The Most Affable Man is BACK (ft. @AbroadinJapan ) | Trash Taste #163 02:28:18

Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready. For

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- Welcome back to another episode of the Trash Taste podcast. - Were we recording? - Yeah, we've been recording the whole time. I was like, can you guys stop talking for a second? - Oh, I thought we were just trying shit. We haven't done the audio test yet. - We did while you were talking about air conduction. - Oh, okay. - Anyway, welcome back to another episode. I'm your host Joey. I'm with the boys as per usual and Chris is back. - Yeah. - Say hi. - How you doing? It's your boy, Chris.

- Wait, which camera am I looking at? 'Cause last time I looked at the wrong camera for the entire two hours. Every time I did like a funny sentence, I was like, no. - Is that why you look that way? - No, that's the middle part. So we don't really look into the middle part. - What a dickhead. - Look into this one. - He was landing jokes like a stage performer. Off to the side. - He actually had to remove the laugh track. That was their line.

Anyway, it's been what? Eight, nine months maybe? - A long time. - It has been nine months. - It's been a long time. You've had a busy eight, nine months. - I've had a baby for a bunch of days. - The whole nine months, that's why you left. - Yeah, Felix did. - My greatest achievement this morning, I nearly drowned on the way here. I was in a taxi with Bacari Sweat and the driver was like,

Like every mouthful I just deep throw it in the Pocari bottle. It's like waterboarding myself on wheels. I fucking hate that. Yeah, but other than that, I'm good. A bit very hot. And I just arrived and the guys are like, by the way, the air conditioning doesn't work here. It's not that bad. It's a nice, it's one of the nicer days of summer. The studio's gone downhill.

- This used to be the cutting edge. - Well at least you're wearing a black shirt. - And I walked in and there's like a landfill site by the window. - Yeah, I was like, that's the rubbish corner we put away. - We have too much rubbish. - We've just accumulated a lot of shit. I'm sorry, Chris. - It used to be near the entrance. So now it's in like a little bit more of an inconspicuous spot. - We thought we cleaned things up for you, but you know, clearly you don't appreciate it. - Apparently our efforts were just not seen. - It was just a big pile of rubbish. - Well where the fuck is it?

- Speaking of a big pile of rubbish, you've left Sendai. - I thought that was gonna be a segue to the book there. - You're running through the possibilities. - There's just too many. - I thought it was more, yeah, the biggest thing is that you moved to Tokyo, so you're here now. - Finally, yeah.

- What took you so long? - I don't know. I kind of wish I hadn't come here. It's like seven degrees warmer here than Sendai. It's only like two hours away by bullet train, right? But it's a different climate. It's been good, but like getting around Tokyo is a bit shit in the summer. Like I'm living off of Pocari Sweat. My blood is like...

- 50% Pocari. And it needs to be because just drinking water doesn't do it. You need the salts. Buy Pocari. - Antioxidants. - Antioxidants. - No, not antioxidants. - Not antioxidants. What's the word? - Wait, wait, wait. I think that's something different. - That's from the tea. - From the man that brought you osmosis, poorly defined. - What the fuck's it called? What's it called again? - Electrolytes. - Electrolytes. - Electrolytes, that's it. - But if it's like sweating an ungodly amount, you're fine. - Well, I mean, Chris might be, you never know. - I am sweating ungodly. - What would Aristotle do?

- What would Aristotle do? - Drink a fuck ton of Pocari Sweat. - How's Tokyo been so far? - It's been all right. - It's been all right. - What made you wanna move? You were just tired of being here. - Just to be close to Trash Taste. - Oh, okay, brilliant. - I think actually it was quicker coming here on bullet train than taking a taxi, to be honest. - Yeah, I thought you'd be down here in Tokyo every other week for like something.

Like, yeah, I mean, the novelty, it's sort of worn off very fast, given that I used to come to take care of so much anyway. It's been good. It's been good to near be friends. Near be friends. It's been good to near be friends. And, like, it's cool. We're just getting the newborn Japan studio set up. The set's being built next week, and it's being, like, doubled in size. It can finally fit my entire ego in there. But we've got the ramen shop, the electronics store, and now there's going to be, like, a 1980s Japanese living room.

Oh, nice, nice. Because I think one criticism about the Born Japan set is it's very like cold-hearted. Like the man that presents the video. It's very like a depressing ramen shop. And that's kind of cool, but like... Well, I mean, you were kind of going for like a cyberpunk aesthetic anyway, right? Yeah, yeah. So I want to mix it up a bit. Yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun. But I've got a present for you. Oh.

- Oh, okay. - I know Garnt loves his cheese. - I do, I do. - And his wine. - Necco chef. - Look at this. Not only did I bring some beautiful wine from Chile. - Nice, nice. - How does that sound in Australia?

- Chile? - Chile. We do say Chile, right? - Yeah, we say Chile, but I think it's actually Chile. - I think it's actually pronounced Chile. - It's Chile. - It's Chile. - We say Chile in the UK. - Yeah. - I don't know why. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I always, I feel like I was getting- - We've not really been a culture known for- - Naming the countries the right way. - Yeah, yeah. - Listening to what the other country says. - I remember when I moved here, an American colleague always talked about Chile and I pretended to know what he was talking about. - Yeah, Chile.

- What the fuck is that? - It's in Louisiana. And then I've, oh, it's chili, right, yeah. But no red wine will be complete without a cheese board. - Of course, is there a camembert on there? - You bet there is. - Oh, yeah. - A patronizingly small piece of camembert. - Is there a cheese board? - It's a cheese microscopic sample. - You do need a telescope. - Oh, you do, okay. - Yeah, we got two. - One for each. - Oh, we got the board. - I don't think we're gonna need a knife for this. - There's nothing to cut. - We cannot cut this. - Just give the board.

- We need some glasses, wine glasses. - And some delectable crackers. - Can we get some wine glasses, please? - 25% less sodium or something. There you go. - What great guests I have. - Thank you. - Thank you. - Now the guests bring cheese boards and wine. - In a "Broad in Japan" episode, we're belligerently drunk at the end of it.

- Or eating camembert. - I heard you're past the camembert phase though, right? You got a new obsession. - Do I? - Yeah. - Like what? - 'Cause the other day when we were hanging out, you were talking about this like brown cheese or something. - You remember that? - Yeah. - You say to me. - I like Norwegian brown cheese. - Yeah, that's like your new thing now. - You made it sound really fucking insidious.

- You like a bit of brown cheese, mate? - No, dude, okay, when Chris and I were hanging out the other day, it's the first thing he said is like, "How's it going?" By the way, brown cheese though? - That's part of the conversation. - Actual banger. And I'm like, oh, okay, he's no longer the Camembert man anymore. - He's good. Norwegian brown cheese. - How did you discover this Norwegian brown cheese? - I live near a Norwegian coffee shop.

for whatever reason. And yeah, they have brown cheese on Norwegian bread. I was like, I'll try this delicious food. And they brought it out. It was amazing. What's cheese? Is it reminiscent of? Nothing. That's why it's so good. It's kind of like caramelized cheese. Oh, no fucking way you love it. How do we make cheese even more unhealthy? Caramel? Like,

- I can directly correlate what foods you're gonna like by how unhealthy they are. The unhealthier it is, the more you're like, this is just gross. - Camembert wasn't bad enough for me.

- You know what, how many calories can we pack into this? - We'll go to like Yakitori and you'll have this great, you know, Yakitori is not, I wouldn't say it's healthy, but it's not terrible for you. And Chris, without failure, we'll get, and it is fucking good, fucking good though. We go to this one place and they have like cheese, but Chris will get like four. - Dude, that's what happened the other day when we went drinking at this like British pub, he got two fish and chips to himself. - He wasn't supposed to tell anyone about it.

- I'm like, bro. - To be fair, to be fair. - The fish and chips in Japan are fucking small size. - Exactly. - I've gotten fish and chips at some pubs. - I don't know, man. - Also from that pub, they are good. I know the one in Yokohama. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah. Yeah

- I was trying to defend you, Chris. - It's run by a British man from Essex. - Spangler and Mashers are amazing. - Just being abused here about the cheese. - Sorry, sorry. - Without fail, if it's unhealthy, you will always be like, we should get it.

I'm like, "No, you cycled 500 kilometers." - So Chris, I see you've relapsed from your chess boxing days, eh? - Things have been downhill, girl. Things have been downhill. How can I say? - There's one boxing event and- - When was the last day we had you on? It was just before boxing, right? - It was a simple time. - Yeah. - It was November. - I think the last time you were on, you guys made a bet about you getting a six pack. - Yeah. - Which he still hasn't made.

He didn't live up to his end of the deal and he still hasn't- - I did pay it. - Did you actually? - I did donate it. - I'm not a monster. - Thank you, Chris. - Or cheese. - You're not a monster, but it's hard to get the wallet to open up sometimes. - This is his way of repaying him, cheese and wine. - I lost the six pack bet.

- I was putting a lot of pressure on myself. - So what was the bet? What was the bet? - It was to get a six pack. - Yeah, let's get a six pack by the time- - In like six weeks or something. - Yeah, in six weeks by the time you guys did your cyclophone or something. - Right, right. And didn't do it. - And then you- - I learned it's a little bit difficult to get a six pack. - Really?

- Very difficult. - I fucked up. Honestly, I should have trained more for that chest boxing event. There's no two ways about it. But I was under a lot of pressure at the time. I was also writing the damn book, right? So I'm like booking one hand and getting smashed in the face in the other. - Well, yeah, one of the things people don't know about the first cyclothon and-

- One of the smartest decisions Chris made was that he was gonna have a deadline for the book whilst we were cycling. Remember, so every night you were like, you were stressing out and then you were like, we'd all, after we'd had a meal, we'd go to bed at 10:00 PM, normal time. I'd charge my stuff and go to bed, wake up the next day, Chris would go, "Oh, I went to bed at three."

- Why the fuck did you go to the bed? We've been waking up at six, Chris. And then he's like, "Oh, I had to write my book." I'm like, "Why would you schedule the book at the same time?" - I fucked myself. I really did. - You did fuck yourself. - I did. - So is there one chapter of the book that's just like really badly written because you're just suffering from brain damage? - Just mashing the keys.

- Before we get into that, let's have some Merlite. - Cheers. - Cheers, everyone. - Just realised these are Trash Taste glasses, available now on the Trash Taste store. - No, they're not. - They're custom made by a fan for us. - By Wendy. - I feel bad because I wanted to get you a present, Chris. - Oh really? - I tried really, really hard. - Under what guy's gun? - I tried really, really hard to win a prize at Connor's charity auction. - You did. - I watched you in the audience with Sid going like,

I woke up at 10 a.m. that morning and I was like, oh shit, I'm missing Connor's show. And I tuned in literally seconds before you started doing the big mouth thing. Yeah. Which went for an astonishing $8,000. Yeah. Somehow. For something that was like a dodgy printout that you guys framed. That was a high quality. Hey, come on. We worked hard. That was seven of its finest printer quality. We framed it. I'll have you know. I felt like I was framed. Like, honestly, fucking...

- It went for eight grand and that is astonishing. - Someone has it now. - Someone has it. - What was your limit? - Five grand. - Oh shit. You're actually taking it seriously. - It would have been fun to have given it back to you. - What would I have done with it then? - Just be this endless cycle where you can't escape it. - The groundhog day of abuse. - You were like, oh, I'm thinking I'll give away this. I'm like, what are you doing?

- You wanted to just throw it away and you found a reason to throw it away. - It was either go on the auction or go on the trash taste landfill site. Fucking awful. - Can't believe that. - That was a real happy ending to the story. As I've, you know, I don't look like big mouth anymore, right? I'm metamorphosis. - You look better. - Yeah, I was mosey. - Well, we're trying to bring you back. Don't worry with all this cheese. - Bring him back to the glory days. - Speak up to oblivion. - Show me the real abroad in Japan.

- But it was good though. It was a good auction and yeah, did really well. - Yeah, yeah. - Rare praise. - I don't know, rare praise on no jokes. - And while you were doing the pig mouth auction, you ate a cracker from hell or something. - We have one upstairs. - No, fuck off. - Unless you wanna do it now. - All but one chip challenge. - Yeah, have you ever done it? - I haven't, no. - Do you wanna try it? - No. - Okay.

- 'Cause I couldn't tell if you were like deliberately like drawing out to get more bits in, right? - No, it was really, really terrible. It was really, really fucking awful. - How many Scovilles was this thing? - I think it's like the equivalent of like two crushed up Carolina Reapers. - Like 10 mil. - And that's what you had on the Trash Taste.

- No, I had a ghost pepper which is one level down from that. - No, it's like two, two or three. - Oh, two or three? Okay, yeah. - You had that on an auction? - It's like, yeah, two of them. - How were you not like physically sick all over the stage? - Well, 'cause I have a good spice. I have a good spice tolerance, but that was- - The next item is . - That was really pushing it. The worst time I've ever had it is I was doing the stream where one of my Pokemon died. I would take one 'cause I thought I can handle the pepper and the first one was fine.

I was in pain, but it wasn't terrible. I think there was some kind of like follow-up punch that the second one did. - Get that away, Naby. We don't wanna see that. - It gave me like a follow-up punch. Yeah, Carolina Reaper pepper, scorpion chili pepper. - So scorpion chili is the second most Carolina Reaper all in one. - You can smell it if you want.

- It's vacuum sealed. - It says, "Do not eat if you are sensitive to spicy foods, allergic to peppers, nightshades or pregnant." "Seek medical assistance should you die." - Yeah, so I took two peppers like an hour after each other and the second one, I felt like nearly put me in a coma. It hurt my stomach so bad to the point where I just couldn't stream. I had to like lie down for 30 minutes and like come back later and be like, "Sorry guys."

- Yeah. - That was a bold move. - So that was dumb. And this one wasn't that bad 'cause I had like a gallon of milk. - Right, right, right. - And the milk helped so much because everyone's like, "Oh, the next day is worse." But yeah, the next day is worse if it's not absolutely encapsulated by one liter of milk. - So is that, would you say the worst thing you've had? Like in terms of spice?

- Yeah, I think so. - God damn. - I think that was the worst one. - Other way, it comes in a box shaped like a coffin no less. - Yeah. - Sets you up there. That's marketing. - The stomach pain was the worst part 'cause near the end of the auction I was trying to do it. - Did you get the cramps? - Yeah, yeah, I was getting the stomach cramps. - Did you get the spicy pee? - I did get the spicy pee. - Do you get that? - What? - What's a spicy? - Why do I have toilet habits here? - Have you ever done like the ghost pepper or like Carolina Reaper challenges or anything like that? - No.

on a series of Journey Across Japan last year with you we had some what was it called what it was there's some fucking spicy food that looked like tar it was supposed to be the spiciest thing in the world or something I don't know how I compared it to this it looked like tar in the Jackie's house yeah

- We had to have it on a toothpick, right? - The sauce. - Yeah, I had to have it on a toothpick and that incinerated my tongue. - That's probably like- - It was like pure- - That's probably just pure capsaicin or- - We had that. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Why do people do it? - I don't know. - It's just dangerous. - What I've learned is that a little toothpick is fine 'cause no matter how much you take, it's just not enough to spread around your mouth and fuck it all up. But having the chip or the noodle soup, when it's just completely coating your entire organs- - Those noodles fucking hurt.

- That's when it really hurts. - And that was just like pain. But I think I'm gonna lay off the spicy stuff for a while. - Yeah. - You say that. - Stop eating Thai food, innit? - Well, the Thai food needs to stay.

- I'm sobbing it to a certain level. - Maybe I'll get fish and chips. - Tea portion. - I get it though, 'cause when I drink, I've become like a human vacuum when I drink. It's just like my normal appetite is just like quadruples when I have like one beer. - For me, it's not the day I'm getting drunk, it's the hangover. For some reason, when I wake up, even if I'm on like a diet and I go out, go drinking, have like a moderate amount to drink,

I wake up and I'm like, first thing in the morning, I just crave a McDonald's breakfast. And one's not enough, I have to order two.

- For me it's the like right at the end of the night when we're like, all right, let's go home. And we're heading to the taxi or the station or whatever. And I'm just like- - No, that's when you gotta fight. - You could go for a cheeky little Mac. - That's when you have to fight. - I can't, I can't. My brain's just like, you need to eat two Big Macs right now. - No, you have to stop. - I'm just like, okay. - 'Cause it doesn't feel satisfying right before you go to bed. You just feel like shit. And then you wake up and you're like, I hate my life. Why did I do that? - Speaking of hate.

Okay. Something you want to say, Chris? Los Angeles. Oh, okay. I've finally been to the City of Lights, or whatever it's called. I've had the City of Disappointment and lots of fucking traffic and awful. Actually, the food's good. And the people are good. I think the people of LA are really friendly, really nice. Don't know why everyone's so surprised. It's a little bit worrying. You guys have been there a lot more than I have. I think a lot of...

I guess people I interact with are pretty nice, but I get a very sterilized view of it, I suppose. - Yeah, I mean, I like the people that I know there. I mean, the content creators, but the general vibe I get of LA is that it's- - Every man for themselves. - It's very superficial. - A lot of ways. - Just like In-N-Out Burger. - Yeah. - God, it was shit. - I mean, people are like, "You have to get the In-N-Out Burger, dude. It's amazing." I went there.

And I got the french fries No the french fries are shit Right And then they tasted like Cardboard Tasted like something Yeah At a bookshop And like

I was like, what is this? Why do people praise the chips? They're like, you got the wrong fries, dude. They're animalistic fucking dickies fries. - Yeah, animal fries. - And I was like, animalistic fries? - You know, when you go to a fucking burger restaurant, you just want fries. I don't want like the secret special order. - Well, yeah, I think 'cause the fries are just so bad. - What's the order? What's it gotta be? Animal? - Animal style. - Animal style fries. - Animal style. - But the reason why I guess it's kind of revered is that it's like you can get the double burger for like, what, five bucks? So it's like a really good price for a solid burger. - Value for money.

- Yeah, 'cause like, you know, obviously it's not as good as like Five Guys, but Five Guys is like three times the price. I mean, Five Guys is basically restaurant prices. They charge a ridiculous amount. - But those fries though. - Yeah, those Cajun fries. - Those Cajun fries, man. - Sheesh. - They're all good. - Yeah, it was a really trippy city. When I did the chess boxing, I stayed in downtown LA. And it is a bit like Mad Max. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - GTA. - I got out of the taxi after, you know, a long 12 hour flight, whatever it is. And like, there was,

there's just a man running naked down the middle of the road going, and I was like, LA. Sounds about right. Skid Row? Near it. I was staying, I think, two or three blocks from it. Oh, gosh. That's where it's like, that's where it's like, that's scary. This episode is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Going online without ExpressVPN is like not having a case on your phone.

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But yeah, I know Grant's been wanting to grill me on the chest boxing. Every time I see a clip of Grant, I'm like, I was so disappointed in Chris. I feel like I let you down, Grant. You didn't let me down. I was, I got tilted for you. Yeah.

I was tuning into the chess boxing to cheer on my bro, cheer on my man and you were doing so well. You had this point where you're about to win and then you had a point where you could have like checkmated or ended the game.

And then you threw away your queen. - Literally the worst mistake. - You literally went from a winning position to throwing away your queen. And I was just like, what the fuck up? - It's really annoying in the chess boxing fight. Like the real time chess board that all the viewers, everyone was watching is kind of broken. - Yeah, yeah. - You can see why I was doing it. - I was a little bit behind. - The first two rounds I was doing really well. Like I pinned the queen in the corner and I was being really fast.

My tactic was to try and move really quickly and get like a minute ahead. And by the second round of chess, that's where I was at.

But like, I sort of shot myself in the foot because everyone who I told that I was doing the boxing stuff, they were like, everyone has a plan to get punched in the face. I was like, fuck off. I think I know what I'm doing. And then I got hit in the face. Very hard. On the second round, I got hit in the face. And have you ever been hit in the face? Yeah. You probably have. Why are you fucking saying that? Your brothers, you always fight. I have actually, yeah. Where? Where? Uh,

- At a house party when I was 18 years old. Yeah, I just got in a fight with someone who was like really, really fucking drunk and just looking for a fight. - Is this in Brighton? - Yeah, this was in Brighton. - What is this? - We are civilized, we get in fights.

- Group of them started on a few mates of mine and then one of them threw a punch and then just a fight ensued. And that's the only fight I've ever been a part of. And yeah, that's good. - How did it feel? Did you enjoy it? - Didn't feel great. - Did you enjoy it? - Release the anger. - Do it again. - Release the anger. - This is how you became a monk? - Yeah, actually after that I was like, you know what? Maybe being a monk is a bad thing. I have no enemies actually. This is overrated.

But yeah, that was like, I remember the first time getting punched in, like getting probably punched in the face. And this was like not even in a controlled environment. This was just straight up just getting punched in the face.

- You have that, you know, I had the moment like you basically get stun locked. You're just like, you feel it. And then you don't feel the pain. You just feel like the shock of it happening. - You get the adrenaline too. - Yeah, you get the adrenaline rush and you just, I just remember being punched in the face and I just like, holy shit, what the fuck just happened? - It's like the flash bang in Cod. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. - You're just like stun locked. I never forgot that feeling of being punched for the first time 'cause you just like.

you forget like what just happened. You're like, oh, I just got punched in the face. And then you start punching back. - I mean, it only happened to me when I was 14. I was making fun of some guy's bike.

It was the most mundane fight. Some guy turned up, who I hated, and he had a bike called a Mongoose Pro. And I was like, mate, your bike's shit. He was like, what did you say? I was like, Mongoose Pro. And he punched me. And that was the only fight I'd had pre-30 years old. And so, yeah, when I...

- Did you punch him back or what? - I did punch him back in the face, yeah. That Mongoose Pro bike, what a bellend. Mongoose Pro sign. Yeah, so I signed up for the chess boxing 'cause Connor made me do it. - No, whoa, whoa, whoa, I said you wouldn't do it. And then I think you took the other side. - The only reason I did it is 'cause Connor said, "Look, he won't do it, you're a loser." And I was like, "I'll show that Connor."

So, and then Ludwig was like, yeah, you want to do it, bro? I was like, yeah, all right. And that was the main reason just to spike on. And also part of the fitness chair. I'm glad your spike powered you to exercise. Yeah. And honestly, like the boxing training was relentless and great. But I was training with Nick and you've met Nick. I might know. I don't know if you guys know Nick. He was in the boxing ring. He's kind of like my trainer. Oh, okay, okay. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a former K-1 kickboxing champion of Japan. He fought like in the,

in the Tokyo Dome in the early 2000s and it was watched by like 50 million people. Damn. He's a real celebrity in Japan but...

But he is like Gaston out of... In the Beast. In the Beast. His arms are like... Without the baggage, hopefully. He eats like a thousand eggs a day. His arms are like the size of Spain. They are huge. They're massive. And if he hits you, as he did training, like... So I would spar with him a few times a week and he hit me in the face and like...

everything just sort of went white for a second. - Was it really scary? - Yeah, it was fucking scary, 'cause I've never had that before. And it wasn't even a big hit by his standards. But again, when he's super trained to do this, he's like, "Okay, okay, I'm gonna hit you now, you ready?" I was like, "Yeah, I'm ready." I was like, "Whoa, I'm actually quite scared now." It's like, you know, when you get hit like that, your whole brain sort of rocks a little bit, and this white flash.

which is something I'd never experienced before, right? I'd never had that white flash of being stung. Brain damage. Concussion. I'm watching a CW video. LAUGHTER

So I'd never had that. And I was like, oh, what the fuck have I done? It was too, at this point it was like November. - You can't back out. - One month out. - Did you want to like, it was probably like- - I didn't back out, but I was like, maybe this was a bad decision to do this fight, having no actual experience. But I was against that German dude. I can't remember his name. - Yeah. - It was a German streamer. - Pepper. - Pepper Platt or something. - Pepper Platt, yeah. Pepper Platt. - And then while he was training,

And I always thought I could take him. He was a bit taller than me, but he was quite skinny. And I think we would have been on par with Chess, or maybe he would have been a little bit better on Chess. But then he burst his eardrum training. Somebody hit him in the ear, the ear got blown up, and he was like, I can't fight now. I was like, oh, shit. It was crazy. And also, there was someone else before Papa Platt who I was going against, and he had to pull out for other health reasons. So it was just like, God doesn't want me to fight. I think it's pretty common, though, that a lot of these events are like...

50% of the fighters or not a little less than that, but ended up pulling out for concussions or whatever it is just 'cause you get injured. - And there was a few that ran up to that one. - Yeah, there was a lot of people who pulled out. - And so I was like, oh, maybe God let me off the hook here. And then like, don't worry, we've brought in a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu. I was like, brilliant.

- I got stitched up like a pellet. - When you came out, I saw after the fact, but cause obviously I was up there with you, but everyone was like rip, rip Chris. - Did you see like the Twitch chat replay at all? - Yeah, I did watch it back. So I came out with Nick and Pete and Connor were cheering and I was like, you know, I was like, hey, it's like fucking 50,000 people there, 500,000 watching online. It was really cool moment actually. That was like the highlight of like last year for me, that walkout.

And then I was really cocky. I was like, I got a box of Hershey's and smashed it over my leg and threw it into the crowd. I was like, ah. And then he comes out to some like fucking terrifying soundtrack from like a horror film. So like sirens. And then I saw that it was a pole and it was like, is Chris going to die? Yeah.

- 95% say yes. - He looked very muscular. - He's obviously someone who had worked out and had fitness as a huge part of his life. So obviously, for me as a viewer watching it with Twitch chat,

- There were a lot of abroad in Japan fans in chat cheering you on. You came out first and everyone was like, yo, everyone's like being supportive. The hope was high. Just like, you got it. And then there was just like one fucking shot of your opponent walking out. And I think that was just like collective, oh. - Oh shit. - Oh, it's been a good run boys. - Get the body bag ready. - We were actually a similar weight. He's a bit taller and he had big arms, but because my legs are like tree trunk.

But my muscles are in my legs, which is not overly useful in a boxing match. I'm fast as fuck. Kickboxing might have been a different thing. But I was still like, I can take him, he's fine. And then we had the chess match, the first round, and it was going really well. I was really up on time, which is my strategy. I was like, if I fuck my queen, which I actually thought I might under stress, at least I'd be like a minute up, right? And then I went to the first match and he...

And it's just really weird. It's really hard to explain what it's like being in a ring with 20,000 people, whatever it was, around. But, like, you forget they're all there because the bright lights are on your face, right? And all you can see is him. And in between, you can sort of see in the distance Connor and the audience going...

Cause I can see every shoulder, but like, yeah, I just, this moment where I saw him like focusing on me about to hit me. And I was like, what the fuck have I done? Why am I here? What is this? Like, I really stitched myself up. My past self really fucked me.

Like when you're looking at someone, you're like, I'm about to get hit in front of like half a million people. Like that's when it's like, what have I done? Like moments later, cocky fucking Hershey's throwing it into the crowd. And now it's like, I could like get knocked out or die in front of everyone. Do you think you're just not like, was that like a weird thing for you to have to do to like lock onto someone and be like, I got to punch this guy. Yeah. Because when I was training with Nick, we didn't really spar properly. Yeah. We were hitting each other, but I never had a, and this is,

- My fault, I didn't put enough time into it. I really didn't train that much for the boxing as much as I should have. I trained on the fitness front, right, for stamina. And I suppose that's one good thing in the chest boxing, I survived. I made it to round three, 'cause it takes so much energy to keep moving and dodging and blocking, throwing punches. But I had never fought anyone before, really. And I couldn't fight Nick, 'cause he was too big.

And I could not have won. So that was really my first actual fight, sparring practice or not. Which was a spectacular error. A lot of the other YouTubers, whatever, that did it. They really went for it. That I had at least enjoyed it and really liked it were like, yeah, sparring was everything. Like if they were sparring so much and that really allowed them to

to kind of get a lot better at boxing. And I think being, like you mentioned, just being prepared to be beaten up essentially. It seems like a hard thing to do. - And that's why a lot of people get injured.

Oh, fuck it. Fuck it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm the sort of person that's always like, oh, I'll do the homework tomorrow. And that's the next day. It's a hand in day. And you're like, oh shit, I'm fucked now. And it was a bit like that with the boxing. I was like, oh, I'll spar tomorrow. You still won technically. Yeah, I still won. I did, but like, yeah, but in that first match when he locked on and he got that first punch, I got really stunned. And I was like, oh,

- It looked like when he landed the first hit on you that you were like, oh shit, I gotta figure something out. - Yeah. - And the plan was basically trying to just keep avoiding blocking and dodging. - I mean, honestly, legitimate strategy if you know you're not gonna be able to outbox him. - I didn't think I could outbox him.

Yeah. I mean, he clearly had experience. So the second round of chess, I started moving up and I actually had a plan of attack, blocked his queen and I was like, or his king rather, and I was like, I could actually win this, wrap this up in the second round. Right. And then it got to the end of the second round and I was two, three moves away from executing the plan.

And then time was up and I was like, no. And then I went back in, got absolutely obliterated and punched in the face over and over. And by the time I came back, I was like, oh, cause your heart's going like, yeah, your head's a bit like, and I sort of just went, oh, that one there. And I fucking did the wrong one. But I guess that's the difficulty of stress boxing, right? Is that you have to manage all that stress level. But if you watch it, luckily I don't go,

Because I still felt like I might be able to win because I looked at the timer and there was a minute up. And another thing that's really weird, you're wearing the headphones, right? So you can't hear the audience. They don't really help that much. They don't help. You're listening to fucking Beethoven while you're having a stroke. And it's like, I'm having a heart attack, a stroke, and listening to Beethoven all at once while playing chess and getting beaten up. When I was wearing them, I could easily hear the crowd. Exactly. And I could hear like the moment I fucked, the move. Before he even retaliated, I think everyone went, ah!

and i was like no but and then in the third round i got really angry and went a bit aggressive but yeah i i think the thing with the chess boxing i feel like i didn't deserve to win after i blundered the queen maybe it's the wrong way of looking at it i did win after all um and there were some major mistakes like the chessboard was set up wrong when i started yeah it was like and go and i was like and i

And I moved and I think I fucked up. I made like an illegal move because the horse was in the wrong square. Our horse and the bishop were in the wrong fucking places. What the hell's going on here? I heard you going like... Yeah. And they were like, oh, Shogun, I walk in here. They didn't stop it. They carried on. And then he started making some illegal moves and it all went to shit a little bit.

- Yeah, it was kind of weird 'cause then I guess the illegal move allowed them to have time to kind of think and then it was really bizarre. - It was bizarre. - I guess they just didn't expect the chess level to be that bad where people would just be making illegal moves. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I mean, you kept your cool after you blundered the queen. - Yeah. - That's the important thing in chess. - Did you do any chess practice? - I did do a fair bit of chess, yeah. - Okay. - It was cool actually. I was like, one day I'll be training, boxing training. - Yeah.

at my friend's gym over in like Yoyogi Park area and then the next day I'd be like in Yoyogi Park with a chess trainer and we'd be playing in the park and stuff it was a really cool time actually my week was kind of like spread between chess and boxing and then writing a book and it was really really weird kind of three four months which is why I write no videos can't train to not blunder though

- Yeah, yeah. - They happen at every level as well. Like even like the grand masters sometimes blunder pieces. - Well in the last week before training, when I was doing chess, they made me like run for like 30 seconds really intense, then sit down and play. Oh my God, it changes the game. - Oh, I can imagine, yeah. - When your heart's racing and stuff. Really good experience, don't regret doing it. We'll look back on it and go, wow,

- I don't think I want to get hit in the face again. - No more boxing. - No round two. - You're going out as a champ? - Yeah, yeah. - The undefeated champion. - The undefeated chess boxing champion. Why not? But I think I might carry on the boxing training without getting hit in the face. - Just go for fitness. - Yeah, yeah. - Just go for fitness. - So I actually felt like I could,

defend myself in a way that I never could before. - What was it like in the dressing room beforehand? Were you like nervous? - Yeah. - When did it like hit you? - It hit me, there's the stadiums there, right? And we had a suite or room upstairs and you were there and a few. - Yeah, yeah. - I can't even care. - I was in the big room with Ludwig and the team. - I came in and out, popped in and out. - Every now and then he sort of wandered in and was like, "Oh, the Peasants in the small suite." "We've got fucking Sam smoked salmon in our suite."

- That's because Chris was in like the zone and Nick was like, was talking to you like you're about to fucking go on a Navy SEALs raid. And they were so in the zone that I was like, I'm just gonna let him do the thing. 'Cause Nick was like, don't you fucking dare talk to him. Don't you dare talk, be nice to him. And I was like,

I don't think he- - You're not supposed to talk to your opponent. - I get it, I get it. 'Cause I guess if it's more like you don't even wanna have an ounce of sympathy when you're trying to punch the guy. - Yeah, of course. - But also at the end of the day, I was like, "I think it's just a fun little waltzing event actually." - Well, that was a weird thing actually, 'cause I did talk to my opponent over at Flow, PJ beforehand, and like it humanized him a bit. I saw he's a real American person. And I was like, so when I'm fighting him, I'm like, "I don't actually dislike this guy. Why do I have to hit him?" He's like fucking like,

Like that, down the... It's really weird. He's like, I am going to kill this man. But it hit me when I was in that room looking down. I did have like a small panic attack-y moment. I was like, what the fuck have I done? Why would you do this to yourself? It's like...

You know, going, oh yeah, I'll put my feet in a blender, no problem. And then like the day arrives, the blender's there and you're like, oh, actually, I don't know if I... You've locked a core memory. That's something you'll never ever forget and you can always talk about. That's true. Like it's those kind of stuff that I think that you can always look back on and be like, it was maybe stupid or maybe crazy, but I'm glad I did it. Well, I'm lucky. Honestly, I'm really lucky that I did come out without a serious injury. Well, some people came out with concussions, reporting that they feel slower still months after. Yeah.

- That's why I don't know if I could advise anyone to do it really. I don't think it is worth the risk. 'Cause if you brain damage yourself, get a concussion, I could have written off half of this year if it had gone really badly. - Yeah, I think a lot of people really struggle to comprehend if they're healthy and they're fit that they could ever be injured severely and have like a, be punched in the head and then you're just actually just cognitively worse off for it. I think it's really hard for people to,

think about that future self of them, like think about that. And they're just like, it's a cool opportunity, I wanna get punched. It's like, well, hold on now. Let's really look into this and see, is this actually worthwhile? - Yeah, think about the long term. - Like if you came out of this, yeah, maybe you win, it's great, you got fit, you got the victory, it's great for you.

what if you got beaten the fuck up, you have a concussion that could, that sticks with you for life. 'Cause when you have one concussion, you have a higher chance of getting another concussion. And then who knows what kind of damage you've given yourself. Could be slower in some ways that you just don't expect. Could have taken five years off your life maybe. You just don't know like what kind of damage.

like that could give you. I mean, the brain isn't the one thing you don't want to fuck around with. - Yeah, absolutely. I have a lot more respect for fighters though. The discipline it takes to do all that. I do have a lot of respect for people that do it. I don't know why they do it necessarily. Maybe it's that rush. There was a real rush in the ring. - I can definitely see there's like that carnal rush that you get from being in the ring. - It was pretty fucking cool knowing all eyes are on you for this moment, what you're about to do. Nothing, I've never had a feeling like that ever.

even being up on stage doing other things. I've never felt like that. Yeah. That was really good. That I think is the sensation they lock onto why fighters enjoy it so much. Yeah. I mean, from how you describe it, it definitely can feel like it can be an addicting feeling. Um,

Personally, I respect for you for saying yes. I don't know if I could ever do that. - No, me neither. I'm good. I like my brain. - One year ago, I would have been like, no, I'm not doing that. I took the right set of ingredients. It took a bad health report. It took the objective. - Conor's cockiness. - It took Conor's abuse. And bullying. Before I even knew chest boxing was a thing, I was like, I'm gonna be the fittest I've ever been by the end this year.

So when Ludwig brought it up and Connor brought it up, it was like, okay, this is the one way to make this happen. - I was just looking vicariously through you 'cause I wish I could do it. - Well, you did get slapped in the face. - Yeah, but it's fine. It's not the same. That was more of like a WWE performance than a- - Yeah, it was pretty fun. - Actual fight. - Yeah, than a fight. I mean, it definitely hurt a little bit, but he was going easy on me and I was going a little easy on him.

He definitely went easier on me. That's because I told him like two minutes before, I was like, "By the way, I've got a blood condition. Don't hit me too hard." - I was impressed you did that. - Well, 'cause it was a slap and I knew we weren't trying to hurt each other. 'Cause there was no way that we could lose via the slap, right? 'Cause the idea was that it was just the chest thing. - Just give yourself a concussion before the chest thing. - You wouldn't get a concussion from being slapped unless they went full like,

- Well, like one of those like fucking most critical videos. - Yeah, but that's like- - Oh my God. - Then they're like, they turn around to the camera and their face is disformed. - Yeah. - Well that's- - That's more than a concussion. Concussion is the last thing they're worrying about in that situation. - That's a disfigurement. That's like playing like fucking fear and hunger. - It's like, oh, am I actually going to come out of this ring with the same face? Like that's the thing they're worrying about. - The face just becomes like a-

- I mean, I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie.

I mean, yeah, everyone's been like, Chris, every video I put out, people like analyze it. They're like, has he put on weight or not? And the comments are like, Chris looks great. Or Chris looks marginally fatter again. It's like, oh, fucking hell. I'm fucked, whatever I do. I think I put on a little bit more weight because I haven't been doing all this stuff. Yeah, but you're way better than you were. Yeah, I feel a lot fitter. And when I did the cycle, the second cycle with Connor, I hadn't trained for three months. The stamina was still there. And I did a Spartan race a few weeks ago and I was able to,

Get through that. And then next week, climbing fucking Mount Fiji again, which I haven't...

Never thought I would do, but doing that again. You dressing right for the occasion this time? Not going in fucking shorts? Not sleeping on a rock this time? I think I just need to have the air ambulance on speed dial because Natsuki's going to do it, right? Oh, shit. He's 50, or he will be August 9th, as he likes to say, my birthday Nagasaki bomb because he always tells me that. It's a great way to remember when his birthday is, for better or worse. But yeah, he's been cycling because I...

I'm like, are you actually going to climb Mount Fuji in that ski? He's like, yeah, no problem. It's like, you can't go up the stairs. It's like having a heart attack. Because he smokes like 30, 40 cigarettes a day. 20 cigarettes a day minimum, right? His lungs just cannot be operational. And like 3,700 metres up, it's like, oh, there's less oxygen here. And what's going to happen? But he has been cycling every day, 40 kilometres. Oh, damn. Providing he's not lying. Yeah.

I'm encouraged. - Do you think he's lying? - I watched him cycle for 10 minutes and he did look quite wrecked by the end of it. - Maybe he like- - Today, only four kilometers. When I was there, I was like, "Oh yeah." - Oh yeah.

- Today's a rest day. - Extra zero by accident. - Yeah, maybe it's 4.0. - Well, I never thought I'd climb Mount Fuji again. There's that saying, right? A wise man climbs Mount Fuji once, a bell end climbs it twice. - Who made this? - That's not a direct quote. - Chris Braw 2023. - What's the quote in Japanese? You'll know it.

- That's the crystal directly translated. - Is it? - A wise man climbs Mount Fuji once. - A fool. - A fool climbs it twice. - And a bellan climbs it twice. - It's my own contemporary take on it, right? - It's a British take. - British translation for Japan. - And the reason is 'cause it's not a fun climb. It's a big black volcanic wasteland up there. There's no like, "Oh, it's nice scenery." There's crowds of people, the wind is bad, the temperature goes from hot to freezing, and it's just not really fun.

But people do it obviously for that once in a lifetime view of the sun coming up, which you can't get from anywhere else apparently. From literally anywhere. - Yeah, a wise man climbs Fuji once, only a fool climbs it twice. - Wait, why? - Apparently that's the same. - Okay. I mean, I guess it makes sense 'cause once you've seen it, you've seen it. - Yeah. - But the thing is, it's not actually translated correctly from the Japanese one.

- The Japanese one is you're a fool if you don't climb Mount Fuji once, you're also a fool if you climb it twice. - Okay, so it's just one and done? Just do it once? - Yeah, just do a one and done. - So I'm not a fool right now. - Zero is fool, one is fine, two is not. - I'm saving it. - So you're the only one that's not a fool right now, Chris. - I'm not a fool, but I will be a fool. - What if it's three times? Did you just go back to normal again? It's like every other time. It's like, you're an idiot, you're fine. You're an idiot, you're fine. - A legend climbs Mount Fuji.

- I think we fucking cycled up like four Fuji's when we were doing the Kyushu cycle. That was fucking crazy. - Quite possibly. - Wait, so why are you climbing up Fuji again?

Why? Just for fun? If I ask his 50th birthday, I want to do something. Okay. I hope he survives, because I'd be a real fucking shame. Or a present. Yeah. What better way to celebrate your birthday than an air ambulance off Mount Fuji? And also to kind of promote the book, because the book cover has like Fuji on the front. Yeah. And I'll be like, eh, Fuji. How else would you know it's a book about Japan? Exactly right. There's no other way. And...

I'm going to try and do like a book signing at the summit of Mount Fuji. Water stains have sent me like a banner. Right. British bookstore. And I'm going to stand there with a pile of books. At the top of Mount Fuji. Just hand them out to anyone who'll take them. Pretty much, yeah. How many books can you carry up there?

- Well, I've got like, you know, there'll be Natsuki. He can carry a few. - Yeah, but you know, four books is even like heavy. Like that's- - I have my luggage mule with me. - I know, it's just a very good book. - This is better than finding the last remaining Sherpa in all of Japan. - In the same way Pete comes on the cycles for the back rubs, Natsuki's coming to carry my books. I need this, that's the real one. - That's why he's gonna have an air ambulance, right? It's not the mountain, it's the books. - A broken back. - Yeah, just a broken back.

- Did they ship to the top? Could you ship it to the top? - Ship it to the top. - There's a Yamato guy up there, ready to go. - Air ambulance to the top.

- There are some weird things at the top of Mount Fuji. There's vending machines, if I recall. - I believe it. - Which take some of the magic away. It's like, wow, it's Ethereal Mountain. It's been here for a hundred million years. - It's kind of nice though. - Beep, beep, beep, yeah. - It's kind of nice though. You actually get to the top, you're like, I'm parched. It's just a vending machine. - It will quench my thirst. - It's like if you were stuck in the oasis in the desert and then you come along this, you're like, oh, I need to, ah.

Some water and then over the horizon you just see like a fucking Pocari Sweat machine. You'd be like, "Oh, yes." And then you have no coins 'cause you're dead. - Just imagine the guy like refills that every day. - He must be the fittest man. - Ask that guy to take the books off.

- Just be like, oh, you gotta go refill it? Can you take these off? By the way, just leave them up there. - Yeah, you know how there's like in every Kung Fu movie, there's like a secret like grand master that's like training in the mountains. It's just the fucking guy bringing up the Pocari Sweat. - Man's definitely taking up the Sanzu beans. - There's something worse than that. When you get to the fifth station, which is the typical starting point for the climb, there's a shop that sells cans of air from the summit of Mount Fuji. So there's literally someone whose job is to go up to the summit, be like,

- And then walk down again. - I don't, I don't. It's gotta be a scam. - Yeah, it's gotta be. - You can sue them. This isn't air from the summit. - Sydney actually tried buying one of those. Like it wasn't even one of the cans. It was literally a plastic bag, right? Someone had gone up to the top of Mount Fuji, just went whoop and just like tied in a plastic bag. - A thousand yen please. - I can make a profit from this trip. I'll sell the books at the top and then I'll use the bags to bag

- It's the book with inside a bag with the air of the sun in the mouth. - Imagine my face when I get, when I go to the door for delivery one day, I open it and the postman gives me like, what it feels like an empty box. I open it and it's just a fucking bin bag.

- Sydney, what have you bought? - It'd be funny if you tried to open the bin bag to see what it is. - It's like, what is it? Rip! Leaves that precious air. Fucking hell. What a weird mountain. But I've seen photos of the crowds this year and it is a joke 'cause it's the first year I think that it's properly officially opened. So for an outside world.

And it looks like the world's biggest theme park, right? There's photos at night, right, where everyone's using lights. You can see Fuji. And then the top third, there's a sneaking line of lights. And it's just like, oh God. But, ace up my sleeve, good friend of mine, Victor Frame of Travel, you guys know. He climbed Mount Fuji every year, sea to summit. I thought he did it in one day. And I was like,

Victor, you're a god. How have you done this? He does it in like six days, which is, I think, which is smart. And much more manageable. Six days? I think so. Maybe it's three or four, I don't know. But he...

He's like, there's a secret path around the back. There's like four trails that go up Mount Fuji. And he's told me to go up this secret one where we'll probably get eaten by a bear. There's like no one there. It's so secret now. Everyone bloody knows. It's a sheer cliff. This episode will probably come out after the climb. But don't come up the secret trail. But yeah, we're going to get mauled by a bear instead. There's going to be no one there. But I think this secret trail, and I'm going to be secret trail, secrets. He's got 25% of the footfall of the main route.

but it's a little bit steeper and it's supposed to be the hardest way which is why it's the secret it's not so much the secret route it's not so much the secret route as the death route because it's a vertical fucking climb up a volcanic it's free climbing up a cliff yeah

- If we survive, they'll find my corpse a lot quicker. But yeah, it is what it is. - Just Chris's corpse and all around him is just his books. - I was like, "What happened here?" - Just forever on the side of Mount Fiji. - Is this his memoirs? - Just left.

- It's time to collect them. - Well, speaking of book. - Of book? - Of book. - That's the sort of grammar you can expect in the book. - Of single book. - I do have a copy. Fun fact, when I go on trash chase, I take my belt off. - Why? - You can't eat two portions of fish and chips. They sit down for like three hours. - Do you have another two portions? - No comment, anyway. - That cover is so clean, by the way. - Last year, I was Mr. Affable the year before that.

No, not last year. Barry chopsticks. Barry chopsticks. Before Mr. This year, bestselling author Sunday times, bestselling author, Barry chopsticks. And let me check if, yeah, that's for you. Go on. Thank you so much, Chris.

- Abroad in Japan, 10 years in the land of the rising sun. - I could only carry like one book. - I already got mine. - Oh my God. - What the fuck? - You can get yours at the top of Mount Fuji. - What the fuck? - Mount Fuji next Wednesday, midday. - And it's signed by the author? - You can get yours at the website.

- What the hell? - Thank you so much. - It's signed, it'll be worth at least three pounds one day. - Oh, great. - Yeah, 'cause it's got the author signature in it, you can sell it for more. - So Connor, when's your next charity auction? - I only take one. - One fuck up with the book, though.

- So obviously I wrote every six months on and off, right? You don't just sit down and bash out a book in a weekend. - Yeah, well, I tried. - I was just Stephen King. - I just opened up the book and I opened up to chapter five, Mr. Dick.

- Such incredible writing. - Oh my God. - A literature masterpiece brought in Japan. - Mr. Dick, when I read chapter Mr. Dick, I was left in tears. - What is this book?

- Who is Mr. Dean? - I was gonna say, the big fuck up. I wrote the chapters in a rush and then I thought Penguin- - You were fucking cycling. - No, I thought, yeah, 'cause I was cycling with you and I thought Penguin would be like, "Let's just check the chapter." They didn't. They just literally kept in the ones. I was like, "Well, we'll think about the chapter later." So look at the chapter list page. - From many fucking snow. - That's a Nascism. - I have a Nascism. - That's a Nascism right there. - Yeah, let me- - All right, read out these chapter names.

- All right, let me see. Chapter one, sushi revelation, the Japan lottery, sweet and san, hot springs and tiny cars, Mr. Dick, sake onegai shimasu.

- I must have put some effort into that one. I really was. - That's what you were doing when you were writing this chapter. - When teaching goes wrong, many fucking snow, the impossible language. - That's a good one. - That's riveting. - It's party time after that. - Give up on the language, go party. - That's like, I've done my work here, all right.

- The land of the rising waistline.

- All right, "Hostess Clubs and the Art of Expensive Companionship." - Okay. - "Get Out Now." - That's a good chapter, that one. - All right. "Japan's Most Eccentric Man," "The Wise Men of Fuji," "Doctor Who." I believe that's a copyrighted- - What is this book? - Uh-oh, Jesus Christ. - Okay. It's okay, the BBC won't be calling, it's all right. "Fried Chicken, Addicted Bear," "The Worst Possible Start,"

- A letter from the Colonel saying goodbye. - Can you guess what that's about? - Yeah, KFC. - When I got my first KFC Christmas bucket, 'cause you get Christmas in Japan right? You open it up and it's just a letter, it's like a letter from the Colonel. And you're like, "Oh, a letter from Colonel Simon." You flip it over, it's like, "Put it in the microwave." It's literally the letter from the Colonel. Put the shit chicken in the microwave. - And then saying goodbye, starting over, Cat Nation.

"A Home at Last: Missiles Incoming." What? Were we living in Japan at this time, Chris? - Oh, is that with the North Korean missiles? - Oh, North Korean missiles, okay. "Seeking Redemption in a Lost Year," "Disappearing Kyoto," "This is My Dream," "Fear and Earthquake." Chris, I don't see a chapter about meeting trash Tasty-ers. - I'll be in the "Born in Japan" book part two. - Acknowledgement?

Acknowledgements? Are we there? Are we in the acknowledgement section at least? Wow. That's a good book. You should definitely, yeah. Oh, you've got one. Where can they buy it? Amazon. Blackwell's. Waterstones. All major book retailers. It's not. It will be, I think, when this comes out, but it wasn't on Amazon US. Penguin are like, we'll see it because it's Penguin UK. We'll see if we get a book deal.

book deal bill book bill a book deal in america right and i was like sure so they didn't i don't think they did and in the end they just they released it themselves but it meant when i was promoting the book there was nothing on amazon us for the time they were working it out and somebody when this fucking cover was released somebody screenshotted it put it under an account called like todd lb

and people started buying the fake A Brawl in Japan book. Oh, shit. So they would get this, and it's like a really crappy 7-Eleven print job. Open it up, and inside the book was a technical guide for breastfeeding. And it's so fucking weak. I mean, people are like, I've got the book, I'm so excited. The next tweet's like, what is it about breastfeeding? When did you learn that in Japan? It's like, well, that was just the first edition. What?

What I learned in Japan. Chapter one. Secrets to breastfeeding. I got these really sad Instagram messages and people were like, I was really excited to get your book. Why was it about breastfeeding? That is the secret of Japan. But we've got that book taken down now, so don't you have any fucking thoughts about getting that book? Yeah, don't do that. The only thing I want now is to be a Sunday Times bestseller. So I can have that. You just said you were.

- Well, I don't think we are yet. We could be. - Are you claiming you're a Sunday Times bestseller? - Well, we might be if people buy the book. - Can't you just keep saying, I can't say I'm a New York Times bestseller in 20 years when I'm gonna make the book. - Well, yeah. - I see why you wanted to come on now after like eight months.

- Oh, I see. - Lots of promo. - I wouldn't come on March. - Not all our calls. - I wouldn't come on March. - Well, you will get the Sunday Times bestseller nickname if you actually become it, you know? - What will the nickname be? - Until then, you're still Barry Chopsticks. - Barry Chopsticks. - Guy who wrote a book. - Guy who wrote a book. - The breastfeeding guru. - I don't know, I just feel like when you meet me, it's very underwhelming. I should probably sell myself better.

Why do I say these things out loud? To my fucking Merlot. I'm like, when you meet me, it's like, oh, hello, I have a YouTube channel. And like, when you go to a networking event anywhere, if you're in LA, you're fucked. You have to be like, you have to say all the incredible things you've done really fast in 20 seconds. But like, when I meet people, I'm like, yeah, I have a YouTube channel. But now I can be like, yes, I'm a...

Sunday Times, New York Times, best-selling author. If someone tells me that, I'm just going to think they're a dick. Mr. Dick. How should I introduce myself when I meet people? What do you say? Me? Yeah. I'm from Wales, innit? Wales' most famous... No, I'm joking. Wales' most mediocre Twitch streamer.

- So you go with Twitch for you right now? - I just go online personality, which is so underwhelming. - I hope you don't say you're an influencer. - I don't, no, no, no. - No, no, no. - I say general online personality and they're like, "What does that mean?" I'm like, "Well." - If you know, you know. - I'm like, "Do you like cycling?" I do this thing sometimes where I cycle. - Do you like cycling and auctions? - Yeah, I was like, "Do you like auctions?" - What do you say, Gav? - I talk about anime for a living. - Talk about anime?

- Yeah, well, I guess that works. - What do you say? - I say- - You call it anime? - No, I say CEO of a fashion brand. - CEO of a fashion, that's worse than best-selling author. - What do you mean? - They're both just as pretentious. - I've got a fashion brand, nobody buys it, but I got a fashion brand. Fucking CEO, I'm the CEO of a broad Japan industry. It's crap, isn't it? That's what you can say from now on. - I do think if someone tells me they're a CEO, I immediately think you're an idiot.

'Cause I'm like, well- - I mean, I am. - Often when people say it, it's like, if you, because most CEOs don't introduce themselves as CEO, I feel like, a lot of the time.

- Well, yeah, they don't say the word CEO. - Unless they're like really off themselves. - If someone immediately says I'm a CEO, I'm like, do, do, do, do. - Of what? - Anything I'm allowed to do. - Might as well just put entrepreneur on your Twitter bio. - Entrepreneur! - I think people realize that entrepreneur has a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. So they'll just say CEO. 'Cause CEO is now the big hot word that everyone is like, oh.

- I'm just really bad at saying myself 'cause I don't wanna go too far. - I think it's a British thing though, isn't it? - Yeah, I think it's a British thing. - We just shit. - And I go to LA and the first sentence is, "Oh yeah, hi, I'm this, I've done this, I've done this." - It is weird when I talk to people and they're like really proud about what they did. - Yeah.

- Why are you proud? - I'm like, hi, I watch cartoons and that's pretty much it. - I thought I was supposed to be proud about the stuff we do. - In LA, everyone I spoke to was like, yeah, I'm writing a script for a movie that Steven Spielberg looked at once five years ago. And it's like, oh wow, great, yeah.

Everyone really pushes themselves hard. And in the UK, I feel like you just sound like a douche bag if you say you've done anything good. - You could literally have cured cancer and everyone would be like, "Oh, fuck off, Barry, right? Come back." - Fuck off, chopsticks. - What are you fucking doing? - Oh, go shop another country, mate. - That's why I just, I fucking hate networking events. It's like speed dating for your ego.

- So you're like, you go there and you're just like, let me inflate my ego as much as possible and see all these inflated egos. - Well the most important people often are the ones that have to desperately be like, oh, I've done this, I've cured cancer and built a rocket out of salmon. And you're like, eh. - Rocket out of salmon. - That's my net goal. But like, yeah, when I'm at networking event, I remember I was one at the UK years ago, five, six years ago, midway through the career. And I was like, oh, you know, I do YouTube videos. And he went, oh yeah.

- And sort of look past me and it's just like, oh, fuck this. - Yeah. - It sort of just looks away and takes a fifth and they're looking past you. - They're trying to find someone else to bounce off to. - Yeah. - I don't know what, what can I call myself? What can I say? - I think being a YouTuber is fine. - Yeah, I think it's getting- - Best selling author YouTuber. - You can tack that on top of- - No, I think the best selling author will work against the YouTuber title. It'll come off as bad. - Yeah.

I think you should just mention you're a YouTuber and then just mention like, it should naturally come up in conversation, you know? 'Cause best-selling author kind of gives the vibe that you're doing- - You're desperate. - I'm desperate. - You're desperate. - Fucking desperate. - I want the title. - Buy the book. - I am desperate. - You're desperate. - Of course you are. - What have I done? - Nothing. - Nothing. I mean, the book, no, no, no. - Boxed. - I did chest boxed. - That's how you can say it. You're like, I'm a un...

I'm an undefeated chess boxing champion. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, yeah, there you go. I don't know. It's one of those things. And like, even when people spot me around Tokyo, as happens quite a lot now that tourists are back. Yeah. You know, somebody met me, I was waiting outside of, I think it might have been Shibuya Station that day and so on. You were brought in Japan. I went, well, I think so. And it's like, even I like trying to be humble because you want to be like, yeah, of course I fucking am, mate. Yeah.

Even that British like weird, humble networking thing. That extends to like people run into me. I'm like, "Oh, I think I'm abroad in Japan." - Yeah, whenever someone comes up to me, they're like, "Are you the anime man?" I'm just like, "No." But then sometimes I guess they don't see the irony in it. So I remember this one dude was just like, "Are you the anime man?" And I was just like, "No." And he's like, "Oh, okay." And he just walked off. I felt so bad. I'm like, "No, no, no, I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding." - I did that literally two weeks ago. I went, "No."

I'm, no. And he went, he sort of looked like he'd broken. And he was like, and he sort of stood there for a moment. And I was like, I was like, this guy looks like he's going to die. Are you getting annoyed with more fans recognising you? No, honestly, it's not so much being approached, it's how you approach me. Yeah. If you go, Chris, I brought your book, I'd be like, you're my best friend. That's what I'm saying.

- So basically, if they've spent money. - If they've spent money, then they're your best fucking friend. - If you've bought the "Abram Japan" book and you have tangible proof. - I mean, I'll be nice to someone if they're like, "Oh, I've subbed you on Twitch." So I'm like, "Oh, you actually fucking watch my stuff." - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Like a lot of people see it and they're like, "I don't really know, but I think you're famous." - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I think if people approach me and they clearly know who I am, then that's fine, it's cool. It's good, right? I feel like you're watching or you're meeting a viewer.

There were times when people were like, "You're that YouTube guy, right?" I was at like, Fushigi Fish Market a few years ago. Someone came over. "You're like a YouTuber, right? You're Dave in Japan." I was like, "Who the fuck is- No, no I'm not." But I've had people go, "You're like famous or something." I was with you, literally in Shinjuku a few months ago, having a barbecue or something at a restaurant. Some guy sat down next to us. - Yeah, we went to this one spot and I was like,

It's like a, what was it called? It was in one of the sukiyaki places. - Yeah. - And we sit down, it's going pretty well for the first like 10 minutes. We're just chatting and it is roasting though. It was unbelievably hot in that restaurant. They just turned the AC on.

and a group of four white guys sit down. And there's always, I think that moment, I think in our heads where we're like- - We did look at each other and go, "Oh no." - Yeah. - 'Cause a lot of, if you're an English speaking tourist, odds are you've probably watched- - Chances are. - I'm gonna take this off in case I spill the wine. - And so we kind of thought, "Oh, I wonder." And then it was very obvious pretty quickly that at least two of them of the four group had recognized us. - Yeah. - And then it became really awkward because

The two of them were trying to talk about it and explain to the other two. And then this one of the, one of those, his friends is just so annoying. He goes really loudly in this restaurant. He goes like,

"Man, they're just YouTubers, man. They're real people." Like really loudly. - And he looked at you and went, "I think he has a podcast or something." - Yeah, yeah. - And it was like, yeah, all right. But like, they were literally like, "Yeah, we're talking this distance." And it was just like, we sort of went, "Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh." - It was awkward for us 'cause we were like, "What do you like?" - It just really came off as rude. - Yeah. - I was, you know, I don't mind it, but I was out with, I was surfing with Felix the other day, right? - Right. - I was surfing one of the last times before his son was born.

There was two people, like a foreign couple basically, like swimming in the sea nearby. You could tell they kind of recognised him and were sort of lingering there. And we got out, they got out and we got out shortly after for a drink. And without saying anything like, oh my God, Felix, what are you doing here? Or like, man, I've loved your videos. They just charged everyone, can we have a photo? And like, Felix was like, no.

And I was like, fair enough, you know, because he didn't say anything. I think his policies just don't take photos. Yeah, his policies. Which is, I think, a good part, because when you're that famous, it's going to happen, you're going to get mobbed. But that's the sort of interaction I hate. People come over and they're like, I didn't get a photo. He didn't even say anything. There's no conversation. There's no conversation there, you know?

- And you don't know whether they actually really like your content or they just recognized you from the internet somewhere. - Yeah, I got the impression that maybe they just recognize you. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Famous guy. - You have a moment where you're just like, "I don't know if you see me as just like an object." Where it's just like, "Hey, I get you watch my stuff, but yeah, we are human beings." - Start a conversation with me. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - If you're gonna come up. That's the determining factor. So if you ever run into us, start a conversation. - Yeah, just treat us like normal. - It's not like I'm rushing.

- Unless it's an IRL stream that Connor's doing. - Yeah, don't, don't please. - Just stay away from him. - Stay away, I'm horrible, I'm horrible. Well, this one guy like already pissed off at me 'cause I was running to my train and I was literally, like it literally pulled up and I had to go underneath the platform, get on the other side to get to the train. And I could, I had headphones in, but I could hear someone shouting after me as I'm running down the stairs to go underneath. He's like just chasing me. And then like for a good like,

20 seconds and I'm clearly running and I'm running away from him. I'm trying to get to the fucking train. I gotta wait another five minutes, I miss it. I was already late. And I'm about to get on the train. I took out my headphones.

"Hi," and he's like, "Can I take a picture?" I'm like, "No, I gotta get on this fucking train." He's like, "Well, fuck you then." - No, he said that. - Really? - Yeah, I was like, "Okay." - God damn. I got a guy that got off the train to take a photo with me. I was on the train going somewhere, Shijuku, whatever, and he was sitting opposite and he just kept staring at me and I was like, "Eh." - I hate that. - And then I got off

And he got off and he's like, "Oh my God, I need to get a photo." So he got off the whole train, the train left, and then he had to wait for the next one. I was like, "Wow, that's commitment." He was really nice guy and I loved chatting with him. So like, that's all that matters. - Don't sprint after me. - That's that's really, don't sprint after me and don't be rude if clearly you're in a hurry. - Yeah, I mean, I was running, literally running. Like I feel like you just don't stop people if they're running. - Just feel the only unbelievable point of that story was you getting a train Connor. - Yeah, taxi everywhere.

- I have to tax, man lives off taxis dude. - In a Ferrari. - Well, yeah, you know, I'm kind of guilty of getting too many taxis. - He's single handedly keeping the taxi companies afloat in this country. - I know it's bad because some, absolutely my privilege to show, sometimes I'll get a taxi, I'll order it to my house and then I'll open up the name, right? And then I'll see like,

that I ordered it from the same guy like four times in the past. - Oh my God. - Because their name will pop up and it'll be like, "Tanaka-san is your driver today." And I'll see it four times prior with the text. - Basically your private driver at this point. - Yeah. - I should have been like, "Tanaka man, let's just cut the shit. Let's just cut out the middleman." - I'll give you 20 quid. - What's your private number? - Pull up. - Let's stop giving them a cut. Let's cut them out of this. Why are we wasting time?

- Well, yeah, yeah, I do it a lot. 'Cause also I realized that you can also tax deduct it a lot of the time and I was like, all right, this is very nice.

- In the summer, absolutely fuck. I will only get the train if it is like so much more convenient and makes more sense. But if I can avoid it in the summer, I'll just taxi. I'll just go broke. I'll just lose all my money. - I just don't go out in the summer. - It's that too. - Yeah, that too. - It's impossible. - I wish people would stop being like, "It can't be that bad, right?" I'm like, "No, it is just not fun." I was in Kyoto just for like the day.

And in the station, we only saw, I think we saw like the ratio was like, just of like foreign looking people. But it looked like the ratio was like three to one foreigners to Japanese people. It was crazy. It was all, I'm like, why would you be in Kyoto in the summer? It's so brutal. - Or Japan in general. It's really not fun. I've had some friends come over recently for something like,

- I just can't enjoy it. - It's like a fling grilled experience when you step out the front door. - There are so many people who come around this time as well. And I'm just like, you could have picked any other month. - I keep telling people, stop. Some people are coming next month for some Pokemon stuff. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. - I was like, why? Why? Don't come here in August. That's literally the worst month. - 'Cause they love Pokemon, man. - It's shit. Awful, awful. - Yeah, I mean like, it's fucking unbearable even as a Southeast Asian for me as well.

'Cause even, I don't know how it compares to like Vietnam when you were in Vietnam, but I don't think Thailand gets, it gets pretty bad, but not like this bad. I think it's just because at least the mega city that Tokyo is, obviously Bangkok's obviously like a huge fucking city as well, but it just traps heat.

- It's so fucking wet. - Vietnam was kind of like this in the cities for sure. But if you're in small villages, it's a little bit better. But that's the problem, especially in Tokyo. It's just like all the concrete just sucks up the heat. It's just horrible. - No trees. - You can feel the heat radiating off the top. - Whereas if you go to the Inaka or something, it's a couple of degrees cooler already just because of the ground. - I discovered what wet bulb temperature was.

- Is that why your skin doesn't evaporate the sweat? 'Cause the humidity, right? - Yeah, I think it's something to do with the mixture of the heat and the, can you Google this to make sure? I'm not talking on my ass, but essentially like, I think it's like at a certain temperature on the scale, like no amount of water or shade can help you. Like it's actually just dangerous to be outside for extended periods of time. - Really? - And I think Japan is regularly in that zone. - Oh shit. - Where it's like, man, you see people working in construction

You're like, what the fuck? - I've got those weird fans though, they're fan suits. - Well, you notice that, yeah, they have the- - Yeah, I love that. - They have like two exhausts here and they look like Michelin men. They have like a permanent shield. - It's pretty cool. - The air circulating through the seat. - But it's fucked that it's gotten to that point where like to be outside or even be a worker, you have to wear a fan suit.

- Fucking astronauts right here. - Yeah, it's kind of crazy. - I really wanna make that for the next nonsense piece. Just the fucking fan jackets in the summer.

- Dude, you need it. It's fucked. I mean, I just, yeah, it's absolute suffering. - Main takeaway, don't come here in August slash June, July. - June, July, August. - June's not super terrible. - It's July and August. - Well, June is mostly just like raining, so it's kind of miserable. - Even September, the start of September is not great. September's pretty rough too. - It's still bearable though.

It's still bearable. - Better, better. - This is the most British conversation ever. - Yeah. - Oh, the weather. - It is that, it's like, it's all you can think about 'cause the moment you leave your house, you feel like you're on a timer of like death. - Well, yeah, I just don't. Even in here, it's really quite hot. - Yeah. - So I found out what the wet bulb temperature means. Basically, it's like a thermometer that's covered in a cloth that's soaked in water.

And it also means that, what are you guys looking at? - Are we filming again? - Yeah. - Is this a podcast? - And also it's like the temperature after like 35 degrees at like a certain humidity, your body can't sweat enough to cool you down. So it's dangerous and you can just die. - From like what heat struggles on it?

- Whatever you, I don't know what you dive into. - Dehydration? - Yeah, I guess so. - I don't know. - Damn. - Yeah, I definitely feel Japan is like in that stage all month. - Basically, it's just fucking hot. - It's hell on earth. - It's like five minutes outside and I'm like soaked. I feel gross, I can't do anything and I just stink and I'm like,

- I stink. - That's just you normally, man. - Yeah. - Just use deodorant, bro. Just cut that out of context. - I put- - I stink. - I swear I stink. - The other day, I covered my entire body in antiperspirant. - Yeah. - It stood no chance against Japanese sun. My body was like, "No, the sweat is coming out. We cannot stop." - I remember when you went through that phase, we were like, "I'm not using shampoo."

- I still don't use much shampoo. - Your hair was like really ragged. - Fuck off. - It's like rope. - Fuck off. - Cut off Connor's hair. - It's like carpet. - No, I still shampoo like once a week. - That's good, it's healthy for you. - Yeah, that's the health. - Once or twice a week. - You don't use your three in one, head and shoulders every fucking day with your withered hair.

- I'm holding onto the remains I have left, Chris. - Fucking hell. Why is it just a half-eaten piece of camembert, Joey? I left that for you, Mr. Camembert. - I'm stabbing my camembert. - I think this could be a good YouTube series, Behind the Cheese Broad. - No, this could not. - Behind the Cheese Broad. - Behind the Cheese Broad. - One of the hot ones, but it's cheese board. - Cheese Broad. - Now you gotta try the brie.

- Can you explain what's happening in this picture? - Just throwing our meaning out there. - Yesterday, Charlotte and I went for dinner. Sushi, which we do like once every few weeks. And the price came to this.

7777? 7777 Yen. And the staff were like, you are the chosen one. You should post that to our Mildly Interesting. R slash when did I ask? Why didn't you just show us a receipt? Oh, it's kind of cool. It's fucking cool.

- It's cool. - Professional entertaining, you guys. - It's probably interesting. - I'll give you 10 years of this. - Congratulations on getting engaged. - Oh yeah. - Oh yeah, that. - Things that have happened in the past nine months. - It was good. Well, actually it was a disaster.

He did say yes. Again, it's kind of like the chess boxing. Things didn't go right. How was it a disaster? What happened? How was it a disaster? Well, so we're back in the UK for Christmas and whatnot and celebrating the chess boxing. Sian and I went for a

A holiday in the UK. Yeah. And the UK is actually nice for a holiday sometimes, which you don't get that if you live in the UK. You don't view the UK through the prism of like, oh, this is a nice country. So it was kind of like, nice to go back there now and then and be like, oh, it's good. And we went to the Lake District, which we went to years before. It's kind of like a special place in the UK. And we went there and it was fucking shit because for five days it rained, stormed.

Couldn't literally go out for five days straight. Jesus. Sounds like the UK. Yeah. It was the UK. And I was like, fuck, I bought the engagement ring. I was going to do it here. It was going to be this magical moment. And instead, we're just stuck in this little person's house just going, oh, the weather's crap. So it kind of tainted my image. But anyway, I wanted to...

kind of, Sharla was like, I think the conversation came up about marriage. As I was kind of like, yeah, that's gonna be fun. I was like, yeah, I think like, we went to dinner and I was like, I'll lead her astray. I was like, marriage, what a rubbish, eh? Swing of my merlot.

Bring me another cheese boy. Why do you mean? I was like, it's just rubbish, isn't it? If you overhear me having a conversation with Charlotte at a restaurant, this is the level of quality you can expect. So this is your genius idea to throw her off the show and figure it out. Marriage. Because a few times marriage would come up. We'd be dating a few years and it'd come up. And I was like, we'll see. But I bought the ring a few weeks beforehand down in the UK. Chose the ring, got the shop.

And that day, actually, while I was getting the ring, Charlotte was travelling around the town with her friend, and I had to, like, keep an eye out while I was in the shop. Yeah. Walk past the window and see me getting it. But anyway, I got the ring, and, yeah, so I was like, marriage, that's rubbish if you think about it, isn't it? Who would want to do that? Nonsense. And she was like, what do you mean? You don't want to...

you want to get married? I was like, I don't know, I'll think about it. Just like trying to lead her astray. And you know, the dinner finished, we went back to our room to chat and she got really upset. She said, what do you mean you don't want to marry me? I was like, well, no.

She's like, you don't like marriage? You know, I thought, we talked about it before. I was like, ah. And then you can't do that. So we're literally in this room on the bed. She's like upset, crying a little bit. I'm like laughing like a monster. She's like, what do you mean? You don't want to. And I'm just like,

because i'm like the bag's over there with the ring in it yeah and i'm like oh i finally she knew but i could i can just be like well guess what there's some wedding day well here's what i made earlier yeah you can't get engaged even like in a funny way yeah memory of the engagement would just be like trauma crying and trauma like what do you mean you bought it like it would just be shit so i had to like hold off but it was really uncomfortable and like

so we had like four days of like just off the back of that me being like yeah i'm sure we'll get married soon no way about it yeah no way i'll engage you and then luckily oh yeah we got down to um doodle door it's like this rock yeah good they filmed tears for fears music video there that's why i like it and then i did it there and she i think i put the camera on the um

Because I do think the engagement thing is important. Some people literally just do it on a sofa, like, marriage, innit? And they're like, yeah, all right. Some people really go, like, really far. Yeah. And, like, do it in a fucking hot air balloon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like Egypt or something. I just... I'm one in the middle ground. You fucking Jackie Chan around for more than 80 days. What the fuck is this? Where did you do it? I'll let you finish your story. Yeah, but, like, I...

So I went to the middle ground. I went somewhere that was a nice location that I went back on and go, that was nice. And so I found Dirtle Door. The wind was like a fucking hurricane that day. Mess. I put the camera down in the rocks on the floor.

And I was like, let's take a selfie. She's like, oh yeah, okay. And I was like, all right, I've got self-timer, five seconds, three, two, one. I got down, three, two, one, will you marry me? She was like, really? I was like, yes. Had it the whole time. And I think she was happy when it made up for the awful shit of making her cry.

in the Lake District. And it was a nice happy ending. - That's good. - It was a lovely backdrop to it. And it's a nice memory now. - Yeah, hell yeah. - We just forget about the bit where I made a cry. - Congratulations. - No, it's okay, what a load of shit innit? Like it was literally that bad and I'm an idiot. - It's good to know that I'm not the only one that- - It's not like they always go wrong.

- Yeah, I'm not the only one that fucked up his proposal and it still went right in the end. - I thought you did it by the River Thames, right? - Yeah, yeah, I did it by the River Thames. - Yeah, yeah, so I've told this on stream before, but I'll tell it again here because I don't think I've told it on Trash Taste before. So yeah, like my idea,

for the engagement was going to be like a repeat of our very first date that we ever did. So, you know, like you, how you were saying some people go super extra. I wanted, I'm more like a sentimental personal kind of person. - No hot air balloons. - No hot air balloons, no special things. So on our first day we cycled down South Bank along the Thames and there was this like,

picturesque place that we stopped at and we took one of our first pictures we'd ever taken on like that first date. And I was like, this has sentimental value for me, this place has sentimental value. So my idea for the engagement was gonna be, we're gonna repeat our first dates and we're gonna stop at that point and that's gonna be where I do it. Obviously at this point we've been dating for like seven, eight years. So it's been a long time since I've been back to London. So I was like,

We were back just for, I guess like a month or something. So I was like, honey, let's, how do you feel about repeating our first day? You know, that's nice, right? And honestly the date went really well. Like the beginning of the day, we cycled down and stopped out all of the places we'd taken like pictures before. And you know, it was all going super well. I thought, yes, this is the vibe I was like hoping for.

And then we start getting closer to where the engagement point was meant to be. And we start cycling closer and closer. And I start looking around, start seeing scaffolding slowly get more and more dense. - Of course, the UK road works. - And I'm like, huh, that's weird. That wasn't there before.

So I saw like single, single, single sweat drop starts like coming down and I'm like, "Hmm, sure it's just the area. "Sure it's just the area. "Nothing to worry about." And then we progressively, the day goes on and as we cycle closer, the construction and the scaffolding progressively get more and more dense to the point where they're like, so this,

photogenic area spot was just kind of like in an area right next to the Thames, like very picturesque. And we got to the entrance of the area and it was just shut. It was just completely shut all closed off thanks to construction. And at this point I'm like, normally when I have a plan, I have like a plan B. So I'm like, go on engineer, you can engineer a plan B. And I like cycle through, I cycle through what my plan B is and I'm like,

I don't have a plan B, fuck, what do I do? So like in a state of panic, I'm like, maybe there's another entrance somewhere. Maybe there's another entrance somewhere. Sydney's like, yeah, sure, let's try go find another entrance. So we cycle around and this entire area is just closed off.

Thanks to construction. Thanks a lot, city of London. Thanks, thank you. - Bloody Boris Johnson. - Thank you so much. - Yeah, Big Ben is still- - No, it's good now. - It's good now? - It's good now? - It was like that for like how many fucking years? - Half a decade. - Yeah. - Closing. - Yeah, so we cycle around the entire area looking for an entrance, but this single area is just closed off for construction. So at this point, I just like, in my mind, I just like given up. I just like, all right, it's done.

this was a good plan, maybe I'll try and find another day. And I turned over to Sydney and Sydney knows me very well. I think she could see how much I was panicking. And I think at this point she could suss what was going on. She could suss what was going on. So I look over at Sydney about to say, let's just call it a day for the day. And I look at her and I take a breath

And she gives me the most evil eyes I've ever seen Sydney give me in her life because I think she knows what I was about to do and she's like- - You better fucking bail. - He's bailed. - She's like, "No, you are not bailing. We are doing this today." - Do it. - And so I go, and so I turn over and I go,

"Do you wanna keep cycling?" And so I was just like, maybe God will smile down on me and maybe there's a like a nice spot that's not like all fucking painted in construction. - So he's like, "Good boy." - Good boy. So yeah, we cycled down for another like 20 minutes and thankfully, thankfully there's like a place that looks like halfway decent. And you know, I set up the camera

for the selfie as you do. - Get the selfie. - Get the selfie. - Classic trick. - Although I took the video. - You have the Twitter engagement. - Yeah. Sydney told me afterwards that of course she knew what was coming halfway through the day. She could see how much I was panicking. But when the ring came out, she just completely blanked and so did I actually, because we didn't realize until after we saw the video

that I didn't realize this 'cause I was just like so shot up with adrenaline, pulled out the ring. She was just like gasp in shock, even though she knew what was coming. She didn't even say yes. - Shit. - She...

- What did she do? She was just like, "All right, let's go home." - She gasped for air. She started crying and I just hugged her. And I just, I guess in the moment I heard yes. - You're like hugging her and you're just like, "Please say that was a yes. I beg of you." - And we didn't realize until after we saw the footage that, "Shit, you didn't actually say yes in the moment. I just hugged you and assumed you did say yes."

- Oh my God. - You pull away and she's like, "No." - She's like, "Oh, sister." - Marriage annulled. - It's like, "Well, it was too late to go back out now, right?" - "I never said yes." Fuck yeah, now. - Yeah, it's one of those things that you do panic. It's quite a scary thing. You want it to go right and you know what? I thought she would say yes despite making her cry. There was a lot of, I was really nervous when I did it.

- Right. - I think everyone is right when they go through that. - I guess so. - I don't know. - I can't really imagine a dude just being like all calm and collected being like, yep, this is going absolutely according to plan. I'm gonna fucking nail the landing. Everything's gonna go well. They might say beforehand. - You've never been in a hot air balloon over Egypt. - Yeah. - Well, fuck. - I mean, I haven't. I mean, I'm glad in a way that it went wrong because it's just become such a cool memory for me now.

- You think you'd forget it otherwise? You'd be like, "Oh shit, that is how we only meet." - Oh yeah, I have a wife now. - I just think the- - I think it's gonna be a cool memory regardless. - It's a cool memory, but the emotional journey I took to get to that final moment just amplified it just because I went through so many emotions in those six hours or however long that day was. - Right, 'cause otherwise if you,

if it went smoothly, it'd be like, it's like when you beat a video game on a too easy difficulty. I should have experienced it in a harder mode. I should have had like a boy trip in front of us in the picture or something. - Yeah. - Should have arranged it. - You're gonna like artificially add like difficulty to your engagement. - Yeah, I'll hire like a bunch of actors.

- That it's gonna be me. It's a battle royale. - All of them pull out the ring. It's like, which one's the real me? - There's gotta be some kind of test. You can't just be married. - If you really love me, you'll know which one's me. - It's easy to say yes. You gotta prove it. - It's like you've ripped off Scott Pilgrim. - It's gonna be boss fights, boss music at least.

- I know that you are kidding. That's the worrying thing. - No, no, no, I'll- - You must win my love. If you want this ring, you must take it from my hands. - You want to be a part of my- - Just Dark Souls level. - There's like a treasure hunt.

- Only then if you solve the riddle, may you- - All right, I hit it as a geocache. You have to go find it. You open up the box, it's just an empty box. He's just like, "The ring is-" - It's a shitty Mr. B short. It's like goes over the Bermuda triangle and in there you will see what you seek. And it's like, it's the dead man. - Check his hand, it's got the ring on it.

- Fair enough. - Well congratulations. - From the gauntlet. - Yeah, yeah. - Congratulations. - Lots of congratulations for you. - Yeah. - What else was happening? - What else? - Book, chess boxing, fucking proposal. - Fucking proposal. - What else you got? - Fucking proposal. - What else you got? - You missed Sendai all now that you have moved. - Nah, it's good though. - Nice, but like- - How does Natsuki feel about it? - He never wanted me to move to Sendai. - Oh really? - Easy for him to get to Tokyo by plane. - When he was trying to- - When I said, "Oh, I'm thinking of moving to Sendai, Tokyo." He was like, "Sendai, very fuck."

I was like, all right. Well, so. I've got a bit of a conundrum, though. Like, in the, for the book, right? Yeah. I've got an audio recording. Actually, in South Bank. I can look over where you've got proposed and the road works. And I've got to do an audio recording for three days in a room for the audio book. Mm-hmm.

how the fuck am I going to do the voices of people in the book? Because I can't be like, oh, Kurish-san, it is so good to meet you. I can't like fucking try and do like impressions. Are you kidding me? I think your audience will fucking love that. I can see some issues arising, but there's only one voice actor here and he's called Sea Dog. What would you do? Well, I voiced the Nigerian archers myself. Has that stood the test of time? No, they didn't remove it. So, yeah.

- I would just do your like a different voice, but not racist. It's pretty easy. You don't have to go, oh, you don't have to do that shit. Like what the fuck? You can just be like, you can just change up your voice a little bit. - It's tough though, isn't it? For Latsky, like how would I be like,

- You've done impressions of Natsuki. - It's the grammatical structure just isn't there. So it's easy to be like, oh, so very fucked, Chris. - Yeah, but you normally do, oh, Chris, so very fucked, Chris. - I feel like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just do it in your own voice, just being like, and then Natsuki said, always fucking place. - Always fucking place. - You gotta mix it up a little bit. You gotta let the readers know that the voice has changed. - Scary. - No, it's easy. - No, it's fine. - Yeah, it's fine. - Can I do an American accent?

- I do an Australian accent. - Well, I'm convinced you can't say the word umami without taking an American accent. - Umami flavor. - Speaking of umami flavor, this is pretty good. - For some reason, whenever the word umami comes into Chris's vocabulary, he has to do it. - He has to add the word flavor. - The umami flavors. Why is that?

- I don't fucking know. It's 'cause I saw it on NHK World once. Where they like only hire American presenters and that's all they say. - Umami flavor. - We went to the restaurant and we had umami flavors all over my face. That's NHK World. See Pete Macy. - You're gonna do all of that, this entire book in three days? - Three days, 80,000 words, 300 pages. - How many words is this?

- 80,000. - 80,000 words in three days. - How many pages? - 300. - Yeah, that's very doable.

- Well, you have better reading skills than me. - Chapter five. - You also bloody wrote the fucking thing. So like for me, when I was doing audio books, I didn't fucking know what the book was about. And they'd be like, "And the elves took their swords and conquered." And I was like, "What the fuck is this shit that I'm reading?" Like, I don't know what I was reading. And you know, 'cause when you do audio books as well, obviously you can't read the book and then do it. You read the book while doing the books. So that was the hard part. - I did do a test read through the other day and I was laughing at my own jokes. How's that?

- That's a good thing. That means you have good jokes. - I don't know if that's pretty lame. - It's good. - Or maybe not in the recording. - It's gonna be like chapter five, Mr. Dick. Like how the fuck am I gonna do that? - You just sit like that. - I just want the audio recording of that. - Take that to the soundbite. - Yeah, I just want the audio recording of that. That's my new text tone. - Chapter seven, the sausages. - It's gonna be shit.

- It's what it is. - Remember to buy the audiobook. - This feels like the superior experience. - I'm fucking buying the audiobook already. - I'm definitely buying the audiobook. - I wanna listen to that. - When is that gonna be released? - September. - Oh wow. - Somebody's gonna real time editing Latin in South Bank. - Why are you doing it in South Bank? - So now that's where the recording studio is. - There's a lot of studios in London. - Okay. - You didn't think about doing it in Japan?

- Nah. - You probably wouldn't want to do it. - I'm doing it like the day you've got your show in London. - Oh, I'll be like across the road from you. - You'll be like a sellout show to millions and I'll be in a recording booth being like, "Mr. Dick." "Mr. Dick." - Come on our show. Wait, are you actually gonna be in London during our show? - Yeah. - Do you wanna come on our show? - Maybe. - Come on stage. - What day is it? - 9th September. - 9th of September. - Oh, I might be there.

- I get special perks. - Yeah, if you want. - Yeah, if you want. - All right, great. - I guess I'll roll around on stage. - Mr. Dick! - Can I throw my hardback books into the audience? - Sure. - Some people would love it. - Hey, Londoners, you get a special guest, brought in Japan for your show. - He's confirmed it. - He is confirmed it. - Just like my six pack, it'll definitely happen.

- Get your tickets 'cause those are, we still got like a little bit of like space left. - Yeah, we still got London tickets left. - It's a big venue, isn't it? - It's our biggest venue we've ever done. - Apollo? - Yeah, Apollo Theater. - Wow, sausages.

- Sausages. - Sausages. - Sorry, will there be sausages? Will there be camembert? - I will have sausage. - You can bring it on stage. Just throw camembert and sausages into the crowd. - That is the least flavorful camembert I've had in my life. - Yeah, it was pretty disgusting. - I think we know who likes cheese. They still got two thirds left. It's like fucking Mickey Mouse's closet over here. - I just had lunch. - Excuse his gum, it's the finest cheese I could afford. Who wants some more wine?

Oh man, over here I was on YouTube flicking through like you do, which you should never do. On the homepage, a dribble of wine for you. Thanks. I saw a video that triggered me. Go on. It wasn't even Sea Dog VA. Do you want some?

- It was. - White girl speaks Japanese to Japanese people. Japanese people shit themselves. - Oh yeah. - It was like, "What is this a video?" - I wanna know, do you ever watch like, I'm gonna guess you don't watch TikTok at all. You don't seem like a TikTok guy, Chris. - I despise TikTok. - The day that Chris comes up to me and says, "Did you see that thing on TikTok?" Is the day that the world is gonna end. - Something bad's gonna happen. - You might be aware of like YouTube Shorts, right?

- What's your opinion of like the new wave, like YouTube shorts, which is like, here's some weird things in Japan. Number one. - Top five things that you didn't know existed in Japan. - Every time I see it, I'm just like, I want to buy an island and just live there and fucking turn off the internet.

Like when YouTube shorts was kicking off, I was speaking to YouTube and they were like, we think it would be really great, Chris, if you could do some YouTube shorts. I was like, how about fuck off? You know, I know YouTube shorts for some people and I get it. But I hate them. It's not my demographic. I did one on Abroad in Japan once and people were like, what the fuck is this? Because my demographic's like...

a 32 year old white man in Swindon and like, and maybe more. - That's it, that's the entire- - The entire league guy. - The entire population is swinging. - You could be the David Attenborough of Japan. - My demographic's older people, I say older people like people who are 25 to 35 who are less keen to watch shorts. I don't watch shorts, I hate them.

And it is literally just, did you know there's a ferry in Japan that you can ride? And it goes across the sea. And I found a vending machine. You can get Pocari Sweat and you shit yourself. And it's like...

- You know the fucking time I spend on my videos and shorts, like just crap videos going, this is first class. - Where does your annoyance come with the shorts? Is it because you feel like they're lower quality or is it 'cause you think they cover stuff in a superficial way? - Both. - Oh, okay. - Both. Superficial, I don't know, just Japan feels more and more like a playground for shit content. And like content creators coming over in spades now.

It's everywhere. I don't want to be like the gatekeeper of Japan. - Yeah. - I've been here 10 years, I know more about Japan than you do. That's literally the last 10 years I've spent here. - Yeah. - Every four, like a lot of four hours I speak to. - If you want to make a YouTube show in Japan, you have to go through me. - It's literally like top jumps when you sometimes meet a foreigner in Japan. They're like, how long have you been in Japan? You're like, well, I've been here seven years. He's like, I've been here nine.

- I know more than you do. - Yeah, that does happen a lot. - I know more about the culture. - I hate that shit. - And I don't wanna be like that. But there are people coming over here now. - But I am that man. - But I haven't met anyone. I haven't met anyone yet who has been here more years. So it feels good. - Hold on, I have a TikTok to show you. And I think this, you will actually get a kick out of this one. Fuck, this had me cringing in a sense that I,

- Oh my God, I've never had such great- - I don't mind shorts for comedy necessarily. - Yeah. - Comedy, a quick joke, funny. - Yeah. - But just boiling down something into seconds, it robs it of any emotional sort of- - Build up. - You feel like you watch it, you forget it, like that. - Chris, do you know what does really well on shorts on TikTok? Promoting a product. - Like a book. - Like a book. - Like a book. - Like a book. - I bought a book in Japan, I made a book in Japan. It's just like- - You're shitting yourself. - So good your shit.

- Did you know there's a book about Japan that's so good, you'll come. - No, just, okay, okay. Here, here, here. - Chris, Chris. - Literally YouTube shorts. - Chris, Chris, here's how to do an Abroad in Japan YouTube short. Just be like, here's one weird thing that happened in Japan. And you just tell the story. It's a short story. And if you wanna buy it- - You can find out more in my book. - Yeah, if you find out more stories, I wrote a book all over it.

- I'm gonna make my life in Japan. - There you go, perfect. - Perfect. - You can make it in 60 seconds and start. - I never thought I'd see the day Garnt was trying to sell me a YouTube short. - What have you become Garnt? What has he become? - This is fucking awful. - Oh that was so bad. - What is this? - What is this? Is this real? - That's a parody, it's a parody. - I'll forgive it. - I'm just making fun of people who idolize Japan I suppose too much. - Which has happened quite a lot. - Yeah, it does happen. - I've unfortunately met a few people who were like that.

- Yeah, well, I think some people comment as well. They're like, "You guys just all fucking hate Japan. Why are you there?" And it's like, no, no, no.

- Who, you? - Some people, occasionally we get comments like that on the show. - Oh, well, it's always like that. If you're critical of Japan anyway, you always get destroyed by someone. - Yeah, I mean, if you've been here long enough, I think you'll just have complaints. - Well, I'm working on a video now to break the book a little bit called "10 Years in Japan: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly." And I'm at that scary bit where I'm like scripting the ugly bit and it's like, "Oh, I don't wanna talk about that." You know, there's some things you just don't talk about the end content.

- They hired it, they upped it. - It's like the ugly. - So I've got to tread carefully and I feel very careful how I do that. - Well, 'cause Japan's problems are pretty,

- Pretty real problems. - There are lots of problems. I still think the net on the net is a very positive. That's why I have to preface with like, you know. - Yeah, it's 'cause you know, sometimes what I do dislike is that sometimes there'll be like a TikTok show and like, "This is the top five vending machine in Japan." Then the first reply will be like,

"Why is rape so underreported in Japan?" And it's like, whoa. These energies aren't matching. It's like someone who's trying to like enjoy Japan and then someone who's like absolutely trying to be like, "It's a terrible country. "The sexual crime is higher than the US." And it's like, okay, well. - I feel it's so weird as well because Japan is one of the few countries where that phenomenon happens. Where it's like, if someone who's a foreigner is like, "Hey guys, by the way, I'm moving to Japan tomorrow." And then there's always that one person that's like, "Do you know that, like,

the sexual crime rate in Japan is like really fucked. And it's like, okay, thanks, I guess. - I mean it is. - But any other country, you don't get that. - That's what I find interesting about YouTube shorts and TikTok comments in general. Because shorts and TikToks are just reaching an audience that are so vastly bigger than you'd get on like a stream or like long YouTube videos. You just see what kind of comments you'd get

your content would be recommended to people just like outside of your own interest. So it's like you get some of the most fucking unhinged comments you have like all time. - Oh my God. - Unlike shorts and TikToks. - It's just kind of crazy sometimes I see someone who just gets like an order from McDonald's and they like 10 million views 'cause they're just talking about like Shacky Chicky. It's like, it's just chicken. - You shake. - You shake.

- Still, YouTube short views are worthless. Both literally and financially. Like I was speaking to someone, they got like 10 million views and it's like, I made a dollar. It's like, wow. - I mean, it sucks 'cause I've been very resistant to them for a long time, but I've recently started kind of trying to do them more because just the people I spoke to were like, yep, it's kind of- - You've gotta do it. - You've gotta do it. And also YouTube is only gonna keep incentivizing it more and more. Right now it's not, maybe not the best,

but slowly and slowly they're putting more eggs in that basket. - At least they're paying you on like TikTok, you know? So that's already in the right step. - Yeah, yeah, that's at least one good thing. My short channel gets more views than all my other channels combined. I know obviously the views is very different. - I know.

Yeah, I wouldn't say it is, but I know a big YouTuber in Japan who has millions of views on Shorts, and millions of subscribers as a result. But his main views don't go above like 20,000 to 50,000. What is the point of that? That's the problem. I would much rather have an audience that's there for the long-form content, where a lot more thought has generally gone into it. Yeah, I agree. Fixing a topic where you can feel emotion and try and get something like... I think best of both worlds, you can do both, right? You can do both, and maybe I should explore it. But I'd rather chop my fingers off.

I hate that pressure of having to do shorts. I've had so many people, YouTube and organisations and people I work with go like, you need to do shorts. It's like, no, I don't. I just shut the YouTube channel down and go and fucking read a book for 10 years. Honestly, I hate... My book, that's... I hate viewing YouTube through the prism of business. I've always... All I give a shit about is trying to make a good video

Fucking throw my energy into that video and release it into the wild. And I hate like, you've got to do YouTube shorts, man. You've got to do this. You've got to do that. And it's like, oh, I just want to make a video, innit? Yeah. Like, I hate that pressure. Yeah. And it's ever present. I guess the problem is you just don't know where the platforms are going a lot of the time. So it's very hard to,

be like, oh, a lot of eggs are being put in this basket more than I had originally anticipated. Now I'm fucked 'cause I didn't adapt. And that's always the worry. - I just hope there was excited design about reels, Connor. - Oh fucks sake. - Reels. - Yeah, those are blowing up like crazy, aren't they? - What the fuck is reels? - Instagram reels. - Oh no, sorry, it's not reels. It's threads. - Oh, threads. - We've talked about threads. - Yeah. - Oh, threads everyone, threads. Two days later, oh, there's nobody here. - The Google trends was interesting.

- Like a fucking Falcon 9 rocket. - I mean, I would have liked to use threads more if it didn't share the same problem with Twitter, which is just show me who I fucking follow. Please. Like as soon as I saw people I don't follow on my feed, I'm like, okay, no. - I actually had the other problem where it was like, I was following people, but there just wasn't any stuff on the timeline because people weren't posting that much. And I was like, oh, this is,

It's kind of fucking boring. At least on Twitter, I see some weird shit. - Yeah. - But I don't like Twitter. - I know I'm getting old 'cause I'm just like, I miss the days where if there is just like a social media platform where I get to decide what I see and it's not some fucking algorithm or some fucking computer deciding, hey, this is the thing that's going to interest you the most. 'Cause for a long time, that was my Twitter. That was like my Twitter. Twitter was like my safe space of just,

my safe space of just like, if I want to follow the people I'm following and what they're getting up to, this is the space. And then Elon took over and now it's just a fucking quote, retweet hell. - It's awful. - Yeah. - I get retweet, tweets that come up that's just shit that I should not be seeing. - Yeah. - Andrew Tate, what the fuck?

I don't want to see Andrew Tate. Yeah. Originally, I was making fun of Chris for buying Twitter Blue. And then I looked at my analytics and it was like, it was like, it was like up and down, up and down. And then it's crazy. It literally took a nosedive after they removed verification. And like the tweets just weren't being pushed to anyone. I tried to get rid of Twitter Blue after a month and it wouldn't,

No way. It's like letting a fucking bear into your house. They're like, I shouldn't have let that bear in. I was like, well, the only reason for such a cliff dive was that I lost the verification. And so I joined up again to see if it'd go back up. And sure enough, right after I bought it again, went right back up. I was like, this is fucked. I mean, that's the only reason I use Twitter is to sort of promote my video. Yeah. YouTube has become increasingly shit. So I thought,

get Twitter blue at least it might promote my stuff and not those I mean it does unfortunately and that's the sad truth of the matter yeah it's made a win but then you see verified accounts and you're like this is useless it's shit Twitter's garbage now absolutely garbage it's gonna be worthless in five years I think well that's why I was hoping like threads would actually kind of take off to you know replace it I think Instagram you're gonna see Instagram get more popular

- I've actually tried doing a little- - I saw fucking this morning, Garnt posted a fucking story and I'm like, "Dad's back." "Holy shit, he's back with the milk." - I saw your stories like- - You know what, I'm gonna make an Instagram post for you. - Oh no. - I'm gonna be like, "Look what came in." - Look what I got. - Look what came in guys. - That's selling author. - Yeah, I'll do one with my book, wait. - I'm gonna get an Instagram story of Garnt

gone making an Instagram story. You'll get up one day. There you go. Oh, no, that's me. Look at this. Look at this. Even my YouTube feed of content, it's just got really weird recently. It's all very odd. Unfortunately, I'm just getting all this viral content that I don't want to see, like

white person speaks Japanese, Japanese people don't. - So what do you- - Why is that fucking content? - You can do that. - What do you wanna- - Because they're easy views, innit? - I put all this time into my video when I should be going up to Japanese people going, sashimi chabimash. And they'll go, oh no, Uncle Joe's like, that's not content. - Sake onigashima. - This all started from, was that guy who spoke Chinese fluently in-

- Yeah, there's a few in New York. - And the thing is that I think ultimately the reason why I think those Japanese videos aren't entertaining from a general level is that I think Chinese people are just way more shocked. - They are way more shocked. Japanese people go, "Oh, Nihongo's also this." - They'll be like, "Oh, you know." And then in these videos, these dudes are like, they'll fucking flip a table and sprint around and go, "Whoa!" And then that's why it's kind of interesting. - But it doesn't really work in Japan. - It doesn't. - And I saw a video that had millions, millions of views. And I clicked on, "That must be good then."

And it's literally like, "Oh chicken, tabemasu, tokuni, tokuni." It's like, "Tamonisashimi, tabemasu, kudo." And or, "Omarisuki, janai, kudo." And it's just like, the Japanese man's like, "Oh, yongodouze, shionee."

and it's just like if this is the level what am I doing with my life if I can get 20 times the views with 500 times less effort I am doing something wrong yeah can we name this episode like

Asian guy surprises two white men by speaking English for two hours. - It's like, you know, most people they don't give a shit. They'll say, "Ni hong kong jiao zi" and then they'll move on. That's it. And this video, I saw it so many times come up. - I think I know who you're talking about. They've done multiple. - There's a few people. I'm not even saying I'm angry at them.

because it's the algorithm you're angry that it's successful the thing about YouTube you make one video it kicks off it does really well you want to make another and I you know some people have day in the life videos some people have tiny apartment videos some people have white

white person speaks Japanese, you know? And there's these YouTube and they go onto one thing. And I've never done that. And I wish I probably fucking should have done that. - Sounds like you're more angry almost at yourself that you didn't take the- - I am angry at myself, Colin. I think it's just like, you know what videos do well about Japan. And like when I'm desperate, I have like,

a break now in emergency and then the things fall on the floor. It's like, okay, yeah. Tiny apartment. Oh, oh, speak Japanese. - White Japanese. - White Japanese. - Day in the life of something shit. - 24 hours in. - And it's just like, you fucking know the content you need to make, but you don't, but I just feel like I don't want it. - Well, there's a clip of me on like Hassan's stream where I ordered at Starbucks. And as you know, when you order a Starbucks, none of the words are Japanese. - Yeah. - Yeah. - They were like, the title was like, "Connor's amazing Japanese." And it was like, "Oh, cappuccino." He thought so.

- And then everyone in the comments is like, "What the fuck?" - But can you say cold brew coffee? - Cold brew coffee. And then they were like, "Oh my God." - That's the hardest Japanese word to say. - Cold brew coffee. - Cold brew coffee. - Go on, say it. - I can't. I just, when I look at it, I'm like, I pointed it. I'm like, I don't know how to say it. - That's why Connor can't make a, "I spoke Japanese." - I should just go to Starbucks and keep saying like a bunch of just,

ordering things until he's animated. - Cold brew coffee, . - I don't know, I just hate the internet now. - Sounds like you're jaded at the-- - It sounds like you're just getting jaded at all generations. - I just think, yeah, I don't know, I'm just better.

I do of course I do still enjoy making videos though and I love my audience I love the people that watch Aborn Japan you know there's a really good core audience there I don't know what the audience is it's probably like 800,000 core viewership and that's the most important that's a pretty good I could make a general I could make a viral video that I know would go viral right but I just

wanna make the content I wanna make. - It seems like you have a real passion in filmmaking. - I do, and honestly, I love, I get excited about the composition and the color grading and the least, my least favorite bit is presenting, right? - Right.

- I mean, you filmed like a whole fucking sniper sequence in the journey across Japan. - Yeah, that was fun. - Which, you know, from a YouTube content perspective, absolutely not necessary at all. - It was a bit excessive. - It was just a bit. - Just a bit. - As a content creator. - I made that 'cause I wanted to watch John Wick 4 and it wasn't out in Japan. And Connor's like,

"I'm gonna watch John Wick 4 in Hawaii or something." And I was like, "You bastard." - That was what was powering me through on the cycle. Every day I was like, "I'm gonna be in Hawaii next week watching John Wick 4." And that was enough to get me through. - So I was like, "I can't watch it." - "I'll make my own John Wick 4." - "I'll make it with Natsuki and Ryotaro." And that's how that came about. - Natsuki Wick. - And Natsuki. - You know, Garnt said something the other day. He said- - He said what? - He said he watched John Wick 4 but didn't watch John Wick 3 and was like, "Oh, it's probably not that important to the story."

I mean, it kind of is, but you can watch it without seeing it. - I don't think my viewing experience was diminished that much by missing some of the story bits. - John Wick doesn't have much of a story. - Yes, it does. - I mean, does watching John Wick 3 explain just the lack of any dialogue that John Wick actually says in John Wick 4? - John Wick dialogue's him just going,

- Yeah. - When he says, "Are you pissed, John?" - Yeah. - Like, that's John Wick. - I love that though. When he says, "Yeah." - You get the backstory behind the, "Yeah." - Yeah. - The teacher is worth a thousand words. - It's an interesting month of film. I saw Indiana Jane. I'm a big fan of Indiana Jane. - You're dialing the fuck up. - Wait, you watched the new one? - Yeah. - 'Cause I love the original trilogy.

But why are you laughing? White man watching Indiana Jones. The new one is so shit. Yeah, I mean, nah.

I mean, we should have taken hints from Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls, right? It's somehow worse than Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls. Really? Did you watch it? No, I've heard it's way worse, though. Oh, really? It's not worse. It's just not as... The problem is Indiana Jones works... But it's like soulless. Indiana Jones works because Indiana Jones is fucking cool. Yeah. He gets the girl, he goes in the cave, he gets the treasure, and he's got a globetrotting adventure. And then Indiana Jones starts this, and it's, he's just a depressed man in a room.

There's no spoilers, but Indiana Jones is just depressed. He's 81. Just like Harrison Ford in real life. He's 80 years old. He's in a room going, ugh. The opening scene of him is flat. Some people are playing David Bowie too loud. And he's like, shut the fuck up.

It's like, this is not Indiana Jones. Where's the adventure? This is racist now as well. Racist, angry man. And like, and the opening, they de-age him. I've heard this. CGI wizardry. You've seen my scene like Star Wars Rogue One. Yeah. It kind of worked for a few characters but didn't for others. But like, you do become painfully aware. Like, in many ways, it's the best part of the film. Right. Because the rest is... Because it's the old Indiana Jones. Yeah. It's Indiana Jones. If they'd made it in the 90s maybe. Yeah. And then the rest, he's just like...

"Oh, I could get the treasure with a lot of effort." - It's just like, if I did Indiana Jones, we need to get the treasure, but will there be Camembert? - But I mean, do you- - Wait, you just have the lost fridge. - Do you think that's just 'cause the idea of like a fucking hero is just like, I guess, aged? - Yeah, fuck yeah. - It's not all about like kicking ass and like getting the girl and like- - No, I think if you've got a compelling story, the 80 year old thing could work. - Yeah, but it doesn't. - But it doesn't, yeah. - Is it a bad film? No. Is it a good film? No. - Did you watch "The Whale"?

- No, I just can't. - I've only seen that one scene. I haven't watched it, but I've only seen that one scene. - Well, they call it cry porn or something. - Yeah, where he's like crying. I've only seen that scene. I'm pretty sure that's the only scene in the movie. - I just don't. - I just wish you'd watch it 'cause I bet you'd give the funniest review. - What would it be? Adam's, the Brendan Fraser. - Yeah, he'd be like, "Oh shit." He just cries and he's just on a fucking Skype call. - Well, I'm all out of fucking time.

- You can't say that word on here. You better hide that. - Oh yeah, we gotta bleep that. - Well, Moodah bleeps it. You got in trouble for not bleeping it. - Yeah. - Oh dear. - But yeah, Indiana Jones, I can't recommend it unfortunately. - I wasn't gonna watch it, so it's fine. - It's better than Kingdom because Kingdom,

It's just a clusterfuck. It doesn't know what it needs to be. And there's literally Shia LaBeouf swinging with monkeys. That's epic. No, it's not. Just because you're a monkey man or whatever. Did you ever watch Shia LaBeouf's other weird films? Some all sorts of awful stuff. Like Nymphomaniac. It's weird. I've seen that. You have? Oh, fuck. It's fucking weird. But it's a good week for film. You've got Mission Impossible. I watched it.

- Yeah, I watched the premiere where Tom Cruise was supposed to be, but then he was sag. - Where? - In Toho. - What, here? - Yeah. - It's out now? - The premiere was, I went to the premiere. - How'd you do that? - Just bought tickets online. - Oh, I thought it was like Tom Cruise's one request, but he's the creator. - I bought tickets to go watch the premiere 'cause I thought, fuck it, I got nothing better to do on a Sunday. - It's good. - It's Mission Impossible.

Tom Cruise riding off a bridge. - It's exactly what you think it's gonna be. - Cool action, threadbare plot, but quite fun. - I will admit I was a little sleepy 'cause I was like, it's like too much and the villain is kind of dumb. Do you want me to tell you what the villain is? - No, I kinda know a little bit, but. - Okay, yeah. It's kind of, when I introduced it, I was like. - Is it AI? - Yeah. I was like, okay.

- AI is the bad guy again. - Technology evil. - Yeah, and it's kind of, I mean, the stunts were impressive, but it kind of went on like a little too long almost. - It's like two and a half hours. - Yeah, I was like, I was like, come on guys. - Then you've got Barbie and Oppenheimer. - Yeah, I was gonna say, you seem like you're gonna be watching Barbie, right? - It's probably quite good. - Well, you can't watch Oppenheimer. - Yeah, you can't watch Oppenheimer. - Why not? Apparently it's not coming out in Japan. - Yeah, people don't know why that is. I think it's because,

the release date is close to the Hiroshima bombing, unfortunately. You can't be like, let's have a film about the bomb and then the next day it's Hiroshima's annual event. So I do get that. It will come out there, I think, in September. Don't forget Japan, they do have the movies like fucking six months after they've been everywhere else. But normally that's announced ahead of time. It hasn't been announced yet. I'll just watch it in the UK. The reviews for Oppenheimer look good. I saw someone go,

- It was great, but I had no clue what anyone was saying. - Just like Tenet, right? - Oh, great. - Where every- - Just mumble fest. - Every like Christopher Nolan film is great, but I just don't know what I'm saying. - Every Christopher Nolan film you have to watch twice at least. - Just to know what they're fucking saying. It's like a cryptic mystery watching a Christopher Nolan film. Yeah, 'cause you can't fucking hear what they're saying. - 'Cause the microphone is here. - I'm like, and it's like,

I had to watch Abroad Japan eight times to hear him talk about Camembert. Just come on Chris Nolan, just make the audio good. Because I remember like,

Batman Begins, Rises 3, Dark Knight, what was it called? - Dark Knight Rises. - Dark Knight Rises. - Bane was what started it. - Literally had no idea what, oh my God, Bane half the time is just. - What did you say? - Subtitles are great. - When I watched the subtitles, I was like, oh, Tom Hanks.

- I love that opening scene when he's hijacking the plane. He's just like, "I'm going to take this as a sign." The guy's like, "No way." And he's like, "Yes." I'm like, "I don't know what he said." - I remember watching that and I was a bit confused. 'Cause he's like, "What's the next step of your master plan?" And he's like, "Going through this plan."

- I remember going, "Hurt." 'Cause that just sounds so lame. It's like, "Crash of the Spade, we're no survivors." - I know you also watching or watched "Silo."

- Yeah, it's good. - Yeah, I finished it last night. - It's really good. I also was watching- - What is it? - "Silo." - What's "Silo"? - It's this Apple TV show about, you're just kind of introduced to this silo where there's forbidden relics, so you can't have any old technology, and there's no elevators, and you can only go up this one giant concrete silo, and everything has to be within the confines. - It's big as well, it's like 2,000 meters high. - Is it like an indie kind of movie? - No, no, no, it's Apple, big TV series. - No, no, no, Apple TV production.

- It's pretty good actually. - Pretty good. - Just finished last night. The ending is really good to the first season. - I've watched Apple, they had a good run actually. I'm watching it. - I really wanted to watch Tetris. - It's pretty good. - Is it really good? - It's really fun. - Severance, watch Severance. - I have watched Severance. - It's the best. - You have? - Yeah, I have watched Severance. - Oh, fuck yeah. - We've talked about this literally on Trash Taste. - Oh, okay. - I haven't seen it. - I assume if it's good, you guys don't watch it.

- What? - It's like anything good, anything good you guys are like, "Oh, sorry, I'm watching too much anime stuff "and playing Gacha games." And Joey's like, "I'm listening to Pink Floyd for the 15th time." - Joey's like, "I've just finished listening to Pink Floyd "and watching Akira for the 20th time." - Yeah, yeah, yeah, Joey's like, "I actually found a-" - That sounds like a good day. - Joey's like, "I've just replayed the JRPG for the 19th time."

- The best two shows last year, Succession number one, Severance number two, I'd say. - I've been watching Severance, but I really struggled to get through the third and fourth season. - You're talking about Succession? - It did go on a little bit, no doubt about that. - The opening theme is a banger though.

I've watched it for that. - It is a banger. - I ride around Tokyo listening to it. Succession seems to be like, "Oh, yes." - Yeah, I've currently finished like two seasons of Succession and it is- - The second one's good. The third one, it gets a little bit, yeah. The fourth is good again. - Brian Cox carries that show. - He does. - He's very much- - Very intimidating. - Started watching a new show on Apple called "Hijack" with Idris Elba and it's about a plane being hijacked. But it's a bit like, just doesn't feel believable. The terrorists are really rubbish.

It's just five people from Essex. And it's like, well, we're taking over this plane, mate. You better not fucking do anything. And it's just like, it doesn't work. It just like, just sounds silly. Not that I'm saying people from Essex are silly. I'm like, wait, they're just, terrorists are just shit. Yeah, Apple TV's been crushing it. Is Tetris good? Yeah, it's pretty good. I haven't seen it. I really want to watch it. It's quite original. It's very...

- They also did "Drops of God" as well. They did an adaptation of "Drops of God." - Of course you've watched the one about wine. - Of course I've watched that. We actually watched it when we visited Napa Valley. I thought it was pretty good. - Doesn't look good.

- You know me, but you had a wide variety of opinions just because Sydney is just like, it's not like the manga. It's not like the manga. It's not the real job. - It's an adaptation. It's not supposed to be exactly on the wall. - Yeah, there's like this romance subplot and then like in the original manga, like the two main, the two rivals are both guys,

In the adaptation, the main character is a girl and she has like a romance subplot. I'm like- - It's like a live action adaptation. - Yeah, it's like a live action adaptation. I thought the adaptation was actually really fucking good. Siddi was just like, "It's not the manga. It's not the real- - Just read the manga. - Just read the manga." And I'm like, "I had a good time." - You have plenty of time to catch up 'cause these writer strikes will.

Nothing coming out in like two years. Apple TV has been consistently the best over the last few years to some extent. Then HBO, Netflix. Do you guys remember the last Little Rider Strike at all? Well, yeah. It was like when you, back in the day when I was a kid, you'd watch Prison Break and I'm like, why is it shit all of a sudden? Watching 24, you're like, why is it shit? Quantum of Solace, right? The sequel to Casino Royale. Casino Royale, best Bond film ever. And it's just like, oh, they gave up.

- Stop those terrorists. - Yeah, I remember when the first writer's strike happened, it was just like, you know, as you know, you're a lot younger and I'm just like, I'm sure people can write stories even though it's not their job. - I don't remember it happening.

it happened that all the TV shows I liked, a certain season would always be bad. And then when you go online and look, it was like the writer's strike happens. And that was why 24 was 10 episodes less. - And I was like, oh, this is why writers are important. - Oh, okay, I get it now. - It's almost like it's a qualified job. - I know, oh my God. No, like for me it was heroes.

Like "Heroes" was such a good TV show. And then like season three, I remember watching season three and this was before, this was back when before like I even had an inkling of like, there are people who made TV shows, you know? - That was like the peak TV period as well, where it was like "Lost", "24", "Prison Break", "Heroes", where it felt like everything was like, whoa. - And then suddenly every TV show I was watching got shit and I was just like, well, what's going on? Why is this happening? - TV fell off. Did you watch "Black Mirror"?

I did. I did. What did you think? Did you watch all the episodes? Was there any episodes? Big fan of the writer, Charlie Brooker. Love the original. What season is this? Season six. Six new episodes. Five and six have been a bit. And there's about, I would say, there's one absolutely god-awful shit, should be a mistake episode. Streamberry? No, the one with the wolf, the werewolf.

- Oh yeah. - That was like the worst episode of Black Mirror ever. It was so shit. And the stream barrier was whatever. The only ones I kind of liked, the true crime one was okay 'cause of the Scottish guy, he carried it.

- The Podrick from- - Podrick from Game of Thrones. - He was so fucking good. - As angry Scottish man. - He was so good. - He was really good. - He carried the episode. - He was the best acting I've seen in a long time. - And then the Aaron Paul was okay, but it was too long. - No, I didn't like it. - Yeah, I didn't like that one. - It was too long. - I thought it was trying to be a lot cleverer than it was. - Yeah. - The ending was just like, oh, I'm gonna watch it. - It was like, I felt like it tried to do the same kind of like twist as,

- What's the one where he's like being forced to do a bank heist. - Something don't talk to me and dance. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Shut up and dance. - Shut up and dance. - I feel like that. - You said that line before. - I feel like that episode had a really good fucking set up and a good payoff at the end. - That's such a good episode. - And then I feel like it kind of tried to do something similar where it's just like, oh, we have this set up but it doesn't end the way you think it's gonna end. And it's just. - I kind of like the Satan one.

- That was the best one. - That was kind of fun. The acting was pretty fun in that. The devil was so funny in it. - The devil's the dancer from "Boney M." - He's out of context, San Jose. - The devil's the guy from "Boney M." - Imagine the devil is just like a guy who's charming with a thick British accent. He's like, "What are you doing, mate? You gotta go and kill him. It's midnight." - It's so good. - That was a really fucking good performance. - It was like a kind of boring premise with fantastic acting that made it, not to be like biased, but I feel like whenever the "Black Mirror" episode was set in the UK, I was like, "Oh, this one's gonna be a good one."

- It's true though. I just feel a bit more grounded in the UK. - Yeah. - Why that is. - I just feel like a lot of this season of Black Mirror, there's an interesting idea there, but that interesting idea could cover like 20 minutes at most. You know what I mean? - The stream very well.

No. Didn't like... You're fucking Salma Hayek! That's not a line that needs to be put in the script. I guess that was like the tradition. Because Black Mirror is kind of struggling, right? Because it had this very tech-focused premise. And I guess now they've explored a lot of options. And everyone else is doing it, right? That's the power of Black Mirror. It inspired so many people to make great content. Well, everyone describes stuff as Black Mirror-esque, right? Whenever anything's dystopian technology, everyone's like, oh, it's very Black Mirror-esque.

- She dug the IRL. - She's just walking around with the camera, it's Black Mirror. - I would also argue that reality has kind of caught up to Black Mirror as well in some way where a lot of these out there ideas that happened when season one started airing, reality has kind of caught up and we've realized, oh, it's actually happening now. - It's just a documentary. - It's so one where the prime minister fucks a pig. It happened, didn't it?

- Allegedly it was reported David Cameron did something with a pig. - I think like, there was- - So you did, defamation. - You're never gonna be allowed back in the UK. - Allegedly. - I think there's more ways that you can explore that feeling of,

feeling trapped online with twists and stuff and feeling like online is kind of beholden and you're kind of being trapped by it. There's more ways to explore that. I think that they've just given up. - I just feel like it's dumbed down for a younger audience a little bit. - Yeah, the true crime one could have been interesting. - Could you guys just make it a bit more like accessible to younger people? - The true crime one I felt actually could have been quite good exploring true crime and the obsession of it.

But I felt like they kind of were like, all right, now let's just do a twist. And it's kind of fun. Sorry to spoil. That's fine. I wasn't going to watch it. I just felt like it, because true crime is actually such a prevalent thing. And it could have been a fun poignant way to talk about it in a Black Mirror-esque way that kind of didn't.

feel like they nailed it. - Does Sid make you sit down and watch true crime documentaries like, "The man that killed his entire family for no reason." - No, I just, I don't, she doesn't make me sit down. - 'Cause Sharla makes me like, well, she doesn't make me, but she's like, "I'm gonna watch the documentary about everyone that killed the man." - I just wake up and like, she's,

- She's doing her makeup and I'm just like getting ready for the day. - His arms were cut off. - He was drowned by his dad. - His legs were cut off. - And Timothy found his dead parents and called 911. Here's the call. And it's just a kid going,

- And I'm like darling, it's eight in the morning. - I'm just like, oh my. - Please stop. - I'm trying to get ready for the day and I'm fucking sad hearing a kid report his dead parents. - Did you see that YouTuber that had charged

to see an 11 year old boy's autopsy. - Oh yes, I did see that news. - 'Cause like I guess true crime is going so commodified now. I guess people are like, because obviously I think a lot of the historical cases have already been well documented. So now it's getting to the point where they're covering like stuff as it's happening, which is kind of fucked.

'Cause like these people were inserting themselves in like the process essentially and more like turning up to the hearings and getting the information and just immediately posting about it. And it's like, it's pretty fucked. Like it's getting to this state now where like true crime is just, it's just like a reality TV show of what's happening. And then now they're showing the fucking morbid stuff because we have these systems of accountability where people would have to release information to the public.

And now it's kind of being abused in a way where it's like turning it into circus shows and freak shows. It's like, if you want the HD photos of a dead body, go to my Patreon and pay $15. And it's like, that's fucked. - That's so fucked up. - It's so fucked. - I mean, that's part of the reason why I was never really into true crime in the first place. We talked about true crime before. - We've talked about it at the same time, 'cause I think it's an uncomfortable topic.

- Yeah, and you know, ever since the first episode we've talked about it on Trash Taste, the line has just gotten been pushed more and more and more. And you know, going back to Black Mirror, I think part of the reason why Black Mirror doesn't hit as hard now is just because reality has caught up. Online is way scarier than when it was at the first episode.

where in the first season we can view like the stories of Black Mirror is like, ooh, look at this funny thing. And now we look at the late season of Black Mirror and we're like, actually reality is fucking weirder and scarier and more depressing. - On the next season there'll be one basically like ripping off the Apple ProVision, they'll just make one

- A dad who sees his kid that isn't there and he imagines he's still there even after the death of his kid and he goes crazy. - And it's internally fused to his face and he can't take it off. - I genuinely think like they've become so shallow that it's so easy to kind of just write a, predict a Black Mirror episode now. - Just hate walking into my sitting room and hearing,

When we got there, there was blood everywhere. We couldn't stop the bleeding. What he had done to that child? He'd eaten his face. And I'm just like, I'm having a nice morning. I don't want to hear this. He didn't put headphones in or something. Like the man that murdered his entire family for seemingly no reason. Yeah. What? No.

- It must have been a reason. - There's some stuff that's really like, you know, you had that level of distance, but sometimes they show some stuff or talk about some stuff like, this feels like you shouldn't be allowed to view it. - Public knowledge. This feels like really fucked. - This feels really invasive right now. - Yeah. - What a great uplifting topic to end this podcast. - I've got Aquarius in a wine glass. - Nobody's ever done that before. - Wow. - Five weirdest things to do in Japan.

- Number one, Aquarius in a wine glass. - That's how the Japanese do it. - I thought you were drinking Pocari Sweat, Chris, what is this? - I know, that was- - You betrayed them. - That was your vending machine downstairs. - The only real problem I have with the TikToks covering Japan is they're just flat out spreading wrong takes about some of the food establishments. They'll be like,

- Don't go to McDonald's, go to Mosburger, yada, yada, yada. It's like, well, no, Mosburger is just worse than McDonald's in Japan. - Also takes five times longer to come out. - It's five times longer. The nuggets are the only thing that is slightly better 'cause they use better chicken, but everything else is worse. - Onion rings a bell.

Oh yeah, the anime. But there's some other stuff as well where they were like, oh, if you're in Japan and you're on vacation, don't go to a restaurant. Go to the Family Mart and get this microwave pasta. It's like, no. Don't come to Japan and get microwave food. Have the good stuff. It's cheap. It's affordable. I think just the image of Japan is going to be one where everything's crazy and ridiculous. The shorts I see, it's always like really wacky or wild and shit. I saw one that got pushed to me the other day with like a trillion views. And it's like,

I went to Japan's teddy bear cafe and there's like a fucking hole in the wall and I'm like

- A paw comes out. - Oh yeah, yeah. - I can make a video on that place. - Part of the problem, Aki. God damn it. There's more to Japan than bear paw teddy bear restaurants. - Probably. - I just feel like Japan as a country is just tailor made for- - Content creators. - Online content creators. - That's a gold mine of content. - Online content creators. - I can't talk, I've done. - That's why I brought in Japan exists. - You'll get a kick out of this. One time,

'Cause Kaho helps me get video ideas. And sometimes Kaho gives me some ideas that are like a bit, a bit much. And one time I'm having a conversation with Kaho, she's like, "Hey, so I have this video idea." And I'm like, "All right, cool, what's it?" She's like, "So, you know, there's a lot of services for men out there." And I found one where it's for women. I was like, "Oh, okay, cool, like what?" She's like, "Well, you know, there's a lot of services where men can get pleasured, but I found a place where women will get pleasured." And I was like, "Okay, so how do I,

"What am I filming?" She's like, "Well, it's a massage place, but at the end, the guy makes you come." And I was like, "How do I film this?" And she's like, "And I think the guy will let you join in if you want." I was like, "I'm okay with not doing that." And then, so I was like, "Oh, I'll pass." But another guy- - Oh wait, what? Kaho going to it is what you're saying, or you going to it and you using it as a service. - So I would go there and film and then apparently,

the customer would be okay with letting whoever the presenter is do the thing. - It's a Connor dog video waiting to happen. - You're just a porn director. - Yeah, I'm just the porn star. So I said, I can't film that for obvious reasons, but I appreciate the offer, Kaho. Kaho's a great sport about it. She's very funny. I'm like, Kaho, tell me every idea. Let's just go. I'd rather you bring me the weird ideas and say no than not tell me and be a guy.

Someone else did take up on the offer and I had a chance to speak to him. And he's like, yeah, it's a bit awkward. Just sat in the corner of a room commentating while the woman got finger blasted. And then afterwards, afterwards she offered to let him do it. And he was like, I'm okay. And then apparently her husband was just okay with it or didn't really fully understand what was happening. I was like, but she was okay being on camera? He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of weird. I was like, all right.

- Sounds like a brothel in disguise. - That's half of Japan. - Yeah, that's exactly what that is. - Are you kidding me? Japan has so many brothels that are just hidden in plain sight. They're just there.

- It's insane. It's actually, even the fucking pub that we go to, you look across the road, there's like fucking flashing neon signs. - That's true. - The biggest fucking soap lane. - Hand jobs, $10. And it's like, and the bar, and it comes out, oh, I'm actually- - They're not even inconspicuous about it. There's like 80,000 LEDs on that building. - It's crazy. It's like the most well lit up place in Yokohama. I haven't seen so many lights anywhere. It's just like, and it's in English. They got English menu, arimasu.

- Well, I don't think any content I'll be making on top of that. - Yeah, no, that's hard. - Except I've got to make "Take it for Gaunted." - Just thought you'd get kicked out of that. - The only fucking times where we're like, "What have you made "Taken for Gaunted"?" - Yeah, when is that happening? When is "Taken for Gaunted" happening? - All right, okay. - I'm ready. I'm ready to strap me to the bottom of a plane, launch into a volcano. - When are we skydiving? When are we skydiving? We did bungee jumping. - Yeah, you can make "Gaunt." - All right, do you want to skydive? - No, no, no. - Yeah, no, no, no. - Okay, I'll do "Take for Gaunted." - I couldn't get him to go on a fucking children's zip line. He's not getting-- - Children's what?

- I couldn't even get on a short zip line, I had to fight for my life to convince you. - That was a big gorge. I've done zip line, I've never been afraid, but then looking down 200 meters, I was like, this snaps. It's a quick game over. - Yeah, GGs. - Rather than actually make "Take of the Guide", I thought it was really funny to make like a trailer for "Take of the Guide". And then you can have all these action packed moments where it's just like, you know, you're walking home from Trash Taste, then you get kidnapped and waterboarded or something.

- It's a fantasy I have. - So you wanna, you just wanna, it's gone from like fucking bungee jumping foot to like just like torture. - I just wanna make a snuff film with you. - Can we get Joey in as like an actor for me? So like a body double so I don't have to get water- - No, I'll be the one pouring the water on you. I'll be like, "Talk, dammit! "Say you wanna do this show." - What the fuck? - I thought it'd be like a funny "Mission Impossible" style trailer-esque.

- And you could have like a really funny three minute trailer with these cool moments, right? - Chris's new obsession is trailers. - I noticed you wanna get my content about all of the films that you feel or you have just watched.

- Well, Indiana Jones. - Yeah, probably Indiana Jones. - Gone de-aged. - Legally just the same. - We spent 10 million dollars. - The aging gun. - Just randomly there's like a flashback of just 12 year old gun. It makes no sense in the story. It's like, I just wanted to show off this cool thing. - If I was gonna de-age guns, just have a shave. - Watch Oppenheimer then.

Fuck's sake. Well, I want to do that. I want to do it for like April Fool's. All right. I was going to make a, like a Netflix true crime thing about trash taste called, I think I told you last time, Bitter Taste. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to be like, they invited me on trips, but then they stopped. You're going to what? You're going to have a friendly Scottish character now who's really well acted. Really angry. For sure. Sure. It's great. But,

But that's my girl. - I mean, yeah, let's do it. Hit me up. You're in Tokyo now. - I have a question. - Yeah. - When we were on the cycle, every single day you'd be like, I can't wait to play "Resident Evil 4 Remake." And you would every day be like, I've heard it. Everyone's saying it's the best thing ever made. Did you play it? - I played it for half an hour at Pete's. Then I had to go. - And you got really angry. - So yes, teeny. - It was good, yeah. Graphically great. A lot of effort though, innit?

It was like, find the key. I was like, oh, fucking hell. I just want to shoot some zombies. I've never seen you talk about a game and you being excited for it. I like strategy games where I can sit there with a pie and just sort of...

- Move like, oh, the tank over there. - You basically mean chess. - Yeah. - I could sit slowly, digest a pile of food and then like have all the soldiers die. - Age of empires. - Yeah. - Come on, civilization. - Anything like that. - It wasn't evil. - You like sending people to their death basically. - It's like, go on while I eat, go on man while I eat my camembert. - I'm surprised you brought up the fact I listened to Joseph Stalin. - Yeah, you did. So we were on the cycle and it was very tough. And Chris,

for the first two days was very like, hey guys, what's up? And then...

And then I think it got so difficult. It was very tough. It was so much harder than Hokkaido. - Yeah, and there was a lot of rain. - And there was a lot of rain, it was miserable. And then after the, we had the third and fourth days were just hell. And then after that, Chris was like a hikikomori on his Stalin audio books. It was like, we didn't hear from Chris for the next four days. He would just cycle. And then occasionally, apparently, 'cause his phone was connected to the car, when he would cycle closely to the car, the Stalin audio book would start playing in the car.

He'd be like, "So guys, we're gonna go." And he'd be like, "Stalin murdered 15,000 people because they dropped his handkerchief on the floor." And it was just like, what is he doing? What is motivating this man to cycle?

- What is this reason? - I was listening to Stalin's toils and ups and downs, I thought. - Why? Why was that? - For most of his life, Stalin was like living in camps. - What made you want to listen to all of this on the cycle pod? - I thought he's had a rough time. Well, I'm making Stalin sound nice.

He had a rough time. Before he became the undisputed fucking paramount leader of Russia, he was in like prison camps in Siberia for 20 years. And I was listening to that thinking, if he could do that, I can get through today's cycle. That's like my thought process. But then it just got really bleak because by the second half of the book, when he becomes powerful, he's just like, if his friend says something he doesn't like, he's like, yeah.

I've been killed and it's like just has him killed and it's like Stalin killed his friend David and like every fucking page one of his friends is just being sent off to a concentration camp or whatever Jesus Christ just like this isn't this isn't fun but it's still more fun than this fucking cycle you didn't like it the weather was bad the weather was the terrain was brutal like the Hokkaido cycle if you ever want to cycle for a week do Hokkaido like that's great beautiful city it was tough the scenery was stunning

- I remember we made such a big fuss about this hill in Hokkaido. And to be fair, it was tough. It was like a 300 meter incline. And then in Kyushu, we regularly had four or 500 meters and we had a 700 one day. And if you check back the video of this one hill that never ends, it's like we were walking for 40 minutes on a vertical hill basically. - I remember, yeah. - I remember that hill so distinctly 'cause it just never ended. And that was pain. That was true suffering. - But not as bad as Stalin and his people. - Yeah, not as bad as what Stalin did.

- Well, that was why I listened to that, I think. I needed to get through it. - That was your motivation. - I need to take my mind somewhere. I don't know what to listen to. What would you listen to, Garnt? - Not a fucking stolen audio book. - That's not a fucking text to speech, losing my mind. - I needed something. - I need some, I don't know.

- I had a playlist of songs I would listen to before I got like, I went on stage just to hype me up. Like a lot of like Carpenter Brute just to be like, let's just get the adrenaline running. - Yeah, yeah. - You know? - I started every day cycle with listening to music. The one song I always use was,

Boogie Wonderland by Earth, Wind & Fire. It's like... It does hype you up. It does hype you up. That is the start of a great day. And I'm like, yeah, it's so happy now. Yeah, there's a buff friend there. He did not interact with Chris for the first two hours of the morning until he's fully woken up. I need the whole Earth, Wind & Fire album to get through the fucking song.

- Boogie Wonderland is the song. - Boogie Wonderland is a good track. - It was a tough cycle. That was a tough one. I think we'll definitely change some things for the next one. - Yeah, e-bikes. - E-bikes. - A car. - A motorbike. - Just get a moped. - Just get a moped, yeah. - It was kind of fucked 'cause we picked a time where it didn't rain much and we just got fucked by some weird rainstorm that come from the south. - It was horrific.

It was horrible that one day. - 'Cause you're hot and sweating like this temperature now, but you've got rain mixing with the sweat. So you feel like you're drowning, especially when you've got your gear on, you're cycling. - A third day, I remember. - You have to really go to a very special place to get through that. You have to take your mind elsewhere. - That only Stalin can get. - I have Navy SEAL people donating me like, "Ah yes, this reminds me of my Navy SEAL training." I'm like, "What the fuck? I'm just trying to cycle." He's like, "Yeah, it feels awful, but you have to just keep going." And I was like, "Oh my God."

- You know what got me through a Stalin audiobook? - Shit, 'cause there's no part of your body that's comfortable in that. It was like, you know, 'cause when it drizzles- - And you fell off twice? - I fell off twice as well, that was just miserable. - And that looked painful. - Yeah, my leg was all fucked up. - And I had to cheer you up one day and everyone was like, "Chris is so nice, he's cheering Connor up." - 'Cause I was miserable. I just wanted to stop. - Yeah, you were like, you looked like you were gonna stop or just implode. - Well, 'cause like, I think any sane person doing that who wasn't on camera would just call it a day there. And I think any sane person just wouldn't, you'd see that level of rain.

and you'd be like, no, we're not doing this. Because it was the kind of rain where, if it drizzles or rains normally, you get a little bit wet, maybe your hair gets wet, your clothes get a little bit damp, but your shoes aren't like waterlogged and you're not like soaked. And because you're moving and it's constantly there. But that was the kind of rain where,

I remember so distinctly there was this bridge that we started. Do you remember this bridge? It's a really long bridge, about a kilometer long. And I remember we started, because it's the start of the bridge, it's the start. And by the end of this bridge, I was completely soaked. My feet were soaked. They were fully like waterlogged. Every single part of the body was soaked. It was 10 minutes in. It was already like your feet's in the River Thames. And then your glasses, you can't fucking,

and see anything 'cause you got water on your glasses or it's just like everything's miserable. And then the worst part, I don't know if you remember this,

I got really cold. I started getting really, really cold towards the end of the day. And to the point where I was like shivering for like the past two hours. And I was like, I don't know what to do. 'Cause I can't get warm. 'Cause to get warm, I need to dry. And then what's the point drying when I'm gonna cycle? - Then you threatened to piss yourself to get warm. - I was actually this close away from pissing myself 'cause I was so cold. And it was to the point where I thought I was cold, where I was like, I think I would have,

bad health consequences if I was out for like another two hours. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And then we had 20 kilometers left where I was really feeling faint. I was like, let's just do it. Let's just finish this. And I'm being in McDonald's. - I thought you meant let's just piss yourself. - Honestly. - I'm done. - I was desperate 'cause I was like, I gotta do something.

And I remember being in the McDonald's afterwards just depressed 'cause I was so, I was still obviously even when you, when you've been cold for like a few hours, even if you change clothes and get warm, it's kind of weird. Your body doesn't quite heat up as fast. - Yeah, you're like kind of cold to the bone. - Yeah, so it was kind of weird 'cause I was just in this McDonald's feeling like shit. And then I was just, but Chris was full of joy 'cause Chris was- - Was I? - I remember the menu came out and you were like, "Well, it was a good day. It wasn't that bad that day." And I was like,

And I just felt like shit because we also had McDonald's. And you got the wrong burger.

And then they fucked up my order. That was last day. But they also fucked up my order that day as well. It was not a good streak of results. They can't hear you. It's like a Christopher Nolan film. What is he saying? I ordered on the fucking app. But yeah, that was a grueling one. I think we're going to change a few things for the next one. These are the moments that define the year. It's true. They are dying in a bike or fucking chest box. I'll never forget that fucking cycle. Yeah, I don't know.

- Suffering is what you remember a lot. - Well, it's still like type two fun, right? - Type two fun. It's fun when you look back on. Fun in the moment. It's not fun in the moment, but then when you look back on it, you're like, that was fun. - Who named it type two fun? - I don't know. - That's quite good. I like that. - 'Cause it's easy to look back on something. - Sounds like an affliction. - He's got type two fun.

- How often have you done something that you remember to simply be shit, right? And then you look back on it and you're like, that was fun. You're like, no, no, no, Connor, don't. Don't lure yourself into thinking that was fun. That was not fun. - That was not fun. - The idea of it again was fun and the highlights were fun, but it was shit.

- I could just see you on your cycle, like make cycle fun. I was like, "I'm having such type two fun right now." - Fucking hell. - I mean, it was all worth it to see Pete on a bike for three minutes. - For five seconds. - Yes. - I can do it, I believe. - That was so good. - He did well for the- - He cycled like 10 kilometers. - 10 kilometers. - Which is pretty good. 10 kilometers is less I didn't need to do. So I was very happy.

Yeah, life, just a bunch of memories. It is. The weeks where I'm just sat indoors doing the same shit, the ones you forget. It's when you get out and put yourself through hell that you remember it, right? Absolutely. All right, well.

- All right, well that's been this episode of Trash Taste. Hope you enjoyed it. Take it away, Joey. - Hey, look at all these patrons though. You see them all Chris? Point to one. - Oh, look at that one bought my book. - Did he? - He and she bought my book. - Oh my God. Hey, if you want to buy Chris's book, then we'll leave that in the description. And also follow us on Patreon at patreon.com/trashtaste. Might see you guys in the UK.

- Yeah, hell yeah. - Come to our live show in the London guys. - Available on TrashTasteTour23.com. - I'll be going. - Also follow us on Twitter, send us a message on the subreddit and if you had a faceless toss on Spotify and we'll see Chris again sometime in about nine months from now. - Always a pleasure to see you guys. - Cheers. - With your empty wine glasses. - Cheers. - I'm going to do the Sea Dog VA warming technique now. - All right, see you guys next week. Bye. - Bye.

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