00:00:04 John Daub: Hello everybody! Welcome to beautiful Fukui City on the Sea of Japan, the prefectural capital of Fukui. They have big buildings here, lots of shops, tons of things to see and do. I just arrived, but as you can see, it's a hub of life. Not as crowded as Tokyo. Here's Fukui Station. It's a very nice new station.

00:01:08 John Daub: There's a lot more to Fukui than just the station and the buildings of a normal local Japanese city. There's dinosaurs. These things are right in front of the station and they're super cool. Why are they here? It does keep the kids really captivated. This is right in front of the train station. Look at these rocks. That's a herbivorous dinosaur, the Ornithopoda. And then there's this mammoth one. It's big. Wild. Is it real? It's not real. It's pretty big, about 4 or 5 meters high, and the skin looks very realistic. For something built outside in front of a train station, it does look really good. The fact that they animated it is even cooler.

00:03:44 John Daub: Fukui Prefecture is famous for dinosaurs because they discovered dinosaur bones here a while back. They opened up a dinosaur museum near here, which I'm going to go to tomorrow. I wanted to go today, but I got picked up too late and my ride dropped me off at the end, so I had to make the interchange. I ran to the train station to try to get there in time, but I would have arrived like 5 minutes too late to enter. They found the original dinosaur bones here, and they even have a species named after this place: Fukuisaurus tetradactylus [?]. Probably an elementary school boy could pronounce that a lot better than me. It's documented, 4.2 meters high. These finds make this prefecture famous for dinosaurs. You can see these two are fighting to the death, perpetually in this position. One day they will rip off the glue that holds them down and destroy the crowd. Why battle when you can share all these tasty fritters walking around the street?

00:05:38 John Daub: This is Fukui Station, and it's pretty cool that they have something like this. If this were any other country, there would be people climbing all over them, trying to get a picture from on top of the neck. But here in Japan, you can make stuff like this and people won't try to destroy it. That's super cool. No one's going to climb up there and graffiti it or damage it. These have been here for a few years now. I love the mural on the side of the station. This is downtown Fukui right now. It's a little bit past 4:30, about 5:30 in the afternoon on a Saturday, and there's not a lot of people out. I was going to stay in this hotel here because it's right next to the dinosaurs—how cool would that be?—but they wanted a lot of money, so it's not going to happen. I'm going to be camping in one of the local parks tonight.

00:07:33 John Daub: Here's my stuff. It's a sign that I used to hitchhike—I'm now in Fukui. If you watched the livestream on the Only in Japan channel, you saw me getting picked up about two hours ago. After I got picked up, I wanted to go to the dinosaur museum, which is halfway between the interchange and the city, but I missed the train by two minutes. So my choices were to go into the city, spend the night, see these dinosaurs—which is a close second to what I wanted—and then camp or stay in a hotel. It looks like I'm going to be camping because Saturday night is ridiculously expensive. Then on Sunday, go straight first thing in the morning to the museum. Sunday is free, so I don't have to pay anything if I go tomorrow. It's sort of a good thing that I missed it. But I'm already a week behind schedule. It's pretty creepy right now that there is a dinosaur behind me—he's going to pick the trash out of my ear. Never mind Q-tips; I have a dinosaur.

00:09:06 John Daub: It's cool that they have this in front of the station. The thing with Fukui though is that it's hard to get here if you're visiting Japan with a train pass. There's no Shinkansen here. You have to go to Kanazawa and then take a local train for about an hour and a half. I think it is worth it. This looks like a really cool prefectural capital city. Everything is new. They proclaim it Dinosaur Kingdom Fukui—you see it up there on top of the station. There is an airport, but flights into Fukui are not cheap. The guy who picked me up, a local who lives here, says it's really hard to get back and forth to Tokyo. It's cheaper to take the bus, but driving is what he usually does. If you want to fly, unless you book 2 or 3 months in advance, it can be up as high as $200 to $300 one way—that's $600 round trip. That's crazy. The train is the same price as flying. So Fukui is not an easy place to get to unless you make plans way in advance, which is a shame. But if you have a JR train pass as a tourist, take the Shinkansen to Kanazawa and then a quick train over to Fukui. If you have kids that love dinosaurs—especially boys, because when I was a kid I loved dinosaurs—I feel like a kid again right now. You arrive at the station to this, dinosaurs, and there's a dinosaur skeleton inside the station sitting on a bench. Then go from here to the dinosaur museum. You can make an awesome day trip out of it.

00:11:21 John Daub: You can hear the express train rolling by. This is some sort of science museum as well. I was thinking about staying in a hotel, but there are parks around here, so I might do some park camping. I'm waking up at 5:30 in the morning anyway, so why go to a hotel and spend a hundred bucks when I can just camp in a tent I'm already carrying? The only thing I gotta worry about are these darn dinosaurs. If they break the glue on the bottom of their feet, they could go anywhere. Seriously, these are raptors. I don't know if any of you've seen Jurassic Park—raptors are not really kind souls. The skin on them looks really lifelike. This one doesn't look like it's got teeth at all—he's gonna get ripped to pieces. This isn't even a battle; it's more like a slaughter. If I'm putting money down, I'm putting it on this raptor. What's cool is, from this angle, you have cars and bicyclists and people just riding by as these dinosaurs seemingly do battle. So in a way, Japan is under attack.

00:13:14 Passerby: It's nice.

00:13:16 John Daub: Once again, for those joining in, I'm in Fukui on the Sea of Japan in front of Fukui Station, which is famous for dinosaurs. We're live streaming on YouTube right now—it's the Only in Japan show. The channel is Only in Japan.

00:13:36 Passerby: Oh, it's a channel called Only in Japan. I think it's only broadcast in Japan.

00:13:40 John Daub: You're right. Only in Japan.

00:14:25 Passerby: Tokyo is where you live?

00:14:28 John Daub: Yes, I'm going to Tokyo. Where should I eat? I don't know Fukui at all. I heard that soba is delicious.

00:14:41 Passerby: Soba is delicious.

00:14:42 John Daub: Fukui soba. Inside the station?

00:14:46 Passerby: Look to the right from here. There's a soba shop over there.

00:15:01 John Daub: There's a lot of people. It's quiet there. Why is there no one? What are your names?

00:15:14 Passerby: Kayo and Yui.

00:15:16 John Daub: This is Kayo and this is Yui. They live here in Fukui. I was asking them where I should go and eat dinner tonight. They said there's a place inside the station. Can you speak English?

00:15:30 Kayo & Yui: It's a little difficult.

00:15:32 John Daub: It's a little difficult? You can't speak English? That's okay. We're going camping today near here. Is it okay?

00:15:48 Kayo & Yui: It's a little wet. It's not that cold.

00:15:51 John Daub: We're going to the museum after 5 or 6—the dinosaur museum. It's pretty far. Tomorrow is free.

00:16:03 Kayo & Yui: Oh, it's a free day.

00:16:04 John Daub: It's a free day. I wanted to go today but I couldn't make it. It's sad.

00:16:11 Kayo & Yui: I saw your YouTube live. I want to subscribe to your channel.

00:16:16 John Daub: Really? I have two channels. Only in Japan's main channel has 450,000 subscribers. It's pretty popular.

00:16:33 Kayo & Yui: It's live streaming. It's not being saved.

00:16:36 John Daub: Yes, it's live streaming now. This is live streaming. I usually edit videos, but if I do live videos, I don't have to edit. That's easier to do right now.

00:17:22 Kayo & Yui: You're in Fukui. Which one is live streaming now?

00:17:26 John Daub: Only in Japan. They're going to subscribe. Thank you. Please subscribe. I'm making a video of a hitchhiking trip. I don't have much time, so I'm doing live streaming.

00:18:42 Kayo & Yui: See you! Have a nice day! See you! Thank you!

00:19:01 John Daub: I'm going to attack that taxi. So that was cool. I was able to get some locals taking a selfie. Imagine 20 years ago if they didn't have a cell phone—that action would seem pretty strange. They're going to be watching this later too. They said that when the nama hōsō (live broadcast) goes off, they're going to watch the live feed. Hey girls!

00:19:42 Kayo & Yui: Boom! Bye bye!

00:19:55 John Daub: Thanks for watching this dinosaur edition—Japan under attack. Yeah, we weren't really under attack, and that might be a little bit of clickbait. But come on, I got to see some dinosaurs. We got to hang out at Fukui Station, meet these two girls. They suggested a restaurant for me to go to for dinner, and they said it's okay to camp in the park. What's not to love about Fukui? If you have any questions about this place, write it in the comments and I'll try to answer them tonight. I have some time because I'll be in the tent early. Let me know what you're thinking about this trip as well. Thanks for the support on these live streams. I know not everybody likes them, but this is an interesting way to see things, and stuff you don't expect happens. Like, I didn't know I'd just start talking with these two people. If I make a mistake, that's okay—that's the great thing about live video. It's all there and I have to be who I am.

00:21:04 John Daub: Everybody, I'm going to be camping here tonight. If you're in Fukui, send me a message—I'd love to hang out and go get some dinner tonight. If you're not in Fukui, I'll be up in Kanazawa tomorrow, and Toyama, then Tanabata and Akita. I'm going to go quite fast through Tohoku to Aomori. I'm a week behind, but there's some places in Tohoku that I really want to see. Thank you, everybody. If you're in the middle of the night in the US, I'm sorry to bother you. And if not, wherever you are in the world, thanks for watching. See you again on the road. Bye from Fukui.