00:00:03 John Daub: Alright, so I've just arrived at this station in Hakodate. This is where the Shinkansen starts going towards Sapporo. I didn't know the Shinkansen goes to Sapporo yet. I thought it just went to Hakodate, but you can get the Shinkansen here. That's the Shinkansen behind me, and I'm so tempted just to hop on the Shinkansen and go to Sapporo. It's right there! Why don't I just jump on? You see the green Shinkansen behind me?

00:00:33 John Daub: I can't do that. That's cheating. But this station is brand new. It's all the money coming from the Shinkansen. This is the Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto Station. That's where I am right now. That's where I'm going to hitchhike out of. Look how beautiful the inside of the station is. You can see the Shinkansen symbol on the logo there. It's all brand new, a really beautiful station.

00:01:08 John Daub: You don't find such new things out here, but if you look down there, you get to see the Shinkansen. There's the platform with the trains leaving towards Honshu (main island), going off to Tokyo. But because it's now the Japanese holiday, it's really crowded around here. I'm going to be hitchhiking out of here. There's a convenience store, according to the map, that's about a 10-minute walk. So I thought I'd walk with you guys. It's a beautiful day out there. How stylish is this place? For the middle of nowhere, it looks really nice, this Shinkansen station.

00:02:15 John Daub: Stylish bento cafe. Let's check out the eki-bens (station bentos) real quick.

00:02:22 Staff: Hello.

00:02:25 John Daub: Hello. Looks good. Thank you. When did this station start?

00:02:31 Staff: Last year.

00:02:32 John Daub: Last year? It's a new station.

00:02:34 Staff: It's a new station.

00:02:36 John Daub: Wow. It looks like the kaisen (seafood) I had. Thank you.

00:02:39 Staff: Thank you.

00:02:41 John Daub: Yay, I'm feeling it. Thank you. People are so friendly out here. In Tokyo, I'd probably make people upset if you just bring a camera with a stick on it and walk up to them and go, hey, what do you got there? But here, it's so happy.

00:03:11 John Daub: I can't get down this escalator fast enough, but you can see such a nice day. I don't know what that lady at 7-Eleven was telling me in Hakodate. She said tonight it's going to thundershower and that I should be careful, kind of like a fortune teller telling you things are going to get rough. Right now, I don't see it that way. I just see a beautiful day. It's not hot, a little bit chilly. There's a little bite to the air, but it's fresh, like a fresh chill. I don't know how to describe this weather. It's different.

00:03:55 John Daub: Gosh, whenever they make a new station, they make it hard to get around. There's a lot of car rental places, and I wonder if people took the Shinkansen from Tokyo and then come here and rent a car and go up towards Sapporo. Maybe you should just hitchhike outside of the Toyota Rent-a-Car. Actually, I'm starting to really consider that idea. One guy who took me to Toyama had a rent-a-car and picked me up on the way. He told me one reason he picked me up is because he was going straight to Toyama Station and dropped me off pretty much at my hotel.

00:04:46 John Daub: Hey there, little guy. Slightly creepy. Why is this character sitting on top of a mailbox? Very nice mailbox. Slightly creepy, but I'm cool with that. Anything that's unusual is a welcome sight to me. Welcome. Come to Sapporo. Come to Hokkaido. Come to Hakodate and enjoy the sights. And send letters to the post office.

00:05:44 John Daub: There's no other way for me to go except for this way, so I figured this is going to be the direction which I eventually walk to get to that convenience store off the highway. I'm looking at the license plates. You can see where these people are going, unless it's a rent-a-car. Muroran. It's not so far from Noboribetsu, my destination today. Got a late start because I really slept in. I woke up at 8:30, which is sleeping in for me. And I downloaded all of the footage off my three cameras. It's a red light. I'm just going to go. There's no traffic yet. It's a beautiful area.

00:06:36 John Daub: It looks like they built this out of the middle of the desert, the Shinkansen terminal. The station is just built. I think it goes on for like 100 meters and then it just turns into farm fields. Stunning day. Look at that. If somebody doesn't pick me up fast, I'm going to turn into a french fry out here.

00:07:17 John Daub: So this station, according to the bento lady, opened up last year, which makes sense. I remember seeing the signs for the Shinkansen at the Sapporo Snow Festival last year saying that the Shinkansen was opening up. In fact, they had a Shinkansen display in snow. So go back and see the Only in Japan Sapporo Snow Festival video. You'll see some Shinkansens made out of snow. There's another budget rental car.

00:07:53 John Daub: You want to make a bet? Let's make a bet. Somebody who picks me up who is a tourist visiting Sapporo with a rent-a-car.

00:08:02 John Daub: Whoa! Manhole! Check it out. Look at that manhole cover. It's a Shinkansen. So they've taken the manhole cover design, made it into Shinkansen because this is a Shinkansen town. Is that not cool? That's the identity of this town: Shinkansen. That's why I kind of really like these manhole covers because it gives you an idea of the identity of the city, what attractions it has.

00:09:02 John Daub: The worst thing I can do is to go in the wrong direction. I've got this little stand here for the Osmo. Sometimes it falls over. Stay there. I have two cell phones. This is my old iPhone 6 Plus, and I'm streaming on an iPhone 7 Plus because the camera is so darn good on it. Thank you, Apple. So according to this Google Maps convenience store, go straight and then make a right. Here's where I am. It's hard to see because of the glare. But I'm now going to walk about 15 minutes. It's not even worth showing you. It's just too bright out here. I'm going to walk about 10-15 minutes to the spot and then start hitchhiking.

00:10:10 John Daub: Toby (crow), if you're watching, and I know you probably are because you're always watching. Yeah, I'm going to use the sign, but I've got to go out there first, Toby. I can't just start hitchhiking right here because no one is going to pick me up. Relax, Toby. Okay, you see the sign, man. Relax, Toby. Here's the freaking sign. There he is, upside down. Alright, Toby, I'm having a meltdown here because people are saying Toby. Relax, Toby. Come on. This trip is a marathon. It's not a sprint. I've got to get to the spot before I can use the sign, Toby.

00:11:05 John Daub: Who's going to pick me up today? Is it going to be you, Toby? Are you going to come out here with your little car, Toby, your little 1970 Gremlin and sputter out here and pick me up and then say you don't have room for my luggage and then you're going to leave it behind? Is that something you'd do, Toby? I'm just kidding. I'm all by myself out here on the road. If it wasn't for Toby, morale would be even lower. I'm not doing that bad. I'm just worried because it's late in the day. It's a little late in the day to be hitching.

00:12:01 John Daub: Alright, I'm going full all-out backpacker mode. That's when you put your day pack on your chest and you start looking like a backpacker. They put the big one on the back and then on the front they put the day pack. It's hardcore. Backpacking 2.0. I am glad that you all are joining me. One reason why I love to do these live streams is because I don't feel alone out here. Okay, I see the highway. I've come to the point where there's absolutely nothing, and I'm in the middle of a farm field like I told you.

00:12:53 John Daub: That's the direction I'm going over there where that truck is going and try to hitch a ride from there. So JR got all this money to make this station, and the station ends right there at this intersection, turns into a farm field. And if you were joining me about 10 minutes ago, we were in the middle of a brand new beautiful building. It looks like a whole new town, even have manhole covers with the Shinkansen. Look, there's one right there. Manhole. Look at that manhole cover. Sweet ride. That there is a Shinkansen, brand new Hokkaido Shinkansen. And in the distance is a brand new JR station. See that? Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto. They couldn't just make it Shin-Hakodate. Had to add more.

00:14:17 John Daub: There's something cool about Japanese manhole covers. And that episode didn't do that well on the channel. You don't know what's going to be a big show on the channel or what's going to do okay. See here, where am I? Yeah, here's the road. Just go straight and then veer to the right. So remind me if I forget this: go straight and then the first road that allows you veer to the right. Somebody tell me in like three minutes because I might forget. I don't have a very good memory.

00:14:53 John Daub: You know when I was in Hakodate, three times somebody from Singapore stopped and said hi. They watched the show. Yesterday at the tower, in the park where I live-streamed from the Star Fort, a really nice kid from Singapore with a couple of friends stopped and said hi and got a picture with him. So Singapore is representing this morning. Three people from Singapore stopped me in the market to say hi. Made me feel really good because I'm out here traveling alone, and I get to see people that know me. I like to get to know them too. And that was really cool because when people stop and say hi, I got all that wind pushing through this massive island of Hokkaido blowing. It's Toby's fault, the wind. Toby.

00:16:50 John Daub: Last time I hitchhiked in Hokkaido, you see up here there's a sign with an arrow pointing down. Do you know why that's there? The reason why it's pointing down is because there's so much snow in this area that the arrow points the drivers in the direction of where the road is. There's so much snow here that they can't put just markers on the sides of the road because the snow goes up higher than that. They have to put arrows suspended like three meters up. But today, no snow. Just crows.

00:18:06 John Daub: If I was making this as a regular Only in Japan episode, I'd cut this part out, and you wouldn't see me walking with all this luggage for two kilometers to a highway. Man, that crow is going to town on that pole. Digitally watching live in beautiful 480p because YouTube can't stream in high definition. It's too advanced for them. YouTube, if you're watching, clean up your act. I'm right now on Japan's fastest network, maybe in the world, Docomo, and it's faster than Wi-Fi. You could stream this in 720p, but you choose not to, and you're making us all upset. There's people who unsubscribe from the channel because I didn't have high-definition videos. See that, YouTube? Look what you've done. You encouraged me to live stream, and people are leaving because you can't get it into HD.

00:19:40 John Daub: Check the map again. It says I should make a right, and I will be right at the intersection where there's a Seico Mart. Google Maps is awesome. The problem with Google Maps sometimes you look at the map and the road that looks like a major road is actually a dirt road that might be somebody's driveway. So I can either go on the main road, go straight here, which is what Google Maps is telling me to do. Last time about ten days ago out of Fukui, Google Maps told me to go through a farm field. There was no road. It was literally a farm field. I had to walk on a field, which is funny to me because Google Maps is absolutely way off.

00:20:48 John Daub: I'm right now walking towards a Seico Mart, which is a Hokkaido convenience store chain. And I can still just make out the station over there. You see in front of me, in the distance over there, that's the Shinkansen station. So a lot of activity. The amount of people are really over the next two days. The amount of travel in Japan is going to explode because the whole country is shutting down for spring vacation. And I'm hitchhiking because we made 400% of the goal in Kickstarter. People were like, you better do this whole country then if you're doing this on the road. We'll give you this money if you go out there and make a DVD of the entire country. I said OK. I haven't been home in over a month. I haven't been running, exercise. I've been eating really good, which is the problem. You eat really good; it's actually like eating really bad because the good stuff is never quote-unquote good.

00:22:14 John Daub: I wish there was a drone that could do all this work for me, solar-powered, just pop it up there. It could do circles around me. I bet you we'll have it in 2-3 years. Very bad connection; Docomo is saying to me. Sorry if it's pixelated right now. YouTube is telling me that the connection is bad. I'm getting away from the station. So I'll keep on streaming until I can't anymore. If we cut off, I'll live-stream again from the hitchhike if there's a signal.

00:23:01 John Daub: I'm just arriving at Seico Mart, which is a Hokkaido chain of convenience stores. Seico Mart is only, well, there's a few of them in Honshu (main island), the main island, but most of them are here in Hokkaido. If the connection is bad, it's Toby's fault because he's done something. Toby's always doing something, isn't he? He's always up to something. I have a mental image of what Toby looks like. If any of you artists draw me a rendition of what Toby looks like, send it to me. Toby's actually a nice guy. He's not a bad guy. But we need somebody to pin the bad stuff on.

00:24:19 John Daub: All right, I see approximately zero cars going past this road. This is going to be a tough hitchhike. I'm going to have to get out of here. Everybody's going the wrong direction. Here's the Seico Mart, the convenience store. And there's the traffic going the wrong way. One of these people could be my ride if I hurry up. Gosh, I'm so tempted to get a coffee and a big piece of pudding cake. Yeah, ice cream. Hokkaido melon ice cream. Should I get the ice cream or should I hitchhike? Ice cream or hitchhike? Toby (crow), what should I do? My heart says ice cream, but my heart is usually wrong. Follow my brain. My brain says to hitchhike. I can't do both. Where am I going to hold the ice cream and the sign? And it's warm enough that this thing's going to melt in warp speed.

00:25:46 John Daub: I see my first sign up there. It says Oshamambe, 87 kilometers. Whoa, that's far. Sapporo is 260 kilometers according to that blue sign. Whoa, this is going to be a long ride. I have no idea that where I want to go is so far away. So I'm going to hitchhike at this intersection, I think. Let me walk up, get a picture of that sign, and then I'll start hitching.

00:26:23 John Daub: Crazy Callie writes, I wish I knew the metric system. If you didn't, you wouldn't survive outside the U.S. And I learned the story why the U.S. doesn't use the metric system, and it's insane. They had a chance to change it in the beginning of the 20th century, and they decided not to because of lobbyists. It's hard to find a spot where they can pull on the side of the road. So I usually will scout the location. And before I hitchhike, I have to do some shots, some photos for the DVD, some video in 4K. So before I start the hitchhiking, I'm going to just walk over to that sign just to get a shot. I'm going to go up there and I'm going to go up to the top of it.

00:27:39 John Daub: All the license plates are saying Hakodate. Truck! I have not ridden with a truck yet on this trip. Right now I'm out here. This is pretty much nowhere, Hokkaido, the fringe of Hakodate. I'm going up here just to see the sign before I hitchhike. You know, when you make a DVD or any video in general, you need a lot of B-roll. Signs are the perfect B-roll. You should always have as many signs or little teeny things that you can find to insert to give people the feeling of where you are right now. And it says here Sapporo, 263 kilometers. The other side, Mori, 25 kilometers. And Oshamambe, 87K.

00:28:43 John Daub: I'm back. Sorry I had to film. I'm trying to get a scope of what this area is like. Where can people pull in and pick me up? There's not much of a shoulder on this road. So it's very narrow. So I have to think where if somebody does stop, how can they stop here? They could pull in here. It has to be well before this traffic light or after it. There's no real easy place to pull in. There's a place I can hitchhike from about another 20-minute walk. Yeah, I'm not going to buy the ice cream. Did you see the breakfast that I ate? I Instagrammed it, the kaisendon (seafood rice bowl). It was massive.

00:30:28 John Daub: All right, I have to take the complimentary photos. Should I keep this live stream going or should I stop it? It's 30 minutes in. I got to take the shots of me hitchhiking before. All right, I'm going to leave it going. You guys can stick around or you can leave the live feed and come back later. I'm going to leave this on the crosswalk here. So this is the crosswalk sign. See there? That's where you guys are sitting on top of this. That's how real the show can get. Stay there. I got to take a break, get a snack. I'm just going to keep live-streaming, and hopefully by the end of this, someone will stop. Who knows? This doesn't seem like the ideal place. We'll see. I got to get my tripod out.

00:32:26 John Daub: Harry Lin, thanks for the super chat. How did you enjoy Hakodate? I really loved it. A lot of the tourists were from China, not too many Westerners. A lot were from Singapore. The Chinese tourists, they have a bad reputation and I can see why. Sometimes, especially when waiting in line, they didn't... just a different culture. Other than the tourists, Hakodate was great. The food, the food, the food. Hakodate has to be the place with some of the best food, seafood in Japan. Everything. And I sort of set up one of my next episodes with Abuyasan, who owns the fish shop there. He's going to help me out with an episode I'm going to make in the future. It's sort of cool.

00:33:43 John Daub: So if you buy the DVD, you're going to see you right here on top of this yellow box in this scene. I hold up the sign and I pray for someone to stop. And I take about 30 seconds in high-quality video just for an in-depth look. And I insert a sign like a sail on a boat.

00:36:15 John Daub: Okay, that's enough for that scene. That's hard because sometimes the setting on the GH5, it resets. And then I don't know why the heck the settings are different again. This camera just came out about a month ago, so I've been using this for a month, the GH5. It's a wonderful camera. I wish it was more dependable because the settings... It's not anything I'm doing. I'm very used to this camera from using the GH4 for a couple of years. But the GH5, man, little things. It's always about the little things. The gain on it is not... I want it completely all in manual. I never want any auto on my videos.

00:39:04 John Daub: So every time I start, I take a shot for a minute. And then I set up the GoPro because the GoPro is very easy to work with. Except the GoPro 5, it's all touch menu, and I don't like the touch menu. I just want to push the button with the settings that I keep in Go. But they put so much stuff in it, things that people don't use.

00:40:00 John Daub: Toby (crow), you happy? I'm now hitchhiking. So there you go, Toby. Here's your sign. Stop complaining, alright? And there's no cars coming. I don't know where the car is going to stop and pick me up. Let's try and see what happens for 15 minutes or so. Here come the cars. The more I think about it, the more I realize this is such a horrible spot.

00:42:31 John Daub: There's got to be... hold on. If I can turn the sign on, somebody might stop as long as they can see the sign. Alright, fine. If I walk down this road more, see here, there's a soba noodle shop around the corner. That's promising. So there's a soba noodle shop, and then there's nothing for a long time. And then there's an intersection that I'm pretty sure I'll get a ride from. But this intersection is 41 miles, and I'm only walking for 45 minutes because if I leave now, I get there at 2pm. Oh man. Really? This road, there's just not enough traffic. And once I get to the intersection, I bet you a ride stops.

00:43:48 John Daub: Alright, I'm going offline for 45 minutes. I just don't have much faith in this road. Toby did it. There's no 7-Eleven around here. It's not a 7-Eleven. And if you keep on commenting that 7-Eleven, you're going to end up like Toby. Okay? It's Seico Mart. So I'm sort of holding the sign up. I'm going to try a little bit longer here. There's just nowhere for people to stop, really. Look behind me. Where are they going to stop? They are nice people. They're smiling and bowing at me, but they're not going to stop. There's nowhere to stop.

00:45:28 John Daub: Alright, I'm going offline for a while. I guess I can just go offline and then come back on, right? So I'm not going to stop the feed, but I'm going to turn off the camera and just come back in like 40 minutes. I don't know what else to do. Yeah, I just got to do the hike. 40 minutes. See you soon. See you on the road.