*I decided to try out a new style of solo vlogs, and within 2 days, my test video that I shared last time blew up!  Not massively but 1000 views and 30 (edit: 2300 views and 70 likes) which is way more than I expected the algorithm to throw at me. It’s not as if this was easy, I have been studying the algorithms and improving some skills for months now, including editing, SEO, thumbnail design, and understanding how content is consumed.*

*Now I’m going to try to share a similar video with a more interesting subject on my new second channel which is focused on Japan.  These are the notes for the video which I just uploaded. Once everything is running smoothly I’ll post to 3speak one or two days earlier than Youtube!*


https://youtu.be/Iez3ni8w_7E

One of the things that always confused me about growing up in the United States was just how little I knew about the rest of the world.  I grew up with friends from India, Russia, Korea, Cuba, Italy, Poland, way too many countries to count.

Why the hell didn't I know anything about life in these countries?  I would spend time at friends houses and they would respond to their parents in another language.  When I showed curiosity, they'd shy away from sharing anything with me.  

I remember the pressure to fit in and I didn't realize it then but I'm sure they felt it stronger than I did.  Some of their parents didn't even speak English and the kids felt like they were American, so they may have not liked being considered anything else and avoided their own cultural background. 

So for that reason, I never learned anything about the world from those around me who were connected to it.  Everyone wanted to fit in and so whatever customs or languages that they kept and the differences in their upbringing were mostly private.  We learned about the stereotypical Asian parents, and how Latin Americans have often had bigger families, but that was really the extent of what I learned of the world...

Some melting pot.

Yeah, I guess it was a melting pot, but aside from the food, it was sometimes hard to figure out what came from where.  We always took our shoes off in the house...was that because our ancestors were Eastern European or was it because of an Asian influence, or was it an east coast thing?  I'm still not sure.

Later, when I was in university, there was a huge international concert called Live 8 in 8 different countries to raise awareness about poverty in Africa. 

This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  

I was really excited to watch some of the non-English speaking acts.  I had never really heard much music in other languages before other than maybe Andreas Bocelli, Mas Que Nada and a few others, mostly classic or old jazz pieces. 

We were just getting settled into the internet at that time so attention was far less decentralized than it is today. There were a handful of international artists who managed to make a name for themselves, but they were few and far between and almost always in English. J-pop was nearly impossible to find in CD stores and the early days of iTunes. I don’t think K-pop was even a word yet. 


So I followed this big concert pretty carefully, hoping to learn about music from around the world. 

Streaming video in 2005 was not what it is today.  There was no YouTube or anything like it yet or if there was, it Was just starting.  

The internet service I was using claimed to be broadcasting every single minute of every performance in these G8 nations.  Germany, France, UK, all of them....except, that in the end, the broadcast left out most of the local acts. They only showed The artists that American people were familiar with. It was like the other countries music didn’t even exist.  Japan wasn't even listed.

I was especially looking forward to seeing the Japanese concert because Bjork would be playing and I had just discovered her music.  She brought me out of my punk rock only phase and helped me appreciate all kinds of music and so I was ultra excited to watch her.

I don't know why Japan wasn't included in the broadcast, but I imagine it was because it had the most local acts of all the countries involved.  Most other countries had 2 or 3 local artists and a majority of American or British acts.  The Japan show had a majority of Japanese artists.  I can only imagine that’s why it was cut from the broadcast that claimed to include everything. 

I got really angry.  Why was America not more curious about other countries. 

Over 180 countries in the world, and the overwhelming majority of music in America was either American or British.  Even Bjork who was popular in Europe was mostly known in America for wearing a swan dress.  

Yes there were a few songs that made it across our borders, but from my childhood, I can really only remember the emergence of reggeaton and my dads Andreas Botticelli album which I knew from the Sopranos. 

I could imagine people complaining about not understanding the lyrics...but I also knew that lots of popular American musicians toured the world.  

I felt that if other countries are learning about us, we should be learning about them. 

As an early child of the internet I decided to spend all of my online time trying to understand what was going on outside of my borders and what kind of great secrets were being kept from me. 

I decided to study a language and after making a list of the pros and cons of each language I settled on Japanese. 

3 years later I moved here, and I never regretted it even once. Learning Japanese was the first step in recreating my personality and with a little struggle and a lot of practice I’ve been able to adapt to other cultures as I encounter them. 

That’s what this channel will be about, my whole journey of adapting to different culture, my experiences in Japan and other countries, how I taught myself Japanese and Mandarin and maybe eventually about how I go about studying Spanish, German, or other languages. Maybe I’ll end up exploring some other cultures too. 

If you like this content, you may also be interested in a podcast I do called Untangled Knots. You can find video clips from it on my other youtube channel, Untangled Knots. 

I also make music and write fiction under the name I+Everything. You can find my music on Soundcloud and my novella series “Confessions of the Damaged” on Amazon and lulu.com. 

Thanks for watching, love you all 

Peace 

🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎
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