Pokemon sent me to Japan!

remember when Pokémon sent me every single one of their Gen 5 sitting cuties for me to rank turns out they really liked that video so much in fact that they said hey Jaden awesome video why don't you come to Japan to watch the Pokémon 2023 World Championships our treat you won't have to pay for your flights or hotel or nothing I've been to Japan once before in my entire life and it was back in 2018 with my family we did a bunch of fun little Japanese tourist things it was a phenomenal trip but ever since

then I've always wanted to go back and do all the awesome nerdy stuff Japan has to offer that I didn't want to bother my family with at the time they didn't even know who Luffy was they would have been so lost so when Pokemon extended their hand and offered to fly not only me but Jacob out to attend the biggest Pokémon tournament in the world I jumped for Joy free trip to Japan the tournament was only going on for a single weekend but Jacob and I planned to stay there for three whole weeks to do

a bunch of said extra nerdy stuff we were pumped eventually the time came Jacob and I were packing up all our stuff and decided we both would bring an extra suitcase so we could treat ourselves a bit and buy a bunch of cool stuff while we're there don't judge us we are anime and Nintendo loving impulse buyers going to Japan a game plan was needed we were being responsible two extra suitcases was definitely going to be enough yep equipped with our extra luggage we headed off to the airport Pokémon straight up gave us business class

seats we didn't ask for them or anything so so when we boarded we realized we had the seats where you could lay down there even was some sort of seat divider that acted like a car window so I could roll it down and bother Jacob whenever I wanted quick little 11-hour flight later and we were in Japan it was time to have the best trip of Our Lives I'm I'm not joking I had the most incredible trip and got to do things I won't ever forget and I I won't because I've now plastered it onto

the internet forever we landed midday Japan time so we decided to go to the first thing we wanted to see while abroad Japanese McDonald's I couldn't order anything except fries but Jacob and I both dropped our Jaws when we saw something called the double Big Mac on the menu I thought Americans already went big with the Big Mac but Japan did The Impossible just to send a message what a magical place let's begin with the next morning Pokemon planned a bunch of cool stuff for the creators and partners they flew out beginning with a group

field trip to the mega Tokyo Pokémon Center Jacob and I woke up early for it and missed the bus they had for us and it totally wasn't completely my fault entirely because I hypothetically didn't read the schedule correctly and was taking my sweet time getting ready why would you think that so we had to take the trains on our own to get there anyone that remembers my first Japan trip knows the trains were me and my family's mortal enemy number one we kept getting it wrong and it was failure after failure the entire trip you'd

think that with all that prior experience and struggle I would have grown as a Japanese train understander right nope we got on the wrong train but at least we were having a a good time after a lot of freaking out and mental strain and Regrets We finally arrived at our destination and although by the time we got there they had already finished looking at the Pokémon Center we were able to grab a quick snack with the group at the Pokémon Sweets Cafe I meant to take a picture of the Pikachu waffle before I ate half

its Cranium but I forgot so this is why you get now that we were with the group we were able to travel with them for the rest of the day so we packed into the bus and headed off to a traditional tea ceremony where we were taught all about how the tea Masters would make tea and tea etiquette and all these things about the significance of tea in Japanese culture all while getting to taste the tea the tea Master made again I've meant to take this picture before I took a chunk out of the little

sweet they gave us but here we are yet again I'm just not that great at this they also served us a really special lunch of super fancy Beno boxes like so fancy that the host was like dude I've never even had these Beno boxes before for I was super excited but I don't mean to be ungrateful or wasteful but the box was full of super fancy complicated fish and seafood I knew going to Japan I'd have to be flexible with food because it's really hard to be vegan or even vegetarian there so I really tried

to eat as much as possible and look thankful but yeah I struggled a lot but I still had a great time and it was an honor we were dropped off at the Yokohama Chinatown and left to explore a bit until dinner in a few hours everyone separated into groups and Jacob Stefan the guy that sent me all the sitting cuties you guys remember him the guy named Steve and I went and pursued the street food a bit before stumbling into a little arcade with a bunch of crane machines I got this silly little bear minifigure

his name is Chico OB so I decided to innocently carry him around in my pocket for the entirety of the trip you know because he was silly this single action severely changed the course of my mental stability going forward you'll see soon enough but look at these cute photos I got with them we had a great dinner headed back to the hotel got to hang out with with our good old Pokémon Rival jit or yawn of it and called it a night the next day we all got to do some private shopping at the Pokémon

world's popup shop I'll just say we bought way too much stuff that we also don't regret in the slightest I even got this video of Jacob grabbing more and more sitting cuties as the workers kept reorganizing them to keep the display looking perfect we walked out of there with three giant bags of stuff but it's okay because remember we anticipated this with our extra suitcases which I I'm starting to wonder if they are going to be enough but surely we will come down we were then all taken to the creatures offices you know just the

place where they make Pokémon cards it was gorgeous in there they had these awesome sculptures of giant Pokémon cards with crystals and all the walls were lined with 3D card art it felt like I was in a building with a lot of significance because I was we got a tour around the building met the TCG card testers and were able to ask them questions about their process even got to have a little Q&A session with atushi nagashima the game director of the Pokémon TCG it was funny one of the people in our group asked how

they chose which Pokémon to make cards for a good question and then followed it up with I really like Manti but there's only two Manti cards that exist and the assistant pulled up a list of all the Pokemon Manti cards that have ever been created and sure enough there were only two the director chuckled and was essentially like yeah sometimes Pokémon get lost in the cracks we kind of just make cards of Pokémon I like for example my favorite Pokémon is Gengar and you know what that actually makes a lot of sense also we were

able to have a Q&A session with the Pokémon card art director and three artists who actually draw art for the cards that was super interesting and I was so incredibly inspired by that discussion but you know those Pokémon cards with the super cute clay art that artist's name is Yuka Mori and she was in that panel I was so Star Struck those are some of my favorite Pokémon cards and not only that but she hosted a little workshop for us where she gave us clay and taught us how to make little clay magnemites like in

this card here speaking of this card she brought the actual original Magnemite for us to see that was by far the coolest thing that I've ever gotten to be a part of we got to meet a piece of genuine history I felt like I was meeting the President also here's me and Jacob's magnemites that we made day three of our little Pokémon field trip and we were taken to another Pokémon Center this time in shabuya which was also right across from a Nintendo store it was like a bullet was shot through our credit cards in

the shopping center I saw a little gacha machine with little miniature chicaa plushes I was only interested in getting choa but I decided to test my luck anyway and I got him first try now I had two of them yes the original was still in my pocket you can safely assume he is in my pocket for the entirety of this video I've got pictures to prove it Jacob snapped this awesome picture of the chika brain rot taking over when we were looking around in the Shonen Jump shop a little Japanese boy pointed at Jacob and

went Sanji son before his mother quickly yanked him away and I still to this day laugh at that interaction poor kid saw his first blonde guy in real life and immediately thought it was Sanji later that day we also got to attend the Pokémon Symphony where a live Orchestra played Pokémon songs and it was absolutely incredible video game orchestras are so cool it always tugs on my heartstrings to see video game music transformed into such a beautiful new art form highly recommend attending one if you have any favorite games or franchises onto the first day

of Worlds it was exciting people flooded into the venue we watched the opening ceremony in the crowd just wow this is the whole reason why we're here we went back to shopping look at this cute little chab book I found in a nearby bookstore at this point we were absolutely pushing it in terms of luggage space and we were day four into a 2 and 1/2 week trip our shopping spree until this point were very not Frugal so we cut our losses and bought two extra giant suitcases to fit everything better okay we knew we

were going to need extra suitcases getting a few extra couldn't hurt look the flights were paid for we were still saving money at this point I think that's my rationalization I'm going with that also in the mall were tons of Pokémon monitors straight up playing the World Championships TCG Pokémon go VGC Japan treated worlds like it was the Super Bowl and and it was just so cool to see one of my main interests so culturally celebrated people of all ages would stop by to watch for a bit before going back to their shopping I can't

explain it but it just made me very happy we even got to see Wolfie live on the monitors how'd he do uh he did great don't worry about it nothing happened look we were just happy to see our friend on the Pokeball screen proud of you Wolfie you're so cool the second day of Worlds was hype so hype that we left Yokohama and flew to Osaka I haven't mentioned it yet but actually got tickets to see the one and only Hsu Nam Miku live in concert the real ones know how huge that is for me

I want to talk about how lifechanging that was but I'm going to make a whole separate video about that experience I'll be posting next all I'm going to say is it was the best day of my entire life bye a lot subscribe now before you miss it just saying I will mention we did have to take the train to get back later that night and got super lost again and we never get better at it don't expect anything to change in that regard we did finally get back to Yokohama crashed for the night and had

a nice slow morning as we got ready for finals later that day to any one piece fans who are caught up we were in Japan for the one piece anime episode you know what I'm talking about 1072 we were able to turn on our hotel TV and watch it live and that was so cool I don't talk about how much I love one piece much mainly because it doesn't really come up but one piece is peak and it was an honor to be in Japan at such an iconic part of the manga and anime's history

anyway back to Pokémon sorry about that we were able to watch the final VGC match live got to chat and eat dinner with Wolfie and some other friends had a late night hangout with Yan again and that was about it day seven meant it was time to pack up all our stuff from the hotel say goodbye to Pokemon and Yokohama and head on over to the apartment we rented for the rest of our stay just outside of Tokyo at this point we had filled up all six suitcases and multiple backpacks I didn't mention it but

Pokémon gave us a truckload of gifts that we genuinely had no idea what to do with we're grateful nonetheless thank you Pokémon but yeah the the taxi ride was a bit awkward so are you meeting up with some friends no after we got situated in the new place we decided to look around the area and grab some lunch and I got to say the little hole-in-the-wall restaurant Jacob found was some of the best ramen I've ever had ever they even made it vegetarian for me which was extremely kind of them food modifying is a bit

tricky in Japan compared to the states so I was very very thankful and it was delicious we then proceeded to do absolutely nothing for the rest of the day because we were exhausted from the trip so far I haven't mentioned absolutely everything we'd been doing on the trip because it would be a lot of first we did this and it was cool then we did this and it was cool even though it was such a pleasure to be invited I was so dead and definitely looked super not approachable or friendly to the rest of the

group by the end of it sorry guys but neither time nor Japan stops for anyone so we had to keep on chugging along there were a bunch of friends we wanted to see while in Japan and one of them was Connor he wanted to take us to what he deemed his favorite Italian place ever I asked if it was like fancy Italian to which I was given the answer of no so we get there having a great time and suddenly we realized junichi Masuda the director of game freak is there having dinner not a fancy

dinner my ass I then look down to see the Freddy Fazbear FNAF t-shirt that I am wearing not the best Jaden moment to exist but hey what can you do the food was phenomenal though I already mentioned the best ramen I've ever had while on the trip but this was genuinely the best pasta I've ever had in my entire life maybe even a top three meals ever for me I don't know what the other two would be but that Conor place is definitely up there the next day we went to the one piece store in

shabuya and bought a lot of stuff because there was a lot of topical and hype things in there as you could imagine if you don't get it go catch up and come back don't worry it won't take too long my favorite character is mihawk but out of all the stuff the store had to offer there were only a few stickers and a single keychain for mihawk I'm still Ming about that one I just want more mihawk is that too much to ask for even this guy got better merch the world's greatest swordsman deserves better I

guess I'll just take my Zoro and law stuffff that's cool too I suppose I also found found a bunch of chicawa stuff in a kitty land store and this is truly when you get to see where things start going downhill for me I just like the funny little cartoon bear thing what is that such a crime I don't remember what we did the rest of the day I think we just crashed and passed out this trip as surreal as it's been so far has been absolutely taking a toll on me and I desperately needed to

just not move or talk or exist for a bit we were doing so many different things that were all awesome and hanging out with so many different people that were all awesome but man I am not built for extended periods of that much excitement and socializing as much as I would like to change this fact I'm also not a very active person I know I know up until this trip I was practically sitting down 24/7 working all the time to prep as much work as possible so I could have a guilt-free 3 weeks off and

my muscles were definitely starting to Decay at that point I looked at my phone step meter thing and there is one day where I literally got 300 steps that's pathetic and suddenly I'm logging over 20,000 daily my body was screaming what the hell are you doing out there please stop plus we were in Japan during the hottest most humid time of the year every time we left the air conditioned luxury of a building we would immediately be drenched in sweat look I'm used to the heat I grew up in Arizona but even this was too

much so yeah crash and burn it was Tokyo Disneyland was a bit underwhelming it felt like a slightly worse version of the one in California because of the oddly spaced layout and surprisingly empty Vibe we did go to a stitch themed show thing and as we were walking in a worker stopped us and said oh excuse me Stitch only speaks Japanese like warning us it's not super tourist friendly but I just think the statement of Stitch only speaks Japanese is hilarious we went in anyway and yep Stitch only spoke Japanese yeah overall it was not

the best thing we did but apparently I didn't know this Japan has two Disneys Disneyland and Disney sea and we went to land which is unanimously deemed the worst of the two so oops better luck next time Jacob and I took two more rest days where we just turned to Ash then up and Adam back to Osaka we go this time we went to an Eve concert besides hotu Miku the Japanese band Eve is the only other concert I've said I wanted to go see I love their music videos they have for all their songs

it's always such beautiful animation and by the way they're the ones who sang the season 1 Jiu-Jitsu kaisen anime opening theme if you're lost earlier in the trip Jacob just so happened to look up if they were doing a concert while we were there and lo and behold they were he got some totally not scalped tickets which turned out to be a super complicated process so thank you Jacob you're the bestest friend I've ever had thank you for going through the trenches for a silly old me anyway the concert was so incredible the atmosphere was

fantastic they had awesome visual effects going on the glow Bands A lot of people bought were perfectly synced to the music and colors on the stage which really enhanced the experience the music was great which I mean of course it was that was the whole reason we went in the first place I talk about it more in the upcoming Miku video but Japanese encor are so much different from the American ones they're so quiet and polite there is pretty much no screaming and cheering it was just a long Applause with a semi- whisper chant of

un and they also made us wait like 5 minutes for them to come back out my hands were getting itchy just from clapping so much that's how long it took and then when they finally came out they ended up doing like five extra songs I mean I'm not complaining but after the fourth time thinking man that was a great last extra song well time to head hope wait another it starts getting a bit comedic this is just a side tangent but Jacob went off to use the bathroom before the show started and came back 10

minutes later like dude this is crazy but it took me a bit longer to find a bathroom because there were so many extra women's bathrooms which is like wo that's actually so smart there's always such a huge line for the women's bathroom compared to the men's in any scenario I was just shocked Japan was like okay then we'll make more women's bathrooms to fix out problem like it was so simple I know in America it would probably turn into a stupid political thing but it made me so happy Japan just implemented such an obvious and

straightforward solution so easily for the gals the next day we headed over to Universal which was hands down the best amusement park I've ever been to so they can do amusement parks well first of all Universal Japan is way more anime and manga Focus than the ones in the states which made it instantly more engaging for me Jacob and I both agreed we would to window shop for the first part of the day and then buy all the things we wanted as we were leaving so we wouldn't have to Lug around a bunch of bags

all day but we immediately saw a little one piece shop and cracked we just wanted to wear these one piece headbands that's rule breaking worthy we also got some towels because surprise surprise it was freaking hot I know I've been complaining about the weather here and there but my Lord it was miserably scorching Japan has such a big culture around staying cool while outside side and I totally get it now people would be walking around with little fans ice packs towels a lot of women had parasols I'll say if we didn't get those towels we

probably could have passed out from heat stroke that day later on I even ended up getting another towel it was a cute Pikachu one but I got it mainly because it was a cloak design after soaking that thing in cold water and putting it on my body temperature instantly lowered like 5° however that meant I was walking around the park looking like this back to the awesome stuff we did a bunch of attractions like watch a fun 4D Jiu-Jitsu Kaizen show where the seats move around went on a super cool 3D VR Spider-Man ride we

tried to cool down by going on a minions thing called freeze ray sliders that claimed to cool riders down with a blast of chilled mist from a giant freeze ray but we got on and absolutely did not even touch a drop of the Mist because it never ended up getting in range of our cart that felt like an actual tragedy at the time there were a few big roller coasters we w want to go on but I get super motion sick and forgot to bring nausea medicine so no roller coasters for us but I shall

return one day the park of course had a bunch of cool themed restaurants one of them being a super cool one piece restaurant did I mention I like one piece there also was a special Sanji one but we didn't know you needed a reservation so FY it was awesome though I love one piece after a few hours of rides and being broiled alive we decided to fully cool off by going on the Jurassic Park ride that's just giant Splash Mountain with Dinosaurs we cooked in line for probably a solid hour and as soon as we

were literally stepping foot inside the ride it started pouring rain now that's just not fair I don't even understand how that happened but whatever we started buying all the stuff we window shopped for as we waited for the one piece live show to begin again please refrain from judging I am being vulnerable and open here by the way as we were walking around we stumbled onto a little Mario themed show just out in a Courtyard area they played some fun little custom songs and had all these dancers alongside the mascots and then out of nowhere

they started absolutely blasting the crowd with like gallons of water I didn't even see it coming it was like firefighters showed up to put out a giant fire except the fire was a bunch of Japanese people the time came and we got to file in for the special one piece live show and even though Jacob and I didn't understand a single part of it because it was all in Japanese it was awesome and the costume design was phenomenal it was a bit unfortunate though because the seats were all in like a half circle formation around

the stage as much as they tried to make the show enjoyable from all angles it was pretty hard to see the main things going on in the center my only true complaint though is that Zoro didn't come to our side at all all the other characters rotated around so we could see them but Zoro only did it at the very end to take a bow also mihawk being included would have been nice nice but it's okay by the time we got to enter Nintendo Land it was like 900 p.m. we got up at 6:00 a.m.

by the way so we pretty much just rode the Yoshi's Island ride they don't have in the states and headed home because that's all the energy we had left but even just seeing that it was Miles better than the one in the states also we picked up a little dinner at the 7-Eleven near our hotel 7-Eleven is actually awesome in Japan by the way and they had a few little chicoa plushy keychains and I bought them just being transparent here we woke up early the next morning to catch our flight back back to Tokyo and

hurried over to the Kirby Cafe Emily actually booked the reservation for us she was meant to also be there but she was only able to get two seats and gave them to us as a gift Emily I will always be indebted to you for your sacrifice the cafe itself was so well decorated with all these little Curby things and the menu was adorable I got the star Curry and a magical little fruity drink with a Kirby marshmallow that triggered my cute aggression Jacob got the pizza and a Kirby Burger but since he made modif vations

the staff asked him to not post a picture of the burger to the public like they didn't know he was a content creator or anything I guess they just didn't want the public to see a naked Kirby Burger we also both got desserts I already decided I was going to consume the kbby the presentation was beautiful it was literal art on a plate taste-wise it was decent the body was some sort of gelatin which I wasn't too crazy about but the rest was super tasty I did my best but he ended up looking like he

was in a horrific accident accident when I threw in the towel the cafe also has a special little private store connected to it and yeah what you expect happened definitely happened we left with full bellies and bags continued to look around the shopping center the cafe was connected to and ended up walking into a Goa store I am about to be very vulnerable with you here this is one of the lowest points of my entire life please don't think too much less of me after what happened in that gotcha door so I walk in Sp

chwa beline it to the machine obviously like I mentioned before I'm only interested in chicawa so I was only playing for him but by the cursed luck of the gacha Gods I just could not get him I was going back and forth between the machine and the coin exchange getting multiples of every other little guy but no chicawa I could feel the workers glances at me probably because the desk they were standing behind was right next to the machine I was grinding but after way too much money he dropped I got my well learned horribly

priced at that point chicawa I then started looking at all the other machines putting some coins in a few here and there until I stopped at one that had a line of animals playing band instruments they were very silly but there was a little pigeon holding up symbols and I really wanted to get him for Jordan and Kelsey in went the coins tiger elephant Fox it was happening again everything except the one I wanted which I know more or less that's the luck with gotas but it was getting to the point where I was getting

surprised the pigeon was dodging me as much as it was surely the next one what eventually I had to go back to the coin exchange and as I was about to put in more money I saw out of the corner of my eye one of the workers peek out and take a look in horror at all the gacha pons that were sitting at the top of my bag they then raised up their hand and said something in Japanese while shaking their head and I knew in my heart I was being cut off no please I

I can stop whenever just a few more hits and I'm done the pigeon is next I I can feel it why why do you look afraid what's under the desk I got kicked out of a gotcha store I had hit an alltime low I told my friends and they said they probably just thought I was going to try and resell them but I don't even know if that would even make it sound better knowing I was getting so many that they thought I was robbing them blind I just wanted my little chicawa and pigeon with

symbols we made dinner plans that night with a friend and we were just about to grab a taxi and head back to freshen up but Jacob and I caught sight of a fun anime and goodies shop who do we think we are people with self-control we'll make it quick we rushed in and split up for optimization as I was looking around I saw it a whole section dedicated to chicaa it was like someone put a freshly baked pie on a window sill and I was suddenly floating over to it my eyes were zoned in making

sure I saw every single thing possible putting chicawa after chwa in the basket Jacob eventually came over and showed me a picture he took on his phone in my tunnel vision all my eyes registered was that the picture showed more choa in the store I immediately went phell where Jacob's eyebrows went up in Surprise and maybe a bit of fear and as I looked at the photo again I realized Jacob wasn't showing me a picture of a different chicaa section he was showing me a picture of me at the current cha section I was standing

in because he thought it was funny and in my cha brain rot I didn't even register I was in the picture I just saw more chikawa and went obsessive this is how I am either Stand By Me or Leave No I don't need an intervention put it away we left I looked Bel longingly at the crane machine chica was we didn't have time for and we made it in time for dinner plus we ended up in another arcade nearby anyway and I got myself a chicaa from one of those machines so it worked out stop

I don't want to hear it finally we were reaching the end of our trip we spent the last day grabbing lunch with Emily and daus there was a cool one piece scavenger hunt event going on so we also did that with them we basically had to walk around shabuya and find special one piece Trading Card posters hidden around the area and if we found enough along along with the special card of the day we could get a limited edition mystery card it was fun but also hot and all my clothes were sticking to my body

daus generously let me borrow his umbrella and I jumped for joy as he showed me it was coincidentally chicaa themed I I don't know what's wrong with me all I know is that bear makes me happy we spent a few hours completing the scavenger hunt got our special cards and bid them farewell always good to see you guys bye-bye I accidentally stole Dig's umbrella it looked so calculated they knew how much I was obsessed with chicawa they've been watching my Instagram stories follow if you want to see brain rot in real time Emily I have

the chiet umbrella I didn't mean to steal it I promise it's not what it looks like since we were leaving in the morning and wouldn't be seeing them again they just let me keep it but the side eye Jacob gave me the rest of the way back I didn't mean to stop it getting back to the apartment reality hit us hard we needed just a few more suitcases again in total we ended up buying six extra suitcases to hold everything we collectively bought and even then it was a struggle making it fit Jacob ended up

going professional Tetris mode perfectly fitting everything into the suitcases with quite literally no extra room to spare we came to Japan e each with a backpack carryon and one extra big suitcase and we're leaving with allog together eight suitcases and four backpacks we were lucky the taxi driver had a big enough car to fit everything because we didn't have much of a game plan if it didn't off to the airport we went where we checked all of our excessive bags paid a couple fees boarded our flight and headed home that trip will go down as

one of the best trips I've ever gone on it felt like it turned turned into a celebration of everything that makes me me all of my hobbies and interests Pokémon one piece at the last minute chicaa we got to do so many incredible things and were given so many opportunities i' never even thought I could be a part of I got to see so many friends that are normally so far away ate some of the best meals of my life and overall was just really happy especially getting to spend it all with my best friend

Jacob by the way if you wanted to know why in the world we got so many things yes a lot of it was for us 90% of it all was for our friends 100% of the cha stuff was mine but that's besides point if you want to see what we got them also credit where credit is due the majority of it all was from Jacob because he's a great gift giver and even more incredible friend to the people around him we're all nothing short of lucky to be able to call him our friend you can

go watch his Japan video I assume it's already up because we had to animate a freaking 30 minute long video my God it was a lot thanks for sticking around but yeah I just had an unforgettable trip and I owe the opportunity to the Pokémon company for inviting us to Japan in the first place I'm extremely lucky to be in the position I am and will be forever grateful [Applause] [Music]