Daily Yamabushi

I’ve spent the greater part of the last few hours editing a video. I was working really hard on it but all of a sudden the voiceovers became grey and the sound from them completely disappeared. Looking for a solution on Google bears no fruit, just a series of unsolved problem threads, so I’m going to have to add them in and cut them up again one by one. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again. (Thankfully it’s not a long video)

This is on top of a whole other set of problems I’m having trying to set up a ghost.org blog. I’m finding that I can’t customize the blog at all really besides colour and theme (it seems I need to upgrade and then learn how to code to get what I want), and finding an effective way to import posts from WordPress and medium is proving futile (importing into medium is the most broken I’ve ever seen it).

So, what I thought would be a good solution to my blogging issues turns out to be a whole other can of worms that I’m not sure I have the energy to deal with. And now my video editing software Final Cut Pro X goes and does this weird unsolvable thing.

I’m taking a break. I really wanted to get this video out this morning, and I really wanted to have a ghost blog up and running, but it’s beginning to look like neither of those things is possible.

I’m in a frustrated state of mind, and this could be more harmful than it’s worth, so I’m going to do something until I calm down and can get back to work with a cool head.

When things don’t go your way, do something else until you can accept it.

Writing this has helped, I haven’t had my coffee, so I could do that, and I had promised to do some baking, so I guess I should just do that as well? Even though the urge to do the video and blog is strong, it’ll probably just make me more upset at this stage.

It is much easier to make progress when you have something than when you don’t.

We never know when inspiration will strike, we never know when our soul is trying to tell us something, when our soul wants to express itself. We need systems in place to take from this inspiration when it strikes, otherwise we are essentially ignoring what our soul is trying to tell us. This is truly soul-crushing.

When inspiration alone is enough to produce a masterpiece it can feel like a true gift from the heavens. Most of the time though, this inspiration is the spark that leads to starting the process of producing, and given enough tender love and care, this inspiration can become a masterpiece.

As soon as you feel inspiration strike, record your feelings. Whether written, vocalized, or expressed in other media, record your ideas for the inspiration as soon as they come. This much is imperative.

Once this original inspiration is down, you can go with it, or you can feel free continue with your day and let the ideas fester before coming back to them. What matters is that you have utilised the spark, and your soul will thank you in the future.

You’re going to be fine. If there’s anything that the mountains have taught me over the years, it’s this.

Getting out into nature and simply being there and accepting your place in the world is enough to teach you that you are going to be ok.

Nature doesn’t judge, nature doesn’t discriminate, nature simply lets us feel our place in the world.

That’s why nature is my drug of choice.

I used to binge drink a lot, especially as a teenager and in my early 20s. My two front teeth were chipped from getting drunk and falling over. It’s why they appear yellower in my videos (once you see it you can’t unsee it). It’s also why half a life later I am needing to get the caps replaced.

I drank as a form of escape. I drank as a way to fit in. One thing I am proud of is that my teenage friends and I made a pact that I have always kept: never drink alone.

Now, with a lifetime of perspective, I no longer feel the need. About five years ago, I quit drinking altogether, and my life has been all the better for it. I realised it wasn’t the drinking that mattered, what matters is the company. Good company is all you need (most of the time).

There are some things good company can’t help you with. For those things, nature is your best friend.

You’re going to be fine. Go out into nature and you will see.

(I don’t have a problem with other people drinking, just don’t treat me like a leper when I tell you I don’t drink, it’s not the end of the world).

I just posted my Mt. Yudono article completing the trifecta of the three Dewa Sanzan peaks. I even did them in the proper order too, starting with Mt. Haguro in May last year, then Mt. Gassan in August, and now Mt. Yudono in February. I can now say I am reborn (well, once the video is also up on my YouTube channel I guess).

I have written and translated numerous articles about these three peaks over the years, but for these I wanted to give them a personalised touch. I did this by focusing on a climb that I did, and each time it was an epic adventure. Every single time I go there it is amazing. Now I just need to do a better job of sharing this with the world!

Mt. Haguro we climbed from the hidden side, the Haguro Kodo that begins in Shonai Town right where I used to work. I would have passed the entrance at least 20 or so times without knowing that a path to the Dewa Sanzan lay there.

Mt. Gassan I did the Juso, 縦走, the traverse, climbing guided by a yamabushi from the eighth station to the summit where we stayed, and back down to Mt. Yudono. You could count this as going to Mt. Yudono, I did, but now I have an even better story to tell about the last peak on the Dewa Sanzan journey of rebirth.

Mt. Yudono we got to visit in the middle of winter. Traditionally the mountain is closed at this time of year, there’s normally just too much snow to contend with. But I was invited by Shida-san of Gassan Tsutaya Ryokan, a fellow yamabushi who I knew had extensive experience on the mountains. What better chance to visit Mt. Yudono!

The Mt. Gassan article is an almost 30 minute read, and I just found out the Mt. Yudono one is almost 20 minutes. I’m working on adding to the Haguro article, and it’s already nearly a 30 minute read. Over the past few years I’ve been writing a Dewa Sanzan guidebook. It might be time to put that together in a more concrete way methinks!

I was once complaining to a friend about a job I had done that I really did not like, and regretted having done in the first place. He piped up with some really good wisdom:

‘at least now you know that’s one thing you don’t like. You know not to do it ever again.’

And he was right.

Things we don’t like, no matter how much we don’t like them, always have a silver lining. We gamble with ourselves everyday with the decisions we make. To do this, to do that. Things we don’t like take a lot of our options straight off the table. It is like a cleanse, getting rid of the things that wouldn’t have made us happy anyway. We shouldn’t regret these things, we should be thankful for the insight they provide.

I’ve updated my home page (timbunting.com) and my mission. As you can see I get straight to the point. I asked myself what I most wanted people to know about me, and why they should follow me. Here’s what I came up with:

The Home Page Copy

Kia Koutou. Thanks for visiting. I’m Tim Bunting, the Kiwi Yamabushi.

Struggle is a normal part of everyday life. What matters is how you deal with it.

In April 2016 I received news that no one ever wants to hear. My dad had been out hiking, had a heart attack, and died right then and there. It’s the kind of news that sends shivers through your spine, and for myself it was a true wake-up call. Not only that, my mother is also terminally ill with Alzheimers, a disease so bad you die twice. For someone still in their 30s, this has been very tough to deal with, and I wouldn’t wish anything of the kind even on my worst enemies.

However, less than a week after returning to Japan from my father’s funeral, I had a chance encounter that irrevocably changed my life. I was invited to join the Yamabushido Project providing yamabushi (mountain ascetic, read more here) training to English speakers. I jumped on the chance, and the rest as they say, is history. 

I have found yamabushi training to not only be comforting, but a restorative and productive way to deal with these struggles. 

By becoming a yamabushi, I have learned what it means to appreciate nature, and through this appreciation I feel Ikigai, which I define as the desire to live well. It is my wish for those around the world who are struggling to learn from my experience, to perhaps join yamabushi training (it’s not a requirement, but it definitely helps), and to discover Ikigai for themselves. 

For the past five or so years, I have been working to build the profile of the Yamabushi and the Dewa Sanzan, The Three Sacred Mountains of Dewa where our yamabushi trainings are based here in Yamagata Prefecture. I have written a daily blog since the beginning of 2019, started a yamabushi YouTube channel in 2020, and in 2021 began a project to summit and document the 100 Famous Mountains of Yamagata Prefecture on a blog and YouTube channel. 

Sign up for the Mountains of Wisdom newsletter (link in header), where I send out a round-up of the week’s blog posts and updates of the 100 Famous Mountains of Yamagata Project, or support my work by following me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. 

Any support that helps me get the word out is much appreciated.

The mission

The mission is still similar to what it was before, making a positive impact day in day out. I’ve just made it more specific: teach the world about yamabushi.

This restatement of my mission and reframing of my homepage helps remind me what is important to me, and why it’s important for me to share the lifestyle of the yamabushi. I don’t think this will change anytime soon, it hasn’t changed in the past two or three years, and in fact I think it has only become more and more important as time has gone on.

The only thing we know for certain is that things are going to change. So while the struggle may be real in the current moment, given enough time, either the situation will change, the way we think about it will change, or we will change.

Pain is temporary. Glory lasts forever.

When I played waterpolo, I used to get really angry at some of the things the other teams would do. Since it’s waterpolo and we’re wearing speedos (what we call the briefs-shaped swimwear, actually it’s normal to wear two pairs just in case), you can probably guess what happened, lots of grabbing and poking and pinching. Punching under the water is amazingly ineffective.

I used to let it really get to me, thinking what they were doing was really unfair and unsportsmanlike. Now looking back on it I think they were just playing the game, and I had let myself get caught up in it. In that way, I lost.

One time it was particularly bad, but I had one amazing manager who just took me to the side, and basically told me to channel my anger into energy to help the team. Ever since then, I tried to take his advice literally whenever I felt unsettled. And it worked.

Now unfortunately we only got so far in waterpolo tournaments, there’s only so much you can do in a team game, but I started to try and convert the anger and other energy into energy for positive. I saw what they were doing as them just trying to get in my head, and turned my focus towards what I can do.

It turns out anger can be a powerful motivator, but I find it also has many undesired side effects. Best to calm yourself down first, and when you are level-headed, turn that emotion into a force for good. Play the game, but play your game, calmly. Don’t let the opposition get the upper hand.

If you have an inkling to try something new, my advice is that you do it. This inkling is your soul telling you do to things.

Don’t know what to do with your life? Good, you have nothing to lose. Try something. Worst case scenario you find it’s not for you. Best case scenario you find out it is what you wanted to do with your life.

The only way to know whether something works or not is to try it. The only way to know whether you enjoy doing something is to do it. No posturing, no hypotheticals, actually getting down to business.

Often we are afraid of doing new things for fear of the unknown, for fear of being embarrassed, for fear of looking fool like a fool. We don’t want to do something only to turn around and say ‘no, that was a waste of time’. This much is understandable.

However, you only truly ever gain by having tried something. Only once you’ve done something can you truly know if it was worth doing in the first place. Doing something lets you know whether it would be worth continuing as much as it lets you know it wouldn’t. Not doing something only leaves you with questions.

For the past few weeks, if not months, I have been getting excited about using Ghost.org instead of WordPress. It just seems so much more suited to what I want out of a blog. For those who don’t know, Ghost.org is like a combination of WordPress, Patreon, and MailChimp, three services I am currently using. It’s fast, and seemingly simple to use, and could be a good way to provide a valuable membership service.

I read an article comparing WordPress and Ghost that lauded WordPress for its ease of use, which I scoffed at. If you are a complete amateur like me, WordPress is extremely hard to use. It is extremely unintuitive, and you have to know how to modify the back end to be able to customise things the way you like.

Every once in a while I get a 500 error, which means you can’t access the site, although it goes away soon enough, and I have tried all manner of things to make the website faster, but I am probably making an amateur mistake somewhere. Google penalizes websites like this, so I think I am really losing out by being on WordPress.

For some simple things you need to download plugins, which is fine, except that too many plugins can make the website extremely laggy. Being able to make a fast website on WordPress while having the functionality I want requires a whole lot of knowledge that is simply prohibitive to an amateur like me.

So, I have been seriously considering moving over to Ghost.org. If I am to do so, however, there are a whole lot of things I need to consider.

I would have to modify a lot of the blog posts here before migrating to make it easier to do so (I have to make all the categories into tags, but I have been lazy on a lot of posts and haven’t been selecting categories in the first place, my first mistake).

I would also have to establish the pages in a way I like. I’m not sure I could customise the pages to have a black border around the pictures in this style that I like, although I’m sure I could figure something out.

One problem my friend had using Ghost.org was a drop in traffic, but I don’t have much traffic to start off with.

I will also have to think about how to establish a membership section (don’t worry this daily blog will always be free). I’ve been wanting to provide deeper content for people who want it but it takes a lot of time and effort to do so! A more efficient way for people to support my work in an environment I control would be much appreciated!

Either way, I think I’ll try Ghost out for a while and see how I like it then report back to you.

Seeing a 15m tall Torii gate covered in snow, and then having freshly-cooked soup and a hearty lunch underneath it is just plain fun, and a great way to get into the great outdoors, and to really get refreshed. But there’s a bit more to it than that.

The past couple of days and weeks even have been a bit tough on me. Just life catching up on me I guess. The reason I know is because I get panic attacks, and find it hard to breathe sometimes. There’s no real trigger for it, it just happens, the realities of losing your parents, among other things I guess. I also know because I wasn’t feeling very motivated to do much. Usually I wake up really early and want to sit down and get some writing done or maybe edit a video or two. I wasn’t really feeling that much recently. Until I went to the mountains, that is.

This morning I was invited to join an ancient tradition that a friend of mine recently restarted. You may have seen it in the video where I stay in Gassan Tsutaya Ochimizu-no-yu, a yamabushi-run Ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) in Shizu Onsen, Nishikawa Town, Yamagata Prefecture. The proprietor of the Ryokan, Shida-san, led a group of us on a snowshoe hike to Mt. Yudono Shrine, which is about 90 minutes from where the roads end in winter. Well, in the past devoted people would pay a visit to Mt. Yudono Shrine at the lunar new year, a custom that ended during the Meiji Restoration. And that’s just what we did.

I think the important part of going to the mountains that leads to inspiration is appreciation. When you go to a place like that, you are just in awe at its beauty, and it makes you want to stop and just say thank you to nature. That’s why I think Master Hoshino pushes the importance of prayer while out in nature, without appreciation, there really isn’t much point in being out there.

Which is to say, I feel so much better after having been to Mt. Yudono. Now to make a video of it.

When you’ve signed up for something, but then regret having done so, or simply don’t want to do it, it can obviously be really tough to truly enjoy the experience. But it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once the wheels are set in motion, you really shouldn’t fight it, doing so only makes the experience worse. Look for the positives in the experience and embrace them, and try to make the most of it. Otherwise your deemed-to-be-miserable experience turns out to be one.

This week I had to use my Hanko stamp, a stamp used in place of a signature in Japan, for two things; one an invoice, and one a receipt.

I had been told that you don’t need to print these out, that you can just put a .png image of your stamp in red where you would normally stamp it on actual paper. At least in practice.

Turns out you can and you can’t. For the receipt, it worked fine and I didn’t need to do anything else. For the invoice, I was told it had to be done on real paper and then scanned and emailed in. Long story short, they ended up sending me a physical letter to stamp and then send back in the mail. Much more trouble than it’s worth (well, it’s not a small amount).

I can be slightly to blame for this though. For the invoice I think I accidentally sent back an excel file rather than a .pdf, if I had sent in a .pdf they probably would not have noticed, and I would have been ok.

Japan has some ridiculous rules that can really do your head in (don’t get me started on their primitive banking practices). But if you keep in mind a few tricks, there are ways around some parts. You just have to be a bit cognizant of things.

Your accomplishments are much more meaningful precisely because of the struggles you had to overcome to get there.

Think about your struggles, then think about how much more meaningful they would make your success in the future. When you look back on your life, look back at the struggles, but be able to say, look at what I accomplished.

I’m not saying to go out seeking struggle, but that you should be proud that you have been able to get through so much. That in itself is an achievement, but it can also make your achievements much more meaningful.

Sometimes it’s hard to emphasise with someone if you simply don’t have the experience. So when they repeatedly choose you as a complaining board it can be frustrating for you to have to listen to.

But if someone straight up says ‘it’s not something I have to worry about’, it shows a complete lack of empathy. Sure you may not be able to empathise with them completely, but you are at least able to listen to them. If they don’t take your advice after that, then that’s on them.

There are a few issues in my life I am certain other people haven’t had to deal with. And let me tell you, when you meet people who have had the experience, their perspective feels like it’s coming straight from the mouth of god.

Depending on the issue though, such people can be all but impossible to find (in my experience at least). In that case ‘it’s not something I have to worry about’ feels like you’re getting the cold shoulder.

Just listen. That’s enough. Provide perspective where you can. Even better is to introduce people with the same experience, but either way, just listen.

Honestly though, really think about the other person’s situation when you go to them. In certain cases, that you’re able to complain about things may be coming from a position the other person hasn’t had the chance to experience, and can actually come across as a brag. In these cases, you really shouldn’t be offended when they say ‘it’s not something I have to worry about’.

Derailment is what happens when you lose your direction. It can happen all of a sudden, or it can build up over an extended period of time.

Some things creep up on you if you’re not careful. Once you realise they have crept up on you, you may think it’s too late, and although it may be too late to go back to the ultimate state, maintaining a satisfactory state is always possible.

The best thing is to have systems that ensure you stay on top of things that lead to derailment, but to also bring you back into line when you inevitably do.

About a month after I started investing in index funds the market crashed. At the time, I panicked and didn’t buy shares for a little while, like I should have and had planned to do. Looking back, the market has not only recovered, but has made that market crash look largely uneventful in the big scheme of things. Pick a plan and stick with it (low-cost index funds purchased periodically is what I do, besides a few other things).

I have a friend who is just getting around to establishing an investment account at the moment. Since the start of 2022, the markets have been down a bit, and I’ve lost a bit of money since the peak (if you count peaks as you having money, which it isn’t. The price is only relevant when you sell), but I’m still well up all things considered.

It has got me thinking though, if you think about the perspective of someone starting today, I would still definitely do what I am doing. I just wish I had had the confidence way back when to stick to the plan.

When you do calligraphy, there is no such thing as a second take. If you write the character but forget a spot, that’s it. No adjustments.

When you make a website, everything is changeable. If you want to change the photos or the copy on the website, it’s usually not that hard to do. Everything is a work in progress. Everything gets better over time with subtle and sometimes huge adjustments.

Physical books and YouTube videos are different though. Once something is out in the world, it’s out in the world. Everything is a work in progress until you hit that publish button. No adjustments, only amendments and additions.

This blog isn’t published because it’s ready. It’s published because it’s today. Sure, since it’s electronic I could go back and change things, and with things like typos I sometimes do, but then you lose the advantage of it being today. Much like that first calligraphy character, no second takes, no adjustments, no amendments, no additions.

Hit publish and mean it.

When you’re out of practice, don’t be so hard on yourself to get back in practice. Of course you should demand the best from yourself, but I’m not sure you should expect it. Get into the rhythm a bit by warming-up with exercises that help you practice the core competencies, and help you get back into the flow.

The flow comes from doing the practice, so do the practice without thinking too much about where you’re at your best or not.

I can’t recall which episode it was, but in the Revisionist History podcast by Malcolm Gladwell, he says one reason he loves podcasting is because of the way it can move people more effectively than words on a page.

For a while there I was convinced that I could just turn my essays into a YouTube video by reading them out and adding video. My most watched video is an essay I turned into a video, my last video about Shida-san I worked on extensively as an essay first. However, for my most recent video I started reading out the essay I had written, and I realised, no it totally was not going to work out.

While I think it’s perfectly fine to adjust written word to a more visual format, I think as long as the message is portrayed in at least a similar way, then that’s great. However, the choice of medium dictates the tools you have on hand to use, as well as the tools you should use, to portray the message.

I’ve noticed a problem with my most recent video, I’m going to have to put in a lot of effort just to maintain the standard!

However, at this stage this is not realistic. I know I have these videos in me if I have the time (and money), but my focus now is to maintain the standard as much as possible, and put in the reps by creating weekly videos for this year at least.

In the time between taking this video and releasing it, I recorded two other videos.

The first video I’m afraid the sound was ruined (I didn’t use the right settings on the GoPro), and I also used the GoPro a lot, which I really should have avoided. This first video was taken on a bit of a whim, I knew I would be going to the mountain but wasn’t sure whether I would film. I could always just not use this footage, however, I promised myself to make a video each week no matter what.

The second video I have also put together, but there are a few pieces to the puzzle that are missing. The main story is there, but I don’t think it is as interesting as this week’s video.

So, my thinking here is, I have these two videos, and I’m going to release them. They may not be at the same standard as my other video, but they are videos nonetheless. What’s important isn’t making a perfect video every time. What’s important is making the videos. And that’s what I’m going to do! (Who knows, they may turn out quite well!)

Do you use your phone while watching TV? How is it working out for you? I was talking to someone about just this recently. We had watched a movie together, and they were using their phone throughout, although whenever I asked them if they were following the story, they said they were. Then, a few days later, I brought up the themes of the movie and talked about how the characters reflected them, and it sounds as if the person I was talking to only really got the main gist, not the details like I did, as expected.

I’m not saying this to sound pretentious, I know it is, but I just want to point out that since I started to put my phone down to charge at 6pm each night, I have noticed a greater appreciation for film and books that feels like it did when I was much younger. It may not feel like it at the time, it may feel like getting the gist is fine for you, but I want to say that your experience just intensifies exponentially when you fully invest your attention in it. Not only do you gain more from the experience, but I think you also choose the books or films more carefully, you choose something that you are more than certain you will enjoy, and overall the experience is better. Just my two cents.

Ideas and execution.

Before you climb up to the top of the diving board, you know how you’re going to dive. You size up the competition and know what it takes to win. Then you execute.

The ability to execute ideas is just as important as having them. No execution, no ideas.

But ideas don’t have to come before execution. Practice execution enough and your ideas form themselves. Decide to execute your ideas daily, and your ideas come daily.

Keep at it long enough and your execution becomes your ideas.

Execution and ideas.

In 2020 I got a GoPro 9 expecting it to be a catalyst in my video creation. While it did indeed mean I got out there and made a lot of videos, and have a lot of videos in store, I have found on the whole for it to be a disappointing purchase, although not completely worthless.

Problems with the GoPro

A lot of this you could probably blame on my inexperience. I didn’t realise that GoPros completely fail in low-light situations, meaning forests are all but impossible to walk through and capture smoothly. To catch footage in the forest, you have to duckwalk, and move very slowly or use a tripod, which sort of defeats the purpose of the camera. I’ve had to discard so much of my footage due to this, and it got so bad I stopped using the GoPro entirely for these situations.

Also, I didn’t realise that the mic cover for the media mod would come off so easily. I bought the media mod for the mic specifically, but lost the wind cover within a few weeks, and have since had to buy a second non-powered mic (which is working wonders by the way). It’s just unfortunate that the mic that comes with GoPros is so useless whenever there’s even a tiny amount of wind. If you’re going to buy the GoPro and want usable sound, the media mod is a must, but costs an extra $100 or so.

One other huge nuisance with the GoPro is changing the battery or memory card. If you have the media mod on, this just becomes way more difficult, but you have to take the GoPro off the tripod you are using by unwinding the screw, slide open the GoPro, replace the battery or card, and then close everything again. Once I nearly lost my memory card because it is spring loaded and if you’re not careful it shoots out really fast. Either way, replacing the battery or memory card is a tedious process that is really annoying to do when you’re outside, especially when it’s cold out.

These are my biggest reasons for not liking the GoPro 9. It’s really tough going out and climbing a mountain only to come back and realise that your gear has failed. I guess this is also part of the learning curve, but I wish I had known this before I got one.

Good points of the GoPro

In saying that, I think GoPros are good at taking video while driving, and it can be a handy thing to have in a pinch because it is very compact. From what I can tell, it’s also very good at capturing snowboarding and mountain biking, in good light that is.

However, if you’re going to spend a couple hundred dollars on a camera, I don’t think I would recommend it. I would only recommend it if you were going to be focusing entirely on these action shots, but even then other cameras might be better.

A GoPro Alternative

I don’t have one because I have my Sony a6500, which is pretty good (it’s really annoying for shooting talking videos because it turns off after 20 or so minutes from overheating), but I think the Sony VLOGCAM ZV-1 looks like a really good candidate for vlogging. It’s compact enough, has a built-in stabiliser, a decent mic, shoots 4K, and if you get the shooting grip and tripod, I think you would be in good company.

In all, only get the GoPro if you are going to be doing majority action shots. Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother.

One thing I was quite naive about for my latest video was the sheer effort needed to put the subtitles on. I’m a translator so am fine with the language, for the most part, where I’m not I have ways of checking (just ask your wife), and I’ve put subtitles on both my own and another person’s videos before. I just forgot how tedious the process was, but now I think I know the best system.

All things considered, it’s best to use the YouTube subtitles function, rather than adding subtitles in your video editing software. There are a few reasons for this, but the biggest reason is that it’s also a way to add to your SEO, and a good one at that.

For my latest video, probably 3/4 is in Japanese so requires subtitles. I started by adding the subtitles through normal titles, before I realised that FCPX had a captions function. However, the captions function in FCPX is nowhere near as intuitive as the YouTube version. I had to keep copy pasting the captions, I couldn’t easily just add a new one, but it is there and you can turn it on and off when exporting your video.

So in terms of intuitiveness and SEO, YouTube wins out, but it’s still a risk because you have to tell viewers to turn the subtitles on, and that tiny little nuisance may be enough for them to stop watching. If that’s the case though, you probably couldn’t do videos in a second language in the first place.

Not by design, but as a means to counteract this, the first few minutes or so are in English, so if I’ve done my job and convinced people that the video is worth watching, it shouldn’t be a problem, should it? (Genuine question that time will tell)

A few months back now I entered in a competition for up-and-coming YouTubers who target foreign audiences in Japan. Along with ten others, I was selected out of a pool of more than 250 to attend a two-hour lecture by fellow Kiwi YouTuber InternationallyMe, and we were tasked with making a video for her to then provide constructive criticism on.

We were given a small budget, and I used it to stay at Ochinomizu Tsutaya, a Ryokan, traditional Japanese Inn, in the Shizu Onsen area of Mt. Gassan. Tsutaya is run by a yamabushi friend of mine, and I thought it would be a good chance to not only introduce the area, but also the people that live there, and Shida-san of Tsutaya is one of my favourite yamabushi.

The video should be out either today or tomorrow, so I hope you are able to enjoy it, but it was a completely different style of video that I’m used to. First, as I mentioned yesterday, it involves an extensive interview. I hope I did Shida-san and Tsutaya justice by adding my own comments and explanations, and I hope that people get to learn the type of person that lives here in Yamagata.

Not only that, but since this video was made as a part of the competition, I had a very specific audience in mind when making it. It wasn’t surprising to me that it was easier to make this video because I knew exactly who it was for, but it was surprising how much easier it was for me. Don’t get me wrong. I spent a lot of time on this video, more than usual because I wanted to make it the best I could, but the concept and the flow of the story felt like it came to me much easier.

My most popular video to date, the ‘how can Japanese be Shinto and Buddhist at the same time‘ video, was made with the sentiment of making the best video I possibly could at the time. To be honest, I felt that same sentiment when I was making this video, and I feel very proud to have done that. All I need to do from now on is to have my target audience well-targeted, and to make the best possible video I can while thinking about them. Not only will I feel proud of the work I have done, I (should) will produce my best work. Now to pass this sentiment on to other aspects of my life.

I’m testing out a new type of video at the moment and it is proving a bit difficult to piece together. The video involves an extensive interview I did, which is a bit of a first for me. It really feels like a difficult puzzle.

However, this is all part of the learning process. There’s so many things I’ve learned in the videos I’ve made so far that I am incorporating in this new video, but there’s still so much to learn. This is to help keep me on my toes, but also to add a new type of video to my repertoire.

I think it’s all about the narrative, it’s all about making a compelling story that keeps you engrossed. The difficult part is putting it together in the right order. Until now I’ve been making videos in an essentially chronological order, but for the purpose of the narrative, I’ve had to switch things up.

Either way, it’s a good experiment! Full of learnings!

Surrender. Release. Let it be. Take it as it is. Give in. But don’t give up.

Push on. Move forward. Lean in. Thrive.