JOURNEY ACROSS JAPAN: Day 6 - DR Jelly in Nagasaki, Battleship Island & Was JAJ3 Worth it?

Before we dive into the final diary entry & photos for Journey Across Japan: The Lost Islands, the Hokkaido road trip video is finally up on Abroad in Japan!

It’s actually the second longest video we've ever produced after Natsuki: The Movie, with a run time of 28 minutes (hence the long time it took to edit).

As well as introducing my best American friend Pete, I’m really proud of the cinematography and tried to raise the bar on the production quality front as well, as we discover floating rocks, Stephen King inspired barns and Stonehenge to name a few locations.

In many ways, the trip was a test run for Journey Across Japan as I had to familiarise myself with the new camera (Sony A7siii) and I learned a lot of lessons to take through to the Lost Islands!

I Drove to Japan's Most Extreme North | Hokkaido Road Trip
⛩️ https://youtu.be/UlRraQXerGg

And speaking of the Lost Islands, let’s see how we get on, on the final leg of our journey!

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DAY 5 - Nagasaki

This is it folks. The last major city in Japan I’ve yet to visit and it certainly didn't disappoint.

As the morning kicked off and we drove into Nagasaki, we were all excited, given none of us had ever experienced the city. And inevitably there was only one challenge in Anpanman this morning - to produce the final chapter of the Dr Jelly story.

We all knew it was coming and Joey and Natsuki were delighted. Being the producer, editor and awkward actor in these damn commercials, I’ll admit I was less enthusiastic.

While we gave Natsuki a few hours off in the morning so he could do some shopping for souvenirs, Joey and I went exploring - or rather eating - around town.

We started off in Nagasaki Chinatown, where we had the most delicious pork buns I think I’ve ever eaten, drizzled with delightfully stringy cheese.

Next we bought some of the city’s famous flower ice cream and wandered beneath the oldest stone bridge in town, with koi fish splashing about nearby. It was all rather romantic.

Our romantic stroll ended when we visited the memorial for the Atomic bomb that struck on August 9th 1945 (August 9th actually happens to be Natsuki’s birthday). I discovered that on the morning of the 9th, the bomber actually intended to hit the industrial city of Kitakyushu, about 100km north. However, due to adverse weather the bomber chose another nearby target and Nagasaki’s fate was sealed.

But similar to Hiroshima, walking through the bustling streets and parks, I came away feeling optimistic that if a city can rebuild itself after being destroyed by an atomic bomb, it can pretty much overcome anything.

After Joey and I munched our way through the city, we caught up with Natsuki and headed off to Gunkanjima, literally “Battleship Island” about a 40 minute boat ride out into Nagasaki Bay.

The island had been on my bucket list for a decade and as the boat neared and the concrete towers came into view, I felt a surge of excitement I usually only feel when buying Family Mart fried chicken.

It really is an impressive sight to behold. At one point the island was one of the most densely populated spaces on Earth; today, its concrete towers are slowly crumbling into the sea.

Whilst Gunkanjima was visually striking, unfortunately as it’s only accessible via tour, the actual experience on the island was fairly unremarkable. We went with a group of about 50 people, with a couple of guides shouting through a megaphone and explaining the history.

All in all, I’m glad we were able to visit Ikeshima the day before, as that was a much larger island that you could truly wander through and explore, compared to the slickly choreographed tour of Gunkanjima. But we had no regrets about visiting, and the island has a fascinating story to tell in the video.

Returning to Nagasaki, we hastily shot the Dr Jelly commercial - and this time, Natsuki had ingeniously come up with the natural sequel to energy jelly and hand jelly.

I’m not going to spoil it, but it’s quite possibly the most ridiculous, over-the-top, hilarious commercial we’ve made to date and a fitting end to the Jelly saga. It was brilliant to get Natsuki in it once and for all as well.

We ended our day overlooking Nagasaki from a nearby mountain, where we had quite possibly the best burgers in Japan. Natsuki and Joey even battled it out to see who could eat a triple cheeseburger the fastest (I have no idea how they were able to eat those monstrous burgers).

But like that, our huge adventure across Kyushu, and 3 islands was at an end.

Natsuki called it his best holiday yet, Joey referred to it as the most fun he’d ever had in a week, and I was too burned out to truly appreciate all that we’d done.

There’s no doubt, it was an incredible week, full of firsts. Whether it was flying in a Cessna through ash of Japan’s most active volcano, riding a horse that wanted to kill me, exploring abandoned islands and the nation’s biggest theme park, or producing a rap video in an igloo, Journey Across Japan: The Lost Islands is set to be one hell of a trip.

It’ll be a FIVE part series, but each episode will be 25-30 minutes long, so in effect it’ll be almost TWICE the run time of Journey Across Japan: Escape to Fuji!

You can expect the first episode in late May, with a trailer in a couple of weeks - a trailer which will be released EARLY right here on Patreon.

And with a BEHIND the SCENES Patreon episode being released each week alongside the series, featuring bloopers, outtakes and deleted scenes, you’ll be able to enjoy every step of this hilariously action-packed nightmare.

But a huge thanks to you all for making this series happen guys. I really hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed producing it!

Before then though, we’ve got a few new episodes out on Abroad in Japan, but more on that later this week.