welcome to another episode of what's it like it's your friendAnming here
mina-san konnichiwa , dajia hao this episode is really difficult for me because we're
gonna be comparing two places that I really liked the first one is Beijing
where I spent two years and the second one is Tokyo where I also spent two
years these are cities that I absolutely love and they are huge and they are
really really crowded just as you can see here on the Tokyo subway system but
don't be fooled because beijing is also very very crowded and has a ton of
people so from natural scenery to cityscapes we're gonna be looking at what
you can do and facing and what you can do in Tokyo now they're very different
places but you're gonna see some similarities and some differences so
let's start with Beijing now something you probably didn't know about Beijing
is that you can go skiing there because it's quite a lot colder than Tokyo
especially in the winter I went skiing with my colleague and my roommate and
she did not like it let me tell you it was a disaster so we started off pretty
good everybody was all smiles and we were just riding and having a good time
But shortly after that I realized that it wasn't gonna go so well she started
to get really nervous
and pretty soon my roommate was nowhere to be seen because she was still up on
the hill and I was going down down a slope of fake fake Beijing snow that's
right it's fake snow just look at this guy there's not a cloud there and
there's not going to be because Beijing is very dry in the winter especially
Tokyo is wet it rains all the time in Beijing it just about never rains because it
is semi desert so oh there's my roommate
let's just go ahead and skip to summer I'm sure when you think of Beijing you
think of the Great Wall but how about the unrestored part because quite
frankly if you're on the other part you're just climbing something that was
redone in the 1980s this is the real deal and there's kids climbing it okay
the little girl doesn't want to talk to me but I thought she was really amazing
because this is the restored part of the Great Wall which was done like I said in
the 1980s and it is very difficult those steps are high and you can see people
struggling behind me just to climb up this thing but if you go to the right
part there just slide at the end which is really really cool and it's way
longer than you would think you're on this thing for like forever it's like
half the fun but be careful because there are some bad drivers there I mean
they will just stop right in front of you for no apparent reason whatsoever
especially on crowded days so be careful and if you're not and you're looking at
the scenery and not paying attention like I was at certain parts or filming a
GoPro video like I may have been doing you're gonna crash but that could be a
lot worse so yeah this is a picture of a nice beijing day and this is a not so nice
day I took these yeah there's pollution but we deal with it
so next we're gonna be talking about Tokyo and when you think of Tokyo you
probably think of a huge striving metropolis which is true it is a big
city it's very dense it's much smaller area than Beijing and it's very very
densely populated but there's also it's a Prefecture so you can go out into the
countryside which is where I found this waterfall there might be a lot of people
hiking out there depending on if you go during the middle of the week or if you
go on the weekend but it's very peaceful and that would be West Tokyo so not
actually Tokyo the city but Tokyo the prefecture and it's just so clean and so
beautiful out there I mean I mentioned the pollution in Beijing Tokyo has
pollution but it doesn't even compare and you can even find a bamboo forest
but this place is hot it is so hot and humid in Tokyo Beijing feels better in
the summer there's a lot of tradition in Beijing and tradition in Tokyo you can
go to Meiji Jingu Meiji temple and see people having their wedding every once in
a while and of course Tokyo's claim to fame which Beijing does not have is the
cherry blossoms Sakura and Japanese people wearing their traditional clothes you
yukata and kimono out when they walk around and go flower viewing so these
were all planted by the way they're not natural big clumps of cherry blossoms
don't just grow over a bridge they planted these many many years ago for
people to enjoy in the city and I love it
don't you love when random strangers talk to you on the beach
now I'm totally okay with it and I love going to the beach and I'm glad there is
one near Tokyo because there's not one in Beijing at all but most people don't
go there for the beach they're going for Harajuku and the shopping and the
cutesy stuff which by the way really adds up that stuff is kind of expensive
as opposed to Beijing where you feel rich because everything's cheap there's
also a Disneyland which has been here forever in chiba which is not actually
tokyo but close there's no disneyland in beijing but there is one in shanghai it
was built around 2016 there's lots of temples in tokyo as well as beijing and
there's kaminarimon own which is where i'm at right now in Asakusa very famous
and then there's always people doing stuff that I don't understand like I
don't know what's going on right here in this scene I've seen similar things in
Beijing I didn't know what was happening then either but I believe there's a
method to it and they have some sort of purification ceremony as well when you
go into temples like Meiji Jingu Meiji temple in Tokyo where they drink
water and they wash your hands so what do you guys think would you rather go to
Beijing or rather go to Tokyo actually they're both very cool I can't say which
one's better than the other cuz I like the both so tell me your favorite thing
about Beijing and Tokyo in the comments section now thanks for watching
see you next time