Abroad in Japan


Chris Broad, known online as Abroad in Japan, is a British YouTuber, filmmaker, and podcast host. He focuses on videos about Japanese culture, Japanese food and travel in Japan, primarily in the Tōhoku region.

Personal life

Broad briefly appeared on the TV series Robot Wars in the UK, where his father and team were regular contestants, with their robot Killertron.
Broad studied English Language and Business at the University of Kent from 2009 to 2012 before moving to Sakata, Yamagata to teach English as a part of the JET Programme. He has since left the programme and moved to Sendai.

YouTube channel

Upon moving to Sakata, Yamagata to teach as a part of the JET Programme in 2012, Broad decided to vlog about some of his experiences as a foreigner living in the rural Tōhoku region. The subjects of videos included topics like what it's like to drive in Japan, KFC as a mainstay of every Japanese Christmas, and love hotels. He later moved to Sendai to remain in the region, but to be somewhere better connected to the rest of the country to expand his business opportunities as an influencer. As the channel grew in notability, Broad began to make more travel-themed videos, such as a video describing a trip to Aomori where he visited the city's Nebuta museum and another where he visited Hokkaido with his close friend Natsuki Aso, who often appears in Chris' videos.
On 29 August 2017, Broad was visiting a town in Aomori Prefecture near Shirakami-Sanchi wilderness area when he was woken up by the J-Alert being triggered by the North Korean August 2017 missile launch over Japan. He posted a video about how rude it was that they would carry out their test so early in the morning and proceeded to criticize the regime of Kim Jong-un. The video was featured as "Trending" the day it was posted. It then went on to attract national attention in Japan, with Broad being selected to represent the word "J-Alert" in Japan's annual Words of the Year event.
On 31 May 2018, Broad released the documentary film Natsuki: The Movie telling the story of Broad and his friend Natsuki's journey to Europe.
Starting in 2018, Broad started his "Journey Across Japan" series featuring various YouTubers, such as The Anime Man, and his friends as he travels across Japan by bike, documenting local customs and daily life along the way.

Documentary work

The channel also has featured some documentary-style videos. In addition to the Natsuki movie mentioned above, one focused on the effects of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on the citizens of Kesennuma and how they and external powers are working to rebuild their city's image and livelihood. Broad noted that the aversion to the area because of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster bothered him and that caused him to work on documentaries about the area, including one that is in development that will focus on the positive aspects of life in Fukushima. In December 2019, he released a documentary interview of the rock artist, Hyde during the artist's performances at Zepp Tokyo.

Podcast

Together with Pete Donaldson, Broad presents a weekly Abroad in Japan series of podcasts on Radio Stakhanov about Japanese culture, current events, and cuisine. Some recurring topics of the series are the Lotte soft serve, Coolish and a pizza vending machine that was once functioning in Hiroshima. The pair also talk about Japan-related stories and questions submitted by their audience by email in a segment they call the "Fax Machine" as a jest towards the obsolete method of communication that is still commonly used in many Japanese workplaces.

Other work

Broad spoke at a TEDx conference at Tohoku University where he spoke about the power of YouTube and encouraged the audience to share their experiences with the world through the platform.
In 2017, Broad was the host of a documentary about cats in Japanese culture called Cat Nation where he travelled throughout Japan to document the cat-centered activities or places, such as visiting the Wakayama Electric Railway where a cat named Tama became a tourist attraction after it became the station master of Kishi Station.

Collaborators