BRAND NEW Journey Across Japan Series | LOCATION & GUEST Finally Revealed! (Patreon)

6 days.
5 prefectures.
1,000km.

An action-packed journey through the mysterious Japanese Alps, wandering through creepy abandoned buildings, secluded villages, stunning hot springs, an eroding coastline, wacky hotels and eventually, hopefully catching an amazing glimpse of Mount Fuji once and for all.

Journey Across Japan: Escape to Fuji is the first series to kick off the next generation of Journey Across Japan, where we’ll pick an exotic region in Japan, grab a guest, hop in a car and film the entire adventure in glorious 4k.

AND what better place to begin the next chapter of Journey Across Japan, than by going in search of Mount Fuji, after 8 years of consistently failing to get it on camera.
- This time, it’s personal.

For this first series I’m delighted to announce we’ll be joined by returning guest, Dr. Jelly himself - Joey the Animeman - and we’re ready to kick off shooting in early October.

Like Journey Across Japan, we’ll even have a small team helping us to film along the way, although this time around it’s solely an Abroad in Japan project (aka. Tokyo Creative aren’t involved).

- Perhaps best of all, there won’t be a single bicycle in sight.

As this series is a road trip, we can focus on experiencing a wider range of locations on each day and pack way more in. Given we won’t need to dedicate half the day to cycling 50km, we can do twice as much and make each of those 6 days truly count.

We’ve spent a great deal of time researching to plan the perfect route to make the trip as crazy and intense as possible, with a mixture of jaw dropping scenery, mind bogglingly bizarre locations and terrifyingly creepy hot spots, and with challenges sent in by viewers once again, we’re looking to spice things up even more.

Who knows, we may even see Dr. Jelly himself put in another appearance!
(God, I hope not).

As grumpy as I may be, even I’m genuinely excited to have Joey on board for this series, given the unpredictable and creative videos that marked his segment of the original Journey Across Japan trip; from pimping out bicycles and exploring a haunted abandoned tunnel, to shooting a Japanese commercial inside a train carriage.

Above all though, I’m just excited to go on a spectacular adventure through a part of Japan I’ve always wanted to immerse myself in. 

I’ve been lucky to travel through central Japan and the towering mountains of the Japanese Alps several times, but Journey Across Japan went around them last time (thankfully). I’ve always been keen to explore the region more than anywhere else and hopefully with cameras, drones and GoPros we can finally do the region justice.

The project will be announced publicly in a couple of weeks and while I’m keeping the itinerary under wraps for now, I’d love to hear what you would like to see us do during the series. Let’s face it, the trip wouldn’t be the same without the kind of challenges, competition and one-upmanship that defined Journey Across Japan the last time around. 

After all, why merely walk through an abandoned building when you can shoot an entire fake commercial there? 

So join us for another wild ride, as we fasten our seatbelts, head off into the mountains and Journey Across Japan once again.

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In other news, thank you for all the kind words on the most recent Abroad in Japan documentary, “What Owning a Sushi Restaurant in Japan is Like”.

It feels absurdly satisfying to release a video that Ueno-san (the restaurant owner) and I had been talking about filming for 5 years now. One of the best things about producing videos is turning your conversations and ideas into physical events, then filming them and sharing them with the world. 

Admittedly, that sounds a bit lame and pretentious given my dreadful phrasing, but hopefully you get where I’m coming from. Ueno-san was delighted his restaurant got on the channel and I was fantastically grateful that he let me go in and film around for a couple of days. A win-win all around.

Though to be honest, like a lot of Abroad in Japan videos I did a good job hiding my suffering. On the second day of the video when we went off to the Fishmarket, I had to wake up at 4am to meet him at the market.

Given my body knew I had to get up early, the adrenaline meant I had absolutely no sleep - perhaps 45 minutes at best - meaning the entire day spent filming, interviewing and presenting was done on less than an hour of sleep.

By the time we returned to the restaurant to film the scenes with the awesome chef and taste test the food, I was completely dead to the world - hence my underwhelming review of the food. (You know I’ve given up when I use the phrase “melt in your mouth” for the 100th time).

As obscenely delicious as the sushi was, the only thought playing on repeat in my head the entire time was “SLEEP. SLEEP NOW.”

Never the less, I lived to tell the tale and overall I’m proud of the mini documentary. Even if you’re not big on sushi, hopefully the scenes of the tuna auction, or the master chef revealing the one thing you should never do at a sushi restaurant will be enough to entice you to watch it.

But if there’s anything you’d like to know about the sushi episode, fire away with your questions in the comments and I’ll answer what I can!

FINALLY, COMING UP THIS MONTH ON ABROAD IN JAPAN:

• A brand new Q&A episode, answering questions sent in by viewers and reading out bizarre hate comments
• A cinematic video of Tokyo at night with the new 6k camera
• A Patreon vlog revealing more details of the upcoming Journey Across Japan series and some more large scale projects in the final months of 2020
• An overnight adventure to an (almost) abandoned island with Natsuki in the Sea of Japan; we attempted to film it last month but had to postpone to September as the boat was cancelled due to bad weather!

So another exciting month to look forward to though folks; I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the upcoming series! And I will see you later this week in a Patreon vlog from a cramped Tokyo hotel room.
 

P.S. Apologies for yesterday’s absence of Film Friday.

My excuse is that I was off producing a video for another major Youtube channel here in Japan (Trash Taste), and as they’re keeping the video a big secret for now, I can’t say too much. Alas, you’ll find out soon!