
How far can you go without a map and smartphone in Japan? US gamer Ludwig Ahgren tries to find out
These are the rules American game streamer Ludwig Ahgren and his YouTuber buddy Michael Reeves have imposed on themselves as they embark on a journey to traverse Japan on motorbikes.
The friends ditched the smartphones that are a staple of their generation and set off without so much as a guidebook.
That left them no option but to mingle with locals to get directions, sparking encounters that have unlocked a full display of friendliness from Japanese people.
The journey from Cape Sata at the southern tip of Kyushu to Cape Soya, the northernmost point of Hokkaido, is about 2,000 miles – or it would be, if they hadn't gotten lost already.
It took them two weeks to complete the trip, according to a finale video posted Saturday on Ahgren's YouTube channel. A team had been responsible for tracking the pair and uploading videos of the journey since they hit the road two weeks ago, enjoying some of Japan's most unique scenery, culture and cuisine along the way.
It was no easy quest, acknowledged Ahgren, one of the world's most successful game streamers with 6.7 million subscribers on YouTube. 'We are doing this the hard way,' he quipped in a video before hopping on his motorbike.
'I've realized I have become addicted to this thing,' he said in the video, referring to his smartphone. 'But now, I can't use it to go on Yelp to find the best place to eat, Google Maps to figure out how to get there, Google Translate to figure out what to order when I get there.'
CNN reached out to the pair during their trip but did not hear back – probably a sign they didn't have their smartphone on.
They cruised through the bustling capital Tokyo, the tree-blanketed countryside of Miyazaki, fed crackers to deer in Nara, and caught a glimpse of cherry blossoms in Shizuoka – where they also ate a picnic against the backdrop of Mount Fuji.
Throughout their journey, they sampled an abundance of Japanese food from udon noodles to okonomiyaki, a savory pancake dish from Osaka. When they fell behind schedule, they grabbed quick bites from Japan's ubiquitous convenience stores or cup noodles from vending machines.
But the journey was not without its setbacks.
With no map, they mistook Miyazaki in southeastern Kyushu for Shikoku, Japan's fourth-biggest island, which is linked by bridges to the country's major island. They turned up in the city, only to find they could not be more lost.
The pair also hoped to check out a sumo wrestling match. They decided to park the bikes and travel by public transport but, without a smartphone, it took them three hours to navigate Japan's notoriously headache-triggering train system.
When they eventually arrived at Osaka's Edion Arena, they saw a sign, written in English. 'Tickets sold out,' it said.
Ahgren initially relied on instinct to guess what Japanese people were saying, according to his YouTube videos. Locals went out of their way to help, doing everything they could to overcome the language barrier.
'Ichiban' – meaning 'number one' or 'the best' – became Ahgren's favorite Japanese word when he asked for hotel and restaurant recommendations, and 'nan-jikan' – 'how many hours?' – when he needed information about his journey.
One man bought the pair coffee at a convenience store before giving them directions with his car. And a woman tried to explain to them that the nearest hotel was next to a sports ground by gesturing a baseball swing.
But by day eight, Ahgren was touting how staff at a restaurant complimented him on his language skills with 'nihongo jouzu' – 'good Japanese.'
'They freaking said it,' he said proudly in a video.
Ahgren and Reeves' style of travel strikes a stark contrast to a group of influencers who previously raised eyebrows in the country for their disruptive stunts.
Jeffrey Hall, special lecturer at Kanda University of International Studies in Japan, said there has been rising sentiment in the country against misbehaving tourists – including social media influencers – as the number of visitors hit a record high.
'There is a phenomenon of people who come here to make content that is provocative and annoying to other people around them… That particular type of nuisance YouTuber or nuisance influencer have really damaged the image of foreign influencers in general,' he said.
They included American live-streamer Ramsey Khalid Ismael, better known by his online alias 'Johnny Somali,' who was arrested in late 2023 for breaking into a construction site in Osaka. He also sparked outrage by posting videos of himself taunting commuters about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
That year, a railway company also launched a probe against four popular YouTubers over their stunt to evade fares on public transport, according to local media.
But Ahgren and Reeves' trip had spotlighted parts of Japan less well known by international tourists, and their use of simple Japanese would be appreciated by locals, Hall said.
Ahgren, who often points the camera away when talking to people, is different from the 'nuisance travelers,' as he shows better understanding of social norms, one of which is not to film people without their permission, he added.
'That's something that a lot of American streamers do without even thinking of the consequences, but in Japan people value their privacy very much,' he said.

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Boston Globe
34 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Amid a culture of fear, a celebrated artist's most important exhibition is pulled from Smithsonian
And it appears that Sherald's 'Trans Forming Liberty,' her 2024 portrait of a transgender woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty, rattled museum leadership in a climate of deep hostility from the administration toward transgender people. Advertisement Installation view of Amy Sherald: American Sublime (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, April 9-August 10, 2025). Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, 2018. (Tiffany Sage/ Tiffany Sage/ Sherald said the Portrait Gallery had proposed replacing the painting in D.C. with a video of viewers' reactions both to it and transgender issues more broadly. In a the museum countered, saying it wanted the video to accompany, not replace, the painting. Either way, no agreement could be struck, and Sherald withdrew. Advertisement 'The video would have opened up for debate the value of trans visibility and I was opposed to that being a part of the 'American Sublime' narrative,' Sherald told the New York Times. 'Unfortunately, we could not come to an agreement with the artist. We remain appreciative and inspired by Ms. Sherald, her artwork and commitment to portraiture,' the museum But even without 'Trans Forming Liberty,' it's a fair guess the show would have been under external pressures: Sherald's paintings are for the most part elegant, precise portraits of unnamed Black subjects painted life-sized. There are two exceptions in the exhibition. The first is her portrait of Breonna Taylor, a memorial image painted with dignified beauty of the innocent Black woman but weary grace. It was the exhibition's centerpiece, an emblem of the artist's larger project to build Black life into a canon of American art long indifferent to its inclusion. Artist Amy Sherald with her portrait of the late Breonna Taylor. Joseph Hyde/Vanity Fair Either one might easily raise the ire of the current administration. We don't have to look very long, or very far, to parse the current president's view of Obama's husband. On his Truth Social website this week, the 47th president posted a shockingly raw AI-generated video of former President Barack Obama being violently arrested in the Oval Office and dragged away in handcuffs. But there's more here than a simple obsessive animus, one president to another (though it's also clearly that). Advertisement The current administration's blunt enforcement of what it deems acceptable expression now touches virtually all aspects of American life. That includes media (as in the 60 Minutes lawsuit debacle), entertainment (the cancellation of 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,' a known Trump tormentor), and higher education (see the administration's roughshod bullying of Harvard and Columbia over its specious claims of antisemitism). A favorite target of the Trump administration, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts by government, private business, and educational institutions, looms over Sherald's withdrawal, too. The most recent addition to the constellation of Smithsonians, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, was one of the second Trump administration's prime targets. In a March executive order titled ' (It also singled out the Smithsonian's Museum of American Art and the Smithsonian American Women's History Museum.) In May, when Advertisement Here in Massachusetts, the National Endowment for the Arts in May refused to disburse funds already promised to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art for 'Power Full Because We're Different,' Which brings us back to Sherald, ensnared by the strident decree of a cultural bureaucracy in deep regressive mode. To be clear: This was her decision. She chose not to compromise her integrity and intentions, which have been consistent and clear from the start. She had been making portraits of Black subjects for years when the invitation to paint Michelle Obama arrived. It is completely in tune with her core sensibility to capture her subjects simply, truthfully, as they are. Ruth Erickson from Cambridge with Jullian Kalim, 8, and his brother Cassidy Kalim, 3, looked at portraits of the Obamas at the MFA Boston in 2022. David L. Ryan/Globe Staff But the Obama portrait arrived in 2018 less as a painting than a heavy symbol amid a violent lurch in American life: From a two-term president who became a beacon of Black achievement to a political outsider openly hostile to the progress his predecessor seemed to embody. When the painting went on national tour in 2022, along with Kehinde Wiley's portrait of the former president, it drew crowds, including Advertisement But is pulling back, in this moment, this place, defiance or acquiescence? That's a larger question that artists, thinkers, and institutions are grappling with in every corner and context. Either way, it's an outcome enjoyed primarily by just one person, and we know who that is. Murray Whyte can be reached at

Hypebeast
an hour ago
- Hypebeast
Hypebeast Community Center: Hikari no Yami
Give us your elevator pitch. My name is Jakarie Whitaker, and I'm the creative director and founder of the brand Hikari no Yami. Hikari no Yami is Japanese for 'light of darkness.' The brand was created to serve as a cultural bridge between worlds, merging my African American heritage with Japanese design sensibilities and philosophies, such as Kintsugi and wabi-sabi. Who is wearing Hikari no Yami? Leaders, thinkers, artists, rebels, and people who exist outside the conventional box. Our community includes anyone who finds beauty in imperfection. What is your brand's main message? Sustainable creations without limitations and Freedom through duality. Cultural combination through merging the east and west and appreciating contradictions like light and dark & control and chaos… while pushing sustainable, philosophical fashion. When did you launch your label? I launched Hikari no Yami in 2020 during the pandemic. It started as a self-taught form of protest and expression, and then it evolved into a global dialogue. Where are people wearing Hakari no Yami? Tokyo, NYC, Seoul, Shanghai! It's worn everywhere that style and culture intersect. The brand is so versatile that it's suitable for all occasions — and bound to turn heads. Why was Hikari no Yami created? To destroy traditional fashion systems and give me the freedom to create without any limitations or expectations. I needed a space to honor both my heritage and the eastern philosophies/Japanese design sensibilities that I love, so I created it. I view Hikari no Yami as my philosophy book that others can relate to. When did fashion design become a passion for you – and on top of that, an intended career path? I was actually super late to fashion. During a gap year, I saw Virgil's 'The Ten' collection. That shifted everything. I switched from pre-med to fashion and philosophy, diving deep into design as both a dream and a medium for change. You're a four-time Virgil Abloh scholar. How did that experience help shape your craft? Virgil was one of the designers who taught me to dream. Being a Virgil Abloh scholar gave me confidence in my voice. His legacy taught me to design from truth, to remix culture with intellect, and to break systems without apology. Those scholarships weren't just awards; they were reminders that I belonged. Seeing Virgil deconstruct things helped inspire my brand's ethos. So far, what has been your biggest takeaway from studying fashion design, as you begin your master's at Central Saint Martins this fall? Attending fashion schools all over the world has taught me the importance of networking, dedication, and how to stand out in a crowd of loud voices. Also, it's taught me to remember that you're only in competition with yourself. How would you define Hikari no Yami's style in your own words? Hikari no Yami is freedom and chaos unleashed. It's an amalgamation of my experiences traveling, working under my favorite fashion brands, and creating my own definition of what fashion can be in the modern world. What do you think makes Hikari no Yami stand out in today's sea of emerging fashion brands? We don't just make clothes… We build ideologies. Our commitment to sustainability, our distinct designs, and cultural storytelling make us more than the average emerging label. The search for freedom resonates in our work, and the viewers feel that. Hikari no Yami is already building a strong identity, one defined by punkish imagery and subversive design tricks. What role do visuals play in the brand's story? Our visuals bring the viewer into the world of Hikari no Yami. I believe visuals are the most valuable part of the story, and I make sure they capture the brand's main focuses: culture, black and white, and light and darkness. What style codes or eras do you draw inspiration from? A combination of avant-garde reverse tailoring and streetwear. I'd say the Karasu-Zoku movement spearheaded by Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto, and Issey Miyake in the '80s is my biggest inspiration in design, and the Post-Modern Renaissance brought on by Virgil in the 2010s inspires me with the notion of 'you can do it too.' What is the biggest challenge you've faced while building your brand? I'd say self-funding everything is quite daunting, but it's also enjoyable to have something to constantly work toward. Who would you most like to see your designs on? The dream is Rihanna and A$AP Rocky, also Zendaya and Fuji Kaze. What's next for Hikari no Yami? After coming off of our Paris Fashion Week exhibition and being a finalist for the Fashion Trust U.S, we're planning to do a debut presentation during New York Fashion Week this September.


Atlantic
2 hours ago
- Atlantic
Decent Airplane Wi-Fi Will Forever Be Just a Year Away
'Wi-Fi is available on this flight,' the flight attendant announced on a recent trip I took from New York City to St. Louis. She recited her routine by rote, and Wi-Fi is among the details that now need to be conveyed, along with explaining how to use a seatbelt and enjoining passengers not to smoke e-cigarettes on board. But when the time came to use the Wi-Fi, the service didn't work. Eventually, enough people noticed this that the crew 'rebooted' it, after which it still didn't work. A new announcement acknowledged that Wi-Fi was, in fact, not available on this flight (and offered an apology). This was the can't even access the portal kind of failure, but I've frequently encountered others, including can log in but not connect and so slow as to be worse than nothing. And then, at other times, the internet works great—as reliably as it does in an office building. For two decades now, in-flight Wi-Fi has occupied this limbo between miracle and catastrophe. Way back in 2008, on Conan O'Brien's late-night show, Louis C.K. told the story of a man who was complaining about the in-flight Wi-Fi not working mere moments after learning of its existence. 'Everything is amazing right now and nobody's happy,' the comedian joked. The bit was never quite right—nobody was happy because services such as in-flight Wi-Fi were not yet amazing, actually. A chasm separated the service's promise and its reality. Today, 17 years later, I sense that same distance when I try to go online in the air. The matter feels more urgent now that more airlines, including JetBlue, Delta, and soon American and United, are offering free, purportedly better in-flight Wi-Fi (mainly to loyalty members so far). Air travel is neither a haven for offline delight nor a reliable place to carry out normal online life. Either option would be welcome, because each would be definitive. Instead, one is left to wonder if the hours about to be spent in flight can be filled with scrolling, shopping, Slacking, and tapping at Google Docs—or not. I set out to learn why. Is the issue technological? Are the airlines promising more service than they can deliver? Most of all, I wanted to know if this situation will ever be fixed, making airplane Wi-Fi feel as brisk and reliable as it does elsewhere. The answer, it turns out, is familiar: soon, any day now, probably next year. Because it's the thing they use most often and turn on directly, people use Wi-Fi as a nickname for internet access in general. ('The Wi-Fi is down,' your spouse or child might say.) But the Wi-Fi part of airplane Wi-Fi—the access points in the plane that appear as Delta Wi-Fi or whatever on your computer or smartphone—is almost never part of the problem. Instead, the problem is the pipe to which the Wi-Fi connects—the in-flight equivalent of the cable or fiber that delivers internet service to your house. An airplane flies in the air, and there are two ways to get the internet to connect to such a place: from above or below. At first, the only option was down. If you're old enough to remember the September 11 attacks, you might also recall the Airfone service on some airlines—a phone handset stuffed into the seatback. These phones used air-to-ground communication, meaning that the signal was sent from the plane to a relay on the ground. Airfone (and its competitors) were expensive, didn't work well, and few people used them. But that technology would be repurposed for early in-flight internet, offered via providers such as Gogo Inflight. Jack Mandala, the CEO of Seamless Air Alliance, a standards organization for in-flight connectivity, told me that air-to-ground works like your cellphone—the bottom of the plane needs a view (metaphorically speaking) of base stations from the air. That's why, for a time, you could use in-flight internet only over 10,000 feet. It's also why the service is unreliable. Just like your cellphone might hit a dead spot, so can your airplane. Air-to-ground bandwidth was limited, meaning that the service would get worse as more people on a plane used it. And finally, air-to-ground service operates extremely slowly when it sends data down to the ground—this is why sending an email attachment or texting an image from a plane can take an eternity, before possibly failing completely. Going up instead of down mostly solved these issues. Around the time of Louis C.K.'s Conan bit, airlines began offering internet service to planes via satellite communication. The improved speed and reliability allowed JetBlue to provide the industry's first free in-flight internet to commercial passengers, in 2013. According to Mandala, satellite services are easier to scale as more planes adopt them and more passengers use them. Satellite also has the benefit of being usable over water, in bad weather, and on the ground. The problem is that having viable technology is different from rolling it out seamlessly everywhere. Doing so requires investing in the equipment and service, and that requires time and money. In 2019, Delta, for instance, made a commitment to roll out free Wi-Fi across its entire fleet. Joseph Eddy, the airline's director of cabin and in-flight entertainment and connectivity, told me that Delta's effort is still ongoing. Unlike hotels or convention centers, Eddy reminded me, aircraft are highly regulated. Each type of aircraft needs to be configured differently, and a big airline such as Delta—or American, which told me it will also soon have 1,500 aircraft of its own with Wi-Fi service—requires some planning. 'We need to make software upgrades. We need to make sure we have all the satellite coverage that we need to ensure that we have enough capacity and the experience is as good as possible,' Heather Garboden, American Airlines' chief customer officer, told me. But, hold up: American is the carrier I fly most these days, and I keep finding myself unable to use the internet. Garboden confirmed that American is still transitioning its regional jets to satellite service—many are still using air-to-ground. And that's exactly the kind of plane I was on from New York. Delta's Eddy told me that its regional jets and some short-haul planes, including the Boeing 717, are also still operating on air-to-ground service. In both cases, the airlines made a deliberate choice to invest first in the routes and planes that carry the most passengers—big, mainline jets. That means that if you're flying on a long flight across or between continents, or on an airline with fewer types of planes, such as JetBlue or Southwest, you might have a better shot at reliable internet. And if you're on a small or regional jet, chances are greater that the Wi-Fi won't work, or won't work well. Eddy told me that Bombardier CRJ regional jets have proved more troubling to certify for the satellite antennas that sit on top of the fuselage, because of the aircraft's rear-mounted engines. 'You can't allow any form of debris to fly off the antenna at all,' he said. If you board a plane and Wi-Fi isn't available on the ground, that's a sign that your aircraft is still using air-to-ground service. Good luck. * * * Beyond the technology itself, the expectation of always being connected is also driving flier perceptions of in-flight internet performance. Fliers are only now starting to take in-flight internet access as a given, rather than viewing it as a surcharged luxury. Eddy thinks the tide started to turn during COVID. Even though people weren't flying as much, everyone became more familiar with digital tools—Zoom, but also Slack, Teams, Google Docs—that might once have been lesser known. When travel resumed, those expectations made in-flight Wi-Fi 'significantly more important,' Eddy said. American Airlines' Garboden added that a younger, always-online generation is buying tickets now—26 percent of the airline's customers are Gen Z and younger, she told me. For both airlines, the evolution of in-flight entertainment has reinforced the need for internet service. American delivers its movies and shows directly to its passengers' devices; once those people are already staring at their phones, habit makes them expect to be able to switch to email or a social-media app. But Delta, which offers seatback screens on most of its planes, believes that having a television in front of you also now implies the need for internet. 'If you look at the younger generations, they're at home watching Netflix and they're playing on their phone. They're doing both almost constantly,' Eddy said, adding that 20 percent of Delta's Wi-Fi customers use more than one device at a time. Competition and passenger expectations may be the key to making in-flight internet work for good. After 9/11, the domestic airline industry devolved into pure carriage, stripping away all comforts in the name of safety—and profit. That appears to be changing. Nomadix, the company that invented the enter-your-name-and-room-number hotel internet service more than 25 years ago, told me that the quality of Wi-Fi is one of the top three factors in customer satisfaction at every hotel property. That's because hotels are in the hospitality business, and catering to customer comfort (not to mention facilitating work for business travelers) is core to their success. Airlines haven't been as concerned with making flyers content in the cabin, but both Delta and American admitted that in-flight internet service is transitioning from an amenity into part of the hard product. 'You would expect that your seat is there, right? Wi-Fi has become that for us,' Eddy said. Almost overnight, he told me, Wi-Fi went from having no impact on people choosing Delta to being 'more important than flight times and airports.' For now, consistency is the missing ingredient. This is what Louis C.K. failed to grasp: The issue has never been the flying public's unwillingness to marvel at the miracles of human invention, but rather, the fact that carriers appear to make promises and then fail to deliver on them. Now that customer expectations, technological feasibility, and airline investments all align, it should just be a matter of time before the air is as well connected as the ground. But how much time? Delta initially promised 'fast, free Wi-Fi' across its global fleet by the end of 2024, but now the airline thinks reaching that milestone will take until the first half of 2026. Garboden said American is on track for early 2026. United also plans to offer free satellite Wi-Fi across its entire fleet, but offered no projected date for full rollout. Like cabin safety or timely arrival, until every passenger on every flight feels confident that the internet will take off along with their bodies and their luggage, the service doesn't really exist, because it can't be relied upon. Internet in the air is both a concrete advancement that's mature and widespread, and a conceptual one frequently deferred into the future. That future may come, and perhaps even soon. Or it might not. Just like the Wi-Fi on your next flight.