For now, I will start with video-book readings from my book of the same name. Tales from Old Japan. I will spare you my voice and clumsy reading unless I don’t have any other option. It will take time for me to build my video creating experience points, even for simple videos like story readings.
Unlike most modern YouTube channels, I plan to keep to minimalism in video design, thumbnails, lack of music, etc. Just like how I keep fairly JP minimal. However, I hope to monetize the channel once I can. YouTube will show ads regardless, so I might as well benefit if I can. YouTube doesn’t allow monetizing or ad-revenue sharing until you have 1,000 subscribers or other criteria. And that’s where you can help by subscribing to the channel and liking videos and sharing the channel. It’s a way to support what I do on JP and helps me keep JP ad-free…other than the odd product sponsor like Sakuraco and Tokyo Treat.
I plan to release videos on a weekly cadence with Wednesdays as the release day. This may change.
I’ve considered starting a YouTube channel for several years, but the time videos take to create kept me away. However, video is where everyone goes first now. Books and written articles don’t have the same reach as they used to have. By going the video-essay route, I aim to keep with my love for writing while expanding the “readership.” My style won’t be a popular format compared to how YouTube videos are today. But that’s fine.
In any case, today marks the beginning. I will continue to write and post here on JP with the weekly cadence you expect. I can’t fully commit to a weekly schedule for the YouTube channel, but that’s my aim. At least for the next few months, I can hit that aim. I’ve worked ahead that far; working ahead is the key to a regular publishing schedule.
If you have folktales, historical events, or anything else from old Japan, you’d like me to cover, please let me know. I’m always searching for ideas.
The channel kicks off with one of my favorite folktales: Tamamo the Fox Maiden.
Visit “Tales from Old Japan” on YouTube. And thank you for your support!
Subscribed! Been reading your blog for a couple years now, you have very refreshing perspectives on anime and other things.
On a side note, I just noticed that when I click on “About” button (without clicking on any sub-menus like “Article index”) or on “Videos”, it gives a notice of critical error. I know debugging WordPress can be a pain, but since you want to also show videos, it can matter.
Thanks for reading and for the heads up! I found the culprit. It’s not an ideal fix, but it will have to do for now. WordPress can be a pain with its spaghetti code > <.
Glad I could help! I had to administer a website written (poorly) by someone else in WordPress on my previous job, and it had constant conflicts of different plugins. Especially problematic was that the website was bilingual, and when changing material in a page in one language, sometimes the same page in another language would also change.
Oh man. I’ve been there too! I once had to administer a WordPress site in English and German. I don’t speak German :D.