Listen Here
By Jeremiah Jackson and Pulse Staff
jacksonj2@findlay.edu
Taiki Kuwabara is a freshman at the University of Findlay but he is far from home. He is from Niigata, Japan and he’s made a name for himself on campus already. He has a YouTube channel which share his new experiences in a new country.
“I like watching YouTube and always wanted to become a YouTuber,” Kuwabara said.
But his desire to record his experience was about more than just being a YouTuber.
“I think it’s going to be good for other Japanese students who are going to be coming here,” Kuwabara said.
He said the COVID-19 pandemic limited students from traveling overseas the last couple of years.
“We didn’t know what we would need or what it’ll be like being here,” Kuwabara said. “So recording my experience living here is good for the other Japanese students who will come here next year to show them my experience.
His YouTube channel has 119 subscribers and features videos with subtitles for both his American and International audience. The videos show many different things such as a trip to an American McDonald’s (which garnered nearly 3,000 views) to his amazement of the sand volleyball courts on campus.
It was his creativity that lead him here.
“I was majoring in Graphic Design in Japan. And my dream is to create movie posters especially for America,” Kuwabara said. “Usually the Japanese design for movie posters are very different from the American movie posters so I want to learn why they are so different and what Americans thought process of creating movie posters.”
It was his work at a movie theater that sparked his fascination with movie posters.
“I sold so many posters and sometimes I would even sell more American movie posters than Japanese movie posters,” Kuwabara said. “Like Aquaman from DC Comics, their American posters are classics in black and white, but the Japanese posters of Aquaman are very colorful.”
So I got interested by seeing so many movie posters and wanted to understand more about why the American style movie posters and the Japanese style movie posters are so different.
You can join Kuwabara on his YouTube journey by following his channel “Kuwanoki.”
