Four questions to help choose your next direction When my friends see something online about Japan, they forward it to me. This is how heard about ‘ikigai.’ I lived in Japan, speak some Japanese, practiced a Japanese martial art, drink Japanese tea (and sake). If I believe what I read online, ‘ikigai’ is an important thing in Japan, and clever publishers, reading Marie Kondo’s sales figures [The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up], have brought it to our attention.