Question for you, when you find yourself with a little bit of extra free time, what do you like to do to rest and relax and recharge your batteries?
I'm in this situation right now.
It's a miserable day here in Seoul.
It's pouring rain and actually I had a big run planned for today, but I'm kind of a baby right now and I don't think I want to go out and run in the rain.
so i'm just gonna hang out at home today instead and one of the things that i like to do in this kind of situation is catch up on some of my favorite youtube channels now i don't know how much you like watching youtube but i love it in fact i think these days i don't really watch too much tv even netflix or other streaming sites i really don't spend too much time watching them But YouTube, I watch almost every day, and it can sometimes be a problem.
It's a very big distraction for me, but I do have many channels that I subscribe to across a whole range and variety of content from music to language learning to running and everything in between.
There's tons of interesting content on YouTube, and I really think it's a wonderful, wonderful website, probably my favorite website of all time.
So what I'm going to do here in this video, because I have some free time this afternoon, I can spend it with you, is I'm going to introduce perhaps I'll say my top three favorite YouTube channels at the moment.
Now, of course, this is always in flux, and it's not a static list. So, you know, I change from time to time as I discover new channels or if some channels maybe stop updating.
My favorites are always in flux.
They're always in motion.
But I'm going to introduce to you at this moment right now my top three channels that I like to check out their videos whenever there's a new one uploaded.
So that will be the content for today's bonus episode, everyone.
And by the way, this is bonus episode 145 of the Q -Lips English Podcast. I'm Andrew.
I'm a Canadian, but I live abroad in Seoul, South Korea.
And each week here in our bonus episode series, I just hang out and spend some time with you.
And my goal is to help you improve your English communication skills.
So if that's something that you want to do, then buckle up and let's study and learn together.
There's a free transcript, an interactive transcript, and a vocabulary glossary available for this episode on our website, QLoops .com, or you can just check the link in the description.
Follow that. That will bring you right there.
If you're happening to watch the YouTube version of this episode as well, you can just hit the closed captions button and see the subtitles there.
I've personally checked them myself.
So as long as I wasn't sleeping on the job, they should be 100 % accurate.
They're not machine generated or anything like that.
So you can trust that it's a true and accurate transcription for this episode.
All right, so let's get into it.
I'm going to introduce my top three favorite YouTube channels, and I'm going to start close to home.
As I mentioned here, and as regular Q -Lips listeners know, guys, I do live abroad in Seoul, South Korea, and there are tons and tons of channels, of course, related to life in Korea.
And I love watching Korean YouTube as well.
That's like a whole different, maybe, episode that I could make about Korean language -based youtube channels because as a korean learner myself i do spend a lot of time consuming content in the korean language and there's yeah amazing channels out there for that but today i'm going to talk about a channel that is in english but actually the creator is not a native english speaker he's a guy from the netherlands his name is bart and his channel is called i go bart and And he has this series on his channel called Welcome to My Dong.
And let me just break down this title because for non -Korean people, maybe this will sound a little bit strange at first. But the word Dong, D -O -N -G, in the Korean language, means like an administrative area.
Or maybe we could just think about it as a neighborhood.
So of course, Seoul is this huge mega city, but it's divided into 467 smaller neighborhoods called Dongs, and in his series, this Welcome to My Dongs series, the YouTuber part, he goes around and visits each and every Dong, or at least that is his goal.
So far, I believe he's covered maybe not even 100, but getting close to 100, I would guess, just off the top of my head.
So he's been to many of the neighborhoods, but still many are left to be explored by him, and I think he's been been doing this for a couple of years now and i just love his channel because of course i'm a fanatic about seoul like i think it's a really cool city i love living here and it's so big like there are still tons of areas of the city that i haven't explored here yet despite living here for many many years already so i love that he's got this adventurous drive to go out there and explore different neighborhoods.
And so what a typical video of his looks like is, I would say half of the time he's by himself and half of the time he's with a guest from the neighborhood that he's visiting.
And he just goes there and walks around.
And I believe he does some pre -scouting.
And what I mean here by scouting is prior research. So I believe he does some prior research, some some pre -scouting before he goes to the neighborhood of the day.
And I'm not sure how he selects his neighborhood.
Maybe he just randomly chooses one or maybe he has a friend who lives in that neighborhood or maybe a viewer suggests a neighborhood to him.
I'm not exactly sure how he finds them, but he does a little bit of pre -scouting and then goes to that neighborhood and just explores, walks around and sees what kind of things come to him.
And yeah, it's great.
He interviews people as he's walking around and asks them questions about what it's like to live in that neighborhood.
Maybe he asks them about, you know, what are some cool things to check out in the neighborhood.
Now, he is also similar to me in that he's a Korean learner.
So he's not a native native Korean speaker.
So that's always really cool.
And I think he's really brave to go out there and talk in, I guess this would be probably his third language because he's a native Dutch speaker, right?
Coming from the Netherlands.
So I think that's really cool that he does that and that he's brave in that way.
And yeah, he gets up to some wild adventures.
Like I always just love seeing how his videos end up because you never really know what to expect.
Everyone is totally different.
Every episode is different.
And as someone who lives here in Seoul myself, I always learn something new.
He's a history buff.
He's really into history and architecture and food and culture and music.
And these things come out in his videos as well.
And yeah, it's great.
Often I'm inspired after watching one of his videos.
I'm like, I got to go to that neighborhood.
I got to check it out or sometimes maybe i'll be in an area that he's explored and then i'll learn something new about it and i can go oh i saw that in the video so yeah i really like it it's a great channel very educational i know that a lot of korean people as well find it really educational when i read the comments for the videos many people comment like i'm korean but i didn't know this so So he's teaching everybody kind of about some of the lesser known history of Seoul in these different neighborhoods.
So I think it's really cool.
And if you're at all interested in what life in Seoul is like, I think he would be a great channel for you to check out.
And I'll put the link to his channel in the description for this episode, of course, so you can easily find it there.
Check it out and see if you enjoy it as much as I do.
you and yeah i have no idea if you would be interested or not i don't know bart i only know him parasocially from watching his channel and maybe you guys can relate to this as well sometimes podcasters or youtubers we can have a kind of parasocial relationship with them because we spend a lot of time with them and what i mean by parasocial is kind of one -sided right like i know a lot about Bart because I've watched many of his videos and I could learn information about him through watching the videos.
But he has no idea who I am and that I exist. So it's a one -sided parasocial relationship.
However, I think he's a really cool guy.
And maybe I'll reach out to him to see if he would come on as a guest onto the QLips English podcast here one day to give us some more information about this big project, the Welcome to My Dome project that he's been working on here for several years.
He actually lives, I believe, not too far away from where I live.
And I've seen him riding the subway a couple of times.
We've been on the same subway together.
And I've always been too shy to approach him and be like, hey, I'm a fan of your channel.
I don't know. It's kind of weird to approach someone in public like that, especially when you're on the subway together and he can't escape, right?
So I didn't bother him when I've seen him him in public before but cool cool channel and yeah check it out if you're interested to learn more about a different side of seoul maybe a different side of korea than the k -pop k -food k -beauty image that is broadcast to other parts of the world and that korea is well known for these days let's move on to channel number two and this channel is called ran to japan ran to Japan.
I love the wordplay with that title.
And in fact, this YouTuber who operates the Ran to Japan channel, his name is Jake Barraclaw.
He is full of clever wordplay.
He's got a lot of puns and funny jokes in his videos.
And Ran to Japan is a running channel.
So if you're interested in running, I super, super highly recommend it.
If you're not so interested in running, then maybe Maybe it's not the best for you, but since I'm super interested in running, I love it.
And he uploads his videos every Sunday evening, maybe Sunday morning, but I usually watch them every Sunday evening.
It's like my ritual on Sunday evening to check out his videos.
So let me give you a little info about what the channel's all about.
Jake Barraclaw is a guy from the UK, but I think it was around two years ago or so, he he moved to Japan and he's based out of Tokyo now.
So he's been living there for a couple of years.
And originally he went as a language student to study the Japanese language.
But I believe now he's just a full -time YouTuber and runner.
And he is what he calls, he calls himself the marathon monk.
So he's living this kind of marathon monk lifestyle where he's just solely focused on on running and becoming a sub 210 marathoner.
That is his goal. So sub 210 means running and completing a full marathon within two hours and 10 minutes, which is extremely fast. Like that's probably fast enough to get into the Olympics.
Maybe, probably, I'm not sure exactly what the cutoff is, but it would be around there.
Sub 210 is extremely, extremely fast. So he's a very very talented runner, and he's living this marathon monk lifestyle where it's just all day, he is just focused around running and improving his running speed.
And I have to say, I really, really respect people like that who have a singular focus in their life.
I wish I could adapt a kind of monk -like attitude for myself with one of my hobbies or passions.
Like if I I could have a monk -like attitude and approach to learning Korean or it was just all Korean all the time no exceptions it'd be so cool but I just don't have the willpower or the ability really because of other responsibilities in my life to do that same goes for running same goes for other hobbies and passions that I have maybe music or other things so I always really respect people people who can do that, who can talk the talk and walk the walk, right?
Where they're committed and yeah, all in is another expression that we use to talk about people like this.
So in his channel, Jake just documents his day -to -day life.
He runs a crazy amount.
He's running between 250 to almost 300 kilometers each and every week.
He is very disciplined and yeah, running two or three times a day and running races all the time.
But he's a really fun, positive guy.
He's got a great energy.
And in his videos that really comes across.
Every time I watch one of his videos, I feel more pumped up and inspired to go out there and run.
And he's also a really talented video maker.
Like I don't know if he has a background in editing, or video production, but he's a great storyteller.
And the way that his videos are pieced together, just kind of have you on the edge of your seat.
Like he does a really, really good job at making a narrative in his videos and telling a story.
And even if it's just about running training.
He also has a segment of each video called Scran to Japan.
And Scran is slang, UK slang, for food.
So he introduces an interesting food that he's found and is enjoying that week.
And of course, living in Japan for Westerners, there's a lot of really interesting and unique foods there.
So the Scran to Japan segment is really fun as well.
The motto that Jake always says, his kind of catchphrase in in each and every video is train harder, not smarter.
His whole philosophy is that doing a lot of training, big volume will lead to great growth in marathoning and lead him to running faster and faster and faster and better and better and better.
And I really like that approach. It's so easy in many things that we do these days, whether it's running, any other kind of exercise or training or even language learning where we want to spend so much time with the newest gadgets and gizmos and technology to help us try and improve but at the end of the day putting in time putting in effort putting in work really we know is going to lead to the best success so as I mentioned Jake is talking the talk walking the walk and training a lot and I really enjoy watching his weekly updates check out ran to Japan if you're into running and you don't know
about Jake yet, I think you'll really enjoy it.
The final channel I want to introduce to you today is called Maigo Mika.
I believe that's how the channel is pronounced at least. Anyways, this is another channel that's set in Japan, but run by foreigners.
So this channel is a vlog and the main creator, her name is Mika, but also appearing in almost every video is her husband named Jesse.
And also they have a dog named Pancake.
So the three of them are in all of the videos and they just vlog about their daily life living in the Japanese countryside in Kyushu, I believe is the area.
And yeah, they talk about renovating their home and doing home improvements.
And Jesse is a real handyman and knows how to fix and build things.
It looks like really really well so he's always working on the home and they also have a nice garden so they grow vegetables and it just looks like a really wonderful kind of place to live in the countryside there in japan the seasonal changes are immense so in the spring it's really lush and green and then the summer it's super hot and rainy you get these monsoon rains the fall is beautiful and golden brown with the red and yellow and orange leaves.
And then the winter it snows from time to time, they get a big dump of snow.
And so you have these massive seasonal changes, which makes the videos really interesting to watch in that regard. And yeah, I gotta say like, not a lot happens in the videos.
But just the way that they're presented and shown is something just really comforting about watching them and i i love sort of fantasizing about living in the countryside when i watch their videos i guess maybe it's because i live in such a big city that when i look at these kinds of videos i can get a sense of what living in the country is like and yeah i gotta say life in the japanese countryside seems a lot different than life in the canadian countryside although there are a lot of similarities and jesse and mika they're are Canadians as well, I believe.
And yeah, I think they are actually from Vancouver, which is pretty close to where I grew up.
So it's kind of cool in that regard as well.
But I mean, yeah, the differences between the Canadian countryside and the Japanese countryside seem to be very intense.
One funny episode that happened in a recent video of theirs was that they had some monkeys invade their garden and steal some fruits and vegetables from their garden.
And I thought, wow, that's so amazing.
And also scary that you have these wild monkeys that will come out of the forest and steal fruit and vegetables from your garden.
That would never, ever in a million years happen in Canada.
Of course, we'd have other animals that would try to eat your fruit and vegetables, but never monkeys in Canada.
So yeah, a really cool channel and just relaxing.
And I love the vibe.
And I think Mika, the main creator, she's got a really great aesthetic sense.
She's a a great videographer.
So the scenes and the images that she captures and includes in her videos are lovely and beautiful to watch. She's also a great storyteller and can put together what are seemingly random clips in a narrative way that just makes a lot of sense and is engaging from the start to the finish.
So I really get inspired by her storytelling as well.
So definitely if you're ever interested in what life is like living in an old house in the japanese countryside for a canadian couple and their dog then i recommend the my ego mika channel and yeah i'll put the link again in the description for this episode all right everyone it's the end i gotta run i actually have a recording date with my co -host anna we're gonna make some new chatterbox episodes for you all.
But before I let you go, let me share this week's completion code with you.
And it's going to be recharge, R -E -C -H -A -R -G -E, recharge, because I like to rest and relax and recharge my batteries with some of my favorite YouTube channels that I told you about in today's episode.
So I'd like you to leave a comment with this completion code recharge on our YouTube page, our Instagram page or our discord community.
And that will let me and all of our other Q -Lips listeners from around the world know that you made it to the end of this episode and that you completed a study session here with Q -Lips today.
I'd also like to know about your favorite YouTube channels.
I love watching new YouTube videos, as you can probably tell by how passionately I talked about YouTube in this episode.
So let me know your favorite YouTubers as well.
And I want want to check out what they have to offer.
Okay, everyone, take care, and I'll talk to you in the next Q -Libs episode.
Until then, bye -bye.
