You are the most valuable person on this team right now, and it has an expiry date. You are living in Japan for the first time, from the same country as our viewers, and things still confuse you. In a few weeks you will have got used to it and stop noticing. Write down what confuses you while it still does. Travel, or just going out on a normal day — both count. Aim for around ten a week.

1 Your name

If your entry becomes a video, you get asked along to the shoot.

2 What did you struggle with?

Write it as it happened, to you — not what you think tourists might find hard.

Anything counts. Buying medicine. An ATM that refused your card. The bins. A restaurant that only takes cash. The laundry. A queue you joined wrongly. A sign you couldn't read. It does not have to be about travel — we decide later what's useful, you just notice.

3 What did you search when it happened?

The exact words you typed into Google. Start typing and real searches will appear. Short words show you more options; if you already know exactly what you want, type the whole phrase — that is what gets checked. Everything suggested is Japan-related and already being searched.

4 Where in a trip does this happen?

5 What happened because you didn't know?

6 “I wish I had known…”

How much easier would knowing it have made things?

7 Would you send this to your mother?

Our viewer is a woman aged 30–60 in the US, UK or Australia. Your mother is genuinely close to her.

8 A video about this optional

9 Did you check an official source? optional

Paste the official page you checked — the railway, the airline, immigration, the shop's own site. We date-stamp it, so the video can say “checked in July 2026”. Rules in Japan change, and being the channel that actually verified is worth more than being first.

How this is judged

Search demand, scored 1–100. Built from how much the top videos on this subject are actually watched, whether people really type these words, and how many related searches exist. Nothing to look up by hand.

Then: can a channel our size get seen there, and does not-knowing actually cost her something. Something she cannot avoid, would not know, and where not knowing costs her — that is the sweet spot.

Everything you submit is kept, including entries this tool says no to. Koh, Liza and Claire work through the list and decide what gets filmed.

Numbers are estimated from YouTube data — the closest measurable stand-in for Reels.

You are writing for her

Measured — our own Instagram, 41,250 followers

Age: 45–54 is the biggest group (28%), then 35–44 (27%) and 55–64 (18%)
Gender: 60% women, 40% men (of those we can tell)
Country: US 29%, Australia 10%, Indonesia 7%, Singapore 6%, Canada 5%, UK 4%
Who we reached this month skews younger — 25–44 than who already follows us

Assumed — not tested yet

She scrolls past hauls, “top 10” and hype (we have never made one, so we do not know)
She wants quiet and high-quality over loud
She is planning or already on a trip

Treat these as guesses, not rules. If your idea breaks one, submit it anyway — that is how we find out.

Three things we had wrong, now corrected from the real numbers: the UK is small (4%, not a core market) · one in five followers is in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia) · 40% of our audience is men, so “she” is the majority, not everyone.

The question that matters: would she send this to a friend?

The best videos are things she has to know, and doesn't.

Write down what tripped you up. The tool checks how many people are searching for it, whether a channel our size can be seen there, and saves it to the team's list either way.