James May, soon to be seen in the upcoming The Grand Tour special Seamen, has said his experience making his own travelogue series Our Man in Japan was more pleasant without having to share screen time with his usual travel buddies, calling his time filming “much nicer”.
For years the driver dubbed Captain Slow by Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond has been mocked for his sometimes cautious style and less reckless approach to speeding around the world in high and low performance cars.
In the next instalment of The Grand Tour, a nautical adventure named The Grand Tour presents Seamen, Jeremy has even joked that because of a lethal monsoon which engulfed the trio he thought he was “actually going to be rid of James May”.
However, May survived the fierce seas and the trip across the waters of Cambodia and Vietnam.
While talking about his solo travelogue series, also airing on Amazon, May has shared he enjoyed being without the two drivers who’ve sent him up repeatedly over the years.
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In Our Man in Japan, May travels from the northern islands of Japan to some of those in its south, covering a range of terrain from snowy wilderness to beaches where fans might spot May in his budgie smugglers.
While talking about the series, May said it’s “fantastic” the others aren’t there to elbow him and his thoughts out of the way and he’s found it “much nicer”.
“I don’t miss the other two because this is a programme about what I think for the most part and occasionally what the crew thinks, because they interrupt when they disagree.
“But it doesn’t make it harder, it makes it much nicer. It’s just me, I can talk all the time, and no-one interrupts.”
There’s a lot less barging around in this series, as James explores the etiquette and culture of Japan, and has talked about one misconception of the country he discovered while filming.
“I think it’s that – it’s not a specific thing – they won’t be offended if you get Japanese etiquette wrong. That is a thing I say right at the beginning of the show: we’re all terrified of Japan because we think we’re going to offend everybody by putting our finger in our ear.”
James, who has visited the country a number of times, found any mistakes are quickly forgiven.
“You will get it wrong, it’s quite a formalised society with protocols and etiquette and so on. But if you get it wrong, I mean, on the whole, they just laughed at us. You just apologise and move on. It’s nothing to be scared of. It’s a very hospitable place.”
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Where James does struggle in the series is saying precisely what he wants to say in Japanese, and he found small errors meant significant changes in meaning.
“It’s very easy to make a mistake just by mispronouncing a tiny bit of one word, which is probably true in all languages, but you don’t notice it in your own. I wanted to call my guide my ‘teacher’, but I said it slightly wrong and it meant ‘roll-on deodorant’.”
That, however, was nothing compared to two occasions he recalled where he was glad no-one took him at his word.
“Then one day I said, ‘Good morning, please will you kill me?’ And he was a sword-maker, as well. And I asked if someone could be poisoned. They just think you’re funny.”