I know what you’re all saying: “Omg, where is TofuguTV? You’re going back to Japan, again?” And, if I was listening to you right now I’m sure I’d be all like “ikr, but listen, it’s going to be better this time, really!” Then we’d all laugh and hug and it’d be okay. Really though, it’s going to be great. Here’s what’s up:
TofuguTV Season 1.5, Or 2, Or 1
When we go back this time, we’re going as a team. None of this “take footage of myself Survivorman style” ridiculousness. There will be two people on camera (Viet & Hashi) and we’re going to have great equipment (5d, 7d, plus more side dongles and widgemawoozles than you can shake a tripod at). We’ve also been practicing quite a bit over the last month trying to hone our craft and learn how to make a documentary style show. I hope it really shows in this show, because we really, really want to make something a lot more professional than what we’ve been doing in the past.
So, I’m considering the last Season (which isn’t even all published yet) a test-run. So, it’s like Season 0.5, or something like that. I learned a lot from that trip and want to apply that knowledge and more to another month of shooting, and this time there will be multiple cameramen.
New Places!
We only have a few places really planned out, but they’re big deals. The first scheduled place we’ll be heading to the Snow Festival in Hokkaido to see the snow sculptures, ice sculptures, ice bars, and giant snow slides (will have to take multiple shots of this until we get it right / I’ve had enough slide time).
The second scheduled place is the big Yuki Gassen tournament also in Hokkaido. That’s basically just a big professional snowball fighting contest. I’m pretty stoked. I’m also hoping one of the teams is short a player due to some kind of “unfortunate” accident… *cough, cough*
On top of the scheduled places, we have many unscheduled places we plan to go to as well. So many of them are places you’ve probably never heard of or dreamed that they even existed. I’ve been keeping a giant list, so there’ll be more than we could ever hope to go to in our time there. I’m sure you’ll hear more about these places at a later date.
Old Places!
There are also some places I want to go back to. Of course, there’s Cat Island, Japan. All those Cat Island sequel titles aren’t all that ridiculous anymore, are they? I’ve gathered that you folks pretty much love cats more than almost anything.
There are a few places I want to refilm from Season 1, too. Places like Jigokudani (where monkeys go to hang out in hot springs) and Okunoshima (Rabbit Island) come to mind, but there might be a couple of other places that we’ll re-go to as well.
With all the practice we’ve done, the new equipment, and not to mention an actual crew… well, I just think some places deserve another shot. No pun intended.
Research & Resources
It’s not all fun and games, though. I also am planning to do research and collect resources for posts, TextFugu lessons, and more. Lots of opportunity to take pictures and video that can be used to help you to learn Japanese. No better place to do it than Japan, don’t you think? Hopefully you’ll start to see these particular fruits of labor sometime in March or April.
When We’ll Be Going
We’re going to spend the month of February gallivanting around taking video of things in Japan. For the most part we don’t have a schedule and won’t plan things until the day or two before, so we won’t really know where we’ll be and when.
This also means that things will be on a limited schedule here on Tofugu. Posts are getting cut back to 5 a week (sometimes more, never less) and responses to email will probably be slowed down. We’ll try to keep things running as normally as possible, but since we’re all traveling around at the same time it’s going to be a little more difficult than usual.
So, that’s it. Just letting you know what’s up. We’re all very excited and we’ve all been working very hard getting ready for this. I hope we can do a good job filming and editing to bring you a taste of Japan that you probably haven’t seen or heard of before.
P.S. And, in case you wanted it (we all know you did), our wonderful artist Aya has put together a desktop background based off the header image on this post. Enjoy!
