Watch in Amazement as Kintaro Walks Japan

by 12 Comments

Tyler MacNiven is an easy guy to spot in a crowd. He’s tall, with bright hair and extremely outgoing. His charisma has taken him all over the world, including a win on the TV show The Amazing Race (season 9), and Iran, where he filmed his documentary I Ran Iran.

Despite traveling all across the world, it turns out that MacNiven got his start in Japan. A few weeks ago, after I wrote about Cycling Japan’s Abandoned Rail, a commenter recommend I check out MacNiven’s first movie, Kintaro Walks Japan.

The basic premise of the film is simple: MacNiven walks the four main islands of Japan, from the very southern point of Kyushu to the very northern tip of Hokkaido.

Candle Rock

The full story behind the movie is a bit more complicated than that; MacNiven has a lot of reasons to visit Japan. He’s a recent college grad who gets drawn into a romance Japanese girl. His father was born in Japan, but doesn’t quite know where. And MacNiven decides to throw in a walk of the length of Japan because hey, why not?

Armed only with his hiking backpack and a sketch of a landmark near his father’s birthplace, MacNiven begins his journey and starts walking north. Along the way, lots of memorable things happen — he meets interesting people, nearly gets hit by a train, and gets arrested by the Japanese police.

The whole movie is available for free up on Google Video, which you can check out here:

I tried to find alternate ways to watch the movie (like through Netflix, Amazon, or iTunes), but it looks like at the moment, the only ways are either through the 240p glory that is Google Video, or by ordering a DVD directly from the movie’s website.

Unfortunately, I felt like a lot of the movie was staged. The romance between MacNiven and his Japanese lady friend seems to be mostly for the sake of the film. MacNiven doesn’t seem to have an especially strong interest in Japan, given he doesn’t seem to have revisited Japan since the film was made, instead working on other projects.

Nonetheless, Kintaro Walks Japan is a nice snapshot in time of a young man trekking across Japan. It’s only about an hour long (shorter than your typical movie), so if you want to see, check out Kintaro Walks Japan.

  • mitsuho32

    I would love to walk across Japan like that!

  • kitsuki

    hahahaha
    i watched the beginning of the documentary and just couldn’t stop laughing.

    amazing feat though!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • kitsuki

    great documentary!
    haha

  • http://zoomingjapan.com/ zoomingjapan

    Strange, somehow my comment was deleted??
    Again:

    Didn’t he just copy him? – http://www.japanfenster.ch/jap…
    He
    walked from the northern tip of Hokkaido all the way down to Kyushu
    last year right after the great earthquake to show the people that Japan
    is still safe.
    He used to work in a travel agency, but due to the disaster he lost his job.
    I almost met him back then, too.
    He’s from Switzerland, so his native language is German, but his website is also in English and Japanese.
    He got a lot of public attention and soon there will be a movie about it, too!
    You can watch the trailer here: http://negativenothing.com/

    I just thought I should share it, because I find that much more interesting than that Tyler dude, sorry! ^-^;;

  • http://zoomingjapan.com/ zoomingjapan

    Guys, I think something with your comment system is wrong!
    This is the second time that my comment first showed up and then was deleted.
    That’s really frustrating and I wonder if I’m the only one having these issues …

  • http://www.tofugu.com/ Hashi

    For some reason our comment system had marked all of your comments as spam (except this one). I approved them all and added you to our whitelist, sorry about that!

  • http://zoomingjapan.com/ zoomingjapan

    I can see why the one containing links was marked as spam, but not the other one. Very weird.
    I’m sorry, now you have a lot of dublicate comments.
    Feel free just to keep one of them that contains the links and my edit, both. You can delete the others (if that’s possible).
    Now it really looks like i was spamming! *g*

  • http://www.tofugu.com/ Hashi

    Haha, I wasn’t sure which one you wanted to keep so I just brought all of them back. I’ll delete the other ones

  • kitsuki

    did the guy in the top left corner of the header picture remind anyone else of koichi?
    lol js

  • Name

    This guy is kind of a weirdo

  • Tyler

    I visited Japan 7 times after I made the film and lived with Ayumi for 4 glorious years. What felt staged to you was just us having fun with the project.

    Tyler/Kintaro

  • Ophelia

    the video doesnt work. and the youtube videos are incomplete (about half of it is missing)
    anyone know where we can actually watch this? seems all free versions have been taken down. sad.