Moving to Japan wasn’t part of the plan. None of the stars were aligned. Parts of Roy’s body were twitching. And not in the good way. You know that saying about “squeezing lemonade juice out of rocks when you’re up a river”? At that time, he didn’t know it but, Roy was about to get a full-frontal smack of unadulterated culture shock right in the face. No one could have expected how differently things in Japan work. The people. The language. The staircases. The preemptive, individually wrapped, tiny wet napkins. All of it was more than he bargained.

One vision kept him going through it all.
Video games. Pajamas. Like a boss.

Roy is an introverted man. He fancies the occasional attempt to make a friend. “Are those napkins free?” “That shade of grey on your sideburns is amazing.” “Do you hate your kids too?”

When he’s not aimlessly walking around the hardcore, mean-streets of Karuizawa, he’s cooped up in the abnormally humid corners of a coffee shop, pondering on the next big thing with an unapologetically dark cup of joe by his side and nothing but raw, animalistic lust for sketching on his iPad™.

True story – after a decade of pixel-pushing for the man, he bet the farm on his lifelong passion of building a company that connects people with the most innovative ideas for ginormous brands. That company is called … Rival Schools.