I have been following people on YouTube for years. I follow people who make travel videos, woodworking videos, cycling videos, hack videos, and countless others. At the beginning, I followed a lot of JVloggers. This is a term given to people who do videoblogs from Japan.

In the beginning, I enjoyed their apartment tours and their tours of the one hundred yen shops in their areas. I followed along as they explained things that I was already quite familiar with. I think it was this familiarity that I found comforting. Many popped up and many of those disappeared over time. They gave up doing it, moved back home, or they just didn’t find the success they were hoping for. Some, I gave up on.

I comment on some of these, but I have not developed any kind of rapport with them. I did manage to challenge one JVlogger to a series of Words with Friends matches, but after a while he gave up and I didn’t pressure him to continue.

The student who I wrote about yesterday told me she was interested in becoming vegan, but wasn’t sure how that was going to work out in Japan. I mentioned that one of the Jvloggers I followed was vegan and that she made some videos about her successes and struggles to follow this diet in Japan. I encouraged her to watch some.

Not only did my student watch them, but she commented on them and asked questions. She quickly got a reply and was quite ecstatic about it. She couldn’t wait to tell me. We spoke a bit about it after class and it turns out that my student was really happy that she could understand the videos quite easily and was thrilled to have some interaction with her. She has had follow up comments and she is much more confident now. She was absolutely beaming.

I really enjoyed her enthusiasm and I was so happy that my comments and encouragements yielded so many positive things. Though this didn’t happen today, I am declaring it Today’s Perfect Moment.