00:00:03 John Daub: Greetings everybody from Hakodate. I thought I would give you a view from one of the big towers here in Japan. This one is sort of famous. Yesterday I was videoing from the other side from Mt. Hakodate and now I'm at the tower. Can you see that? It's sort of an interesting looking tower, isn't it? It's located in the middle of the city. I learned a lot of stuff from this place because it has a history lesson if you walk around it which is pretty cool. Here's the view of Mt. Hakodate in the distance. I was there last night, and the summit here has a cable car and from there, they say it's the best night view in Japan. They have rankings for everything.

00:01:14 John Daub: Between this mountain, Mt. Hakodate, this used to be an island in itself. All this land in between because here you can see the sea, and over on this side is also the sea. That land mass is all of the buildings that you see here. That's because when Mt. Yoko was here, this mountain, the currents came on both sides bringing sand with it, creating a land mass connecting the island of Hakodate with the mainland of Hokkaido. That was pretty interesting. I had no idea about that before. The view up here is really nice. I'm going to take you around and you get a chance to look. I hope you're not afraid of heights.

00:02:24 John Daub: Over this way, you can see the sea. That's essentially the Pacific Ocean between Hokkaido and Honshu Island. This is where the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean meet. Here's a map that can show you where I am right now. I'm in Hakodate and there's Aomori where I came from yesterday. This strait is what connects the Pacific Ocean with the Sea of Japan. The currents are really, really strong. The city of Hakodate exists because of the currents. The sand from both sides met in the middle and made the city connect with the mainland. And that's where I am right now, pretty much. From this point, you get a really good view of the city. And that's Mt. Hakodate with the cable car in the distance. I hope that map helps. It's a pretty nice view. I couldn't have asked for a better day. It's 900 yen to come up to the top. About $9.

00:04:04 John Daub: They've made this park look like a star. That's really cool. You can see the edge of the star right there. Uh oh, it's Toby (crow). Toby's commenting. Might have to end this feed. Just kidding. This is what it looks like. This is a model of the park. Now I'm going to pan around and show you. Beautiful, isn't it? The cherry blossoms haven't come out yet. So the trees are sort of budding. They're kind of pink. They're just about to break out.

00:05:35 John Daub: This park's called Goryokaku (star fort). I really didn't hear too much about it. If you're using Google Earth, take a look at this park. It's pretty cool from space. Here's the Google map. It really is a star shape. That's really cool. It was an old fort. Thanks, Steven. You can see some kids on a field trip. Really orderly. No bad kids in the bunch. Unlike this live chat. We got some ridiculous people in here. I really do like this park. It's amazing how they got the shape so perfectly. It's a reason to come up to the tower. Because I'm not a big fan of going up in the towers. But they won't let me fly my drone here. So all I have is a tower.

00:07:03 John Daub: Here's the other side. From this side, you can see more of the city of Hakodate. But also in the distance are mountains. Here in Hokkaido, we still have snow. I'm really surprised at how big this city of Hakodate is. I didn't realize how massive it was. You can see so many buildings. There's the port that I came in yesterday. I came in yesterday on the ferry at around 8am. I walked to the station and took the train into the city. Everything's pretty compact here in Hakodate. But because this area is so flat, you get awesome views of the entire city. From Mt. Yoko on the other side, which I didn't live stream by the way. I wanted to but there were too many people around. This park is actually really better. Everyone looks like little ants down there.

00:09:01 John Daub: There's a lot of little history lessons around the building. Let me show you some of the models. Look at that. That's history right there. The great thing is that they translated it in so many languages. This was Fort Goryokaku. The history of the fort you can see. See down there in little pieces. I like it when they do this. They make history sort of come alive with models. They should have used Legos. Would have been better.

00:10:24 John Daub: History can be a lot of fun. That might be my favorite one. I don't even have to read the captions. I know exactly what they're saying. Charge. We're going to take this glass and smash it and get out of this box once and for all. I can't believe they put us in a glass box. Charge. I'm sure that he can just take that sword. If he were to slice right here on the side he could make it out. Obviously that's what they're talking about. This is history.

00:11:06 John Daub: Keep shooting the weeds. We're going to start a fire. Shoot the weeds. Why are they shooting the weeds? Are they trying to break out of the box? This would make a cool movie. Like they're trying to shoot their way out of this glass box. Little people. We're going to break out of this box once and for all. Start a fire in this little bucket. Bucket of glue. Keep stirring the glue. Make a glue bomb and get out of here. And that's the leader right there. What do you think he's saying? Fire. Could be. History is all about how you interpret the history. History can be interpreted in many ways.

00:12:13 John Daub: These are the mascots of Hakodate. This one I can sort of understand. But the other one, it's a mascot of the tower. They just basically made the tower into a living creature. It's a little bit creepy. I have my doubts about Gokun. People try their best to appeal. It's not a bad effort.

00:12:50 John Daub: Thanks for joining me on this live stream. I'm going to leave you with a beautiful view of Mt. Hakodate in the distance. If you go to Instagram, Only Japan TV, you'll be able to find some of the pictures from last night when I took from the beautiful view and they consider that to be the most beautiful night view in Japan and I think it's ranked in the world. They have these world night views. It's hard to beat the one in Hong Kong from Victoria looking down the city. But this one looks really impressive because again from here on both sides is the sea and you have the city in the middle just sparkling with lights and it really is dazzling. This is it. If you ever come as a couple you're just there's two of you and you're in love and you want to smooch and stuff. You want to go up to Mt. Hakodate because it's just one of the most romantic places in Japan. Just it's a smooch zone.

00:14:02 John Daub: All right, thanks for joining me on this tower tour this very short live stream. I'm going to be in Hakodate tonight. I'm staying in Hakodate for one more night. Tomorrow morning, I'm gonna eat a kaisen don (seafood rice bowl). I made friends if you saw the last Only in Japan stream. I made friends with the owner of the kaisen don restaurant. So I promised him we did a dude bump. I promised him I would go and see him before I left so I'm gonna honor that promise to go tomorrow, have a kaisen don and then get onto the road and hitchhike out of Hakodate towards Noboribetsu. Noboribetsu is an onsen (hot spring) town. So I'm gonna stay in an onsen (hot spring) town for one night and then move on to Sapporo or if I could find some place in between that's really cool, I'll do that.

00:14:50 John Daub: The Kickstarter ends tomorrow I think, the day after tomorrow on the 30th. So if you haven't gotten the DVD do that, I think we're really close to hitting $20,000 which is insane and I promise to jump into the sea. Why did I do that? I guess I would probably do it anyways because I'm extremely happy and that's something I haven't done before. Something crazy like that and a crazy trip like this. It's a crazy ending, doesn't it? So I think that'd be a fun thing to do except for the fact that I heard that there's still icebergs in Cape Soya. So if I can go into the water and it's not covered in ice then I will try to do it and I'm gonna ask some locals to help me or somebody to help me because I'm gonna be cold. I don't know if I'm gonna go in with clothes or if I'm gonna go in with a fundoshi (loincloth) like I did the naked man festival but I'm gonna go in unless it's dangerously like the police stopped me basically because I'm so happy. If I can go nude I'm gonna live stream it but I was originally going to stop the trip here and then go back to Tokyo but I've been encouraged by all of you to do so.

00:16:20 John Daub: Fundoshi for life. We'll see what happens. I'm gonna plan it when I get to Wakkanai. Basically $137 left on Kickstarter according to Alan, thank you. I don't know where it's at right now but I know it's close and it's really humbling and this trip is totally funded by all of you who have supported through Kickstarter and Patreon. That's all I can say about it. All of my funding has come for this trip for that so thank you.

00:16:46 John Daub: That's the update if you haven't gotten the DVD do so now and a lot of people ask me if I'm gonna sell it later. I'm not sure. First I'm gonna get through the Kickstarter and anything left over because I have to make a certain amount of DVDs, anything left over I will of course sell it because I don't want to keep that so I'll find a way to get it to you if you want a DVD but for the most part get it on Kickstarter because I don't know what the future will bring. I'm making the DVD for everybody who's supporting on Kickstarter. That's how I'm funding the trip and that's what I'm gonna do.

00:17:20 John Daub: I'll be having Sapporo and Asahikawa. I'm gonna make a stop and do some ramen episode there because I don't get to Asahikawa very often. It's sort of one of those places that's out of the way and there's the prison. Do you know the prison mascot? There's a story a few years ago about a Japanese prison who made a mascot, they started selling souvenirs and stuff so I'm gonna see if I can go to that prison near Asahikawa. It's Asahikawa prison and Katakuri-chan is the prison mascot. I don't think they abolished the death penalty there so yeah don't worry it's not a tough prison I think. Here's the final view which I do for the last 20 seconds of the fort the park and I'll see you again on the road. John goes to prison and gets a mascot Katakuri-chan. Bye.