I’ve been to Japan twice and loved each time I went. With the age of the internet, live streamers, and travel streamers – you can visit anywhere in the world at any time without leaving the comfort of your own home.

Over my 20 years of international travel, one thing I’ve learned is that you can never visit the same place twice. Time marches on in every country, every city, and even every life. Places you visited one year are gone and replaced the next. Cultural trends you loved in one place have been replaced with the latest new thing. Nothing stays the same.

That’s why I love checking up on the places I liked visiting using Twitch, Youtube, and other streams. Thankfully, we’re moving beyond the era of screaming, idiotic streamers into something more refined. I prefer streams from people that live in the countries and travel like locals and not tourists and Instagram influencers. The latter often rarely have any real curiosity or respect for a culture. They do culturally rude/insensitive things, forcing their way through a place with money and brashness. They pressure the goodness of kind locals just to get the shot they want and then go on to culturally pillage some other location for likes. They rarely leave a place or people the encounter better – or actually learn anything about the cultures that produced what they’re traveling through.

Here’s a few of those better channels. Do you have some?

• Chris Abroad: https://www.youtube.com/c/ChrisAbroad
• Tokyo Lens: https://www.youtube.com/c/TokyoLens
• Robcdee (a younger person’s take with some goofy drinking): https://www.twitch.tv/robcdee

An example of some good quality content. Bonus points for the fact I remember this guy when I was in Akihabara.