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