Name: Learning to Fly IN JAPAN - A Day in the Life
Uploaded: 2025-08-28T17:57:37.000Z
Duration: 20 min 42 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

It's been a couple weeks, more than a month now, since I moved out here to start flight school, and it's going well.

Adverbs of manner

Lately, I start every morning by checking on my pigeon. That's not a euthemism, by the way.

There's a pigeon that lives on my balcony that has laid eggs, and now I'm waiting for them to hatch.

Seems like Mama Pigeon is stretching her legs right now.

We've got two eggs hiding back here. Excuse all the grain and cereal on the ground.

I've been trying to make it so she doesn't have to go out very often.

It's a little hazy today, but I've also got a pretty epic view of the Sakurajima Volcano from my balcony.

These are clouds, by the way. It does erupt fairly often, though.

In fact, I made the return of one of my flight lessons really interesting the other day because it erupted while we were in the training area, and on the way back, the sky was just filled with volcanic ash, but the pigeon's doing okay.

Unfortunately, I think I'm going to miss the hatching of the eggs, though.

It's likely to happen during the window of time where I'm away for a bit, but let's continue on our day.

The next thing that I typically do is grab this radio right here and check what is called ATIS, the airport weather.

There's basically a mountain between me and the airport, so I've got to get it in just the right position.

I can obviously check this online, but as I need to listen to this pre-flight and during the flight, it's just really good listening practice.

That reminds me, I want to show you something.

Okay, these right here, these are the cameras that I'm using to record my flights and flight training.

This is the 1RS by Insta360. Insta360 hooked me up with every single version of this camera, so we'd be able to deck out the entire cockpit. We should do that today, by the way.

We're just going to go ahead and say that this video is sponsored by Insta360.

They don't get to check the video and they don't get any input, and by this point, you know that if I have a problem with the camera or the maker, I will tell you, but especially when it comes to my flight lessons, my aviation videos, there's no retakes, there's no do-overs.

The drive from my place to the airport or airfield or wherever you want to call it is about 15-20 minutes, depending on traffic, but it's got this gorgeous, gorgeous river view and I love the entire drive.

Although admittedly, it is just a little narrow.

The drive takes me through tea fields up on this beautiful plateau, which you'll hopefully get to see later on from the air.

So with the sound of airplanes in the background, I've got a full day of flight school today.

The weather here changes every five to ten minutes, by the way, and it's always different on the two sides of the airport. We've got blue skies over here, gray skies over here, but it looks like it's going to be a pretty good day.

Today, my day starts with a flight observation, which is basically exactly as it sounds.

It tends to be a really good study all on its own, especially when it comes to listening to the Japanese ATC, which is in English, but is...

We'll say special. You'll see. You'll see.

My flight school here, by the way, is called New Japan Aviation, and it's located right at the Kagoshima airport.

But the catch is that the Kagoshima airport runway, seeing as this is the second busiest airport in Kyushu, is three kilometers long.

So from here to the actual airport, it's a little far.

Honestly, I would say one of my favorite parts of this so far is just the fact that I have access to an airplane hangar.

You know, more than that, I have access to an airplane hangar and airplanes.

So this is basically how the observation flights go.

I sit in the back. We're just taxiing onto the runway right now.

I record everything, including the ATC audio, so that I can listen to it again later on.

You've probably already noticed that the audio from this sounds significantly different than it usually does, because this is what the headset or avionics audio sounds like.

But we're just about to take off, so I gotta focus.

One of the things I love the most about this area is just the plateaus.

Plateaus, mountains, and tea fields basically make up the majority of this area, and it is so scenic from above.

It's always been beautiful from down below, but having the opportunity to see it from above this much has really doubled, if not tripled, my love for the Kagoshima area.

This also serves as really good practice for me to keep my eyes open for other aircraft and spot them, because that's a skill that I need as a pilot, and they're much smaller and harder to see than you would think.

Even seeing a Cessna about to land on the runway, it is so much tinier than you would possibly imagine.

Luckily, this airport is towered, so they do give you a heads up when there are other aircraft in the area, but you still have to be able to find it, spot it, and let them know that you have it in sight.

And I can actually see rain out the window over there.

After finishing up the OBS flight, then I have a ton of study and review and everything to do on my own, and the hangar is empty right now.

Luckily, I'm the only person here right now.

Usually, most of my lessons happen right in this room.

Today, more than anything, I need to review and practice all that ATC.

For those of you who are pilots, and I was so surprised at how many pilots actually watch this channel.

Hi, I'm very excited to be a part of this community.

Even a fair number of the Japanese pilots here get their license somewhere overseas, like the U.S., and then convert it to a Japanese license.

So despite being Japanese when they come here, they still need to get used to the sound of the ATC.

I'm getting my entire license from zero here in Japan, and how that all works and the difference between doing it overseas and in Japan,

Like, even looking at my notes here, as you can see, all the ATC calls are in English, and then they've got the translations over here in Japanese for those who are still learning.

I do ground school here about four or five times a week, and fly as often as the weather would permit, and then there's a lot of study done at home between running the channel and doing study.

I'm currently hitting about 80 to 90 hours a week of work.

When you're doing stuff that you love this much, it sounds like it's exhausting, but I do not get tired of the study.

I should sit down and do some of my studying before my flight.

So obviously before departing, we need to fill out and submit a flight plan.

Again, everything's in English and in Japanese.

That is the aircraft that I will be flying there, and then once the paper flight plan is filled out, we can put it into the computer, file it, and we are on our way.

Need to do an alcohol check before and after every single flight.

All right, this cloud cover is starting to get a little crazy, but since I'm about to go on my flight, I'm gonna set up the cameras.

The main camera that gets the cockpit view is a 1RS.

I use the 4K boost lens on that one, and then I put one more of those right here to get inside the cockpit view.

Then I use the one inch sensor because I can put an ND filter on it.

I actually just tape it down right there.

You gotta keep it far enough away from the compass that it doesn't impact the...

Well, it's, you know, magnet, metal, all that.

1RS is the upgraded version of the 1R, and if I'm being completely honest, no single feature really made me feel like I wanted to rush out and upgrade, but there are a lot of little upgrades that added up.

And honestly, one of the small simple things is this.

The fact that if I just want to change out the camera,

And in order to put it in and out of this case,

I would have to take off this lens and put it on every single time.

And now I can just pop it in just like that and boom.

So if I want to switch up any of the cameras, once I have them set up, I can do that.

And then I use the 360, which eventually I'm going to be sticking to the outside of the plane, but we're just waiting on approval for the mount.

So it gives you that like backseat view from inside the airplane.

One facing me and from behind are both 4K.