Japan in my 20s | Enjoying the Countryside of Japan (Kurashiki & Kojima)

Japan in my 20s | Enjoying the Countryside of Japan (Kurashiki & Kojima)

[Music] After a couple days of editing, I went to Kyoto as a DP to help out my friend for his directing job. And I was only there for a day. And after 6 hours of sleep, I went on a plane real quick and I’m here in the beautiful city of Hiroshima [Music] to celebrate my birthday. But today we’re headed to Kurashki which is a city in Okama. I always wanted to fully embrace myself in Kurashki. This is a city that I used to pass on bullet train or like I I will go sometimes for like family stuff. Not family stuff quite but just like hanging out with family and we didn’t do much there. And as a kid I didn’t have enough appreciation for like the denim culture in Okama or like the stuff at there. So this time for my birthday, me and my girlfriend, we got to hang out in Karachi and just fully enjoy the culture, cafe, food, and the denim stuff in that city. So I hope you guys will enjoy along the journey with us. And I’m sorry the exposures keep changing. The light is kind of crazy though. But the rainy season is about to end in Japan, which is kind of quick this year. So I’m super happy, very hype. And yeah, come with us to Okay, let’s see. You know what’s popping? [Music] One. [Music] [Applause] [Music] That might have been the coolest thing I’ve seen in 10 years, man. Oh my god. Also, my face is hella puffy. I don’t like it. [Music] We made it to Bikon District in Kurashki City, a designated area for preserving both its aesthetic appearance and historical significance. Actually, we’ve explored this place twice during this trip because the first day was a bit rainy and we wanted to enjoy at the fullest. So, I decided to put together our favorite spots in this section of this video. Tono Bacon is a shop that serves smoked food and onigiri. We tried smoked deer on a stick, which might sound pretty crazy, but it was surprisingly tasty. However, my absolute highlight is this grill oni that was filled with bacon and butter. And you already know that sounds amazing, and yes, it was. La Coffee is a cozy cafe by the end of the district, and I got their ice blend, which was good. But honestly, I love the store’s vibe and overall coziness the most. If your legs are tired by walking around the district all day, this is a spot to just chill out. Rakante is a cafe that is in the main street of the district. We waited for around 10 minutes to get in, which wasn’t that bad considering this is a touristy area. And we ordered Granita Day Cafe, which is coffee with dense cream on top and this super bitter dark roasted iced coffee at the bottom. The mixture of the cream and the coffee create this amazing balance. And even though 1,200 yen for coffee is pretty expensive in Japan, I think it’s totally worth it. Beon district is also filled with bunch of cute souvenir shops and local denim stores. So if you guys have any chance, I highly recommend checking it out. What? [Music] [Music] The next day, we headed to Nshma, which is known as the island of art. And there are a bunch of museums that are built by the master of modern architect himself, Ando Talo. I like how it’s so lowkey. It’s not too country. There’s like a lot of people living here as well. And it’s just like a popping popping city type of island. There’s a lot of people today, too. There’s like a lot of art pavilion. Also, today I’m using the 24 mil f2.8G lens from Sony. I have a not that good of an ND filter on it. So, I think you guys will see like a couple vignettings, but it’s all right. It’s my birthday. I’m just going to enjoy this moment, not thinking about cameras too much. [Music] Unfortunately, all the museums did not allow videos inside. However, some of them did allow photos. So, here are some photos that I got. [Music] [Music] Welcome back to our car review section. Today we have I mean I rented this car but this is Copenang Set. Copengen is from Datsu. This is their sports line. So Copengen uh original one was I think made in 1998 but this is Copenang ST which is the newer Copen but they reinvented the older model to make it just a little bit more modern and new. We have this beautiful British green colorway. Uh we have couple bird poops uh on the car unfortunate. It’s so fun to ride a convertible. This car is 660cc beast. It’s a Japanese K car. You know those like small K truck that you guys see in the States sometimes about the same size of an engine. It’s way more spacious than we thought. We were able to put a bunch of bags in it. If you use the car in a convertible, you can’t really put any luggage in the trunk, but if you have it close, there’s a ton of luggage space. This car is absolutely beautiful. I’m a big fan of K car. I even myself have a K version of Suzuki Jimny. So K all the way. Also, the inside is not leather. It’s like this mesh sports bucket seat, which is also nice. I’m not a big fan of leather seats, so this is fantastic. A great summer car. Such a good vibe for, you know, these days. [Music] Welcome to Fun Fact with your boy Pace Gates. I don’t know if you guys can hear me, so I’m recording my voice on my iPhone as well. But this is Stoashi, which is a bridge that is 12.3 km long that was built in 1988. And this is one of the biggest bridges in Japan. I think it’s the biggest bridge. I’m not sure. I’m not sure about that point. This bridge connects between Okima Prefecture to Kaga Prefecture which is in two different regions which is separated by Sto inland Sea. Because of this bridge, we have much easier transportation of like goods, a bunch of other stuff like using cars just to go across the inland sea. We can just use this bridge. So, this is like, you know, one of the prideful uh Japanese construction uh art right here, which involved 5,000 construction workers, and it took 9 and 1/2 years to build it. Since growing up, I used this bridge multiple times in my life. And this is, I think, the most popular uh road bike course in Japan as well. So, if you’re into road bike, if you’re into cycling, try this bridge. [Music] So, this small district has bunch of Betty Smith’s store, factory, like outlet mall place that you can make your own jeans and like small cafes and jeans museum and stuff, which is really dope. I really like the vibes here. It’s very cute, very local. But the thing is that, you know, it’s not as crowded. So I highly recommend if you ever in Kojima like please check out Betty Smith. Betty Smith jeans museum and village. Such a long name. Saying goodbye is difficult and this time was the hardest. Kurashki and Kojma are definitely now one of our favorite places to visit. Strong culture, unique history, so many cool places to hang out. Thank you Okayama. We will miss you and I will see you guys in my next video. Welcome back to some BS the bonus section of this video. Thank you guys so much for watching till the end of this vlog. Also, if you guys like my hat, I got a Kojima is from Capital. I went to the main store in Japan and I got this sick hat and some pair of jeans. Usually in this part of the video, I answer you guys question and talk about some random stuff that I’m like currently interested in. But I’m not answering the questions today because I want to get into something that is pretty important and pretty useful. But if you guys have any questions for the next video, please leave #BBS so I can answer some questions. However, today we’re talking about locations, specifically locations to film some beautiful stuff. I want to give you guys some my way to find good locations to not only film but also just hang out and have some great time. I usually use these four resources. These are all written in Japanese. I read them because my first language is Japanese. However, a lot of these are like all of these has the address and a photo of that location. You can literally choose whatever location that you think is cool and you can just search on Google Maps. I don’t want to make this section too long. So, let’s just get right into it. I’m just going to briefly explain what each things are. So, this is Chikino Arikata. This is a traveling book that you can find anywhere in any bookstore in Japan. I got this Hiroshima edition uh because I want to travel my home prefixure a bit more this year. And this is literally I don’t know how many pages around 450 pages worth of information about Hiroshima in this one book. So literally go to your closest bookstore as soon as you arrive to Japan. You can’t really plan. The problem with these is that you can’t really plan ahead. But if you have time in Japan, I highly recommend these ways. If you guys want to know any good travel places in specific location, this is the one to go. So the second one is pamphlet. I guess it’s a pamphlet. It’s very thin, but you can find these in any Montbell store in Japan. I think Mont Bell is like one of the most popular outdoor brand in Japan. But if you go to their store, there are thousand of these for different locations in different prefectures in Japan. And they do have English title on this. So, if you guys can find whatever places that you guys are thinking about going or some plans that you already had at certain places, grab this pamphlet and find some activities, uh, mountains, hiking, a lot of outdoorsy stuff, but you can literally find anything on this pamphlet. And the last two are, of course, um, if you guys are watching my vlogs, you guys will know that I will talk about some magazines. So these two Popeye can be kind of difficult to find these editions but premium premium has a lot of let’s say Kyoto touring edition some specific location guide book series they often uh release those. If you guys can find either premium or Popeye’s like tour guide edition I highly recommend to grab these. This is the recent edition of Popeye. at the newest one, but this is a Tokyo guide and this is heavily focused on town as well. So, if you guys are traveling around town trying to find some cool places, cafes, food, etc., Premium and Popeye are like the best magazines to find them. Like, these are really good. But anyway guys, I hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you guys like this video, please hit the thumbs up. And if you guys like my video style, please hit the sub button. Anyway guys, I will see you guys next time. My name is Peace Gates. You guys already know. Peace out guys. [Music]

Welcome everyone! In this video, I’m documenting my birthday celebration in Okayama, Japan—specifically in Kurashiki and Kojima. I thoroughly enjoyed creating this content and hope you’ll enjoy watching it too!

See you guys next week.

Like the music? Find my playlist with the music l’ve used here:
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If you have any questions, please comment #somebs to be feature in my next video!