The #1 Drifting YouTuber in Japan (ft. Noriyaro) | Trash Taste #27

- Drift people, their thing is stickers. Unfortunately, one of them I stuck on, I didn't read what it said and it said (speaking in foreign language) or something like that, like... - Oh my God. (laughing) - Can you translate that first, Joey? (upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to another episode of Trash Taste. I am your host for today, the host zone, 'cause, well, I'll get to that because with me today is again, the boys. And once again, (Joey laughing) I have another guest with me. (chuckles) - We should just like preface that like every time Garnt's a host, just prepare for a guest. At this point. (Garnt laughing) - Oh my God. So do you want to introduce yourself to the lovely viewers? - Okay. Hello, my name is Alexi Smith, from the YouTube channel Noriyaro. - Ooh, nice. (all clapping) - He's the drift guy. - Yeah. - Yes. - I'm well, one of the drift guys. I thought I'd reach out to you after your recent video and- - Thank you. - Yeah. - So for anyone who doesn't know what you do, do you want to introduce your channel and kind of what you do on your channel? - Okay, well, it's basically about car culture and drifting in Japan. People know "Tokyo Drift" and stuff like that, but "Initial D" are the two main things. - [Garnt] Right. - Cars are popular all over the world and Japanese cars are popular everywhere, and this is where they're from and I enjoy them, so I came here to do it. - Nice, nice. - I think, because you reached out to us, I think like a month ago or something. - Yeah. Well, you obviously, 'cause now the huge caliber guests that you could actually get on this show aren't available, I guess, 'cause they can't come from overseas. - Yeah. - So I thought okay, well, I'm here, I might as well reach out, 'cause you know- - Now's my time. - This is my one chance to do this. Because I know about cars, which you've done a little bit of, and also this sort of culture and so I really enjoyed Anime and- - Not gonna lie, when you did reach out to us like, I think, 'cause we saw your Twitter post, I think what was it, like maybe a week? - It was. So we recorded our drift video in the middle of the week, I believe. - [Joey] Yeah. - And then you were the weekend right after we recorded, and we were like, God damn it man. We were just there like a week ago. - We were like shit, man. I feel so bad. - And I felt bad, I knew as soon as we saw that Twitter and we were having this video in production that like the top, some of the top comments would be, "Why didn't you invite Noriyaro?" - "How dare, you did not get Noriyaro in this video?" It was the one opportunity and you messed it up. - Well, here you go guys, here you go, he's- - Look, I knew that we have a lot of crossover with our viewers and I knew that at least a lot of them would enjoy that, and it could add something extra to the content that you already did so that's why I reached out. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Perfect. - Yeah. Well, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. - Thank you for having me, it's great. - And we now have an actual, like someone experienced in drifting, rather than just three idiots who are trying to drive manual for the first time, well, two of us trying to drive manual and- - I would like to set the story straight, gentlemen. - [Joey] Go on. - All the comments clowned on me, said that I broke two cars and we have a guest here, who is an expert and actually you know the guy, right? What was his name? 'Cause we didn't actually get it. - Oh, you didn't actually, okay, so the guy that took you for a ride in the big orange car with carbon fiber helmet- - The Drift King. - The Drift, well, The Drift King. His name is Naoto Suenaga and he's one of the two members of, well, one of a few members of Team Orange, which is why the car was orange. - [All] Right, right. - Team Orange is the team, which is based at Ebisu Circuit. The leader of the team is also the manager of the circuit as well. And Naoto Suenaga is one of the drivers for competition, and also there's another guy who drives with him as well. And they're both doing I think, the two Team Orange drivers, one of them is currently in first place in the National Drifting Competition, and I think Suenaga's about fifth. So you were with one of the best drivers. - [Joey] Yeah, because- - Arguably in the world. - Yeah, 'cause I remember we got a lot of comments on that video being like, "Do they not realize who the Drift King actually is?" (Garnt laughs) - No, it was two comments. It was like, "Do they not realize the cars they are drifting in as well?" Which were apparently some various special cars. We knew nothing going into this. - We were like, "I'll get the one with the spoiler, please." (laughing) All the car enthusiasts just like. - Anyway, so the guy you got, Naoto, he's a really cool guy. You noticed that he was like laughing and smiling. - [All] Yeah. - He's actually like that all the time, whenever he's drifting. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - He's actually one of the videos on my channel, it's called a high-speed violent drift. (all laughing) Which is based around entirely his driving. - I mean, that's the best way to explain what we went through. - He's very violent. - He's very quick, he's very good. It's like watching Bruce Lee, like, you know what I'm saying. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was nuts. - And you told me that you were texting him right? - Just before, yeah. - Right, right, right. - And you asked him what I'd done to the cars? - Yeah. - Do you want to explain to the audience so I can be cleansed of my sins? - You can be vindicated of... Okay, so breaking a car in drifting is not uncommon. It's obviously- - That's what I figured, right? - Yeah. - It felt pretty easy to fuck up a car. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, doing what you do in a drift car is almost the exact opposite of what people tell you to do to a car to begin with. And I think what happened with you was with the first car, which was an R33 Skyline- - Is that special? - Well, I mean, look, all the cars that you drove are not available, in any other country, apart from Japan. - Okay. - Ohm, wow. - Originally being sold- - Yeah, I saw a lot of comments that were jealous that we were able to drive these cars, and I didn't know what was so special about them as well. - Well, the Skyline, I mean, people know the Skyline, the Skyline GT-R, it's like sort of the apex Japanese sports car that people want to get. So there's that. You didn't have the GT-R, you had the GTST. It's like one step down, but it's rear-wheel drive, that's why. The other cars that you drove, they were both JZX90 Mark II and JZX100 Mark II. - Right. (Garnt laughing) - That's okay, sorry. - That's all right, some people know what I'm talking about. So what makes those cars special is the fact that they're turbo rear-wheel drive, which means the rear wheels spin instead of the front wheels. It's good for drifting. And those cars have become very popular recently, especially overseas because like I said, they weren't sold overseas, but in countries like America, they can import cars that are over 25 years old. And those cars are just coming up to 25 years old now. So everyone's like, "Oh, I want to get one of these." You noticed that the Toyotas were the last to break. - Right. - The Nissan broke first. Toyotas, anyone who's driven a Camry or anything like that, will know they just last forever. So they're popular. People are looking forward to getting them, so that's sort of why people were hyped. I actually drive on the same as the, who drove the white car? That was you. - I drove. - My drift car is the same as that. - The one that didn't break. - Yeah, the one that lasted. - The only one that lasted. - What was the diagnosis to the cars that I drove? - Suenaga said that you probably broke a coil pack, which is, it's like part of the electronics on this, which is what they said, battery, right? - Oh. - It's part of the electronics. It sits on the engine and makes the spark that burns the fuel. - Yeah. - Right, right. - So normally when you drive a car you're driving forward and you're not doing burnouts and spinning the wheels and stopping, making a lot of heat and stuff like that. So that day was very hot, you probably overheated the coil pack. So it sits on top of the engine, which is hot, and- - Okay, obviously I'm liking the sound of this. (Garnt laughing) - It just got to be too hot and had to take a lie down for a while. - So nothing serious. - Nothing serious though. - See, I thought I fucked the clutch or something, but I don't know if that's the thing- - It sounded like it. It made like the worst sound I'd ever heard, it was like (imitating car). - Those cars make weird noises all the time. (laughing) - That's true, yeah. - Honestly, the first time, if you drive, like if I jump in someone else's drift car and like, just even drive it around, you have to spend the first five minutes going, "Okay, that's a normal noise. That's a normal noise." (all laughing) - Figuring out which noises are okay. - Usually the way it works is, if something smells different or sounds dramatically different then you probably have a problem after that. - All right, that makes sense. - Yeah. - 'Cause I remember when we first got into the cars for the first time, I mean, they were stripped bare. I'd never been in a car like that that was just specifically designed for one purpose, and that was for drifting, you know? And it felt like when I was turning on the engine, it was like coughing. It was like (coughing). And I was like, is this normal? But it sounded like and it felt like these cars had gone through a hell of a beating, which is what I guess they're designed for. - They're for the school, for the Team Orange school, which is what you did, I've actually been, in the past, been an assistant teacher, like a translator for like the- - English? - Yeah, in English for some of the higher level. - Oh, wow. - This is a while ago though. We had a guy who was like an investment banker for Barclays Bank or something like that. He had Ferrari's back home in England and before he was being sent back home, back to his home office from the Japan office, he'd been asked by his secretary, "Is there anything you'd like to do before, something we'd like to do?" He said, "Oh, I'd like to try drifting." So they set all this up and they sent him there on the train, I had to go pick him up. - A lot of money. - Yeah, I was like, "Oh, this is like super high level guests." And he thoroughly enjoyed it. So, we have all sorts of people. And so those cars have been through a lot of- - I'd figured that those cars were, they were a car, but I just assumed they were all bits and pieces that have been repaired and repaired and repaired, right? Can you even call it the car at that point, right? Isn't that like a philosophy question where it's like- - The farmer's ax or the ship of Theseus? - Yeah, the ship of Theseus, right. - I mean, I've seen, at least the Skyline, I've seen it personally go through two clutches before. - I mean, when they even opened the thing, all of the parts look like completely different ages. Yeah, it looked like a timeline. - It looked like a Lego, like thing that your five year old makes out with a bucket of Legos when none of the pieces fit together. It's like, I mean, it's a piece of work, I guess. - Yeah. - Yeah. I mean, those cars are all, unfortunately, all the best drift cars are starting to get quite old. They're all from like 20, 30 years ago. And you have to start taking your, you'll have like some people will buy, if they have space, who'll buy like two or three of these cars, you have them at the back, something breaks, you take a part or you smash it, you cut off the metal and weld it onto the car and fix it. So, yeah, they're all like that. It's unique. You can't love a drift car. You can love like the, you can have like, this is kind of esoteric, but a drift car will have its own spirit. - Right. - But it's not related to the body of the car itself. - The ghost of the drift. (laughing) - Yeah, you might have to change the engine, you have to change the- - Right. - It's basically all parts getting changed. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And so that's one car that I fucked, but it wasn't my fault in the end. Thank you, thank you. Now, the second car. What was the second car? - My car. - He didn't get back to me about that one so I don't know. - So you probably did fuck that car. - You still fucked my car up. - But you gave me a theory off the podcast saying that he reckons it's all the stalling that somebody did to it, that might've fucked it. - So on-- (Connor laughing) - Please tell, please tell, I'm- - Please, I beg of you. (laughs) - So I'm assuming that you edited out most of the stalling you did, it's like there's a lot more than what actually- - Yes. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I stalled a lot in that video, but that was probably maybe like a third of the amount that I actually stalled. - We could probably make like an hour special, just on Joey's stalling by himself. But to explain to our audio-only listeners that probably didn't see the drifting videos, so we made a drift special, where- - You should definitely go watch. - You should definitely go watch. Get off whatever platform you are. Go on YouTube. - Get on YouTube. - And yeah, we made a drift special where we try to learn drifting for the first time ever, basically. This was our first- - Yes, tried like underline, bold letters try. - [Garnt] Yeah. - And I didn't break two cars. - [Garnt And Joey] You absolutely broke two cars. - But I guess for our listeners, who know nothing about drifting, know nothing about car culture, do you want to explain like what drift culture is, especially in Japan, in like layman's terms? - Okay well, drifting is, if you've never done it before, is like most people who've driven a car, well, these days cars have a lot of safety features on them. They have antilock brakes and stability control and all this sort of stuff which sort of protects you a little bit from making too much of a mistake. But everybody who has lived somewhere where it rains a lot, or it snows or something like that, has had a moment where you've gone around a corner or like a roundabout or something, where the car has just sort of going like this or like that. And you're like ah! You get that crunch in your stomach. You're like, ah, that's not right! - Yeah. - That's the feeling we're going for the whole time. (all laughing) The feeling of like the out of, I mean, I think they said that in "Tokyo Drift", it's like you gotta be out of control to be in control, whatever. (Garnt laughing) - Damn. - It's that feeling of being on the edge. It's like surfing or skiing. It's like you're not gripping what you're on, you're sliding across it and it's that being on the razor edge of that slide, which is just so much fun. Not everybody thinks it's fun. Some people do. The same thing, some people love surfing, some people love skiing or ice skating or whatever. Any of those sorts of things where it's like something to do with that. You can enjoy it, like that's not for me. But then some people just get a massive rush and that feeling. - It was so fun. - Yeah, it was a lot of fun. - Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I remember experiencing the drift taxi for the first time. I remember having the conversation with Joey, which we didn't record, but Joey was telling me how it felt like the afterglow after sex is what you described it as. - I was metaphorically rock-hard. I was like, damn dude, that's fucking awesome. - I was like damn, how am I ever gonna get an erection again after experiencing that? (laughing) - Some of the most chill I've ever been in my life is driving back from a track day- - Which was so nice. - At like nine o'clock at night, I'm on the expressway, just cruising along, going back home, It's like a cool breeze and it's just like. - Yeah, every single organ in your body, which can release some sort of chemical, enjoyment chemical- - It's just like ah! - It does that, it honestly does that. I've had times when I first moved here and I remember I bought the car, got the stuff, finally got to track day and this one particular corner, I hit it, it was a big long, third gear corner, and I literally yelled out, "This is why I came to Japan!" (all laughing) It was that feeling, it was like, I was looking for that. - Yeah. He found his life purpose going around a corner. - Yeah, it's just really enjoyable. - One thing I wondered when I was doing it, I was like how the fuck do you get into this? - That's what I was gonna ask as well. - You know like you said, like skiing and stuff like that, even that is like, I think a lot of people think skiing is kind of hard to get into, and snowboarding. It's not really, you just go to a mountain, you do the week long- - You just try it out. - And you get into it, right? It's not that difficult. But with drifting, it seems like there's a lot more commitment and also it's just way harder to get into 'cause when we tried to do the drifting video, they initially wanted us to buy a car. We were like, "Well, the fuck are we gonna do with the car after we're done?" Right? They were like, "We can sell it back." I'm like, "I don't wanna fucking go through that." That sounds like a pain, but you know, even you can rent skis, you can rent snowboards. How do you take that first leap to getting into drifting? And also, especially if you have no background, because those people at the track, are like the kids who've worked there, I mean they were like 17 teaching us, which is insane but, they'd obviously grown up with it. But how does someone who came from investment banking, get into, obviously he has so much money but- - Which is one of the things you'll probably need is money, which is the biggest thing I just found out. - I didn't notice that. - Even just one day of drifting for us where some of us barely learned anything, I feel, still cost a lot of money. - Yeah. - So how do you get into it? How do you take that original leap and how do you know you wanna do it? - The pattern most people take, I mean, when I started at least, is you start with your daily driver, you have some sort of car which can drift and you just try and make sure it doesn't break too much. - Okay. - I mean, let's be frank. Most people start off on the street, some quiet street somewhere. I mean, that's what most- - Like a parking lot or something? - Like a parking lot or in the case of Australia, like an industrial area or like some sort of mountain road, so like a windy road somewhere, where you just go, you'll sit there for a few minutes and okay, there's no one coming up behind me. There's no traffic, okay, let's go. And you do a little lap or something or you go with friends and spotters and things like that. So there's that. The best way is to go to a circuit. What got me, when I started to understand the feeling was I had an RX7 back when I was like 18, I'd go to the track and drive around. It was all very like, oh yes, you know, grip driving and getting good times and breaking points and clipping points and this sort of stuff. I'm like this is kind of boring. It's just kinda like doing the same thing again and again. But then I'd come in a bit too hot and break too late and the back of the car would sort of step out like, "Oh, yes. Dude, that was sick. I'll do that again." Try and like come out of the corner, if you come out of a corner, you press the accelerator really hard, I mean, look, it's like video games do the same thing. Mario Kart, whatever. (all laughing) It's like you do something and the back of the car slides out. And I'd do that, but then you have the flag masters like, "Don't drift, that's da, da." And they get all annoyed at you. So we started a little club in Australia, in Sydney, where I'm from- - Sydney represent. - Sydney! And we have track days and we just go out there and you just do it, like you just try. We'd watch these Japanese videos and these weird videos where they're talking, I can't understand what they're saying, but it's like, "Yeah, okay, we'll try that." - "I can't understand what they're saying, but they're pulling some sick drifts." - Basically, yeah. The best thing these days is it's so accessible now. Like these days you can, there's millions of videos and everything and you can just get into super easy. - And you're one of them, right? - Yeah, yeah. - I feel like no amount of videos could prepare me. - I actually tried to, before the day of the Drift Circuit, I actually tried to watch like a basic how To drift video. Fucking didn't help any, by the way 'cause there's no like, you can read up about it and learn about it all you want, but there's a different feeling where you have to like, when you're just in this car seat and in the moment and you just have to like, you kind of have to feel your way through. - Yeah, it's a massive seat-of-the-pants thing, where you're trying to unlearn what you already know. Like if you're already a regular driver, everything is the exact opposite of what you should be doing. You're not supposed to rev the engine. You're not supposed to dump the clutch. You're not supposed to spin the wheels. You're not supposed to slide around. You're not supposed to do any of that stuff. So it's the Yoda, "You must unlearn what you have learned." To start off with. (all laughing) And that can be a bit of a hurdle for some people and for other people who maybe have a bit more of a feel for it, then it's a bit, you get over that hump a bit faster. But honestly, look, anybody can do it. It's not an unusual skill to be able to drift. - I mean, yeah, I managed to somewhat pull it off at the end of the day and yet I went into it not knowing how to drive a manual at all, right? - Yeah. It's not an unusual skill, but the gap is obviously, as you said, the commitment to keep doing it is a huge thing. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah, because I mean, shouldn't you have to buy a car dedicated to drift? You can't just, do people use their like daily commuter car? - Yeah, yeah. - They do? - Some, well, I- - Can they drift? - Yeah. - Oh okay. - You don't need a crazy car to be able to drift. You need some like minor modifications. But generally any rear-wheel drive car can drift reasonably easy. And the downside is though like if you have to go to work on a Monday morning and you broke something on, you know? - I was gonna say. - I've done that too, like I've broken a gearbox at the track and I'll have to go to work on the Monday. And it's like, well, I've only got like first, second and fifth gears. Okay, it's like (imitating shifting gears). (all laughing) I'd be like, "Just go around me, I can't..." (all laughing) So there's that. But you know, these days, people will have dedicated track cars, but that adds a whole extra level of money. - 'Cause I noticed when we were at Ebisu, there was so many foreigner-friendly staff, and it was like, "Come buy a car, just come drift here." - Yeah. - So the thing about Ebisu is Ebisu is very special. Ebisu is probably one of the, if Ebisu didn't exist, that'd be one less reason for me to originally move here. - Right. - So it's been around for a long time? - A long time. - Ebisu is the track that we are drifting on in case you don't know. - Yeah, Ebisu Circuit up in Fukushima. What makes it special is it's drift friendly, it has not one track, but many tracks with different styles. It's about seven, yeah, I mean, well, there's some like open skid pans and stuff like that. They're all different kinds of tracks. A lot of very famous drift videos, like you watch a famous drift video, oh, that's where it was. Especially the, you guys didn't go to it. There's a track called Minami, the South Circuit, which is infamous for being extremely difficult and extremely rewarding to drive. It's extremely dangerous. I've seen it break legs and ribs from people crashing there. I saw a guy right off his car, an American guy, on his second lap. He bought the car there- - No. - Second lap he went over the entry and just went straight into the wall, banana the front end, done. (laughing) - Have you ever had any bad injuries or have you ever had any bad crashes or anything like that? - Knock on wood, no. But you shouldn't ask the person who drive cars that sort of question. (all laughing) - Oh my God, what an asshole. - I'm sorry. - Yeah, a lot of these small crashes, but I mean, that sort of comes with it, but yeah, personally I've seen, actually there has been some very severe injuries at Ebisu Circuit from- - I can imagine. - I can only imagine. - It comes with the sport, right? - Yeah, motorsport, yeah, it can be quite sketchy. I mean, it used to be a lot better because the speeds were lower and people weren't quite as extreme now, but now everyone's just going flat out the whole time. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah. - That's terrifying. - Car rolling over and yeah. - Okay, here's a question I want to ask though. As someone who like is into the drift scene, obviously, "Initial D", legit or no? - Okay, uh... (Garnt laughing) - 'Cause I've always wanted to know. 'Cause the "Initial D" is kind of put on this pedestal of like, yes, this is the drift anime. - [Garnt] Yeah. - And even though there's other ones, like "Wangan Midnight" and like all these other great ones, it's always like "Initial D" is like the cream of the crop, right? - [Alexi] Yeah. - So I want to know like as someone who's into that scene and who's probably watched a lot of "Initial D"- - I've seen all of it. - Yeah. Legit or not legit? - Okay. That is like, sort of saying like, okay, it's like saying someone who is like into computers saying, "Is "Hackers", is that what it's actually like?" (all laughing) Wait, wait, wait. Or someone who's into surfing like, "Oh, is "Point Break", is that what it's actually like?" - [Joey] Right, right, right. - It's like, yes, it's based a lot on reality. Obviously there's a lot of dramatization, but honestly "Initial D" is pretty good as far as that sort of stuff is concerned. Now, so going all the way back to the start, the Mangaka, Shuichi Shigeno, who wrote that, his specialty is sort of like teenage, romantic, drama and motorsports sort of thing. (Garnt laughs) - A classic combination. - I don't know, I guess it's like a sort of a 1990s Japan sort of thing. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - He's done other one's like, "Baribari Densetsu", which is based around motorcycle racing. - Oh, okay. - Oh. - That was also an anime as well. There was another one, I forget, something, something, blue sky, I forget the name of it, which was like the precursor to "Initial D" where like the main character drove an AE86, you know and- - That's the main car in "Initial D"- - Yeah, that's he main car in "Initial D." And it was set at like some sort of rich kids summer tennis camp or something like that, I don't know. - Right. - Drifting around the tennis court. - Well, there was some sort of thing with like, I don't know, anyway. So then came out "Initial D." So yes, it's mostly true because back then in the late 80s, early 90s if you went up to the mountains in Gunma, Saitama, anywhere around Tokyo, you'd find dudes in these little, cheap, rear-wheel drive Corollas or Silvias or things like that, just having fun. Sliding around, enjoying a Saturday night. - [Joey] Yeah, yeah. - And at the same time too, yes, there were races done up there. I've spoken to, see, this is one of those things where the reality is almost better than the fiction. - Right. - Oh, okay. - I've spoken to people, I've actually met the real, Takumi Fujiwara, the real guy. - The guy who inspired the, yeah, yeah, yeah. - There's a guy, he worked at a tofu shop and he would deliver the tofu up to the top of the mountain or some stuff so it's all based on reality. - So cool. - Like there's one guy I know, I did a job with him once, where he's a Gymkhana champion of Japan, Gymkhana is where you... It's like what you did with the cones. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Right. - Where you've got to drive around as fast as possible. - Like an obstacle course. - Yeah, you got to remember it too. It's like, you going to go four, then backwards here and around this three times and back. It's very complicated. - I'm sure it's a bit more complicated than what we did. (all laughing) - And so, he's like one of the Japanese champions and I was talking to him about, yeah, we used to go out to this certain mountain, I had a CRX out there and I was the fastest guy on the mountain. And then one day these guys showed up with a bunch of Civics and they were faster than me. And I was like, "Oh, I need to beat these guys." And we had races, and it was like, this sounds exactly like "Initial D." - Sounds like a little gang war going on. - Yeah, yeah. - It's the same thing. And all the stuff you've seen in initial D, like for example, there's a scene in that where a bunch of gangsters come up the mountain to, like one of the other street racers calls a bunch of gang members to come up to fight. - [Connor] Of course. - Yeah. - And then they all see the Takashi and they're like, "Oh, senpai." (all laughing) That's real, guys would, see, this is the thing about, 'cause it's street racing, it's not legal. - Right. - So, guys who are out to look for fights would actually go up there and like try to start fights with street races and stuff. So all these little points you see in that are based on some sort of reality. - Okay. - Yeah. - That's pretty cool. - So it's pretty good. They talk about the different kinds of cars, their strengths and weaknesses and like some cars on certain touge and stuff like that. There's the one with the spiral GTR, which loses its brakes going down a hill and the other two cars that have to go in front, like, stop it with... Like that, I know someone who had to do that, in real life. - Oh my God. - That's so cool. - I was watching your videos, and I saw there was just like, an AE- - AE86. - AE86 like meetup. Like in the place where, and it was fucking tons of them. - Yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - That was so cool. - Yeah. So I guess fortunately or unfortunately, I guess it's one of the things that made me confident to reach out to you guys was some of my most popular videos on my YouTube channel are based around "Initial D." - Yeah, of course. - Yeah. - And anime culture as well. Well, yeah, it's... I mean, if you think about it, it's just a very expensive cosplay. (all laughs) - It's a car cosplay. - It's like a weapon, but- - Yeah, at that show, there was the main characters, you know, Corolla, there was the Takahashi brothers RX7s. Even the new Manga that's out now, what's it called? Ghost, "MF ghost." Made by the same, the new 86 with the number on the door. People do cosplays of these like car cosplays. - It's cosplay with attitude. That's what it is. - And I noticed that even like the Japanese people knew you, and were like fans of you. - Uh, yeah, I mean- - It's because you just like 'cause you go to these events so often you're kind of like notorious. - I go to all these events also, a lot of my videos that I know are gonna be popular with Japanese people, I have subtitles on them as well. - Oh, okay. - They watch them. There's not a lot of car content being like car YouTubers in Japan. I mean there are, but I think people often say like I've, 'cause I'm looking at it from a different perspective. I'm like, oh look, it's the "Initial D" car. 'Cause if a Japanese person does it, it's kind of cringy I guess, to them? - Yeah. - Yeah. It's a little weird how they are like that with kind of anime. - Their own, yeah. - Yeah, like stuff that is a reference to an anime and it's like, oh yeah, this is "Initial D" thing, I get. Anyway, whatever. It's like dude, it's like be proud of it. - [Alexi] Yeah, yeah. - It's fucking "Initial D", it's cool. - I guess for me, drifting has always been so ingrained in Japanese culture and Japanese car culture, because if it wasn't for stuff like "Initial D" or like "Tokyo Drift", I would have no idea about drifting. - Memes aside about "Tokyo Drift", it is legit the only reason I knew that Japan was famous for as a kid. I can see you dying inside. - Talking to you about the international drift scene, I'm gonna be honest. I had no idea there was an international drift scene. I thought it was like all Japan and everyone was following that. - It used to be like that. - Right. - I mean, nowadays, okay, so I've sort of come to peace with "Initial D" and "Fast and Furious" and that sort of stuff. Look, it's like anything where like you're into something and there's a movie about it and people go, "Oh yeah, I saw that movie." Like, "It's not like that." (all laughing) But the fact that it makes it, it's an easy, it's a wedge to open a conversation. People sort of understand that. It's like okay, yeah, I'm fine with it. It's the same thing with "Tokyo Drift." The majority of that, I mean, you can probably look at the Japan side of and go, "No, that's not actually what it's like here." But it is in certain ways. But people don't drift in car parks. - I was gonna say, that seemed just very irresponsible. - Yeah. - Yeah. I mean, if you're gonna see drifting in Tokyo, it's gonna be like down on the docks, in like the big open areas where trucks go. - Like "Wangan Midnight", for example. - Yeah. - I think they had a scene in "Tokyo Drift" at the docks. I'm pretty sure they did. - They did, they actually did, yeah. - I did my research of this episode. - I couldn't get over the car park scene though, because like looking, 'cause you go into any car park in like Tokyo or whatever, like you can barely drive- - It's like the fucking Daihatsu boxes, can barely get through and then you're like, what the fuck? - That's probably the most inaccurate thing about that. But the rest of it like, the general theme of what they talk about is- - Do you like the movie? - Uh. (all laughing) - That's a loaded question. - Honestly, I think I would genuinely like it, the movie for its campiness if the main actor wasn't so fucking awful. - Yeah. - Fucking can't stand his accent. - Every time he speaks Japanese I do cringe. - [Garnt] Oh yeah, right. - It's so bad. - There's a scene that has been cut out of the movie where they steal a bunch of tires from a petrol station and it's got what's the guy's? Little, little, no, Little Dog Snoop. What's the character's name? The actual actor. - Nate Dogg? - No, no, no. The guy in the movie- - His like side kick? - His side kick character. - I know he's a rapper, right? - Yeah, he's a rapper. Anyway- - It'll be on screen. - There's a scene where he distracts the staff, by like speak by, he opens a drink 'cause it doesn't have any fizz and he's like (speaking in foreign language). (all laughing) It's just so... (speaking in foreign language) Like it's just so bad. Oh, man that's so bad. But look, it's fine. Like I said, I've come to peace with it. Like you said, it's horrible campiness, but it is a good general overview. And there are some scenes where they kind of get into the side of where it's kind of like escaping from reality and free. 'Cause honestly it is like that. Like you go up to the mountains at two in the morning and all you can hear is like the sound of the crickets and maybe a river nearby and that's it. And then all of a sudden you hear this screaming coming from the distance and it's a bunch of cars and the headlights shining through the trees and they come through there. It is very cool. - [Joey] Yeah. - Right. - I've seen footage of like the late night drifting stuff and it's like, there's a part of me that's like, "Oh man, that'd be so cool to be in." But then at the same time, I'm like, "No." - So dangerous. - I like my life. You know what I mean? - [Joey] Yeah, exactly. - Basically what I'm getting out of this is like, "Initial D" isn't realistic enough. (laughing) Compared to "Tokyo Drift." - Look man, I think, again, the reality of all this stuff. It's same thing with the "Wangan Midnight", the freeway racing, like the stories that I've heard. See, a lot of those guys don't want to talk about it too, 'cause they just want to keep it buried in the past and stuff, but when you can get them talking, like if they've been drinking and stuff like that, like you're just sitting there going, "Wow, holy shit. How are you still alive? Wow." It's so cool. It's like a lot of stuff like in Japan too where you get here and you meet these people. Same thing with this industry too. It's like you meet them and you hear what they did and stuff they've done, it's like- - I almost feel like because of how the culture is and how strict everything is, I've met like the craziest fucking people here, that just do not give a fuck and they're like, "All right, this is what I used to do." And I feel like I've never met anyone like this in the UK because everyone's kind of like, "I don't really care about the rules." But when you get a society that's so strict that normally you get characters. - And you hear some of the craziest stories that you don't normally hear about. And you really have to drag it out of them. You know what I mean? - [Joey] Yeah. - They'll just mention like this offhand or off the cuff thing, you're like- - Yeah, they'll just say something and you're like what? - Please elaborate. - Yeah. - Oh my God. So you were mentioning that you know "Initial D" very well and all that anime, but I'm curious, do you know actually any other anime, or are you into any other anime? - You are in an anime podcast. - Okay, so the... - Anime podcast. - One of the things that made me a bit more confident to reach out to you guys was that I used to be massively like into anime a lot. - Hell yeah. - Hell yeah. - How long ago are we talking? - Okay, so it's 2020 now, I was in probably like middle school, high school. So we're talking like 1994, I'd say was 92, 93, 94- - Fuck, you were in high school before I was born. (group laughs) - I was two years old. - This is the era of VHS rental tapes. - [Connor] Right, right, of course. - And just going forward, people, you know, IRC list serves and stuff like downloading random, getting throttled, downloading too much stuff, swapping CDs and things like that. - Burning CDs. - So, how did you get anime back then? How does one get into anime back then? What was like the entry point? - Oh well, most people say like, "Oh yeah, I saw," what was the actual name for Macross? "Robotech." - "Robotech." - Thins like that. So every time I would see, and this sort of, I watched the podcast with with Chris when he talked about this sort of thing, where just every time you see something from Japan, there was just something about it that just kind of resonated. - Yeah. - Okay, you know what I'm talking about. You just sat like, "Yeah, this is my aesthetic. I like this." - Yeah. - So every time I saw and sometimes you don't realize what it is and you're like, "Oh, that was actually a Japanese anime." Right. Or like, even stuff like "Inspector Gadget", which was, it was a French, all those French-Japanese productions back then. - Oh, okay. - Yeah. Just something about it because it was animated in Japan. - Yeah. - Yeah. - And slowly, slowly, it just starts to be like, you see this tape at the Civic Video, which is my local rental shop, and like, "What is this crazy looking things rated R18?" (all laughing) Oh and you take it to the counter like... (all laughing) 'Cause they don't care, it's like, oh, it's just some animation, yeah, whatever like that changes it. It's like "Wicked City" and things like that. - Oh. - Oh, I freaking love "Wicked City", dude. - So you got into anime during the fucking 80s, 90s OVA boom manga? - The manga VHS era. - Oh my God. - It was amazing. Everything. I'd just go there and rent that stuff and it just went from there to- - That was kind of like a golden age in and of itself. - Yeah because it was like everything you could, anime was so brutal back then. Everything was "Devilman Crybaby." - Pretty much. - You know what I mean? - Like "Wicked City"," Ninja Scroll." - "Vampire Hunter." - "Violence Jack" like shit like that. It was just like so fucked up, but it was so good. - "Cyber City Oedo 808." - Yeah, yeah. - "Akira." So I'm actually wearing, this is my "Akira" shirt. - [Joey] That's such a sick "Akira" shirt too. - So this is about 20 something years old. I just thought I'd wear it here today. - Oh, wow. - Although again, "Akira" all that sort of stuff, it just like blows your mind. Like oh, this is so cool, and it was just always enjoyable. Any sort of media can just get your hands on. Back then like, the UK video game magazines were very good with that sort of thing like they'd- - Were they? - You don't know about that? - No. - So, there was, from what I can tell there was a huge imports. Like Gray Import scene back in the day for video games. So people would, they'd be playing like Japanese stuff all the time. And these certain video game magazines they'd feature a lot of Japanese content. - I do remember roughly having some memory of seeing a lot of Japanese stuff growing up, which is why I think eventually I did get into it because I always thought like you said, every time you see it you're like, "Man, that's really fucking cool." It always just happened to be Japanese stuff. That was always the thing that stuck out to me. - [Alexi] Yeah. - So was it like a Nintendo Power, but not a legit Nintendo Power? - We had a lot of those in the UK- - Yeah, there were a lot of, I forget what it was called. "Hyper", it was called "Hyper." - That sounds familiar. - Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was a magazine called "Hyper" and I've managed to find a big download dump of it a while ago like every issue scanned. And I was like, "Oh yeah, I remember this stuff." (laughing) - Gaming publications in the UK and stuff like that were huge for a very long time. - CV&G or whatever it was called, "CVG." - I can't remember, but I remember there was just like, everyone had demo disks from the magazines. - Oh, I remember those days, the PS1 demo discs that you get with the free magazine. - We had that in Australia too. - We did have that. And just stuff would be, there'd be like some sort of video game where you'd see it and it's like, you'd find out later, like, oh, that was actually a real, it was like a Japanese game. That particular sort of thing, right? So, and it snowballed from there. I didn't have any friends who were into it- - Same, same. - My school, nobody. Not even, maybe like one kid from Hong Kong, who like kind of liked "Dragonball." (all laughing) - Why is it always "Dragon Ball"? - Yeah, so you have like some of those little cards, whatever. - Yeah. - And it got to the point where it's things like going to specialty shops and ordering, see, I remember I bought the, when "Evangelion" came out, like the movie, I ordered the VHS tape, 'cause it first came in on VHS, no subtitles. I wanted the best, the highest quality and I downloaded the script. (Connor laughs) - You're like reading along. - So my original experience of the Eva movie was sitting there going- - Oh my God. - You were fan subbing yourself. - I would say yeah. - You were live fan subbing "Evangelion." That's crazy. - Oh my God. - Dude, I swear, I feel that, but this is embarrassing. When I watched fucking Shakespeare in the Globe Theater, I couldn't fucking understand a word. (all laughing) Because they talk in like a older version of, I don't know what type of English it's called. - Ye old speak. - Ye old English. - I was like fucking online, like following the story. I'm like, "Oh, this is that part, oh." I couldn't understand a fucking thing. But obviously yours is a lot more understandable. - No, same thing, but you get it. Unfortunately, there's that one scene where, can I spoil it or not? Is it old enough? - Spoiler alert. Oh so, it's fucking Eva. Why haven't you watched Eva yet? - Where Oscar gets stabbed through the head and they're ripped apart, I accidentally read that too early. (all laughs) And she's one of my favorite characters, and like Eva gets violently ripped apart, I'm like, "Ah, what!" And then they all die like, ah! I remember feeling, it was like two in the morning and I remember feeling sick. I was like, "Oh my God." Yeah, it was a thing, man, like yeah. So it just- - That was a brutal scene too. - Yeah, so it went from there then- - I love how you spoiled yourself on a script. (all laughing) - I feel old when I talk about hard-coded fan subs, you know what I mean? - [Joey] Yeah, right. - And then now we're talking about, fuck hard-coded fan subs. How about on paper, printed paper fans subs? (laughing) - So you printed out like 25 sheets of paper. - It was about that thick. - Oh my God. - Did they have like translated notes and everything too, like- - No and it was pretty good. - Keikaku means plan. (all laughing) - It was pretty good. It was designed for people to read, like to read and watch. - [Joey] Right, right, right. - They type set it pretty well. Yeah, I downloaded off like some, something like some weird website. - So you're like more of an OG anime fan than any of us. - Dude, we do things like where we'd swap VHS tapes. Like what you do is watch- - Yeah, I've heard about that. - Yeah you'd have your list of all your content, you'd have that somewhere, and then people you're friends with, they'd say, "Hey, I want that. What do you want from mine?" And you'd make a copy of the tape and send it to each other. - Oh my God. (Joey laughing) - That sounds so fun though. - I want ask, 'cause like growing up, we had the problem of like our anime was for example, on YouTube, and sometimes there would be like an episode or a part of an episode that wasn't uploaded. What was it like for you, where you had to actually get physical VHS tapes? Did you have to like watch anime episodes out of order, or if some episodes were available, you just get them anyway? - I think it was, I mean, because the thing about that is it's much easier to delete things so that's why, like something would be a copywriter or whatever. someone's channel would go down. But back then, everybody had like physical media, so it all like exists. Like it's not gonna disappear. - So as long as you didn't lose the physical tape. - Yeah, as long as you had it, it's like it's there and you know that someone else has it. They can just make a copy and send it to you. - Physically? - Yeah. (all laughing) - And people would be very, goes back then people like hardcore into it so they'd have a complete collection. That wasn't really an issue, no. If wanted to see something, you could get it. - Was it expensive? - Oh man, I don't even know how much I've spent- - Yeah, right? - People out here complaining about a $6 monthly subscription. (all laughing) - Yeah. - If I could pay that six bucks a month back then for almost unlimited content, wow. - Yeah. - So stop complaining Zoomers! - So how much did you have to pay for like a single VHS tape then? Or like if you wanted to watch an anime, a series, what would that cost? - Okay, so the best thing was when the Australian distributors like Madman and stuff started to make, 'cause the Japanese disks would have like, two or three episodes a disk. And it'd be like $60. - Yeah. - What? - It's like that to this day as well. - It is. Right, I just don't get it. Whereas overseas, that's the best thing like in America and other countries where they make- - A whole season. - Yeah, the whole season on one thing. It's like that's how it should be. - [Joey] Right. - And it's still good quality and subtitled and everything. So, yeah, but I didn't really spend money on anything else. I didn't go out. (all laughing) - Are you into drugs, son? No, anime. - I didn't go drinking, didn't do do anything, that sort of stuff, I watched anime and- - You went from one expensive hobby to another man. (laughs) - So that makes me curious then, how did you, because obviously I've seen your videos as well, you can speak Japanese, like much better than me and Garnt like 100%. How did you, were you learning Japanese before you moved to Japan, and also when did you move to Japan, and what made you do that? - So I used to work at a car magazine in Australia. Originally, so what I did was went to university, didn't like that, studied- - Just that quick? Two lessons in, I'm done? - It be like, it do be like that. - I took a smoke break. (all laughing) - Yeah and just never came back. I was just like, it's like, whatever. Just something to do, I don't know what I wanna do. But I in the meantime, while I was doing that, I was studying animation. - All right. - Wow. - The actual like physical with pieces of paper. And so, I was super hardcore into this sort of stuff. So I had my own thing and I was doing like little test things or whatever. So then I started to learn 3D animation. And this is back when, if you heard of the program, Maya, Maya, I was learning like Maya 1.5 or something. - Oh my god. - Yeah, original, it was running on IRIX boxes, which is a Silicon Graphics IRIX, which is like a proprietary UNIX system. And one box would be like $12,000. - Jesus. - Yeah, to learn on. So I learned this 3D software because I wanted to do animation because that's what I liked. And did that, got jobs doing that, which paid really well back then, because no one knew how to do it. - It was very specialized. - Yeah. You had to churn out content real quick. And so I was young. I was like 23 or four or something and I just go there in the morning, work hours and hours and nothing else to do so I'd always get the work done, got paid really good. Bought lots of anime, go home watch anime. (all laughing) Yeah, it was good. So then, I got kind of burned out on that. It wasn't what I'd imagined. It was a lot of like- - How long you're doing that for? - Probably about five, six years. - Oh, wow. - I mean, it was good. But it's very high, you know, the crunches and things like that. They just shovel content, "Here, do all this stuff." And you're like, "This sucks." And you just sit there all day. But at the same time, I've got my headphones on listening to Japanese lessons. Because for some reason, like I think if you're doing creative work and language, it doesn't mix in your head. - Right. - Yeah. - I can sort of listen. (speaking in foreign language) - Like just again and again and again so it just stuck. - Right. - While I'm doing that. So then got burned out on that. Came to Japan. I wanted to do anime stuff and car stuff. - Right. - How did you come here? Like what was the process like? Did you get like a- - No, I just did tourist. - Oh, just tourist. - Yeah, just as a tourist. I wanted to see car stuff, I wanted to see anime stuff. So I went to Akihabara. It was all in a notebook, all written out. No Google Maps. None of this. I didn't know what I was looking for. - So what year was this? - This was like 2005. - Oh, fuck. - Oh my goodness. - I was blind. - Yeah. - I had two friends had been to Japan. One who'd done car stuff. One who'd done, he'd sort of gone back to Akihabara. So he's like drawing me hand-drawn maps of like, "Okay, so this is the LAOX building, and if you turn this way, there's the bridge and you walk down that way, 'cause that's where all the stuff is." Like okay. 'Cause I didn't have any friends who wanted to do car stuff and anime stuff so by myself. So, you've done the same thing, I'm sure. You burn yourself out. You get up in the morning and go do stuff all day. You don't eat, you don't drink. You just do more of this sort of stuff. You go to the hotel fall asleep, wake up, let's do it again! So I go out again and went up to Ebisu Circuit by myself. - And you went all the way to Fukushima by yourself? - Drove there, or? - No, I took the train, I was blind, a friend of mine who worked at a magazine, actually was a friend of a friend, he worked at a magazine and I just said, he sorta knew who I was. So I messaged him like, well, I emailed him. And said, "Hey, can you tell me how to get to Ebisu Circuit?" He said, "Just go to Nihonmatsu Station and just get in a taxi and just say Ebisu Circuit." (all laughing) He said "Oh, are you going there?" I'm like, "Yeah." "Oh, can you write an article about the event for the magazine?" "Yeah." So I've got my mum's little Panasonic, like digital camera, 32 megabyte memory card, Not gigabyte, megabyte. - Megabyte. - Right? So I go up there, I see the event, just blows my mind, all this cool stuff, it was a big competition, which I now do the commentary for, which is kind of cool. - Yeah. - Full circle. - Go back, I write this article and he's like, "Oh, that was really good." And then a few weeks, you know about a month later, he was like, "Do you want a job?" "Yes, I'm sick of doing 3D, I hate it." So, I started working at the magazine and every chance I could, I come to Japan. And this is how we did it. This is how, these people have to remember this sort of stuff. You somehow make money when you come here. - Right. - Yeah. - If you can. Like people do that by like making YouTube videos and stuff like that. So what I did was I would come here, I'd go do car stuff. I'd take photos of it, write articles, go back and I'd get paid for going on holiday. Which is so fun. - It's a double win. - Yeah, it's like this is perfect. - I have gamed the system. (laughing) - So I thought okay, I got this figured out and it got to the point where literally everyone I knew it was like, "Lexi, just shut the fuck up and go live there." (all laughing) That's all you talk about. My car friends, everyone's like "Alexi, Japan this, well in Japan, well in Japan they do this, in Japan they do that, so just go." I said, "Okay, fine, I will." So working holiday visa, right? - Right. - 18 months, okay. I'm gonna quit everything, sell everything. I'm gonna live there for a year and a half. If it works out, if I've had a good holiday, I can just shut up about it and get it out of my system. If not, we'll see what happens. So came here and just did the same thing, just went around shooting articles, writing things, selling them to magazines, selling them all around the world in English. And it just sort of built up from there. So like taking photos. Oh, look at these cool random photos I've taken of this cool stuff. I'll make a WordPress blog, which is what everybody did back then, this was like 2008. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Okay, WordPress blog. So that became a popular thing. Then, oh, this is really cool, I've got this little Sony vloggy camera. It only shoots- - I think I have the exact same camera, yeah. - So like oh, let's just shoot this car doing something cool, 'cause it looks, it's moving, it's making noise. Here we go. - Cars do that. - That's what makes 'em cool. - Was it the old Sony Handycams? - It was a tiny little one. - Oh, okay, okay. So shoot all that. And then that goes on YouTube. Well, that becomes more popular. You know, magazines aren't popular. They don't make any money anymore. They don't want to pay $800,000 for a big article these days anymore. Okay. YouTube pays money, let's do YouTube. And it's just sort of snowballed from there. - So how did you transition from doing all the online stuff into then actually living here permanently? 'Cause I assume you had to figure out a way, right? - Yeah well, and this is one of the biggest questions, everyone wants to know like, "How do you live in Japan?" - 'Cause we get it all the time as well. - I'm sure, yeah. It's a difficult thing because there's so many people, I'm sure you've had this same experience. Like people who are living here, it's like, "How are you living here?" Like you don't, you have to do something. - It's like what do you do? - I have some people where I'm like, how? - It's like what visa do you have? How have you coined, how have you gamed the system in your own way, right? - And it's sort of like, you're not supposed to ask that question. Like what visa and how are you here? 'Cause I mean, look, some people just, they're lucky like, "Oh my, my father is Japanese, I got a visa." Or not lucky, you know what I mean? Like almost like it's a bad thing. - Yeah. - Or for some reason they're here. So the way I did it was... So originally working holiday visa. And then when that started to run out was, I thought, okay, I need to do something. And I had a friend who lived up in Sendai, who was a French guy and he was actually running a magazine, a French magazine. He was running the magazine as the editor from Japan. So he was just getting all this content from Japan, just editing it. And so he was on a journalist visa. - Oh, okay. - So I thought he said, "Oh, you should do the journalist visa. It's very easy." (all laughing) Sorry, JC, that's a bad imitation of you. (all laughing) So I thought, okay, maybe I can do this. So I applied for everything. Now, remember when the earthquake happened, oh, you weren't even here when the earthquake happened. The earthquake- - 2011? - Yeah. The earthquake happened and I'd already sort of renewed once and it worked and I thought, okay, I don't know if I can do this again. It was kind of easy the first time, because I managed to get like a contract from a magazine and I don't know if it would work these days or not, but I had proof that I'd been doing that job for a long time. And the best thing about being a journalist is you don't need any sort of- - Like qualification? - Yeah, you don't. All you need is like, I've done this for a long time. - I'm a keep doing. - Yeah, I'm a keep doing it. These guys are gonna pay me to do it. Okay, so I sort of convinced a magazine to give me a contract. Like, look, you want this content? Give me a contract. - [Connor] Yeah. - Right, okay. - So I got that, I showed it to them. Then again, that whole earthquake thing happened. And this was like literally at the same time I was meant to renew. I thought, "Oh no, what if they cancel me or?" - Right. - So, I mean, look, everyone, I don't know about you guys- - 'Cause then it's like panic state, right? - Dude, it's all- - Yeah, what was that like? (Alexi sighs) - Okay. When I... It wasn't bad for me because all I did was just sort of sit at home for like a month and just do nothing. I just thought I'm just gonna stay the hell out of it. - Yeah. - Until I need to do something. Actually, I did go and help a friend who was at Ebisu who had a lot of trouble with stuff falling down the hill, like collapsing, anyway. - Right, right, right. - So I thought, okay, I don't want to leave. If I leave now, probably not gonna come back. 'Cause a lot of, even hear of flyjin, you heard that term? - No. - So foreigners who left Japan when the earthquake happened and was like, I'm out. (all laughing) - Flyjin! - Was that a real thing? A lot of foreigners left? - Yeah, well, okay, it was kind of derogatory thing. It's like, "Yeah, you left." It's like, I honestly don't blame people who did that 'cause it was- - Was it that bad? - Understandable, have a nice day. - I see footage of it, but it's so hard to like actually get a sense of it because even the small earthquakes here kind of like throw me off sometimes. So I can only imagine what an earthquake of that magnitude would do. - I don't know, I don't think people can quote me on this, but wasn't it one of the most like, financially, it was one of the most like devastating earthquakes, slash tsunamis of all time or something? - Well, probably the deadliest, not the deadliest but- - The one that did the most damage. - Yeah, I think like it caused the most damage financially. - It did cause a lot of problems. - Really fucked up the Japanese economy. - Depending on how severe I hear it was is depending on who I ask and where they were at the time. Because some people said like, I've been told this like, "It wasn't that bad, things just started falling." - No, it was bad. (laughing) - But that's what I'm saying, right? Depends on who you ask and where they were at the time. - Right. - Because obviously if someone experienced it and it wasn't bad for them, they probably think like eh. - I mean, it was on like, every country it was on news. - Like it was fucking worldwide news. - No, I know, I'm not saying it's not. what I'm asking is like, how was it for like you, because everyone I've seemed to ask so far has such a different explanation of how it was for them. - Personally, I mean, when it actually happened, I was just doing some washing at the time 'cause it was like in the afternoon. And I thought, oh, I'm gotta take it down to the laundromat and get the dryer going. And some thing I was gonna hang up as well and the windows started rattling. I'm like, oh, it's windy. Good, I can get my- (all laughing) - So I can wash this. - I can hang my sheets up, get them to dry. And then all of a sudden everything started, I was on the second floor of a house that I used to live in Saitama. And it started to move, I'm like oh earthquake, okay. What do I do? Okay, stand in the, so I stood in the doorframe. - Right. - That's what you're supposed to do I guess. - I think that's what you're supposed to do. - And it started to, it's just doing this. And I'm like okay, this is bad, wait, I'm supposed to be a media guy. Where's my camera? So I grabbed my vloggy again and I caught the last like 20 seconds of it on video. And I aimed out the window. All the power lines are doing this and it's rattling. And it's just crazy. And I remember it like that too and then it just kind of stopped and there was a guy doing a delivery, like (speaking in foreign language) guy of the road and he just kept doing the (indistinct). (Garnt laughs) - [Joey] Yeah, like nothing happened. - Is anything gonna happen? And I'm looking at, there's no smoke rising. It's okay, it should be okay. And so I put my stuff in my laundry thing, went down to the laundromat, and I'm in there, just sitting there waiting for it to dry, I was like, okay, I'll go shopping maybe in a minute. And these kids walk past the window outside wearing those hats, you know the foam? Yeah, it's like this kind of- - It's like a triangular- - It's like a bandana looking thing that they wear and it's supposed to be fireproof? - Yeah. - Right. - And like elementary school kids wear it, to like kind of protect themselves- - It's like a Red Riding Hood hood, but it's like thick foam made of reflective, like an old fireman's hat sort of thing? - My God yeah, in the UK, they're like fucking get on with it. (Joey laughs) - Well, I mean, there's nothing that happens in the UK that's big enough to be worried about, right? - They will walk past the window and I'm like, What the hell are these? Oh, they're wearing those things, okay. And then in the laundromat, sometimes there's a TV. And I look up and there's that the big black wall of death just eating towns. I'm like... (Garnt laughs) Oh, oh shit, I better go get some, I better go and buy some food or something. So I went to the supermarket and just bought a bunch of food and I thought okay, and a slab of beer and I thought... (all laughing) - Might be a long night. - Well I thought if I'm gonna be stuck at home. And yeah, so it was okay for me. The worst thing for doing car content was there was no fuel. They just cut, all the fuel got cut off. So I was like, okay. And what I actually did that month was I had enough of a internet presence then to say, 'cause I had a regular column in a Japanese magazine actually. And I said, "Hey, everyone, send me a picture of your foreign drift car." And I got people to make my content for me. - You're a pro YouTuber. (all laughing) God damn. - But up in Tohoku like up where, especially where Ebisu is, I had to go up there to help a friend just- - So you weren't in Sendai when it actually happened? - No, no, no, I wasn't up there. - 'Cause my grandma lives in Sendai. So she like- - Yeah, 'cause what I've heard is that from people who were in Sendai near the epicenter, it was awful, but then I've heard a lot of people in Tokyo who were like, "Yeah, things were shaking." - Yeah, I mean, for my grandma, it was kind of like half-half, because like she lives on quite a big like apartment place. I think she was on like the 13th or 14th floor or something. And like obviously the higher up on a building you are, right, the more it's gonna shake. So the shaking was bad but it didn't break anything. Like she didn't get injured or whatever, but then she did tell me that it was really scary that after the rattling kind of stopped and she picked herself back up and looked out the window, she could actually see tsunami coming over the horizon. - Oh my God. - And then she was like, "Oh, Shit." And so she turned the TV on and then that really famous footage of the black wall was just- - Wait, what is the black wall? - I just made that up. The tsunami was just like a big churning, dark mess of debris. - It wasn't like this one big wave that most people think it is. It was kind of just this rush of water that just swept over everything. - Because it was just taking all the debris with it, right? So, it was just like, it just turned a black wall of like destruction because it was hardly water anymore. 'Cause it was just like all the gunk that it'd taken up with it. - And just all the houses that were along the coast were just getting crushed as this thing came over and yeah, it was horrible. - Meanwhile, international people like were like, "But my anime." - I remember, like Pokemon got delayed or something? - Madoka got delayed. - And people were like, "I can't believe this is stopping the anime." It's like, oh my God. - It's like fuck you. (laughing) - And trains were canceled for a while. And they had rolling blackouts. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Luckily 'cause I was, the grid that I was on at my house was the same grid as a big hospital and a Japanese military base so we never got a cut. But here's the thing. So what I was saying before was I had to renew my visa. And at that point you had to get a reentry visa to come back into the country. Which means you have to go to the visa center, get like a $20 stamp in your thing, in your passport, so if you leave the country, you can come back and everyone's leaving, 'cause it's like, well there's radiation landing on Tokyo. I mean, understandably. So, and I was just, I thought okay, fine. But I was like trying to renew my thing at the same time. So I went to the visa center at like three in the afternoon, which was a bad idea. I drove there, out in Saitama. And the queue was about 300 meters long of people. I thought- - What is this, Anime Expo? (all laughing) - I thought okay, here's what I have to do. Okay, I have to come back tomorrow morning, before the first train. So my car, because my car ran on premium fuel, this is a drift car. No fuel. - Right. (Garnt laughs) - I like how you had to mention premium fuel. - Just reminding you, I'm a drift channel. - It was a drift car. - So I begged my friend, like, please lend me your little Kei car, your little small compact car so I can drive there before the first train so I can get in line. Get there, there's already about maybe 50 meters of people lined up. - Oh my God. - I didn't get in the front door until, I lined up like maybe 4:30 in the morning. Didn't get in the front door until two in the afternoon. And then as soon as I got in the front door, everyone's going to the left, I go to the right to renew. And I walk up, there's no one at the counter, 'cause they're all busy over here. I'm like... And so someone walks past is like, "What do you want?" "Oh, I want to renew." And they're like, "Oh, okay." They just take it. And they sort of just flicked through and like, "You got your tax thing in there?" I was like, "Oh, I forgot that." It's like, "Eh, don't worry about it." (all laughing) - They just couldn't be bothered. - They couldn't be bothered, I got the renewal. It was great. And then just as I went back, I was like, "Oh, that's over. Thank God for that, I can go home." Went to the car park to get my car, it was a coin parking with the little gates. So I get in the car, go to drive out and go to the gate, put my money in the machine. All I had was $100 like a 10,000 yen, like $100 bill. You can put them in the machines here, put it in the machine, the gates open and it's like where's my change? Four o'clock scheduled blackout. - Oh no! - Oh my God. - So the machine ate my hundred dollar bill. I'm like, oh. (all laughing) Yeah, I look around and all the lights are blanked out and people are coming out of the bank because it's just got blacked out. I'm like oh no. So anyway, I called up and this being Japan, there was a very lovely girl. And she's like, answering the phone and like, "I'm sorry, the machine ate my hundred dollars." She's like, "Oh, don't worry. (speaking in foreign language) We'll make sure it's okay and we'll send you the money. We'll get you the information of your bank." Sure enough like a week later, they did it. - I mean, Japan's the one country where you probably wouldn't mind a machine eating your money. - Yeah. - You know you were getting that back. - You can get it back, yeah, exactly. - So, that was a thing. So since then, but now I'm married with kids and I'm an adult now. - [Connor] Gosh, terrifying. - A proper adult. - What's that like? (chuckles) - I gotta ask though, because you came to Japan obviously much earlier than us. 'Cause for us coming to Japan, there's plenty of resources for us to learn about what Japan life is like. We have like a lot of, way more vloggers and more YouTube videos and more resources that we can look at. But what was it like for you? Was it almost like coming in blind? Like what was it like coming to Japan back then, compared to how it is now? - The first time I came, oh, I'm sorry. The time I moved here, I already been here about six or seven times, - [Connor] God damn. - Mostly doing work or like what I said before like I go on holiday and so I had a lot of friends. Make friends with people who speak English and stuff. You know, I'd have floors to sleep on and contacts and things like that, which with Japanese people, they're very friendly. You can impose on the Japanese person terribly for like two or three days and they don't mind. It's like, yeah, you're only gonna be a couple of days, that's fine. So I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into at that point. And I knew I'd have, like I sort of set myself up with people. Okay, I want to buy a car. I want to somewhere to stay. I need all this sort of stuff. And I kind of worked out how to do it. So it wasn't really that bad. And I knew like, you know, I bought a kick-ass laptop, we've got internet. When I first arrived and I was staying at my friend's house, they had internet then, I'm like, "Oh what's the, is there like a download limit?" (all laughing) I don't want to get throttled and they're like, "What's a download limit?" (Garnt laughs) I love this country. - Every Australian coming to Japan. - Does Australia still have download limits? - Oh, not now. Well, probably- - America does? - No, it does, yeah. - America does too and I couldn't believe it. I was like, what do you mean you only get three gigabytes a month? You can't do shit with that. - Yeah, yeah. - That's ridiculous. - I use up like 20 gigabytes a day minimum. - Yeah, for like YouTube and Netflix nowadays. How'd you do that? - It's criminal man. It's criminal. I wonder like, how is, because I feel like when I've asked Japanese people who have been, who are like 30, 40 plus, how Japan was back then, they're like, "Oh, not much has changed." But I think because they've been living here, they don't see it that way. I wonder, like, as someone who came here in 2005, how is Japan like different then from now like majorly? Is there anything that's changed? - The biggest thing, I mean, there's been a quite a few changes in the past year, honestly. - True, true. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Pretty obvious you guys, but... As from a foreigner's point of view, accessibility to everything is just wide open now. You want to know how to get to random little place? Google. That's it. And there's pictures of what it looks like. And it's just so easy. Like no matter where you want to go, it's much easier now. Whereas back then, like for example, going to Akihabara, you'd find some random guy's blog that he was like obsessed a bit. 'Cause the problem was like, back then, people would flavor their content with their own tastes. - Buds. - Yeah, buds exactly. This guy was obsessed with finding LaserDiscs for certain things. And LaserDiscs and porn. (all laughing) - You just forgot that thing. - It's the only two reasons you should go to Akihabara, all right, LaserDiscs and porn. - I mean, one of them's been phased out, the other one hasn't been. - The other one has exploded in popularity. (all laughing) - So, it would tell you all these places to go and here, like where all the anime studios are, like here's Gainax, here's whatever. And it's like, if you want to go- - Oh, they had a map of where they were. - There wasn't a map, it was just like this. like it was like literally, directions from the closest station. Like walk to this corner and turn left. - That's creepy. - Yeah, it was weird. But I mean it's- - Just how it is. - Yeah. - You just find things like, I've still got the first notebook of my first trip. There's a lot of like printed out maps and handwritten notes and things like that. It's like- - How do you navigate a handwritten map of Akihabara? Like looking through Google Maps is already confusing. - You just walk down the street and- - Just hope for the best. (laughing) - That's okay, go ahead. - I mean but it's so, no matter where you're turn, it's like there's something. - Yeah. - And even if you want to look, I've sort found about Japan is, you focus on one thing and then see what you find along the way. 'Cause you'd always find these random like, I mean all the best stuff is like, oh, what's this random floor? Oh, it's like some Doujinshi shop. And go in like oh wow, there's all this cool stuff here. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - True, true. - So you didn't really need it back then. - Was there many foreigners back then? Like in Japan? 'Cause there isn't that many now, but I imagine it was even less back then. - So for Akihabara, the biggest difference between then and now is there's less video games and more of the claw machines. - Ah, okay. - The billboards are more blatantly, how do I put it? (all laughing) - Just say it, say what it is. - Well, a lot of titties and assholes. - A lot of lewd stuff. - Yeah, a lot of lewds. - A lot more waifus now days. - The concept of lewd is definitely, like the boundary has gotten further. - It's more like bam. Although, on the other hand though, the Eroge shops are not like right out in front anymore. - They're all on underground now. - Yeah, back then, like on the front of the Eroge shop, it had like the big wall with like each of the games and a little ticket. So you just, on the street, you're like, I want, ah, I want this, yeah, something, sister something. (all laughing) You go inside and buy it. Whereas now it's more sort of all shut up. It's more like tourist friendly. Like they still have the maids and stuff. Also yeah, the maid stuff. That was none of that back then. - Oh really? - Yeah. - Oh was it not? - Yeah. Like originally. I mean, they were, but now it's like every corner it's like the new maid one. Like there was the big ones, but there's not all like the little niche ones- - Like the Ninja one. - The ninja one, the Tsundere one, the imoto one. - I think I watched a documentary yesterday of Akihabara. And that was like 2005. It was a horribly edited documentary. It was like a horror show. - I mean, that's what every anime documentary was like back then. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I didn't know what it was supposed to be though. Like it was, I couldn't figure it out. But there was like maid cafe. They were showing some maid cafes around, but it looked like very early on. Like, so I think like around- - Like super sketch. - I think that was around the time it happened because they were following the author of Higurashi. - Oh, okay. - And his family. It was really weird because in this documentary, for some reason, I know this is going on a tangent. It just made me laugh my ass off there because it's super serious documentary and the guy with Higurashi, he had his whole family helping him make it. And then his dad was in charge of research. And his dad dead ass to the camera goes, "Yes, I had to study how much gas it would take to blow up a classroom for one of his novels." And I was like what? He said that? Like, he said that like it was nothing. Like, "How much gas to blow," how did you find that out? Like what resources is there out there? - It's the difference between a large explosion and a small fire. - I'm like, but did you really have to find out how much gas there was? Could you not have made up some arbitrary amount of gas? - Yeah, who's gonna read Higarashi and like fact check? It's like, oh, I don't believe that's the right amount of gas to blow this classroom up. - Yeah, I mean, come on like a modern day America hadn't happened yet. Come on, I'm joking. (laughing) - You want to be factually correct in like how to fucking kill bodies, right? And how to- - Sorry for the tangent but that was just about a documentary in 2005. - It was slightly different then. Even more of the old electronic stuff was still... There still is now, but I thought that was cool. - That was the main stuff though? - Yeah, like you turned down some random alley and it's all like Blade Runner electronics and stuff, like oh wow, this is really cool. - Because my dad, like when he first came to Japan, it was like the mid 90s, like kind of early to mid 90s, like before I was born. And back then Akihabara was called Electric City. And nowadays there's barely any of that shit anymore, right? Like the electronics shops and everything are like all behind like in alleyways or- - Well yeah, there's like the big anime shops that if you actually go in the first level in the back and you find all- - That's where all the electronic stuff is, right? - Because like you go out of the train and you see like the Electric Town exit or- - Yeah, the Electric Town exit. - I remember first coming, I was like why is it called Electric Town exit? Well, what does this got to do with electricity at all? (Joey laughs) - Eventually, that's eventually gonna be just be like the anime town exit. (Garnt laughs) I guarantee you. - Going back to drifting, I'm curious because obviously normal YouTubers, they have this kind of, I buy the camera, I buy the shit, that's it. I probably don't have to spend much more money, unless you're Mr. Beast, of course. But I mean, is it hard running a YouTube channel where it requires you to buy a bunch of fucking cars and tires all the time? How much a year do you spend on tires alone? - Oh. It can depend on the year, but I mean, one, depending on the car, like one tire can go between say $40 or 40 to $120 per tire depending on how good it is. So let's say like 70 or $80 a tire. So that's two. And a regular track day, you're probably gonna go through four, if not more, depending on how crazy it is. - I see you upload sometimes weekly, but it was like, it was kind of sporadically over a month, right? And is that every single time you're making a video you're probably doing that? - No. Well, okay, these days I think I could for various reasons, because the market for people to watch those sorts of videos is much bigger now. - Has gone up. - Oh, it's huge. Like everyone watches YouTube now. It's a thing. That's the only place you can get that sort of content too. You can't really get it on TV, 'cause it's not a TV or anything like that. So right now is a really good, there's a good lane for automotive content right now. But the most cost-effective content is going to a meeting or some sort of cool events- - Like a festival. - Like a festival. - Where you don't have to spend money. (all laughing) - You just drive there, walk around going "Hey guys, look at this cool stuff." And the best thing about that is like, if I know what I'm talking about- - People will just watch. - I'm providing value- - That's kind of like your itasha video. - Yes, and again, that's another thing that made me confident- - Do you wanna explain what that whole thing is? - Oh, okay. - What's itasha? - Okay, so a lot of your audience will know what these are, so itasha is the anime waifu cars, that are like wrapped with like some character or some theme or whatever. - The ones that always get upvoted on your Reddits or pop up in your feed every once in a while. - Yeah, you see them like- - It's like wow, I've never seen any of these before. You come to Japan and this is entire festivals for it. - Oh, yeah. So what itasha means is, so in Japan, when they refer to a car like an American car, you can say it's an amisha. Like American car. Itasha is usually Italian car like Ferrari or whatever. But they change the character for like Ita, like the Katakana to the Kanji for pain. - Like, Itai. - So itasha literally means pain car. - Because as I explained the video, when you look at it, a normal person looks at it and goes (cringes). (all laughing) - So basically, it's literally more like cringe car. - It's a cringe car. - Yeah, cringe car is the most accurately way of putting it. But the people who drive those sorts of things, they just don't care, they're like super hard core. This is my waifu, and I love her and- - There's not much bigger of a flex than like, how to represent your waifu, slap it all over your car and drive around in it, right? - That's like the next stage from just wearing a T-shirt with your (instinct), right? - Yeah, exactly. - Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's the step up, it is the T-shirt then it's like the, what do you call it? The armor, like the badges where they have all the full. - Oh the (indistinct) stuff, yeah. And then it's a plushy, and then it's a figurine and then it's a car. - A car. - And a lot of the cars too, they put the (indistinct) in there and stuff like that on the dashboard. - Yeah. - So some of the most popular content I've done on Twitch and also on YouTube was this itasha show that they run every year in Tokyo, down in Odaiba. They didn't run it this year, unfortunately. - Obviously. - Obviously. - Everything's canceled this year. - Everything's canceled, unfortunately. - No surprise. - So when I made that video, this was before I knew there was such a big crossover in audience- - Between the anime and cars. - Between the anime and cars. It's sort of like the Japan anime, cars, there's a big, there's actually a big crossover in the middle there. So, and even people who are like maybe not necessarily into cars, like people who will watch "Initial D", they'll enjoy it, 'cause of the cool story and it's action, whatever. So there's all this sorta stuff too. So I went to the show and I thought, okay, how am I gonna cover this show? I don't want to be like full on weeb, "Hey guys, look at this, look at this." - Look at this big titty anime girl. - 34th edition anime girl from the one manga panel that you all know. We all know it. - Like I didn't want to come across too, I didn't want to alienate my car audience. But I still wanted to- - You can say it. You didn't want to come off as cringe. - As cringe. I want to hide my power levels. (all laughing) - Level one weeb. - So I walked around the show talking about, I know about the car and this is the character, I'd explain like, okay, this is like this show, it's about this sort of thing or whatever. Or this is my Madoka, the show is Madoka. It's a bunch of magical girls and they all die horribly and it's really good. - Well, so I've heard. I don't know, I haven't watched it myself, I've just heard things. - And I'm making jokes too like, I wonder what these guy's girlfriends think if they go pick them up from the train station in these cars. Oh wait, who am I kidding? (laughs) - Meanwhile, inside, you're like, God I wish that was me. (all laughing) - You're 100% right. (all laughing) And some people actually took big offense to like, "Oh man, show some more respect toward these things, man." It's like you should be able to understand, I'm actually- - It's clearly an inside joke, right? - Yeah, so anyway. So that got really popular, and all of a sudden I realized, oh, I've got this audience. And then, next time that show ran, I did a live stream on Twitch. And it's probably one of the best, maybe not the biggest numbers I've ever done, but probably the most engagement I've ever done. I blew out my data for that day, I'm like, "No, we gotta keep going, it's great." I covered this whole show. It was really good. I actually talked to TV. There was a TV crew there and they talked to me and I didn't actually make it on the show. I think because they asked like, "So, what do people overseas think of these cars?" And Japanese TV wants the nice response. "Oh yes, they're very wonderful." I basically sort of said like, 'cause I was on the live stream and I didn't want my audience to think I was trying to be fake or something. - Right. - So I was like "Yeah, a lot of them say like, there's a lot of like really young girls on the cars and they think that's kind of weird." (all laughing) I mean, what do you want me to say, there's like you know? - Cameraman swinging. - All their TV is hyper positive here. - Yeah. - Exactly. - Don't say bad things. - I didn't really care. - Especially Japanese TV. - I was memeing for the Twitch- - It was a pug moment, it's all right. - Dude, it's a different beast when there's a Twitch chat on you, because it turns you into like the memer side of yourself. 'Cause you don't Twitch chat- - It turns you into the worst person. - It's the same thing with the Crunchyroll Anime Awards. I didn't want to be cringe. So I was like fuck, Twitch chat's watching me. What would Twitch chat respond to? Just troll, just say dumb shit which they will love. So they can go like, "Pug no way." (all laughing) - Yeah, because I remember I, 'cause that itasha video of yours I think was from like 2017 or something. - Yeah, it was a long time ago, yeah. - Like two or three years, at least. And I when I heard that you were gonna come onto the show, I was like, okay, I've got to obviously do some research on the guest. And I found that itasha video and I'm like, "Why does this video look so familiar?" And I remember I watched that video, I think like maybe like two or three days after it came out. Because I don't know if you remember, but like that video initially was getting recommended everywhere. - 'Cause I watched that video as well back then. - Oh really? - Yeah. It was... (laughing) - What he's trying to say is he knew you before you were big. (Garnt laughs) - I knew you before you were big, yeah, but it was cool as well because like I obviously knew very quickly that like, as you were kind of explaining the different shows and whatnot, I could very clearly being like, "Oh yeah, this guy knows this shit." But he clearly doesn't want like show it all. It's like yeah, this guy's definitely a weeb. - Like I've been a closet weeb before, I recognize my fellow brethren. Do you know what I mean? Coming from being an old school weeb, what is your opinion of like the modern anime scene and modern anime culture? - Oh, man. Okay so, I think... So this is the interesting thing is when I moved here, you'd think like oh, now I have unlimited access to all this stuff. I can just do it now. I actually didn't, I actually ended up quitting. You know what I quit on? - What? - The last thing I actually sat down and watched like I'm gonna sit there and watch this was the "K-On!" movie. - Wow. - That is such a fucking throwback for us. - Oh my God. - Holy shit. - Why? - I don't know, but I watched that and I'm like- - I would quit anime if I watched that. - Okay, question, did you like the "K-On!" movie? - No, I didn't. - Did you like K-On though? - I liked K-On. - Okay, okay. - There's something nice about the thought of someone in a cinema watching "K-On!" and then thinking, I'm done with anime now. (all laughing) It's over for me. - I don't know if it was, maybe it was just like that's enough or maybe it was 'cause a combination of like, well now I'm in Japan, it's like all this stuff that you see- - Doesn't feel as like unique and as- - Well, it's there. - It's not as romanticized anymore, right? - I don't know if I read it somewhere or someone's told me this but when you come to Japan, you realize that manga artists are actually, they're not creative, they're just really good at representing real life in a very consumable way. - Right. - It's true. - And that's not a bad thing. Obviously that's great. Like that's really good about reading the sort of the daily life genre. - Like "K-On!" - Like "K-On!" Like "Yotsuba", like all those sorts of things where it's all the stuff you've see in those is real life just sort of compressed into like a form where you can consume it all really quick. And I think that's a great thing. That's makes it really enjoyable to read or watch or whatever. But I just sorta like, yeah, that'll do. (all laughing) And unfortunately that was also at the peak of what is, I guess was known as the moeblob, right? - Yeah. - Yeah. - And it just kind of ended up, I don't know it just sort of turned me off. Like, yeah, I don't- - Yeah, as much as I love the moeblob era or like kind of halfway through it, I was like, all right, can we get something else now? - I hated the moeblob era. I remember like I, so the reason I haven't watched "Fullmetal Alchemist" was because that was during the moeblob era. And that was when I thought I needed to save shows in case I lost my faith in anime. 'Cause there wasn't enough shows coming out per season, to like keep my interests. - That wasn't moeblob, right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the Isekai era started. I'm like okay, boys, I'm good. - The what? The Isekai era. So now- - Right now we're on the Isekai era. - Okay, see. Now, I hate that. (all laughing) - I like that you hate that. - I'm sorry, everyone, I just can't stand Isekai. - It's boring, it's so boring. - Yes, yes. - I don't want to see a bunch of normal teenagers in like some fantasy, you know, I get it. It's it's cool but it's- - No, it's not cool. - It's not cool. - As someone who likes the Isekai era, I can definitely say like most of it is fucking trash. - It's not self-aware enough. It's basically like an RPG game, but it's real. It's like all of you would get annihilated the first time you faced an enemy. (all laughing) All the characters and stuff. - That's true. - What is the original, there's one called "Escaflowne", you know that one? - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah. - I guess that's like an original sort of Isekai. - That was an Isekai before the real, the modern Isekai formula really started. - But that was good I think, 'cause it was like you were dragged into this world and it was all this crazy shit. Whereas now it's more like, yeah, this is us, yay, and it's just like I don't know. That just turned me off even more. - Yeah, I'd say like Garnt and I covered this when we did the Isekai anime tier list, but "Escaflowne" and "Now and Then, Here and Now" are probably the two shows from like the 90s that like really kind of built the foundations. - I'd say there's "Inuyasha" as well. - "Inuyasha" as well. And then ".hack" came along and kind of put in the whole video game aspect into the Isekai thing. And then, and now we're here and it's just kind of (whistles). - I feel like Isekai back then, it was all about you get transported to this world, but it was always about finding your way back home. 'Cause it was always a desolate, kind of rough world to be in. But now it's all about, man- - I love this place. - I wanna get hit by a truck so I get transported to another world. - There's so many fucking shows where it's a teenage boy who's a fucking incel and then he turns up and eight girls wanna fuck him. (all laughing) And then it's never mentioned that he came from another world ever again, unless it's kind of convenient for why other people wanna fuck him. And it's like I'm so bored of this shit, man. Can I get something else, please? Needless to say it, I'm kind of bored with Isekai. - Yeah, the other one too, I don't know if this is kind of controversial or not but the genre of where, okay, how do I explain this? Where you have, it's like a harem anime, but the main character is not male. They're a female, they're female, but it's like they're basically a male, but for the convenience of the story, they're female. Like what's the dragon one? - Dragon one? - With- - Are you talking about stuff like "Ouran High School"? - No, no, no. The one with, what's that character, Kanna and the other one? - Oh "Kobayashi's Dragon Maid." - Like the main character is a female, but it's actually male, if you think about it. - It's like a position of a male, right? - Right, no, no, she's female. (laughing) - I don't have the resources for this. (Garnt laughs) - She's a female or is she? - Oh, am I missing something? - No, no, no no. - And there's other ones like that too, where it's kind of like, yeah, the main character is female, but it's an analog of a male, but it's female, so it's okay. And it's just like, ah, it's just even worse, I don't know. - Yeah I get the genre you're talking about. I'm just trying to think of other ones that kind of fit into that genre. - I have no fucking clue. - I can't remember the name of it, but there's other ones too where it's kind of like that and it's like eh, it's kind of on the edge. - So, you didn't like "Dragon Maid"? - No, I didn't like it. - Really? - It's just kind of too on the edge of like... It's not actually lewd guys. (chuckles) (all laughing) - Not gonna lie, if it was a toss up between watching anime and fucking tearing a car to shreds on a track. - Yeah, I would tear a car to shreds. - That's probably gonna be my hobby. Let's be realistic. I think there are differences. There's a $6 a month subscription and like a $30,000 problem. How much is it, does it cost a drift on a yearly basis, for you? - Oh, man. It can vary but- - Rough estimate. - If I had to throw out a budget, like, okay, you're gonna need this much a year to drift, car, fuel, insurance, registration, maintenance, and the occasional like you're gonna stuff it into a wall and you're going to break a bunch of shit, oh, at minimum, at minimum maybe like $30,000, If you want to drift maybe once a month or once every couple of months at like one track day. - I mean, needless to say, the kids don't get good Christmas presents. (all laughing) - No. - I'm kidding, I'm kidding. - Would you like an Noriyaro hoodie? You just give them your merch. - You're like daddy's got you something special. It's just a fucked up tire. Here you go. - Noriyaro touched this. - Just buy them one of the tires and be like, are you gonna use that? If you can't use that, daddy can use that, you know. (all laughing) - Some premium oil for you here children. - Have you ever thought about getting an itasha yourself? - Yes. - Oh, really? - What would you get? - What would you get? - I loved the zero hesitation there. He's like of course. - Okay, I turned 40 years old this year, so I don't know how, I really don't know. See there's two ways you can do this. There's the one way we can just be shameless and like, this is my waifu, but there's the other way, 'cause a lot of Western people are very like timid when it comes to the itasha. Like it'd be like Dragon Ball or something where it's not- - Normy as hell. - No, no, no, it's not. Whereas here it's like some studio leaf, you know- - Like visual novel? (all laughing) - Yeah, yeah. And it's like, this is what I fap too. Like that's it. So I guess if I was gonna do it, I'd have to go hard in and go like- - Okay, who's your waifu? - Who is it then? - I just don't know. I don't have any of these days. I thought- - Who was the OG waifu for you? Like the one that you first was like, yes, this is my waifu. (Alexi groans) - A long time ago, I really liked Lum from "Urusei Yatsura." - Holy shit, that's the OG waifu. - You can't get more OG than Lum. I'm pretty sure she was like one of the first waifu to ever exist. - Like the eye shadow and the bikini and everything. - Yeah. - I have no idea what this character is or looks like. - You've probably seen her. She's the one with like the green hair and like the tiger. - The tiger bikini. - The tiger bikini. - Yeah, I've seen that. - Like those horns. - Yeah, I've seen that. - I just got this great image of you like rocking up to your kid's school in like an (indistinct) just like picking up your kids, like, "Come on, kids, get in." (all laughing) - It's like, "That's not my dad, that's not my dad." - Man, I got in trouble, 'cause like the, I just drive a van now. It's like a regular looking sort of van. But the van- - Free candy. (all laughing) - The van I had before was, I'm probably gonna do this with my current one, 'cause I've okay, so drift people, their thing is stickers. - Right. - I guess it's sort of, I mean, a lot of things do that too, but like you meet someone, here's my sticker, here's your sticker, yeah? - Yeah, yeah. - I've got a huge collection of stickers. I've done like sticker sorting streams on Twitch. I've done like three of them. So it took like six hours, I guess, to do them all. So I put them on the rear door, of the gate of the car or the back window, you know, whatever. I'm sorry. And, I did that with my previous van, which I sold a while ago. And unfortunately one of them I stuck on, I didn't read what it said. It was written Japanese, it was an Australian Drift Team but they put like random shit on there. And it said, what did it say? It said (foreign language) or something like that. - Oh my god. - Can you translate that for us, Joey? - Elementary school kids are awesome. - Yeah. - What?! Why did they have that? - I don't know. I don't know. I guess it was like some, they were trying to be edgy or something. 'Cause it was like one of those sort of, okay. So a lot of- - This is the one country where you shouldn't have a sticker like that. - Yeah, a lot of animes, a lot of, again, this crossover thing, there's a lot of these like sort of anime style slap stickers that they make. They have like some random anime titties and like some team name or whatever. And they'd done this. And I didn't check what it said 'cause again, they came to Ebisu Circuit, like a lot of foreigners come to Ebisu Circuit and they stuck it on there and I didn't read it. And then my wife saw it. (Joey laughs) She's like, "What the fuck is this?" And I'm like, "What?" She goes, "This sticker here." I'm like shit, I didn't want to peel it off because it was stuck on the paint, 'cause it probably would have peeled the paint off. So I got like a black marker. (all laughing) - I want to get it off immediately but I don't wanna ruin the car. - Well, yes. Now I vet my stickers before I put them on. I probably should have done that. - It goes through screening process. - I have like, a fucking irrational fear of stickers. - Why? - I have no idea. The thought of stickers. You know how like people used to when you were in school, people just put stickers on each other, I used to be disgusted if people did it to me. - Why? - I don't know. Just fucking freaked me out. People putting stickers on me, I'm like, that's disgusting. Get that off of me. I hate stickers. They are like the worst thing ever. Magnets, I'm cool with, no problem. Stickers, gross. I don't know why. - What is it like the stickiness of it? - I think it's the stickiness, the sound. I'm like that's disgusting, get that away from me. - The sound? - Get that away from me. - The sound the stickers make I fucking despise. - You don't put any stickers on any of your products or anything at all? - I have one on my laptop, it was a gift and I felt bad not to, but a part of me, it pained me so fucking much. - Well, Connor fans, next time you're at a con- - Don't fucking bring me stickers. - Give him stickers. - Give him stickers. - I know what I'm getting for your Christmas present now, Connor. - I'm getting you a sticker book for your- - I shouldn't have said that. I should have kept my irrational fears to myself. - That's like going in front of an audience and being like this is my weakness. - Well, I also have a weakness of money. I can't stand people putting money in my pockets. So, if you wanna... Sorry. - It's called Patreon. - I can't stand it. - Connor, you're like the one guy, who was like most into cars, now, you can't be a drifter now, because you don't like stickers. - Do they put car, that would piss me off. - Stickers is the main thing. - If someone came up and put a sticker on my car, I'm like, "What have you done?" You've ruined my car. - People do that. Okay, so my, at Ebisu Circuit, I have a Skyline that I actually, I leave it there, like it's my car that I drive when I go there. And I've told people like, "Hey, if you come to Ebisu, just put a sticker on my car." - Fuck, that would drive me up the wall. Don't fucking touch my car. (all laughing) - That's just how you make friends. That's how you bond. - It is. - The sticker does not consent. - I'll stick your car if you stick my car. - I'll bring a plastic sheet right now, I'll drape it over my car. Put the sticker on that. The moment I leave, fucking rip that off. (all laughing) I didn't know that, wow. Go on. - I have people like, it's a tourist attraction. They send me selfies like, "Ooh, drift car." 'Cause it's sort of like, I guess sort of semi-internet famous. - I've never been so horrified in my life. - Oh, you can't be a drift driver then if you don't have stickers. - Fine, after I did the drifting, I was like telling the boys outside, I was like, "You know what, I actually think I'd get into this. It was pretty fun." - But first you have to get over your irrational fear of stickers. - I'm willing to put that aside. - You know the worst thing is, so when you, when you buy tires and you know drifters usually, they fit their own tires, then you save money. Tires have a big sticker on them. It's so like the brand, you have to peel it off. (imitates sticker peeling off) - Fuck, I can do that. I can get rid of them. I hate people who put stickers on things. It looks so tacky as well. - Well, I agree with you. - I fucking hate it. - I agree. But it's sort of like who you know. - It's a badge, it's almost like a badge. - It convenient. - Joey's fucking laptop disgusts me when I see it. - Why? - I'm saw it. - This man has so many fucking stickers on it. It drives me insane. - It's not even that many. - Oh, Jesus Christ. - [Alexi] That's pretty normal. - It's like, someone's spreading their ass cheeks in front of me. I'm like, get outta here, man. - It gives me all the memories, like, I remember when I got all of these stickers. - That's it. Yeah, you know, like on my van it's like- - Just take a photo. - Like I'll go to a workshop and they're like, "Oh, can we put one on", it's like I've been here, I know these people. - I'm just the guy who's just never been, I've never been given stickers or anything like that. - Do you have to memory, like out of memory, by fucking destroying my items? - Okay, do you buy stickers? - Sometimes, yeah. - 'Cause I've never been a guy to be like, I see a sticker, this is what I need. This is my memorabilia. - Because they're always the budget item. It's always the pity item or whatever. It's always the T-shirts or anything else, I guess we have stickers. - There's a sticker shop actually in Harajuku called B-Side Label. That I go to quite often where it's like, it's these like, really like some of those stickers on there are from there. And it's just, I don't know. It's like really cool design. It's like, but then again, I was always like huge into stickers when I was a kid, I was that one kid who had like books and books. - I can tell. Joey has this off-camera obsession with what he calls peelies, right? Like, so whenever- - Don't expose my fetish like that, please. (laughing) - So, every time we get some new kind of furniture or contraption, they have like the plastic peelies. - Oh, the peelies, right, you understand it, right? You have to go as slowly as possible. - There's people who like it. And then there's Joey. I swear to God, he fucking has a 10th of an orgasm, every time he does a single peel. He's just like, "Can I, can I, can I do it?" And then you just see, he just does it slowly. I'm just like, "Yo, Joey, do you want me to leave you alone for like five minutes, man?" - Dude, I fucking love it. You understand, all right? - Especially when it's like the clear stuff, not that, it's like when it's that dark blue one that's like (imitates peeling). - Yeah! - New phones I like it 'cause you can whoosh. - No, no, you can't go fast with it. You got to go slow. - Slow. - You gotta tease it. You got to tease it, you know? It's gotta make that like (imitates peeling). - Look at the glossy surface underneath. - Yeah, exactly. See, Alexi gets me. - I get it, yeah. - Yeah. - Is this some Australian thing that we just don't get? - There wasn't a lot to do in Australia, all right. - And also when you're a kid, right? People would always like when you went to the hospital or the dentist, they'd always give you a fucking sticker. - Yeah, I loved that shit. - When I was like six, I was like, "Bold of you to assume I want this fucking thing on me. Don't you fucking dare give me a sticker. - I think I have the exact same fear of, like irrational fear, but not with stickers, but with like buttons and badges. - I don't like those. - I don't like badges. - Wait, what do you mean? - Like the pin badges, right? - Yeah, the pin badges, 'cause I didn't get stickers. I would get like those pin badges and I'm like, don't you fucking put that on me. Don't you fucking touch me, miss. - Yeah, I was never into the pin badges because if you collect a lot of them, they just make way too much fucking noise. - I never understand people who go to like anime conventions and they buy the pin badges of like, if you're gonna buy any anime memorability, why the pin badges? Anything else, but pin badges? - Dude, Japan fucking love pin badges. I don't know what it is. Like every single, like you'll find like a new anime series, right? And you're like, "Okay, I'm looking forward to when they're released merch of this." And then they're like, "All right, we've released merch of it. Have a pin badge." It's like, "I don't want it man." - It's like detergent of like, it'll be like fucking Eva slash detergent, cross fucking promotion. And it'll have like, it's got a sticker of Eva in it. And it's like people go fucking nuts for it. I'm like what's wrong with you? What? - I mean, I'm one of those who was like hell yeah. - It's like the holy trinity of just useless anime merchandise is stickers, pin badges and clear files. - Clear files are the fucking worst. No one needs this many clear files. - I mean, I have a clear file full of clear files. (laughs) I can't say anything, but- - I just kinda end up using it because you know, they say, it's says clear file, but they're always got some stuff. - You can't see it. - It's the unclear file. - It defeats the purpose of a clear file. - It's got all the anime shit on it. - It's just a file. (laughing) - Anyway, we went on a massive tangent there. - Yeah. - So you talked about your opinion of like the modern anime scene. What are some of your favorite anime? Because I don't think we mentioned that. - It's normie as hell, but I mean, I always just enjoyed "Evangeleon." Like back then, because it was- - [Joey] Yeah, of course. - I'd say it's less normie now than it was back then. - I guess so, but back then, so in Australia, I'd seen a lot of stuff, but then it came out on TV on SBS, which is like a public channel in Australia. - Where they like air a lot of the international shows. - Right, right, right. - Yeah. There was a show, there was a guy called Des Mangan who presented like the cult movies and stuff. And sometimes it'd be anime. And I was like, "Anime's on tonight, yeah." Yeah, back then, whatever you could get, you took it. Like it'd be professionally subtitled, it would be really good. And they would show "Evangelion", they had like an anime block where they showed some stuff for awhile. And that was good because that came out on TV so everyone had a shared experience of it at that time. So, you know what I mean? Like it, I think it's very important that shared experience when it comes to this sort of media, I think. Like it's mostly about video games, that sort of thing. Like if you meet someone's who played like, Final Fantasy VII, it's like, you immediately have a huge thing in common. - Like, what's your favorite part? - Yeah, yeah. - We've all done the same thing at the same time. And that was probably the first time that like mainstream anime was shown on TV. So you sort of discovered other people who were into it too, because they'd watch it. It was accessible. So I guess that it had a bit of an impact and it was very, it wasn't the standard monster of the week show. There's a lot more to it and I'm not trying to sound like it's super deep or anything 'cause it wasn't, but it was just, really, it solidified like- - It was engaging, right? - It was very engaging. It wasn't afraid to make something different, like a show that's a bit different, but at the same time he used every trope combined, like, yeah, whatever- - That's the weird thing about a lot of anime. It is the most tropey unique shows that for some reason, get the most attention. It's like, you look at it, like someone will look at it and be like, like Eva, for instance, right? Someone will look at Eva and being like, "Whoa, I've never seen anything like this at all." But at the same time, it's the type of show where another person will look at it and be like, this has every trope that I've ever seen. - Dude, "One Punch Man." - Yeah. - Okay? My cousin's kids a couple of Christmases ago when I went back and they've started talking about, "Oh yeah, we watched this thing, "One Punch Man." It's really cool." And I blew their minds by going, "This is actually based on a little kid's TV show called 'Wanpanman.'" (all laughing) And that character is based on like the "Dragonball" character, this one and this, it was actually voiced by the same guy- - You dropped the anime knowledge on them. - I just, I explained- - Man, Mr Worldwide over there. - You fucking schooled them, man. - So everything you like is actually based on something else. (all laughing) - Your life is a lie, don't be happy and I'll tell you why. - That's exactly what I was aiming to destroy them 'cause, yeah, it was just fun. - Not gonna lie, doing that is fun. - Destroying them with facts and history. - See, that's what this is. And so you actually like this, you should actually like this. But again, it's a gateway thing. Hey, anything that gets people into it, it's like, look, I don't, who cares anymore? Like, "Oh, you're a bunch of normie fans, what do you know?" It's like, no, you start somewhere, you go this far. It's like the same thing you guys have done drifting. If you don't want to go any further, it's like, well, why would you? Like if you don't understand enough, that's fine. You enjoyed it. It was like you got your adrenaline hit, and it was some weird stuff you've never done before. You have a new experience that you've done, it's in Japan. You've done drifting in Japan. Like that was, I guess this is the thing that I have to offer to other people. And I always try and not force it on them, but if I can, at some opportunity, like for example, when Reckful and Sodapoppin came to Japan for their legendary stream on Twitch, their IRL stream, I hunted them down and said, "You have to come and go drifting." 'Cause Team Orange had two of their drift cars at a dive bar, which is only about- - Very close to Central Tokyo. - Yeah, less than an hour from anywhere in Tokyo to go drifting. So, 'cause I know them, I hooked it up. I said, "Yeah, come here, we'll meet here." We take them, sent them drifting. They went out that night and did Ram and Rem cosplay play on the streets. (all laughing) So I guess they had a good day. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Other guys like, the IRL stream of JakeNBake, the Japanese IRL stream. I got him a ride in a D1 Grand Prix car, it was about maybe 1200 horsepower GTR, live streaming it to like whatever it was, like 20,000, 12,000, whatever people. I love to, if I can just present it to people as like, 'cause I honestly, I think it is a really good part of Japanese culture that is not only fun and relatable but, I mean any, like you said, you know it because of "Fast and Furious", people saying "Initial D" and I think it's a cool thing that I like people to experience and I enjoy it. - They're super welcoming as well. - Yeah, yeah. - They were really friendly to us at the track. - Now, if only every community was like that. (all laughing) - Oh, go ahead. - Go ahead. - Okay no, 'cause I was going to say, I mean, like you talked about getting people to experience this for the first time. I'm sure we've done that like introducing our friends and everything into anime where we can just like recommend a show or something. But I feel like it's infinitely harder with drifting because like, as we've talked about, the barrier of entry is like so high. And I feel like it's one of those hobbies where no one just casually drift, you know what I mean? (all laughing) You can't just be a casual drifter. You like either in this all the way, or like, it's something you experienced once and you know, I would love to go drifting more. It was a fucking hell of an experience, but at the same time, it's like, "Do I have the time and the money to commit to this?" And it's something- - Just quit gacha. He said he spent like 30K, we said? - That's a minimum. - That's probably Garnt's monthly allowance on gacha, come on. Quit gacha. - He was telling me on the train here that he's like, "Man, I would go drifting. I just have to quit gacha." (all laughing) "But it's so hard." - I think one thing that I really appreciate about your channel in particular, and to anyone listening, that whereas a lot of YouTubers here who live in Japan who are foreign, it feels like an outsider looking in on a lot of the content. And what was really refreshing I think from your videos, what I got was that it was like you were in it with them and that you knew all the big players in the scene. It was really cool seeing that aspect 'cause I thought, when I first watched your video, that it was gonna be like, "Hey, I'm here, let's find out what's going on. I'm gonna see what's happening." But you were like saying hi to everyone, everyone knew you. It was so cool. - I roll deep. - Yeah, it was really cool seeing that, you get a YouTuber in Japan who is really deep in the scene to the point of where even the people in the Japanese scene would know you. It's really cool seeing that. - That mostly came from the fact that back in the day when I was doing, journalist work- - You've been around so long. - Well, it's like, if I want to get access to cool stuff, I have to make friends. - [Connor] Make friends. - I have to get to known to people and have to show them. You know, I would, any event I would show up. This is the thing about anything about Japan, especially is show up. Obviously right now you can't really do that. But if you want to be in something, show up, talk to people, get to know people. I mean, I've been on tours of, like a couple of anime studios because I'm friends with someone else who knows someone else. And you just because you know someone and "Oh, Alexi's into that stuff. Why don't we go? Do you want to come too? We're doing something." It's just knowing people and yeah. Eventually it gets to a tipping point where it's like you show up and like, "Oh yeah, there's Alexi." That's why my friends told me, like when I first got here, it's like it's very difficult for a Japanese person to get to know and trust a foreigner because they just assume that you're not gonna be here in a year or so. And another person told me too like, "Alexi, you have to keep going to track days again, like all the time. Because if you don't, people just gonna forget about you, straight away." So I do make an effort to, even if I don't, even if I'm not driving, like I got today off, I'll go to the track. Maybe I'll make a, I'll take my equipment with me, maybe if there's something cool, I'll make a video. But otherwise I'll just hang around and talk to people and walk through the pits and everyone "Morning, morning." (speaking in foreign language) And then eventually they'll come to you, "Oh Alexi, (speaking in foreign language)" and they'll have something cool and someone will be like, "Oh, are you driving today?" Ah, no, I just turned up. "Oh, you wanna take my car out for a couple of laps?" I'm like hell yeah. I've got my helmet in the van. I'll bring my helmet with me just in case. - Take the shirt off like the whole team. - I'm ready. - Got my race suit on. (all laughing) Yeah, it's just show up and do it. And it gets like that after a while. I mean, I've been here 12 years, so, and I've been coming here for longer than that too. - I think that kind of applies with any social situation. - [Alexi] Absolutely. - It's like, it's just about commitment, right? Like you just got to, if you want to be known in that circle or you want to be part of that circle, whatever that circle might be or whatever that niche might be, if you don't make an effort to want to actually show, your commitment to it or want to be like part of it, then you're not gonna get in. - Right. - Yeah. - I was gonna say like it's the same thing with like the anime industry as well. Like once you know a couple of people, it's such a small industry that your face just gets known everywhere as long as you're staying committed to it. Like, that's really the only reason why like any of us have like- - That's just like our friend Nabi in like a nutshell, right? - Yeah, exactly. - Like he just seems to know everyone. And when I ask him, it's just, he just says, "Oh, you know, I just know a guy, who knows a guy who, I've just been around enough." - I just go around and just make myself known. That's so, but the thing is that's like so much easier said than done. Because it is a lot of commitment and it does take time and it's not guaranteed either that you're gonna get results. - No, it's just you got to build up recognition and everything. 'Cause it was interesting you mentioned a point that people in Japan just assume people are gonna to be living here, like unpermanently. 'Cause having lived abroad in a few different countries, there's like you make some expat friends sometimes, right? Who you can be like the closest friends with them for like a few years, but then eventually they're gonna move back. And it's really hard building up a friendship from zero again, when you knowsometimes that people aren't gonna to be here in like two or three years. - Yeah, I've definitely noticed that, that I even I made some friends who had just moved here and I'm like, "Oh cool, I'm making friends." And then they left. (Joey laughs) I was like damn, finally started getting some good list of friends going and they all just fucking left. - Yeah. - They just yeeted out. - Can you imagine they had their own problems? (Garnt laughing) - How dare they? - I know. - The audacity. - The audacity. - The audacity to have nationalities aside from the place I'm living right at this moment. - I have to ask because you've seen our drift special, who was the best drifter? - You. - And why was it me? Thank you, thanks. - I mean- - Was that really the question you needed to ask? - I wanted to just make, I want to feel good about myself - You might as well just ask the question. Alexi, can you just give me a hand job right now? - I just want to whip your dick right out, right now. - It's ready, come on. - It's okay. I already got his PayPal email, so it's fine. (all laughing) - Slips him a 20. (chuckles) Okay, I must admit, even though we clowned on you in the episode, you clearly were the best drifter. You just fucked up in the end. - Yeah, I just fucked up in the end. I mean, that test is bullshit. It's fake news, I clearly won the election. - Well, you were the most sort of confident with it so you've got a bit too hectic with it. That's why. - Yeah. - I would like to argue though, that the starting position was a little different. Like you were clearly the most- - That's your fault. - I mean, you were the most experienced driver. - With the manual driver. - Out of all of us. - Well, like I said before, it's, you all got to, like I watched the video and I thought, "Hey, that's about right." Like from what I've seen, it wasn't really different. Like if you haven't driven, like the prerequisite for learning how to, maybe learn how to ski, the prerequisite is being able to stand up. If you can't stand up, then you're not gonna be able to do it. So if you're not used to driving a manual car for such a long time. Also those cars have a clutch, which is kind of- - That clutch was weird. - Well, their design, was it making it like a rattling sound when you hit it? - Yeah. - And also I feel like a normal clutch like, if I touch it a slight, I feel it in the car. This one, I had to fucking slam it down to get anything out of it. - So the clutches in those, 'cause you're constantly slipping them. - Fucking it. - Yeah, so the clutches are made to take a lot of heat and also- - Makes sense. - Be kind of grippy so they're not easy to drive. So they're definitely not easy to drive. Even though the car looks fairly, didn't look too extreme. Yeah, they're kind of a pain in the ass. Look, even I do that. I left my Mark II at the tuner shop like last week, and he lent me his drift car, one of his personal drift cars, just as the courtesy car. What, this? He's like "Yeah, I got too many of them, just take that one." - I got too many. - Too much in the way. And I stalled it twice before leaving the car park and he's like, "Alexi, you suck." I'm like, "Yeah, whatever, man." 'Cause everyone knows, it's always hard to jump into someone else's car. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I'm just like only two? Damn. (all laughing) I stalled like eight times trying to move forward. - It was all right. You all did good it was- - You would be able to drive a normal manual car because even for me, I stalled it a lot and I've like, I'd gotten used to it, but the biting point is like so small. It feels like you're gonna break the car as well. And you go like one millimeter above and it just stalls. Like there's no leeway at all. - Yeah. - They're a little bit tricky, but you'll did pretty good. It was an enjoyable video and even I enjoyed watching the whole thing. - Oh that's good. - That's a W. I wonder how, because we obviously didn't get to go on the serious track or anything, right? How do you transition from just doing your little fucking donuts to like actually going on a track, because there has to be something like, how do you- - Is there like a test? - How do you in between that? Because how do you learn? Because it seemed like there wasn't really a way. Like, it was... - It's just a slow progression of, like there is a little bit of a sort of a wax on wax off approach to it where it's like, you do the donuts, then you did the handbrake turn, like the parking, but then what you do is, you do the handbrake turn, but then you transition to doing a donut. Then that's a drift. You didn't get to that point. That's okay. Normally it takes people a bit longer if you haven't done any sort of car stuff before like that. So it's just a slow progression. Like you start off going slower, then you build a bit of speed. Then you get a bit too overconfident and you spin out a lot. Then you start to, "Okay, let's dial it back a bit." And it's just slowly, slowly building up. It's kind of like, what I've noticed is, so I used to play video games, like "Quake Arena" and stuff like that, boomer stuff back in the day. But then I gave it up for a long time. Never played shooters. And then all this whole BR thing started up again. And I thought, "Oh, this is actually cool." Like a lot of people, you're paying real people. It wasn't like CES, I didn't mean to get into that. And I started, I noticed that like, watching people, you know, pros playing again, is that they just sort of jump in. It's like first games a dud. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they'd just been doing it for so long. Whereas I noticed that like, if I get in, it's like the first two or three games, it's like, yeah, my aims off, I'm terrible, I suck. Same thing with drifting, you start off. It's like, you got to like recalibrate everything and it just gets better and better. And the better you get, the faster you can hit corners really well. Compared to when you're a beginner. Like it might take until the end of the day. You finally get that corner right. I entered at a good speed, the car didn't go too sideways, I kept my speed up, yeah! And you get that huge rush. And then you get that again and again and again again. And honestly it doesn't... The rush doesn't get any worse. It doesn't get any lower. You just end up going faster, more angle, you know, more, more speed- - Power. - More power. - The orgasm just gets more intense. - [Alexi] It does. - You're really selling me on this. Okay, how long would you say it takes from like, coming from nothing to kind of going on, like one of the tracks that isn't like the practice track? - You can do it straight away. Like they have other tracks which are kind of smaller, but I'd say I've been drifting, let's see, for like 20 years. - God damn. - And I'm pretty confident, like I could probably, I've never actually driven like a top-level car before. I'm pretty confident that if you'd give me a few laps, I'd be okay at it. Like, I'm not a top level driver. I've got the... I hold the second highest, but I've got like a diamond license, sort of. I'm like a diamond tank driver. (laughing) - Not challenger yet. Just grinding to get master or challenger. - I'm not at that level yet. I haven't done (indistinct) for a long time. But I can confidently drive pretty much any track. That's been 20 years. If you, it depends on you but if you drifted every, if you drifted a two or three times a week, like, say you go to Ebisu, you went there two or three times a week. It would maybe take you two weeks or so to be pretty confident most of the tracks. Depending if you crashed or not. - Right. - Yeah. - The crash is definitely like this. - Crashes are- - Those fuck people's heads, right? When they, like as in their mental towards like drifting, if they crash, some people. - Yeah some people, I've seen people quit drifting. I've seen people quit, it's like they'll blow their engine or they'll crash, and they're like- - I'm done. - Yeah, I'm done. - Yeah. - I've seen one guy actually sell his car at the track to another guy, like a guy had a truck there with an empty truck. He's like, "What do you wanna do with it? You want me to tow you back to where." He's like, "Man, I just want to sell it." So the guy, he was a dealer. He's a car dealer. He's like, "Yeah I'll buy it, here's cash, I'll buy it from you." - Okay. - The ultimate rage quit. (Garnt laughs) - So, yeah, people just give up, 'cause it's a huge, like, once you crash a car, then it's- - It's a big like decision point. - Yeah, it's like, it can cost like several thousand dollars even to get it back to. And it's a crashed car now, it's not perfect anymore. It's not good. From that crash, you might have all sorts of things happen. So yeah, it could be really expensive. Some crashes you can be lucky, it's just the bumper, other ones it's like, you bend the whole frame and the whole car is a write off and it's just parts now. - Jesus. - Sounds like a double edged sword, right? - Can't wait. - It's a gamble. It is a gamble. Like I recently set up a simulator rig, which I'm hoping to use more on my Twitch streams, just to get more sort of seat virtual seat time. Like it's not as good as the real thing, but it's still pretty good. Like it's just- - Do you have like the steering wheel? - Yeah, I got the steering wheel, I got foot pedals, the little seat in the rack and everything that goes on. Yeah, it's good. It's at a stage now where you can use it as a fairly good facsimile of the real thing. Not so much as the feeling, but just the concentration mindset. - Like a combination of movements? - Yeah, yeah. You can practice your... 'Cause you know that like there's your tracks IRL and there's tracks in-game. So I can watch the video of me at the track and then go in the simulator and go, okay, I keep doing this here. I got to unlearn that because then you just hit the reset button back to start, back to start, screw it up. Okay, back to start, let's try it again. Okay, got it. And you just get that mindset. - Now, that's the future, isn't it? - I mean, it's kind of like, it's like a speed run. (laughs) If you think about it, you know like- - All drifting in future will be done virtually. - Dude, there are entire virtual drifting- - I've seen. - Drifting competitions and they're serious, man. - [Joey] Really? - Yeah I went in the comp once, I just went in sort of as a joke and I just made a huge ass out of myself. I crashed off the start line. (all laughing) Yeah, it's serious. - How do the virtual ones compare to actually doing the real thing though? - In the sense of what they do in there, it's like almost the same. - Oh wow. - With the way they drive, I mean even like there's things like iRacing and stuff where it's like a, it's a full on NASCAR race and it's run at like the same sort of schedule as the real thing. But it's just not real. So here's the thing though, some drivers who are really good in the game, have tried doing an IRL and they're just like, I can't do it. It's just too, it's too scary. - There's a lot more forces at play. - Yeah. - Like the G-Forces. Also the fact that you could die. - Yeah, yeah. - You can crash and get hurt. Like at Ebisu, like I said before, I saw a guy come off the track, hit the wall, like at an oblique angle. - Was he okay? - No, he broke his leg and his ribs. - Yikes. - I'd rather that than a fucking sticker on my car. (all laughing) I'll tell you that. - Which wins? A broken leg or one sticky boy? - Do you know those fucking stickers that do not peel off as well. Those are my fucking nightmare. It's like industrial glue stickers. Don't fucking come, sorry. - Are we still on the sticker talks? - It's in my head now. - That was like half an hour ago. And you're like- - You never forget it. - Recurring nightmares. - I can't just forget my fear like that, are you kidding me? Man. So how often do you stream on Twitch? - Oh, God.Don't ask my subs. They're very angry. I used to do a lot more regularly, but then when the rona happened, I thought like everyone else did, "Oh, this free time, yeah. I can get back into it properly." No. - Yeah, that's never happens. - It just made it even worse. My aim is like twice a week. I want to do some more like SIM stuff, also IRL. My next goal is to do a full track day as an IRL stream. - What is your Twitch? - I've sort of, what's that? - What is your Twitch? - Unfortunately, it's NORIYAROJAPAN. - NORIYAROJAPAN. - Check him out, check him out. - Add that on the end there. But it's mostly car related stuff. Like either car games, like "My Summer Car" or other sorts of indie games and stuff like that. But I also want to do more IRL stuff now that all this sort of stuff has started calming down. Track days are running again. I want to get the backpack and all that sort of stuff and do a full track- - I think that would do really well. - Yeah, that'd be something. - All of my, if you look at the... If you saw my highlights, like all the biggest highlights are- - IRL stuff, yeah. - The best thing about that is like, it's you don't know what's gonna happen. - [Hosts] Yeah. - I can crash it every corner. (laughing) - They're all waiting. Crash, crash. - But then sometimes something really cool happens. Like, I think I was in a car actually with Suenaga, the guy you rode with at Ebisu, I was riding passenger and he got like within a millimeter of the car in front, we're doing like forth gear, and chat is just going nuts. - Pog! - Was he just like laughing, like he always does? - Yeah, he just like (laughs). - I love that guy. Just his laugh, it's just so like emotionless and yet so maniacal, I fucking love it. - I've never seen a handbrake move like that. It was like pumping it up. And I was like, what the fuck is happening? It was insane. The man was insane. Absolute legend. - I remember when we were like learning the handbrake turns and just like that one session gave me like the fucking worst wankers cramp I've ever liked felt in my life. It's going ugh. - Wankers cramp? I have never heard of this word. - Because that's the same kind of movement, right? - God, God. Where is your dick? - Down in your leg. - Cranking it up, like Jesus. - No, because I've never had to crank it like that hard. And it just was a movement on my arms weren't used to, man. What can I say? - Oh my God. - It was fun as hell. - That's a normal thing you do get. Also you hurt your hand, right? - Yeah. - Let me tell you. Okay, never put your thumbs inside the steering wheel. - That's I think that's exactly what I was- - He was scared to death. So he was gripping. - No, no, I guarantee you that's what happened is because what you do is you put your hand, your thumb inside the steering wheel and then when it counter steers, the spoke of it comes down and wangs you on the fingers. That happens a lot. - That's exactly like, now that I'm thinking about it. Like, if I was holding it like this, where I injured myself is exactly where that spoke was. - They should have told you that. - Come on Ebisu, what the fuck. - I didn't think we were going fast enough for it to fucking matter to grip on to the thing. I was like woo, you know, like... - We're sorry that you're a natural. - You were going slow. You didn't have to hold on. - I've never driven a manual. Give me a fucking break, man! - Where did you think the car was gonna go Joey? - I don't fucking know. I was scared. Anyway, anyway. So yeah, it's been lovely to have you on. - Thank you very much for coming on. - Do you like to shout out anything on your end? - I have a YouTube channel, Noriyaro. It's car stuff. I do want to do more, if there's more itasha shows and I eventually want to do Itasha as well. - We gotta come on - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would love to see itasha show. - Yeah, itasha festival. - 100% I'll let you know. Also, so this weekend I'm going out to a track out in the middle of the mountains in Gunma, which is actually a, it's actually an old school cycling track. It's like a mountain road sort of thing, but it's actually a drift, they use it for drifting now. - Rip cyclists. - It's gonna be a sort of simulated, Toga drifting and all these cool guys that companies- - How many cycles can we drift into? - That's pretty cool. And I've got a bunch of other stuff coming up, I don't know. - All the social links- - By the way, I bought a little present, I see you have a lot of things on the walls here. So I brought a little... - Aw, it's so cute. - A little A86 from "Initial D." - It's even for the (indistinct) thing. - That's so cute. - Put it over on the shelf somewhere. - Thank you very much. - Thank you. - That's so cute. I love it. - Look at all these beautiful patrons. - And thank you very much to the patrons for supporting us and also supporting the drift episode that we did. It's all led up here. And also like we've talked about this from our perspective, but if you ever get the chance to try out drifting, even if it's just being driven around a track, I highly recommend it. As we've said, it is an adrenaline rush like you've never felt before. These guys have just turned fucking three, right now. - I don't wanna grow up. - Wee! - Wee! - But yeah, if you'd like to support the show, make sure to go over to our Patreon. Also check us out on our subreddit and our Twitter. And if you want to listen to the show on audio, then check us out on Spotify. Links on the description. - And you can follow this beautiful boy. - Yes. - Absolutely. - Go check out all the links to Noriyaro's stuff down in the description below. And thanks for coming on. - Thank you very much for having me, it's great. It's been- - Hope you've had a good time. - Yeah, it was awesome. - And with that said that's everything for today. We will see you guys next time. - [All] Bye, bye. (upbeat music)

Channel: Trash Taste

Views: 1,162,940

Keywords: TrashTaste, Trash, Trash Taste, Taste, Trash Taste Podcast, Anime, Manga, CDawgVA, Gigguk, TheAnimeMan, Joey, Connor, Garnt, Podcast

Id: 8-9wNeYiua8

Length: 123min 42sec (7422 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/ashbat1994]

The episode was not available for a couple of weeks due to some sponsor problem which made it took a hit for views.

Its underrated and one of my favourite Trash Taste episodes. Coming from someone who doesn't know shit about cars.

[u/HallowBanter]

Noriyaro was a fantastic guest one of my fav guest ep's this news sad that it's not more popular since i'd love to see him collab with the bois again in another ep or a special.

Trash tastes goes to the wifu car festival.

[u/Brejkkalu]

My fav guest episode, the only close ones to it are with Chris. But Chris episodes feel like trash taste plus rather than trash taste guest episode

[u/PossumTheMistake]

Because noriyaro doesn't upload lmao