A Curious Aspect

With the rise of TikTok and similar off-the-cuff services people have become more accustomed to watching videos with a portrait orientation. This has long struck me as odd as it removes a viewer's ability to explore the periphery to better understand a situation or context. However, given the incredible popularity of the format, there is clearly something that people find attractive. This is clearly something that makes sense to explore if I plan on doing anything with online video long term.

A couple of weeks ago I thought that it would make sense to start with videos of Ayumi doing silly puppy-dog things. I went through all of my videos of her, of which there are hundreds, and found none of them that would work in a portrait orientation. Just about every video had been recorded in the more traditional landscape orientation with a 16:9 aspect ratio. Converting this to a 9:16 simply did not work as it would rarely allow more than half of Ayumi's face to appear at any given time. New videos would need to be captured.

At the start of March, the puppy and I got in the car and drove out to Izumi on the Pacific coast of Chiba Prefecture. There we walked along a beach well known for all the driftwood that accumulates there and recorded about 25 minutes of video using a handheld camera as well as a drone using both 16:9 and 9:16 aspect ratios. A YouTube Short was published within a few hours of returning home and, to the surprise of nobody, it received almost zero views.

Given I am a complete unknown to just about everyone on Earth, this comes as no surprise. This video was also the first "short" and pretty much consists of me walking around on a beach, because Ayumi was moving in and out of focus with most of the footage that was collected. Sure, people watch these videos on their phone, but fuzzy images are no fun.

A week later I went out for an evening drive after a rather frustrating day at work. Rain was softly falling and it offered an opportunity to try and play with reflections and light. The pocket camera was mounted to its suction arm and moved around the interior of the car as I drove to Funabashi and back. Again, a video was uploaded to YouTube within an hour or so of getting home. However, this one was watched by four times as many people as the first video. Clearly something worked. But what?

From what I can tell, there are only two real differences between the videos:

  • one focuses on a person while another focuses on an action
  • one is labelled mostly with English while the other contains Japanese hashtags

Perhaps the problem is the language?

Today I posted a third Short. This one involved me driving home at night with the top down on the car. The descriptions were all in Japanese without a hint of English. Interestingly enough, the view count was more than double the previous video after just three hours. Are my videos being presented to people outside of Japan? Sure, I'm geographically inside the country, but the use of English was supposed to make the videos a little more international. According to the various metrics that YouTube shares, though, over 90% of all visitors for every video are in Japan, with over 80% of them being male. So, if I want to have videos that attract eyeballs, the English should be an afterthought.

Mind you, the point of creating a YouTube channel was not to attract a huge audience, but to learn new skills while also sharing the beauty of Japan with anyone who might watch. That said, investing hours into video recording and editing only to receive a few dozen views is disheartening. Having a bit of a balance would be nice.

So, with this in mind, I think the plan for the near future will be to continue making shorts while also focussing on some of the longer-form videos. They will be made primarily for a Japanese audience, which means I'll need to improve my pronunciation a bit if there will be any speaking, and subtitles will be made available for anyone who doesn't know the language. Let's see what patterns emerge over the next few months.

Domino Effect

People have tried to make a lot of analogies for life over the years and so many of them fail to capture the entirety of the human experience. Despite what Tom Hanks might suggest, life is not like a box of chocolates. Nor is life a dance. Nor is it briefer than a ballad sung by legendary rocker Meatloaf. Life, if it can be compared to anything, is a giant domino effect.

This line of thinking ran through my mind today as I wondered what would have happened had I not moved to an apartment north of Tokyo.

  • I would not have joined the church I attend, which means …
  • I would probably not have met some remarkable people, which means …
  • I would probably not have joined various Bible study groups, which means …
  • I would probably not have had the opportunity to develop meaningful friendships with the people who I look forward to seeing several times each week.

The argument could be made that I could have met other people and joined other groups had I attended a different church, and that's certainly true. It would be a different domino chain, though. Because, had I not joined the church I attend, then …

  • I would not have met Ayumi, as she was at a pet shop in Adachi, between the church and my apartment. Which means …
  • I would not have learned that she dislikes public transit. Which means …
  • I would probably not have invested the time and money at a driving school. Which means …
  • I would probably not have earned a Japanese driver's license. Which means …
  • I would almost certainly not have a bright yellow Daihatsu Copen.

Another argument could be made that I would have likely chosen to get a car if I had a different dog, as there are no vets around my house nor is it particularly easy to get around with public transit in that part of the country. This is a possibility, but it's not likely that I would have stumbled across the plethora of videos on YouTube featuring people driving their Daihatsu convertibles with a puppy in the passenger seat. Before settling on the Copen, I was seriously considering a Honda Fit or a Daihatsu Mira e:S as they are cheaper and easy to find at a dealership.

Of course, if I had not picked up a Copen, then I could not have …

Again, some might say that I could have brought Ayumi – or a different dog – to different events in a different car, and that I could have started a YouTube channel irregardless of the vehicle … but there are a whole lot of IFs required to make it all fit together. Had any one of the dominoes that resulted in a decision above not fallen, then this year would look different.

Heck, had I taken my sister's advice and returned to Canada for a couple of months from February, then pretty much nothing that happened this year would have come to pass as it would not have made sense to move into an apartment so close to flying half a world away.

Life sure is interesting.

Not Yet

Nozomi passed away almost a year ago. Every so often I find it hard to believe how quickly the time has gone, but the feeling is always the same. She deserved a longer life and a better ending than what she received. I can only pray that all dogs truly go to heaven and she is at peace now. Every so often people will see my phone and remark that the dog they see is not Ayumi. I let them know that her name was Nozomi and that she was a very special friend.

Nozomi on the Phone

The picture on the lock screen was taken on August 2nd, 2014 and it remains one of my most cherished photos. It was taken during a particularly difficult period, but it always brings a smile to my face. Nozomi's bright eyes and ever-present smile communicated everything I needed to hear. It still does. The photo on the main pages was taken six years later, on November 22nd, 2020. Nozomi was ten years old by this point and was quietly dealing with a medical condition that would not be diagnosed until four months later, when it almost killed her. For so much of her life, she was incredibly patient. She rarely put up a fuss and she looked forward to every opportunity to spend time with the people around her.

Her photos remain on the phone because I haven't yet been able to give her up to the past. Yes, Ayumi is also a special puppy with a special place in my heart, but she's not a replacement for Nozomi. Close friends cannot be replaced, nor should they be. But every so often I wonder if I should change the lock screen image for the first time since 2014, or the main image, which has been static since the day it was taken three years ago. Is it time to move on?

The answer is obvious, but the execution is difficult. Part of me knows that changing these images, which captured just a moment of tranquility with a good friend, would be akin to leaving much of the last 16 years in the past. Perhaps that's the thing I should be doing, but it's not the thing I want to be doing.

The Challenge of Distraction

Over the past few years I have tried to improve my writing. Better writing often leads to a better understanding of an idea, be it a question, a problem, or a memory. Given how easy it is for our emotions or biases to colour perceptions of a topic, the process of writing allows us to better separate ourselves from a subject when the need arises. Naturally, this doesn't mean that the things we write should be devoid of personality. What we should strive for when putting pen to paper, however that may be, is an absence of inaccuracy and an abundance of clarity.

The former is generally easier than the latter.

At the beginning of this year I made a number of changes to some habits so that I can invest more time in thinking. I no longer wear headphones while out and about in the world, using them only when talking to people through the phone or Internet. I carry something to write in at all times. I do not have music playing in the background all day to overcome the silence that permeates my life now. This has had a noticeable effect on how much time I spend thinking about important matters that were previously kept at bay by playlists, podcasts, and other distractions. Thanks to the reintroduction of "boredom", a number of realisations have been discovered and important decisions have been made.

That said, there is still one distraction that gets in the way of mental clarity: the internal monologues.

This is a plural because there are generally two thoughts that are vying for attention at any given time. There is one that is trying to focus on right now, whether it is work or reading or prayer or something else. Then there is that distracting voice that presents memories, asks off-topic questions, demands food, or something else that interferes with and sometimes overpowers the first. This is different from the "Voices of Self-Doubt" that I used to struggle with because the distractions are rarely demeaning or self-destructive. Instead, the distractions are more like a young child that runs around in an attic full of old boxes asking "What's this?", "How about this?", "Can I have this?".

Perhaps describing this voice as distracting is a little too generous.

One of the things I've been doing to try and reign in this internal "Chaos Monkey"1 is to have a paper notepad next to me when trying to focus on a specific task. Some testing over the last few weeks has shown that when I write down some of the ideas that are being thrown to the forefront of consciousness, the distractions can be set aside for a short while. Time still needs to be dedicated later in the day to mull over the concepts and memories that were presented, but the main area of focus can continue to receive the bulk of my attention. What I find interesting about these half-thoughts and memory fragments is that, when looked at as a whole, a pattern emerges that can offer insights into a problem or something I thought I understood. It is as though the mind is saying "You're not done with this, yet".

What does this have to do with better writing? Quite a bit. The insights are written about in my journal, in a letter, or on this blog. Because a proper amount of time was afforded to them, what I write is generally – but not always – more concise, with fewer tangents that lead to nowhere. I also find myself to feel better afterwards, as if a small weight has been lifted off my shoulders; one less burden to bear.

The voice continues to cause interruptions throughout the day but, perhaps by attending to that monkey, it will eventually run out of things to say and I will learn more about myself along the way.


  1. This term comes from a tool developed at Netflix that would randomly shut down parts of their infrastructure. This was done to ensure their systems were built to be resilient against failure. It's also a good term to describe the little voice in our head that is never satisfied with the present.