The #1 Drifting YouTuber in Japan (ft. Noriyaro) | Trash Taste #27
02:08:41 Share

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

$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. This episode is brought to you by Honda. When you test drive the all-new Prologue EV, there's a lot that can impress you about it. There's the class-leading passenger space, the clean, thoughtful design, and the intuitive technology. But out of everything, what you'll really love most is that it's a Honda. Visit Honda.com slash EV to see offers.

- Hello and welcome to another episode of Trash Taste. I am your host for today, the host zone, 'cause well, I'll get to that because with me today is again, the boys. And once again, I have another guest with me. - We should just like preface that like every time Garnt's a host,

just prepare for a guest at this point. - Oh my God. So do you wanna introduce yourself to the lovely viewers? - Okay. Hello, my name is Alexi Smith from the YouTube channel Nori Aro. - Ooh, nice. - He's the drift guy. - Yeah. - Well, one of the drift guys. I thought I'd reach out to you after your recent video and- - Thank you.

So for anyone who doesn't know what you do, do you want to introduce your channel and kind of what you do on your channel? Okay, well, it's basically about car culture and drifting in Japan. People know Tokyo Drift and stuff like that, but Initial D are the two main things. Cars are popular all over the world and Japanese cars are popular everywhere and this is where they're from and I enjoy them, so I came here to do it.

- Nice, nice. - Yeah, I think because you reached out to us, I think like a month ago or something. - Yeah, well, obviously 'cause now you're the huge caliber guest that you could actually get on this show unavailable, I guess, 'cause they can't come from overseas. So I thought, okay, well, I mean, I'm here, I might as well reach out 'cause I've- - Now's my time. - This is my one chance to do this. Because I know about,

which you've done a little bit of and also this sort of culture into I really enjoyed anime. - Not gonna lie, when you did reach out to us, like I think, 'cause we saw your Twitter post, I think, what was it like maybe a week? - It was, so we recorded our drift video in the middle of the week, I believe. And then you were the weekend right after we recorded and we were like,

- God damn it, man. We were just there. - Shit, man. I feel so bad. - And I felt bad and I knew. I knew as soon as we saw that Twitter and we were having this video in production that some of the top comments would be, "Why didn't you invite Noriyama on?" - How dare you did not get Noriyama in this video? It was one opportunity and you messed it up. - Well, here you go, guys. Here you go. - I knew that we have a lot of crossover.

- Yeah. - And I knew that at least a lot of them would enjoy that and it could add something extra to the content that you already did. So that's why I reached out. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Perfect. - Yeah. Well, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. - Thank you for having me on. - And we now have an actual like someone who experienced in drifting rather than just three idiots who are trying to drive manual for the first time. Well, two of us trying to drive manual. - Yeah.

- I would like to set the story straight gentlemen. - Go on. - All the comments clowned on me, said that I broke two cars and we have a guest here who's an expert and actually you know the guy, right? What was his name? 'Cause we didn't actually get it. - Oh, you didn't actually get it? Okay, so the guy that took you for a ride in the big orange car with the carbon fiber helmet. - The Drift King. - Well, Drift King. His name is Nelto Suenaga and he's one of the two members of,

a few members of Team Orange, which is why the car was orange. Right, right. Team Orange is the team which is based at Ebisu Circuit. The leader of the team is also the manager of the circuit as well. Right. And now Tsunaga is one of the drivers for competition and also another guy who drives with him as well. And they're both doing, I think...

the two team orange drivers, one of them is currently in first place in the national drifting competition. And I think Sunag is about fifth. So you were with one of the best drivers. - Yeah, because- - Arguably in the world. - Yeah, 'cause I remember we got a lot of comments on that video being like,

- Do they not realize who the drift kid is? - It was two comments. It was like, do they not realize the cars that you're drifting in as well? Which were apparently some very special cars. We knew nothing going into this. - We were like, I'll get the one with the spoiler, please.

- All the car enthusiasts like. - So the guy you got, Naoto, he's a really cool guy. Like you noticed that he was like laughing and smiling. He's actually like that all the time. Like he's whenever he's drifting. He's actually one of the videos on my channel. It's called a high speed violent drift.

which is based around entirely his driving. - I mean, that's the best way to explain what we went through. - He's very quick, he's very good. Like the way it's like watching Bruce Lee. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And you told me that you were texting him, right? - Just before, yeah. - Right, right, right. - And you asked him what I'd done to the cars. - Yeah. - Do you wanna explain to the audience so I can be,

- Cleansed of my sins. - Indicated of, okay, so breaking a car in drifting is not uncommon. It's obviously- - That's what I figured, right? It feels like it felt pretty easy to fuck up a car. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Doing what you do in a drift car is almost the exact opposite of what people tell you to do to a car to begin with. And I think what happened with you was with the first car, which was an R33 Skyline. - Is that special? - Well, I mean, look, okay, all the cars that you drove are not available

in any other country apart from Japan. - Oh, wow. - Like originally being sold. - Yeah, 'cause I saw a lot of comments that were jealous that we were able to drive these cars and I didn't know what was so special about them as well. - Well, the Skyline, people know the Skyline, the Skyline GTL, it's like sort of the apex Japanese sports car that people wanna get. So there's that. You didn't have the GTR, you had the GTS-T, it's like one step down, but it's rear wheel drive, that's why. The other cars that you drove were a, they were both,

- It's okay, sorry. - Some people know what I'm talking about. So what makes those cars special is,

the fact that they're turbo rear wheel drive, they suit the, which means the rear wheels spin instead of the front wheels. It's good for drifting. And what, uh, those cars become very popular recently, especially overseas, because, uh, like I said, they weren't sold overseas, but in countries like America, they can import cars that are up to over 25 years old. Right. And those guys are just coming up to 25 years old now. So everyone's like, Oh, I want to get one of these. You know, they're, they're, you notice that the Toyotas were the last to break. Right.

- The Nissan broke first. Toyota's, anyone who's driven a Camry or anything like that will know like they just last forever. So they're popular, people are looking forward to getting them. So that's sort of why people were hyped. I actually drive one the same as the, who drove the white car that was used? - I drove. - My car is the same as that. - The one that didn't break. - Yeah, the one that lasted. - The only one that lasted. - What was the diagnosis to the cars that I drove? - Sunaga said that you,

You probably broke a coil pack, which is like part of the electronics on this, which is why they said battery, right? It's part of the electronics. It sits on the engine and makes the spark that burns the fuel. So normally when you drive a car, you're driving forward and you're not doing burnouts and spinning the wheels and stopping and making a lot of heat and stuff like that. So that day was very hot. You probably overheated the coil pack. So it sits on top of the engine, which is hot and hot.

- Okay, I'm liking the sound of it. - It got to be too hot and had to take a lie down for a while. - So nothing serious. - Nothing serious. - I thought I fucked the clutch or something, but I don't know if that's a thing. - It sounded like it. It made like the worst sound I'd ever heard. It was like a .

- I mean, those cars make weird noises all the time. Honestly, the first time if you drive, like if I jump in someone else's drift car and like just even drive it around, you have to spend the first five minutes going, okay, that's a normal noise, that's a normal noise.

- Figuring out which noises are okay. - Usually the way it works is if something smells different or sounds dramatically different, then you probably have a problem after that. - Oh, that makes sense. - 'Cause I remember when we first got into the cars for the first time, I mean, they were stripped bare. I'd never been in a car like that that was just specifically designed for one purpose and that was for drifting, you know? And it felt like when I was turning on the engine, it was like coughing.

And I was like, is this normal? But it sounded like, and it felt like these cars had been gone through a hell of a beating, which is what I guess they're designed for. - They are for the school, for the Team Orange school, which is what you did. I've actually in the past been an assistant teacher, like a translator for like the- - English. - Yeah, in English for like the high, some of the high level guests. - Oh wow. - This is a while ago though. Like we had a guy who was like,

investment banker for Barclays Bank or something like that. He had Ferraris back home in England and before he was being sent back home, back to his home office from the Japan office, he'd been asked by his secretary, is there anything you'd like to do before we get something we'd like to do? He said, oh, I'd like to try drifting. So they set all this up and they sent him there on the train. I had to go pick him up. A lot of money.

- Yeah, it was like, oh, this is like super high level guests and he thoroughly enjoyed it. So we have all sorts of people. And so those cars have been through a lot of- - I figured that those cars were, they were a car, but I just assumed they were all bits and pieces that had been repaired and repaired and repaired. Can you even call it the car at that point? Isn't that like a philosophy question where it's like if you're a pair- - Or the farmer's ax or the ship of Theseus. - Yeah, the ship of Theseus. - A lot of them are like, I mean, I've seen,

at least the skyline, I've seen it personally go through two clutches before. - When they even opened the thing, all of the parts look like completely different ages. Like you look like a timeline. - It looked like, you know, like a Lego like thing that your five year old makes out of the bucket of Lego where none of the pieces fit together. It's like, I mean, it's,

- It's a piece of work, I guess. - Yeah, I mean, those cars are all, unfortunately all the best drift cars are starting to get quite old. Like they were like 20, 30 years ago. And you have to start taking, you'll have like, some people will buy, if they have space, you'll buy like two or three of these cars. You have them at the back, something breaks, you take apart or you smash it, you cut off the metal and weld it onto the car and fix it. So yeah, they're all like that. It's unique. You can't love,

You can love like the, you can have like, it's just kind of esoteric, but a drift car will have its own spirit, but it's not related to the body of the car itself. - The ghost of the drift. - Yeah, you might have to change the engine. You have to change this part. - It's basically the whole parts getting changed. So that's one car that I fucked, but it wasn't my fault in the end.

Thank you. - Yeah, we should- - The second car. What was the second car? - My car. - He didn't get back to me about that. - So you probably did fuck that car. - But you gave me a theory off the podcast saying that he reckons it's all the stalling that somebody did to it that might've fucked it. - So on- - Please tell, please tell.

- I'm assuming that you edited out like most of the stalling you did. It's like there was a lot more than what actually- - I still have a lot on that video, but that was probably maybe like a third of the amount that I actually saw. - We could probably make like an hour special just on Joey's stalling.

by himself, but probably to explain to our audio only listeners that probably didn't see the drifting video. So we made a drift special where- - You should definitely go watch. - You should definitely go watch. Get off whatever platform you are. Go on YouTube. - Get on YouTube. - And yeah, we made a drift special where we,

we tried to learn drifting for the first time ever basically. This was our first experience drifting. - Tried like on the line, bold letters, tried. - And I didn't break two cars. - You absolutely broke two cars. - But I guess for like, for our listeners who know nothing about drifting, know nothing about car culture, do you wanna explain like what drift culture is, especially in Japan, from like in like layman's terms? - Okay, well, drifting is, if you've never done it before,

is like most people who have driven a car, well these days like cars have a lot of safety features on them. Like they have anti-lock brakes and stability control and all this sort of stuff, which sort of protects you a little bit from making too much of a mistake. But everybody who has lived somewhere it rains a lot or it snows or something like that has had a moment where you've gone around a corner or like a roundabout or something where the car has just sort of gone like this.

Or like that. And you're like, you get that crunch in your stomach. You're like, oh, that's not right. That's the feeling we're going for the whole time.

The feeling of like the out of, I mean, I think they said that in Tokyo Drift. It's like, you gotta be out of control to be in control or whatever. - Damn. - It's that feeling of being on the edge. It's like surfing or skiing. It's like, you're not gripping what you're on. You're sliding across it. And it's that,

being on the razor edge of that slide, which is just so much fun. Not everybody thinks it's fun. Some people do. I mean, the same thing. Like, I mean, some people love surfing. Some people love skiing or ice skating or whatever. Any of those sorts of things where it's like something to do with like that. Right, right.

you can enjoy it, you're like, that's not for me. But then some people just get a massive rush out of that feeling. - It was a lot of fun. I remember experiencing the drift taxis for the first time. I remember having the conversation with Joey, which we didn't record, but Joey was telling me how it felt like the afterglow after sex is what you described it as. - I was metaphorically rock hard after that. I was like, damn dude. - I was like, damn, how am I ever gonna get an erection again after experiencing that?

some of the most I mean some of the most chill I've ever been in my life was you know driving back from a track day must be so nice at like 9 o'clock at night on the expressway just cruising along going back home it's like you know cool breeze and it's just like

You get every single organ in your body which can release some sort of chemical, enjoyment chemical. It does that. It honestly does that. I've had times when I first moved here and I remember I bought the car, I did this stuff, finally got to track day and this one particular corner, I hit it. It was a big, long third gear corner and I literally yelled out, this is why I came to Japan. Yeah.

It was that feeling, it was like I was looking for that. - He found his life purpose going around the corner. - It's just really enjoyable. - One thing I wondered when I was doing it, I was like, how the fuck do you get into this? - That's what I was gonna ask as well. - You know, like you said, like skiing and stuff like that, even that is like, I think a lot of people think skiing is kind of hard to get into a snowboarding. It's not really, you just go to a mountain, you do the week long. - You just try it out. - And you get into it, right? It's not that difficult, but with drifting,

- It seems like there's a lot more commitment and also it's just way harder to get into. Like, 'cause when we try to do the drifting video, they initially wanted us to buy a car. We were like, well, the fuck are we gonna do with the car if we're done, right? They're like, "Well, you can sell it back." I'm like, "I don't wanna fucking go through that. That sounds like a pain." But you know, even you can rent skis, right? You can rent snowboards. How do you take that first leap to getting into drifting

And also, especially if you have no background, 'cause those people at the track, like the kids who worked there, I mean, they were like 17 teaching math, which is insane, but they'd obviously grown up with it. But how does someone who came from like investment banking, get into, obviously he has so much money, but how does- - Which is one of the things you'll probably need is money, which is the biggest thing I found out. - I didn't notice that. - Even just one day of drifting for us where,

Like some of us barely learned anything, I feel. Still cost a lot of money. - So how do you get into it? Like how do you take that original leap and how do you know you wanna do it? - I mean, the pattern most people take, when I started at least, is you start with your daily driver. You have some sort of car which can drift and you just try and make sure it doesn't break too much. - Okay. - You know, like you could, I mean, let's be frank. Most people start off on the street

- Right, right. - Some quiet street somewhere. I mean, that's what most, you know, it's like- - Like a parking lot or something. - Like a parking lot or in the case of Australia, like an industrial area or like some sort of mountain road, some like a windy road somewhere where you just go, you'll sit there for a few minutes and okay, there's no one coming up behind me. There's no traffic. Okay, let's go. And you do a little lap or something, or, you know, you have, you go with friends and spotters and things like that. So there's that. The best way is to go to a circuit.

The way, what got me, when I started to understand the feeling was I had an RX-7 back when I was like 18. I'd go to the track and drive around and, you know, it was all very like, oh yes, you know, grip driving and getting good times and breaking points and clipping points and all this sort of stuff. I'm like, this is kind of boring. It's just kind of like doing the same thing again and again. But then I'd come in a bit too hot and brake too late and the back of the car would sort of step out and I'd be like, oh yes! Yeah.

"Dude, that was sick." I would do that again. I like try and like come out of the corner and put a, you know, if you come out of a corner, you press the accelerator really hard. It's the same thing, I mean, look, it's like video games do the same thing. Mario Kart, whatever it's like. You do something and the back of the car slides out. And you, I do that, but then you have the flag masters like, "Don't drift, don't, don't." And they get all annoyed at you. So we would, we started a little club in Sydney where I'm from.

And we have track days and we just go out there and you just do it. Like you just try it. We'd watch these Japanese videos and these weird videos where they're talking. I can't understand what they're saying, but it's like, yeah, okay, we'll try that. - I can't understand what they're saying, but they're pulling some sick drifts. - Basically, yeah. The best thing these days is it's so accessible now.

Like these days you can, there's millions of videos and everything and you can just get into it super easy. - And you're one of them, right? - I feel like no amount of videos could prepare me. - I actually tried to, before the day of the Drift Circuit, I actually tried to watch like a basic, like how to drift video. Fucking didn't help any by the way. 'Cause there's no, like you can read up about it and learn about it all you want, but there's a different feeling where you have to like, where you're just,

in this car seat and in the moment. And you just have to like, you kind of have to feel your way through. - Yeah, it's a massive seat of the pants thing where you're,

- You're trying to unlearn what you already know. Like if you're already a regular driver, you're doing everything is the exact opposite of what you should be doing. You're not supposed to rev the engine. You're not supposed to dump the clutch. You're not supposed to spin the wheels. You're not supposed to slide around. You're not supposed to do any of that stuff. So it's the Yoda, you must unlearn what you have learned. Start off with it. And that can be a bit of a hurdle.

for some people and for other people who maybe have a bit more of a feel for it, then it's a bit, you get over that hump a bit faster. But honestly, look, anybody can do it. It's not an unusual skill to be able to drift. - I mean, yeah, I managed to somewhat pull it off at the end of the day. And yet, I went into it not knowing how to drive a manual at all, right?

It's not an unusual skill, but I mean, the gap is obviously, as you said, like the commitment to keep doing it is a huge thing. - Yeah, because you have to buy, I mean, I assume you have to buy a car dedicated to drift. You can't just, do people use that like daily commuter car? - Yep. - They do? - Can they drift? - Yeah. - Oh, okay. - You don't need a crazy car to be able to drift. You need some like minor modifications, but generally any rear wheel drive car can drift reasonably easy.

And the downside is though, like if you have to go to work on a Monday morning and you've just, you broke something on, you know. - I was gonna say. - I've done that too. Like you've, you know, I've broken a gearbox at the track and I have to go to work on the Monday and it's like, well, I've only got like first, second and fifth gears. Okay, it's like,

Just go around me, I can't see. So there's that. But these days, people will have dedicated track cars. And again, that adds a whole extra level of money to it. - 'Cause I noticed when we were at Ebisu, there was so many foreigner friendly stuff and it was like, "Come buy a car, just come drift here." - So the thing about Ebisu is Ebisu is very special. Ebisu is probably one of the,

if Ebisu didn't exist, that'd be one less reason for me to originally move here. - So it's been around for a long time. - A long time. - Ebisu is the track that we were drifting out into. - Yeah, Ebisu circuit up in Fukushima. What makes it special is it's drift friendly. It has not one track, but many tracks with different styles. It's about seven. Yeah, I mean, there's some like open skid pans and stuff like that.

they're all different kinds of tracks. A lot of very famous drift videos, like you watch a famous drift video, oh, that's where it was. Right, right. Especially the, you guys didn't go to it. There's a track called Minami, the South Circuit, which is infamous for being extremely difficult and extremely rewarding to drive. It's extremely dangerous. It's eaten. I've seen it break legs and ribs from people crashing there. People, I saw a guy right off his car, an American guy,

on his second lap he bought the car there. - No. - Second lap he went over the entry and just went straight into the wall, banana at the front end, done. - Have you ever had any bad injuries or have you ever had any bad crashes or anything like that? - Knock on wood, no. You shouldn't ask someone, you shouldn't ask the person who drives cars that sort of question. - Oh God, what an asshole.

Yeah, a lot of small crashes, but that sort of comes with it. But yeah, personally, I've seen...

Actually there has been some very severe injuries at Ebisu circuit from- - I can only imagine. - Yeah. - It comes to sport, right? - Yeah. - Yeah. - Motorsport, yeah, it can be quite sketchy. I mean, it used to be a lot better because the speeds were lower and people weren't quite as extreme now, but now everyone's just going flat out the whole time. - Yeah. - Yeah. - That's terrifying. - Cars rolling over and- - Okay, here's a question I wanna ask though. As someone who like is into the drift scene, obviously, initial D, legit or no? - Okay.

- 'Cause I've always wanted to know, like, you know, 'cause "Initial D" is like kind of put on this pedestal of like, yes, this is the drift anime. And even though there's other ones like "One Gun Midnight" and like all these other great ones, it's always like "Initial D" is like the cream of the crop, right? So I wanna know, like, as someone who's into that scene and who's probably watched a lot of "Initial D." - I've seen all of it. - Yeah. Legit or not legit? - Okay, it's,

That is like sort of saying like, okay, let's say someone who is like into computers saying, is hackers like, is that what it actually is? Or like, you know, someone who's into surfing, like, oh, it's point break. Like, is that what it's actually like? It's like, yes, it's based a lot on reality. Obviously there's a lot of dramatization. But honestly, initial D is pretty good as far as that sort of stuff is concerned. Now-

So going all the way back to the start, the mangaka Shigeno Shuichi who wrote that, his specialty is sort of like, you know, teenage romantic drama stuff.

and motor sports sort of thing. - Classic combination. - I guess it's like a sort of a 1990s Japan. - Yeah. - He's done other ones like Buddy Buddy Densetsu, which is based around motorcycle racing. That was also an anime as well.

There was another one, I think it's like something, something blue sky, I forget the name of it, which was like the precursor to Initial D where like the main character drove an A86, you know, and it was- - That's the main car in Initial D. - Yeah, that's the main car in Initial D. And it was set at like some sort of rich kid's summer, like tennis camp or something like that, I don't know. - Right. - Drifting around the tennis camp. - Well, there was some sort of thing with like, anyway, so then came out Initial D.

So, yes, it's mostly true because back then in the late 80s, early 90s, if you went up to the mountains in Gunma, Saitama, anywhere around Tokyo, you'd find dudes in these little cheap Ribble Drive Corollas or Silvias or things like that. Just having fun, sliding around, enjoying a Saturday night. Yeah, yeah.

And at the same time too, yes, there were races done up there. I've spoken to, see, this is one of those things where the reality is almost better than the fiction. - Right. - Oh, okay. - I've spoken to people, I've actually met the real, like the Takumi Fujiwara, like the real guy. - The guy who inspired the character. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - There's a guy, he worked at a tofu shop

And he would deliver the tofu up to the top of the mountain or some stuff. So it's all based on reality. Yeah. So cool. Like there's one guy I've, I know I've done a, I did a job with him once where he's a Jim Kana champion of Japan. Jim Kana is where you, uh,

It's like what you did with the cones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where you've got to drive around as fast as possible. Like an obstacle course kind of thing. Yeah, you've got to remember it too. It's like you've got to go forward then backwards here and around this three times. It's very complicated. It was a bit more complicated than what we did. And so he's like one of the Japanese champions. And I was talking to him about, yeah, we used to go out to this certain mountain. I had a CRX out there and I was the fastest guy on the mountain. And then one day these guys showed up with a bunch of civics and they were faster than me. And I was like, oh, I need to beat these guys. And we had races and it's like,

This sounds exactly like initial D. - Like a little gang war going on. - Yeah, yeah. - It's the same thing. And like all the stuff you see in initial D, like for example, there's a scene in that where a bunch of gangsters come up the mountain to like one of the other street racers calls like a bunch of gang members to come up to fight. - Of course. - One of the Takashi brothers. And then they all see the Takashi and they're like, "Oh, senpai."

That's real. Guys would... See, this is the thing about... Because it's street racing, it's not legal. So guys who are out to look for fights would actually go up there and try to start fights with street racers. So all these little points you see in that are based on some sort of reality. Okay. That's pretty cool. It's pretty good. They talk about the different kinds of cars, their strengths and weaknesses, and some cars on certain...

like Toga and stuff like that. Like the one with the spiral GTR which loses its brakes going down a hill. And the other two cars have to go in front, like stop it with the, like that's, I know someone who had to do that in real life. - Oh my God. - That's so cool. - I was watching your videos and I saw there was just like,

An AE86. AE86. AE86, like meetup, like in the place where it was. And there was fucking tons of them. Yeah. That was so cool. This episode is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Going online without ExpressVPN is like not having a case on your phone.

Most of the time, you'll probably be fine. But all it takes is one drop and you'll wish you spent those extra few dollars on a case. Did you know that your data is valuable? Yes, even you, your data is valuable. And hackers can make as much as $1,000 selling your personal information on the dark web. I don't think you want that. And it doesn't take much technical knowledge to know how to hack someone. A smart 12-year-old can do it.

I can't, though. Every time you connect to an unencrypted network in cafes, hotels, airports, your online data is not secure. Let me tell you a little bit why ExpressVPN is the best. You see, it would take a hacker with a supercomputer over a billion years to get past ExpressVPN's encryption. And it's super easy to use. Just fire up the app and click one button to start getting protected.

And it works on pretty much every device, phones, laptops, tablets, pretty much anything you have. So you can always stay protected on the go. And it's also rated number one by tech reviews like CNET and The Verge. I'm traveling around the world right now and especially VPN has genuinely been saving my ass. I like watching TV shows and it's very annoying that I have accounts in Japan and when I travel, it does not like it. So being able to just spoof that I'm in Japan or in any other country to watch any kind of content

is very helpful. So secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com slash trashtaste. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash trashtaste. And you can get an extra three months for free. That's expressvpn.com slash trashtaste. Thank you to ExpressVPN for sponsoring this video. Back to the episode. Yeah, so I've...

I guess fortunately or unfortunately, I guess it's one of the things that made me confident to reach out to you guys was some of my most popular videos on my YouTube channel are based around Initial D. Yeah, of course. And anime culture as well. Yeah, it's, I mean, if you think about it, it's just a very expensive cosplay. Oh,

- It's like a weapon, but really. - Yeah, like I mean, all the, if you at that show, there was the main characters, you know, Corolla, there was the Takashi brothers RX-7s, even the new manga that's out now,

what's it called? Ghosts, MF Ghosts. Maybe the same, like the new 86 with the number on the door. People do cosplays of these, like car cosplays. - It's cosplay with attitude. That's what it is. - And I noticed that even like the Japanese people like knew you and were like fans of you.

- Oh yeah, I mean- - 'Cause you just like, 'cause you go to these events so often you kind of like- - I go to all of these events also, like a lot of my videos that I know are gonna be popular with Japanese people, I have subtitles on them as well. - Oh, okay. - They watch them. - Big brain move, big brain. - Yeah, there's not a lot of car content being like car YouTubers in Japan. I mean, there are, but-

I think people often say that I've, cause I'm looking at it from a different perspective. - Yeah. - Yeah. Like, I'm like, oh look, it's the initial D car. It's like, cause if a Japanese person does this kind of cringy, I guess to them. - Yeah. - It's like, yeah, yeah. - It's a little weird how they are like that with kind of anime. - Their own. - Yeah. Like stuff that is a reference to an anime and it's like, oh yeah, this is initial D thing. I get it. Anyway, whatever.

- I'm so proud of it. It's initial D, it's cool. - I mean, I guess for me, drifting has always been so ingrained in Japanese, well, like Japanese culture and Japanese car culture, because if it wasn't for stuff like initial D or like Tokyo Drift, I would have,

no idea about drifting. - Yeah. - Yeah, like memes aside about Tokyo Drift, like it is legit the only reason I knew that Japan was famous as a kid. - Talking to you- - I could see you dying inside. - Talking to you about like the international drift scene, I'm gonna be honest, like I had no idea there was an international drift scene. I thought it was like all Japan and everyone was following that. - It used to be like that. It's not- - Right. - Nowadays, okay, so I've sort of come to peace with

and Fast and Furious and that sort of stuff. It's like anything where you're into something and there's a movie about it and people go, "Oh yeah, I saw that movie." You're like, "It's not like that." But the fact that it makes it, it's an easy, it's a wedge to open a conversation. People sort of understand. It's like, "Yeah, okay, I'm fine with it." It's the same thing with Tokyo Drift. The majority of that, I mean,

You can probably look at the Japan side of it and go, no, that's not actually what it's like here. But it is in certain ways. But people don't drift in car parks anymore.

- I was gonna say that's just very irresponsible. - Yeah. - No, I mean, you see, if you're gonna see drifting in Tokyo, it's gonna be like down on the docks in like the big open areas where trucks go. - Like Wangan Midnight, for example. - I think they had a scene in Tokyo drift at the docks. I'm pretty sure they did. - They actually did, yeah. - I did my research for this episode. - I couldn't get over the car park scene though, because like looking, 'cause you go into any car park in like Tokyo or whatever,

- You can barely drive. - It's like the fucking Daihatsu boxes that ones can barely get through and then you're like, what the fuck? - That's probably the most inaccurate thing about that. But the rest of it, like the general theme of what they talk about is- - Do you like the movie?

- That's a loaded question. - Honestly, I think I would genuinely like it, the movie, for its campiness, if the main actor wasn't so fucking awful. Fucking can't stand his accent. - Every time he speaks Japanese, I do cringe. - Oh, yeah. - It's so bad.

There's a cut, there's a scene that's been cut out of the movie where they steal a bunch of tires from a petrol station. And it's got, what's the guy's, little dog Snoop, what's the character's name? The actual actor.

- Nate Dogg? - No, no, no. The guy in the movie- - He's like sidekick? - He's sidekick character. - I know he's like a rapper, right? - Yeah, he's a rapper. He's a rapper. Anyway. - It'll be on screen. - There's a scene where like he distracts the staff by like speak by, you know, he opens a drink and like, 'cause it doesn't have any fizz. And he's like, "Nani correr?" Like it's so...

It's just so bad. Oh, it's so bad. But look, it's fine. Like I said, I've come to peace with it. Like I said, it's horrible campiness, but it is a good general overview. And there are some scenes where they kind of get into the side of where it's kind of like escaping from reality and free. Because honestly, it is like that. You go up to the mountains at two in the morning and all you can hear is the sound of the crickets and-

and maybe a river nearby and that's it. And then all of a sudden you hear this like screaming coming from the distance and it's a bunch of cars and the headlights shining through the trees. It is very cool. - I've seen footage of like the late night drifting stuff and it's like, there's a part of me that's like, oh man, that'd be so cool to be in. But then at the same time, I'm like, nah, I like my life. You know what I mean? - Yeah, exactly.

Basically what I'm getting out of this is like initial D isn't realistic enough compared to Tokyo Drift. - Look man, I think the, again, the reality of all this sort of stuff. It's the same thing with the Wangan Midline, the freeway racing. Like the stories that I've heard, see a lot of those guys don't want to talk about it too 'cause they don't, they just want to keep it buried in the past and secret. But when you can get them talking, like if they've been drinking and stuff like that, like you're just sitting there going, wow.

how are you still alive? Wow. Yeah. It's really, it's so cool. It's like a lot of stuff like in Japan too, where you, you get here and you meet these people. I mean, same thing with, with, you know, this industry too. It's like you meet them and you hear what they did and stuff they've done. It's like, I almost feel like because of how the culture is and how like,

how strict everything is. I've met like the craziest fucking people here that might just do not give a fuck. And they're like, all right, this is what I used to do. And I feel like I've never met anyone like this in the UK because everyone's kind of like, I don't really care about the rules. But when you get a society that's so strict,

when we get characters. - Yeah, and you hear some of the craziest stories that you don't normally hear about and you really have to drag it out of them. You know what I mean? They'll just mention like this offhand or off the cuff thing. - Yeah, I'll just say something. You're like, "What?" - Please elaborate. - I mean, so you were mentioning that you know "Initial D" very well and all that anime, but I'm curious, do you know actually like any other anime?

- Are you into any anime? - You are in an anime podcast. - Anime podcast. - One of the things that made me a bit more confident to reach out to you guys was that I used to be massively like into anime a long time ago. - Hell yeah. - How long ago are we talking? - Okay, so it's 2020 now. I was in...

probably like middle school, high school. So like we're talking like 1994, I'd say was 92, 93, 94. - Fuck, you were in high school before I was born. - Damn, man. - Yeah. - I was two years old. - This is the era of VHS rental tapes and just going forward, like, you know,

people, you know, IRC list serves and stuff like downloading random, you know, getting throttled, you know, downloading too much stuff, swapping CDs and you know, things like that. - Burning CDs. - So how did you get anime back then? How did you get, how does one get into anime back then? What was like the entry point? - Oh, wow. Well, I mean, probably, I mean, most people say like, oh yeah, I saw,

What was the actual name for Macross? Robotech. Robotech. Okay. So every time I would see... And this sort of... I watched the podcast with...

with Chris when he talked about this sort of thing where just every time you see something from Japan there was just something about it that just kind of resonated yeah you know what I'm talking about you just see like yeah this is my aesthetic I like this so every time I saw and sometimes you don't realise what it is and you're like oh that was actually a Japanese anime right or stuff like Inspect the Gadget which was

It was all those French, Japanese productions back then. Just something about it because it was animated in Japan. And slowly, slowly, it just starts to be like, you see this tape at the Civic Video, which is my local rental shop. Like, what is this crazy looking thing? This rated R18. Oh, and you take it to the counter like,

- It's just some animation, yeah, whatever. It's like, you know, "Wicked City" and things like that. - Oh, I love "Wicked City" dude. - So you got into anime during like the fucking 80s, 90s OVA boom. - The manga VHS era. - Oh my God. - It was amazing, everything. I just go there and rent that stuff and it just went from there to- - That was kind of like a golden age in and of itself. - Yeah, because it was like everything you could like,

Anime was so brutal back then. Everything was Devilman Crybaby. - Pretty much. - You know what I mean? - Like Wicked City, Ninja Scroll, Vampire Hunter. - Violence Jack, shit like that. It was just like so fucked up, but it was so good. - Cyber City, Oedo 808. Akira, so I'm actually wearing, this is my Akira shirt. - That's such a sick Akira shirt too. - So this is about 20 something years old. I just thought I'd wear it here today.

Again, Akira, all that sort of stuff. It just blows your mind. Like, oh, this is so cool. And it was just always enjoyable. Any sort of media you can just get your hands on. Back then, the UK video game magazines were very good with that sort of thing. You don't know about that? No. So there was a...

- From what I could tell, there was a huge like imports, like gray import scene back in the day for video games. So people would, they'd be playing like Japanese stuff all the time. These certain video game magazines, they'd feature a lot of Japanese content. - I do remember like roughly having some memory of seeing a lot of Japanese stuff growing up, which is why I think eventually I did get into it because I always thought like every, like you said, every time you see it, you're like, man, that's really fucking cool. Like it always just happened to be Japanese stuff. That was always the thing that stuck out to me.

- Yeah. - So was it like a Nintendo Power, but like not a legit Nintendo Power? - We had a lot of those in the UK. - Yeah, there were a lot of, yeah, like, I forget what it was called, Hyper, it was called Hyper. - Oh, Hyper. - That sounds familiar. - Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was a magazine called Hyper, and I've managed to find a big like download dump of it a while ago, like every issue scan, and I was like,

- Gaming publications in the UK and stuff like that were huge for a very long time. - CV and G or whatever it was called. - I can't remember, but I remember that there was just like, everyone had demo discs from the magazines. - I remember those days, the PS1 demo discs that you get with the- - We had that in Australia too, didn't we? - We did have that. And just stuff would be, you know,

there'd be like some sort of video game where you'd see it and just like, you'd find out later like, oh, that was actually like a Japanese game. - Yeah. - That particular sort of thing, right? - Yeah. - So I mean, look, it just, it snowballed from there. I didn't have any friends who were into it in, yeah. My school, nobody. Not even like maybe like one kid from Hong Kong who got like kind of like Dragon Ball.

- Why is it always Dragon Ball? - Yeah, I know. So yeah, you have like some of the little cards, whatever. And you know, it got to the point where it's things like going to specialty shops and like ordering. I remember I bought the, when Evangelion came out, like the movie, I ordered the VHS tape 'cause it first came out on VHS, no subtitles. I wanted the best, the highest quality. I downloaded the script. So my-

- My original experience of the Ava movie was sitting there going- - Oh my God. You were fan subbing yourself. - I was there, yeah. - You were like live fan subbing Evangelion. That's crazy. - Oh my God. - Dude, I swear, I feel that, but this is embarrassing. When I watched fucking Shakespeare and the Globe Theater, I couldn't fucking understand what was going on.

- They talk in like an older version. I don't know what type of English it's called. - Ye Olde speak. - Ye Olde English. - I was like fucking online, like following the story. I'm like, oh, oh, this is that part. I couldn't understand a fucking thing, but obviously yours is a lot more understandable. - No, same thing, but you get it.

unfortunately there's that one scene where can I spoil it or not is it old enough spoiler alert also it's fucking Ava why haven't you watched Ava yeah where Asuka gets stabbed through the head and they're ripped apart I accidentally read that too early and she's like one of my favourite characters is like you know Ava gets violently ripped apart I'm like

And then they all dive in. I remember feeling, it was like two in the morning. I remember feeling sick. I was like, oh my God. It was a thing, man. Like, yeah. So it just- - That was a brutal scene too. - Yeah. So it just went from there. - I always thought of yourself on a script.

- I feel old when I talk about hard-coded fan subs, you know what I mean? And now we're talking about fuck hard-coded fan subs. How about printed paper fan subs? - Printed out like 25 sheets of paper. - It was about that thick. - Did they have like translator notes and everything to like- - No, it was pretty good. - Like, "KCooker means plan."

- It was pretty good. Like it was designed for people to read and watch. - Right, right, right. - They typeset it pretty well. Yeah, it was- - That's crazy. - I downloaded it off like some- - Sold. - Some, you know, something like some weird website. - So you're like more of an OG anime fan than any

Dude, we would, we do things like where we'd swap VHS tapes. Like you, what you do is you watch. Yeah, I've heard about it. You'd have like your list of all your content. You'd have that somewhere. And then people you're friends with, like they'd say, hey, do you, I want that. What do you want from mine? And you'd make a copy of the tape and send it to each other. That's cool.

- That sounds so fun though. - I wanna ask like, 'cause we like growing up, we had the problem of like our anime was for example on YouTube and sometimes there would be like an episode or a part of an episode that wasn't uploaded. What was it like for you where you had to actually get physical VHS tapes? Were you just, did you have to like watch

anime episodes out of order or like if some episodes were available, you just get them anyway. - I think it was, I mean, because the thing about that is it's much easier to delete things than, you know, so that's why like something would be a copywriter or whatever. I don't know what if someone's channel would go down. But back then, like everybody had like physical media. So it all like exists, like it's not gonna disappear. - So as long as you didn't lose the physical tape. - Yeah, as long as you had it, it's like it's there and you know that someone else has it, like they can just make a copy and send it to you. - Physically.

- Yeah, and people would be very, because back then people like hardcore into it. So they'd have a complete collection. That wasn't really an issue, no. If you wanted to see something, it was- - Was it expensive?

"Oh man, I don't even know how much I've spent." - Yeah, right? - People out here complaining about a six dollar monthly subscription. - Yeah, right? - If I could pay that six bucks a month back then for almost unlimited content, wow, that's a- - Stop complaining, Zoomers. - So how much did you have to pay for like-

- Like a single VHS tape then or like if you wanted to watch an anime, a series, what would that cost? - Okay, so the best thing was when the Australian distributors like Madman and stuff started to make, 'cause,

the Japanese discs would have like two or three episodes. - Yeah. - And a disc would be like $60. - Yeah, it's like that to this day as well. - It is, yeah, right. I just don't get it. Whereas overseas, that's the best thing like America and other countries where they make, you know, it's like the whole season on one thing. It's like, that's how it should be. And it's still good quality and subtitled and everything. So yeah, but I didn't really spend money on anything else. Like it was just, I didn't get it.

- I didn't go. - Are you into drugs? - No, I didn't go drinking, didn't do any of that sort of stuff. - You went from one expensive hobby to another, man. - So that makes me curious then, how did you, 'cause obviously I've seen in your videos as well, you can speak Japanese like much better than me and Garnt, like 100%. How did you, were you learning Japanese before you moved to Japan? And also when did you move to Japan? And like, what made you do that?

So I used to work at a car magazine in Australia. Originally, so what I did was went to university, didn't like that, studied. - Just as that quick? You're like two lessons in, I'm done. It'd be like that. - I took a smoke break. - Yeah, just never came back. I was just like, it's like, whatever. It's just something that I don't know what I wanna do. And so I, but in the meantime, while I was doing that, I was studying animation.

- All right. - Like actual, like physical with pieces of paper and stuff. I was super hardcore into this sort of stuff. So, you know, I had my own thing and I was doing like little test things or whatever.

So then I started to learn 3D animation. And this is back when, if you heard of the program Maya. - Oh yeah. - Maya, this is like Maya, I was learning like Maya 1.5 or something. - Oh my God. - Yeah, like original, it was running on Irix boxes, which is a Silicon Graphics Irix, which is like a Unix, proprietary Unix system. - Right, right, right. - And one box would be like $12,000. - Jesus. - Yeah, to learn on. So I learned this 3D software 'cause I wanted to do animation. That's what I liked.

and did that, got jobs doing that, which paid really well back then because no one knew how to do it. - It's very specialized. - Yeah, it was very, you had to be, you had to know, you had to churn out content real quick. And so I was young, I was like 23 or four or something. And I just go there in the morning and work hours and hours and nothing else to do. So I'd always get the work done, got paid really good, bought lots of anime, go home, watch anime. Yeah, it was good.

So then I got kind of burned out on that. Right. Doing, it wasn't what I'd imagined. It was a lot of like- How long were you doing that for? Probably about five, six years. Oh, wow. It was, I mean, it was good, but it's very high, you know, the crunches and things like that. Yeah. Like they just shovel content. Here, do all this stuff. And you're like, this sucks. And you just sit there all day. But at the same time, I've got,

my headphones on listening to Japanese lessons listening to you know because for some reason like I think if you're doing creative work and language it doesn't mix in your head I could sort of listen Konnichiwa Oh Mr. Yamada-san

- Like just again and again and again. So it just stuck while I'm doing that. So then got burned out of that, came to Japan. I wanted to do anime stuff and car stuff. - How did you come here? Like what was the process like? - No, I just a tourist. - Oh, just tourist. - Yeah, just as a tourist.

I wanted to see car stuff. I wanted to see anime stuff. So I went to Akihabara. It was all in a notebook, all written out. No Google Maps. I didn't know what I was looking for. So what year was this? This is like 2000...

- Five? - Oh my God. - Yeah. - It was like not, I was blind. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I had two friends who'd been to Japan, one who'd done car stuff, one who'd done, he'd sort of gone to Akihabara. - Yeah. - Yeah. - So he's like drawing me hand drawn maps of like, okay, so this is the LAOX building and if you turn this way, there's the bridge and you walk that way 'cause that's where all the stuff is like, okay. 'Cause I didn't have any friends who wanted to do car stuff and anime stuff, so I bought myself. - Yeah.

And you've done the same thing, I'm sure. You burn yourself out. You get up in the morning. You do stuff all day. You don't eat. You don't drink. You just do more of this sort of stuff. You go back to the hotel, fall asleep, wake up. Let's do it again. So I go out again and went up to Ebisu Circuit by myself.

- Perhaps you went all the way to Fukushima by yourself? - Drove there or? - No, I took the train. - Okay. - I was blind. A friend of mine who worked at a magazine, actually he's a friend of a friend, he worked at a magazine and I just said, he sort of knew who I was, so I messaged him like, well, I emailed him and said, "Hey, can you tell me how to get to Ebisu Circuit?" He said, "Just go to Nihonmatsu Station and just get in a taxi and just say Ebisu Circuit."

Are you going there? I'm like, yeah. Oh, can you write an article about the event for the magazine?

- Yeah. - So I've got my mum's little Panasonic like digital camera, 32 megabyte memory card, not gigabyte, megabyte. - Megabyte. - Right? So I go up there, I see the event just blows my mind. All this cool stuff, it was a big competition, which I now do the commentary for, which is kind of cool. - Yeah. - It's full circle. - Yeah. Go back, I write this article and they're like, "Oh, that was really good." And then a few weeks, you know, about a month later, they're like, "Do you want a job?"

Yes, I'm sick of doing 3D. I hate it. So I started working in the magazine and every chance I could, I come to Japan. And this is how we did it. This is how people have to remember this sort of stuff. You somehow make money

When you come here. Right. If you can, like people do that by making YouTube videos and stuff like that. Yeah. So what I did was I would come here, I'd go do car stuff. I'd take photos of it, write articles, go back. And I'd, I get paid for going on holiday. Right. It's a double win. It's like, this is perfect. I have games, the system. Okay. I've got this figured out. And it got to the point where literally everyone I knew was like,

Lexi, just shut the fuck up and go live there. It's all you talk about. Oh, like my car friends, everyone's like, Alexi, Japan this, Japan, well in Japan, well in Japan they do this and Japan do that. So just go. I said, okay, fine, I will. So working holiday visa. Right. 18 months. Okay, I'm going to, I'm going to,

quit everything, sell everything. I'm gonna live there for a year and a half. It works out if I've had a good holiday, I can just shut up about it and get it out of my system. If not, we'll see what happens. So came here and just did the same thing. Just went around shooting articles, writing things, selling them to magazines, selling them to all around the world in English. And it just sort of built up from there. So like taking photos,

"Oh, look at these cool random photos I've taken of this cool stuff. I'll make a WordPress blog." Which is what everybody did back then. This is like 2008. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Okay, WordPress blog. Then at the same time, so that became a popular thing. Then, you know, "Oh, this is really cool. I've got this little Sony vloggy camera. It only shoots-" - I think I have the exact same camera. Yeah.

- Let's just shoot this car doing something cool. Cause it looks, you know, it's moving. It's making noise. Here we go. - Cars do that. - That's what makes them cool. - Was it the old like Sony handy cams? - It was originally a tiny little one. - Oh, okay. - So shoot all that. And then that goes on YouTube. Well, that becomes more popular.

magazines aren't popular, they don't make any money anymore. They don't wanna pay $800,000 for a big article these days anymore. Okay, YouTube pays money, let's do YouTube. And it's just sort of snowballed from there. - So then how did you transition from doing all the online stuff into then actually like living here permanently? 'Cause I assume you had to figure out a way, right? - Yeah, and this is one of the biggest questions, everyone wants to know like, how do you live in Japan? - 'Cause we get it all the time as well. - Yeah.

it's a difficult thing because there's so many people, I'm sure you've had the same experience. Like people who are living here, it's like, how are you living here? Like you don't, you think like, do you, you have to do something to be- - It's like what do you do? - I've met some people where I'm like,

- Yeah, it's like, what visa do you have? How have you coined, how have you gamed the system in your own way, right? - It's sort of like, you're not supposed to ask that question. What visa are you on, how are you here? 'Cause I mean, look, some people just, they're lucky, like, oh, my father is Japanese, I got a visa. Or like, I'm not lucky, you know what I mean? I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Or like, for some reason they're here.

So the way I did it was... So originally working holiday visa. And then when that started to run out, I thought, okay, I need to do something. And I had a friend who lived up in...

Sendai who was a French guy and he was actually running a French magazine. He was running the magazine as the editor from Japan. - Oh, okay. - So he was just getting all this content from Japan, just editing it. Yeah, and it was, so he was on a journalist visa. - Oh, okay. - So I thought he said, "You should do the journalist visa. It's very easy."

Sorry, JC, that's a bad presentation of you. So I thought, okay, maybe I can do this. So I applied for everything. Now, remember when the earthquake, oh, you went here when the earthquake happened. The earthquake- Yeah, the earthquake happened. Right. And I'd already sort of renewed once and it worked. And I thought, okay, I don't know if I can do this again.

it was kind of easy the first time because I, I managed to get like a contract from a magazine. Right. And I don't know if it would work these days or not, but you know, I had proof that I'd been doing that job for a long time. And the best thing about being a journalist is you don't need any sort of

- A qualification. - Yeah, you don't. All you need is like, I've done this for a long time. - I'm gonna keep doing it. - Yeah, I'm gonna keep doing it. These guys are gonna pay me to do it. Okay, so I sort of convinced them a magazine to give me a contract. Like, look, you want this content? Give me a contract. - Yeah. - Right, okay. - So I got that, I showed it to them. Then again, that whole earthquake thing happened. And this was like literally at the same time I was meant to renew. I thought, oh no, what if they,

cancel me or right so I mean look everyone I don't know about you guys this is like a panic state yeah it's all it's all what was that like

Okay. When I, it was, it was, wasn't bad for me because all I did was just sort of sit at home for like a month and just do nothing. I just thought, look, I'm just going to stay the hell out of it. Yeah. Until I need to do something. Actually my, I did go and help a friend who was at Ebisu who had a lot of trouble with stuff falling down the hill, like it collapsed. And anyway. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. So I,

I thought, okay, I don't wanna leave. If I leave now, probably not gonna come back. - Yeah. - Right. - 'Cause a lot of the whole, you ever heard fly gin, you heard that term? - No. - Yeah, it was like, so foreigners who left Japan when the earthquake happened, it was like, I'm out. - Fly gin.

- Is that a real thing? - Yeah, well, okay. It was kind of a derogatory thing. It's like, yeah, you left. It's like, I honestly don't blame people who did that. - Was it that bad? - Understandable, have a nice day. - I see footage of it, but it's so hard to like actually get a sense of it because even the small earthquakes here kind of like throw me off sometimes. So I can only imagine what an earthquake of that magnitude could do.

- I don't know if, I don't think people can quote me on this, but wasn't it like one of the most like financially it was one of the most like devastating earthquakes slash tsunamis of like all time or something. - Well, probably the deadliest. - Yeah. - The one that did the most damage. - It was, yeah. I think it like caused the most damage like financially. - It did cause a lot of problems. - Really fucked up the Japanese economy.

- Depending on how severe I hear it was is depending on who I ask and where they were at the time. Because some people said like, I've been told this, like, it wasn't that bad. Things just started falling. - No, it was bad. - But like I'm saying, right? It depends on who you ask and where they were at the time. Because obviously if someone experienced it and it wasn't bad for them, they probably think like,

I was like, "Huh." - I mean, it was on like every country you were. - It was fucking worldwide news. - No, I know I'm not saying it's not. What I'm asking is like, how was it for like you? Because everyone I've seemed to ask so far has such a different explanation of how it was for them. - Personally, I mean, when it actually happened, I was just doing some washing at the time. It was like in the afternoon. And I thought, "I'm gonna take it down to the laundromat and get the dryer going." And something I was gonna hang up as well.

The window started rattling. I'm like, oh, it's windy. Good. I can get my, I can hang my sheets out and get them to dry. And then all of a sudden everything started. I was on the second floor of a, of a, of a house that I used to live in. And it started the move. I'm like,

- Oh, okay, okay. What do I do? Okay, stand in the, so I stood in the door frame. - Right. - That's what you're supposed to do. - I think that's what you're supposed to do. - And it started to, it's just doing this. And I'm like, okay, this is bad. Wait, I'm supposed to be a media guy. Where's my camera? So I grabbed my bloggy again and I caught the last like 20 seconds on video and I aimed out the window. All the lines of the power lines are doing this.

and is rattling and it's just crazy. And I remember it like that too. And then it's just kind of stopped. And there was a guy doing a delivery, like a Kuro Neko guy over the road. And he just kept doing this stamp and here you go. - Like nothing happened. - And I'm looking at, there's no smoke rising. It's okay, it should be okay. And so I put my stuff in my laundry and the thing went down to the laundromat and I'm in there.

Just sitting there waiting for it to dry. I was like, okay, I'll go shopping maybe in a minute. And these kids walk past the window outside wearing those

those hats, the foam, - Yeah. - Yeah, it's like this like kind of, - It's like a triangular. - It's like a bandana looking thing that they wear and it's supposed to be fireproof. - Yeah. - Right. - Kids like elementary school kids wear it to like kind of protect themselves. - It's like a red riding hood, but it's like thick foam with like made of reflective, like an old fireman's hat sort of thing. - Oh my God, yeah, in the UK, they're like fucking get on with it.

- I mean, there's nothing that happens in the UK that's big enough to be worried about, right? - They'll walk past the window. I'm like, what the hell are these? Oh, they're wearing those things, okay. And then in the laundry room, sometimes there's a TV. And I look up and there's that, the big black wall of death, just eating town. - Yeah, yeah. - Wow. - Oh, oh shit. I better go and buy some food or something. So I just, I went to the supermarket and just bought a bunch of food. I thought, I can't, and a slab of beer.

I'd be stuck at home. And yeah, so it was okay for me. Like the worst thing for doing car content was there was no fuel. They just cut all the fuel got cut off. So I was like, okay. And what I actually did that month was I had enough of an internet presence then to say, I had a regular column in a Japanese magazine actually. And I said, hey everyone, send me a picture of your foreign drift car.

And I got people to do, make my content for me. But you're a pro YouTuber. Yeah. Damn. But up in, in, in Tohoku, like up where, especially where my Ebisu is. Yeah. I had to go up there to help a friend just,

- So you weren't in Sendai when it actually happened? - No, no, no, I wasn't up there. - 'Cause my grandma lives in Sendai. So she like- - Yeah, what I've heard is that from people who were in Sendai near the epicenter, it was awful. But then I've heard a lot of people in Tokyo who were like, yeah, things were shaking. - Well, I mean, for my grandma, it was kind of like half-half because like she lives on like quite a big like apartment place, right? And I think she was on like the 13th or 14th floor or something. And like, obviously the higher up on the building you are,

The more it's gonna shake. - As we found out. - So the shaking was bad, but like, you know, it didn't break anything. Like she didn't get injured or whatever. But then she did tell me that like, it was really scary that after the rattling kind of stopped and she picked herself back up and looked out the window, she could actually see the tsunami coming over the horizon. - Oh my God. - And then she was like,

- Oh shit. And so she turned the TV on and then, you know, that really famous like footage, right? - Yeah. - The black wall was just- - Wait, what is the black wall? - I just made that up. - The tsunami was just like a big churning dark mist.

- It wasn't like this one big wave that most people think it is. It was kind of just this rush of water that just swept over everything. - Because it was just taking all the debris with it. So it just turned into a black wall of destruction. 'Cause it wasn't like, it's hardly water anymore.

'Cause it was just like all the gunk that he would have taken up with it. - All the houses that were along the coast were just getting crushed as this thing came over and it was horrible. - Meanwhile, international people were like, "But my anime!" - I remember like Pokemon got delayed or something. - Madoka got delayed. - People were like, "I can't believe this is stopping the anime." And it's like-

fuck you. I mean, they, they did, you know, trains were canceled for a while and they had rolling blackouts. Yeah. Luckily, because I was, the grid that I was on at my house was the same grid as a big hospital and a Japanese military base. So we never got a cut. Right. Here's the thing. So what I was saying before was I had to renew my visa and at

at that point you had to get a re-entry visa to come back into the country right which meant you have to go to the visa center get like a 20 stamp in your thing your passport so if you leave the country you can come back and everyone's leaving because it's like well there's radiation landing on you yeah i mean understandably yeah yeah so and i was just i thought okay fine but i was like trying to renew my thing at the same time so i went to the visa center

at like three in the afternoon, which is a bad idea. I drove there and Saitama. - Right. - And the queue was about 300 meters long of people. - What is this anime expo? - I thought, okay, here's what I have to do. I have to come back tomorrow morning before the first train. So my car, 'cause my car ran on premium fuel, this is a drift car. No fuel.

- I like it to mention. - Just reminding you I'm a drift car. - It was a drift car. - I begged my friend, like, please lend me your little K car, your little small compact car so I can drive it there before the first train so I can get in line. Get there, there's already about maybe 50 meters of people lined up. I didn't get in the front door until, I lined up at like maybe 4:30 in the morning. Didn't get there in the front door until two in the afternoon. And then as soon as I got in the front door, everyone's going to the left.

I go to the right to renew. And I walk up, there's no one at the counter because they're all busy over here. I'm like, and someone walks past like,

"What do you want?" I'm like, "Oh, I want to renew." And they're like, "Oh, okay." They just take it. They sort of just flicked through and like, "You got your tax thing in there?" It was like, "Oh, I forgot that." It's like, "Oh, don't worry about it." - They just couldn't be bothered. - They couldn't be bothered. I got the renewal, it was great. And then just as I went back, I was like, "Oh, that's over. Thank God for that, I can go home." Went to the car park to get my car, it was a coin parking with the little gates. So get in the car, go to drive out,

and go to the gate, put my money in the machine. All I had was a hundred or like a 10,000 yen, like a hundred. You can put them in the machines here, put it in the machine. The gates open. It's like, where's my change? Four o'clock scheduled blackout. So the machine ate my a hundred dollar bill. I'm like, Oh yeah. Like I looked around like all the, all the lights are blacked out.

and people coming out of the bank 'cause it just got blacked out. I'm like, oh no. So anyway, I called up and this being Japan there was a very lovely girl and she's like, you know, answering the phone. I'm sorry, the machine ate my a hundred dollars. She's like, oh, don't worry. We'll make sure it's okay. We'll send you the money. We'll get you information to your bank. Sure enough, like a week later they did it. - I mean, Japan's the one country where you probably wouldn't mind a machine eating your money.

- You know you're getting that back. - Yeah, you're getting that back. - So yeah, that was a thing. So since then, but now I'm married with kids and I'm an adult now. - Gosh, terrifying. - A proper adult. What's that like? - I gotta ask though, because you came to Japan like at a obviously much earlier than us. 'Cause for us coming to Japan, you know, there's,

plenty of resources for us to like learn about what Japan life is like. You know, we have like a lot of way more vloggers and more YouTube videos and more resources that we can look at.

But what was it like for you? Was it almost like coming in blinds? Like what was it like coming to Japan back then compared to how it is now? - The first time I came, well, I'm sorry. The time I moved here, I'd already been here about six or seven times. - Goddamn. - Either doing, mostly doing work or like what I said before, like I go on holiday and you know,

So I had a lot of friends, you know, make friends with people who speak English and stuff, you know, I'd have floors to sleep on and contacts and things like that, which, you know, with Japanese people, they're very friendly. Like if, you know, you can impose on a Japanese person terribly for like two or three days. Yeah.

And they kind of had that in mind. It's like, yeah, you're only going to be here a couple of days. That's fine. So I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into at that point. And I knew I'd have, like, I sort of set myself up with people. Okay. I want to buy a car. I want somewhere to stay. I want, I need all this sort of stuff. And I kind of worked out how to do it. So it wasn't really that bad. And I knew like, you know, I bought a kick-ass laptop. We've got internet. When I first arrived and I was staying at my friend's house,

they had internet there. I'm like, "So what's the, is there like a download limit? I don't wanna get throttled." And they're like, "What's the download limit?" I love this country. - Every Australian coming to Japan. - Does Australia still have download limits? - Not now. - America does. - No, it does, yeah. - America does too and I couldn't believe it. I was like, "What do you mean you only get three gigabytes a month?" - Yeah, yeah. - That's ridiculous.

I use like 20 gigabytes a day minimum. - Yeah, for like YouTube and Netflix nowadays. How'd you do that? - It's criminal, man, it's criminal. I wonder like, how is, I feel like when I've asked Japanese people who've been, you know, who are like 30, 40 plus, you know, how Japan was back then, they're like, "Oh, not much has changed." But I think because they've been living here, they don't see it that way. I wonder like, as someone who came here in 2005, how is Japan like different then from now, like majorly? Is there anything that's changed like,

- The biggest thing, I mean, there's been a quite a few changes in the past year, honestly. - Yeah, sure. - I'll admit that. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Pretty obvious to you guys, but as from a foreigner's point of view, accessibility to everything is just, it's just wide open now. - Yeah. - You wanna know how to get to random little place

Google. That's it. And there's pictures of what it looks like. It's just so easy. Like no matter where you want to go, it's much easier now. Whereas back then, you know, like for example, going to Akihabara, you'd find some random...

you know, guys blog that he'd like, he was like obsessed a bit. Cause the problem was like back then people would, would flavor their content with their own tastes. Yeah. It's like this guy was obsessed with finding like laser discs. Yeah. Certain things. And he, like laser discs and porn. Yeah.

- I mean, one of them's been phased out. The other one hasn't been. - The other one has exploded in popularity. - So it would tell you all these places to go and he had like, where all the anime studios are like, here's Gainax, here's whatever. And it's like, if you wanna go there. - They had a map of where they were.

It wasn't a map. It was just like, it was like a literally directions from the closest station, like walk to this corner and turn left here. That's creepy. Yeah, it was weird. But I mean, it's just how it is. You just find things. Like I've still got the first notebook of like my first trip. There's a lot of like printed out,

and handwritten notes and things like that. - How do you navigate a handwritten map of our caliber? I like it. Looking through Google maps is already confusing. - You just walk down the street and- - Just hope for the best. - Let's go, go ahead. - Well, I mean, it's so, no matter where you turn, it's like there's something. And even if you wanna look, I've sort of found about Japan is you,

focus on one thing and then see what you find along the way. 'Cause you'd always find these random like, I mean, all the best stuff is like, oh, this is what's this random floor. Oh, it's like some Dojinshi shop and you find it. Oh wow, there's all this cool stuff here. Like that's- - Yeah, true, true. - So you didn't really need it back then. - Was there many foreigners back then? Like in Japan? 'Cause there isn't that many now, but I imagine it was even less back then. - So for Akihabara, the biggest notice, the biggest difference between then and now is

There's less video games and more of the claw machines. The billboards are more blatantly...

- How do I put it? - Just say it, say what it is. - Like a lot of titties and ass. - A lot of lewd stuff. - Yeah, a lot of lewd. - A lot more waifus nowadays. - The concept of lewd is definitely like the boundary has gotten further. - It's more like bam. Although on the other hand though, the eroge shops are not like right out in front anymore. - They're all underground now. - Yeah, back then like,

On the front of the Ergoge shop, they'd have like the big wall with like each of the games and a little ticket. So you just, on the street, you're like, I want, oh, I love this. Yeah, something sister, something. You go inside and buy it. Whereas now it's more sort of all shut up. It's more like tourist friendly. Like they still have like the maids and stuff. Also, yeah, the maid stuff. Like that didn't, that was none of that back then. Oh, really? Yeah. Like originally. I mean, there were, but-

Now it's like every corner, it's like the new made one. Like there was the big ones, but there's not all like the little niche ones. - Like the ninja ones. - The ninja ones. - The army ones. - The tsundere one, the imouto one. - I think I watched a documentary yesterday of Anakihabura. That was like 2005. It was horribly edited documentary. It was edited like a horror show. - I mean, that's what every anime documentary was like back then. - I don't even know what it was supposed to be though.

I couldn't figure it out, but they had, there was like maid, they were showing some maid cafes around, but it looked like very early on. - Yeah, like super sketch. - I think that was around the time it happened 'cause they were following the author of "Higurashi."

- Oh, okay. - And his family. - Oh wow. - It was really weird because in this documentary, for some reason, I know this is going on tangent, it just made me laugh my ass off there, 'cause it's a super serious documentary, and the guy with Higurashi, he had his whole family helping him make it, and then his dad was in charge of research, and his dad dead ass to the camera goes, "Yes, I had to study how much gas it would take "to blow up a classroom for one of his novels." And I was like,

I was like, "What? He said that?" He said it like it was nothing. How much gas to blow? How did you find that out? What resources is there out there? - It's the difference between a large explosion and a small fire. - But did you really have to find out how much gas there was? Could you have made up some arbitrary amount of gas? - Who is gonna read Higurashi and fact check? It's like, "I don't believe that's the right amount of gas to blow this classroom up."

Like modern day America hadn't happened yet. Come on. - You wanna be factually correct in like how to fucking kill bodies, right? How to display- - I just put a tangent, but that was just about the documentary 2005. - It was slightly different then. Even more of the old electronic stuff was still, there still is now, but I thought that was cool. - That was the main stuff though. - Right? Yeah. Like you turned down some random alley and it's all like,

Blade Runner electronics and stuff. - Yeah. - Oh wow, this is really cool. - Because my dad, like when he first came to Japan, it was like in the mid nineties, like kind of early to mid nineties, like before I was born. And like back then, Akihabara was called Electric City. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Nowadays,

there's barely any of that shit anymore, right? Like the electronics shops and everything are like all behind like in alleyways or they're like- - Yeah, there's like the big anime shops that you actually go in the first level in the back and find all of that. - That's where all the electronic stuff is, right? Yeah, so- - Because like you go out the train and you see like the electric town exit or whatever. - Yeah, the electric town exit. - I remember the first time coming here, I was like, why is it called electric town exit? Well, what does this got to do with electricity at all? - Where are the electrics?

That's eventually gonna be just be like the anime town. I guarantee. - Going back to drifting, I'm curious because obviously normal YouTubers, they have this kind of, I buy the camera, I buy the shit, that's it. I probably don't have to spend much more money unless you're Mr. Beast, of course. But I mean,

- Is it hard running a YouTube channel where it requires you to buy a bunch of fucking cars and tires all the time? How much a year do you spend on tires alone? - It can depend on the year, but I mean, one, depending on the car, like one tire can go between say, well, like $40 or 40 to $120 per tire, depending on how good it is. So let's just, let's say like 70 or $80 a tire. So that's two.

And a regular track day, probably gonna go through four. - Jesus Christ. - If not more, depending on how crazy you go. - I see you upload sometimes weekly, but it was kind of sporadically over a month, right? And is that every single time you're making a video, you're probably doing that? - No, well, okay, so you,

These days I think I could. - Yeah. - Right. - For various reasons because the market for people to watch those sort of videos is much bigger now. - It's gone up. - It's huge. Like everyone watches YouTube now. Like everyone, it's a thing. That's the only place you can get that sort of content too. Like you can't really get it on TV 'cause it's not on TV or anything like that. So right now is a really good, there's a good lane for automotive content right now. But,

The most cost-effective content is going to a meeting or some sort of cool event. - Like a festival. - Like a festival. - Where you don't have to spend money. - You just drive there, walk around going, "Hey guys, look at this cool stuff." And the best thing about that is like, if I know what I'm talking about,

- I'm providing your value. - That's kind of like your Itasha video. - Yes, again, that's another thing that may be confident. - Do you wanna explain what that whole thing is? - What's an Itasha? - Okay, so most, a lot of your audience is gonna, will know what these are,

So Itasha is those, the anime waifu cars that are like wrapped with like some character or some theme or whatever. - The ones that always get upvoted on your Reddit or pop up in your feed every once in a while. - Yeah, you see them like, it'll be like, "Wow, I've never seen any of these before." Meanwhile, you come to Japan and there's entire festivals for it. - Oh yeah. So what Itasha means is,

In Japan, when they refer to a car, like an American car, you can say it's an Amesha, like American car. Itasha is usually Italian car, like Ferrari or whatever. But they changed the character for like Ita, like the katakana to the kanji for pain. So Itasha literally means pain car. Because, I mean, as I explained in the video, when you look at it, a normal person looks at it and goes,

- So basically it's literally more like cringe car. - It's a cringe car. - Cringe car is the most accurate way of putting it. But the people who drive those sorts of things, they just don't care. They're like super hardcore. This is my waifu and I love her.

- There's not much bigger of a flex than like how to represent your waifu, slap it all over your car and drive around in it, right? - That's like the next stage from just wearing like a t-shirt with your glasses on, right? - Yeah, exactly. - Yeah, absolutely. It's the step up, it's the t-shirt, then it's like the, what do you call it? The armor, like the badges where they have all the full- - Oh, the clunchy stuff. - Yeah, right? And then it's like- - And then it's a plushie and then it's a figurine and then it's a car. - A car.

And a lot of the cars do have, you know, they put the, like the Nestle Bettys in there and stuff like that on the dashboard. Yeah. So, so some of the most popular content I've done on Twitch and also on YouTube was this Itasha show. Yeah. That they run every year in Tokyo, Dan and Odaiba.

They didn't run it this year, unfortunately. - Obviously. - Everything's canceled this year. - Everything's canceled, unfortunately. - No surprise. - So when I made that video, this was before I knew there was such a big crossover in audience. - Between anime and cars. - Between anime and cars. It's sort of like the Japan anime cars, there's actually a big crossover in the middle there. And even people who are maybe not necessarily into cars,

like people who watch Initial D they'll enjoy it 'cause it's a cool story, it's action, whatever. So there's all this sort of stuff too. So I went to the show and I thought, okay, how am I gonna cover this show? I don't wanna be like full on weeb. Hey guys, look at this, look at this. - Look at this big titty anime girl. - 34th edition anime girl from the one manga panel that you all know. - I know it.

I didn't want to come across too, I wanted to, didn't want to alienate my car audience, but I still wanted to- - You can say it, you didn't want to come off as cringe. - As cringe, no. I wanted to hide my power level. - Level one weeb. - Yeah, right?

I walked around the show talking about, I know about the car and this is the character. I explained like, okay, this is like this show. It's about this sort of thing, whatever. This is Madoka. This show is based on Madoka. It's a bunch of magical girls and they all die horribly. It's pretty good. - Well, so I've heard, I don't know. I haven't watched myself. I've just heard things. - And I'm making jokes too like, oh, you know, I wonder what these guys' girlfriends think if they go pick them up from the train station, these cars.

"Oh wait, who am I kidding? "Ha ha ha." - Meanwhile, inside you're like, "God always tells me." - You're 100% right.

And some people actually took big offense to like, oh man, show some more respect toward these things. And it's like, don't you under, like you should be able to understand I'm actually- - It's clearly an inside joke, right? - Yeah. - So anyway, so that got really popular and all of a sudden I realized, oh, I've got this audience. And then next time that show ran, I did a live stream on Twitch. And it's probably one of the best, maybe not the biggest numbers I've ever done, but probably the most engagement I've ever done

I blew out my data for that day. I'm like, no, we're going to keep going. It's great. I covered this whole show. It was really good. I actually talked to TV. There was a TV crew there and, you know, they, I was, they talked to me and I didn't actually make it on the show. I think because they asked like, so, you know, what do people overseas think of these cars? And,

TV wants the, you know, the nice response. Oh yes. They're very wonderful. And I basically sort of said like, cause I was on the live stream and I didn't want my audience to think I was trying to be fake or something. Yeah. A lot of them say like, there's a lot of like really young girls in the cars and they think that's kind of weird.

- I mean, what do you want to say? There's like, you know, cameraman's- - All that TV is hyper positive here. - Yeah. - Exactly. - Don't say bad things. - I didn't really care. - Especially Japanese TV. - I was memeing for my, for the Twitch. - It was a pog moment. It's all right. - Dude, it's a different beast when there's a Twitch chat on you because it turns you into like the meme-a-put sign. - Yeah. - 'Cause you don't want it.

- It turns you into the worst person. - Yeah, because it's the same thing with the Crunchyroll Anime Awards. I didn't want to be cringe. So I was like, "Fuck, Twitch chat's watching me. "What would Twitch chat respond to? "Just troll, just say dumb shit that Twitch chat will love." So they can go like, "Pog, no way!"

- Yeah, because I remember I, 'cause that Itasha video of yours, I think was from like 2017 or something. - It was a long time ago. - It's like two or three years at least. And I like when I heard that you were gonna come onto the show, I was like, okay, I gotta, you know, obviously do some research on the guest. And I found that Itasha video, I'm like, why does this video look so familiar? And I remember I watched that video, I think like maybe like two or three days after it came out because,

I don't know if you remember, but like that video initially was getting recommended everywhere. - 'Cause I watched that video as well back then. - Oh really? - Yeah, it was. - What he's trying to say is he knew you before you were big. - I knew you before you were big.

- It was cool as well because like, I obviously very like knew very quickly that like, as you were kind of explaining the different shows and whatnot, I could very clearly be like, oh yeah, this guy knows this shit. But he clearly just doesn't want to like show it all. It's like, yeah, this guy's definitely a weeb. - I've been a closet weeb before. I recognize my fellow brethren. You know what I mean? Coming from being an old school weeb, what is your opinion of like the modern anime scene and modern anime culture? - Oh man. Okay. So,

- I think, so this is the interesting thing is when I moved here, you'd think like, oh, now I have unlimited access to all this stuff. I'm gonna, I can just do it now. I actually didn't, I actually ended up quitting. You know what I quit on? The last thing I actually sat down and watched, like I'm gonna sit down and watch this was the "K" on movie.

- Wow. - Why? - That's such a fucking throwback for us. - Oh my God. - Holy shit. - Why? - I don't know, but just, I watched that and I'm like, yeah. - I would quit anime if I had watched that. - Okay, okay, question. Did you like the K-On! movie? - No, I didn't. - Did you like K-On! though? - I liked K-On! - Okay, okay. - There's something nice about the thought of someone in a cinema watching K-On! and then thinking, "I'm done with anime now." - It's over for me.

- I don't know if it was, maybe it was just like, that's enough or maybe it was 'cause a combination of like, well now I'm in Japan. It's like all this stuff that you see. - Doesn't feel as like unique in it. - Well, it's like, it's there. - It's not as romanticized anymore, right? - I don't know if I read it somewhere or someone's told me this,

When you come to Japan, you realize that manga artists are actually... They're not creative. They're just really good at representing real life in a very consumable way. Right. And that's not a bad thing. Obviously, that's great. Like you get...

That's really good about reading the sort of like the daily life genre. - Like K-On! - Like K-On! Like Yotsuba, like all those sorts of things where it's all the stuff you see in those is real life to sort of compressed into like a form where you can consume it already quick. And I think that's a great thing. That's makes it really enjoyable to read or watch or whatever.

But I just sort of like, yeah, that'll do. And unfortunately that was also at the peak of what is, was, I guess was known as like the Moe blob era. And it just kind of ended up, I don't know. It just sort of turned me off. Like, yeah, I don't know. - As much as I love the Moe blob era, like kind of halfway through it, I was like, all right, can we get something else now? - I hated the Moe blob era. I remember like,

- So the reason I haven't watched Full Metal Alchemist was because that was during the Moe blob era. And that was when I thought I needed to save shows in case I lost my faith in anime. 'Cause there wasn't enough shows coming out per season to like keep my interest. - That wasn't Moe blob. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the Isekai era started. I'm like, okay boys, I'm good. - The what? - The Isekai era. So now we're- - Right now we're in the Isekai era. - Okay, see, now I hate that.

- I like that you hate that. - I'm sorry everyone, I just can't stand isekai. - No, it's boring. - Yes!

- I don't want to see a bunch of normal teenagers in like some fantasy. I get it, it's cool, but it's not self aware. - As someone who likes the East Coast era, I can definitely say like most of it is fucking trash. - It's not self aware enough. It's basically like an RPG game, but it's real. It's like all of you would get annihilated the first time you faced an enemy.

all these characters and stuff. - That's true. - What's the original, there's a one called Escaflowne, do you know that one? - Yeah, yeah, I know that. - I guess that's like an original sort of isekai. - That was an isekai before the real, the modern isekai formula really started. - That was good, I think, 'cause it was like, you were dragged into this world and it was all this crazy shit. Whereas now it's more like,

"Yeah, this is us, yay." And it's just like, I don't know, that just turned me off even more. - Yeah, I'd say like, Garnt and I covered this when we did an Isekai anime tier list, but "Escaflowne" and "Now and Then, Here and Now" are probably the two shows from like the '90s that like really kind of built the foundations. - I'd say there's "Inuyasha" as well. - "Inuyasha" as well, and then ".hack" came along, kind of like put in the whole like video game aspect into the Isekai thing.

And now we're here and it's just kind of- - I feel like "East Sky" back then, it was all about you get transported to this world, but it was always about finding your way back home.

'Cause it was always like, it was always a desolate kind of rough world to be in. But now it's all about, man- - I love this place. - I wanna get hit by a truck so I get transported to another world. - There's so many fucking shows where it's a teenage boy who's a fucking incel and then he turns up and eight girls wanna fuck him. And then it's never mentioned that he came from another world ever again unless it's kind of convenient for why other people wanna fuck him. And it's like, I'm so bored of this shit, man. Can I get something else, please?

- Yeah. - Needless to say it, I'm kind of bored with this guy. - The other one too, I don't know if this is kind of controversial or not, but the genre of where, okay, how do I explain this? Where you have, it's like a harem anime, but the main character is not male, they're female, but it's like, they're basically a male, but for the convenience of the story, they're female. Like what's the dragon one?

- Dragon one. - Are you talking about stuff like Orin High School? - No, no, no, no. The one with what's that character, the Kana and the other one. - Oh, commercial dragon. - Yeah. Like the main character is a female, but it's actually male. If you think about it, like it's like a- - It's like a position of a male.

- Right, right. It's like, no, no, no, it's female. No, no, she's female. It's okay. - She's a female or is she? - Am I missing something? - No, no, no, no. - And there's other ones like that too where it's kind of like, yeah, the main character is female, but it's an analog of a male, but it's female, so it's okay. And it's just like, it's just even worse. I don't know. - Yeah, I get that.

the genre you're talking about. I'm just trying to think of like other ones that kind of fit into that genre. - I can't remember the name of them, but it's just other ones too where it's kind of like that. It's like, eh, it's kind of on the edge. - So you didn't like Dragon Maid? - No, I didn't like that. - Really? - It's just kind of too on the edge of like,

It's not actually lewd guys. - Not gonna lie, if it was a toss up between watching anime and just fucking tearing a car to shreds on a track. - Yeah, I would tear a car to shreds. - That's probably gonna be my hobby. Let's be realistic. I think the only difference is there's a $6 a month subscription and like a $30,000 problem. How much does it cost to drift on a yearly basis for you?

- Man, it can vary, but- - Did you throw me a number off? - If I had to throw out a budget like, okay, you're gonna need this much a year to drift, car, fuel, insurance, registration, maintenance, and the occasional like, you're gonna stuff it into a wall and you're gonna break a bunch of shit. At minimum, maybe at minimum, maybe like $30,000 if you want to drift maybe,

maybe once a month or once every couple of months at like one track day. - I mean, needless to say the kids don't get good Christmas presents. - No, I mean. - I'm kidding, I'm kidding. - Would you like a Noria hoodie? You just give them your own merch. - You're like, daddy's got you something special. It's a fucked up tire. - Oh man. - Here you go. - Just buy them when you see our tires and like, are you gonna use that? If you can't use that, daddy can use that, you know?

- Some premium oil for you here, children. Have you ever thought about getting an Ittashia yourself? - Yes.

- Oh really? - What would you get? - I love the zero hesitation there. - Of course. - Okay, I turned 40 years old this year. So I don't know how, I really don't know. See, there's two ways you can do this. There's the one way we can just be shameless and like, this is my waifu, but there's the other way, like, 'cause a lot of Western people are very like timid when it comes to their Ita Shalik. It'll be like Dragon Ball or something where it's not like- - No, no, no, it's not. Whereas-

Here it's like some studio leaf, you know. - Like visual novel. - Yeah, and it's like, this is what I fap to. Like that's it. So I guess if I was gonna do it, I'd have to go hard in and go like. - Okay, who's your waifu? - I just don't know. I don't have any these days. I mean, I thought- - Who's the OG waifu for you? Like the one that you first was like, yes, this is my waifu. - A long time ago, I really liked Lum from "Urusia Tuda."

- That's the OG one. - You can't get more OG than Lama. I'm pretty sure she was like one of the first waifus to ever exist. - Dude, like the eye shadow and the bikini. - I have no idea what this character is. - Oh really? You've probably seen her. She's the one with like the green hair and like the tiger bikini. - I've seen that. - It's like those horns. - Yeah, I've seen that.

- I just got this great image of you like rocking up to your kid's school in like an idle master car and just like picking up the kids like, "Come on kids, get in." - Man, I got in trouble 'cause like the, I just drive a van now. It's like a regular looking sort of van. But the van I had- - Free candy on the van.

The thing I had before was, I'm probably gonna do this with my current one because I've, okay, so drift people, their thing is stickers. Right. Like, I guess it's, I mean, a lot of, you know, things do that too, but like, you know, you meet someone, here's my sticker, here's your sticker. Yeah. I've got a huge collection. I've done like sticker sorting streams on Twitch. I'm like three of them. Wow. So it took like six hours, I guess, to do them all. So I put them on the rear door of the, like the gate of the car on the back window, you know, whatever. I'm sorry. And, uh,

I did that in my previous van, which I sold a while ago. And unfortunately one of them I stuck on, I didn't read what it said. It was written in Japanese. It was an Australian drift team. 'Cause they put like random shit on there. And it said, what did it say? It said, something like that. - Oh my God. - Can you translate that for us? - Elementary school kids are awesome. - Yeah. - What? Why did they have that? - I don't know.

- I don't know. I guess it was like some, they were trying to be edgy or something. 'Cause it was like one of those sort of, okay. So a lot of- - This is the one country where you shouldn't have a sticker like that. - Yeah. A lot of anime, a lot of, again, this crossover thing. There's a lot of these like sort of anime style slap stickers that they make. Like they have like some random anime titties and like some team name or whatever. And they'd done this and I didn't check what it said. 'Cause again, they came to Ebisu Circuit. Like a lot of foreigners come to Ebisu Circuit and they stuck it on there.

And I didn't read it. And then my wife saw it. She's like, what the fuck is this? And I'm like, what? She goes, this sticker here. I'm like, shit. And I'm like, I didn't want to peel it off because it was stuck on the paint because it probably would have peeled the paint off. So I got like a black mark and I was like...

- I wanna get it off immediately, but I don't wanna ruin the car. - Well, yeah, so I didn't wanna, now I vet my stickers before I put them on. I probably should have done that. - Go through a screening process. - I have like a fucking irrational fear of stickers. - Why? - I have no idea. - Really? - The thought of stickers, you know how like people used to, when you're in school, people used to just put stickers on each other? I used to be disgusted if people did it to me. - Why? - I was like, I don't know, just fucking freaked me out. People putting stickers on me. I'm like, that's disgusting, get that off me.

I hate stickers. They are like the worst thing ever. Magnets, I'm cool with, no problem. Stickers, gross. I don't know why. - Is it like the stickiness of it? - I think it's the stickiness, the sound. I'm like, that's disgusting. Get that away from me. The sound the stickers make, I fucking despise. - You don't put any stickers on any of your products or anything at all? - I have one on my laptop.

- It was a gift and I felt bad not to, but a part of me, it pained me so fucking much. - Well, all Connor fans, next time you're at a con, give him stickers. - Give him stickers. - I know what I'm getting for your Christmas present now Connor. - I'm getting you a sticker book for your- - I shouldn't have said that. I should have kept my irrational fears to myself. - That's like going in front of an audience and being like, this is my weakness. - I also have a weakness of money.

- I can't stand people putting money in my pocket. So if you wanna, sorry, I guess- - It's called Patreon. - I can't stand it. - Connor, you're like the one guy who was like most into cars then. Now you can't be a drifter now 'cause you don't like stickers. - Do they put, that would piss me off. - Stickers is the main thing. - If someone came up and put a sticker on my car, I'm like, what have you done?

- You've ruined my car. - People do that. Okay, so at Ebisu Circuit, I have a Skyline that I actually, I leave it there. Like it's my car that I drive when I go there. And I've told people like, "Hey, if you come to Ebisu, put a sticker on my car." - Fuck, that would drive me up the wall. Don't fucking touch my car. - That's just how you make friends. That's how you bond. - Stickers is not consent. - I'll stick your car if you stick my car. - I'll bring a plastic sheet, right? And I'll break it over my car. Put the sticker on that. The moment I leave, fucking rip that off.

- I didn't know that, wow. - I have people like, it's a tourist attraction. Like they send me selfies like, "Oh, a drift car." 'Cause it's sort of like, I guess, sort of semi-internet famous. - I've never been so horrified in my life. - Oh, you can't be a drift driver then if you don't have stickers. - Fuck, you know what? - Well, you're gonna have to give up a bike. - After I did the drifting, I was like telling the boys, I was like, "You know what? "I actually think I'd get into this. "It was pretty fun." - But first you have to get over your irrational fear of stickers.

I wanna put that aside. - You know what the worst thing is? So when you buy tires, 'cause drifters usually they fit their own tires, they save money. Tires have a big sticker on them. It's like the brand.

- You have to peel it off, like peel it off. - I can do that. I can get rid of them. - You get rid of it. You don't wanna put it on. - I hate people who put stickers on things. - Ah, okay. - It looks so tacky as well. - It does, I agree. - I fucking hate it. - I agree. But it's sort of like a, you know, who you know. - It's a badge. - Joey's fucking laptop disgusts me when I see it. - Why? - This man has so many fucking stickers on it, it drives me insane.

- Oh, Jesus Christ. - That's pretty normal. - It's like someone's spreading their ass cheeks in front of me. I'm like, get out of here. - It gives me all the memories. Like I remember when I got all of these stickers. - That's it. Yeah, you know, like on my van, it's like a little workshop and they'll like, oh, can we put one on? And it's like, I've been here. I know these people.

- And I'm just a guy who's just been never, I've never been given stickers or anything like that. I don't know. - Do you have to memory, like out of memory by fucking destroying my items? - Do you buy stickers? - Sometimes, yeah. - 'Cause I've never been a guy to be like, I see a sticker. This is what I need. This is my memory. - Because it's always the budget item. It's always the pity item and whatever. It's always the t-shirts or anything else.

- I guess we have stickers. - Because there's a sticker shop actually in Harajuku called B-Side Label that I go to quite often where it's like, it's these like really, like some of those stickers on there are from there and it's just, I don't know, it's like really cool designs. Like, but then again, I was always like huge into stickers when I was a kid. Like I was that one kid who had like books and books. - I can tell. Joey, okay, Joey has this off camera obsession with what he calls peelies.

- Don't expose my fetish like that, please. - So every time we get some new kind of furniture or contraption, they have like the plastic- - The peelies. - The plastic peelies. - You understand it, right? - No, no, no. - You have to go as slowly as possible. - There's people who like it. And then there's Joey. I swear to God, he fucking has a 10th of an orgasm. Every time he does a single peelie, he's just like, "Can I do it?"

and he just does it slowly. I'm just like, "Yo, Joey, do you want me to leave you alone for like five minutes, man?" Like, dude, I fucking love it. You understand, right? - Especially when it's like the clear stuff, not that. It's like when it's that dark blue one. - Yeah! - New phones, I like it. - No, no, you can't go fast with it. You gotta go slow. - Slow. - You gotta tease it. You gotta tease it, you know? It's gonna make like that. - Look at that glossy surface underneath. - Yeah, exactly. See, Alexi gets me. - I get it. - Yeah.

- Is this some Australian things that we just don't care? - And also when you were a kid, right? People would always like, when you went to the hospital or the dentist, they'd always give you a fucking sticker. And when I was like six, I was like, "Bold of you to assume I want this fucking thing on me. Don't you fucking dare give me a sticker." - I think I have the exact same fear of like irrational fear, but not with stickers, but with like buttons and badges.

- I don't like those. - I don't like badges. - Wait, what do you mean? Oh, yeah, I fucking hate them. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Like the pin badges, right? - Yeah, the pin badges. 'Cause I didn't get stickers. I would get like those pin badges and I'm like, don't you fucking put that on me. Don't you fucking touch me, miss. - Yeah, I was never into the pin badges because,

like if you collect a lot of them, they just make way too much fucking noise. - Yeah, I never understand people who go to like anime conventions and they'd like buy the pin badges of like, if you're gonna buy any anime more memorability, why the pin badges? Anything else but pin badges. - Dude, Japan fucking loves pin badges. I don't know what it is. Like every single, like you'll find like a new anime series, right? And you're like, okay, I'm looking forward to when they release merch of this. And then they're like, all right, we've released merch of it.

have a pin badge for it. It's like, I don't fucking want it. - It's like detergent of like, it'll be like a fucking Eva slash detergent, like cross fucking promotion. And it'll have like, it's got a sticker of Eva in it. And it's like, people go fucking nuts for it. - Oh yeah, yeah. - It's wrong with you. - What? - I mean, I'm one of those who was like, hell yeah. - It's like the holy trinity of just useless anime merchandise is stickers, pin badges and clear files. - Clear files are the fucking worst.

- No one needs this many clear files. - I mean, I have a clear file full of clear files. So I can't say anything, but- - I just kind of ended up using them because you know, they say it says clear file, but they're always got some stuff. - You can't see it. - The un-clear file. - It defeats the purpose.

- It's the purpose of a clear file. - It's just a file. - Anyway, we went on a massive tangent there. - Yeah. - Yeah, so like you talked about your opinion of like the modern anime scene. So like, what are some of your favorite anime? Because I don't think we mentioned that. - It's normie as hell, but I mean, I always just enjoyed Evangelion like back then because it was so- - Yeah, of course. I'd say it's less normie now than it is back then. - I guess so, but back then, so in Australia, I'd seen a lot of stuff, but then it came out on TV

SBS which is like a public channel in Australia it's like where they air a lot of the international shows right yeah it's like there was there was a guy called Des Mangan who presented like you know the cult movies and stuff and sometimes it'd be anime and I was like anime's on tonight yeah back then whatever you could whatever you could get you took it like it'd be professionally subtitled be really good

and they would show Evangelion. They had like an anime block where they showed some stuff for a while. And that was good because that came out on TV. So everyone had a shared experience of it at that time. So, you know what I mean? I think it's very important that shared experience when it comes to this sort of media, I think. It's mostly...

about video games, that sort of thing. Like if you meet someone who's played like whatever, Final Fantasy VII, it's like you immediately have a huge thing in common. - Right. - Which favorite part? - Yeah. - Yeah. - We've all done the same thing at the same time. And that was probably the first time that like mainstream anime was shown on TV. So you sort of discovered other people who are into it too because they'd watch it and it was accessible. So I guess that it had a bit of an impact and it was very...

you know, it was, it wasn't the standard monster of the week show. There's a lot more to it. And I'm not trying to sound like it's super deep or anything cause it wasn't, but,

- It was just really solidified. - It was engaging, right? - It was very engaging. It wasn't afraid to make something different. Like a show that's a bit different, but at the same time used every trope combined, like whatever. - That's the weird thing about a lot of anime. It is the most tropey unique shows that for some reason get the most attention. It's like you look at it, like someone will look at it and being like, like Ava for instance, right? Someone will look at Ava and being like, whoa,

I've never seen anything like this at all. But at the same time, it's the type of show where another person will look at it and be like, this has every trope that I've ever seen. - Dude, One Punch Man. - Yeah. - Okay, my cousin's kids, a couple of Christmases ago when I went back,

And they would talk, they started talking about, "Oh, we watched this thing, One Punch Man, it's really cool." And I blew their minds by going, "This is actually based on a little kid's TV show called Anpanman." And this, that character is based on like the Dragon Ball character, this one, and this, it was actually voiced by the same guy. - You dropped the anime knowledge on them. - I explained the whole- - You fucking schooled them, man. - I just thought like, okay, so everything you like is actually based on something else.

- Your life is a lie, don't be happy, I'm gonna tell you why. - That's exactly, I was aiming to destroy them 'cause yeah, it was just fun. - Not gonna lie, destroying them with facts and history. - See, that's what this is. And so you actually like this, you should actually like this. But again, it's a gateway thing. Hey, anything that gets people into it, it's like,

Look, I don't, who cares anymore? Like, oh, you're a bunch of normie fans. What do you know? It's like, no, you start somewhere, you go this far. It's like the same thing. Like you guys have done drifting. If you don't want to go any further, it's like, well, why would you like,

If you don't understand enough, that's fine. You enjoyed it. It was like you got your adrenaline hit and it was some weird stuff you've never done before. You have a new experience that you've done. It's in Japan. You've done drifting in Japan. I guess this is the thing that I have to offer to other people. And I always try and not force it on them, but if I can at some opportunity, like for example, when...

Wreckful and Soda Poppin came to Japan for their legendary stream on Twitch, their IRL stream. I hunted them down and said, you have to come and go drifting because Team Orange had those two of their drift cars at a diver, which is only about...

Very close. Less than an hour from anywhere in Tokyo to go drifting. Because I know them. I hooked it up. I said, yeah, come here. We'll meet here. We'll take them out. Set them drifting. They went out that night and did Rem and Ram cosplay on the streets. So I guess they had a good day. Other guys like the IRL streamer, Jake and Bake, the Japanese IRL streamer. I got him a ride in a D1 Grand Prix car. It was about maybe 1,200 horsepower, GTR.

you know, live streaming it to like whatever it was, like 20,000, 12,000, whatever people. I love to, if I can just present it to people as like a, because I honestly, I think it is a really good podcast.

part of Japanese culture that is not only fun and relatable, but you know, I mean, any, like you said, like, you know, because of fast, fast and furious and people have seen initial D. And I think it's a, it's a cool thing that I like people to experience. And I, I enjoy welcoming.

- Yeah, yeah. - They were really friendly to us. - Now, finally every community was like. - Go ahead. - Okay, no, 'cause I was gonna say, I mean, like you talked about how to, you know, getting people to experience this for the first time. And we've, I'm sure we've done that, like introducing our friends and everything into anime where we can just like recommend the show or something. But I feel like it's infinitely harder with drifting because like, as we've talked about, the barrier of entry is like,

And I feel like it's one of those hobbies where no one just casually drifts. You can't just be a casual drifter. You're like either in this all the way or like it's something you experienced once. And I would love to go drifting more. It was a fucking hell of an experience. But at the same time, it's like, do I have the time and the money to commit to this? And it's something that- - Just quick catcher.

He said he spent like, what, like 30K was it? - That's a minimum. - That's probably Garnt's like monthly allowance on Gatcha. Come on, quit Gatcha. - He was telling me on the train here that he's like, man, I would go drifting. I just have to quit Gatcha. But it's so hard. - I think one thing that I really appreciate about your channel in particular and to anyone listening that,

Whereas a lot of YouTubers here who live in Japan, who are foreign, it feels like an outsider looking in on a lot of the content. And what was really refreshing, I think from your videos, what I got was that it was like you were in it with them and that you knew all the big players in the scene. It was really cool seeing that aspect 'cause I thought when I first watched your videos, there was gonna be like, "Hey, I'm here, let's find out what's going on. "I'm gonna see what's happening." But you were like saying hi to everyone, everyone knew you. It was so cool. - I rolled deep. - Yeah, it was really cool seeing that like,

you get a YouTuber in Japan who is really deep in the scene to the point of where, you know, even the people in the Japanese scene would know you. It's really cool seeing that. - That mostly came from the fact that back in the day when I was doing journalist work. - You've been around so long. - Well, it's like, if I want to get access to cool stuff, I have to- - Make friends. - Make friends. I have to get to know the people. I have to show them, you know, I would- - You're serious. - Any event I would show up. This is the thing about, this is the thing about anything about Japan especially is,

show up, obviously right now you can't really do that. But if you want to be in something, show up, talk to people, get to know people. I mean, I've been on tours of like a couple of anime studios because I'm friends with someone else who knows someone else and you just, 'cause you know someone and, "Oh, Lexi's into that stuff, why don't we go, you wanna come too? We're doing something."

it's just knowing people and yeah eventually it gets to a tipping point where it's like you show up and oh yeah there's Alexia and that's what my friends told me like when I first got here it's like um

It's very difficult for a Japanese person to get to know and trust a foreigner because they just assume that you're not going to be here in a year or so. And like another person told me too, like, Lexi, you have to keep going to track days again and like all the time, because if you don't, they're just, people are just going to forget about you straight away. So I do make an effort to, even if I don't,

Even if I'm driving, like I got today off, I'll go to the track. Maybe I'll take my equipment with me. Maybe if there's something cool, I'll make a video. But otherwise, I'll just hang around and talk to people and walk through the pits and everyone, morning, morning, and then eventually they'll come to you.

Oh, actually, hi all. And they'll, you know, they'll have something cool. Like, and someone will be like, oh, are you driving today? Oh no, I'm just, I just turned up. He's like, oh, you want to take my car out for a couple of laps? Like, hell yeah. I got my helmet in the van. I'll bring my helmet with me just in case. Maybe go for a passenger. Take a shirt off like a whole kid. I'm ready. Got my race suit on. Yeah.

- Yeah, it's just show up and do it. And it gets like that after a while. I mean, I've been here 12 years, so, and I've been coming here for longer than that too, so yeah. - I think that kind of applies with any social situation. - Absolutely. - It's like, it's just, you know, it's about commitment, right? Like you just gotta, if you want to be known in that circle or you wanna be part of that circle, whatever that circle might be, or whatever that niche might be, like if you don't make an effort to want to actually show your commitment to it or want to be like part of it, then,

you're not gonna get in, right? - Yeah. - So, I mean, like I was gonna say, like it's the same thing with like, you know, with like the anime industry as well. Like once you know a couple of people,

it's such a small industry that your face just gets known everywhere as long as you're staying committed to it. Like that's really the only reason why like any of us have like gone in. - That's just like our friend Nabi in like a nutshell, right? - Yeah, exactly. - He just seems to know everyone. And when I ask him, he just says, "Oh, you know, I just know a guy who knows a guy who, I've just been around enough." - Yeah, I just make my, you know, go around and just make myself known. Like that's so, but the thing is that's like so much easier said than done.

- Yeah. - Because it is a lot of commitment and it does take time and it's not guaranteed either that you're gonna get results. - No, it's just, you just gotta build up recognition and everything. 'Cause it was interesting you mentioned a point that people in Japan just assume people are gonna be living here.

like unpermanently. Like, cause having lived abroad in like few different countries, you know, there's like, you make some expat friends sometimes, right? Who you are, you can be like the closest friends with them for like a few years, but then eventually they're gonna move back.

And it's really hard building up a friendship from zero again when you know sometimes that people aren't gonna be here in like two or three years. - Yeah, I've definitely noticed that, that even I made some friends here when I just moved here and I'm like, "Oh cool, I'm making friends." And then they left. I was like, "Damn." Finally started getting a good list of friends going and they all just fucking left. - They just needed out. - Can you imagine they had their own problems? - How dare they? - The audacity.

- The audacity to have nationalities aside from the place I'm living right this moment. - I have to ask, 'cause you've seen our Drift special. Who was the best drifter? - You. - And why was it me? Thank you.

- Was that really the question you needed to ask there? - I wanted to just make, I should've, I wanted to feel good about myself. - You might as well just ask the question, "Alexi, can you just give me a handjob right now?" - Yeah, yeah, just wanna whip your dick right out, right now. - It's ready, come on. - It's okay, I already got his PayPal email, so it's okay. - Slips in the 20.

- Okay, I must admit, even though we clowned on you in the episode, you clearly were the best drifter. You just fucked up in the end. - Yeah, I just fucked up in the end. I mean, that test was bullshit. - Because you were- - I clearly won the election. - Well, you were the most sort of confident with it, so you got a bit too hectic with it. - Yeah. - That's why. - I would like to argue though, that the starting position was a little different, you know?

Like you were clearly the most. - I mean, you were the most experienced driver out of all of us. - Like I said before,

And you all got to, like I watched the video and I thought, oh yeah, that's about right. Like from what I've seen, it wasn't really different. Like if you haven't, you know, the prerequisite for learning how to, you know, maybe learn how to ski, the prerequisite is being able to stand up. Like if you can't stand up, then you're not gonna be able to do it. Like, so if you're not used to, you know, drifting, to driving a manual car for such a long time. Also those cars have a clutch, which is kind of,

- That clutch was weird. - Yeah. - Well, they designed, was it making it like a rattling sand when you put it in? - Yeah. - Yeah, and also I feel like a normal clutch, like if I touch it a slight bit, I feel it in the car. This one I had to fucking slam it down to get anything out of it. - So I mean the clutches in those, 'cause you know, you're constantly slipping them. So the clutches are made to take a lot of heat and also be kind of grippy. So yeah, they're not easy to drive.

So they're definitely not easy to drive. The car looks fairly, didn't look too extreme. Yeah, they're kind of a pain in the ass. Look, even I do that. I left my Mark II at the tuner shop like last week and he lent me like his drift car, like one of his personal drift cars just as the courtesy car. I was like, what this? He's like, yeah, I got too many of them. Just take that one. I got too many.

- And I stalled it twice before leaving the car park. He's like, "Alex, you suck." I'm like, "Yeah, whatever man." 'Cause everyone knows it's always hard to jump into someone else's car and he's like, "Oh shit." - I'm just like, "Only two? Damn."

I stalled like eight times trying to move forward. - It was all right. You all did good. - You'd be able to drive a normal manual car because even for me, I stalled it a lot and I've gotten used to it but the biting point is so small and it feels like you're gonna break the car as well. And you go like one millimeter above and it just stalls. There's no leeway at all. - Yeah. They're a little bit tricky but you all did pretty good. It was an enjoyable video

even I enjoyed watching the whole thing. Oh my God. Yeah. That's good. That's a W. I wonder how, cause we obviously didn't get to go on the serious track or anything.

How do you transition from just doing your little fucking donuts to like actually going on a track? Like, because there has to be something like, how do you- - Is there like a test? - How do you in between that? Because how do you learn? Because it seems like that wasn't really a way. Like it was- - It's just a slow progression of, like there is a little bit of a sort of a wax on wax off approach to it where it's like you do the donuts. - Right. - Then you do those, you did the handbrake turn, like the parking. - Yeah. - But then what you do is,

You do the handbrake turn, but then you transition to doing a donut. Then that's a drift. You didn't get to that point. That's okay. Normally it takes people a bit longer if you haven't done any sort of car stuff before like that. So it's just a slow progression. Like you start off going slower, then you build a bit of speed. Then you get a bit too overconfident. You spin out a lot. Then you start to, okay, let's dial it back a bit. And it's just slowly, slowly building up. It's kind of like, what I've noticed is

So I used to play video games like Quake Arena and stuff like that, boomer stuff sort of thing back in the day. But then I gave it up for a long time, never played shooters and then all this whole BR thing started at the beginning. I thought, oh, this is actually cool. Like a lot of people, you're playing real people, whatever. It wasn't like CES, I didn't really get into that. And I noticed that like watching people, pros playing again,

is that they just sort of jump in. It's like first games are dubbed. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they've just been doing it for so long. Whereas I noticed like, if I get in, it's like the first two or three games, it's like, yeah, my aim's off. I'm terrible. Same thing with drifting. You start off, it's like, you got to like recalibrate everything and it just gets better and better. And the better you get, the faster you can hit corners really well compared to when you're a beginner. Like it might take until the end of the day

you finally get that corner right I entered at a good speed the car didn't go too sideways I kept my speed up yeah and you get that huge rush and then you get that again and again and again and again and honestly it doesn't the rush doesn't get any worse it doesn't get any lower you

you just end up going faster, more angle, more speed. - Power. - More power. - The orgasm just gets more intense. - It does. - You're really selling me on this. So like, okay, how long would you say it takes to from like coming from nothing to going on like one of the tracks that isn't like the practice track? - I mean, you can do it straight away. Like they have other tracks which are kind of smaller. But I mean, I'd say I've been drifting, let's see, for like 20 years.

And I'm pretty confident. Like I could probably, I've never actually driven like a top level car before. I'm pretty confident that if you give me a few laps, I'd be okay at it. Like I'm not a top level driver. I've got the, I hold the second highest speed.

I've got like a diamond license sort of for it. - Right, right. - I'm like a diamond ranked driver. - Not challenger, yeah. - Just grinding to get master in challenger. - Yeah, right. I'm not at that level yet. I haven't done comps for a long time. But I can confidently drive pretty much any track. That's been 20 years.

- It depends on you, but if you drifted every, if you drifted two or three times a week, like say you go to Ebisu, you went there two or three times a week, it would maybe take you two weeks or so to be pretty confident most of the tracks, depending if you crashed or not. - Right, okay. - Yeah, the crash is definitely- - Yeah. - Crashes are- - They fuck people's heads, right? When they like, as in like their mental towards like drifting if they crash.

Some people. Some people. I've seen people quit drifting. Yeah. I've seen people quit. It's like they'll blow their engine or they'll crash and they're like- I'm done. Yeah, I'm done. Yeah. I've seen one guy actually sell his car at the track to another guy, like a guy who had a truck there with an empty truck. He's like, what do you want to do with this? Do you want me to tow you back to where? He's like, man, I just want to sell it. So the guy, it was a deal. It was a car deal. He's like, yeah, I'll buy it. Here's cash. I'll buy it from you here.

- Okay. - Ultimate rage quit. - Yeah, like, literally rage quit. So yeah, people just give up 'cause it's a huge, like, once you crash a car, then it's- - It's a big, like, decision point. - Yeah, it's like, it can cost, like, several thousand dollars even to get it back to, and it's a crazy,

it's a crashed car now it's not perfect anymore it's not good you might from that crash you might have all sorts of things happen so it can be really expensive some crashes you can be lucky it's just a bumper other ones it's like you bend the whole frame and the whole car is a write off and it's just parts now Jesus yeah

- Yeah, so it sounds like a double-edged sword, right? - Can't wait, can't wait. - It's a gamble, it is a gamble. I recently set up a simulator rig, which I'm hoping to use more of my Twitch streams.

just to get more sort of seat virtual seat time. Like it's not as good as the real thing, but it's still pretty good. Like it just- - You have like the steering wheel like. - Yeah, I got the steering wheel and I got all the pedals and everything and I got the little seat and the rack and everything that goes on. Yeah, it's good. It's at a stage now where you can use it as a fairly good facsimile of the real thing.

Not so much as the feeling, but just the concentration mindset. - And like a combination of like movements. - Yeah, like you can practice your, like 'cause you know that like there's your tracks IRL and there's tracks in game. So I can watch the video of me at the track and then go in the simulator and go, okay, I keep doing this here. I gotta unlearn that 'cause then you just hit the reset button back to start, back to start, you know, screw it up. Okay, back to start, let's try it again.

Okay, got it. And you just get that muscle memory. That's the future, isn't it? I mean, it's kind of like, if you think it's like a sort of a, it's like a speed run.

If you think about it, you know like- - All drifting in future will be done virtually. - 80% drifting speed. - There are entire virtual drifting. - I've seen. - Yeah, drifting competitions and they're serious, man. - Really? - Yeah, I went in a comp once. I just went in sort of as a joke and I just made a huge ass out of myself. I crashed off the start line. Yeah, it's serious. - I'll do the virtual ones compared to actually doing the real thing though.

in the sense of what they do in there, it's like almost the same. - Oh wow. - The way they drive. I mean, even like there's things like iRacing and stuff where it's like, it's a full on NASCAR race and it's run at like the same sort of schedule as the real thing. - Right. - But it's just not real. See here's the thing though, some,

Some drivers who are really good in the game have tried doing an IRL and they're just like, I can't do it. It's just too scary. - Oh yeah. - There's a lot more forces at play. - Yeah. - Like there's the G forces. - Right, right. - Also the fact that if you could die. - Yeah, yeah. - You can crash and get hurt. Like at Ebisu, like I said before, I saw a guy come off the track, hit the wall, like at an oblique angle. - Was he okay? - Huh? - Was he okay? - No, he broke his leg and his ribs.

- Yikes. - I'd rather that than a fucking sticker on my car. - Which wins? - A broken leg or one sticky boy? - A sticker that, do you know those fucking stickers that do not peel off as well? That's my fucking nightmare.

- Like industrial glue stickers don't fucking come, sorry. - Are we still on the stickers? - It's in my head now. - That was like half an hour ago and you're like. - You never forget. - Recurring nightmares. - I'll just forget my fear like, are you kidding me? Man. - Oh my God. - So how often do you stream on Twitch?

Oh God, don't ask my subs that. They're very angry. I used to do a lot more regularly, but then when the Rona happened, I thought like everyone else did, oh, this free time. Yeah, I can get back into it properly. Yeah.

- No, because- - Yeah, that never happens. - It just made it even worse. My aim is like twice a week, I wanna do some more like SIM stuff, also IRL. My next goal is to do a full track day as an IRL stream. - What is your Twitch? - I've sort of, what's that? - What is your Twitch? - It is, unfortunately it's Nori-ero Japan. - Nori-ero Japan. - I couldn't get Nori-ero. - Check him out. - Add that on the end there, but yeah, it's mostly car related stuff.

like either car games like My Summer Car or other sort of indie games and stuff like that. But I also want to do more IRL stuff now that all this sort of stuff has started calming down. Track days are running again. I want to get like the backpack and all that sort of stuff and do a full track day. I think that would do really well. Yeah, that'd be sick. All of my, if you look at, if you sort my highlights, like all the biggest highlights are all stuff in the car. So drifting. So the best thing about that is like it's,

you don't know what's gonna happen. - Yeah. - I can crash in every corner. - They're all waiting. - Yeah, they're all waiting there. But then sometimes something really cool happens. Like I think I was in a car actually with Suenaga, the guy you rode with at Ebisu. I was riding passenger and he got like within a millimeter of the car in front. We're doing like third gear and Chad is just going. - Pog! - Pog! - And then was he just like laughing like he always does? - Yeah, he just like,

- I fucking love that guy. - Just his laugh is just so like emotionless and yet it's just so maniacal. I fucking love it. - I've never seen a handbrake move like that. This man was like pumping it up. I was like, what the fuck is happening? It was insane. The man was insane. Absolute legend. - I remember when we were like learning the handbrake turns and just like that one session gave me like the fucking worst wankers cramp I've ever like felt in my life.

- I've never heard of this word. - It's the same kind of movement, right? - God, God. - Where is your dick? Cranking it up?

- No, because I've never had to crank it like that hard. And it just was a movement that my arms weren't used to, man. What can I say? But it was fun as hell. - That's a normal thing though you do get. Also you hurt your hand, right? - Yeah. - Let me tell you, okay. Never put your thumbs inside the steering wheel.

- I think that's exactly what happened. - I think he was scared to death, so he was gripping it. - No, no, I guarantee you that's what happened is, 'cause what you do is you put your hand, your thumb inside the steering wheel and then when it counter steers, the spoke of it comes in and wangs you on the fingers. - Yeah, yeah. - That happens a lot. - That's exactly, yeah, because that's exactly, like now that I'm thinking about it, like if I was holding it like this, where I injured myself is exactly where that spoke was. - It's a really, they should have told you that.

- Come on, AB Sue. - Thumbs out. - What the fuck? - I didn't think we were going fast enough for it to fucking matter to grip onto the thing. I was like, woo, you know, like- - Well, sorry that you're a fucking natural, man. - We were going slow. You didn't have to hold on. - I've never driven a manual. Give me a fucking break, man. - What do you think the car was gonna go, Joey? - I don't fucking know. I was scared.

- Anyway. - Just keep bullying you. - Yeah, anyway. So yeah, it's been lovely to have you on. - Thank you very much for coming on. - Would you like to shout out anything on your end? - Well, I have a YouTube channel, Nori Arrow. It's car stuff. I do wanna do more. There's more Ita Show shows and I eventually wanna do an Ita Show as well. - We gotta come out and so on. - Yeah, we gotta check that out. - Oh yeah, yeah. - Actually this- - I would love to see an Ita Show.

- Like, yeah, Ita Shif Festival. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I'll 100% let you know. Also, so this weekend I'm going out to a track out in the middle of the mountains in Gunma, which is actually an old school cycling track. It's like a mountain road sort of thing, but it's actually, they use it for drifting now. - Rip cyclists. - It's gonna be like a sort of simulated toge drifting and all these cool guys are coming. - How many cyclists can we drift into?

That's pretty cool. And I've got a bunch of other stuff coming up. I don't know. So yeah, check it out. - Also social links. - By the way, I brought a little present. I see you have a lot of things on the walls here. So I brought a little, - Oh, is it? - Oh, it's so cute. - A little A86 from Initial D. - It's even got the tofu thing. - Oh, that's so cute. - I thought we could put it over on the shelf somewhere. - Thank you very much. - Thank you. - That's so cute. I love it.

- Look at all these beautiful patrons. - Thank you very much to the patrons for supporting us and also supporting the drift episode that we did. It's all led up to here.

- And also like we've talked about this from like our perspective, but if you ever get the chance to try out drifting, even if it's just being driven around a track, I highly recommend it. As we've said, it is an adrenaline rush like you've never felt before. These guys have just turned fucking three right now. - I don't wanna do it. - Wee!

But yeah, if you'd like to support the show, make sure to go over to our patron. Also check us out on our subreddit and our Twitter. And if you want to listen to the show on audio, then check us out on Spotify. - Yes. - Links in the description. - And go follow this beautiful boy. - Yes, absolutely. Go check out all the links to Noriara's stuff down in the description below. And thanks for coming on. - Thank you very much for having me. - It was great. - Hope you've had a good time. - Awesome. - And with that said, that's everything for today. We will see you guys next time. - Bye.

Hardy Fiber Cement Siding handles conditions that can cause damage to vinyl. From fire to hail, Hardy Siding stands tall through it all, helping trade professionals look their best when they recommend Hardy Siding and Trim. See the proof at jameshardy.com.