Note: The text below is the transcript of the YouTube video above.
Have you ever felt this? LIFE keeps getting faster, noisier, and more crowded — and before we realise it, our senses become a little numb.
But here’s why we need to pay attention to this. In a world where AI can do so many things, one of the key things that makes us unique, something AI can’t copy, is our unique aesthetic sense. Our personal way of seeing beauty. Our own compass for what feels right.
So today, I want to share two things I consciously practice to develop my aesthetic sense, along with some of my own stories.
Hi everyone, I’m Satomi Takayama. I’m a Japanese artist based in London, but right now I’m back in Japan, reconnecting with my roots and gathering inspiration for my future work from the culture and values I’m rediscovering here. And on this channel, I share what I learn along the way.
So Today’s video is Part 2 of the Why We All Need Aesthetic Sense series.
Have you watched Part 1 yet? If not, I’d recommend watching that first before this one. I’ll put the link in the description.
In Part 1, we talked about the more theoretical side — why we need an aesthetic sense. We explored how beauty is something we instinctively seek. And in a world where AI is part of everyday life, understanding what we personally find beautiful is becoming more and more important, both in our personal lives and in business.
But I’m sure many of you were thinking, okay, so how do I actually develop this aesthetic sense?
In Part 2 today, first, we’re going to look at our own aesthetic values by reflecting on our lives so far. And then I’ll share two methods I recommend for developing aesthetic sense as an adult.
This episode is also slower and more personal. I’ll be talking quite a bit about my own story, so feel free to just listen like a podcast and use it as a chance to think about your own experiences, too.
First, before you get into developing your aesthetic sense, I recommend taking time to really understand what your own aesthetic values are. By doing this, instead of being influenced by other people’s values and thinking like “oh, this might be nice” or “that might be nice too,” you can discover your own unique aesthetic sense.
So what actually changes in your daily life when you understand your own aesthetic sense?
I feel there are three main benefits:
First, you get better at choosing what truly feels right to you.
Second, your words or actions become more consistent – and more memorable.
Third, your sense of who you are becomes clearer.
This is a bit abstract, right? So let’s take a closer look at each one.
First, choosing what truly feels right to you.
This connects to what I mentioned in Part 1 about having your own compass. For example, have you ever bought something just because everyone on social media has it? Or chosen a holiday destination simply because it was popular, not because it genuinely sparked your curiosity?
There are times when connecting with others is important, but if you take it too far, you lose sight of what you actually like. You lose what makes you unique.
That’s why I recommend thinking about the roots of your aesthetic values.
I’m going to share my own experience as an example, talking about THE roots of my values. But before I do, there’s one thing I want you to keep in mind.
Your values and mine can be different. In fact, they should be different. I’m just hoping my story can be a starting point for you to think about your own aesthetic sense.
Where does my aesthetic sense come from? What values do I care about? I hope you can use what I share as material to ask yourself these kinds of questions.
Okay, so let me go back to my childhood.
From elementary school through university, I attended the same private school in Japan. Members of the imperial family and various cultural figures attended there. So it was a pretty unique environment that really valued tradition. Looking back now, one thing that became the foundation of my values today was having lots of opportunities to experience authentic, real things.
For example, in music class, we got to try various instruments. We experienced a tea ceremony and Noh theatre, which are traditional Japanese performing arts, not just from textbooks, but in that live atmosphere. I’m really, really grateful to my parents now as an adult for giving me such a culturally rich environment. Honestly, I could probably make a whole separate video just talking about how thankful I am to them!
Anyway, the authentic and essential things I encountered back then are still an important standard for me when choosing things today. Maybe that’s why I love visiting ceramic kilns, hearing directly from the craftspeople, and touching their work with my own hands.
Also, from when I was young, I had opportunities to try lots of different activities besides school. Music, sports, calligraphy and so on. Unfortunately, I gave them all up halfway through. But even as an adult, after becoming independent, I kept learning about things I found beautiful with my limited time and money I had back then. Ikebana flower arrangement, tea ceremony, and Japanese cooking. The shades of ink, rhythms, the negative space that the flower arrangement taught me. Those learnings showed me what kind of rhythms and lines make me feel comfortable.
And what really expanded all of that was my time living in London.
In London, museums and galleries were right there in everyday life. I’d casually go see world-famous paintings or contemporary art. I encountered a whole different world of authentic things and experiences from what I knew in Japan.
There’s Japan with its stillness and tradition, and London with its free and really powerful expression. The way these opposite worlds mixed inside me, now in my thirties, I finally feel like I’m starting to see the outline of my own personal compass.
Whether I’m choosing interiors, clothes, hotels, or ceramics, I feel these accumulated experiences showing up as these subtle differences in sensation. Like, somehow this one feels more comfortable, or this one doesn’t quite feel right. The same goes for when I create my own work.
Through all this background, my own standards have gradually taken shape. Parts of it are always changing through daily experiences, but I feel like the core stays solid.
I hope you’ll take a moment to think about the values you’ve cultivated over time.
What from your past / influences how you choose things? Maybe it’s an experience from way back, or maybe something more recent.
And here’s something I really want you to remember: it’s exactly this mix of different values that makes the world interesting. This is what living in London taught me. There was a time when I looked back at my own childhood – spending so many years in almost the same kind of environment – and thought it was a bit boring. But now, I really feel there’s no need to compare yourself with anyone else.
From now on, when you’re choosing things or deciding how to act, try remembering your own values. Try not to get distracted by that perfect-looking world you see on social media and elsewhere. I think your everyday life will feel somehow richer.
So far we’ve talked about developing your ability to choose what you think is good.
Now let’s dig deeper.
The next benefit I found from understanding your own aesthetic values is that how you act and speak becomes more consistent and makes an impression.
What do your behaviour and words express about you?
My own values about behaviour and speech again go back to childhood in Japan, so I want to talk about that time. At my school, morality and etiquette classes were built into the curriculum.
For example, we had lessons on manners in Japanese rooms, actually learning the proper way to behave in the real tatami room at school.
Have you heard that when you enter a Japanese room, you shouldn’t step on the edges of the tatami mats? I know that might sound a bit too much, but that’s just how it is!
So traditionally, family crests were woven into those edges, so stepping on them would be like stepping on the family or its head. That’s why this invisible agreement about not stepping on important things has been passed down.
As a kid, honestly, I just thought it was a bit too specific. But looking back now, it wasn’t just a manners lesson. It was a lesson in learning with your body to treat things with care, including their invisible background, stories, and meanings. And that’s definitely become part of the foundation for how I behave today.
For me personally, grace is something I want to value throughout my life. It’s something that deepens with age, unlike physical appearance. In Japanese, I think of the word hinsei. “Grace” is probably the closest word in English, but I guess what grace or hinsei looks like can differ quite a lot across cultures.
The kind of grace I mean here isn’t about perfection — it’s more about trying to treat the people around me, the things, and myself with as much respect as I can.
Even in very small things — for example, throwing rubbish on the street goes against my aesthetics. It’s about the people who’ll walk there later, and also thinking about the person who has to clean it as a human being. And at restaurants, when ordering food, I try to be mindful as well — the person taking your order is a person too, with feelings.
My aesthetics about how to behave might be influenced by what I learned in Japan from a young age. That said, I’m definitely not living up to my ideal self yet.
There are lots of times when I don’t have the mental space, and my words and actions get sloppy.
But in those moments, can I notice and think, Oh, that wasn’t very graceful of me? Even if I’m not perfect, I think what matters is trying to return to that sense of my own aesthetics.
And from a bigger perspective, I think behaviour and speech are really mirrors of how you want to be.
In Japan, there’s this concept called kotodama. It’s written with the characters for words and spirit, the idea that the words you speak attract those events into your life.
I really believe in that, so I try to be careful about what words I use and how I say them. Words that degrade myself, and also not using negative words toward others. Something like that.
But please don’t misunderstand. Everything I’ve talked about so far is just my personal values. What I’m trying to say isn’t that you should use polite language or that you should master perfect manners.
What I mean is, what kind of person do you want to be? What worldview and aesthetics do you value? I want you to actually reflect that in your own speech and behaviour. Because that will naturally and significantly change the people and environments you attract.
I have my own aesthetics based on the experiences I’ve shared, and you, watching this video, you have your own aesthetics.
For example, if I were a rock musician, I’d probably have completely different values. Or if I were leading a huge company, I would have other aesthetics about behaviour that I value. I find it really attractive when I see people with unique values that are totally different from mine.
Setting aside questions of morality for now, it’s not about what’s good or bad. We definitely don’t all need to aim for the same kind of behaviour, right? What matters is whether your actions and words align with the aesthetics you’ve valued. Just being a little conscious of that can help. I feel like that’s how your aesthetic sense gets sharper.
By the way, starting this YouTube channel made me see myself more objectively than ever before. I’ve had way more opportunities to think about how I act and speak. Obviously I’m not saying you should start a YouTube channel. But if I can share one tip for seeing yourself objectively, I recommend imagining there’s another version of yourself floating above your head. Like when your emotions are running high and you’re about to say or do something you don’t really mean, you can take a deep breath and let that other self put on the brakes. Just having that image might have some effect.
What past experiences or moving moments have influenced your own behaviour and speech? Maybe it’s something your school teacher always said when you were little, or a scene from an old drama you watched, or how someone you admired behaved. Think about it. And let’s try projecting that onto who you are now.
That was the second point about behaviour and speech.
The third benefit I found from understanding my own aesthetic values is similar to the behaviour part, but for establishing your identity.
How much have you thought about identity in your life?
This is something I became much more aware of after moving to London.
For the first few years after moving to London, I don’t know if identity crisis is the right word, but I had this long period of self-loathing. Because of that, I’ve had several opportunities at different points in my life to think about my identity.
After moving to London, people often saw me first as Satomi from Japan, so being Japanese started to become a much bigger part of how I saw myself.
At first, I couldn’t speak English. So I struggled to express myself in words. Which meant what stayed in people’s memory of me was the non-verbal parts.
So what communicated who I was to others were things that had unconsciously soaked into me.Like the way Japanese culture values respecting others, behaviour that values harmony – that Japanese sensibility I’d learned. Though after living in London for so long, I do feel like those have faded a bit, for better or worse. There were some parts where I felt that Japanese sensibility went a bit too far overseas, too.
But London really does bring together people from all kinds of backgrounds from around the world. Being recognised as Japanese, I naturally started thinking about the virtues I wanted to value as a Japanese person and the virtues I wanted to value as Satomi Takayama.
Precisely because I couldn’t use language the way I wanted, I became more careful about what my actions and presence were communicating. And what I realised was that even in those non-verbal parts, my aesthetic sense as part of my identity was seeping through.
And living abroad added a completely different compass to that Japanese sensibility. That formed my new identity again. Living with two standards, Japan and London, I feel like I can choose things more thoughtfully, considering more layers than I could before.
Also, in London, I encountered various new values that I really liked. Among them, the value of respecting all kinds of different perspectives with so many diverse people around was a new world I really came to love. Really, it was such a different environment from the more traditional, homogeneous world I knew in Japan. I was so drawn to it.
For me, having aesthetic sense isn’t just about style. It’s about having your own core. I think understanding who you are is the first step.
If I had to explain my identity very simply, I’d say it’s my Japanese sensibility and traditional values that have been transformed through encountering different cultures around the world, especially during my time in London.
What’s your identity? When thinking about this, again, be careful not to compare yourself to others. It can be something simple. For example, think about this. For some reason, you have to start a YouTube channel. Just think about it. What would you want to share with people around the world? And how would your unique aesthetic sense show up?
This might be a good moment to stop and think a bit, and jot a few things down on paper.
Let me sum up what we’ve talked about so far. I’ve been saying it’s important to first recognise your own aesthetic values. The benefits I mentioned are, in line with your own aesthetics:
- Creating a compass for choosing things
- Defining your daily words and actions
- Acting with a sense of identity
I didn’t touch on this much here, but in Part 1, we talked about how having your own aesthetics guides business decisions, right? I guess that also starts with reviewing your own values. I think it’s the same when creating art.
Instead of being swayed by other people’s values, I hope this gives you a chance to slowly think about that core inside yourself.
So finally, we’re getting into the practical part. How do you actually develop your aesthetic sense?
From what we’ve talked about so far, maybe some of you are starting to see what aesthetic values you care about. I hope so! By using those values as a solid foundation and refining your sensibility, I think you can express yourself in your own unique way.
I read several books and learned that aesthetic sense can be trained even as an adult. Good news, right?
Childhood experiences have an influence, but I think aesthetic sense can be well developed as an adult through ways that adults can especially do.
From here, I’ll share two things I’ve been practising in my own life. For me, just being aware of them has made everyday life feel a little different.
Those two are:
- Experiencing more things through your five senses
- Building knowledge
First, experiencing more things with your whole body through your five senses.
You’ve probably heard this many times, but the more I do it, the more deeply I feel how powerful it really is.
These days, with just a smartphone, we can see famous paintings, architecture, and gardens from around the world with just our fingertips, right?
That itself is really convenient, and I do it all the time. But at the same time, I deeply know that the world through a screen and the world you actually see are completely different things.
Even with the same painting, the power of seeing it in person, the thickness of the paint, the light in the room and the faint scents. Experiencing all of that through your five senses versus scrolling on your phone, the quality and amount of information that you absorb are completely different.
Whether it’s architecture or paintings, anything really, becoming sensitive to feelings like “I really like this” or “this doesn’t quite feel right for me.” Going there in person and really experiencing how your body responds. That small accumulation, I think, that’s what trains your aesthetic sense. It’s like sports training, right?
I’m still working on this myself, but for the past three or four years, I’ve been consciously investing time and money into these lived experiences. When something seems interesting, or I really want to see it, even if it’s a bit far, I try to go without hesitation.
By the way, I’m funding all of these trips and research out of my own pocket now. Since I left my full-time job in London, my budget is more limited than ever. But I still don’t want to cut seeing authentic things with my own eyes if I can help it. For me, lived experiences are such an important investment.
If you can, I recommend keeping the genres wide too. Because sometimes past experiences connect in unexpected ways, creating a chemical reaction that sparks new ideas. Research has shown this is actually how breakthrough ideas happen.
I’ll show you in a video soon, but I went to Ghana this year because I wanted to see an art scene completely different from the Western one. That experience let me see West African aesthetics, but more than that, it really broadened how I see the world. It’s one of my life’s treasures now. That hot air, the distinctive smells, the intensity of colours, the energy of people, I still remember it all in random moments even now.
If there’s a place or event I want to experience once in my life, I’ve tried to make a point of actually experiencing it with my own body, even if it’s far. If there’s someONE I really want to talk to, even if they’re on the other side of the world, I’ll write them an email myself and go meet them.
For example, one person I went to meet was an artist in Miami I admired. That was two years ago, and I still remember every detail. The moment I stepped into his studio on that really hot day, already sweating a lot. The overwhelming work he showed me. The moving words he said to me one-on-one. The delicious steak we ate for lunch. Those moments are truly precious to me. Especially those experiences that really move you, for me those are the real learning you can’t find in textbooks. They’re sensations I’ll never forget and remember vividly even now. Because I think within experiences that touch your heart, there’s some kind of beauty in them.
Everyone’s circumstances are different. It might be worth reviewing how we’re using our limited time and budget, and thinking about whether there are areas where we could allocate a bit more towards real experiences.
I didn’t start out with this kind of flexible environment – it’s something I slowly built on purpose.
Precisely because we live in a time when we can feel like we know things just through our smartphones, those rich experiences gained through our own bodies feel even more valuable now.
Knowledge you can get quickly and easily, especially now with AI, can be copied right away, but no one can ever imitate our experiences themselves, right?
Of course, there are times when you can’t go far away overseas and such. But I believe there are lots of things you can do within your own living area too.
For example, what I’m actually doing while I’m in Japan now is visiting nearby gardens, setting aside a day for gallery hopping, and making appointments to visit traditional craftspeople at their workshops. Even when I’m out for something else, if I have a bit of free time, I’ll open Google Maps and look for interesting places nearby.
So I guess what I’ve been realizing lately is that it really comes down to awareness. Those small actions that come from being aware – when they add up over time, I think that’s what creates the big difference.
And when you’re actually standing there, expressing what you feel in your own words and keeping it as notes or even photos, so you can look back on it later. If you’re with someone, maybe talk about your impressions on the way home.
You don’t need to do anything dramatic at first. Just consciously and gradually increase experiences through your five senses within what you can do. That accumulation, I feel, is a very simple but powerful way to develop aesthetic sense as an adult. Start by thinking about what you’ll do on your next day off.
Now, let’s talk about the second point, building knowledge.
From here, it’s not just about intuition, but about aesthetic sense supported by words and knowledge.
The experiences themselves that I just talked about are really important. But if you stop at just the experience, I feel like the effect becomes weaker when it comes to developing aesthetic sense as an adult.
Even looking at the same garden, if you know even a little about when it was made, who made it, what philosophy they had, how you feel about that garden becomes much more multidimensional.
Even at a hotel lobby, when you know what the architect or designer cared about and their concept, that space doesn’t just end up being some nice-looking place. It gets stored in your heart and memory as concrete words. Basically, you can put into words more clearly what you like.
For example, if you realise “I’m drawn to things with stillness and empty space” and “that connects to Zen Buddhist philosophy,” then next time you’re changing something in your interior, maybe you can research artists who express that idea and think about displaying their work at home. Something like that.
Once you can put it into words, it becomes much easier to recreate it.
I’m still working on this myself, but I want to keep that attitude of always learning.
Why I came back to Japan and am reading lots of Japanese books I couldn’t access in the UK is because I couldn’t express my aesthetic roots in words.
Now that I’m gradually gaining knowledge by reading various books, I feel like I can understand my values better, put them into words, and have more pride in them.
And finally, I want to share a method for developing aesthetic sense from that book I mentioned last time, Why Do Global Elites Train Their Aesthetic Sense?
Several methods were recommended, and one of them was engaging with philosophy and literature.
How philosophers questioned the taken-for-granted ideas of their time. How novelists and poets express emotions and landscapes that are hard to put into words. By encountering these different ways of thinking and expressing that are different from your own, you can try removing your fixed ideas. By doing that, maybe you can expand what you find beautiful.
To sum up:
First, start by building your intuition and body awareness through real, five-sense experiences.
Second, build various kinds of knowledge to put your sensibilities into words.
Through the multiplication of these two things, I feel, from my own experience, that aesthetic sense as an adult develops in the deepest and most stable way.
And actually, this is exactly what I want to deliver through this YouTube channel.
I go to see Japanese traditional crafts and gardens, art and architecture from around the world with my own eyes. And by researching their history, philosophy, and the makers’ intentions, I hope this channel can be a small catalyst to stimulate your aesthetic sense.
But we shouldn’t just polish it and stop there, right?
I’d love it if you could share in the comments, even small things, how you’re using your own aesthetic values in your daily life or business. I think by knowing each other’s perspectives, we can all learn from one another.
I also want to eventually create more tangible forms of this aesthetic sense. Maybe it starts with collaborations with artisans or creating art pieces. And ultimately, my dream is to create a physical space where you can feel the stillness. I’m still figuring out the exact shape it will take, but I hope to share that process of creation with you through this channel.
If you found today’s video even a little bit interesting, please subscribe to my channel. Having you come along on my journey would mean so much to me. Just that one click on the subscribe button really encourages me and is a huge step toward the big projects I’m hoping to make happen. I’d really love to have your support.
In the next video, I want to dig into something I’ve been curious about recently. Does how we see beauty differ across cultures? The reason I started wondering about this was when I came back to Japan after a while and was walking around Kyoto. I thought that the international tourists there and I, even though we were looking at the same things, were probably feeling completely different emotions. I want to dig into that question together with you all. Make sure to turn on notifications so you don’t miss it!
If you enjoyed today’s video, I think you’ll also love my videos on Italy and France, so please check them out.
Thank you so much for watching and I’ll see you in the next video.
