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Looking back to their earliest encounters with Japan, popular Japan-related content creators The Anime Man and CDawgVA fondly share recollections of anime. As with many teenagers across the globe, the two grew up exposed to Japanese influence without, perhaps, even realising it was Japanese.

For The Anime Man, real name Joseph Tetsuro Bizinger, who was raised in Australia, it was his Japanese mother’s heritage that gave him the comfort of Japanese animation as a child, while CDawgVA, Connor Marc Colquhounon, on the other side of the globe in the UK, would go through a major shock as a teen when he learned that the characters and the games he enjoyed were not western, but Japanese inventions.

Fast forward a decade later, the two are now based in Tokyo, where they successfully produce Japan-focused content for millions of online users. They argue that Tokyo not only transformed their careers but also gave them an entirely new perspective about Japan.

Tokyo: A heaven for content creators

“It felt like I was back where I was supposed to be.” When The Anime Man moved to Tokyo in 2016, his career as a YouTuber was just beginning to flourish. He had reached 100,000 subscribers just two years after his first video in 2013, which had started as an initiative to share his Japanese heritage.

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