judgment. It is like a reset. Art critic and novelist John Berger wrote, “The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.” The idea is that our understanding should stay in motion. Curiosity isn’t a side effect of the work. It’s part of the work.
Moving through Ginza, Aoyama, and Nakameguro reminded me that good creative work rarely comes from constant output. It comes from observation, restraint, and shared perspective. We’re lucky to be able to build this kind of ritual as a small team. And it’s clear that if we want to keep doing culture-led work that feels alive and honest, we have to stay open. We have to keep looking elsewhere.
Some of the observations…
Revisiting Ghibli’s earlier films and learning more about how they were made was a quiet reminder that true originality comes from the human brain, not from automation. The work is shaped by lived experience, intuition, and imperfection. That kind of thinking can’t be generated. It has to be felt.
Experiencing the “kawaii” aesthetic in Japan was another reminder that branding is emotional before it’s visual. Mood is shaped through sound, smell, material, and interaction as much as color and form.
At Mori Art Museum, seeing work ranging from Kuwata Takuro’s large-scale ceramics to Oki Junko’s delicate hand-done embroidery, all responding to a shared theme of time, made the experience feel expansive in a way you can’t get from one medium alone.
Taking a traditional calligraphy class was a reminder to slowdown and enjoy the act of doing. The whole experience was meditative. From grinding down the ink, watching our instructor, Setsuhi "eri" Shirashi, effortlessly create characters, to trying our own hands at it, time seemed to slow down.The notion that there are no do overs with ink and no touch ups allowed might seem daunting to some but we found it encouraging to just go for it. We felt an excitement to pick up the next piece of paper and improve our strokes. Before we knew it we were down to the last paper.
Visiting teamlab Planets was a reminder that execution is everything. The concepts themselves were simple, but the scale, light, and pacing made the experience feel immersive and almost childlike. You’re not thinking too hard. You’re just wandering and absorbing. It was a clear example of how thoughtful design can turn a straightforward idea into something transporting.
Some of the most interesting stories don’t exist on the internet. We happened to visit Nicolas Yuthanan Chalmeau, a French-born photographer and the creator of Sillage, to talk about his art collection inside his living space. New artifacts reinterpreting past eras sat alongside discontinued, iconic pieces worth cherishing. Seeing these objects coexist felt almost unreal, like everything was quietly connected.
Between us, we’d lived in Seattle, NYC, San Francisco and other metro cities. But moving through the city so effortlessly reminded us how much we’d missed real mobility. Even after all that time, nothing compares to truly walkable cities, where you can cross 3 or 4 neighborhoods in a day and feel the culture change from block to block.
There was something really special about seeing our work up on the Shibuya screen, and noticing people take it in. Watching it there was such a different experience… something created in the quiet of our apartments was suddenly part of the noise and movement of Tokyo. For a moment, it made the distance disappear.
Where should we go next? 🙂
Written on
Written By
Melody Yung, Creative Lead
Stephanie Jung, Designer
John Rodriguez, Designer