--- title: "Life with My Japanese Roommate - The Legend of Bed Potato with his dream" description: "A hilarious journey living with my Japanese roommate — aka Bed Potato — who mastered the art of studying from bed." canonical_url: "https://blog.markkulab.net/en/post/life-with-bed-potato" author: "Mark Ku" author_url: "https://blog.markkulab.net/en/author/mark-ku" site: "Mark Ku's Tech Notes" date_published: "2025-03-13 01:01:02 +0800" category: "Travel" tags: ["life", "japan", "roommate", "travel", "story", "留學", "生活"] language: "en" license: "CC BY 4.0" license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" attribution: "when reusing or quoting, credit the author and link back to the original" --- # Life with My Japanese Roommate - The Legend of Bed Potato with his dream Everyone knows I got a Japanese roommate three weeks ago. His name is Taizao... but I usually call him **"Bed Potato."** He’s a smart and diligent guy, and he scored over 850 on the TOEIC. I thought, "Wow, this guy must have some kind of secret study technique." So I observed him for a while... and I realized he only has **two modes**: 1. **Crazy Study Hard Mode** - On weekends, he can write five full essays without even stepping outside. 2. **Lie on the Bed and Study Mode** - He can lie in bed, reading and studying until 12:30 AM without falling asleep, all while resting at the same time. That’s all. No other modes. I saw him lying in bed reading all the time. It looked so powerful, like some genius-level skill. I thought, "I need to learn this skill too!" So I tried imitating him… laid on my bed with a book… But instead of studying, **I just fell right asleep**. And I tried many times, but the result was always the same. Turns out, this wasn’t a study mode — it was a **hibernation mode.** One day, he told me, "The teacher didn't give any homework today." I thought if I were your teacher, I’d probably be exhausted because I asked you to write one essay, and you gave me five. Then after dinner, he just went back to bed... and **didn't move the whole night**. Recently, **Bed Potato** said he wants to find an internship. He told me, "In Kenya, elephants often destroy village buildings. But bees can scare elephants away." So now... **he wants to intern with beekeeping companies in Kenya.** I hope he can find an internship. But... I don’t know which is crazier, his idea for bee research, or that he might actually do it... **on his bed.** Just kidding! I hope he tries something new or challenges himself; he’ll develop leadership and courage. He might even grow into a big outdoor potato. ![Cute potato character reading a book outdoors in a colorful blanket](https://blog.markkulab.net/content/markku/posts/life-with-bed-potato/images/wierd-potato.jpg) Finally, influence has never been about what you know; it’s always about what you do. --- ## About this article and its author Originally published on [Mark Ku's Tech Notes](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/post/life-with-bed-potato) License: [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — when reusing or quoting, credit the author and link back to the original ### About the author **[Mark Ku](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/author/mark-ku)** — Software Solution Provider - 10+ years senior software engineer, now an AI Builder - Focused on large-platform architecture — North-American e-commerce, AI SaaS subscription billing - Combining AI Agents and automation to build evolvable product foundations ### Free tools built by the author All of these are free to use: - [Free PDF Sign Tool](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/pdf-sign): Online PDF sign tool — draw, type, or upload a signature, then drag, resize, and download. 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No sign-up, nothing uploaded to a server, and mermaid.live share links work as-is. - [React Intl Phone Number](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/react-intl-phone-number): react-intl-phone-number is an open-source React component: framework-agnostic and antd-free, with E.164 in/out, a searchable flag / country-code dropdown, configurable validation levels (strict / mobile-strict / loose), themeable CSS, and i18n — phone logic powered by google-libphonenumber. Lightweight and fully typed. Free and open source (MIT). - [Uptime Kuma Cluster](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/uptime-kuma-cluster): Turn single-node Uptime Kuma into a highly available cluster: OpenResty + Lua smart load balancing, shared MariaDB state, health checks and automatic failover, plus cluster-management REST APIs. One Docker Compose command to start. 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