00:04 John Daub: Welcome again to Noboribetsu. I have now come to Hell Valley. You have to say it like that or else it's just not as attractive. In Hell Valley they have toilets and these toilets have demons on them. Nice. No, they really do. I'm not gonna go under the toilet, but they really do. If you enter the demon will eat you. That's how serious we take our toilets in Hell Valley. In Hell Valley the demons eat you in the toilet, so just hold it until you get back to your hotel or something.

00:53 John Daub: So I just wanted to take you on a little bit of a tour of Hell Valley. Here, this is the Noboribetsu Onsen Picnic Ground guide map. And if you ever wanted to picnic in a deserted barren wasteland, Hell Valley's here. It really is called Hell Valley, you see? I'm not making that up. And last night I camped here, not too far away from Hell Valley. That's what we're getting into today. There's a couple of paths, so it's not a bad place for hiking.

01:37 John Daub: Yeah, this area is full of green. Beautiful greenery here. And then this area here, not so much. And that's the area I'm gonna take you to right now. Again, Noboribetsu is one of the big onsen towns of Japan. It's located in Hokkaido, about three hours drive from Hakodate, or I guess it's like two hours on the train. It's between Hakodate and Sapporo. Now, last night I went to the bath, and there's a video on Only in Japan Go, walking through the onsen town at night.

02:19 John Daub: Okay, I'm just gonna stop here for a second because I'm looking at Hell Valley right now. And all I see is like fire and brimstone. I don't see any brimstone, but I see a lot of smoke. Or is it steam? Let's walk up there together. Don't get frightened... yet. As I promised you, a barren wasteland where nothing survives. It's just destroyed due to poisonous gases. That's hell. Down there.

03:19 John Daub: Look down there. There's some poisonous sulfuric steam coming out. Killer steam apparently. Although there seems to be some green plant life in there. I don't know. I cannot confirm or deny if that's just sulfur residue. As you can see on these rocks, green sulfuric residue. There's a shrine down there you can pray to the demons, I guess. Demon prayer. So for those of you who are into that type of stuff, I bet you'll be making the pilgrimage to your hometown. It is beautiful in its own way. I'm having fun with this.

04:25 John Daub: So now there are a couple of paths. Just like life. Do I take a left or a right? Hmm. Left will take me towards the noxious gases. The gases that could kill me. And to the right seems like a safer route that will take me to the promised land. I see here Thomas says right. Johan says left. Harry says right. Dimona says left. Right, left, right, left. Oh, come on guys. Stop it. This is why I don't read the livestream. Okay, I'm going to hell. It says hell, so I'm going to hell.

05:25 John Daub: It says it's a 300 meter walk. I'm voluntarily walking to hell. It just doesn't feel right. I always expected somebody to be pushing me or a rope around me. Or chains. Chains are hard to break. Handcuffs. Something like that. But no, I'm voluntarily walking to hell because that's what we do here on Only in Japan Go. We go. We just go.

06:26 John Daub: Hell Valley smells like crap. It does. It really smells awful. I should have taken the other road. I probably should not be sucking in the air as much as I am. Who knows what. Oh look, we're getting closer to the opening of Hell Valley. Where this crack must be. Where all this steam is coming out. So this is the valley that leads to hell. Hell would be inside where the steam is coming out. Look at these people are sneezing. Noxious, very dangerous, poisonous gases.

07:20 John Daub: I'm showing you the small ones now because that one in a minute I don't think is going to be very interesting because we're getting to the main load. Can't be that bad if people are taking selfies. Look at the green sulfur on the rocks there. I should have came at sunrise when there weren't so many people around. See hell's not a bad place. You can take selfies here. So basically there is 4G service in hell. Kids don't seem to like it. Kids don't like Hell Valley. But the adults will take selfies here. There's a sign that says don't enter.

09:13 John Daub: Wow. Now I see where the steam is coming out. This is raw, raw steam from onsen water. This is the stuff that's pumped out here. And you can see the steam coming out of the baths before it's cooled down by normal water. And look, last night when I took a bath at the public onsen here in Noboribetsu, the water was just pure white. And you can see why. The river in Hell Valley is white. The water, you see it flowing? All this water is so hot. I should have camped here because it is warm down here. The water is white from minerals.

10:05 John Daub: And the onsen that I bathed in, just totally white and makes your skin feel good. Makes your skin softer. Or like the girls who come out of the onsen, they go, oh, tsuru tsuru (smooth/silky), tsuru tsuru, like really soft skin. They do. The girls do that. They touch themselves and go tsuru tsuru tsuru tsuru. And you feel their arms and they make you feel their arms. Like, isn't it tsuru tsuru? And I say, yeah, yeah, you're tsuru tsuru. And the onsen did it. It wasn't Clinique or any of the other cosmetics you bought. It's the onsen. I took a bath twice. I took a bath this morning and one last night.

10:53 John Daub: So whatever stink I had is just made worse here because the water smells like sulfur. I need a real bath maybe. Get rid of the sulfur. It does smell very strong, pungent, sulfuric smell. If any of you have ever taken science class in high school or junior high school and you had to do the experiments with sulfur and you know, the room smelled like rotten eggs, that's what I have right now but in real life, outdoors. And it does give me a little bit of a sore throat. What are you gonna do in Hell Valley? Throat's the least of your worries. There's no guarantee you'll come back. At any moment there could be an eruption. Cause look, I mean, there's even signs saying, danger keep out. I mean, that's a warning that I will heed.

12:08 John Daub: This is the bridge that goes over. You can find folks are enjoying Hell Valley. Hell Valley has changed the color of this stream. Naturally, the residue, the steam has created this whiteness. And again, you can see the water, how the minerals are inside. And this is exactly what the bath looks like inside the public Noboribetsu public bath. 480 yen and you can bathe in this. Which is really, really nice experience, I thought. Hell Valley. It's a hell waterfall. It's not very big. Waterfalls are a thing of beauty. So you don't want too much beauty in hell.

13:56 John Daub: And this is the end of the line. There's a sign warning not to throw coins in here, apparently. People think it's a wishing well. You don't make wishes to the devil. So the sign is just warning you what to do. Yet you make a wish to the wrong party. I'm not throwing anything in. This is the thing with the live stream. People tell me to do the live stream. But I'm doing the wrong thing. The right thing. I should throw somebody in here. Who deserves it. And he knows who he is. Don't throw coins. Throw people who don't deserve to be amongst us. And he knows what his name is. I'm not going to say it. Because he might appear. He's got wings and flies. If you saw the last feed, you know. He's a crow.

15:32 John Daub: Sort of ruins your appetite, though. I was hungry for lunch. But now, thanks to Hell Valley, it has completely ruined my appetite. Especially for anything with eggs. Egg salad. Eggs Benedict. Raw eggs. Fried eggs. Omelets. All of them. I have no appetite for anything that smells like eggs. But I wouldn't mind taking another bath before I left. Right now, I'm going to be leaving. After I finish here, I'm going to take some video for the DVD. There's, I think, 15, 20 minutes left on the Kickstarter. If you want to get a DVD of this. I'm going to take some video with the Panasonic GH5 of Hell Valley. And then I'm moving off to an Ainu museum later on today. Ainu are the indigenous people of Hokkaido. There's a museum nearby. It was highly recommended to me. So I'm going to take a look in there.

16:42 John Daub: Looks like I'm going to survive after all. I have a greater chance of getting hit in the head with a selfie stick than I do getting eaten alive by demons. I do like it. I mean, if you've ever climbed Mount Fuji, for me, it's probably the worst hike. Because there's no tree or no nature once you get to a certain point on Mount Fuji. It sort of looks like this without the steam. It's just rocks and barren. No trees at the last part of it. So I can't really recommend climbing Mount Fuji anymore. Not after they made it a World Heritage Site. And they ruined it. Because now it was pretty crowded to begin with. And now it's like a line. Have you ever been to Walt Disney World where there's like a three hour line? Imagine a five hour line to get to the top. That's Mount Fuji. Unless you go the first few days when the season opens in July. It's okay. But after that, once July 15th hits, forget about it. Mount Fuji, it's a walk. It's a line up to the top. This sort of reminds me of Mount Fuji. Both are barren to a certain point. From a distance, there's no more beautiful mountain than Mount Fuji. But climbing it? Cannot recommend it. I've done it twice.

18:52 John Daub: Adults love this place. Kids seem to be crying quite a lot. I've noticed at least three or four kids crying. Not wanting to be here. And I can understand that. They're smarter than us. They know that the gases are poisonous and can knock you out. In a way, I seriously want to hop this fence and just run down there and investigate more. I took a geology class once in college. Geology 101. It's just an intro class, but it really inspired me to get to know rocks a little bit more. But you can't get to know them from a distance. You can see the striations of the mountain. The layers, maybe from volcanic eruptions or other things. This is definitely an example of the volcanic activity in Japan.

20:11 John Daub: It's impossible to film an earthquake unless I'm filming 24 hours a day for a year and I catch that moment. Or turn your phone on and film it at exactly that time. But you can see why there are earthquakes here in Japan. Because these kinds of places exist. There's so much volcanic activity underneath the ground right here. It's not hard to imagine why Japan both has the blessings of this really wonderful water that makes your skin so smooth and also could improve the quality of your life by the drinking water, all the vitamins in it. The vegetables are more nutritious as a result of the volcanic soil and the nutrition coming from the ground, I guess. So maybe that's one reason why people in Japan live longer. They look better. Old people in the bath, they're in pretty darn good shape here in Japan. You don't see people overweight. They're in pretty darn good shape. So there's really good things I think about the volcano and this sort of stuff. But there's also bad stuff like earthquakes and tsunamis and danger and you never know what's going to happen next. Which is one of some of the risks, the benefits of living in Japan and some of the risks.

21:29 John Daub: After surviving the well, after going through the 2011, March 11 earthquake and feeling how powerful that was, I mean that changed my life forever and I completely understand now how cruel nature can be. And at any moment we, all of us here in Japan, we could just be swallowed up by the earth. I mean, like a massive earthquake can happen and buildings can collapse at any moment. Honestly, you just can't predict an earthquake. And maybe that's why I sort of value life a little bit more. I can do trips like this because I know I'm not going to be here forever. After the earthquake, I definitely changed the way I thought about life. I thought it was over that day. That's how violent my apartment shook. And then the aftershock was just as strong. It was the scariest thing I've ever had in my life where I felt completely out of control. And I bring this up just because I'm in Hell Valley. And you can't talk about positive things in Hell Valley.

22:50 John Daub: Alright, the final moments of Hell Valley. I'm going to cut this stream short to save the battery for the Ainu Village, the Ainu Museum, which I'm going to go to next. It's one town over. They don't see a lot of tourists, I hear. It's going to be a good trip to see to learn more about the indigenous people of Hokkaido. Alright, there's a breeze coming through and I'm finally getting some fresh air. It's pushing the sulfur. I don't think you want to stay that long at where I was because all that sulfur steam is coming into my face. But here, I'm starting to feel a little bit better again because the fresh air is pushing into this area. Hell Valley. Hell of a time.

24:01 John Daub: This is the only time where I could use hell. I could say it a lot and no one can tell me I'm in the wrong because number one, hell is not really a bad word. It's a place. And two, this place is called Hell Valley. It's so hellish that you know, there's signs telling you to keep out. And it's a place where life is dead. That's a little drama for you. End this feed. So I'm going to go back to the origin of the lookout point on the top. We're going to end this feed looking out over beautiful yet deadly Hell Valley. A place that's in Noboribetsu in Hokkaido between Hakodate and Sapporo. One of the big onsen spa towns in Japan. That was complete awesomeness because I bathed in it twice. As I did 14 years, last time I was here was 14 years ago on the first hitchhiking trip.

25:08 John Daub: Now there's the demon shrine down there. I don't know. I'm going to pass that. I'll pray at another shrine. Demon shrine. I have nothing to tell the demons. You know, I told them all I wanted to tell them last night when I walked around the village. Stay away from my tent. Stay away from me. Demons here have clubs too. They don't just eat you. They club you first. Up there's a lookout. Let's go up there. Get a nice view. Then call this a day. I'll be back online one more time in a couple of hours from the Ainu Museum. This is, there's so much to see and do here. Whoa, Jigokudani (Hell Valley). This is what it looks like.

26:23 John Daub: Uh, Toby (crow). Toby, if you're watching this. I'm not far enough from your hometown to say this. I want to say. Yeah. You're not a bad guy, Toby. Send me your address, Toby, and I'll send you a DVD. Because I've ripped you apart these last few days. And I'll send you one of the DVDs, Toby. Why take the chance in angering Satan. So, Toby. I know who you are, Toby. You're not a crow that steals salmon from cute bears. You're not a loser, Toby. You're not Satan. Toby just wrote in. Seriously, dude? No, seriously, Toby. I want to send you a DVD. Toby, I'm serious, man. Send me your address and I'll send you something. Cause, uh, I've been pretty cruel on this trip. And, I even named an episode after you, Toby. So I appreciate all that you do. So the last 20 seconds is for Toby. This is your valley. Thank you, Toby. See you at the Ainu Museum in a couple of hours.