00:02 John Daub: Greetings! I'm in Tottori Prefecture. This is Daisen-machi. This place that I'm going to take you to, you can sort of hear it. It has that sound of rushing water. This is the complete Japanese countryside experience. This is a place not far from Mount Daisen, which is just over here. It's called Ame no Manae.

00:25 John Daub: Anyway, I'm actually here with somebody from the city of Yonago, which is the big city near Daisen in Tottori Prefecture. I'm going to introduce you to it. I'm actually walking past the cemetery. There's a car coming by. But this place is so relaxing because there's a pond here with carp swimming in it. It's so clean. The water coming from Mount Daisen. There's like a small waterfall.

00:54 John Daub: That's Keiko-san. This is Keiko. We drove here from the city. You can kind of see what this countryside area looks like. I mean, there's like moss growing on the roof here. This is so cool. Look at that moss. It's a thatched roof. This in itself is super cool.

01:26 John Daub: And if you look over just following the stream here, look. Looking on down towards the countryside to the Sea of Japan is in that direction. And the direction I'm in, if you look up here, this goes up towards Mount Daisen, which is 1,700 meters high. So let's go ask Keiko-san a little bit about this place. Ah, Keiko-san! Konnichiwa! Yonago City! Eh, what's this place called? Ame no Manae.

02:18 John Daub: Ah, the wheel's moving! Oh my god, okay, hold on! It doesn't always move! I've been here for five minutes and this is the first time I'm seeing it move. Wow! There's so much moss on it because it hardly ever moves. This is sort of a treat. Awesome. And you can see on the tree there's some kaki (Japanese persimmons).

02:44 Keiko: Koro wa kaki desu ka?

02:47 John Daub: Yeah, this is some kaki on here which is a Japanese fruit. It's kind of sweet, but you can see the rushing water. It's just so powerful. And before I started this livestream, I was actually standing here just taking it all in. Yeah, just the sound of the rushing water to me is like, whoa. I gotta go live and show this to people. Because this is way too cool to pass up. This is like the complete countryside, only Japan kind of feeling right now.

03:30 John Daub: Look at her throwing the koi food for the carp. Whoa. They love that carp food. Look how clean this pond is. Here we go, guys. Look how clean this water is. Wow. This koi is black, but it has a red line. You can see the red line on these carp. That's what makes them really special.

05:08 John Daub: There's something really special about Japanese ponds. It's the aesthetic of it all. You can see there's like a little bridge that only the daring can cross. Only the daring shall cross. Those who fail shall dive deep into the pond.

05:31 John Daub: All right, let's do this. Can you do it? That's not so bad. Eh? Can you do it? Wait, wait, wait. You're a ghost. All right. Yay. So you get a nice little view from up here. You can see. That's where the wheel was before. And there's where the pond, the carp is. Isn't this not one of the most relaxing locations? You know, I should just be quiet and let you soak it in for a second.

06:56 John Daub: The backdrop to this pond is pretty cool too. We have a bamboo forest. Very nice. I also like bamboo too. It's just something that I don't see in the West at all. It's pretty cool. And this bamboo forest goes all the way up. I love the color of the bamboo. I don't know if the iPhone is doing it justice. The colors that I see right now.

07:43 John Daub: There's a place where you can actually drink the water. Should I drink it? There must be something magical with this water. All right. Let's go do that. That means I get across the bridge again. The bridge of death. Kiko's still throwing the food in.

08:03 John Daub: Good morning, Rog! Thank you. Rog's chiming in from Norway. I can only imagine how cold it is over there. The weather here is about 19 degrees Celsius, which is like 55 Fahrenheit. This is what it really is. A beautiful pond, how clean it is. And they put wires going across the pond to protect it from the birds. The birds try to come in here and swoop down and eat the fish.

09:07 John Daub: Is it clean enough to drink? There's only one way to find out. I must cross the bridge of death. Haha. It's actually not that hard. But it is kind of a creepy looking bridge. Not everyone's gonna want to cross it.

10:02 John Daub: For those of you who are interested in history, head and read it there. There's the history of Ame no Manae. It's a famous water point at Mount Daisen. And make sure you recycle and throw your trash away. Haha, that's what that sign means. Oh, that sign's seen better days. There's some weird creepy looking bugs here too. Part of the countryside experience, everybody.

10:54 John Daub: Ye who shall drink from the fountain of youth shall become young again. That's what these are for. Which one looks the cleanest? That's the one I shall drink from. Eh, Keiko-san, nomeru? Wakimizu desu ka? This water is spring water.

11:40 Keiko: Wakimizu.

11:51 John Daub: Spring water. Doko kara nomeru? We shall not drink from where the fish are. Ye shall drink from where the shiny rock. This okay if I were to step here. Oh wow, this is really slippery. You have to fight to get in there. All right, first we're gonna wash it. Is that okay? Looks okay. All right, let's drink it. I want to be young again. Oishii. There's like almost no flavor. It's very very neutral. Oishii yo. Every sip is like a year off my life. I have chosen wisely.

14:29 John Daub: Eh, Indiana Jones? I remember you drink from the cup and then you don't know, right? It's totally fine. It's delicious. Oishii.

14:48 John Daub: Okay, I'm alive. And you want to drink? You okay? Wait, she won't drink it? Why? She said she didn't want to drink it. Now she wants to drink it. Okay, all right. Just a little bit more. You have to drink it. Itadakimasu. You have chosen wisely. Good?

15:24 Keiko: [affirmative]

15:30 John Daub: Wonderful. Okay, here we go. Be careful, there's a spider. This is where the spider attacked me. All right, put the cup back. Ahh. That was fun. So I put a link into the description of where to find this place. Unless you have a rented car, good luck. This is one of those places where it's really hard to get to unless you have an automobile. In fact, Tottori Prefecture is very car friendly. So those coming on JR rail passes, come here but rent a car.

16:25 John Daub: Look how clean the water is, gosh. This is all mountain spring water, seriously. Was it really good?

16:43 Keiko: [affirmative]

16:49 John Daub: Really? You can believe it. I saw a comment, they said I can't believe it when somebody says oishii. It's true. The best water. And there's a look of the waterfall from a distance. Just for the record, that's where we just were. Yeah, Tottori is one of the more natural prefectures. Tottori is Shimane, that's called the San'in area. This is one of my favorite areas. Daisen in particular because I like the mountains.

17:22 John Daub: Oh, it's a massive spider. Who wants to see a spider? It looks like a leaf but it's a huge spider. Look at that thing. Can you see it? It's dangerous, right? It has poison, I think. I just assume every spider has poison. That's the safest thing to do, right? I mean, spiders are evil already because they have eight legs. Although they are good creatures as long as you're not a fly.

18:36 John Daub: So the carp is cool. This is one thing I like about Japan. Japan is one of the more honest places in the world for the most part. You can buy fish food here. It's 100 yen for a bag. You put the 100 yen coin in here, and then you just take the food. So it's on the honor system, which is pretty cool. That's Japan. Nobody steals your money, right?

19:27 Keiko: [affirmative, put money in]

19:29 John Daub: I did. Did you put the money in? We don't really know, do we? I'm gonna confirm it with like video footage. I trust Keiko-san. Okay. So one last look at this beautiful countryside. Look at that. Gosh, I'm so happy to be in this spot right now. Oh, we got the wheel moving. Oh, it's moving.

20:40 John Daub: Pretty cool, and you can see it got heavy from the water. You see the water dripping down. Oh, that's a beautiful shot. Why is that wheel here? I think it's here to grind flour. Woah, look at the roof. Amazing. That's old school. I'm kind of afraid of going here. There's like spider kingdom in here. Woah. There's like buckets of something in here. Oh, you can see where the wheel turns this and then it does something. All I can tell you for sure is that there is a Harry Potter broom in here.

22:50 John Daub: Here's another angle of the wheel, the wheel of fortune. I like how the moss is on there. It's pretty cool. Yeah, people do live here. These are all houses all around the place. Most of the people, that's a house. That's somebody's house. Well, they used to live here. That's a cemetery right there. Once again, there's a link to this location in the description so you can see exactly where I am right now.

23:27 John Daub: I have a feeling that there isn't anybody watching this show that's close enough to come by and say hello, right? That would be pretty cool. Water just spurting out of places here. This is like water town. Woah, look at this. Oh my man. That's somebody's house as well.

24:41 John Daub: I'm glad I have this stick. This is the DJI Osmo and I have it on a like one of these Osmo sticks so I get a good like one meter reach, which is pretty cool. So that's it. I don't know if there's anything else to show you. This is sort of fun to be out here and share this experience with you. This is live so you're seeing what I'm seeing right at this very second. I just wanted to show you how clean this water is. Man, everyone talks about how dirty the world's getting. I don't really see that here.

25:32 John Daub: This is the Yonago Daisen area. This is one of the only places in Japan where the population is increasing. And I think it's because a lot of people are moving to this area because they know how clean the lifestyle here is. There's a mountain right there and the sea is just a couple kilometers away. That's how close the mountain and the sea are, within like two kilometers of each other right here, which makes it a pretty unique place. You have the mountain and the sea connecting. So all this mountain water runs directly into the ocean. And right at the base of where this water comes out is some of the best fishing. That means you get some of the most delicious fish with the most nutrients. The kai (shellfish) they're huge because of all the nutrients coming from the mountain to the sea there. So it is a really precious place for food, for adventure and stuff like that.

27:00 John Daub: I really wanted to come and focus on this area of Japan. It's so far away from Tokyo, you know. This place is on the other side. Oh, look at the kaki. That's such a striking orange against the dark green. It's a real autumn looking background.

27:20 Keiko: [picking something]

27:45 John Daub: Seri? Oh, this one smells good, right? This is seri. Seri (water dropwort) is a kind of jelly. Can you eat this? You could eat this. And what is it called? Seri. It's called seri in Japanese. Kawa ni dekiru seri (river-made seri). It only grows in clean water. It's pretty clean. There's almost no wasabi. Wasabi also grows in really clean water. It takes very pure water to grow wasabi.

28:55 John Daub: So if someone wanted to come here, would they have a bus? A train? How would you get here if you wanted to come visit without renting a car? You can't, right? You can't come here by bus. You can't even take a train. There's no, you have to walk. And you know in the olden days, that's all they had. So you're gonna have to do old school walking, hiking or hitchhiking. Or there's the postman. He always rings twice. You can rent a car as well. Probably the best way is hitchhiking or renting a car or just plain old walking.

29:42 John Daub: I love how this place is really special because you can see the architecture, all the old buildings, old roofs, old styles, old quiet lifestyle. This is where we started the streaming about 30 minutes ago. That makes this place really precious. Japan is full of places like this, a little teeny secret place. I don't think unless you're a local you don't really know about this place. And you can see we're the only people here. There's the postman again. He comes in the red, the Japanese post comes in the red trucks.

30:23 John Daub: So I'll leave you for the last 20 seconds. I'm gonna do a little bit more shooting. I'm gonna leave you looking at the beautiful water of Ame no Manae. It's in the description. See you everybody, thanks for joining us.