Reacting to My FIRST EVER Youtube Video from 10 YEARS Ago

make a video wrapped into our first ever youtube video that you uploaded on youtube ever in the world oh god you know how i feel about reaction videos let alone reacting to myself all right just this one time because it's christmas okay but never ever again god forbid reaction videos where's the pork gone [Music] and welcome back to the abroad japan ramen shop where dreams come true unless you dream too big icarus now i don't really like reaction videos and i've only done one ever i think when i brought in japan and that was this year in january when i made a video reacting to about 500 japanese youtubers reacting to me as i in turn reacted to japan it was a really great video quality content and i'm really glad that i made that one but i get this request a lot to go back and revisit my first ever youtube video and it could be fun now given ten years have passed almost it's about nine and a half years so let's go and do it let's collectively cringe at the first ever abroad japan video that kicked off this decade long journey and along the way i'll talk about how i found it living alone in that tiny apartment now because it was 2012 uh the video quality isn't overly great it was shot in 720p joke resolution what a loser 720p it's not even full hd but using modern technology and miracle cgi wonder trickery actually upscaled that 720p video into 4k and the results are surprisingly impressive this is the first time i've ever upscaled and remastered an original video into 4k uh it's a shame it's the worst video ever made and to make things fun every time i cringe at myself in the video i'm going to take a shot of my least favorite drink one cup sake why not join in at home you don't have to drink something alcoholic i don't want lots of people to die watching this video that wouldn't be fun for anyone oh god instant regret instant regret indeed so to set the scene this video came out in august 2012 and i posted it on august 15th by that point i'd been living in japan almost exactly two weeks i was still very much confused disorientated probably a little bit jet lagged as well and just the opening frame of this video with my stupid greasy strawberry face is enough to make me feel embarrassed so i'm going to take a shot and let's begin every morning generally without fail i get woken up by a hawk at least i think it's a hawk i don't know a lot about uh birds and i don't really care for birds much but this hawk means i no longer need to use my alarm clock um so i'm saving electricity so in essence the hawk has actually lowered my cost of living and it's innovations like that in japan that you just look at and go why don't we do that in england um and they want to start you know the honest answer i don't know i don't know why we don't do it in england yeah i still agree with that to be honest um the hawk was there pretty much my entire first year and then one day it was gone just disappeared and i never saw it again what i'll say about this is first things first the composition of the shot is shocking honestly it looks like i've been rolling around in a bucket of grease but to be fair it was the height of summer and i hadn't learned the golden rule at this point which is that you should always shoot your videos at a slightly elevated angle because it's more flattering for your face right i remember when i made this video though i didn't really know who i was making it for i i think maybe my family and friends back home the idea was to like just chronicle my life in japan and just be like look how cool japan is woo no i didn't think it would ever become something bigger than that i never thought that it would blow up into something else okay this is sad right this is a shot of tokyo this was actually just after i'd landed and i was on the bus going from nary to airport into central tokyo i was blown away by the scale of tokyo and just how damn big it is you know it makes london look like someone's back garden this is really sad in the video i had a really cool song here the tsukiyaki song a really beautiful japanese song and for the first year or so i had no problems using this song and then one day i got a copyright strike and the video actually got completely delisted from youtube for a few years before they allowed it back on but they removed the song and replaced it with whatever this is and you can't hear me speaking because because it got [ __ ] up that's such a shame you know what i'm saying but it's probably something really clever i live in is surrounded by sea on one side we've got the sea of japan uh and on the other side we've got a ton of mountains which look beautiful amazing one in particular dominates the skyline it's called mount chokai and it has been called mount fuji my uh my bad pronunciation there it's actually called mount chalkai first time in japan didn't really speak japanese pronunciation wasn't very good chocolate mount chokai sounds like a chocolate dessert um beautiful mountain mate honestly i was really excited to move somewhere where there was just a mountain on my doorstep and what a beautiful mountain it is it's one of the tallest in north japan 2200 meters i'm still so learning japanese also notice my voice is like it's a bit more kind of what i sounded like before i came to japan so it can take 40 minutes and i sounded more like this oh i'm in japan oh now we've moved to a better camera angle but again i'm slumped in the chair in a horribly unflattering green top like looking at how i'm sitting and looking at how this is framed you can tell i never thought anyone was gonna watch this video oh good [ __ ] i'm still learning japanese so i can't actually read a lot which makes the smallest things pretty difficult like microwaving a pizza it can take 40 minutes just to work it really did wait a minute you can actually hear the music underneath playing you can hear the song it didn't learn that's the song that i got [ __ ] earlier on i guess because i'm talking over it it's fine never by the way never use any copyrighted stuff from japan whether it's a song whether it's anime they take it very seriously here and you will be destroyed it's not fun like other songs i've used copyrighted songs quite a lot over the years i don't do it now but youtube usually just lets you keep the song but they take the ad revenue for japanese songs though they just take your whole video off so don't do it be careful it's really sad having a video of yours removed right i've seen two fireworks displays whilst being here and they are ridiculously big um i look like i'm just falling asleep as i'm talking uh uh uh ridiculously big these fireworks display [ __ ] hell where's the energy where's where's the enthusiasm it's a pretty big experience um but pretty cool are they going for about japan does a good fireworks display like the best i've ever seen [Music] but yes copyrighted song there from um the good the bad the ugly didn't get buggered for that weird just things just don't make sense on youtube the small things that make japan interesting like this apartment or flower beds or whatever you want to call it uh it's an apartment it's called an apartment you [ __ ] oh i hate myself i actually hate myself take a shot i remember this apartment really well so i actually liked it despite its size and limitations as well as we'll see but it cost i think about 120 dollars a month because it was government subsidised accommodation some other teachers though in my town in sakato yamagata were really unlucky one colleague of mine got put in a house and she had to pay 600 700 a month just because she got unlucky getting sort of assigned to that house so it's a really weird system but i one that i benefited from one i was very lucky to have okay so this is my sink area and kitchen area as you can see there's absolutely no room for cooking or preparing anything which means i have to go out and eat every night that's just the way it is because i can't kill point to add the kitchen was like really bad um there was it was really hard cooking that kitchen and in subsequent videos after this i often had like an ironing board in shot right you can see behind the kitchen some shots i've just got an ironing board i never ironed anything on that board in in the three years that i lived here but i certainly cooked a lot of food on it and it got very dirty and very stained for the course of those three years but but it's a sad day when you need to use an ironing board as like valuable kitchen space okay this is the shower room uh i don't know if that is a bathtub or just something he's standing if it's a bath then i don't know how i'd fit in it i don't really know what this is either but you can do this it is a bath and i did fit in it even if it was a squeeze to be honest um the bath was actually quite nice because the baths are they're really deep while you have to sort of curl up into a ball to sit in it the water goes up really high so you can really submerse yourself beneath the water and i have a lot of fond memories in that bath in the winter months it got really cold and after work every day i would just sit in the bathroom a few hours and uh just watch some anime the first thing i watched while sitting in this bath was the series great teacher onizuka gta and uh the theme song for that driver's high was done by hyde from larkinceal so it's kind of crazy looking at that and thinking i used to sit in that bath watching that show if only i'd known then i'd actually meet the man that wrote the song very weird i don't really know what this is either but you can do this and then you can you can do that as well so that's pretty good um there's the so that the thing is for uh keeping the water hot if you've got multiple people using the bath right in japan you wash yourself with the shower so you clean yourself then you get in the bath and relax get out and then the next person can get in and use the water it's supposed to be clean but you use that to keep the water hot and it's not just some random thing there but i can understand why i didn't know what the hell it was at the time okay so here is the toilet i love this is such a clever toilet though not in the sense that it's electronic i love japanese toilets but this thing here god i hate my voice when you flush the toilet it refills this bit up from a sink that you can wash your hands in so you go to the toilet flush that and then look oh you can wash your hands you've got about 30 seconds to wash your hands so how clever is that so that's really recycling water and it just gets me excited every time such a simple little thing that's so clever to be fair it's pretty clever if that doesn't excite you nothing will i love just how unenthusiastic i am about everything this if that wasn't exciting ain't nothing well i'd like to think i sound better than that now please please back me up there so yeah uh pretty good first room quite spacious in terms of just being able to do everyday stuff but let's go and check out the room that we've all been waiting for here it is my main room uh as you can see it's a reasonable size especially for one person uh it's got a really cool sofa i've never sat on it once because i love this chair too too much uh i love that chair so i can sit there and watch amazing japanese just sounds like i'm about to fall asleep so this is my first ever place living alone at university i live with a few friends here i was alone and it's a really strange thing living alone i remember i'd get home from work like four or five pm i'd eat something usually some chicken and sit down on the sofa and i'll just fall asleep and for the first time in my life and this is a weird thing i had nobody there to wake me up you know growing up i had my family i lived at the house and then at university my friends would always be loud and annoying and here i was just i was just asleep and nobody would wake me up and i remember just waking up like two hours later on the sofa and being like oh i'm i'm alone and it was the first few times happened i felt really sad about that and uh you know living alone i grew to love it but early on in the first year i did find it a little bit tough and uh if you ever get home sick or lonely my advice is just put on something that makes you laugh like a comedy show from you know from back home um in my case i watch shows like blackadder or only falls and horses british sitcom stuff that i used to love and that would keep me happy and take my mind off of the existential crisis i was having on almost daily basis [Music] if you do have a japanese tv you have to pay the nhk like license fee the tv license fee and one time basically if it happens you get a knock at your door and someone will be like nhk and then you the trick is just don't don't ever answer the door you have to hide that's what everyone does nobody wants to deal with these people but nobody told me that so the first time it happened i let the guy in and he must have been in my apartment for one hour trying to sell me some sort of package and then it turned out i already had one and he got a bit angry and left so here jake was on him okay so this is a traditional uh japanese kind of eating table i don't ding table eating table underneath it's got a heater so in the winter when you sit here with your legs underneath the table you can keep warm because typically japanese accommodation and houses aren't that well insulated against the cold and it gets pretty cold here over here the kotatsu is an ingenious thing you sort of go under it and you have a blanket that goes in the table and sort of goes over you and keeps you warm winter incredible thing never used it once in that apartment never used it once until uh over here got quite a lot of space for putting i still remember i still remember what that cupboard felt like pulling it how it felt because i had to do it every single day um because as you would have seen there's no bed in the apartment i have to roll out a futon so every morning when i got up for work i would roll it away stick it in the cupboard and then when i got home from work after dinner around 9 00 pm i would unroll it put the duvet down put the pillows down it was a really strange existence but i didn't mind it i kind of liked using the space in a clever way a lot of people i knew didn't bother to put their futon away and their apartments were just [ __ ] credit where it's due i did keep this apartment tidy you had to given how damn small it was wardrobe um pretty colorful i don't know where that pink shirt went i don't i don't think i ever wore that once and people say i don't have enough drip look at that that's a pink shirt though there's a cool you know it's more drip than the river thames good enough don't wait when i think it's in the bin this is a bit odd i've got a mirror here fair enough uh but there it seems to be some sort of outline a female outline that's been stuck on with tissue paper and i don't know why it's even more worrying knowing that my predecessor was in fact a guy as well so i don't know what he was doing at all right so the person that lived in the apartment before me i later discovered that uh a bit of a troublemaker and they caused a lot of problems for my school for my colleagues just for everyone in the community and he sold me a lot of stuff in the apartment at a high rate like higher than it should have been um and was a little bit of a dick to be fair he did have good taste because the entire apartment was kitted out by him and i didn't change anything i don't know to this day what the actual [ __ ] the tissue paper on the mirror was all about uh it was very bizarre um so if you if you have any guesses let me know because i still haven't worked out after nine years what that was for and why the [ __ ] you did it okay so these are japanese sliding doors also known as shoji um because they slide they don't take up that much room so they're quite clever and they learn light this makes the room really nice so you can keep them shut and keep the room cool this is my this is my uh balcony it looks just terrible um but another way when you open the door just the sound of the cicadas just gets very very loud like in summer in japan from like july to august it just it's just deafening like you can't sleep you think the hawks are bad get ready for the cicadas but i was rewarded with my balcony with two of the most rusted chairs i've ever seen they were so horrible i don't know what i did with them i think i kept them and just left them in the side but i did decorate the balcony i did put some effort in i got some fake grass and a table it was lovely never sat out there once it's just too hot or too cold so just come sit out here and relax um me and my neighbours drink um a lot of water water uh of course comes in cans in japan so yeah um but yeah we sit here it does it's lovely and here's my pretty not great view but uh does the job can sit out here and drink water and that's my air conditioning unit as well great a lot of water drank a lot of water back then and i yeah i still do this is the main room um very nice and it's got some sort of rug which is always good it's just a rug why do i complicate everything it's just a rug it can just why can't it just be a run surprise it's a futon i roll out every night uh put it away every morning it's a bit of effort but you know it's not a problem and it's very comfortable um lovely to sleep on it's the biggest bed i've ever had this is like a double bed almost and it's very comfortable and pretty good so let's have a look wow such great special effects on the brawn japan shell um yeah pretty comfortable love it [Music] so yeah i mean the bed was quite big it was it was a big almost like double sized bed to be fair and uh it was very strange sleeping on the floor for three years but i think it really helped my back in a weird kind of way i always slept very well on that futon i don't know if it was the more because of the space or you just know you're never gonna fall out of bed when you sleep on the floor like that the whole floor of the room just feels like an extension of your bed and that is my favorite thing about sleeping on a feet on honestly the only downside was just putting it away and getting it out every single day if you could avoid doing that then it'd be perfect the perfect way to sleep sorry otherwise at this point i've just like forgotten there's a camera there and i'm just like kneeling on my bed complaining about things um presentation skills sorely lacking honestly i did like living in this apartment quite a lot um early on it felt like i was living like this movie lifestyle this adventure right that's not a normal place to go and live and uh sleeping on the floor doors that go like this a hawk you know i felt like i was living in a movie or something and i really did kind of enjoy it like i didn't need an apartment that was bigger than that and it made me think very carefully about the things i was going to buy and what i was going to put in the apartment and ultimately i didn't really buy anything because i knew that it was going to be a temporary thing and also you have to be really mindful when you live in a space that big because because you can just fill it up so damn quickly and so easily and effortlessly okay so that's my apartment uh pretty good value for money um less than 100 pounds a month so for the size i think it's great and it's perfect for living alone yeah again i actually like living alone but not really then it was a bit weird still i was a little bit chubby when i started out doing youtube and that was because i was quite stressed and anxious moving to japan so i used to eat a ton of really unhealthy food and i couldn't cook like when i came to japan i couldn't cook anything and i did teach myself in time to cook complex dishes like an omelette and uh chicken breast yeah so hopefully i'll put up some more videos um of japan and the area itself it's a man of my word i did loads to see and talk about and stuff uh if you have any questions ask away but sensible questions not not stupid questions um so yeah great see you later thanks what did i do there i just hit my head cuz i hit my head on something [Music] most awkward ending to a video ever and there's the song the copyright song again this makes no sense i hope this video doesn't get copyrighted though very anticlimactic video the sort of obligatory my japanese apartment video that everyone does when they come to japan but yeah i mean it was a pretty pretty rubbish video when all is said and done um in terms of good and bad i'd say good the video clearly some editing effort had gone into it um there was like a story there the bad was the presentation skills the composition of the shots the sound design pretty much just everything which is pretty [ __ ] to be honest it would be pretty cool to go back in time to meet that guy because i don't really see it as myself i've been such a weird 10 years that i feel very different now to who i was then but i'd love to go back and tell him you know one day you'll be in your own ramen shop alone getting drunk on one kapsake and uh not really sure how i would have taken that to be honest in many ways i i don't like that video the first real video that i was proud of on abroad in japan was the second video i made and i'm not going to react to that now but that one i'd learned a lot from doing this video and i took that knowledge through and made that video and it was a lot more sort of well edited and produced and presented but as i said i i didn't really think this would lead anywhere and for the first year that this video was up i think it had a thousand views um it's incredible now to see 762 000 people have watched it if i had known that that many people would watch it i would have put in a lot more effort to be fair but thank you for watching guys and for joining me on the fourth day of vlogmas sorry that the one cup sake is really kicking in i'll be back in the next couple of days still over again but for now no matter where you might be out in the big wide world i'll see you later back to my delicious bowl of ramen and my tasty pork yeah [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Chris Abroad

Views: 453,243

Keywords: japan travel, living in japan, japanese food, life in japan, abroad in japan, chris abroad, trash taste

Id: ljYnbH9s1Zo

Length: 23min 9sec (1389 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 09 2021