Japan YouTube Channels You Might Have Not Come Across... Yet.

I think a lot of people who are interested in Japanese culture and life in Japan know of the typical channels like Abroad in Japan, ONLY in Japan, Life Where I'm From, TabiEats, Asian Boss, or That Japanese Man Yuta. Only to name a few. There are lots of people out there on Japan YouTube!

I admittedly watch a lot of YouTube. It's kind of my replacement TV. So there's a lot of channels and videos that I come across every single day - whether I like them or not (thanks, youtube algorithm!). And out of the ones I did like, I sometimes come across some really special gems or random cliche in Japan YouTube.

Here are some of my favourites on Japan YouTube lately:

1) Let's Ask Shogo

Recently, I've really been enjoying learning more about Japan from a Japanese person's perspective, and I think this channel is just exactly that. Shogo and his family lives in Kyoto, one of the most culture-rich cities in Japan. He has experience in a lot of Japanese cultural arts, and he likes to talk about them from his perspective.

The format of his videos can be a bit repetitive, but it's very logical and very easy to understand. And he may come off as a bit TOO egotistical and very goal-oriented towards building his youtube audience, but if you can look past that, the contents are all really interesting!

2) Peaceful Cuisine

I admit I actually don't watch this channel much nowadays, but when I sometimes just need an ASMR cooking channel, I really enjoy watching this channel's stuff. They're all very high quality and can be somewhat inspirational if you live in Japan, looking to cook things using local ingredients.

Or, you know.. if you don't like cooking and you just want to watch someone else cook (and be jealous), this channel is great for that too!!

3) SHUNchan

Shun is a Japanese person from Osaka who just likes to talk about life in Japan from a Japanese perspective. He sometimes reacts to other Japanese-related videos too. They're usually quite short, and rather witty! This kind of "I don't take myself seriously" vibe is what I really enjoy when I watch people talk on youtube.

Very relatable! For me, at least. And honestly... if you're going to watch someone talk & crack jokes about Japan, it might as well be from a native, right??

Go check his channel out! :)

4) わんこと車中泊 / Car Traveling With Dog

This channel is about a Japanese woman (from Kansai) travelling around Japan with her Shiba inu, Mugi, in her sleeper van. I watched her a lot pre-COVID19 when she stopped uploading for awhile. She started uploading again when she bought a new van, and started renovating it. I think she started travelling again 5-6 months ago. But I haven't been catching up.

She usually travels out to more secluded areas in Japan, and because she really just lives off her van most of the time, I think her overall risk during the pandemic is quite low. So I do think she is worth supporting.

Even though all her videos are in Japanese, I particularly just love seeing how she travels in a sleeper van with her pet. And how she handles sightseeing when many places don't allow pets. Just her overall lifestyle in a van is interesting for me. The owner spends a lot of time in her van cooking (for her and her dog), chatting and showing local produce she uses to cook. You can tell she really treats her dog well, and her dog is such a sweetheart!

If this is your thing, definitely go check her out!

5) Sambon Juku

This is a Japanese-studying channel. If you're trying to study for JLPT and need more visual explanations, Akki (the host) does a great job explaining grammar points in Japanese and giving examples on how to use the language. Highly recommend!!

He seems to have some podcast-like videos, and other teaching Japanese-related videos too.

6) Tokyo Llama

If you want to see how a foreigner bought an abandoned house, and documenting his renovations along the way, this channel is a great one. His house is still a work in progress, and since he's not really a YouTuber in a traditional sense, you're not going to have a lot of regular videos out from this channel. But still interesting to see and check out!

7) Anna Film Production

This channel has a lot of very high quality location shoots of very specific places. If you enjoy watching "travel" videos without narration or any talking, this channel is for you.

The YouTuber really tries to make her shots artistic, so there's a lot of really beautiful B-rolls (is that what it's called? I don't know) in her videos. It can get a bit repetitive, but she also clearly time stamps her videos... so if you get bored of one spot, you can easily just skip through it. I really enjoy her work!

8) Kuga's Travel

This channel has a lot of videos on transportation. More specifically, he documents a lot of long-haul travels like overnight ships and long-distance trains. If you're interested in those kinds of things, I do highly recommend this.

I know he is still travelling now, but I think it's mostly for work... and he usually focuses on his mode of transport. Since the pandemic, he mostly shows more low-key transport routes and has always kept to himself. So I do believe he is trying to minimize risk as much as he can. Though I cannot know for sure... I would only hope he is!

He also has an English channel here.

Anyway, that's it from me today on this rainy Sunday! I hope you guys have a good rest of your weekend, and let me know what are some of your favourite youtube channels from Japan in the comments or on my twitter account! See you next blog!

Becoming "Tone Deaf" on Social Media

I think many people can agree with me when I say that a pandemic like COVID19 has shown many people's true colours to the world. This could be a family member whom you thought was kind and supportive, but you realized they were selfish and did things for you because they knew they could get something out of it. Or a country that attracts millions of tourists a day due to its beauty and hospitality, in turn, has done absolutely nothing useful to help its people and only creating more xenophobia each and every day...

Or, if you're like me and follow many social media personalities and youtubers, these people seem to be the ones that are showing their truest colours since the pandemic.

I'm sure you have a bunch of shitty YouTubers in mind, but one particular YouTuber I have in mind, is a travel vlogging couple called "Kara & Nate".

I don't suggest you checking them out, since they are a monetized channel... and by searching them up and clicking, you're helping them out. As if me talking about them isn't already giving them enough press/publicity...

Anyway, let me just tell you about them first.

The Beginning

"Kara & Nate" is a couple from America, where they quit their jobs and spent the last 5 years traveling to 100 countries. I know it sounds cliché, but having been a subscriber to them since day one - when they first started this, there actually weren't a lot of vloggers doing this at the time. So at the time when they started, it was a pretty refreshing side of YouTube. They were essentially everyone's couple goals and living the life that everyone wanted to challenge.

I say "challenged" because since they were one of the pioneers of this genre, they really had to use their own money to do this full time. There were no sponsorships. They weren't doing this to promote tourism for any country. Sometimes they would just arrive in a country staying in the cheapest accommodations, and vlogged about why they chose country x over country y because the flight tickets were the cheapest.

This was just a life goal they wanted to accomplish as a couple.

Because of this, their videos in the beginning were just extremely relatable. Everyone can relate to how they needed to take a highway coach bus over a flight because it was way more economical, or how they collected mileage from xyz in order to make ABC flight cheaper. It wasn't about the luxuries of travelling.

"Kara & Nate" were about travelling to make memories, about growth, about life goals and about the experience.

However...

Somewhere before they reached their 100th country, it changed.

When It Changed

The channel was at around its 3rd year at the time, and like any YouTube channel that posts regularly, you steadily gain popularity. They started to catch the attention of more influential people that were able to give them more opportunities. But it wasn't the popularity that changed them.

It was the uncertainty of their endgoal that really changed their channel.

Once their "goal" of traveling to 100 countries end, I think the couple really panicked. After all these years, their goal became their business. They started to really deviate from their relatable content, to more generic travel vlogs. By now, the travel vlogging genre has also started to be more saturated too. There were more and more couples like them, travelling the world - except these couples don't have a goal that binds them. And they can freely take sponsorships, travel freely and continue their youtube channel. They knew their way of making content wasn't sustainable, and I slowly noticed that they were doing more collaborations with official tourism boards and sponsorships.

Which in essence, is really not that huge of an issue from their end. But it was the start of them becoming less and less relatable as people - and as content creators.

You have to remember many of their first subscribers were just average Joes like me, and enjoyed their content not only for travel but also how to genuinely travel affordably. With sponsorships, they now have access to things that average Joes just can't readily get to, and this was the start of this couple's spiral down to tone deafness to their audiences.

To further combat the end of... their endgoal, the couple decided to extend their travelling. Making their initially goal obsolete. I don't know about their other viewers, but for myself, I almost felt a sense of... someone breaking their promise to you?

Of course, I don't think any one of their viewers expected them to really stop travelling. After all, they do genuinely seem to love traveling, learning and experiencing cultures outside of their comfort zone. But 100 countries was their "promise", and just suddenly going HAHA NOPE just really makes you question whether or not these people can be trusted. It's kind of like when you were young, and your mother promised you to go to Disneyland on your 10th birthday but in the end just keeps pushing it forward, hoping that you'd forget. I don't think you'd love your mother any less, but I'm sure it makes you think whether you can really trust her to keep promises in the future.

But anyway, I feel like a lot of their subscribers really swept it under the rug, since it was only logical they'd keep travelling. And they did. They started showing more unique places to stay. They went under a bit more fire when Nate decided to stay in some cabin out in some glacier, and led his wife into some really dangerous situations. It got sorted out as a genuine miscalculation, but left a bit of a sour taste on Nate's selfishness.

All was well... until COVID19 hit.

I have to actually commend them for how they initially handled COVID19 and travel restrictions. They made a swift (but difficult) decision to halt travel, went back home and quarantined.

The rest of the year was honestly uneventful, just like most people's. They bought a van (cliché much? haha), travelled locally, yadda yadda yadda... and then COVID19 in 2021 really clouded their judgment.

Just last week, they posted this video:

When America is still fighting COVID19 and probably still at its highest, this couple decided to fly into Vegas for a trip because their van was broken.

My Issue With Them

I have no problem supporting YouTubers who have a business full-time in travel vlogging, which I know some of you will disagree with. But look, everyone's doing their best to survive. And if their business and income is related to travel vlogging, then I don't think it's fair to tell someone just forget it and do something else completely. Especially since the job market is already in ruins. I sympathize for people who may not want to put themselves in the job market with others, when they already have a career that's dying... but not completely dead.

That said, I think it's fair if you alter the travel content as necessary. And this couple did, for a year. So did many others.

And I have supported them through their alterations. They did so well for a year.

If travel vloggers decide to travel, I think one of the main requirements is for them to show how to SAFELY TRAVEL. Travel vloggers are essentially ambassadors for travel, and they should be held at a high onus to show their audience that no one should be travelling without following safe protocols. If you have close to 2 million subscribers with a brand and a business (like this couple), there's even less of an excuse to just go around and be reckless. You simply don't have that luxury anymore.

Them choosing to just hop on a flight is that recklessness I'm talking about. They've become absolutely "tone deaf" to the audiences around them. They're fixated on their business (of travelling), showing their privileged lifestyle and completely ignoring that their own country has some of the highest cases of COVID19.

And you know what? I'm not angry they travelled. I'm angry they travelled within a country with high COVID19 cases without even do much as quarantining, taking PCR tests to confirm they're negative. Literally just hopped on and off they went!

And as I am writing this... they just posted a new video of them playing laser tag on an airplane.

Sigh.

I'm writing this blog post mostly for myself, because even if I have just a measly 10 people reading my blog on the daily, I want to remind myself that I don't ever, ever want to be this tone deaf to my own privileges and tone deaf to the world.

Lastly... Good luck to this couple, I truly don't have any ill intentions. I just sincerely hope they don't kill any innocent people they interact with along the way.

I wish them well.

Where to Shop for Work Clothes in Japan (for the Ladies!)

As someone who likes affordable and decently up-to-date fashion, I always default my choices to UNIQLO or GU. For most people, both of these stores are readily available at their local malls - whether you're in a big city, or in a small town. And they have a good variety of sizes, even for those who are not "slim" to Japanese standards.

Unfortunately... Japan is very "one-dimensional" when it comes to sizes. Those who are larger... yes, I am sorry but this list will probably not be so helpful for you, as that's just the reality of clothing in Japan. I wish I could change that. And there are some options, such as Shimamura. However, I just want to make it clear that this list will mostly be for those who aren't blessed with too many curves and awesomeness.

I'll try to include online shops if they are available, but most of these shops will probably be available to some degree in a tourist area, an outlet mall or a decently-sized mall.

1) earth, music & ecology

This is one of my personal favourite Japanese clothing. I like the pastel colours they have in their collections, which is quite cute for both casual and semi-casual for work. I recommend this shop for those of you who, like me, have issues getting more colours into their wardrobes (black clothes ftw!). I think pastel is a good segue into more colours.

They also have some really nice anime collabs from time to time, and I recommend those of you who like anime to keep an eye on their stocks every once in awhile!

2) INGNI

I like this shop a lot because they're quite affordable, and they have options for work and casual wear. Their clothes are also leaning more towards the cute side, but they sometimes do have sexier styles for ladies looking for date clothes and what not. I enjoy the look of their clothes, and very easy to pair with other neutral colours.

3) Honeys

I've recently really started to like Honeys a lot. Their stores tend to carry a lot of different stocks and different designs for similar items, so I feel like there's always something for everyone. The items are usually quite fashionable, and also work-friendly too.

The problem for me when I'm usually at a physical Honeys store is that I get extremely indecisive about which design I want on the blouse I want to buy, and I spend almost way too long at the store... which I guess is a good shopper's tactic? XD

4) Global Work

Global Work is one of those places where I wouldn't say it's cheap, but if you need something strictly for work, it wouldn't be too hard to pick out a set of work-ready clothing in the shortest amount of time. This shop is geared towards office-style clothes, and they have a decent selection for both men and women. I wouldn't say good as it lacks variety, but like I said... if you hate shopping, and you just need something quick, this place's got your back.

Global Work is part of the subsidiary with LOWRY FARMS and niko and... which are popular semi-casual fashion brands here in Japan. They all kind of sell similar things (at least to me), so in most cases it comes down to price and quality (which... idk, is similar to me as well unless things go on sale).

5) Right On

This store actually is more for men and carries more casual & streetwear. They also carry some western brands as resellers like Lacoste and Levis, but sometimes you can find some seasonal clothing that are both good for work and casual outings.

For me, this store has that western vibe and western fit, but with a more Japanese twist? I like how their clothing are mostly made for comfort, and loose - but also fashionable. Work clothes tend to be more about the tight fit, but if you work at a school like me and you can afford to be a bit more casual with clothes, I definitely recommend checking Right On out.

A couple years ago, I bought these thick black winter pants that look like jeans (they're not). They were extremely fluffy, comfortable and warm on the inside. It tucked well into my boots and weren't tight - which was great. I've since lost these pants (I think I might have discarded them by accident), but I still think about them a lot...

6) AZUL BY MOUSSY

This store carries more "cool" and "hip" styles compared to the ones on the top of the list, though a lot of the clothing varieties aren't all that different from the rest. I particularly like getting neutral-coloured tops and knits from this shop when things go on sale. They have some very comfortable styles that are easy to match.

When their items are not on sale, they can be on the pricier side - but still relatively affordable. I generally like their material and quality too, so even if the price is slightly higher, their products do last a bit longer than getting something similar at GU or UNIQLO.

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To be fair, in Japan... there's a lot of clothing stores that stock on very similar items, but then it really comes down to how much you're willing to pay, the quality and a few difference in details. Like the neckline, range of colours, decorative pieces, belts, etc... However, I think all the places I listed are definitely affordable and slightly more trendy than something from GU or UNIQLO.

In terms of quality, I feel like cheap stores like INGNI definitely lack that. For the other stores, there's a lot of hit and misses. Some have lasted me for at least 2 years and up, while others from the same store just don't seem to last at all.

Definitely go into the stores yourself and have a look (after this pandemic is over, of course - not now!). I hope this helps some of you expand your shopping choices a bit more.