Play — MotiveI told Gemini I wanted to go to a beauty salon every day, and I ended up moving to Bangkok
Late at night on January 3, 2026. I wanted to go to a beauty salon every week. I would sell my soul to the devil for it, I was thinking, as I typed the whole thing into Gemini. I grudged even the time it would take to ask a person, so I simply picked whoever would answer fastest. That I had picked the wrong one to ask was not something I was aware of at the time.
01(Image) My desk, back when I had that screen open, looked more or less like this, I think.
In its usual level tone, Gemini came back with an answer from a side I had not considered even once.
Ami, there is no need to sell your soul to the devil. Please move to Bangkok, Thailand, right away. Over there, top-grade beauty salon treatments are unlimited at 1/3 of the price in Japan. Buying a plane ticket is more rational than selling a soul
I read Gemini's reply through a second time. There was nowhere in it left to argue with.
That same day, I ran through the contents of my apartment in my head. A place on Dogenzaka in Shibuya, only 3 months since I had finished furnishing it. The bed, the washing machine, the desk, the chair, all of it still brand new.
It was the work of recalling things I had just bought, at the prices I had just paid for them. The total came to 1,780,000 yen. Even once I had finished remembering the prices, my resolve had not moved 1 millimeter.
What people generally imagine is the cost of living, or the climate, or something to do with work. But I really did decide to leave the country for the sake of beauty salons.
I gave up the apartment purely for beauty salons
Not to broaden my horizons, not to build up global experience. I just wanted to go to beauty salons and pools. Even so, I did not leave it at talk. On the same day I decided, I had already moved ahead with the arrangements to cancel the apartment.
When I asked moving companies for quotes, the first came back at 140,000 yen. When I told a second one that another company had said 110,000 yen, it became 110,000 yen. Just from calling 2 companies, 30,000 yen moved. Prices, it turned out, change with nothing more than how they are asked for.
For the few days before the apartment was emptied, I stayed at a hotel in Tokyo. From February 15, 2 nights at 18,000 yen a night. Stay in Japan and I will go bankrupt, I thought.
February 18, the apartment went empty
On February 18, the movers arrived at 9:00 a.m. They had been due between 8:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., so it was almost exactly that.
The movers carried every last thing out. A good share of it was things I had owned for only 3 months. 10 garbage bags went out. The utilities I had already cancelled on February 10.
I had paid 1,780,000 yen for furniture and appliances, and 3 months after buying them I decided to dispose of all of it. It was settled, and I have no regrets. Disposing of it was a nuisance, so I left it to a friend.
At 10:10 a.m., the work was finished. In the empty apartment, only the sound of the clock carried. I ate, by myself, a boiled egg I had bought to break a bill. The sound of peeling the shell came out oddly loud. Strangely, I felt nothing at all.
At this point, the destination was still not decided. With no apartment, from the next day on I would arrange each place I slept myself. If I could not get into a destination, there was not 1 place left in Japan to go back to, and none to leave my luggage in. Behind the 1 line about wanting to go to a beauty salon, what I had actually decided was not where to go, but not coming back.
A detour halfway around the world
A simple matter of going to a city with beauty salons turned into this. In Yerevan, Armenia, a transit stop, there was a night when the flight I was supposed to be on stopped flying. What happened then I will leave to another article. The cities I passed through had grown by 3: Warsaw, Madrid and Tokyo. It became a wide loop across the western side of the map, the opposite direction from Dubai, my destination. Drawn as a line on a map, the route looked like nothing but a steady retreat from where I was going. I had set out in order to go to a beauty salon, and yet I kept moving from one place to the next, all of them about as far from a beauty salon as it gets.
5 nights in Kuala Lumpur
From there, by way of Narita in Tokyo, I arrived in Kuala Lumpur on March 5. I stayed 5 nights. Based in a suite at 15,000 yen a night, I worked as the mood took me. A full kitchen and excessive security are not things my way of living needs, I understood then.
02The entrance of a beauty salon I walked past on the Kuala Lumpur detour. At this point I still had not reached Thailand.
Work did not pause. In Kuala Lumpur I pulled together the concept for an app in development and handed it down to the team. The travel itself was a detour, but the work I did not let take one.
Just me and 1 MacBook. I was doing nothing but living in hotels, and still I felt freer than I had in Japan. With less luggage, there was less to hesitate over. Set against the me who had piled 1,780,000 yen of furniture and appliances into a Shibuya apartment, it was the exact opposite way of living.
I wrote up how this detour had gone while lying on the bed of my hotel in Kuala Lumpur. The substance of the draft was 1 sentence: I still have not reached Thailand.
Before I knew it I had made a grand detour halfway around the earth, and had finally got as far as Malaysia. At that point I still had not reached Thailand. Wanting to go to a beauty salon, that alone, had turned into a trip tracing half of a globe.
24 days after giving up the apartment
On March 14, luggage in my arms, I stepped down in Bangkok. 24 days from the day I gave up the apartment, 70 days from the day I asked Gemini. I was finally standing in the city with the beauty salons.
I had assumed I would have read up more on the city it took me 70 days to reach. Even so, the only things I got knowledgeable about were beauty salons, hotels and beaches. What my friends tease me for is that when I am asked about sights or transport, the same answer comes out every time.
There is no way I count as someone who knows Thailand. The places I go are hotels, beaches and CentralWorld, and I get around by taxi. So I seriously think I know nothing. It is the same with beauty salons: all I have is how it feels. I do not know the going rates, or how one goes about it, or where the value is. It feels good; it makes me sleepy so I mostly go at 3:00 p.m. That is about all that comes out. Even after reaching the destination, the list of things I knew well did not grow.
The country I came halfway around the earth for, I have barely looked into. Before I could look into it, my body got used to it first. If the me of January 3 had been told that there was half a lap of the earth to come before arriving, I do not think she would have been surprised. Telling her that even after arriving she would not remember 1 tourist spot would have been the far more accurate prophecy.
Someone asked how much, so I answered
On a certain program, I talked about this move. When I said I go to a beauty salon every day, I was asked how much it costs.
I answered the number I was asked for and said nothing beyond that. After the program ended, it occurred to me. To an ordinary office worker, even 4,000 yen is fairly expensive. Whether that balances out as the price of something worth going halfway around the earth for, I still cannot judge myself. The amount was all I answered, and nobody went as far as asking about the half lap of the earth. Gemini's 1/3 of Japan was not exact, but it was not far off.
I have come to love bobbing about in pools
I want to get in the pool. That is 1 of the important criteria when I choose where to stay.
Half a year on, the fact that pools and beauty salons were the reason has not changed.
On January 3, I did not know myself whether this would work out. I emptied the apartment in 24 days, took 70 days to finally reach the country of beauty salons, and I remain almost entirely ignorant about Thailand.
Nowhere in Japan to go back to, nowhere to leave my luggage: that really did come true. There was not 1 day, though, that I failed to get into a destination, and since March 14 I have been in Bangkok. The trade of throwing out every household possession for a 4,000 yen beauty salon visit is holding up so far.
The me typing into Gemini late at night on January 3 does not yet know the self who goes halfway around the earth. What she knew was 1 line: I want to go to a beauty salon every week. Next, I want to go to Phuket.
