kyouma buck to the vision still a little
movie back to the future
neither together oh yeah psycho the show
mmm time to elaborate this that no sir
no Laura Donnell O'Connell it's good
Testament idea Chuck you bitch-ass
they're not give me that ski bury ya
yeah gomathy go go go Johnny be good
Nazca be good hmm rooster me hmm target
right time most coyotes no sir there
abouts 2018 it's all nothing good girl
punch myself in the face
[Music]
I genuinely don't know why drink this
stuff actually taste I swear well you
know what
there's no disappointment without
expectations and I had I had high
expectations for 2019 after finishing my
teen thousand kilometer never-ending
cycle of despair I was gonna kick off
the year fitter than ever before I was
gonna run up Mount Fuji backwards I was
gonna launch my TV career once and for
all and finally help people declutter
their everyday living with my unique
groundbreaking philosophy Luke Jennifer
I want you to look around the house
possessions in your life that don't
spark joy and then I want you to burn
them burn Marie Kondo would have loved
it and yet none of these things happened
instead I spent six months this year
hunched over a laptop editing 27 videos
about a bicycle for those of you who are
new to this channel and don't know what
Jerri cross Japan is basically 18 months
ago I decided I wanted to get fit by
cycling 2,000 kilometers across Japan
and along the way I'll vlog every single
day of the journey the end result was a
27 part travel series and to call it an
adventure would be an understatement you
know against the backdrop of
jaw-dropping landscapes mouth-watering
dishes and eccentric characters and
guests it was epic in scale it really
was and above all along the way I also
got some free biscuits
however off camera the entire project
almost completely broke me and from
start to finish you can quite literally
watch my face crumble in real time
evolving like a broken Pokemon so today
I'm here to offer you four life lessons
I learned on journey across Japan
whether he watched it or not and to give
you the inside scoop on what went on
behind the scenes why I cut out one of
my guests entirely why it took six
months to produce and of course how much
weight I lost along the way and
somewhere near the end we'll try and
work out if it was all worth it or not
and if I would actually go back in time
and punch myself in the face last year
instead of doing the obvious thing which
is of course to travel back 2,000 years
and get a selfie with Jesus he'd love it
look at its
how come the upload schedule seems to be
so irregular maybe I'm imagining but I
swear you said weekly videos or
something like that
I never said weekly videos every single
day of that trip every single day of
that month long journey across Japan I'm
gonna be making a video and putting it
up on the channel daily it's true for
some reason when I came up with journey
across Japan I thought I could cycle 50
kilometres a day film the whole thing
upload it and somehow have daily videos
I don't really know what I was thinking
in retrospect maybe I drunk a little bit
too much Pocari sweat and whilst I did
have a small team with me to help film
it all ultimately I decided I wanted to
edit them myself because I'm an absolute
control freak and surprisingly during
the first week of the journey somehow we
actually succeeded I'd get up eight
o'clock cycle 50 kilometres in the rain
film two hours of footage finished the
day of cycling check into a hotel have a
quick dinner comprised of energy jelly
and then edit it around until four
o'clock in the morning and then repeat
the process all over again although
there was just one problem I was very
nearly dead in fact at one point I did
fall asleep at the wheel or the
handlebar and then my stubbornness in
not letting other people edit the videos
for me was ultimately my downfall I
guess against all odds the cycle was
completed in 46 days and every single
day of that journey I did vlog in it we
did film it and because there shot in
real time we can actually watch my
facial hair grow and become more and
more horrific as the episodes went on
however by the end of the cycle all the
videos have piled up and because we had
two hours of footage for every single
episode it took me six months to work my
way through them and whilst the last
episodes of the series were amongst the
most watched the sporadic release
schedule cast a shadow over the whole
project and well ruin it for a lot of
people unfortunately and when the final
episode in Kagoshima was released in
August I turned my back completely on
journey across Japan forever and never
looked at a bicycle again the fact the
sight of bicycles makes me physically
sick
[Music]
looking back at it all now I realize the
problem was I just didn't know what I
wanted journey across Japan to be cycle
series of weight loss series or a
straight-up travel series it's very much
a jack of all trades but master of none
it's a valuable lesson I'll be taking
forward into next year's project journey
across Japan to abroad on a skateboard
yeah it's gonna be it's gonna be amazing
now I'd rather put my fingers in a
blender this year I felt a mixture of
anger a disappointment constantly angry
at myself my handling of it all and the
fact I've wasted so much this year and
disappointed that I let thousands of
viewers down I let you guys down by the
way I handle it all so for that I am
sorry genuinely be bold always push
yourself outside of your comfort zone
but know your limits especially if you
run the risk of letting people down
because it is the worst feeling of all
well that I'm falling off your bicycle
one of the criticisms I got on journey
across Japan was that it was too
scripted it was too choreographed and
pre-planned and that's great
constructive criticism although has got
one tiny flaw and that is none of it was
scripted didn't fall off a bicycle for
fun or cycle through a flood for my own
personal amusement because cycling 2,000
kilometers and filming every single day
of it simply wasn't enough we also threw
challenges in as well to add fuel to the
fire
oh for God's sake interact with locals
ask three people to say journey across
Japan on camera and there are some
fantastic challenges including pimping
our bicycles out with retro video games
and dodgy pillows speaking only Japanese
for one whole day soon at all soo bahk
would steal a copy attempting to get
strangers to say the phrase journey
across Japan or beer with limited
success journey a cool
[Music]
journey across Japan journey across the
Japan one of the more difficult
challenges was to meet a stranger for
the day and get a tour around the city
of Matsuyama and remember when it came
out the capsule machine and looked at it
I kind of thought oh god I'm screwed
it's really hard to do something
spontaneous like that in Japan usually
so I hastily made some phone calls to
some Japanese friends and real terrowin
turned out had an old school friend in
Matsuyama who was willing to show us
around for the day feel like I'm in a
spy film the only way we know how to
meet is that she's eating oranges
because it's the local dish of Matsuyama
what's the code word enjoying some
oranges yeah I'd love an orange and that
went on to be one of my favorite days of
the entire trip
thanks to that challenge and thanks to
Kazu seeing this beautiful city whilst
being shown around by an eccentric
japanese woman with an obsession with
oranges but I think the best example of
creativity and the desperate
circumstances came from the stretch
along Miyata wears a beautiful stretch
along the coastline there's absolutely
buckle there to do and while cycling
through this abandoned place that time
had forgotten Gerry the animation man
and I received a capsule challenge to
make a Japanese commercial in less than
24 hours at first because we were in the
middle of nowhere we had nothing to
really go on or nothing to do we were
just going to go to a beach and just sit
on a beach and make a quick commercial
there but as luck would have it we found
a train station with a bespoke wonderful
train museum complete with an old unused
train carriage there's we saw a train
carriage that's in the museum on them
online yeah and I can see it there just
inside oh wow
that's sick eyes closed and after
dropping into a nearby Don Quixote store
and kitting Joey L in a stylish doctors
outfit and turning him into doctor jelly
we're pretty much good to go really one
actually
oh we populated the train carriage with
members of our production team and off
we go that was it
dr. jelly was born no no cut
[Music]
thank you those are thee as a great
example of teamwork and creativity born
out of desperation and actually if I had
to do one spin-off series out of journey
across Japan it would be making like a
series of commercials or short films
within 24 hours within one day I think
it'd be quite fun who knows hopefully we
can resurrect the great doctor jelly
along the way as well although we're
still waiting for a callback from the
company in question heard nothing
nothing at all
when I think back to Jen across Japan I
don't break it down by the locations
themselves I break it down by the guests
that join me along the way and I think
there was about ten not including the
random strangers that popped up as well
admittedly the most bizarre encounter we
had on the trip was a stranger on a
beach time-traveling man as I like to
call him on the fateful morning that
Reata rode joined the cycle he was
sitting on a beach and I filmed a little
intro with the camera filming him
introduce himself and he had this
horrible smug expression a smug
expression that could break a thousand
mirrors good morning everyone
several weeks later I found myself
editing that footage and as I played it
back I noticed in the background behind
me otter oh there's a guy that dives
into the sand kind of perfectly into
frame and now I'm joining the tour to
this day I don't know who what why or
how but it was so perfectly timed it was
so intricate that I genuinely think it
might be a viewer from the future who
came back in time to photobomb one of
the episodes I think the funnest random
encounter with a stranger though is when
I was in the gutter with my good friend
Roy and we went out for fried chicken
for lunch and we came across the eating
champion of Niigata a small local girl
who could eat a seemingly never-ending
bucket of food as they don't know how
the science behind this works given her
size that bolt
it was absolutely mesmerizing watching
her devour all that food and then jump
up and down to somehow let the food go
down at a gestured system don't know if
that worked or not if you're a doctor is
that is that a thing I don't know it
seemed to work very she ate it all and
at the end of it all I was stood looking
like a bit of a loser an absolute
mockery of my eating capacity given that
she was half my size one of the most
disappointing aspects of journey across
Japan was the fact that I cut out my
good friend Emma tokidoki traveler from
three days in Kyushu at the end of the
cycle and unsurprisingly people have
been asking me all year what happened
why did I remove her from the videos and
the truth is she made fun of my facial
hair one too many times she had to go if
something doesn't spark joy in a you
know this girl no the reality was Emma
was a great guest we had a lot of fun a
few days before Emma arrived I came down
with a nasty cold 40 days of cycling had
finally taken their toll and stupidly
instead of resting up I carried on
cycling I carried on going for it as I
said earlier if you push yourself to
your limit you have to be prepared to
suffer the consequences and after 40
days of relentlessly pushing myself
finally my body told me to off and
she stopped by that point not even
doctor jelly could have saved me from my
predicament good morning everyone and
welcome back to journey across Japan
never-ending cycle of despair we are a
coma Kabu Kabu Kabu to wink yumoto today
that hot they're joining us is our final
guest our third and final guest even
though we've had four or five guests oh
but today we begin our last leg of the
journey to kuma I've been really
struggling the most I feel really drowsy
I think it's the first time you've been
to one way to do that again
so excited now you might be thinking
wait a minute that sounds hilariously
entertaining actual bottled despair on
camera release it put it online but it
wasn't entertaining it wasn't good it
was me struggling to speak for three or
four days looking like I wished I was
dead sorry my days already got tough and
say through no fault of Emma's and the
videos were never uploaded and I stand
by that decision
Emma was good I could edit it in such a
way that's just Emma and me blurred out
on the screen like some sort of dodgy
some sort of dodgy hentai video and I
apologized to Emma for not being able to
feature on Jen across Japan and I
apologize to you guys that were looking
forward to seeing her and seeing the
last few videos in kishi that is easily
one of my biggest regrets of the whole
trip I do hope Emma and I can work on
some videos together next year because
we always have a lot of fun together
I owe her a debt as well as all the
guests that joined on Jen across Japan
and the crew that made it possible
Yeah right it's a cliche but people do
make the journey especially if they
time-travel from the future to throw
themselves in the sand obviously one of
the main reasons I did journey across
Japan by bicycles to get fit as opposed
to go to the gym and run on a treadmill
I wanted to go and do a real kind of
cross-country adventure and honestly the
actual cycle was incredible I'd
recommend it to anyone in a heartbeat in
the first three months before I even
started cycling I got a fitness tracker
I started doing 10,000 steps every
single day I've also cut out a lot of
carbohydrates love rice noodles bread I
went from being 86 kilograms in August
to being 82 kilograms in October just
before I started the cycle the first few
days of journey across Japan were the
toughest especially going up hills
absolute nightmare I had to get off the
bike and run up with it instead the
hardest and most rewarding day of the
trip was the shippin army Kaido cycle
over the Inland Sea of Japan across the
beautiful chain of islands about 70
kilometers in length fortunately I was
with Sharla and she struggled more than
I did so I felt pretty good about myself
I felt pretty good about that by the end
of journey across Japan I could actually
see my cheekbones for the first time and
think about decade it was magical it
worked that being said my face did look
absolutely atrocious it didn't help that
while I was on journey across Japan I
had the worst diet I'd ever had in my
entire life the diet comprised mainly of
convenience-store fried chicken energy
jelly and a mixture of Pocari sweat and
coffee and there's no doubt the diet
definitely negated some of the health
benefits that came from doing exercise
every single day nevertheless on the
last day of the cycle in Kagoshima I
weighed in at 77 kilograms as much as I
considered taking the obligatory
before-and-after photos of me topless
holding the phone like that with the
mirror like everyone does I didn't want
to keep a little bit of my humility
intact because most of it got out the
window by that point but I'd lost 9
kilograms from the day that I decided to
go on journey across Japan so with that
in mind it was a success right yeah a
success Chris lost weight no not
entirely
the subsequent burn out from the project
mentally led me to eat my way back to
happiness and worst of all editing
videos is just about one of the most
unhealthiest professions you can have
hunched over a laptop for up to 16 hours
a day eating a diet exclusively
comprised of junk food of diabetes and
because I had to edit literally dozens
of videos as you can imagine the
compounding effect wasn't particularly
good and in fact when I ended additive
the last video for generating cross
Japan are is back to being 86 kilograms
not good really but it's not
completely depressing ending since
August last few months I have been doing
10000 steps every single day and I'm now
back to 82 kilograms and I am going to
keep that up and I'm going to continue
to do it until I find another physical
challenge to sink my teeth into next
year I'd do it all over again
do I regret journey across Japan no I
don't I regret the execution and I've
had some time to put some distance
between myself and the project I look
back at it all rather fondly all I'm
left with are the amazing memories of
all the things we saw we dare to
experienced along the way the sad
reality is being bold of trying to do
anything different it's always risky and
yeah I could have just sat at home and
made videos that were far simpler
cheaper and easier to produce but I
really didn't want to show you as much
of Japan as I could in a way that I
thought would be fun and ultimately it's
up to you to decide whether it was worth
it or not but hopefully at least just
one of the episodes on journey across
Japan showed you somewhere new taught
you something interesting or made you
smile on a bad day and I think it was
worth it
maybe journey across to the journey
across Japan journey across the Japan
journey across Japan a journey across
Japan yes yes
gotta go
[Music]
Chris you're a real monster Hippias
bunny who was walking this man come on
girl daddy's students don't really know
what far from okay
[Music]
oh
you followed your dream yeah I did to be
on the board in Japan Channel
not really
[Music]
you
[Applause]
[Music]