The Best Workation City? Sorry, We Don’t Buy It.
Why rankings crowned Tokyo as the world’s best workation city — and why real nomads should probably trust their shoes more than spreadsheets.
Every few months, another glossy list lands on our feeds, ranking the best cities in the world for digital nomads, remote workers, workations, or whatever the buzzword of the season is. This week, it’s Tokyo that gets crowned as the planet’s ultimate workation paradise. Fast broadband, shiny trains, Michelin stars, safety, culture — all ticked off in a neat list by a Switzerland-based office rental company.
Budapest, last year’s darling, has been dethroned. Rio somehow made it to second place. Valletta, tiny Malta’s capital, sneaked into the top 10. And so on.
And yes, Japan now has a digital nomad visa. Six months for high earners from 51 countries, spouses and kids included. Tourism’s booming. The yen is weak. Cue headlines about how “Japan is open for nomads.”
Sounds great on paper, right? Except — here’s the thing.
Rankings are written in offices, not on the road.
Most of these lists are stitched together by journalists (or worse, PR teams) sitting in dark urban offices, crunching broadband speeds and metro maps, then pretending they know what it’s like to live out of a backpack with a dodgy Airbnb host and an overpriced SIM card.
But digital nomad life isn’t about checking boxes on a spreadsheet. It’s about the messy, unpredictable, often hilarious details:
The café that says “WiFi” but kicks you out after one cappuccino.
The landlord who insists you pay cash, in advance, for three months, but forgets to give you keys.
The night bus to somewhere that was supposed to be “two hours” but turns into an 11-hour odyssey with chickens and strangers becoming your new family.
That’s the real ranking system. And spoiler: Tokyo’s subway map doesn’t prepare you for that.
What makes a good workation spot?
For us, it’s less about how many Michelin stars you can eat through (expensive, jet lag guaranteed) and more about:
Human scale. Can you make friends faster than your visa expires?
Cost of everyday life. Not the price of omakase sushi, but laundry, groceries, and the occasional dentist.
WiFi in the wild. Because sooner or later you will have to finish a Zoom call in a park, a train station, or a bench outside a closed gelato shop.
Community vibe. If the city feels like a giant hotel lobby where everyone’s just passing through, it won’t stick.
So Tokyo wins. But so what?
Look, we love Tokyo. Who doesn’t? It’s overwhelming in the best way, safe, clean, endlessly fascinating. But to say it’s the best city in the world for a digital nomad? That’s like declaring one pizza joint the “best in the world” without having tried the place your grandmother swears by in her village.
The truth is: the best city for a workation is the one where your feet take you, where your WiFi actually holds during the call with your boss, and where you don’t feel like a stranger after two weeks.
So congrats, Tokyo. See you soon. But until then, we’ll keep trusting our shoe soles more than someone else’s spreadsheets.