My Most HUMILIATING Moment in Japan in 10 Years.

0:00 So, the other day I received this comment from a viewer that I

0:03 think sums up the experience of being a YouTuber perhaps better than any other.

0:07 It was on a recent documentary we made on the Ishkawa earthquake,

0:10 showing the scale of the destruction, interviewing locals,

0:13 and exploring the risks of a potential mega earthquake in Japan.

0:17 An important video, and the response from viewers was amazing,

0:19 and no comment I received was as moving as this.

0:23 Profound love and sadness and loss for the Japanese people.

0:26 Much love for them.

0:28 Time has passed.

0:30 Beautiful, right?

0:31 And uh Oh, there's more.

0:32 Profound love and sadness.

0:34 But bro, you look pregnant.

0:38 What?

0:38 Work out and lose your belly and stop standing like a girl.

0:43 Laugh out loud.

0:45 Profound love and sadness, but bro, you look pregnant.

0:48 That's a real comment written by a real person.

0:51 It sort of broke my brain reading it.

0:52 You know, it's like watching the D-Day landing scene in Saving

0:55 Private Ryan and being like a profound and beautiful sacrifice.

0:59 Bro, somebody on Omaha Beach had too many pork chops.

1:03 Laugh out loud.

1:05 When I first started YouTube,

1:06 encountering much worse comments was a part of the job.

1:09 You know, not like today where such words come with an offensive comment tag.

1:13 And I hate to admit,

1:14 but the first two years I did this, it really did get to me.

1:17 Like a single nasty comment could sort of derail my mood for the day.

1:20 At the time, some YouTubers I knew just

1:23 said they didn't read the comments at all,

1:24 which I felt was a bad idea because the community

1:26 aspect is one of the best things about doing YouTube.

1:29 And I was like, how the hell can I do this?

1:31 Why would I do this full-time when this is the sort

1:33 of thing I have to put up with every single day?

1:35 It's not normal, right?

1:37 And around the same time, and this was exactly 10 years ago,

1:40 I was going through a difficult phase.

1:41 I was loving my life in rural Japan, living in Yamagata,

1:44 but my time as a teacher was coming

1:46 to an end and without a visa, I had to leave.

1:48 And I fell into a really bad place for half a year.

1:51 And amidst my search for something to cling to, some sort of hope,

1:55 I encountered stoic philosophy.

1:58 Stoicism wasn't that well known at the time.

2:00 Wasn't mainstream like it is now.

2:02 And I didn't know anybody around me who followed it or practiced it.

2:04 This 2,000-year-old philosophy, courtesy of the Greeks and the Romans,

2:08 and built around one powerful idea that we can't control what happens to us,

2:13 but we can control how we respond to it.

2:15 It was practical, brutally honest, and exactly what I needed to hear.

2:18 And I absorbed it all like a sponge.

2:20 You know, I jog around at night listening to it on audiobooks.

2:23 I'd sit at my desk and read it.

2:24 And there were three quotes that really stood out to me.

2:26 People are not disturbed by events, but by the views they take of them.

2:30 And if you are pained by external things,

2:32 it's not the thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it.

2:36 And a dog's got to eat.

2:37 And the boss dog is going to show you how.

2:40 Uh, maybe ignore that one for now.

2:42 It was a sort of light bulb moment.

2:44 I realized, hang on, I've been offended

2:46 by these comments because I've chosen to be.

2:48 We had the event, the bad comment.

2:49 We had my interpretation.

2:51 This is about me.

2:52 I'm a loser.

2:52 And we had a reaction or consequence.

2:54 In my case, demoralization.

2:56 But the twist was I was the one controlling the middle bit, right?

2:59 The interpretation.

3:00 That's where the real damage was happening.

3:01 Not the words themselves.

3:02 They were just some pixels on a screen.

3:04 And Stoic philosophy actually encouraged me to take things a step

3:07 further and try and find the positive in each and every situation.

3:10 And I soon realized hate comments are actually

3:12 a blessing in disguise because let's face it, they're comedy gold.

3:17 I took all these weird,

3:18 disorientating comments and made my first hate mail reading video.

3:22 Why does Japan attract bottom of the barrel white guys off?

3:26 Come on now.

3:27 I like to think I'm at least middle of the barrel.

3:29 It was just the most amazing feeling taking something so

3:31 negative and making it into something that made people laugh.

3:34 Not only that, but it was a real

3:35 hit with viewers getting hundreds of thousands of views.

3:38 I think it made like $300 $400 and I

3:41 put that towards like a weekend holiday in Taiwan.

3:45 And the whole time I was there, I kind of thought, "Oh,

3:47 I wish I had more hate comments cuz then I could do

3:49 this more often." And in the end became sort of a beautiful circle.

3:53 Revenue that was derived from the lucrative hate mail

3:55 series went towards funding more meaningful projects like documentaries.

3:59 So, ironically, it was a comment telling me my face and accent were annoying

4:04 that gave me the confidence to realize

4:05 I could probably get away doing YouTube full-time.

4:08 Still, I wasn't out of the woods just yet

4:09 because something far more challenging was just around the corner.

4:12 Something that would quickly dismantle my newfound optimism.

4:17 [Music] I've been in a strange mood lately.

4:28 It's the kind of mood where you stare out the window

4:31 for an hour and then wonder why you're holding a spoon.

4:34 H I suspect one reason is it was

4:38 my birthday recently and I'm now officially 53 years old.

4:42 At least according to the birthday cake so generously gifted by Connor.

4:47 The worst thing is I posted that photo online

4:49 and I got so many comments from people who were like,

4:51 "Oh wow, I didn't know you were 53 years old.

4:54 You look great for a 53y old man." Oh god.

4:57 But today, having turned 35 years old and wondering

5:00 what the bloody hell I'm doing with my life,

5:02 I want to do something I don't often do,

5:05 I really want to open myself up and share with you some stories,

5:08 personal things that I've never really talked about.

5:10 Things that I've learned from doing this across

5:12 300 videos and the last 12 years.

5:14 Now, I realize I may not be the biggest or the most bestest YouTuber,

5:18 but I've been lucky to do an awful lot of stuff.

5:20 I've got to meet people I never thought I would meet.

5:24 In fact, incredible.

5:25 Yeah.

5:26 see things that I never thought I would see,

5:30 challenge myself in ways I never thought I would,

5:34 and injure myself in ways I never thought possible.

5:40 Ouch.

5:40 And the story I want to share with you

5:42 today is one that I've avoided telling out of embarrassment.

5:45 It involves greed, money, desperation, and shame.

5:48 And it's big because it involves the single worst thing that I've

5:52 ever done at the single most important crossroads of my life and career.

5:57 And I'm sharing it now because while I'm not proud of it all,

5:59 I do think there are some useful life lessons in there.

6:02 Hopefully for you and hopefully for myself because I

6:05 fought really hard to get to do this full-time.

6:07 Um, and I've forgotten that.

6:08 I forget that frequently.

6:10 Diving back into the past can really help you to appreciate the present.

6:13 Right.

6:14 to gather around, hear the wisdom and mistakes of a pregnant

6:17 53 year old man and a story that I am really,

6:21 really not looking forward to recounting.

6:29 Some of my colleagues thought I was a bit

6:31 weird when we used to go home 5:30 p.m.

6:33 after working at school and instead of going out for a drink,

6:36 I'd retreat to my apartment to start work again.

6:39 This time making videos.

6:41 The first three years I did YouTube, every video was a labor of love.

6:45 Yeah.

6:46 Oh, or insanity, depending on your perspective.

6:49 It was an exciting time to be a YouTuber.

6:51 You know, it wasn't called content back then.

6:53 It was just pure unfiltered creativity.

6:56 People didn't worry about view counts or algorithms.

6:59 It was just about having fun.

7:00 And in my case, trying to find my way living in rural Japan.

7:04 I would mostly sit awkwardly and just talk to the camera in my apartment.

7:07 But there were top-notch special effects.

7:12 Poisoned my Japanese friends with British food.

7:18 Taught them to swear in English.

7:21 I'm trusting you with the drug.

7:24 Are you[ __] with me?

7:26 And in one video, I even broke my table.

7:30 Yeah, it wasn't so great.

7:32 I always wanted to be a filmmaker, and YouTube kind of felt like the middleman.

7:35 A way to cheat my way into the world.

7:37 learn by doing and with a bit of luck eventually get good at it.

7:40 I didn't really have time to make videos.

7:42 I'd have to sort of script, edit,

7:43 and film the videos in the cracks between work.

7:46 And so quality over quantity was a real necessity.

7:49 And after 3 years, I'd made about 30 videos

7:51 and had this amazing community of about 100,000 viewers.

7:54 And for the first time in my life,

7:56 I felt oddly confident about what I wanted to do.

7:59 Uh I wanted to do this.

8:01 But the job ended and so did my visa.

8:03 And I went back to the UK for a few months to figure things out.

8:06 catch up with my family and perhaps above

8:09 all find the biggest cheese board name to science,

8:12 which thankfully I was able to do.

8:15 My plan to do YouTube full-time are two pretty big problems.

8:18 Number one, I had no money.

8:20 YouTube was bringing in maybe $200, $300 a month, which was cool,

8:23 but it was like onetenth of my teaching

8:25 salary and certainly not enough to live off.

8:27 It was sort of a chicken and egg situation.

8:29 I needed to devote all my time to making videos so I could live,

8:32 but I had no money with which to do that.

8:34 So, I did something I never thought I would do.

8:36 Uh, I went to my bank and asked for a loan of about £6,000,

8:40 hoping that money could kind of support me through the first 3 or 4 months.

8:43 Now, the bank manager was an older guy and he

8:45 sort of treated the whole thing like an interrogation.

8:47 When he looked at my bank account and was like, "Oh, you have no money.

8:51 How will you pay this loan back?" I was like, "Oh,

8:53 I'll do YouTube in it." And he was like, "I don't know what that is.

8:56 Get out." But I was like, "Wait, wait,

8:58 look at this." And I got my phone out and I was like, "Look, this is YouTube.

9:01 This is the future.

9:02 Here's a video of people calling me a[ __] who hate me.

9:05 And uh look, look, I broke a table for views.

9:09 And uh admittedly, it wasn't going very well.

9:13 But I had one ace up my sleeve.

9:14 A few months earlier, I had a video go viral giving Japanese friends Marmite.

9:19 And I showed these poor friends of mine dying while eating British food.

9:22 And the bank manager like flipped and was like, "Oh gosh, oh my goodness.

9:27 Isn't that marvelous?

9:28 Wonderful.

9:29 Wonderful." And that video actually featured on the BBC website.

9:32 And when the manager saw that, he was like,

9:33 "Oh my goodness, somebody who's been on the BBC must be good.

9:37 Here, have a bank loan with lots of interest.

9:40 Hurry up and pay it back." So, I finally had this loan.

9:42 It was November.

9:43 My goal was simple.

9:44 Get back to Japan by December, start making videos, hit the ground running.

9:47 But there was a second problem, a bigger problem, and that was I needed a visa.

9:52 Can't go to Japan without a visa, right?

9:53 One idea was to come back on a working holiday.

9:56 However, it only lasted 12 months.

9:57 and in a year I'd sort of be back at square one.

9:59 But there was another option.

10:01 A Japanese company got in touch with an offer that sounded too good to be true.

10:05 They would not only give me a visa,

10:07 but they would help me film, edit, and subtitle my videos into Japanese.

10:11 They were a multi- channelannel network,

10:13 a new business model that had sprung up to exploit,

10:16 I mean, help YouTubers with their videos.

10:18 And all I had to do was give them a cut of my ad revenue,

10:21 and in return, they do all these great things.

10:23 And just to be clear, this wasn't Tokyo Creative.

10:25 This was at least 3 years before they even existed.

10:28 And I don't want to paint all MCN's in a bad light.

10:30 Modern ones are a lot better than back then, but back then it was the wild west.

10:34 Every company wanted YouTube channels.

10:35 They were trying to collect them like Pokémon cards because it meant they could

10:38 inflate their revenue and make their companies look a lot bigger than they were.

10:41 YouTube was changing as all of a sudden

10:43 businesses had realized you could make money.

10:46 And Abro Japan was doing pretty well as it

10:48 was one of the fastest growing channels in the country.

10:50 I don't think even I appreciated how well it was doing with 100,000 subscribers.

10:54 But this company said they wanted to work with me.

10:56 But first, I had to prove myself, prove that I was worthy.

10:59 And they said, "We're going to fly you to Japan.

11:01 We're going to put you up in a hotel for a week.

11:03 And all you have to do is this Abra Japan live show where you promote

11:07 our brand new website in front of a live

11:09 studio audience at the YouTube space in Tokyo.

11:11 It'll be fun.

11:12 You can do it with Natsky.

11:13 And if it goes well, we could do great things together.

11:15 We can get you that visa." Now, this was a big deal.

11:17 I'd never done a live stream before.

11:19 It was 2015.

11:20 It was kind of like new, clunky, terrifying technology.

11:22 And the idea of speaking in front

11:24 of thousands of people online and also in front

11:26 of a live studio audience of 150 people absolutely scared the crap out of me.

11:31 But I was desperate.

11:32 I was really desperate to get back to Japan to get

11:34 the visa and to claw back control of this rapidly fading dream.

11:39 So against my better judgment, I said yes.

11:44 2 days before this big live event, they fly me to Tokyo economy.

11:48 But man, did I feel like a real badass,

11:50 sitting in the back of the plane, knowing that I hadn't paid for the ticket.

11:53 The apple juice had never tasted so sweet.

11:56 I arrive in Tokyo, jetlagged, destroyed,

11:59 still smelling like Heather Airport, but excited to be back.

12:01 And I thought, "Oh yeah,

12:02 at least I've got my nice hotel waiting." Except I didn't because it turned out

12:07 the staff in this company owned what can only be described as a shed in Saitama.

12:12 And that would be my accommodation for the week about an hour outside of Tokyo.

12:16 I remember getting the keys, opening the door to this place.

12:19 This dark, damp room that looked like something

12:22 out of Silence of the Lands meets the ring.

12:24 There was this ragged shy door.

12:26 It looked like somebody had been clawing at it.

12:29 Somebody tried to escape something unspeakably awful.

12:32 And I'm sitting there alone, God knows where, you know,

12:35 half expecting something to crawl out of the TV.

12:38 But I'm a practicing stoic, right?

12:40 I'm trying to find the upside, the good thing.

12:42 And I'm like, well, at least uh at least this is free.

12:45 words that I imagine will be chiseled onto my gravestone.

12:48 But I'm really nervous about this event.

12:50 Like, I'm not going to sleep tonight level of nervousness.

12:53 As a guy who's filmed all their videos alone in their apartment,

12:56 I'm not ready to do this in front of thousands of people.

12:58 But at least Natki will be there, right, to see me through.

13:01 And I'm lying on this sleeping bag the night before,

13:04 wondering what I'd gotten myself into because this really didn't feel

13:06 like the glorious future of YouTube that I had been promised.

13:11 [Applause] So the big day arrives and I've

13:18 had like a solid 20 minutes sleep and I

13:21 get on like four trains to get into Raongi

13:24 to this monstrous skyscraper Mory Tower which is

13:26 the home of the YouTube space where the live

13:28 event is going to happen and I'm on the train

13:30 like posting about this event promoting it as like

13:33 the first ever a Braw Japan live event.

13:35 Everyone's excited especially Natki who's messaged

13:38 me like I'm flying down to Tokyo.

13:40 Can't wait.

13:40 It's going to be amazing.

13:41 The live show is in the evening, so I've got like five or six hours beforehand.

13:45 So, I meet with the guys at the company

13:46 in a coffee shop to discuss the game plan.

13:48 And they're like, "Wow, you made it.

13:50 You look well rested.

13:51 That's great.

13:52 It's going to be a big night." And across the table,

13:54 they hand me this paper with the running order.

13:57 And I look down and it is a script for an absolute horror show.

14:03 All of a sudden, I realize just how absolutely[ __] I really am.

14:08 What had happened is this company had realized

14:10 how lucrative this show was going to be.

14:12 Not just to promote their website,

14:14 but to promote literally dozens of items from random companies, random products.

14:18 This wasn't so much going to be an Abro

14:20 Japan live show as a shopping channel QVDC style[ __]

14:25 show stitched together with duct tape and lights and I

14:28 was going to be the frontman for all of it.

14:31 In exchange for the flight and the shed in sight hammer,

14:33 they had sold off every square inch of this live

14:36 show to an almost impressive amount of sponsors.

14:38 Now, at this point, the response is obvious, right?

14:41 You say no, you walk away, you back out.

14:43 A reasonable response, but this was an unreasonable situation.

14:46 I'd already promised this show to thousands of viewers.

14:49 The event space was quite literally filling up with a live studio audience.

14:52 There were camera crews running around because this was

14:55 going to be like TV show studio level of production.

14:58 influencers have been flown in from across Asia to take part in this.

15:01 There were so many moving parts that for me to cancel

15:04 it would have blown a hole through my reputation in Japan,

15:07 especially as this was at the YouTube space at YouTube's head office in Asia.

15:11 So, as a guy trying to find their way through all of this, you know,

15:14 I had no manager, no support, no experience in this situation.

15:18 I mean, this company was supposed to kind of be my managers at this point,

15:21 and they obviously held off telling me about all this until

15:24 it was too late for me to sort of back out.

15:27 But they reassured me.

15:28 They were like, "Don't worry.

15:28 Don't worry.

15:29 It be a lot of fun.

15:29 We got all these influences.

15:30 Just just read the script and have fun with it." But I had no

15:33 time to process this act of betrayal because I had a live show to do.

15:42 So, a few hours later, there I am sat on this big red sofa

15:46 with a literal studio audience of 150 people staring at me.

15:49 Right.

15:50 My heart is thumping.

15:52 I'm jetlagged.

15:52 I'm tired.

15:53 I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

15:54 I've never done an event in front of a live audience.

15:57 This is the imposttor syndrome speedrun spectacular

16:01 with a[ __] bow wrapped around it.

16:03 And Natsky, who I thought would be here as my savior,

16:06 has been shoved into the audience like an unpaid extra.

16:09 They've told him he's not coming on stage.

16:11 Now, on a technical level, this is very impressive.

16:13 The studio lighting, the cameras, the high production values,

16:16 which only made the ensuing disaster look even worse.

16:20 And then away it went.

16:22 Now, the show is simply too awful to show you outright,

16:25 but I will share with you the highlight reel of awful because it was insane.

16:29 Good afternoon, good morning, good evening.

16:31 Hello everyone.

16:31 Welcome to Tokyo Live.

16:34 We're live here from the Tokyo YouTube space in a very,

16:37 very big building in the middle of a very, very big city.

16:40 First off, I didn't follow the script.

16:42 It was bollocks.

16:43 And instead, I sort of awkwardly closed my eyes while I was talking,

16:47 hoping that if I shut my eyes, if I reopen them, it would all go away.

16:51 It'll be like it didn't happen.

16:53 Meanwhile, literal wave after wave of influencers were thrown

16:57 onto the stage like frontline troops in Operation Barbarosa.

17:01 All nice people who I'd never met once in my life.

17:04 Each one tasked with selling something utterly ridiculous.

17:08 For example, their first product was this crappy Honda robot thing like

17:13 a chair that you're supposed to sit on and it would like drive around.

17:18 And it was great until I sat on it and broke it.

17:21 It literally just fell over and that was it.

17:24 Five minutes into the show.

17:26 As the company running this nightmare were Japanese,

17:29 it kind of had all the trappings of a Japanese TV show.

17:32 There was a YouTuber called Deca King who again really nice guy,

17:35 massive YouTuber these days.

17:36 He was sort of brought in as this slapstick court jester kind

17:40 of figure who'd get his stomach out and sort of just prod himself periodically.

17:46 And while I was speaking,

17:48 the camera would like cut away to him, literally holding an ad,

17:52 like an ad read on a bit of car and he held that up and that was the ad.

17:56 It was in I didn't even realize it was going on.

17:58 I like had to look around and see it was happening.

18:01 This wasn't so much a production as the absolute theater

18:04 of the absurd because I didn't know who Harvey sponsored rounds were.

18:09 It became painfully obvious and I'm holding them like I don't know what this is.

18:12 I've never had it or used it or eaten it.

18:15 I have no idea.

18:16 And I'm not going to sit there and lie and be like, "Oh, I love this thing." So,

18:19 it's not an overly flattering presentation for the sponsor products either.

18:23 And while this is all unfolding,

18:24 I'm looking at the comments from the 9,000 people watching

18:27 this live and nobody knows what on earth is going on.

18:30 Everyone's extremely bored and confused.

18:32 And the crowd is so underwhelmed at this point,

18:35 they practically have rigor mortise.

18:37 Meanwhile, you've got poor Natsky,

18:39 who's vanished to the sidelines doing halfbaked magic

18:42 tricks like a drunken children's entertainer who's finally allowed

18:45 to come on stage for all of 30 seconds

18:47 to shock a cup of sake and still somehow become

18:51 the highlight of this complete and utter trainer

18:55 in the even though this was supposed to be like

18:58 the Abor Japan show and I'm in the middle

19:01 of the sofa surrounded admittedly by an army of influencers.

19:05 I had to escape it.

19:06 And I did that by drinking like a bottle of sake, a sponsored bottle of sake,

19:12 of course, that was placed before me in the middle of the table.

19:15 I drank it.

19:16 I quietly got drunk and I sort of just disappeared.

19:19 Kind of pretending like I wasn't there.

19:21 By the end of this thing, there were nine people on the sofa.

19:24 Nine people.

19:25 And about a dozen companies had been name dropped.

19:28 I have to say if it wasn't for Martina who was a bit

19:31 more experienced in the world of doing this, we would have been really stuffed.

19:35 It was thanks to her she kind of helped

19:36 keep it all together and for that I'm eternally grateful.

19:38 Meanwhile, the MCN company that was running this like in the back

19:42 room counting the money out like a scene from Scarface.

19:45 And when it finally came to an end,

19:47 I was just so distraught and disappointed and empty.

19:52 I felt like a sellout even though ironically I'd make no money from doing this.

19:57 It was exploitation in its purest, most distilled form.

20:01 I felt like I'd let a lot of people down,

20:03 namely people that liked to abro in Japan, viewers of the channel.

20:06 You know, for 3 years, I built this channel that I was proud of.

20:09 I'd built a community I cared about.

20:11 And what should have been a celebration of that, the first

20:14 live show was this soulless corporate parade disguised as something personal.

20:19 And as a naive, idealistic guy who just wanted to make videos and get creative,

20:24 that was my first real lesson in business,

20:27 you know, I'd been dragged kicking and screaming

20:29 into the brutal world of business and reality.

20:31 The next day, I had a meeting with the people,

20:33 the MCM over coffee, and they were beaming.

20:36 They were like, "Wow, you did great.

20:38 What a success.

20:39 It was so much fun.

20:40 We'd love to work with you and have you on board with the company,

20:43 and we could get you that visa by Christmas." And unsurprisingly,

20:47 I was like, "Nah, I'm I'm good." I thought,

20:50 "If this is what I have to do to get a visa,

20:53 I'd rather just burn the Abroad Japan channel to the ground." Now,

20:56 some of you might be disappointed, like,

20:58 "That's the worst thing you've done in Japan.

20:59 I thought you'd put some chopsticks in the rice

21:01 or slapped Kenwatanabi in the face." And indeed,

21:05 those things would be pretty awful.

21:06 But this went on a far deeper level.

21:08 It's a hard emotion to convey when

21:10 you feel like you've discarded your integrity.

21:13 You know, in the case of that live show,

21:15 nearly every single artistic principle that I held dear had been

21:18 dismantled in the space of two hours in a very public manner.

21:22 And yet, in hindsight, despite everything and drawing upon that stoic lesson

21:26 I mentioned at the start of the video, I am happy that this happened.

21:30 The worst moments can lead to the best decisions.

21:32 And that event essentially became the guiding star in what not to do.

21:37 In the ashes of this disaster, two things happened.

21:40 Number one, I did come back to Japan two months later

21:42 on a working holiday visa and did things my own way.

21:45 I found my own path and it wasn't easy.

21:47 It really wasn't.

21:48 I spent the first 3 months living out of budget hotels

21:51 and that affforementioned loan evaporated quicker

21:54 than a puddle in the Sahara desert.

21:56 But I got to live through it all,

21:58 making videos that I cared about, doing things on my own terms.

22:01 And to this day, the good news is it really is

22:04 the only thing I have regretted making and putting out on the channel.

22:08 or maybe that and eating the biggest gyoza in Japan.

22:11 My stomach has never been the same since,

22:13 but that's a different different matter altogether.

22:15 The second thing is that company no longer exists.

22:18 Turns out when you burn your bridges with everyone,

22:20 it's not the best long-term strategy for a company to follow.

22:23 And today, when I catch sight of Mory Tower looming over the Tokyo skyline,

22:27 it's become a powerful reminder to me.

22:29 It's a beacon of what not to sacrifice when the chips are down.

22:33 And perhaps above all,

22:33 it's a reminder to never again agree to something that involves the phrase,

22:37 just read the script, it'll be fun.

22:40 And finally, if you are struggling in any way,

22:42 I do recommend the wise words of the Stoics.

22:45 Maybe maybe not that one, just there.

22:47 But these guys worked out 2,000 years ago.

22:49 And much of the success that I've had in my career

22:52 is thanks to knowledge and wisdom that I've absorbed from these books.

22:55 I would recommend them more than anything.

22:57 Check them out.

22:58 and the Abro Japan book which is almost as good and now available in German,

23:02 Dutch and Polish, very beautifully translated as well.

23:05 That's it though guys.

23:06 As always, many thanks for watching.

23:07 A huge thank you to all of you who have joined

23:09 me on this journey over the last decade and a half.

23:12 It sounds like I'm going somewhere and hopefully that's not the case,

23:14 but I uh I am genuinely very very grateful to all of you.

23:18 And of course to the Abro Japan Patreon community who have funded an upcoming

23:22 documentary on volcanoes that I'm very excited

23:24 about and which is coming very soon.

23:27 Keep an eye out for it.

23:28 As for me, I'm off to swap the wise words

23:30 of the Stoics for the wise words of Snoop Dog.

23:33 Uh, this is officially the only cookbook that I own.

23:36 Somebody got it for me for my birthday.

23:38 And uh, well, I think it's time for me to embark on my next culinary journey,

23:41 cooking for Charlotte.

23:45 Oh, come on now.

23:56 [Music]