Subtitles section Play video
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"Salted Egg Flavor Potato Chips"
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It should work, but it doesn't.
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You might be thinking, "It must be nice. A kind of savory salty flavor."
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But, in fact, it tastes like somebody dropped a bag of sugar over some potatoes
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and the end result is...
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Disappointment.
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This was supposed to be my reward for a job-well-done today on my
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1980s Japanese living room. Which I've spent all afternoon working on.
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It's a reward that now feels somewhat redundant.
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Nevertheless, check out the actual working retro television in the corner over there.
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Admittedly, when I did plug it in earlier, I did think I hope it doesn't show real
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Japanese television because nobody deserves to watch that.
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Maybe let me think to yourself. Well, ...
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Eh?
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Now right about now you might be thinking,
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"Wait a minute. Did you just say bad things about Japanese television?"
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"Japanese TV is amazing!"
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"And I hate anyone who says otherwise!"
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"What about Takeshi's Castle? The game show where people fall over in the mud for our amusement?"
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"Or what about the show where the guy eats a door handle?"
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"An actual door handle. And he eats it."
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It's probably the best thing I've ever seen.
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A hilarious act that,
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probably wouldn't go down very well anymore...
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But what if one of the greatest myths about Japan to the outside world is that
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Japanese TV is actually good.
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Because while people falling over in the mud or eating door handles is undeniably great entertainment. I can't deny that.
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Unfortunately, the reality is quite the opposite.
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Now over the years by virtue of having lived here and done this I've found myself on both sides of the screen
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both as a bemused viewer and as a bemused participant
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TV Host: "Good morning!"
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"Good morning! Thanks"
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"Are you, YOUTUBER?"
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"I am"
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And I've somehow ended up on TV around half a dozen times.
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Including Japan's biggest morning breakfast show, "Mezumashi TV"
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Thanks to the horrific behavior of YouTube Supervillain Logan Paul. Which we'll get onto in a minute
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I've always wanted to make a video talking about those somewhat awkward experiences and
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breaking down the aforementioned myth.
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But I didn't find the real motivation to do that up until a few weeks ago
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when a TV show here aired a segment that
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beautifully personified everything wrong with Japanese TV in about 10 seconds
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Shrewd TV pundits of one of japan's biggest channels were discussing why in hell the number of cases of Covid-19 were so low in Japan
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when a groundbreaking theory was put forward suggesting it's something to do with the Japanese language itself.
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Was it because the Japanese language is more "elegant" and "softly spoken?"
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a test subject stood before a tissue and said the phrase,
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"Kore ha pen desu." Literally "This is a pen."
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to measure the exhalation of air and any potential virus riddled spit as she spoke.
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Upon speaking the phrase in Japanese the tissue barely moved.
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A testament to the refined and superior nature of the language.
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Next though, came English. And that's when things got really scary
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The sheer destructive force of saying, "this is a pen" in English blasted the tissue away
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A testament to the crude, abrasive nature of the English language.
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Cue the reaction from the enthralled commentator stuffed inside a tiny box!
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The writing was on the wall for the English language and for the letter P
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And I think we can all agree looking at the results of this, objective and meticulous scientific experiment,
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The results are abundantly clear.
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Was there a lack of cases in Japan due to the wide adoption of face masks or an absence of mass testing?
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No! It could only be "Kore ha pen desu." This is a pen!
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I know for a fact because I've done the experiment myself. So I know it's true.
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Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled-
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To be honest,
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I'm as guilty as anyone else at believing that Japanese TV was on another level before I came here
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Like a lot of people, I grew up watching reruns of Takeshi's Castle
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A gameshow in which around the hundred willing participants battled their way through
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increasingly sinister obstacles in order to take the castle and beat takeshi himself
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It was ludicrously hard. In 133 episodes,
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Only eight contestants ever actually took the castle and won the grand prize of a million yen.
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A grand prize that wasn't really so grand when you converted it into dollars and pounds.
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Especially given the questionable scenarios the contestants have put themselves through
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The winnings probably wouldn't cover the cost of the health insurance claims.
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Nevertheless, I've given many reasons over the years as to why I moved to Japan
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Cultural exchange, learning a language, becoming an English teacher. But it was all a lie.
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The real reason was, I just wanted to be on Takeshi's Castle.
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So you can probably imagine my horror and despair when I started working as an English teacher
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My students asked me one day, "Chris sensei, what's your favorite Japanese TV show?" and I thought yes
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This is my chance to show off to show that I've actually watched a Japanese TV show
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So I sort of said, "well, I like to watch Takeshi's Castle! Yaaa!"
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Ya...
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Uh, no. I was met with a deafening silence because none of my sixteen year old students had seen it
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apart from my 50 year old colleague who fondly remembered it and gave a it a
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nostalgic grin. Because it turns out takeshi's castle finished broadcasting in
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1989
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One year before I was even born!
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The truth is, that outlandish wacky game shows that most people know about
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are very few and far between
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Spectacularly rare and difficult to find.
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People often ask me, "Oh, you must watch that show Candy or Not Candy."
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The one where people walk into a room and start eating random objects to see if it's candy or not
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You must have seen the guy's stuff a shoe into his mouth or the lady munch on a delicious tasty table
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And of course I have it's ingenious its glorious and it's also a half-hour segment for a TV show broadcast six years ago.
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It's not an ongoing series. Although, it definitely should be.
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It's just a funny thing that happened once in 2014
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and its been repeated so much that people think this is what Japanese TV looks like
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So far, we've heard what Japanese TV isn't. We've heard the expectations. But what is the reality?
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What is it actually like and why do I avoid going on it?
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Imagine if you were to switch your TV on right now outside of Japan, what would you expect to find?
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Drama! Attention! Suspense!
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Im right, you're not!
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Views, debates, conflict. It's what we crave in the West.
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We want to be angry. We want to be uncomfortable.
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Fucking donkeys!
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It's not Gordon Ramsay's Fun Kitchen, It's Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares!
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It's not the Everyones a Winner Factor, it's called the X Factor!
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And you haven't got it!
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ha ha har
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"Terrible"
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But then again, he doesn't exactly have it either.
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We want cretins! We want sycophants! We want monsters!
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We love it and we watch it over and over and over
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Now imagine you wake up tomorrow morning switch on the TV and everyone is exceptionally happy
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"Look at this!"
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Everyone: "Eeeeeeeh!"
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"Wow!"
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"Delicious~"
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There's no criticism. There's no negativity.
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Just everyone is happy and positive. In an almost uncomfortably utopian manner.
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Imagine an episode of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares
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where he walks into a restaurant, is sat before a dish, and instead of saying the usual phrases like
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"It looks like a dog's been sick. Where's the men sauce?"
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Imagine if instead he just said, "Wow! That's delicious!"
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"Ooh amazing! Wow, it's so good."
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"It's delicious."
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"Wow!"
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As a one-off, it might be acceptable
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but imagine if he then did that not once or twice, but every single time, in every single episode
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"Wow! It's delicious! Amazing!"
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No other constructive criticism
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No other comments. Just blind superficially positive statements repeated
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over and over and over as if someone was threatening him secretly
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off-screen to act that way. And that is what Japanese TV is like and for once I am not exaggerating
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"Amazing!"
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"eh!"
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"UUOOOO!"
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It has a very fake dumbed down feel to it where presenters are forced to display a
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disturbingly theatrical enthusiasm towards the most utterly mundane things
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Now yesterday I did something unspeakable.
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I sat down actually watched some Japanese television and I did my own meticulous scientific experiment
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Just like "Kore ha pen desu."
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Where I went through some programs to see if there are any key traits or attributes that they all hand.
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And I boiled it down to four points and the four points are:
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Number One: Every show requires hyperbolic language
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where everything is "sugoi" meaning "incredible"
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or "Oishii" meaning "delicious."
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Or in some cases, "Umai" which means "really delicious."
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Number Two: You need lots of canned sound effects
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Every action on-screen must be accompanied by some sort comical cartoon sound effect
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The sound you hear the most though is
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"heeeeeee"
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which kind of means like "whaaat?"
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The sound is so ubiquitous that it's actually put in post-production. They'll have a studio sound of all the audience going
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*tons of people saying "heeeee"*
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Stage Three is: The entire screen needs to be drenched from top to bottom in text
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And finally, of course is stage 4. The infamous reaction box were
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Enthusiastic presenter is forced to look on and deliver a relentless positive appraisal of everything happening on screen
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and to give you a quick example of all those things combined let's now do a
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horrifying simulation of what the Abroad in Japan channel would look like if it were on Japanese television
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Yeah, again, they taste dreadful.
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It should be illegal. It should be a crime to brand something as salted when it actually tastes sweet.
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I can't be doing with that.
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But congratulations guys! You've just watched every Japanese TV show about food ever. Well done!
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Now, you know the kind of performance and sheer excitement required to go on Japanese TV.
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You can probably realize why I don't enjoy doing it very much which takes us through to my own awkward experiences.
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The first time I featured on Japanese TV was during the brexit vote in 2016 when a local TV station
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Wanted to interview a British person and get an expert
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"Expert opinion" on what was happening
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Basically, an interview twice once on the day of the vote and once on the day the results
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The TV crew came over and after
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discovering that I was a
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Youtuber for some reason they wanted me to hold a camera in the frame just randomly in the apartment because that's you know
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That's what YouTubers do isn't it
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Apparently
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And they also wanted me to pull a face while I was doing it
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The end result was I ended up looking like a fucking murderer
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I was then asked if I thought Brexit would actually happen at which I said no, of course
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It won't
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Never in a thousand years
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The bonds are too strong economically between the UK and the European Union.
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And economic benefits aside,
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There was also the bond of mutual respect. A bond that was, quite simply,
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Unbreakable.
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Anyway the next day we left the EU.
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And the TV crew came round again
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Now I was a bit disappointed by the results and
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surprised above all. But the TV crew really wanted me to exaggerate my reaction as if the world itself was coming to an end
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I was asked to glare at the laptop screen clasping my mouth in shock, biting my fingers in despair as I nursed a mournful expression
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And naturally because I'm a YouTuber I was forced to do it over the camera stuck next to me on the desk all the while
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You know just like I always do. I don't know how I've got so far into a video without not having a
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Camera in shot. Whats going on?
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Anyway, despite the experience of looking like a murderer on Japanese TV though,
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one year later
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when one of the country's biggest TV channels reached out to me
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and asked me to feature on a show eating the local cuisine of North Japan
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I of course said yes and jumped at the chance and the prospect of fame and glory
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Beyond my wildest dreams. Best of all it was all filmed in English. So I thought I could be myself a bit more
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This also meant the entire show had a chillingly robotic English voice over.
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"Japan"
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"A land of four seasons and bountiful nature"
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Ah, fuck ya! Bountiful nature bring it on!
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Now I thought would be eating something good like pork or fish or a cheeky bowl of ramen which the region is famous for
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Instead however, it turned out Id being eating nothing but vegetables
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Clearly they hired the wrong guy for the job as I was quickly handed an assortment of pickles and
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told to give a big happy face and reaction as I ate them, which I then inevitably failed to do
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In a desperate attempt to elicit some kind of performance though
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they secretly
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Sneakily drenched some of the pickles in this extremely spicy mustard and then rather than pretending to enjoy the experience
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I had to actively hide the fact that I was in pain.
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"Oh my god"
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"It is quite spicy"
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In reality, I wanted to say holy fuck it tastes like someone's put a flamethrower in my mouth
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But instead I had to sit there and go, "Oh, it's delicious. It's amazing. Bountiful nature."
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Absolute bloody torture
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But the worst scene was on a farm where I had to eat some edamame soybeans in front of the kind elderly farmer who,
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So painstakingly cultivated them only for me to turn up and fail to show them the appreciation
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they so sorely deserved.
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Now odds are if you've been to a Japanese restaurant,
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You have had edamame soybeans at some point and they are very nice or a great start or a great side dish
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You can't beat it
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But the variety of edamame that I was trying onscreen were actually called "dadachamame"
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Which are well just edamame with a different name. There's no literal difference
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However, for 40 minutes we stood in the field as I had to painstakingly describe the difference between
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Edamame and Dadachamame, even though there was no difference whatsoever
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I had to make it up and I could not do it over and over about 15 times
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the producers tried to put words in my mouth and try and get me to
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See the difference that wasn't there. Like to give you some example, imagine you took a crisp, right?
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You split it in half I ask you to eat this one
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And then I ask you to eat this one and then compare the difference on
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Camera for 40 minutes in a field on a hot summer's day and I just couldn't do it and throughout the whole ludicrous situation
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The nice kind elderly woman just stood there but mused wondering what the hell was going on.
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In the end, They just gave up and turned the entire 40 minute ordeal into a 10-second sequence and just quietly and awkwardly