Two weeks ago, on a Sunday morning, I met up with Olga (my part-time marketing assistant) at Shinjuku Gyoen, the national park in the bustling heart of Tokyo. It was still early but already pretty warm. Summers in Tokyo often hit 36 degrees, and on top of that, the air is humid, making everything feel even stickier. Luckily, there was a breeze that morning, which helped with the heat but also served as a test for the microphone we wanted to try out.
I had recently bought a new set of wireless microphones, the Godox WEC Kit2 (not sponsored or anything, but I’m sure some people are curious), because we realized while filming the room tours that having them would be pretty useful. With just a week to go before Charlotte arrived in Japan to shoot a bunch of content with me, I figured it was a good time to test them out. Olga had been wanting to film a Q&A for months, so the timing was perfect. We were silly enough not to clip a mic on Olga since we initially thought we wouldn’t use her audio, but hey… it was just a test, after all.
In addition to the mic set, I had also ordered a 50mm camera lens. I’d used one before, so I knew how it worked, but I figured it was a good time to test that out as well.
The mic worked great (though I found out a week later with Charlotte that it’s super important to make sure the cord from the camera to the transmitter is properly plugged in…), and the lens was perfect too. So, voilà, here’s our Q&A, covering topics like publishing (audio)books, dumb comments on the internet, my Japanese, starting a business, and the story of how a hairdresser unexpectedly turned my hair orange.
Since we were already at it, we also took some photos. After that, we took a break at the unique Starbucks in the park – you can find it here on Google Maps. Just a heads up: This Starbucks is inside the park, so if you want to go there, you’ll also need to pay the park’s entrance fee. But it’s definitely worth it.
And if you’re thinking, “Toeps and Olga are checking the park? Don’t you mean the equipment?” Sorry, that’s a reference to a Dutch meme from 2002 that almost no one gets, but hey. As long as I can laugh about it myself, right?
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