Paolo (Paolo fromTOKYO) – Detailed Biography

Paolo de Guzman is a popular Japan-centric YouTuber.

He has over 3.7 million subscribers on his channel Paolo fromTOKYO.

Introduction-

Paolo de Guzman was born on 17 September 1983 to Filipino parents in Quezon city, Philippines.

He, along with his family, immigrated to the United States at 3.

Initially, Paolo lived in San Francisco but later moved to Redmond, Washington State and grew up there in a humble background.

His father worked as a janitor at schools and his mother used to work as a waitress.

Paolo’s nationality is American and ethnicity is Filipino American.

He has two siblings.

Japanophile-

Paolo studied for a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Computer Science and Business from Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.

While studying there, he got a chance to study a semester in Florence, Italy and he was bitten by the travel bug.

At the time, Paolo was fascinated by Japan’s technology and culture.

So, in his third year at university, he applied for a student exchange program in Japan.

Packing his bags for Japan-

Paolo got accepted into the student exchange program.

A couple of months before his trip to Japan, he was offered an internship by a software company in Santa Monica, California.

For a while, Paolo thought of accepting that offer and making his career and travelling to Japan at a later period of time.

But upon realising that travelling at a younger age would be more fun, he rejected the job offer and packed his bags to travel to Japan.

Blown away-

Paolo arrived in Japan with a savings of $3000. He was blown away by the moment he arrived in the country.

He enrolled into Sophia University in Tokyo.

Paolo lived in a homestay for a year which was very convenient for him.

While studying at the university, he secured a part-time English teaching job and started earning $30 per hour for teaching English to the kids of his family friends.

Later, he switched to another English teaching job and started earning $300 for working a few hours per week.

Making the country his home-

Initially, Paolo arrived in Japan on a one-year student visa. But as he was impressed by the country, he decided to settle there.

He learnt a few Japanese words before arriving in Japan but learnt much of the language by interacting with people in the university and homestay.

Career-

Paolo worked for Safeway, bagging groceries, while in high school.

Initially, in Japan, Paolo searched for job opportunities in magazines and attended a couple of job interviews.

He couldn’t crack the interview for the job of an account manager of a magazine.

Paolo cracked the second interview and in 2003, he started working as an associate engineer at Systemsgo while still studying at the university.

After securing this job, he quit teaching English.

After his first year of university, he was hired full-time at Systemsgo and got sponsored his working visa in Japan.

Paolo worked for this company until 2010 and at the time of resigning, he was working long hours as an IT Project Manager.

He joined TORA in 2010 and served as an IT Project Manager until 2014.

Value of life-

Soon after picking up snowboarding, Paolo fell in love with it.

Unfortunately, he met with a devastating snowboarding accident.

While recovering in the hospital, Paolo realised the value of life and the unpredictability of it.

Prior to this accident, he was working long hours at the job. So, he decided to quit his job and start something on his own.

eikaiwaNOW-

After quitting his job in August 2014, Paolo started eikaiwaNOW in September 2014 with the savings of his job.

eikaiwaNOW was a GPS-based matching app used to help connect English teachers with students.

Eikaiwa in Japanese means English conversation and the word eikaiwaNOW means real-time English conversation.

Paolo’s experiences as an English tutor in Japan helped him start this app.

He started funding eikaiwaNOW all by himself and also hired a small team in Tokyo.

As Paolo needed more capital for marketing the app, he started working as a Senior IT Consultant at Akegata Solutions in December 2014.

He paid the developers of eikaiwaNOW with his salary.

Meeting his future wife-

Paolo met Maiko while working as a consultant.

He hired her as a full-time marketer for eikaiwaNOW. Before that, she worked as a Visual Merchandiser in the fashion industry.

Maiko is Japanese and she lived in the United States for a few years.

Starting Paolo fromTOKYO-

Paolo decided to start his YouTube channel after having a discussion with Maiko.

He started his channel Paolo fromTOKYO, on 23 October 2016, to share his love for Japan and his life experiences.

Paolo was inspired by Casey Neistat back then.

He didn’t have any prior video production experience, the only experience that he had was editing some of his snowboarding GoPro footage.

Paolo used to shoot videos with his iPhone and edit them with iMovie on his Mac. Later, he switched to Final Cut Pro.

He also upgraded to a newer GoPro and later to a Canon EOS 80D.

Succeeding-

Paolo fromTOKYO wasn’t a runaway success.

The channel had only a thousand subscribers in the first six months and only around 7,000 subscribers even after a year.

Paolo fromTOKYO started off as a vlog style channel but later, Paolo changed the content style to informative style videos about Japan. This helped the channel gain more traction.

Fifteen months after launching the channel, Paolo was offered the first sponsored video. It was for a small, handheld gimbal.

This gave him hope that he could earn a full-time income from his channel and motivated him to create better content to keep growing his channel.

Paolo fromTOKYO grew substantially in 2019 and thanks to this, he became a full-time YouTuber.

He quit his consulting job. As eikaiwaNOW wasn’t performing as expected even after investing much money, he closed it in April 2019 to fully focus on his YouTube channel.

As of June 2026, Paolo fromTOKYO has over 3.7 million subscribers.

The primary focus of his channel is Japan but he previously also published videos on Vietnam, Philippines and Thailand.

Maiko helps him out with his YouTube channel as a camerawoman and video editor. She also has a YouTube channel MAIKO | Japan Mom.

Paolo has other channels like Paolo fromTOKYO en Español and Tokyo Zebra.

Personal life-

Paolo and Maiko got married on 11 January 2019.

They have a son, Taiga Wolverine aka Wolfy, born in May 2020.

Paolo is a perfectionist and a morning person.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Paolo de Guzman?

Share with me in the comment section below.

Featured image credit- Paolo de Guzman/Wikimedia Commons