There are four of us going: two videographers, a photographer and a model. All four of us ride, so there’s no support van and nobody waiting at the next stop, and everything we shoot with travels on the bikes.

We’re renting bikes in Tokyo and riding out from there for two weeks. Most of the time goes on the parts of towns people pass through rather than stop in, garages without a sign out front, and places where we’re the only ones who don’t live there. If somewhere takes a bit of effort to get to, that’s usually a good sign it’s worth filming.

Some of what comes back is the polished side of that and some of it isn’t. Four people on four bikes for two weeks in a country where none of us can read the road signs tends to write its own comedy, and we’d rather keep that in than cut around it. That’s the footage people tend to watch to the end, and it’s usually where a product looks most believable.

If you come along, your product travels the way ours does. ALPAKA’s bags are carrying our camera kit for the full two weeks, so by the time one turns up on camera it’s covered in road and strapped to a tank at six in the morning. If you can picture your own gear being used like that for a fortnight, that’s more or less what a slot on the trip looks like.