so a few months back i'm doing some planning for this project that i want to do and part
way through i get an email saying hey norm if you want to do that thing you're trying to do
you're going to need a captain's license for a boat it was at this point that i thought
the project was pretty much dead in the water until i realized it might actually be kind of
neat to have a captain's license for a boat and so this is where our story begins today
all right so it's about midnight right now and i just found out that i'm actually gonna need a
boat license for this one project that i've been chasing some countries you don't need them but
here in japan you do but luckily enough it seems fairly easy i think i should be able to just
self-study and be able to pass the test okay scrap that so i've been studying for the past
couple weeks even ordered study materials in both english and japanese and i've run into a couple of
problems first off i haven't studied for anything in years and completely forgot how incredibly
draining it is if you're studying for anything right now you have my full respect you're amazing
and i love you but second and quite possibly much more important is that japan has a lot of
water traffic and the more i learn the more i'm starting to think that i might actually want to
receive professional training from an expert on this and it's a bit of a long shot but my
buddy mitch who lives down in kagushima has long joked that to make the best of his life
down there in kagoshima bay or kinko bay as it's called he's someday gonna get his boat license
so you know what i i'm gonna call him up and i'm gonna call his bluff because if i have to do all
of this i might as well make somebody suffer with me that was fast okay hi um so quick one for you
you've joked for a while about getting your boat license and i'm actually thinking about getting
mine would you be interested in going to i guess it would be boating school with me um
are you serious about this i'm very i'm very serious i'm very sad are you interested
um if you're gonna do this i wanna come along okay all right we're doing this okay i will uh i'll
drop you a line later with the all the details and all the specifics and whatnot we'll figure it out
all right sweet dude let me know that was a quick call i'll talk to you later
all right bye bye so we just arrived at the boat training center day one starts
right now right now exactly right now let's do this
i gotta put my shoes on like falling over how you feeling
excited and a little nervous not gonna lie all right uh i think they're waiting for us so
do we have everything we need what do we need for that we'll come back
so this is our classroom it's super super tiny and i love it it's actually pretty dope it is
the teacher has requested that i don't show his face or anything so we're gonna hold to
those requests but he's allowed us this is the place here leave a boat license school and look
at our nice slippers do they ever fit you they never fit me they don't fit mitch for some reason
is wildly nervous oh my god the knot tying about the ropes i've never learned how to
tie a knot about ever in my entire life no boy scouts nothing so this is really intimidating
like of all the things to be dude you're super confident about this but i am not okay
i think what's gonna happen i'll pass the written test you'll pass
the practical test and then the two of us will have to redo it i'm kidding
this is it says captain i have to pass now right
you have to pass that if i don't pass what happens then i take away the hat
thanks norm that's cool all right i'll study extra hard now
yeah we're not allowed to put on the captain's hat until we pass the test
we'll get there eventually all right uh i guess we should get set up and there is
just so much stuff to learn and study it didn't seem that hard like out of the gate but
uh no it seemed pretty intimidating out of the gate okay all right i take it back
creates a circle and that circle turns into a circle
just finished up our training studying study it was studying it feels like university our class
that made everything make sense so i feel so much better now than i did yesterday our teachers the
best yeah and now we we're actually staying here for the night so we're gonna check it it's like
it's also it's a boat club so it's also kind of like a hotel it's a captain's club it's a captain
we're not captains yet it's just you sew on the captain thing i have the hat i want to wear it
it's technical and it's boring but we're just gonna spend the rest of the night
studying and then tomorrow we get on a boat i'm just i'm i'm crossing my fingers for the
weather it looks okay but then again we haven't had the best of luck have we norm
he's never gonna let me off the hook for sakurajima like it's sunny
360 days of the year in the five days that i'm there it's already rain like
it looks like we're the only people here that's actually that's a big room it's not too bad
there's the beautiful unit bath oh there's a shower we're gonna go ahead
and do we have a decent view i bet you we do you ready for it
kind of it's not bad it's a little foggy that's okay we can live oh this size over here is nice
okay get some water over there also she why are all the mirrors in this place coffin shavings
um norm i'm pretty sure you booked this place so i'm just gonna okay all right i'll go now
actually you know i can't leave we get a lot of studying to do we have
we just found five practice tests that we didn't even know we had so yeah study time
so
so we are on to day two the practical and the weather is terrible and i almost i almost fell
down right in here we spent the morning working on knots do you remember them
i remember a lot of them the weather could be worse but it's it's not great
i hope i hope it gets way worse like we could make more video about it being so bad
practicing rescues right now
i don't know why
okay
a big building is 220 from here i'm still not remembering this i'm so stupid it's around over
there we go my first first ever boat i got to ride in japan mitch has been stressing
out over the knots the entire time that uh you tried that right yeah solid attempt yeah
he said it was okay and that's pretty much it for the practical the mitch is still practicing
mitch is so worried about these knots look i'm not good at this okay i'm not good at this
that's okay it's not a joke i'm not good at knots i'm figuring out though this is
i just figured okay so they were super cool and they let us borrow this so we could practice
and do we do we tell them about you about your omiyage about your souvenir oh sure we called
all the hardware stores around here thinking that we could find a cleat but they didn't have any at
any of them and so the the kind people here they're just like here you can have this yeah
so they just gave me one the staff have actually hooked me up with my own cleat and ring to do not
training practice and this is mr kurita over here so norm has a has a souvenir and i have a training
i have to return this but it's going to help me pass the test because i'm super worried you know
what does this light light is a thing light apparently it's not a thing i'll just control
everything over here no it doesn't control the light i think there's a light switch down there
that was honestly so much work just to turn on that light
i we we've been standing here forever just there's like
there's a whole panel of switches here and something started vibrating so but now
it's time to get back on the road and uh we're going to head back to tokyo our test is
in what three days yeah so i tell you what norm you drive an oil practice
so that's how that's how things are gone
do you think you get a pass i think we're both gonna pass but i do think that we need to continue
to study like it's not going to be an easy pass so norm has been calling me bitter mitch today
and the reason why is because i have found some inconsistencies between like the the test not
not the the textbook the textbook is great but the tests that the government has provided us
you see one of the challenges inside of this is that the english for this is not it's not english
it's wonky it is so half the time you're just trying to figure out what is what is the question
like what are they trying to ask we're originally trying to decide if it was going to be better to
do the test in japanese or in english in japanese it's a little bit easier because the kanji kind
of just gives you the answer there yeah but if we ever want to boat internationally we figured
it would probably be a pretty good idea to learn this in english but not only that but from the
like the study materials that we've been provided we've learned so much about boating just so much
actually you know what i learned because in america you don't need any of this especially
like lakes and rivers to like boat you just need a driver's license i've learned from this that
that's incredibly dangerous yeah yeah at the very least i want to be able to boat safely and smartly
that's it if i can if i can boat without putting anybody including myself in danger i will be happy
well because i think that we both went into this thinking like this is gonna be fun we're gonna
party we're gonna go out in the ocean it's gonna be great i still feel like we're gonna do that
but we're gonna have this like incredible sense of responsibility yeah we're doing it there's a
there's a weight behind the word captain this has been i'm enjoying it okay i'm gonna go to sleep
enjoy all right so mitch and i got back a little while back a few hours back we've
just been studying the test is tomorrow mitch doesn't know yet but i have a little surprise
all right i'm hiding in the bathroom to do this so mitch doesn't hear me kurita's on
the gentleman from the school gave these to me so that we'd be able to practice but mitch was really
keen on getting these in the area as a memento but we weren't able to find any he still thinks these
are mine i've kind of prepped this for him that's like a bit of a thank you for him coming all the
way out to tokyo from kagoshima and and doing this with me so i'm going to give it to him now
that's for you for me yeah this one yeah you made this well i just fastened them
i tried to think of a really fancy message now we gotta pass the test we got to cool
it is the morning of the test day actually the the test center is right there behind us how you
feeling nervous not gonna lie yeah yeah we got a coffee though i'm actually weirdly excited like
i'm i've got this like wakulaku like you you would be because it's morning this morning and you just
love mornings do you think you're gonna pass the written tests we've done okay the practical seems
not that bad but i'd also don't want to get cocky and be like yeah we've got a group of gentlemen
back here who are like clearly waiting for us and we're going to get hit by a car all right
all right just finished up the test yeah let's keep your test book and all the answers are here
so i'm going to check through and see whether i passed or 40 died you see that wasn't a
check mark i'm getting copied out right at the end and 50 nailed it wow i did way better than
i thought on this at the very beginning of the test i came in hot and so motivated
i was like i got this i have got it this is easy and then around section three i was like
it's gonna be so bad our results are gonna come in a week yeah so we'll know then whether or
not we've failed or passed why did i start with fail why did i lead you to the negative i think
it's bad habits i think we're so scared to fail this because we're kind of a little cocky about
it but we tried so hard not to come in cocky we try to the there's a certain weight on you when
you're out there you can't save for absolute sure but i think i think we might have passed
the nuts i got disappointed on i wanted i wanted him to give me a typical night
okay this is the best part so despite how hard mitch has been working on dots he got like the
easiest knot where you just wrap it around a pole and that's it i was so sad i was like dude give
me something harder i practiced so how do you want to do this do you want to like look at it together
on skype or something at the same time i don't want you to look first i'm not gonna look back
we'll line call each other and look at the exact same time that's the only way this is fair
okay if you call me i would be like oh we both got it we didn't get it i'm gonna be so pissed okay
all
all right so the test results go live in less than a minute i'm gonna give mitch a call i'm gonna
what's up bro hey man are you ready
okay so i'm clicking on tokyo i've opened them both up in separate browsers okay you ready
yeah three two one scores should be live all right looking at the tokyo test okay
it um looks like you're coming back to tokyo
looks like i'm coming back to tokyo because we got our license yeah we did baby and as you may
be able to tell from fuji in the background here niche is so excited about fuji this time
this is not exactly tokyo and that itself was a comedy of errors i can't believe how much it took
to how many flights did we get how many places we canceled how many fall startups were there
oh my lord i bought my plane ticket like right before my plane took off yeah to get here yeah
like literally like minutes before but here we are with fuji in the background not a clown in the sky
i know i know what are the odds i want to say like oh we're so lucky but honestly so much
effort went into being this right now we're on like yamanakako let's take a peek at this look and
you've got this beautiful beautiful view of fuji and almost nobody else on the entire leg just us
all right so there are few things more stressful than the idea of trying to land a drone on a boat
especially when you're like low on battery
yo it just keeps moving
i don't think i have ever been so nervous
in my entire life that was exhilarating i do not want to do it again bro you got it back
you should see mitch's face i was way more nervous than i was
like you said it's a real possibility we might lose it we should just accept it
if you fly a drone on the water there's always a good possibility that
you know the boat's always moving right and i still haven't still recording so you know aside
from that initial spark of me just not wanting to give up right like i had to try i had like it
was fine to fail but i had to try i don't think i mentioned it when i was young my grandfather used
to always take me out on a boat on the lake and so a small part of this was kind of for him but all
of the the emotional aspect aside i think the part of this that i'm looking the most forward to is
when the borders open up oh right like having the ability to like perhaps take people out on a boat
or something like that and go through the rivers of tokyo that would be sweet it'd be so much fun
so oh that i just i'm really yeah okay let's let's put that idea on the table a tokyo lens by boat
adventure can i come you didn't it would be wrong if you weren't there
yeah yeah does that mean we get to wear our captain's hats now
so mitch i feel like i need to explain why there wasn't more footage of us on the lake are
you gonna tell everybody i'm gonna tell everybody that i recorded the most of it the majority of it
right here on the gopro which hardcore glitch repeatedly and
now it seems like we've lost a great deal of the footage some from the beginning is there
and i re-recorded some of the end on this like dji action 2. which is actually pretty cool by
the way it actually i like it i like it i might just end up using this a lot more gopro i've said
it before i'll say it again fix your stuff don't don't don't buy these these the gopro like just
no so norm has been calling me bitter mitch today
i'd say i've been calling you more of a truncated version of bitter mitch if
you put them together there's a word in there if you just squeeze those to end so
and before we return the boat because i almost completely forgot it reminded me that we have
captain's hats that i originally got as a joke but mitch has genuinely fallen in love with this is
not a joke to me this is very serious i learned how to do knots to get this hat okay fantastic
i'm at the marina right now doing my
seminar training so that i can rent boats in tokyo it's like a three hour course it's not bad
people