Fasten your seat belts, it’s time to fly high在バンクーバー客室乗務員のRyucrewさん

幼い頃から飛行機に魅了され、海外での生活を夢見ていたRyucrewさん。カナダへ移住し、客室乗務員としてのキャリアを築きながら、YouTubeで現地での生活や仕事について発信している。試行錯誤を重ねながら言葉の壁を越え、夢を実現した彼のストーリーに迫る。

Meet Ryucrew, a Vancouver-based flight attendant who works for a Canadian airline. Ryucrew also happens to be a YouTuber with over 300,000 subscribers.

An Osaka native, Ryucrew became a flight attendant when men in the profession were rare in Japan. Then he emigrated to Canada. “I know a lot of Japanese say they acquired English skills through watching Hollywood movies or listening to Western music. I wasn’t like that at all,” says Ryucrew. “In school, I was never particularly good at English. I think I got my language skills mostly through work and life experience.”

He always had a wish to go overseas. “When I was a kid my family took me on a trip to Guam and, after that, I wanted to be a flight attendant. I loved planes. But I’m a downtown boy from Osaka and my family had no connection to anything overseas. My mom however, knew I wanted to go and encouraged me to go after my dream.”

His mother always had his back. In junior high, she sent Ryucrew on a two-week homestay program to Australia. Later in university, he got to study in Ontario, Canada, for 10 months. “After my program in Ontario, I spent two months in Vancouver, where I met my partner. We promised to live together in Canada after my graduation from university in Japan.” Back in Japan however, Ryucrew decided to realize his dream of becoming a flight attendant before embarking on his new life phase. “None of the major Japanese airlines were hiring males but I got a job with a low-cost carrier.” Ryucrew promised his partner he would work a year and, at the end of that time, go to Canada. He followed through on that promise. “In Vancouver, at first I worked for a travel agency but I wanted to be in an airplane. So I applied to a Canadian airline and managed to get accepted.”

Ryucrew reflected on why he was hired by the airline. “My language skills were not high, but I think what set me apart was that I never pretended to be someone I wasn’t. During the group presentation, we were all asked to pick a card with a word on it, then talk about that word, one by one. My card said ‘gnome,’ and I had no idea what it was. So I held it up and asked the group what this meant because I was Japanese and didn’t understand. They were glad to help and I appreciated that. Flight attending is all about teamwork. There’s no shame in admitting that you don’t know something.”

He sums up: “Acquiring foreign-language skills requires hard work, and trial and error. Also, the humility to ask for help. I just want to say, if I managed to swing it, so can everyone else!”

On YouTube, Ryucrew talks about life in Vancouver with his Canadian partner, offers tips on travel and navigating the ups and downs of overseas travel. But perhaps his core fans know him most as a guy from Osaka who defied the odds to get where he is today. “In high school, I learned that men can become flight attendants too, and that gave me a goal to strive for. Still, it was hard for me to connect the need for language skills with my desire to become a flight attendant. Even now I don’t like studying English, but I’ve made it a habit to carry around a small notebook in which I jot down phrases or words that I don’t understand. And then I look up the pronunciations online, and use them on the next flight.”

Ryucrew says that he has come a long way since he first started working in Canada. “In Japan, the senpai’s word is absolute, but in Canada, everyone is equal. The crew all argue with each other, especially on long-haul flights. It’s good to get all your complaints out in the open and hash them out with your colleagues. That way, there’s minimal stress.” As for Ryucrew, he doesn’t stand for any disrespect. When a crew member or a customer snidely asks whether he can speak English, he comes back with his rejoinder: “Yes, I can. Do you speak English?” (Kaori Shoji)

Words to live by