things are about to change i'm hoping
for the better but things could also go
terribly terribly wrong along the way
so allow the documentation process to
begin
as a kid i always had two major dreams
the second of which was to come and live
here in japan and what was no small feat
to get here i've now spent the majority
of my adult life right here in japan
thankfully i've stuck it out to the
point where i can honestly say that
japan has given me more than i ever
expected to have in life definitely more
than i could put into a single
conversation or youtube video in fact i
considered listing off all of the things
that japan has allowed me to do and the
things it's allowed me to be a part of
but there's an entire channel for that
you know i am way too restless and
excited to sit here and do this so
let's go to this at the airport i've
always wanted this channel to feel like
this this journey of its own that you're
kind of tagging along with but in order
for it to be a journey i kind of feel
like we need to be making some
kind of progress and with everything and
everyone that the last two years have
taken i've decided that it's it's time
to move forward
no more waiting
i'm chasing my dream of becoming an
aviator i want to fly i always have one
fly ever since i was a little kid it is
by far my biggest
dream in life i'm so excited to even be
able to say these words and i'm going to
be doing that here in japan
starting immediately i've actually been
slowly and quietly kind of working on
this in the background for some time but
after a fairly big personal loss back in
february i figured i would just stop
wasting time and just just go for it
just do it
i had to move i live out in kyushu now
by the way so that's a thing i didn't
want to say anything about it too early
because there were so many steps and
points along the way where anything and
everything could have gone wrong and
stopped the entire process the first big
challenging step was getting my pilot's
health check through the government
which is an insanely time consuming and
difficult and tedious health check i was
very nervous for that i'm slightly
nervous because if this doesn't go well
then nothing goes well nothing happens
so this is step one
everything rides on this i hope i'm as
healthy as i can
four and a half hours the entire thing
took four
and a half hours but the doctor said i
am approved so unless anything major
comes back in my blood work saying that
i'm dying or
in terrible shape or i guess dying so
now i just spend the next week waiting
for the blood results and staring at
tokyo tower
luckily that went smoothly i got the
health check and that enabled me to go
to the next step which was applying for
the card basically that allows me
to fly
and the day that that card arrived was
exciting and emotional like i now have a
card that says i am allowed to fly an
aircraft i still don't know how plus it
took me three days to remember how to
pronounce the name of the card because
you know what that actually reminds me
the real kicker to all of this
let me show you something
[Music]
so the big challenge here is that i am
doing all of this
in japanese
my ground school my flight school my
textbooks my tests my flight checks
pretty much
all of it is being conducted
in japanese you might be asking yourself
well can you read japanese at that level
and the answer is not
yet i don't want to say no because i'm
working on one of the biggest struggles
in it is i needed to learn
everything in english first so that when
i'm learning it in japanese i at least
have a base of knowledge to work with
and i know what's going on and so for
the past four to six months i've
actually been spending between two and
eight hours every single day while
running this channel
studying i'd say eighty to ninety
percent of that is actually learning
aviation and then the other
ten to twenty percent ends up being me
studying the language and the kanji and
it's getting easier and easier but i'm
not
quite there yet i will be but it's gonna
take time also you know let me continue
this part as i do a little bit of a
cockpit check
i have essentially joined
flight school
in japan
and while everything is in japanese the
international language of aviation is
still english which means a lot of the
other students can speak english opening
up the opportunity to make new friends
and learn from each other and everything
like that and i feel like i should also
say that no this doesn't mean that this
channel is going to turn into an
aviation channel there will be a
separate channel for that this channel
will continue on theme just with the odd
adventure from above testing every now
and then and how long will all of this
take well usually you can get your
private pilot's license in a few months
to a year but adding in the fact that
i've got to learn it all in japanese and
learn all the jargon and the kanji and
everything like that i've earmarked
myself
about a year year and a half hey if it
takes two years that's fine i think it
goes without saying but i would much
much rather do it right and actually
learn it well than to do it quickly the
majority of my time is going to be spent
here in a place called kirishima it's at
the south of kyushu i'll be using this
as the base for obviously my training as
well as my travels out around japan
which means we're probably gonna get a
lot more kyushu videos and i'll still be
making fairly regular trips back to
tokyo in fact i'm gonna go back to tokyo
in just a couple weeks to do this
three-day course and test for my pilot
radio exam which i'm really not looking
forward to because some people claim
it's more difficult than the tests that
you have to pass to get your license
which there are multiple of by the way
ranging from navigation and piloting
skills all the way up to japanese
aeronautical law and it's there's a
chance i've bitten off more than i can
chew at this point of the process i'm
i'm okay with that
only time will tell but when it's all
done providing i survive
i'll be a pilot and that opens up this
entirely
other world like there is a whole other
world up there that most of us never get
to see with its own culture and language
and viewpoint and mindset and
i'm just so incredibly excited to to
finally be at the doorstep of having
access
to all of that like obviously i'm in
hangar right now but someday i'll be
able to look out the window down at
japan as i fly over it is so exciting
and the patreon crew has been so
supportive in all of this which i really
appreciate because this is one of the
biggest challenges in my entire life
it's
a bit more expensive than it is to do it
overseas but i just got tired of waiting
for the option to maybe someday go
overseas and get my pilot's license and
then even when i come back i would still
have to do some of the tests and get the
radio exam and everything in order to
convert it to a japanese pilot license
and all that boring stuff and quite
frankly i would much rather go broke
trying to become a pilot then to spend
the rest of my life wishing that i had
done this it's getting pretty hot in
here if i'm being completely honest with
you i am the greatest
mix
of excited and terrified that i have
been in a very
very long time and again while i'm sure
some of the flight stuff will make its
way into this channel here i've already
set up an entirely other channel to
document my aviation journey here in
japan while i'm still working things out
it's likely that the majority episodes
will drop on patreon first possibly even
months in advance
i still don't know what shape it's all
gonna take it's
it's up in the air my first ever flight
is coming up tomorrow by the way which
i'm insanely excited about and it's one
of the reasons i've come out to do a
plane and cockpit check and just kind of
get used to the look and feel of
everything
but my heart is absolutely racing out of
my chest there is just so much so many
things that i want to say right now and
there's there's just not enough time to
do it there's
i wish you could feel my pulse
like my heart is serious
i also make this knowing that some of
you may even be pilots and if you are i
would love to hear from you or you might
be like
some of my friends who think i'm
absolutely crazy for doing this but
either way i guess this is the basics
this is
what's going on where i am what i'm
doing why i've moved
i
i think i've said i'm excited about 4
000 times so we'll leave that as is
thank you guys so much for joining us if
you haven't hit subscribe already this
is your formal invitation i would love
to have you as a part of this journey
also the new channel is linked
everything's gonna be like thank you
thank you
so much with all that being said i will
uh
i'll see you again
real soon
also these clouds right here just tell
me summer is on its way and it feels so
back in university there were times
where i would actually go out to a local
small airfield and study just so i could
watch the planes coming in and out and
then when i first started this channel
there were times where i would actually
go to the airport and work in the lounge
just so i could feel closer to the plane
that's how much that is how much i love
planes and that is how much i am looking
forward to this and
[Music]
open the door right into my
[Applause]
oh they're not leg let me use these
planes are they