so this is my uh my vladimir putin calendar um it's on sale in just about every shop
in japan they love i love putin in japan um i might not agree with the man or the politics but
there's no doubt the photos in this calendar bring me a lot of joy in my everyday life so here he is
uh with some binoculars just looking through some binoculars here he is it's casually sitting
on a rock and having a bit of fun yeah it's a great reminder that you can run a country of 146
million people but you can also you can also have a little bit of fun along the way as well lovely
they say you can learn an awful lot about someone from having a look at their bookshelf so
i'm not really sure this is a good idea i call it my disappointing bookshelf because by the
standards of most bookshelves it's pretty small just by virtue of the fact i do live in a tiny
japanese apartment with walls made of paper i'd like to point out most of my uh more intellectual
books they're all on kindle so don't judge me just buy these books all my goods you know
intellectual books they're definitely definitely on my kindle i do think now more than ever there
is a place for physical books in a world where everything's digitized i like to just walk in here
if i'm feeling like i haven't got any ideas or inspiration i can turn my attention
to this bookshelf just simply pick up a book and you know dive in and find ideas and inspiration
it's not all books on here though there are various objects and narcissistic items designed to
inflate my ego like this paper this newspaper and this is the japan news the english um component of
the yamiri shimbun the biggest newspaper in japan here on the back on the on the back of the paper
uh videos videos like a party videos like a party look for the real japan and then beneath
this huge headline there's a large photo of me standing alone in the middle of a road
filming myself with a camera alone videos videos like a party nevertheless it was a privilege um so
thank you to the yamiri shinmun for that um where to start let's start with some of the more weird
things we've got here let's start with oshiritante literally detective [ __ ] he is a detective with
a ass for a face and um he goes around solving crimes really i'm not really into or shiritante
even though he's a really quite big figure in japan particularly for kids he's designed for kids
don't know who thought that was a good idea really and the reason i own it is not because
i like this character or the concept in any way shape or form but it reminds me to
think outside the box because you don't need to write a masterpiece with great narrative structure
or wonderful characters you literally just need a detective with an ass for a face to succeed
and the money will come rolling in the bar can be fantastically low also got this dvd here
of this is a superhero japanese superhero planting tree man let's make the forest of life with
dream courage and hope his motives are simply to encourage the planting of trees i got given this
when i was at a buddhist ceremony once the people working there i think they had too much money to
spend and for tax reasons maybe they wanted to you know spend the money on something and that's where
planting tree man came in although given the sheer amount of youtubers who seem to be planting trees
at the moment um it seems like it was ahead of its time bit prophetic if anything planting tree man
continuing on the theme of slightly odd stuff this is a notepad i bought from the 100 yen store
where they often have weird english written on the front um this isn't so much weird as
well it made me think made me reflect on my life and how i do things
it says you alone can change your life no one else can have a really fun day meow meow meow
i don't know why this is there i don't know if it's the cat saying it it seems like a slightly
odd juxtaposition nevertheless i like that and uh whenever i'm having a bad day i don't look at it
while we're up here we've got some artwork some of the coolest fan art i've had
handed to me in person at an event in tokyo in february i've got myself there natsuki with the
balloons i don't like the fact that riotro is on a cloud sort of insinuating he's got some sort of
god-like status that's my only criticism other than that fantastic artwork and thanks again to
the person who made that you're awesome there's a few books on here that i'm a little bit
uncomfortable with being on the shelves for one reason or another um i think this is one of them
the big book of philosophy um it's it's a bit awkward in conversations when you
bring this up to be honest hmm yes i find in these highly irrational times people tend to
underestimate the important row philosophy can play within contemporary discourse
wouldn't you wouldn't you agree yeah oh yeah definitely it's important to um think about
stuff um where did you where'd you study yes well i was initially at oxford for three years i did an
awfully long thesis on the unified account of rationality in belief desire in action
oh yeah yeah i like that one it was quite the adventure down the academic rabbit hole so to
speak how about yourself where did you do your reading um the big book of philosophy
oh gosh oh dear i did actually buy this book for a good reason though other than a
nice presented overview of philosophy about four or five years ago when i got this book
i was studying japanese and i stumbled across this memorization technique that meant i could learn
40 to 50 japanese kanji characters in a day how to write them and their meaning i started applying
that memorization technique to just general information so the idea was i was to get this book
go through every single one of the 300 pages and memorize all the philosophical kind of terms the
people the times you know what for the first 30 to 40 pages i actually succeeded i was able
to memorize the people the places the facts pretty well um and then i realized at the end of it all
that i needed to get out more and that was the end of that oh and then i forgot it all and that
was a complete waste of time i think the second most embarrassing thing on this bookshelf is this
um what was that no that's a receipt from from a bookshop 14 pounds ah so that's how much
my relatives spent on this book at christmas this was brought to me by a relative who knew that i
loved filmmaking but didn't know that i despised the for dummies series which tends to oversimplify
things it's true it's written by an award-winning filmmaker but i just don't like them i can't stand
them i think they're hideous i think they're ugly you see them on coffee tables people never read
them the only time i actually find practical application practical use for this is when i'm
using it to prop open my door you know you need to keep the door open it's actually the perfect
size and weight to make that happen and that is why i still carry it besides i'm not a dummy i
don't think a dummy could make videos like a party if you do actually want to learn about filmmaking
highly recommend the big screen by david thompson fantastic overview no criticisms there better than
filmmaking for dummies i've got quite a few books that seem to revolve around
creativity and self-help i've got this book here this little book 642 tiny things to write about
and inside you've got loads of random prompts and things to kind of give you ideas like write
a breakup text to yourself if you could time travel to last week for one hour what would
you do i think i wouldn't have drunk as much sake on friday write a one-line ad for a rubber band
bendy bollock far don't [ __ ] know write the first line of a constitution for the new country
you just founded uh in the country of broad topia nobody can buy or sell legally the for dummies
guide series of books they are completely outlawed on penalty of death
there are some things on this bookshelf i look at and think oh that's disappointing like this book
here the daily stoic journal this is a diary and you're encouraged to reflect on your day basically
the good and the bad and i bought this with a real sense of optimism for the first time in my life i
was actually going to sit down and keep a journal keep a diary and i got two how far did i get
that's empty oh dear didn't even make it to the end of january i made it to january 23rd
and then i gave up so that was unfortunate it's a good book though i do recommend it and it does
kind of make you think about what you're doing in everyday life so i mean this one
may 13th write about the bad habits you're fueling um in my case not writing in the diary i suppose
one thing you might have noticed is there's a complete lack of fiction on these shelves the
only fiction that i have is this animal farm george orwell's animal farm fantastic book
even then that is essentially non-fiction it's one big allegory for the rise of the communist party
in russia nevertheless great book fantastic guide on how not to run an agricultural business and
the artwork is fantastic look at that i used to be something of a self-help junkie around the age of
18 19 i was a bit lost in life i didn't know where i was going or what i was doing
don't think i do now really but back then i needed some help and i did buy a lot of self-help books
along the way such as the seven habits of highly effective people i don't really like it instead
of reading books like this i would just recommend reading autobiographies about entrepreneurs and
what they went through to build their company or what they battled against to get there
what are the seven habits of highly successful people spoiler alert be proactive think and win
synergise sharpen the saw jesus it sounds like sounds like some pretty dodgy advice to me
and these are going to make me look really bad given what they're called not doing myself any
favors here the 33 strategies of war and this one is the 48 laws of power straight off of a bomb
villains bookshelf above all they are really just history lessons for example law number four always
say less than necessary and then we've got case studies here from roman history french history
backing up that principle so it's quite above all it's basically a history lesson that just sounds
a lot more sinister than it is but i highly recommend it if you're into business strategy
history really good books highly recommend them very well written by robert greene i should
probably turn some attention to the japanese books given that that is overwhelmingly what i have on
these shelves and that is because for the most part i find when it comes to learning materials
in japanese they're still better in printed form and that's because in japan printing is still much
bigger than digital bear that in mind if you want to learn japanese i think my favorite learning
japanese book is down here as you can see it's ripped to pieces just because i've actually used
it quite a lot over the years i still occasionally use it now the ultimate japanese phrase book
this book has 1800 sentences uh used in everyday life in japan it doesn't teach you the grammar
but what it does do is teach you casual useful phrases like my wife is having an affair
in this it's a useful phrase to know they have a section for just about every situation you'd
ever face um often in chronological order for example this one has the private zone
and it talks about dating can i sit next to you tonight
sweet talk i'm having a great time with you
can i walk you home
is there a love hotel near here shikakuni do you have protection get the idea it takes you
from going on your first date to kissing and doing stuff in love hotels to having children
babies kids and teens and then eventually and inevitably it ends with divorce i've got some
manga books here which i use for learning and reading um one piece and detective conan i
never really got into manga though so don't ask me questions about manga because i don't know
any and then also for the next level up there's breaking into japanese literature where they have
on one side they have the japanese and then on the other side there's the english translations now
there is a book here on the shelf that is a little bit odd it's not something i would normally buy
or get or read and it is this one uh onago room it's basically a book filled with fantastic photos
of rooms of girls or girls rooms um like that one that's a girl in a room i was in a bookshop
in sendai i was strolling through it and this book caught my eye i think the front cover is
quite provocative it's quite cool and i picked it up and had a flick through and i was just
completely in awe of the sheer variety of rooms one of the things you find we're living in japan
is we don't have a lot of space to live in you really have to be creative and flicking through
this book just seeing how women across the country have adapted their rooms and managed to pack all
their belongings into such a small space and infuse their own kind of sense of personality
i find it really kind of hypnotically brilliant and interesting some rooms are tidier than others
as you can see and also as somebody who's into film and cinematography i really enjoyed looking
at the composition of the images and the lighting it sounds like i'm making this up sounds like i'm
trying to justify why i bought this book which may appear to be a little bit sleazy pretend though
great book onago room and it's by shiori kawamoto because most of my favorite books aren't here
on this bookshelf and i don't feel like it's an entirely accurate representation of who i am i'm
going to list off a few books that i do recommend that i do love the first one is the obstacle
is the way by ryan holliday the ancient art of turning adversity to advantage it basically uses
stoic philosophy as we saw earlier with this book i think he wrote this one as well actually brian
holliday he loves stoicism but it kind of gives you a framework for everyday living that helps
you take on lots of challenges and feel like you can actually win samurai william by giles milton
chronicles the real life adventure and story of william adams a british guy who got on a boat for
two years sailed to japan and ended up becoming the right-hand man of tokugawa iayasu the most
powerful man in japan that's quite an incredible story it is real you can have an amazing memory
by dominic o'brien a lot of the techniques that i used in that book helped me memorize and learn
japanese kanji characters japanese vocabulary without it i think i would have really struggled
to learn japanese absolutely instrumental in my ability to learn and remember japanese ghosts
of the tsunami and people who eat darkness both by richard lloyd parry both of them cover pretty
serious topics one the tsunami and how it affected a school okawa elementary school in um in miyagi
which is a terrible story about how lots of children passed away in the tsunami as a result of
poor leadership and inaction by the staff as a horrific story but kind of teaches you how
collectivism and collectivist thought can often fail spectacularly sometimes in certain situations
and also the people who eat darkness an equally unpleasant story about a british girl who came to
japan worked in a hostess bar and disappeared suddenly and it was a big scandal about 10 15
years ago but it kind of chronicles what happened there and some of the failings by
japanese police and finally the japanese mind which is a series of essays discussing every
aspect of japanese culture but mainly the mindset of japanese people i've never found a book that
has explained japanese thinking as well as this book has the japanese mind fantastic book if you
want to understand what's going on with the people around you if you come and live and work here
in japan so there you have it my bookshelf tour and what have we learned we've learned that i'm a
terrible person which is why you should definitely subscribe to this channel who knows what could be
coming out here on a broad perspective next week but i hope you found at least one book
that you like here on this show for one book that interests you so feel free to ask me any questions
about the books here in the comments section below i'll linger around and answer as many as
i can and also i've linked many of these books in the description box below if you want to buy them
because some of them are a little bit difficult to find online particularly the japanese ones
so hopefully that'll save you some time but for now no matter where you might be
out there in the big wide world as always many thanks for watching i'll see you next time i'm
off to think about the big philosophical questions in life such as come up with an imaginative
nickname for your least favorite person well we've already done that haven't we he's called risottoro