00:00:03 John Daub: Hello everybody, I am live from Okutama, Tokyo. This is the Only Japan Go channel, the second Only Japan channel. I wanted to show you a little bit of this area of Tokyo. This is a place that's very natural. It's in Tokyo, but Tokyo is a lot bigger than just the city center. It's sort of like a state, like New York State would be, where you can go up into the Adirondacks or Catskills, which is the mountains of New York. This is the mountains of Tokyo. This is Okutama, and it's a really beautiful scenic place.

00:00:40 John Daub: I'm here on a location shoot for NHK for a show called Tokyo Eye. I think this is my 50th appearance on the show over the last 10 years, which is pretty cool. But I thought I would do a really quick live stream and share this experience with you. Now we're at a place eating lunch. It's called the Tokyo Trout Kitchen. There's no fish on the menu. I thought that was pretty weird. So lunch is going to be curry rice, which is sort of a shame.

00:01:18 John Daub: From the mountains, there's a lot of fresh water that's coming. Yesterday it rained, so the water... There's a lot of water running down into the river. But the whole area is very natural, which is strange because this is Tokyo. Very similar to the Aogashima video, which will be on the main channel later this week. Even though it's Tokyo, it's a tropical island in the Pacific. So the state of Tokyo is quite large.

00:01:50 John Daub: So here's a... I guess it's a trout pond. I'm not really sure what this is, but this is in front of the restaurant. And then over here is a really beautiful creek or river. I'm going to take you down there right now. I have to be honest with you, the restaurant itself... It's not really that special. I thought there'd be something unique from the area on the menu, and it had pasta and curry rice. Everything that you wouldn't expect, and a place on a river: pizza, pasta, spare ribs, curry, dessert and coffee. All of them are really good, just not exactly what I would expect in the countryside. I expect fish! Because look, right in front of me is one of the clearest, most gorgeous rivers I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of rivers. This one is just beautiful. And it just rained yesterday, so you'd think there'd be more sediments and the water would be muddier, but it's really clear.

00:02:56 John Daub: Up here is a bridge for cars that pass over it. Maybe you'll see one going by. A lot of evergreens here, a lot of pine trees. Along the river you have a different kind of tree. They look like cedar trees, maybe. I love the sound of the rushing water. It's just really soothing. And you see over here, there's a couple of fishermen trying their luck, catch something down there.

00:03:47 John Daub: Hey Jim, thank you very much for the Super Chat. And Joachim, thank you very much from Toronto. I always appreciate that. I love it whenever I get a chance to get out of the city and bring you somewhere new, and bring myself somewhere new. Get a chance to take in all of the fresh air, get a chance to see some green. And it inspires me. When you're living in a city, coming out and getting away, taking a break from it is really good. What I like about Okutama is that it's only about an hour away from the city center. You can board a train in Shinjuku and be here in an hour. And that's pretty cool.

00:04:30 John Daub: Oh, here's a guy. He's now fishing. He's casting it out. I think he's fly fishing. He was letting it fly, so I guess that's fly fishing. I don't know much about fishing. Nasha Broad, thank you very much. Yes, this is for Tokyo Eye 2020.

00:04:56 John Daub: What are these fish here? Iwana [?]? I don't think they're piranha. These are just fish in a pond. I don't think they're meant to be eaten. I wouldn't be sure though. This is extremely clear. The water? No, no, it's okay. This is actually being live streamed right now on YouTube. It is pretty clear for iPhone. Yeah, the fact that we have 4G in the mountains is pretty amazing. Just waiting for lunch. We'll be eating over here. So there's a beautiful balcony, and it has an amazing view of the river.

00:06:06 John Daub: What's the name of this river? This is not the Tamagawa, is it? It is. Okay, so this river eventually spills into the Tamagawa River, which is what goes past Haneda Airport. So there's Futako-Tamagawa. There's Kawasaki. This is where this river eventually dumps into. So yeah, that river's not the cleanest in the world. But if you take a look at it from the starting point, the origin, this is pretty clean. And the reason why I'm saying this is because this is the first time I've seen this river. I was talking to the director of the show. I don't know if he wants to be on a live stream, but we're having a lot of fun. I just really do love the rushing sound of water and the fresh air. If I compare the quality of air right now with that of the city, there's no comparison. And it's like a no-brainer, right? Trekaris, thank you very much.

00:07:01 John Daub: There is a vending machine. All right, Trekaris has just super chatted me. I'm going to go and show you the vending machine. It's nothing special. I think the food has come, so I have to end this live stream soon. But here's what we got here. This is the countryside vending machine. We have some beer. I don't know, about 300 yen. There's even a sink to wash your hands. I love the countryside. This is a Coca-Cola vending machine, so you have the usual culprits: Dr. Pepper, which is sort of sold out right now, which is weird, green tea. This is mugicha (barley tea), udon cha [?], Chinese tea, and canned coffees, real milk tea, black coffee—all of them are now in cold mode. In the winter they turn red, which is hot. Oshiborii [?], thank you. Not a big vending machine selection.

00:08:10 John Daub: But yeah, I'm filming right now an episode of Tokyo Eye, and the focus of this episode is Okutama, to introduce this area of Tokyo, which is incredible, right? That's the one thing: people don't realize how big Tokyo is. Tokyo is—I was researching this for the Aogashima episode, which is on the main channel. Again, this is the second channel; if you haven't subscribed, please subscribe and support this channel. But Aogashima is about 370 kilometers away from the center of Tokyo, in the Pacific Ocean. Beautiful island. But the furthest point in Tokyo is actually 1,700 kilometers away, or like 1,100 miles. Basically it's like a third of the United States. Yeah, that's how big Tokyo is. It's the size of a third of the United States. That island is all the way down, like south of Taiwan, and it goes into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And then Tokyo extends all the way into the mountains that you see here. So it's a pretty amazing city.

00:09:19 John Daub: If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them right now before I end the livestream. Anything about traveling in Tokyo or Okutama? I don't think that Dr. Pepper is for tourists. I think there's some people in Japan who like that peppery taste to it. Chris Pepler, Dr. Pepper, Dr. Pepler? He's the host of the show. Tokyo Eye is available online. There's an app, an NHK World app, and you can watch the episodes on demand. And you can watch it live. You can watch NHK World live on the app.

00:10:06 John Daub: So I gotta go eat my curry rice. The director's looking at me. It's being served right now. Explain why Tokyo is so large in a video? Or did you mean Japan? Um, Sabby, that's a great question. Okay, I have to end the stream, but Tokyo is large because... To be honest with you, I can't say for certain, but all of these islands, the other prefectures, don't really have the money to maintain it. But Tokyo does. So the islands from Izu that go out to the... It's better maintained by the city of Tokyo, to be honest with you, because they have the resources to go out and monitor and to take care of this instead of the federal government. And I think the federal government doesn't have any federal lands like in terms of the country, but they do have... Each prefecture has islands. And the islands that you see around Japan that are part of Japan, they all belong to a prefecture. Those islands 1,700 kilometers away belong to Tokyo.

00:11:09 John Daub: I'll have more on that during the Aogashima video, which is coming on the main channel. So thank you all very much. I'm gonna go eat lunch. I hope you enjoyed this little snippet of Okutama. See you countryside! And see you everybody! Thanks for joining this livestream! Don't forget to subscribe! Yeah, shameless plug. Ha!