Journey Across Japan

August 4, 2019 10:49 PM

A little over a year ago, British-guy-living-in-Japan-youtuber Chris Broad/Abroad in Japan revealed an ambitious plan to undertake a 2,000 km Journey Across Japan on bicycle. While the journey has been complete for a while now, his painstaking editing process has meant that the final instalment has only recently been completed. The whole thing is available to watch now in this playlist.

The original announcement is here. If you haven't got enough of Natsuki, he's the subject of an hour long documentary Chris did here. Another of Chris' videos I like is this one in which he revisits a region of Japan devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

posted by juv3nal (5 comments total)

I've watched part of this. His whole channel is great - he's a charismatic guy, and he's good at explaining Japanese culture and daily life to a western audience.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 4:55 AM on August 5, 2019

I love Chris Broad and Natsuki and all their shenanigans. He's laid back and honest and his channel is a great resource for insights when preparing a trip to Japan.
posted by HumanComplex at 6:09 AM on August 5, 2019

I really enjoyed this series. It amused me that it only took until day 6 for the subtitle to become "Cycle to the Death" and by the end it was "The Never-Ending Cycle of Despair." I thought the guest stars were an inspired touch. It was also nice getting to see some of the other Tokyo Creative people, especially Sharmander.
posted by ob1quixote at 8:03 PM on August 5, 2019

I like how it started off on "video every day or so" and morphed into "we're just getting the end of the trip now". I do hope that he now goes back to putting out more frequent videos. I hope he hasn't reached YouTube burnout phase just yet.
posted by zengargoyle at 8:40 PM on August 5, 2019

I believe he mentioned somewhere that he was thinking of doing a Natsuki part 2 about Natsuki trying to quit smoking. If so it would be a lengthier project which might preclude more frequent videos. I don't actually know which video it's in where he mentioned this so I may have just hallucinated it.
posted by juv3nal at 9:11 PM on August 5, 2019