A Man With Integrity

…can expect to be attacked

If you don’t know who Chris Broad is, sooner or later you probably would have found out about him without me telling you. He’s an aspiring filmmaker who currently produces content for his YouTube channel, Abroad In Japan.

Chris has integrity. If he can keep it, he is destined to be a great filmmaker. That’s not something you’re likely to hear in reference to most YouTubers.

He started from humble beginnings. Jilted by an unfaithful girlfriend, he left his native England to teach English to Japanese schoolchildren. He spoke not a word of Japanese. In six months of intensive study after teaching all day, he taught himself to read and speak Japanese.

That was more than thirteen years ago. Japan is now his home. He started making videos of his experience as a foreigner teaching in Yamagata, a rural prefecture. He had a dark, self-effacing, sarcastic sense of humor, and his videos were genuinely funny.

Flash forward to today. He has his own studio in Tokyo, and owns an upscale bar that is enormously successful. He has created jobs for many people, and has earned much respect from many Japanese natives, many of whom have befriended him, and some of whom are regularly featured in his videos.

To date, Chris has made 319 videos, has 3.26 million subscribers, with nearly 575 million views. Some of his best work is in serious documentaries. He has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charities with his Journey Across Japan series of bicycling videos, which are always entertaining and often hilarious.

He is eminently respectful of his new adopted homeland. He doesn’t welcome or seek controversy, but occasionally he calls out the uncivilized foreigners who misbehave in a country that is generally more respectful to visiting guests than they are in return.

This most recent video is a case in point:

I’m posting this because it’s a superb example of the kind of treatment a man with integrity can expect to receive from people who have none.