JOURNEY ACROSS JAPAN | Day 16: Why This Episode Almost Never Made it to Air

DR JELLY IS BACK!

And he’s come armed with an obnoxious song about himself.

Those of you guys that’ve followed Abroad in Japan long enough now, know that I’m not a fan of putting out videos that don’t meet a certain standard of quality. Sometimes in previous seasons of Journey Across Japan, entire episodes have been canned outright and wiped from history.

Perhaps due to boring content, bad weather, personal illness on set, etc.

And I’ll comfortably admit, this episode came frighteningly close.

It was nobodies fault mind you.

In everything I create, I always try to strike a balance between the content being both entertaining and educational and it certainly fell flat on the latter.

(Although I guess we learned that Akita's school have a depressing future).

Initially, the plan on this episode was to explore an impressive Edo era themed town called Kakunodate, famed for its rich history and quaint streets.

Stupidly though, we didn’t have a backup plan if the weather took a nasty turn and sure enough, the morning of filming, a storm rolled in turning half of north Japan into a scene straight out of Noah’s Ark.

One good bit of news is I recently visited Kakunodate to film a video there that'll come out in February, so you'll still get to see it next month!

(Below: Kakunodate)

To top it off, I’d been up with the team working till 4am the night before, meaning I was hugely sleep deprived for the shooting of this video. You can hear me slurring a few sentences in this one. Fortunately, this was a rare occurrence this series (save for the day after the island episode).

But I toyed with releasing this video on the second channel or not at all for a while, before deciding it wouldn’t have felt right to miss out a day of the journey. And honestly, when all is said and done, it’s still an entertaining outing thanks to Dr Jelly’s return.

Who knows, maybe I'm being too harsh on myself however, in some respects today’s episode is a real miracle!

Not only did we release a video, but turned a hastily shot and spontaneously planned song in with a catchy song hook. It may not be Too Much Volcano, but it turned out surprisingly well.

I’ve had a few folks ask me how I whip up all these songs on my phone and there’s an app called Launchpad, where you can combine loops to create an original track. While most ordinary folks are glued to Candy Crush or Super Mario Run, in my free time I blow off steam by trying to produce a catchy tune. What can I say, I’m rather weird.

Fortunately, Joey seems to spend his free time making music too (albeit in a more professionally trained manner) and between the two of us, we just about pulled this challenge out of the hat.

In an alternative history the weather was good, and Dr Jelly might have returned in a samurai battle in Kakunodate, but for now we can only dream of what might’ve been.

Joey’s time on Journey Across Japan is at an end and it was certainly a bizarre few days. The Animation Man pulled the short straw on interesting locations but won out on some of the most creative and fun challenges of the series. 

Converting an RV into a bar, some ridiculous locations in a 90’s commercial and now bashing out a song in a matter of hours, is a feat only Joey could achieve given his creative ingenuity. And while locations are the core of what makes a great Journey Across Japan, for me the challenges are equally important as well.

At last though guys, we’re on the home straight!

Next up we’re joined by my 5th best American friend, Pete PremierTwo for the penultimate episode this weekend.

A genuinely epic day and one of my favourite episodes of the whole series, we’re off to an outrageously picturesque hot spring town deep in the mountains, combined with insanely heavy snowfall and hands down the worst challenge so far. It’s going to be a good one.

For now though, enjoy Dr Jelly’s latest outing and I’ll see you this weekend for the next!

Chris