What I'll Never Understand About Japan

so for the next few weeks I am staying indoors only going out to snap up essential groceries and Family Mart fried chicken and one the last things I did before I locked myself away was go out on my biannual clothes shopping trip now as you can probably tell I don't really do fashion or style or anything particularly good but I did buy my new favorite shirt complete with an English phrase that defines not only Who I am but what I believe in and that is this has high functionality has high functionality I wear it with pride especially when I go down the gym people are picking up 500 kilogram weights you might be able to lift a truck but do you have high functionality probably not I do simply put is the best shirt I've ever bought down 100 yen store but as I'm indoors this month I thought I'd do a very rare Q&A video answering questions sent in by you guys I think it's the first time I've done this in about two or three years now covering everything from life in Japan to YouTube to personal experiences answered with brutal honesty we'll also be reading out comment of the week and hate mail of the week because not everybody is nice I'd like to think by the end of this Q&A experience hopefully we'll know a lot more about each other about existence about the very essence of what makes life so special so unique let's jump in what's your favorite color of the alphabet mine's triangle [Music] what was the strangest thing you've seen in Japan all right so this next bit isn't entirely family-friendly so look away from the screen for three seconds if you have to do I'll give you a warning and so there's a little district in Shinjuku called golden gai it's a little collection of bars down these alleyways it looks like a cyberpunk dystopian futuristic setting is a bit of a tourist trap so be careful if you do go there they do tend to overcharge you for certain things but there is a good bar a charming establishment simply called deathmatch inhale if you like death metal or horror movies the place is absolutely covered in them and the guy that runs it very nice guy really nice dude they imagine you've sat down for a drink or two and you're munching away on the complimentary popcorn which comes with the place and then you decide need to go to the toilet so you make your way towards the back of the shop and there in the corner on your way you come face to face with look away now whatever the [ __ ] that is I remember seeing that and thinking oh wow I'm really glad I came here but once you've seen it you can't unsee it so I'm sorry for that Yoda with a chopped-up arm will forever be in your nightmares welcome to the club what is your dating life been like in Japan underwhelming out of the food challenges you've done which one do you regret the most so I have done four food challenges over the years and three of them are actually pretty good I remember them quite fondly there was the monster ramen challenge when at sea and I sat down to eat a mountain of ramen there was the rancor soba noodle challenge where we had to eat over a hundred bowls of soba noodles and then there was Fried Chicken Mountain where I had to eat a small mountain of fried chicken and their dining experiences and memories that I shall treasure forever and then there is one so traumatic and unpleasant there thinking about it makes me feel physically sick the monster goes a dumpling challenge when that skin i sat down for an hour and attempted to eat the world's largest dumpling I mean it was so large Netsky tried to cut the damn thing with a sword no less a sword but there's a fine line between hilarity and horror and whilst initially it started off in good humor by the end of it both nasi and I spent the rest of the day being sick it wasn't fun it wasn't good for heaven's sake stay away from that godforsaken dumpling don't do it to yourself will I find my sock I've got one here but the other one I just don't know where is no you won't find your sock is all downhill from here sorry ok I'm gonna ask a stupid question of all the instant noodles available in Japan which one do you consider to be the best it's a well known fact that I can't cook but I'm not singing a corner munching on a loaf of bread I do like to indulge in a bucket of dried sodium now Japan's Got more instant noodle brands and you could possibly comprehend it and I have to say my favorite brand is still the standard cut needles which kicked it all off 5060 years ago now the flavors best described as sorry sauce with seafood and me it's just all over the place really but basically just tastes like salt just pour in the boiling water stare away and enjoy your healthy nutritious lunch so for this next one I can't work out if it's a comment a question or a sales pitch here we go let's find out hashtag ask abroad hashtag ask a road hello Chris you've all visit Japan oh yeah wow that's great Japan is so safe country you're welcome I like Japanese miss oh sherry Oh Japanese miss a soup yeah it's the delicious breakfast with rice and fish house-made fish house made almost foreign people like you can enjoy Japanese be Sochi room and have pantothenic acid oh you had me at pantothenic acid please eat japanese miss oshiro by all means I'm sure you'll say it's delicious thank you always loved Japan and what do you think about chopstick are like chopsticks are good aren't they can you use I can like it all [ __ ] tight Chris fight - another awkward truth I've just realised I had the chopsticks round the wrong way the entire time so clearly I can't use chopsticks I take that back what a charming young man I'll leave this comment feeling not only confused but with a deep longing for pantothenic acid whatever the heck they are silly question do what fictional children's character scared you the most as a child haha there is one character in particular that scared me as a child and as I've grown older and as the years have gone by what's worried me is the fact that no one else seems to find this character scary I feel like I'm the only one and I find that quite troubling and I am of course talking about et because look at his face since the age of about 3 years old onwards I've had daily nightmares about et is big creepy eyes the vandals the fact that he looks like a walking talking piece of mud for my entire childhood I had nightmares that et was in the closet and so I just was scared opening it and getting my clothes out maybe that's why I don't care about clothes or fashion because I was worried I'd find et in the wardrobe people would say oh he's not scary look Chris he can make a bicycle fly I'll [ __ ] a doodle-doo we should have brought him along for journey across Japan I'll be right here no you [ __ ] won't get back on your spaceship thankfully is 29 year old man I'm no longer scared of et I'm I've got over it last year and as I said these days I feel more scared about the fact that I was the only one that found him creepy or scary made me wonder if I'm different am I alone like 80 wasn't in the film so if you find him scary let me know let me know that I'm not alone in this terrible scary world how did Japanese people view displays of affection particularly by foreign people with a mixture of horror and disgust actually a lot of couples here do hold hands and kiss in public they wouldn't be surprised to see foreigners doing anything like that I think the only time you might get stared out as if you're doing french kissing beside the road or on a train or something rather than that don't worry about it go ahead as normal when we leave post a video featuring both NAT Sookie and Resort Errol we've been teased enough alright I promise you if you make it to the end of this video I will reveal a clip of Netsky Marie Otero having a battle with a sword and I'm not making it up it's genuinely there the only thing I ask is that you try and decide you try and guess who you think is gonna win the battle between NAT Sookie and risotto it's coming up so stick around to watch it but for now it's time for comment of the week Fatma Japan I'm going to Russia alright when looking for an apartment to rent as a foreigner are there any surprises or hidden fees you have to be careful of before renting does discrimination count as a surprise if you don't already know many apartments in Japan have a no foreigners policy that comes to renting I always thought this was exaggerated I thought people playing it up until I moved to Sendai and had the kind of first-hand experience of this I found my dream apartment on a real estate website and I called them up that's nice when they found out I was British when I found out I was a foreigner they sort of said no not happening sorry no amount of fish and chips and Harry Potter can get you this apartment girl like and that was the end of that now there's a few reasons this happens number one is 97% of people in Japan are Japanese it's quite rare for a foreigner to actually bring you up and ask to be your tenant and it's a lot more common for a foreign tenant to just run off and leave the country with an unpaid bill than it is for a Japanese person so that is why it's seen as being a bit risky but if you do move here and you've got a company helping you out they will act as your guarantor and they will help you get an apartment and that often gets around that situation Chris I has a pizza do you has a pizza no I has a noodles but on the subject of food what is the absolute number one the cream of the crop the absolute unit the absolute extra most bestest restaurant you've been to in Japan given I can only cook toast and cup noodles pretty difficult to do oh do we out at restaurants quite a lot and there's always been one that stood out in my mind is being the best or the most memorable and that is a teppanyaki grill restaurant in the city of Morioka called wakana I went there about three or four years ago with netsuke and we had this beautiful locally sourced cut of my sour beef but even now three or four years later I remember the way it kind of melted and dissolved in my mouth white butter and even Ivy in just about every cut of Wagyu beef since that is still my favorite by far it was so good words can do it justice but fortunately Nazca invented an entire new phrase in order to describe it in one word one English word how would you describe just ease dishes to work justice doesn't even make sense just this delicious dusty fusion it's art in the world could you dive into the whole cheating is okay or less bad in Japan controversy if you're not familiar with it in Japan cheating seems to be a lot less frowned upon and more common than any other culture in the world so I recently saw a survey that said 30 percent of guys cheat on their girlfriends or their wives I can't pretend like I'm an expert on this subject I can only speak from experience and what I've observed but it does seem to be pretty common just because Japan does have that kind of service industry in a way that we don't have in the UK or the US I think where there are hostess bars and cab occur where you pay they're willing to sit with you for your drinks to talk with you flirt with you and often you can go beyond that and there is an industry called so plant where you can pay for massages and more I haven't done it so I can't speak from experience the reason numbers aren't higher of people admitting to cheating I think is because they wouldn't necessarily class it as cheating they would say it's just a service right you're going in for a service there's a show recently on Netflix called my husband won't fit and yes is what you think the artwork on Netflix does make that abundantly clear but the show seems to propagate the image that it's okay to cheat on your partner as long as you don't become emotionally attached to the person you are cheating with but I tend to find younger couples are less tolerant towards that kind of attitude and those divorce rates have climbed in recent decades it's become a great way to destroy your marriage and get your partner to hate you it's about that in mind and we're on the subject of hey it's time for hate mail of the week go [ __ ] yourself you look like a [ __ ] version of Elon Musk I I can see Frankie Munoz at push and I can certainly see Robert Downey jr. definitely but Elon Musk not even a not even Elon Musk a [ __ ] Elon Musk I don't see it at all and I'm pretty certain you don't either right anyway with that in mind go [ __ ] yourself and if you do like that nasty sound effect you can download it for free on a broad Japan comm we do have a soundboard there with the aforementioned justice delicious as well Oh number one just DS demo download it and use it as your alarm clock fun for the whole family what are three things you still don't understand about Japan even after living there for years all right three things here we go number one breakfast we all know Japan has some of the most decadent cuisine on earth prepared to perfection and presented like artwork and then there's breakfast which is last night's cold fish it's right and a side dish of some sort of fermented atrocity maybe I'm biased because I'm from the UK and a fried breakfast is my favorite thing on earth my favourite dish or meal full stop but do yourself a favor and the save some money if you're staying in Japan at a hotel never get the breakfast just go to 7-eleven get some bread or just eat a tree anything just don't don't get the breakfast that's number one Japanese breakfast awful I don't get why number two is proofreading and I don't count that as an example has high functionality that's just a slightly odd mistranslations what I'm talking about is this tea towel for example I bought this tea towel the other day there's probably a hundred thousand units of this products that have been made right and it's got little cakes on it's quite nice and it has written on it creamy dreams creamy dreams I don't know what that means but it sounds kind of nice problem is it doesn't say creamy dreams it says clima dreams Clemmy dreams which is a small error that could be corrected by asking literally anyone on earth to be proof read that next example this denim pencil case now I know you're probably thinking wow wish I had a denim pencil case and it is great it is as great as you could imagine it to be so on this pencil case it has a little motivational quote a little uplifting message it says a true friend is someone who accepts your past supports your present and encourages your future which i think is kind of nice I'm not really sure where it's going but it's nice it makes sense except it doesn't because it doesn't say that it says a true friend is someone who accepts you past supports your preset and encourages future supports your preset what does that even mean understand if your friend is a robot or some sort of Android but doesn't really make much sense does it again probably a hundred thousand units of this made would have taken a native English speaker maybe five seconds to correct that didn't bother don't get it don't know why and number three is a pretty obvious one and won't come as a surprise and that is squat toilets I don't understand them why do we still have a hole in the ground given that this is a country that's pioneered the most futuristic incredible toilets with lasers and sprays and excitement there's nothing worse than needing the toilet walk into a cubicle and seeing that atrocity in the ground why are there still squat toilets I've never met anyone who said yes let's use a squat toilet I enjoy it even Japanese people I've never met anyone to this day so I don't understand them and I look forward to the day that they're all gone and those are the three things I've yet to understand about Japan if he was stuck on an island with either realtor or not ski who would be more useful well that's a no-brainer arias rate would be far more useful because you could kill him and then use his corpse as a kind of rudimentary sailing boat and escape to safety I don't think anybody could ever bring themselves to kill math geeks a real trip would you like to consider this as a monthly segment for your channel I'd love to I enjoyed doing Q&A videos I just find they don't do that well if this video gets 30,000 likes I'll do another one in May I promise will we ever get an ask you the movie sequel or perhaps a Reata oh the movie I'll be blunt we ought to raise a good friend is a great guy but I don't feel he has a story to tell as such unless he went to Italy in search of the history of risotto the adventures of risotto he could it could just work but I'm currently considering doing another documentary on ASCII about his addiction to smoking because that skiers probably I think in the top 1% of the smokers in the world given he smokes a pack a day of really strong Marva red cigarettes I mean in a ski movie opened with him saying this is my breakfast coffee a cigarette and two cigarettes and that's and that's pretty much all you need to know addiction is a serious thing though and I don't know if that ski could stop but even if there's just a small chance that we could do it I feel like it would be worthwhile because it could save his life later on down the line so I'm currently exploring that and I'm weighing it up and your thoughts and feedback on that could sway my decision on whether or not I go ahead with it so let me know I'll be keeping an eye out in the comments and while we're on the subject of Nats Kimi Arturo it's time for the battle to the death who do you think is gonna win say their name out loud now on a ski or real true all right let's find out who wins the battle [Music] [Music] [Music] a sad ending there a perhaps a glimpse of what it'd be like to be stuck on an island with real tree that is all for now though guys a huge thanks to everybody who sent in their questions there will be another Q&A potentially next month depending on how this one does but as I said I will be indoors for the next few weeks for the next month or so maybe more and there goes the needles for thank God the lip is on but all jokes and sarcasm aside please be careful guys and that way it might be in the world right now it's a very strange time and my thoughts go out to any of you have been personally affected by it so please be careful but as always many thanks for watching and I hope to see you next time I'm off to prepare my dinner which is is this obviously the company door that was my lunch this this is my dinner pretty bleak is met it's pretty bleak indeed

Channel: Abroad in Japan

Views: 2,519,955

Keywords: japan, japanese culture, shinjuku, golden gai, life in japan, wagyu beef, abroad in japan, abroad in japan natsuki

Id: WaN1mrGvcEU

Length: 17min 41sec (1061 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 01 2020