"Learning makes you stupid."

In a small town on the outskirts of Tokyo, this was one of few things that I used to hear in my parents' ultra-open liberal household, which came from my father, who himself strongly believed that knowledge and wisdom would save the world.

Without fully understanding why people spend so much time on learning for school, I decided to go to Germany at the age of 15.

Germany is a beautiful country, although my daily life started to become tasteless to me over the years. So in August 2011, I went to Lyon (France) for an exchange year, for which I moved out by bicycle. With all the stuff I needed it took 6 days and a lot of energy.

And from September 2012 to July 2013, I cycled from France to Japan, discovering a lot of things over Europe/Middle East/Asia. You can learn a bit more on my website:

http://www.sams-studio.com

After this gap year, I did my Ph.D in theoretical physics at INSA de Lyon in France, which finished recently, leading me to a whole new life here in Düsseldorf, with a lot of hope and expectations :)

Coming from the then superpower of Asia, I often found it difficult to say "I'm from Japan" in the first years in Germany, as my success story possibly is attributed to the wealth of Japan which did not exist in the majority of countries. Merely a decade went on, now I'm trying to decipher a highly sophisticated code written by a former coworker from China, my office mate from Iran looks at lines of numbers on the screen and my coworker from India combines complex mathematical methods numerically. For sure, we cannot daresay that everyone is equal in the current world, and it is certainly far away from perfect. However, still I am grateful to the progress that humanity made in the last few decades, for bringing the brightest brains from all over the world to this place, Düsseldorf.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

By mistake

Interests

As my parents used to be musicians, I play quite a couple of instruments (piano, guitar, cello, violin etc.) Now I play the cello in a trio with a violinist and a pianist.

I also like sport, especially ball games (like ping pong or basketball etc) I jog every morning since 2004, a kind of mental disease :)

• cooking
• traveling
• music
• cycling
• sports
• basketball
• table tennis
• teaching
• languages
• physics

Music, Movies, and Books

Nuovo Cinema Paradiso

Teach, Learn, Share

I can show how to handclap with only one hand.

Countries I’ve Visited

Albania, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, China, Croatia, Denmark, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iran, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, South Korea, Switzerland, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan

Countries I’ve Lived In

Brazil, France, Germany, Iran, Japan, Poland

•