Malaysian Sells His Car And Goes To Japan With No Plan, Now Edits Videos For A Popular YouTuber
A risky decision turned into an opportunity of a lifetime for Zest.
- Zest sold his car and flew to Tokyo with no solid plan, surviving 90 days on budget meals and staying in internet cafes.
- He relied on cheap food chains like Saizeriya and Matsuya, plus generous friends who provided lodgings and meals throughout his stay.
- After bumping into YouTuber Kole Sims at a birthday party, Zest landed a video editing role for the popular Tokyo Sims channel.
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For many people, going to another country with absolutely no itinerary planned is a no-no. One would always think to at least know the duration of their stay, where they plan to visit in the country, book hotels, draw up a budget, that kind of thing.
But, for one video editor in Malaysia, he relied on spontaneity, a questionable budget, resourcefulness, friends, and a whole lot of luck.
TRP reached out to Zest, who is also an aspiring music artist, to learn of his journey from working for a local marketing agency to becoming a video editor to one of the most popular content creators in Tokyo, Japan.
He sold his car to fund his 90-day trip to Tokyo
Zest told TRP that he sold his Chevrolet Optra 1.6, a compact sedan which only fetches between RM3,700 and RM7,000 today according to online marketplace mudah.my.
In a video shared on Instagram, Zest explained that he flew to Japan with no solid plan. He also stayed there through the maximum duration one can stay in Japan without a Visa (90 days).
“To make the trip worth it, I stayed the maximum amount of time you could stay in Japan without a Visa, which is 90 days. No apartments, just moving around and maximising every singgle ringgit,” he said.
He survived on budget meals and slept in internet cafes
According to Zest’s video, he mentioned that he was “technically homeless” while he was there, so we asked him how did he manage to survive for three months in a country with such limited funds?
On the matter of food, he said he saved quite a lot money just by eating at Saizeriya or Matsuya.
For those of you who are not familiar, Saizeriya is an Italian-style food chain in Japan which offers pretty cheap meals with pasta dishes costing around ¥300 to ¥500 (roughly RM7 to RM12 today). Meanwhile, Matsuya serves budget Japanese dishes such as beef rice bowls, Japanese Curry dishes, and even set meals starting from ¥800 (around RM20).
Fun fact: Malaysia is getting its first Saizeriya outlet on 4 June at Aeon Mall Taman Maluri in Kuala Lumpur!
Zest added that he stayed in internet cafes around the city, which also helped him save money on accommodations like hotels.
In Tokyo, there are establishments called net cafes or manga kissa, which are basically 24-hour havens that serve as budget-friendly private work-pods, comic libraries, and cheap overnight accommodations. For rates usually ranging from ¥1,500 to ¥3,000 (RM37 to RM70) per night, you can typically get a lockable private booth, high-speed PC, and access to free showers as well as unlimited drinks such as coffee and soda.
Besides the net cafes, Zest said he also had help from friends when it came to lodgings and food.
“I had a lot of friends who really went all out in helping me by giving me a place to stay, and sometimes even treating me to lunch. Without them I might not have been able to survive as well as I did, so I really appreciate them for going out of their way to help me out,” he said.
How did he end up with one of Tokyo’s biggest content creators as a client?
Zest’s answer to this was very simple: he bumped into Kole Sims, creator of the Tokyo Sims YouTube channel, at a friend’s birthday party.
It turned out that Sims needed someone who could help him handle editing for a large volume of videos, and Zest offered his services. The rest, as they say, is history.
Funnily enough, Zest told TRP that he actually went to Tokyo in hopes of connecting with people in the music industry there as well as to check out the underground music scene in Tokyo since he’s an aspiring music artist himself. Little did he know he would end up with a famous Tokyo YouTuber as a client.
Tokyo Sims is a viral content channel and street interviewing project based in Shibuya. Hosted primarily by Kole (Kole404), the channel is famous for its deadpan, awkward humor and candid, sometimes bizarre interviews with strangers and celebrities. The channel currently has close to 540,000 subscribers and typically garners hundreds of thousands of views per video.
Zest has a background in social media and marketing
Zest learned most of his editing skills from a social media and marketing agency he worked with previously, as well as from some of his fellow editor friends who were willing to share their knowledge with him.
At the moment, besides Tokyo Sims, he’s also working with smaller content creators in the underground music scene while looking out for bigger opportunities.
“I also want to be able to dive into other types of content, and potentially work with brands too,” Zest told TRP.
Currently, he is based in Kuala Lumpur but will be regularly moving back and forth between Japan and Malaysia for work.
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