Rob Taro and Times­can 2

20 / 10 / 2023 / Interview

Inter­view by: Nikola Racan

Rob is cur­rently enjoy­ing the last days of the sum­mer, here in Fazana, hav­ing a beer, maybe a mojito (or rakija!), or just try­ing to find someone with a cam­era to film a trick since he is also here on an intim­ate mis­sion. In anti­cip­a­tion of the European premiere of Times­can 2, we asked him a few ordin­ary skater-to-skater questions…

So tell me, how did the Japan­ese audi­ence react to the video? You did a lot of pop-up premi­eres in the last few months; how did that go?

Man, I’ve been doing video premi­eres every week­end for pretty much two straight months! I have nev­er done this many premi­eres in my life haha. I just wanted to keep the hype going. I worked on this video for over four years, and every­one believed in me and put everything we could into this video. I just want as many people as pos­sible to see all the cool stuff Japan has to offer, even the Japan­ese people them­selves. Japan­ese skate­board­ing is a mys­tery even to Japan­ese skate­boarders. The only way to learn more about it is see­ing it with your own eyes. All I can do is cap­ture it and share it with everyone. 

Also, most events are all centered in Tokyo, so I wanted to offer some­thing fun for areas in Japan that get less atten­tion. A lot of the skate shops that I premiered at had nev­er even had a screen­ing before, and the loc­als were so happy! My favor­ite premi­eres are the ones in the coun­tryside. It could be a shop in the middle of nowhere, but maybe like 20 skaters will show up and they are all so warm-hearted and there would be like a loc­al dude barbecuing. 

Premi­eres, espe­cially at the loc­al scenes and skate shops, are the ones that really remind me that all this work I put into a single pro­ject has a mean­ing after all. 

Your first video (Times­can) was pretty suc­cess­ful (as far as You­Tube clicks and non-Japan­ese web portals noti­cing it and shar­ing the inform­a­tion). When I saw your new teas­er, I asap went search­ing for your email, hop­ing we could save it for Vladi­mir, and here we are, are you feel­ing excited?

Wow! What an hon­or for you to say that, and for you to invite me all the way to Croa­tia is a dream come true oppor­tun­ity for me. I have nev­er been to Europe yet, and I nev­er in my life thought I would ever get invited there! I am so excited to present my pro­ject at a huge skate­board­ing fest­iv­al and can’t wait to see the reac­tion from people out­side of Japan. This is going to mean so much not only to me, but to every­one in the video and the Japan­ese skate­board­ing scene. Thank you so much. 

On Skype, you told me an inter­est­ing point worth shar­ing: skat­ing in Japan has changed in the last 10 Years since you lived there. What exactly has changed?

Oh man. So much has changed.

Before I came to Japan, as a teen­ager I grew up look­ing at Japan­ese skate videos.  Not only how the skaters see spots was unique, but how the Japan­ese guys behind the lens saw skate­board­ing was so dif­fer­ent and ori­gin­al. Not only just tricks, but the amount of per­fec­tion put into every little detail was like an art form. I was so curi­ous to learn more about it. This is what brought me here 8 years ago.

Over the 8 years of liv­ing here, Japan­ese skate­board­ing that I once looked up to has turned into some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent. Japan­ese skate­board­ing, which was once a place for cre­ativ­ity and expres­sion, has turned into skate­board­ing based on strictly Ins­tagram fol­low­ers and con­test scores. There are all these con­test based street league parks get­ting built, par­ents for­cing their kids to do crazy shit down big park hand­rails hop­ing to win gold in the Olympics, fash­ion brands are only hook­ing up Ins­tagramers and You­Tubers, and street skate­board­ing is get­ting ignored and hated on by the pub­lic. I hate to say this but everything is only going down­hill for core skate­board­ing here in Japan. 

All of this has motiv­ated me to cre­ate some­thing pos­it­ive, and give more life and recog­ni­tion to the Japan­ese skate­board­ing that I once looked up to. I hope through this video, we can remind ourselves why skate­board­ing is so great and hope­fully make a pos­it­ive change to the over­all Japan­ese pub­lic view on skateboarding. 

Do you believe we are approach­ing a point when the con­ven­tion­al skate videos (looks) are becom­ing a little stale? People my age (mid-30s; I’m not sure if that is sig­ni­fic­ant) fre­quently respond that they no longer watch skate vids. Should they only pay atten­tion to those that are hyped? 

I feel what makes skate videos feel so stale is when things are rushed. With Ins­tagram and crazy parts going online every­day, we feel rushed to put out con­tent. It is phys­ic­ally impossible to cre­ate con­tent in the way videos are released now. Even as a view­er, it’s also phys­ic­ally impossible to even keep up with everything! There is no time to breathe. 

People say videos get eas­ily for­got­ten and bur­ied under new con­tent, but I really believe even in this digit­al era, invest­ing time and energy into a video or a pro­ject that you really care about could stick out from all the nev­er end­ing con­tent. It could have the poten­tial to last forever and maybe even change someone’s life. I believe that goes with anything. 

OK, Rob, one last ques­tion to bring the hype on: Gou Miy­agi has a full part after 10 years! How did that happen?

Every­one is ask­ing me that ques­tion! Haha It was not easy and I’m not will­ing to give all the answers away yet. All I can say for now is that it is not a coin­cid­ence that Gou has nev­er been in front of the cam­era, and a lot of what I wrote above has a huge role into why Gou waited this long to put some­thing out. 

I will be happy to answer more ques­tions about Japan­ese skate­board­ing or about Gou if some of you read­ing this hap­pen to run into me in person. 

Thanks, Rob!