way through i get an email saying hey norm if  you want to do that thing you're trying to do  

you're going to need a captain's license for  a boat it was at this point that i thought  

the project was pretty much dead in the water  until i realized it might actually be kind of  

neat to have a captain's license for a boat  and so this is where our story begins today

all right so it's about midnight right now and  i just found out that i'm actually gonna need a  

boat license for this one project that i've been  chasing some countries you don't need them but  

here in japan you do but luckily enough it seems  fairly easy i think i should be able to just  

self-study and be able to pass the test okay  scrap that so i've been studying for the past  

couple weeks even ordered study materials in both  english and japanese and i've run into a couple of  

problems first off i haven't studied for anything  in years and completely forgot how incredibly  

draining it is if you're studying for anything  right now you have my full respect you're amazing  

and i love you but second and quite possibly  much more important is that japan has a lot of  

water traffic and the more i learn the more i'm  starting to think that i might actually want to  

receive professional training from an expert  on this and it's a bit of a long shot but my  

buddy mitch who lives down in kagushima has  long joked that to make the best of his life  

down there in kagoshima bay or kinko bay as it's  called he's someday gonna get his boat license  

so you know what i i'm gonna call him up and i'm  gonna call his bluff because if i have to do all  

of this i might as well make somebody suffer with  me that was fast okay hi um so quick one for you  

you've joked for a while about getting your boat  license and i'm actually thinking about getting  

mine would you be interested in going to i  guess it would be boating school with me um  

are you serious about this i'm very i'm  very serious i'm very sad are you interested  

um if you're gonna do this i wanna come along okay  all right we're doing this okay i will uh i'll  

drop you a line later with the all the details and  all the specifics and whatnot we'll figure it out  

all right sweet dude let me know that  was a quick call i'll talk to you later  

all right bye bye so we just arrived at  the boat training center day one starts  

right now right now exactly  right now let's do this

i gotta put my shoes on like  falling over how you feeling  

excited and a little nervous not gonna lie  all right uh i think they're waiting for us so  

do we have everything we need what  do we need for that we'll come back

so this is our classroom it's super super tiny  and i love it it's actually pretty dope it is  

the teacher has requested that i don't show  his face or anything so we're gonna hold to  

those requests but he's allowed us this is the  place here leave a boat license school and look  

at our nice slippers do they ever fit you they  never fit me they don't fit mitch for some reason  

is wildly nervous oh my god the knot tying  about the ropes i've never learned how to  

tie a knot about ever in my entire life no boy  scouts nothing so this is really intimidating  

like of all the things to be dude you're  super confident about this but i am not okay  

i think what's gonna happen i'll  pass the written test you'll pass  

the practical test and then the two  of us will have to redo it i'm kidding

this is it says captain i have to pass now right  

you have to pass that if i don't pass  what happens then i take away the hat

thanks norm that's cool all  right i'll study extra hard now  

yeah we're not allowed to put on the  captain's hat until we pass the test  

we'll get there eventually all right uh  i guess we should get set up and there is  

just so much stuff to learn and study it  didn't seem that hard like out of the gate but  

uh no it seemed pretty intimidating out  of the gate okay all right i take it back

creates a circle and that  circle turns into a circle

just finished up our training studying study it  was studying it feels like university our class  

that made everything make sense so i feel so much  better now than i did yesterday our teachers the  

best yeah and now we we're actually staying here  for the night so we're gonna check it it's like  

it's also it's a boat club so it's also kind of  like a hotel it's a captain's club it's a captain  

we're not captains yet it's just you sew on the  captain thing i have the hat i want to wear it  

it's technical and it's boring but we're  just gonna spend the rest of the night  

studying and then tomorrow we get on a boat  i'm just i'm i'm crossing my fingers for the  

weather it looks okay but then again we  haven't had the best of luck have we norm  

he's never gonna let me off the  hook for sakurajima like it's sunny  

360 days of the year in the five days  that i'm there it's already rain like  

it looks like we're the only people here that's  actually that's a big room it's not too bad

there's the beautiful unit bath oh  there's a shower we're gonna go ahead  

and do we have a decent view i  bet you we do you ready for it

kind of it's not bad it's a little foggy that's  okay we can live oh this size over here is nice  

okay get some water over there also she why are  all the mirrors in this place coffin shavings  

um norm i'm pretty sure you booked this place  so i'm just gonna okay all right i'll go now

actually you know i can't leave we  get a lot of studying to do we have  

we just found five practice tests that we  didn't even know we had so yeah study time  

so

so we are on to day two the practical and the  weather is terrible and i almost i almost fell  

down right in here we spent the morning  working on knots do you remember them  

i remember a lot of them the weather  could be worse but it's it's not great  

i hope i hope it gets way worse like we  could make more video about it being so bad

practicing rescues right now

i don't know why

okay

a big building is 220 from here i'm still not  remembering this i'm so stupid it's around over

there we go my first first ever boat i got  to ride in japan mitch has been stressing  

out over the knots the entire time that uh  you tried that right yeah solid attempt yeah  

he said it was okay and that's pretty much it  for the practical the mitch is still practicing  

mitch is so worried about these knots look  i'm not good at this okay i'm not good at this  

that's okay it's not a joke i'm not good  at knots i'm figuring out though this is  

i just figured okay so they were super cool and  they let us borrow this so we could practice  

and do we do we tell them about you about your  omiyage about your souvenir oh sure we called  

all the hardware stores around here thinking that  we could find a cleat but they didn't have any at  

any of them and so the the kind people here  they're just like here you can have this yeah  

so they just gave me one the staff have actually  hooked me up with my own cleat and ring to do not  

training practice and this is mr kurita over here  so norm has a has a souvenir and i have a training  

i have to return this but it's going to help me  pass the test because i'm super worried you know  

what does this light light is a thing light  apparently it's not a thing i'll just control  

everything over here no it doesn't control the  light i think there's a light switch down there

that was honestly so much work  just to turn on that light  

i we we've been standing here  forever just there's like  

there's a whole panel of switches here  and something started vibrating so but now

it's time to get back on the road and uh  we're going to head back to tokyo our test is  

in what three days yeah so i tell you  what norm you drive an oil practice

so that's how that's how things are gone

do you think you get a pass i think we're both  gonna pass but i do think that we need to continue  

to study like it's not going to be an easy pass  so norm has been calling me bitter mitch today  

and the reason why is because i have found some  inconsistencies between like the the test not  

not the the textbook the textbook is great but  the tests that the government has provided us  

you see one of the challenges inside of this is  that the english for this is not it's not english  

it's wonky it is so half the time you're just  trying to figure out what is what is the question  

like what are they trying to ask we're originally  trying to decide if it was going to be better to  

do the test in japanese or in english in japanese  it's a little bit easier because the kanji kind  

of just gives you the answer there yeah but if  we ever want to boat internationally we figured  

it would probably be a pretty good idea to learn  this in english but not only that but from the  

like the study materials that we've been provided  we've learned so much about boating just so much  

actually you know what i learned because in  america you don't need any of this especially  

like lakes and rivers to like boat you just need  a driver's license i've learned from this that  

that's incredibly dangerous yeah yeah at the very  least i want to be able to boat safely and smartly  

that's it if i can if i can boat without putting  anybody including myself in danger i will be happy  

well because i think that we both went into this  thinking like this is gonna be fun we're gonna  

party we're gonna go out in the ocean it's gonna  be great i still feel like we're gonna do that  

but we're gonna have this like incredible sense  of responsibility yeah we're doing it there's a  

there's a weight behind the word captain this has  been i'm enjoying it okay i'm gonna go to sleep  

enjoy all right so mitch and i got back a  little while back a few hours back we've  

just been studying the test is tomorrow mitch  doesn't know yet but i have a little surprise

all right i'm hiding in the bathroom to do  this so mitch doesn't hear me kurita's on  

the gentleman from the school gave these to me so  that we'd be able to practice but mitch was really  

keen on getting these in the area as a memento but  we weren't able to find any he still thinks these  

are mine i've kind of prepped this for him that's  like a bit of a thank you for him coming all the  

way out to tokyo from kagoshima and and doing  this with me so i'm going to give it to him now  

that's for you for me yeah this one yeah  you made this well i just fastened them

i tried to think of a really fancy message  now we gotta pass the test we got to cool

it is the morning of the test day actually the  the test center is right there behind us how you  

feeling nervous not gonna lie yeah yeah we got a  coffee though i'm actually weirdly excited like  

i'm i've got this like wakulaku like you you would  be because it's morning this morning and you just  

love mornings do you think you're gonna pass the  written tests we've done okay the practical seems  

not that bad but i'd also don't want to get cocky  and be like yeah we've got a group of gentlemen  

back here who are like clearly waiting for us  and we're going to get hit by a car all right

all right just finished up the test yeah let's  keep your test book and all the answers are here  

so i'm going to check through and see whether  i passed or 40 died you see that wasn't a  

check mark i'm getting copied out right at the  end and 50 nailed it wow i did way better than  

i thought on this at the very beginning  of the test i came in hot and so motivated  

i was like i got this i have got it this is  easy and then around section three i was like

it's gonna be so bad our results are gonna come  in a week yeah so we'll know then whether or  

not we've failed or passed why did i start with  fail why did i lead you to the negative i think  

it's bad habits i think we're so scared to fail  this because we're kind of a little cocky about  

it but we tried so hard not to come in cocky we  try to the there's a certain weight on you when  

you're out there you can't save for absolute  sure but i think i think we might have passed  

the nuts i got disappointed on i wanted  i wanted him to give me a typical night  

okay this is the best part so despite how hard  mitch has been working on dots he got like the  

easiest knot where you just wrap it around a pole  and that's it i was so sad i was like dude give  

me something harder i practiced so how do you want  to do this do you want to like look at it together  

on skype or something at the same time i don't  want you to look first i'm not gonna look back  

we'll line call each other and look at the  exact same time that's the only way this is fair  

okay if you call me i would be like oh we both got  it we didn't get it i'm gonna be so pissed okay

all

all right so the test results go live in less than  a minute i'm gonna give mitch a call i'm gonna

what's up bro hey man are you ready

okay so i'm clicking on tokyo i've opened them  both up in separate browsers okay you ready  

yeah three two one scores should be live  all right looking at the tokyo test okay

it um looks like you're coming back to tokyo  

looks like i'm coming back to tokyo because we  got our license yeah we did baby and as you may  

be able to tell from fuji in the background  here niche is so excited about fuji this time  

this is not exactly tokyo and that itself was a  comedy of errors i can't believe how much it took  

to how many flights did we get how many places  we canceled how many fall startups were there  

oh my lord i bought my plane ticket like right  before my plane took off yeah to get here yeah  

like literally like minutes before but here we are  with fuji in the background not a clown in the sky