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Dubliner John McAuliffe on starting a family, the feeling of safety in Japan and missing Irish climate and carvery
John McAuliffe has stepped away from his teaching job in Japan and focuses solely on his Pokémon-focused businessMy journey here began a decade ago, in the summer of 2016, when I became the first Irish person to complete the Pokémon Go Pokédex.
I had just finished my master’s and was inlooking for a job. I ended up just downloading Pokémon Go as it came out. It was really addictive. So I took a break from the job-hunting and mashed through it, capturing all 145 Pokémon.
Pokémon Go was a bit of a craze and the app had 500 million downloads that year. I was interviewed on Ireland AM, the Ray D’Arcy Show and for several newspaper articles. After all this media attention, I thought, ‘why not try my shot at YouTube? ’.
Back then, I’d seen people were making lots of money doing crazy things on video. I set up a channel live streaming about Nintendo and Japanese-based games, including Pokémon Go.
‘In Toronto, a call from Ireland surprised me. My mother had made a decision’Irish man in Birmingham: The English often seem less interested in us than we are in them My first bit of success came with videos about Nintendo Switch’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I realised I could actually do this as a job. I made a good living out of that for a little while, but things got quiet.
So I decided it was time for something new. A move to Japan, the home of Nintendo and Pokémon, would overlap well with YouTube work. I applied for an English language teaching job and moved over here. One of the biggest differences I noticed when I first came to Japan was the feeling of safety.
In Ireland, I often had a slight unease going outside, like I never knew when I could be set upon. But in Japan, you take the safety for granted. I don’t have to look over my shoulder. During the first few years, I would teach English in the afternoons and evenings.
It was enjoyable because I got to socialise with a lot of different types of Japanese people. I would also work on my YouTube channel until 4am. Shortly after I arrived in Japan, Pokémon Sword and Shield came out. It was a big milestone, the first big 3D overhaul of Pokémon for Nintendo Switch.
When I covered the announcements on YouTube, the videos did well randomly and suddenly. I had enough YouTube experience to know I should run with it. So I got really deep into Pokémon. The YouTube grind meant I had to do a video every day.
I was perpetually online looking for what was trending and I had to play the video games thoroughly. Just over half of my customers are Americans, probably because my videos are in English and I live-streamed a lot at US-friendly times.focuses on a particular niche, focusing on exploits and manipulations in the game, which allow players to do things they aren’t technically supposed to. That was my big success, because nobody else was really doing that.
So the natural gateway from there was using modified Switches to provide people with what they want in Pokémon games. Things just started going well. I also met a Japanese woman and we started a family pretty early. But working all these hours was pretty exhausting, so I quit teaching and had more free time as a result.
I got to enjoy more of life here and the experiences it has to offer, such as going to the hot springs at Onsen . Over time, my business became more and more automated. Customers can ask my system to design their own Pokémon. So my main business is primarily monthly subscription revenue, not YouTube ad revenue.
It just blew up and it has been really successful. Daily life now consists of taking care of the kids in the morning and bringing them to school. I catch up on some sleep during the day and work at night after I put them to bed. My children speak Japanese first.
As an English teacher, I taught a number of students from mixed Japanese and non-Japanese heritage and noticed a strong emphasis was placed on their English language proficiency. As a result, their language skills in both English and Japanese were a little off. So I decided my children would be better off speaking Japanese first. They still do English classes and they’ll pick up English from me as we go.
After eight years, to my shame, I am a certain level of Japanese, but I’m nowhere near fluent. The food here is very, very different from Ireland. Foreigners have this rosy image of Japanese food like sushi and ramen. And they’re good.
But if you’re living here for life, the use of soy in everything can get pretty overbearing. And if, like me, you have a Japanese wife cooking for you, you’re going to have to get used to Japanese food! I kind of miss the Irish carvery lunches. We don’t have those here.
I actually miss the Irish weather and climate too, especially the less humid summers and the wetter winters. Are you Irish and living in another country? Would you like to share your experience in writing or by interview? You can use the form below, or email ‘In Toronto, a call from Ireland surprised me.
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