My top ten favourite Youtube channels

Hi there, I'd do a quick post today on ten of my favourite Youtubers and why I like them. I do spend quite a lot of time on Youtube for entertainment and the thing about Youtube is that there are so many videos being uploaded all the time but only a small portion of them are probably going to be of interest to you. What you consume on Youtube is in a large part guided by your interests and hobbies, so not every one of my suggestions is going to be relevant to you but for what it is worth, I am going to suggest Youtubers who are have excellent production quality and constantly update their channels.

1. Simon & Martina (aka Eatyourkimchi and Eatyoursushi): 1.4 million subscribers
Theme: Korean & Japanese culture & travel
Country: Japan / Canada

My favourite Youtubers have got to be Simon & Martina - they are a Canadian couple who has lived many years in Asia: first in Korea then in Japan. Their videos are designed to make Korean and Japanese culture accessible to an English-speaking audience but they go way beyond your average travel videos. They both speak Korean fluently and Japanese quite well unlike some expats in the region. Their channel started when they first moved to Korea in 2008 as English teachers and decided to make Youtube videos just to share with their friends and family back home in Canada what their exciting new life in Korea is life - however, their videos became so incredibly popular over the years that they were able to quit their jobs as teachers and focus all their time on just Youtube. Furthermore, Martina is diagnosed with EDS (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome) which is a very painful, debilitating condition which affects her joints - so for example, she can dislocate her knee just climbing some stairs or dislocate her elbow when taking out the laundry.  She is very honest about her daily struggles with chronic pain and she comes across as very sincere and genuine - there are a lot of Youtubers and people on social media in general who are like, "look at me! I'm young and cute! I'm having fun! I'm going on holiday again! I'm having a party! Life is awesome! Like and subscribe for more amazing content!" With Simon & Martina, they deal with a lot of difficult issues that affect a lot of us out there, problems that we have to deal with in the real world from bullying to depression to work stress. There is a huge variety to the content on their Youtube channel and have fans all over the world, they're definitely number one on my list here. The only thing I hate about the channel is Simon's dodgy hipster beard (he used to be very handsome before he grew that beard) - but apart from that, these two are truly brilliant.

2. Abroad in Japan: 1.2 million subscribers
Theme: Japanese culture & travel
Country: Japan / UK

Another Youtuber in the same category is Mr Chris Broad, a British Youtuber who lives in Japan - hence the name, "Abroad in Japan" which is a pun on his surname and the fact that he is living abroad, in Japan. Once again, there's definitely an overlap with Simon & Martina here as Chris is making Japanese culture accessible to an English-speaking audience. He also started off as an English teacher in Japan before becoming so successful on Youtube that he was able to resign from his teaching job and become a full time Youtuber. Chris is fluent in Japanese of course after having lived in Japan for so many years. Most of his videos are travel videos, but he does things that your average tourist would never do and thus will show you a totally different side of Japan. So for example, he recently released a series of videos entitled 'Journey Across Japan' where he cycled about 2000 km over a six week period last year. Talk about suffering for your art. What I particularly enjoy about his videos is the way he involves two of his best friends in Japan: Ryotaro and Natsuki - Ryotaro is charming, witty and handsome: his English is native-standard perfect and he has an uncanny British accent whilst Natsuki is more like your typical Japanese man from a small town in Japan but there's something very genuine and honest about him. In fact, the best video featuring Natsuki was done almost entirely in Japanese so we can hear him speak eloquently and articulately in his mother tongue rather than struggle on in English and his friendship with Chris is actually very heartwarming - to see how two guys from different countries, different cultures, different languages get along so well. Furthermore Chris is also the king of British self-deprecation which is something I relate to really well.

3. Vox: 5.9 million subscribers
Theme: Politics, culture, geography
Country: USA

Youtube can be both entertaining and educational at the same time and Vox definitely is up there as one of my favourite channels for educational content. I particularly enjoyed their Vox Borders series where presenter Johnny Harris goes to some of the world's most problematic areas and it's not about, "look at me, I'm at this beautiful resort, the beach has golden sand and the rooms are gorgeous." Hell no, it's quite the opposite - he goes to places like Haiti, Colombia, Morocco and Nepal to explore some of the more problematic places in the world. I do enjoy that kind of in depth, hard hitting documentaries.  But then again, sometimes Vox would surprise me with various topics that I have not previously read much about and I would watch the video just to learn more about a new topic (relaly anything from music to nutrition to gambling) - the production quality is very high, they do spend a decent amount of money on even a rather short video. The vast majority of their videos are reasonably short (from 3 to 10 minutes) so I am far more inclined to watch a shorter video than to commit to watching say a 25 or 30 minute video without knowing if the topic would interest me or not. Vox do have a really good team (admittedly, I really like some presenters like Joss Fong and Johnny Harris but I am not fond of some of the others like Carlos Maza) and yes, politically, they do tend to be fairly left wing which does suit me just fine.

4. Randy Rainbow: 255,000 subscribers 
Theme: Politics, Comedy
Country: USA

I totally love with Randy Rainbow - for those of you not familiar with him, allow me to explain what he does. Randy (that's his real name by the way) is a gorgeous, gay American comedian with the voice of an angel - he is vehemently anti-Trump (just like me) and he would take a piece of recent interview with Trump or someone else in the American government and edit the piece to make it look as if he is interviewing that person. Then he would spontaneously break into song and make fun of the person he is interviewing. If you hate Trump and love musicals, then you will fall in love with Randy Rainbow. Yes - we're all incredibly frustrated right now, so why not have some fun whilst Trump is President.

5. Jonathan Pie: 515,000 subscribers 
Theme: Politics, Comedy 
Country: UK 

Jonathan Pie is the alter ego of British comedian Tom Walker who went viral in 2016 when many people on Youtube mistook a staged piece to be real - Jonathan's Youtube skits follows the same formula each time: a reporter is live on the scene, reporting an event and the moment he is off-air, he tells his colleague 'Tim' (presumably the cameraman) what he is actually thinking - this then leads to an expletive laden rant about politicians. Most of us love Jonathan Pie because we wish reporters would actually be honest and tell it is like is, instead of sticking to the script. Most of his skits are pretty short (under 5 minutes) and yes, he hates everyone from Trump to May - I would love to have him as prime minister, he makes a lot of sense. Heck, if comedian Volodymyr Zelensky (who has never ever held any political office before) can become president of Ukraine on his first attempt, I sure as hell would vote for a comedian like Tom Walker to be my prime minister. He is definitely a lot more sensible than the bunch of wankers currently in government and any of the idiots from Labour. And if you think the people of Ukraine are fed up enough with the establishment to elect a comedian to become their president, just think of how fed up us Brits are over the way Brexit has been handled by the government. Yeah, Tom Walker for prime minister - who's with me? He is honest, he tells the truth and that's what we love about him.

6. China Uncensored: 777,000 subscribers
Theme: China, Politics, comedy 
Country: USA

Well many of my regular readers will know my weird relationship with all things Chinese - I hated my father growing up, but I handled it in a very passive-aggressive way. He was a Chinese teacher, so instead of hating him directly, I used to irk him by pretending to speak Mandarin really badly and hating all things Chinese. My father loved all things Chinese and he hoped for China to become the next world superpower so it would lend some meaning to his career as a Chinese teacher. In his simplistic mind, he thinks that the Chinese communist government could do no wrong and I grew up listening to him go on and on about how glorious the Chinese government is - thus when I discovered China Uncensored, it was such a breath of fresh air to hear someone criticizing China in a totally fair manner. Yes the presenter Chris Chappell is a white guy, but their researcher and writer is Shelley Zhang whose parents had to flee Beijing after the Chinese communist government's crackdown after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. The news coming from the official mouthpiece of the Chinese government is all fake news, propaganda, bullshit and lies anyway - so with their satirical approach to what is actually going on in China, I love their approach. May I make a disclaimer please: I hate my father, I hate the Chinese communist government but ironically, I have actually worked with a lot of Chinese people over the years and I treat all Chinese people as individuals - I hated some of the Chinese people I worked with but became very close friends with some of the others. I am not anti-China per se, just vehemently against the Chinese communist party.

7. The Juice Media: 208,000 subscribers
Theme: Politics, Comedy
Country: Australia

Oh you have got to see the Honest Government Ads series by the Juice Media - basically, the Australian government is as corrupt as hell and there are a bunch of left-wing comedians who are so fed up with them that they are using comedy and satire to lampoon the government. And holy shit, it works - well, they videos are absolutely brilliant because they are explaining to us actually just how dire the situation is in Australia and the mainstream media will never be that honest. Once again, don't get me wrong, I've visited Australia and I've met some wonderful people during my travels there, but holy shit your government is corrupt. I'm British and my government is just inept but your government is so fucking corrupt it is scary. Mind you, the British government are so inept they couldn't be corrupt even if they tried but the Australian government takes corruption to all new heights. Anyway, I best leave it to the Juice Media to explain it all to you. Their videos are fucking brilliant but they just make me think, holy shit, yes Brexit is a shitstorm but I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in Australia if that's the kind of government you have. I would include every single one of their videos here but if you like the three below, please visit their Youtube channel and watch them all! They are all awesome!

8. Late Night with Seth Meyers: 2.3 million subscribers
Theme: Politics, comedy
Country: USA

Seth Meyers is a hugely popular American comedian and I regularly watch the segment 'A Closer Look' on Youtube - this is a 12 to 15 minute segment in which Seth examines how Donald Trump has fucked up once again. If you hate Trump as much as I do, then you'll enjoy this - on one hand, it is wonderful to see a comedian lampoon Trump like that, but on the other hand, there's a part of me that thinks, "holy shit, an American president shouldn't be there to provide material for comedians on late night talk shows, they should be running the country and solving some of the world's most pressing problems. Instead, Trump is reduced to a crude punchline in Meyer's routines - what is the world coming to? How did we end up with this pile of shitfuckery that gave us President Trump?" And that's a depressing thought, but like it or not, we're stuck with president Trump until at least the next election. I would love to have Seth Meyers as the next president of America - he's so good looking, he's witty, he's articulate, he's left wing and I adore him. You know, I do like comedians more if they also happen to be good looking - nothing wrong with getting a bit of eye candy whilst they make me laugh!

9. Langfocus: 689,000 subscribers
Theme: Linguistics, learning foreign languages
Country: Japan / Canada

My regular readers will know that I love studying foreign languages and do subscribe to a number of channels on this theme, but the best one amongst them has got to be Langfocus featuring Paul Jorgensen, a Canadian language teacher living in Japan. Paul speaks several languages including Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese,  Esperanto, Italian, French, Tagalog and Indonesian amongst others - so obviously, he has tackled a wide variety of European and Asian languages like me and has mastered a few to a very high level. So at least in my eyes, that makes him highly qualified to do videos like that. One aspect that I do enjoy about his videos is that he doesn't try to dumb it down to make it more accessible to people who are not that interested in linguistics, oh he is very technical and he takes great joy in dissecting the grammar systems in different languages - that is extremely interesting to someone like me of course, but that can make his videos rather long by Youtube standards (15 - 25 minutes long) but if you are willing to be patient and pay attention, I promise you that you will learn a lot. He covers all kinds of languages on his Youtube channel, including those he doesn't speak and he would collaborate with native speakers of those languages to make sure he gets them right. He actually did a video called 'The Languages of Singapore' which I thought was extremely well researched and I was very impressed indeed. Whilst his videos are highly educational, they can also be quite long sometimes (the longest being 24 minutes).

10. 김동우 Kim Dong-Woo: 384,000 subscribers
 Theme: K-pop mash ups 
Country: South Korea 

I thought I'd finish this list with something different. My regular readers will know that I love K-pop and sure I watch a lot of K-pop music videos on Youtube but the mash up is a unique art form: this is when you mix two (or more) songs seamlessly into one. Now there are a lot of K-pop mash ups out there on Youtube, some are good but a lot are terrible - the fact is with the right software, anyone can attempt to do a mash up but Kim Dong-Woo's mash ups are of an exceptionally high quality. There's virtually no information about Dong-Woo on his Youtube page, all I could find was a statement explaining that he started uploading his mash ups and remixes onto Youtube when he was in high school back in 2013 - he literally has millions of videos of his mash ups and remixes on his Youtube channel and the popular ones have over 1 million views (the most popular one of them all has 4.3 million views). The popular K-pop bands like 2NE1, Blackpink, Momoland, BTS, Big Bang, Girl's Day and Twice are all there though I am quite disappointed that he hasn't done anything with T-ara or f(x) yet. It is a shame that Dong-Woo is keeping a low profile, he is incredibly talented in my opinion and should be working as a DJ or a producer in K-pop but I'm guessing that what he is doing is purely a labour of love and that he isn't paid for it; he'll probably go to university and end up working joylessly as an engineer or an accountant despite his first true love being K-pop. Sigh. If you enjoy K-pop, do check out Dong-Woo's Youtube channel.

I could go on but I have decided to limit this list to just ten Youtubers - what do you think? Have you ever come across any of these Youtube channels before? Which are your favourite Youtubers? Why do you like them? How much time do you spend on Youtube? Do you prefer shorter or longer videos? Please do share your recommendations with me now you know what my taste (politics, comedy, Korea/Japan, learning foreign languages) is like and many thanks for reading.