Name that Okashi!

I remember when I was young (not that long ago...yeah right! hehe) my dream travel location was somewhere like England, or Scotland. Somewhere cold with snow and castles and lots of green rolling hills and mountains. These were the places I always read about in books as a child.  Little did I know, that I would end up going somewhere totally different.

I began my travels in Japan, then went to South Korea, China, over to Morocco, and a few other places.  I haven't made it to anywhere in Europe yet, maybe one day.  It is funny how I ended up going to all the places that I knew nothing about and didn't have much interest in.  That has all changed, though, as I love reading about these places now, and dream of going back there one day. One place which I really loved was Japan.  I have to admit I spend a lot of time looking for interesting blogs and YouTube channels about Japan, and this is all because of a lovely friend of mine (thanks, M!) who invited me there and persuaded me to set off on my big adventure all the way from Australia.

So what has this all got to do with the image above?  Well while looking for cool stuff about Japan, I found a YouTube channel created by 'NihonJenn' who is a North American living and working in Japan teaching English (something I am always interested in, as I taught English in South Korea for two years).  She talks about various things she observes about her life overseas, and has a very cute segment called 'Name that Okashi'.  In it she talks about the latest Japanese snack she has found, and lately she asked her subscribers if anyone would like to make an intro for her next snack recording...so I thought it would be fun.  Brings back memories of all the interesting snacks I used to try in South Korea.  I could never read the writing on the packet, but it was always a surprise to break it open and find out what was inside.  The convenience store across the road from my apartment must have made a small fortune out of me in the two years that I was there hehe.

The image above is a still from the 10 second animated intro I made.  As you will see, I didn't use any fancy animation software to make it, I just did a bit of drawing with a black pen, scanned it into Photoshop, and then coloured it in different stages, saving a Jpeg of each stage, and then I just loaded them all into Windows Movie Maker, added a bit of sped up voice and background music, and...Voila!

You can watch NihonJenn's 'Name that Okashi' video here, or alternatively, you can view the animated intro by itself on my channel.

Enjoy!
Regards,