Nagoya-based husband-and-wife vlogging duo Rachel and Jun Yoshizuki run the YouTube channel Rachel and Jun. Their on-the-ground accounts of daily life in Japan have been viewed more than 200 million times.
They belong to a community of “J-vloggers”: YouTubers who attract millions of views by sharing their insights into Japanese culture, including anything from a tour of a Japanese high school, to what it’s like to stay in a tiny room in a capsule hotel, and what it’s like to be multiracial in Japan.
“All of us [J-vloggers] get comments from our audience that they went to Japan because of us, or they started studying Japanese because of our videos, or they visited this city because we made a video about it,” Rachel says.
While misconceptions about every country exist, Japan in particular seems to get a specific portrait painted of itself in international media, which likes to focus on the country's weirder elements. “I think it’s really nice for [viewers] to get a down-to-earth, genuine perspective from actual people,” Rachel says. Many people think Japan is “a crazy place, and then they get here and it’s just another country.”
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Vlogging—blogging with video