How Often do you Spend the Night at the Office?

Prior to moving to Tokyo, I had only spent the whole night working at the office once and had only had three nights when I stayed until 2am.  I suppose that's a pretty fortunate track record after two years in big law.  But as you know, I spent those two years in slow offices where I was having trouble meeting the hours expectation.  Now that I'm working in a legitimately busy office, things have changed.

Last week I worked through the night twice and, generally, didn't get home before 11:30pm.  Happily, we met the Friday deadline that had been keeping us up at night.  After an afternoon team meeting and late, but delicious dinner with some other associates (although a hot meal of any kind would have tasted great after scavenging from convenience stores all week), I was so happy to get some sleep.

I hit the sack around 1am on Saturday and didn't wake up until Sunday at 10am.  There was no tossing or turning, or getting up for a drink or a restroom break--I slept like a rock.  As soon as I woke up, I fumbled for my Blackberry and panicked a little.  Had there been a team meeting at the office that I missed?  Had I failed to respond to an assignment memo?  Fortunately, there hadn't been any emails that required a response while I was comatose.  Huge sigh of relief.

I took advantage of the free time on Sunday to buy some groceries and do some laundry.  As if on cue, the work emails started back up almost as soon as I had finished folding the last load of laundry.

Ran into this year of the snake display
on my way to the grocery store--happy new year!