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Hey guy! Today I'm here with Chris Broad from the channel Abroad in Japan,
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and Sharla from the channel Sharla in Japan
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and we've been traveling Tohoku!
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We'll have a lot of awesome videos about that.
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But today we're going to discuss the greatest myths about Japan!
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What do you think is a large myth?
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I know so much about Japan [lived in Japan so long] so I'm not really sure what the outside-
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*COUGHBRAGCOUGH*
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-what the outside view about it is.
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But probably something like, I've seen lots of comments saying
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"It's so cool how you can wear whatever you want in Japan!"
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"People wear so many crazy fashions."
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So I think people have this image that maybe everywhere you go in Tokyo
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you'll see people dressed up like lolita, or visual kei style or gyaru style.
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But I feel like it's more confined to smaller areas than people have in mind.
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For Harajuku you can see lolita fashion, but definitely not everyone.
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It's rare, so maybe like 3 out of every 100 people will be wearing a lolita dress.
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If you go to Shibuya you'll see lots of gyaru fashion, gyaruo fashion.
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Not too much visual kei fashion at all recently.
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Yeah, most people just wear regular shirts and skirts and shorts.
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It's not really super exciting.
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But of course they do have lots of fashion styles,
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stuff that you wouldn't see at all in other countries.
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So it is interesting. You can see those kind of people.
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But it's not the norm.
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I think it's kind of like gothic fashions in America.
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Yeah, it's about the same. The same percentage of people.
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Some people wear it so it's not like super unusual if you see it,
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but it is out of the norm.
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Chris, what about you?
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What do you think is one of the greatest myths about Japan?
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That everything's healthy.
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Everything's healthy.
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Before I came everyone was like, "Ah yeah, you'll lose so much weight there!"
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Everyone was like "Yeah you can lose weight, it's brilliant!"
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And I came, and then I discovered convenience store food.
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And... oh dear.
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It's so dangerous.
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It all went downhill big time.
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Yeah, I find the food to be not remotely healthy.
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It's got so much stuff in it.
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Salt and fat.
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There are really healthy choices, like if you're a housewife and you have time to cook.
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There's lots of great traditional Japanese foods that are like vegetables
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and fish and miso soup, and stuff that's all super healthy for you.
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But for people who are working all the time, you don't have time to cook that.
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Right.
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I often run into the convenience store to get some stuff
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and everything I find it just really unhealthy.
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Apart from like a carrot stick.
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Yeah, and the lack of salads.
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No one buys carrots.
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Who's ever bought a carrot?
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No one.
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And all the things you wanna buy are like fried chicken
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and
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fried chicken.
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What else is there?
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Japan has very good fried chicken.
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That's it, really.
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There's little bags of salad, but everything else is really unhealthy.
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Bread covered in cheese covered in bacon...
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I think it's like anywhere else. You have to put effort into it
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if you want to be healthy.
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So it's not the super healthy country where everything's healthy.
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I think lots of people have that image.
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But there are healthy options.
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I didn't lose weight. If anything, I put on more weight.
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I feel betrayed.
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Betrayed by Japanese people and their unhealthy food.
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I would say what I think one of the greatest myths about Japan is that
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it's a weird country.
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First of all, "weird" is just so subjective,
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so it really depends on what you're used to,
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but a lot of people think about like Japanese commercials are weird,
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or these shirts with strange English are weird,
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or they have all these weird anime or tv shows
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or like those prank shows and stuff.
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But most of the stuff that's weird here is going to be weird to Japanese people, too.
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Yeah.
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So it's not like Japanese people watch this stuff and say,
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"Oh, well it's just another day in Japan."
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They're like, "What is going on here??"
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And that's why it's entertainment.
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There's lots of comedy stuff here. That's considered comedy.
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It's not like the average.
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Right.
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And all the weird stuff gets out on the internet, so that's all that people see.
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Yeah.
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You know, obviously I make videos about stuff that's weird
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because it might be interesting, it might be unique.
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like robot restaurant
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or like a crazy bar
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or maybe even like cat island itself.
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It's kind of odd.
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Right.
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But even Japanese people I tell I'm going to cat island,
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they're like, "What is cat island??"
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Yeah, so it's not weird at all.
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You could find weird stuff in any country.
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it's just like small, isolated things,
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and that's why it's interesting, because it stands out.
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Yeah. That is probably the biggest myth, though.
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Crazy, weird Japan.
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Okay, well thank you guys for our question video here!
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And I'll link to their channels here and in the description below
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so please check them out if you haven't!
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They have amazing channels! You should be watching them.
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Thanks for watching, guys! I'll see you later!
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Bye everyone!
