The Japanese YouTube scene is more sparsely populated than its American counterpart. However, there is definitely a rising J-vlogging scene. But as with all things up and coming, sometimes it’s hard to tell where to start and find out what’s worth your time. Fortunately, I’ve found several awesome Japanese YouTubers for you. You’re welcome.
Megwin
“we, Samurai, are making original comedy movies in japan!!
We’re pleasure that people over the world enjoy our movies!!
Come to our web site!!”
Megwin puts out a lot of videos and they’re all very strange. They’re all in Japanese, but some do have subtitles. Therefore, Megwin’s videos would be more entertaining and useful to the intermediate or advanced learner of Japanese. Regardless, they’re worth checking out just to experience the silly for many of their videos are hilarious even if you have no idea what’s being said. Check out all the insanity on their channel.
[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3879GUid3M']
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HirokoChannel
Hiroko is a j-vlogger who vlogs about a variety of things while living in Japan. She uses both English and Japanese in her videos and her topics include mini-lessons, Japanese culture trips, and just general info about Japan. Definitely worth your time. Also she is cute. Her channel is here.
[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDGfoqb5rsA']
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Chris Gen (Street English TV)
Chris Gen was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. He was schooled in New York City, used to be a dual citizen, and is married to a Japanese woman.
He has three channels, a main heavy edit channel, a low edit channel, and a travel TV type channel. He goes all over Japan and does videos about a variety of things. He uses mostly English, but his videos do include bits of Japanese quite often.
Even though he is not Japanese, he was born and raised in Japan and his videos are too awesome to not include here. Chris puts out some incredible content. He is by far one of my favorite YouTubers. However, he has become less consistent as of late and does not put out nearly as many videos as he used to. He does have a lot of videos out already though, so you should definitely check those out.
[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3K6NLBxiYA']
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That Japanese Girl
TJG puts out a lot of silly Japanese videos about all sorts of topics. Some videos teach Japanese phrases, others take you to different places around Japan, and some are just goofy. She has a lot of Kansai-ben (関西弁) tutorial videos as well. She uses both Japanese and English in her videos. Check out her channel for tons of tutorials.
[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1Kp1dUnEeo']
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Honorable Mention
Maru (mugumogu)
You’ll learn little (if any) Japanese while watching videos of Maru, but he’s just so darn cute! You can find approximately a million videos of Maru jumping into boxes and generally being adorable on his channel.
[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_AbfPXTKms']
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So who are your favorite Japanese YouTubers? Let us know in the comments below!
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