Youtube CEO shouts out Abroad in Japan! | ALSO JAJ: Escape to Fuji is over after six amazing weeks (Patreon)

One of the most thrilling and nerve-racking aspects of producing videos on Youtube is you never know who’s watching. With Abroad in Japan videos often averaging at 1m views per episode this year, that’s a lot of folks out there watching on their phones, or while sipping their morning coffee over the laptop.

So when Youtube CEO, Susan Wojcicki shouted out Abroad in Japan this week, it was a pleasant surprise to know for a fleeting moment, Youtube’s most powerful executive got acquainted with the Abroad in Japan channel, specifically this year’s Tsunami documentary episode.

We can only hope she stuck around to watch Dr Jelly’s incredible comeback.
- She definitely did.

Coincidentally, that same week Youtube’s official channel with 35m subscribers even congratulated us on seeing Mount Fuji in a comment, indicating some top dogs had been following us on our Journey Across Japan as well. It was bloody amazing to see even Youtube was cheering us on!

Even CD Projekt Red, the makers of Cyberpunk 2077 got in touch a few weeks back, saying they watch Abroad in Japan and wanted to send us a copy of Cyberpunk 2077: Collector’s Edition as a thank you for the videos. (Ironically after waiting for the game for almost a decade, the day it finally arrives I’m leaving for a week to film in Kyoto. So one more painful week-long wait to go!)

Setting my usual sarcastic, cynical, grumpy persona aside for moment, it’s all rather humbling (and terrifying) to think so many folks have been tuning in to watch Joey, Natsuki and I get up to all sorts of chaotic activities these last few weeks and I suspect I underestimated how many people found solace in the series through tough lockdown situations worldwide.

With Journey Across Japan: Escape to Fuji officially over, after six action packed episodes, and thankfully - to my incredible relief - an actual view of Mount Fuji, I feel like it couldn’t have gone better.

Compared to the previous Journey Across Japan, this series felt like a walk in the park in terms of production, which I’ll get into in the Patreon exclusive episode on the series that’ll be coming out in the coming days.

But I have to say a huge thanks to all of you for supporting the series, because without Patreon this series would have been tough to pull off, given the resources required to bring the five of us together (Joey, Natsuki, Ian, Norm).

The production quality was beyond even my own expectations and the things we did and places we saw, far more impressive and surprising than I’d anticipated.

It’s for that reason I’m really keen to produce one last Journey Across Japan series in the first half of 2021, fresh off the lessons learned from this series and while Japan is still empty of tourists enabling us to film in locations easier in the absence of crowds. We’d be mad not to take advantage of this (hopefully) rare situation.

With the entire team back on board, and Natsuki joining us for the whole week this time (the only conceivable way JAJ: Escape to Fuji could have been better), I think we’ve got a chance to make something really special and round off the JAJ Trilogy, where we’ll likely put the name to rest. And the location we’ve chosen is the one we skimmed over in the original series and the place the three of us haven’t really explored; the island of Kyushu.

- More about that next month though!

As for me, I’m currently in Kyoto shooting a documentary I’ve been wanting to make for a few years which I’ll share with you guys later this week, but I just wanted to take the time out to say thank you to you all and I hope you enjoyed the series you helped create. If you’ve been holding out on it, now’s the time to binge the entire series!

JAJ: Escape to Fuji:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSOR9_iNzVflVY0eQlZY4V0gArxUiOMLR

Thanks guys and keep an eye out for another post here later this week.
I hope your week is going well wherever you may be this Wednesday!
Chris

Credit: LauraDiGi (Instagram)