00:02 John Daub: Hello everybody, this is the second livestream of the day. I'm again mostly naked in a public bathhouse. This one is a sento (public bath), but it's also a real onsen (hot spring). And I'm gonna show you why. The ceiling here is quite high. It looks pretty old. Here's the public bath. There's the female and the male.

00:23 John Daub: I can't go in there because there are actually people in there right now. So that's kind of off-limits. So that's where you check in. And I'm gonna show you what the outside looks like. But first I'm gonna go in and show you the bath. This one is pretty old. And this one you can reserve it. So that's what I've done. Yeah. Here's the changing room.

01:00 John Daub: So I've been filming for the other Only in Japan show. But it's pretty cool. You have your own private changing room. There's even a table if you want to chill out afterwards. This is what the outside of this public bath looks like. It looks really cool, doesn't it? I mean, like it's from some sort of movie. Maybe Spirited Away. It's got that sort of curved-shaped roof that we saw in Dogo Onsen in Shikoku.

01:33 John Daub: So that's where I am right now. I put a map to this location in the description. That's right. This is pretty old school. This is really old school. So before I go into the bath, I just want to tell you a couple of things. So I'm in Yumoto Onsen. Now, Yumoto Onsen is the name of this place. This is where a lot of confusion comes in.

01:52 John Daub: At Yumoto Onsen, there are many ryokan (Japanese inns). The one that I was at before I showed you had a different style. This one is a public sento onsen. So it's a lot cheaper to go. You don't have to stay here in order to be able to go into the baths. Now, at a ryokan, you can go but it's usually a lot more expensive. And it's a lot better experience if you stay there. This one is for everyone because it's public.

02:20 John Daub: Right, again, I'm in Fukushima in Iwaki City on the seaside. Here we go. I'm going to unbox this onsen. You ready? Oh, you can already hear the sound. Alright, there's a place where you can shower and wash yourself. Wow. So this is a private one in this public bath. This is one that you can reserve.

03:07 John Daub: And what I really like about this one is all of the wood all around you. It sort of exemplifies the countryside, doesn't it? This feels like Fukushima. This is the Fukushima that I know. A really natural place, full of trees, nature, and wood. There's a lot of history in this wood, I bet. It's all sort of discolored from the years of moisture. Now you guys are trapped in here with me. It's not that bad.

03:48 John Daub: I opened the window just to let in some cool air. But you can see the roof is really old looking too, isn't it? You got some bamboo trees out here. It's pretty relaxing. There's an old building next door. Very nice. This is one of the things I love about the onsen, the going in part. Because I've been out here for a little bit. It's getting a little bit chilly because the window is open. That water is a little bit hot.

04:24 John Daub: I don't know what the temperature is. But all of this is very natural coming out of the ground. I'm pretty sure it's mixed in with some cooler water. Oh gosh, it's so hot. Whoa, it's hot. Okay. Easy does it now. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh my. You can hear the water pouring over the side. You see it? All running. The displaced water is just pouring over the side.

05:32 John Daub: Yeah. Now we have it. This is the life. I'm glad you could join me for this experience. It's pretty nice. So, I try to come to the onsen maybe once a season. I guess every four or five months if I can. Staying at a ryokan is pretty expensive. But if you come to an onsen town, there's always one or two public onsen like this. It doesn't cost that much. Just a few hundred yen. You can get going and enjoy the onsen.

06:14 John Daub: This is where the locals go. I mean, if you lived in an onsen town, you're going to want to go to the onsen a lot, right? So, there's a place like this for the locals and for people who don't want to stay at a ryokan. Day trippers, higaeri (day visitors), we call that in Japanese. Higaeri or day trippers probably want to come to a place like this. It's got a lot of personality. I really love this bath. Again, the location is in the description.

06:41 John Daub: For the next, for over a week, I'm going to be visiting 13 different onsen towns. I'm sort of working with Fukushima to promote that. To promote the beauty of this place. Because I used to live in Fukushima. I used to live in this city, in Iwaki City, about 18 years ago, in 1999. And I really loved it. I liked the fact that it was pure countryside. And this is one of the most outside of the city places that I lived in in my almost 20 years here in Japan. I'm glad to be back here.

07:14 John Daub: I'm starting a trip from this point, going inland through the mountains to Aizu-Wakamatsu, the other side. Stopping at onsen and onsen and onsen and onsen. And also going to some, staying at some ryokan. Thank you so much for the super chats. Thanks for being such a great ambassador to the totality of Japan. Have a beer on me. Kanpai. Awesome. I will. Tonight, I'm going to be having a really good meal at the ryokan where I showed you before this video. You can see a link right here. I'm going to put it in later on. Definitely check it out.

07:48 John Daub: It's a konyoku bath (mixed gender bath), which means it's co-ed. But don't worry. There's no, it's just me. They wouldn't let anybody else in. I want to show you this before I get out of the bath. This is pretty cool. The one thing that was different about this onsen than the other one is that it smells like eggs. This one smells like rotten eggs, or sulfuric. It has that sulfuric scent in the air all around it. And the water, I don't know, can I taste the water? It's got something in it. It's got sulfur in it. I wouldn't drink it. I wonder what it would taste like to make coffee from this. Probably pretty gross, huh?

08:35 John Daub: So I want to show you this spigot really quickly before I get out. Look at this, okay? First of all, the water is pretty hot. I'd say it's near 50 degrees Celsius, which is well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. I'd say like 110 degrees Fahrenheit. It's pretty hot. But around it, you can see the minerals caked onto it. Do you see that? All the sulfur and other stuff that's in the water over decades, probably. At least that's what I think. It feels like it's been decades. This thing's been pumping out water forever. Look at the rust. Wow. Some rust stains on the top.

09:23 John Daub: I really love the ambiance, the atmosphere of this one. Oh, man, it was too hot. That's why I opened the window. Now, if you're a young guy and you're thinking of having kids, you might not want to stay too long in that water because whatever you have, it's going to probably kill it. Yeah. It's not the nicest atmosphere. It's good for the skin. It's good for the body. But when it's that hot, you don't want to spend more than 10 minutes in there unless you're over 70 and you've lost all hope. You don't want to sit too long in the bath.

10:13 John Daub: This is a good one though. You could see I've already... This is sweat. I've already started sweating from the heat of it all. It's good to stay hydrated when you go to the onsens, drink a lot of fluids. But I really, really like this bath. Yeah. Just like the authenticity of it all. That's why if you go to Tokyo, there's the Mononogatari Bath in Odaiba. That's a really nice bath, but it's not authentic. It doesn't have a feel like this one, like coming out to the countryside. Fukushima is one of the closest places that you can go to have that authentic feel.

10:50 John Daub: I think before 2011, before the earthquake and the tsunami and all of the other problems happened, the radiation, first of all, I'm about 65 kilometers away from it. I feel fine. There's no problem. Everybody's living here just fine. The water is okay. I know a lot of people are writing in comments that it might not be safe. It's safe here. There's an area that isn't, but like fishing might not be. But basically, Fukushima is a place that I used to go to all the time for vacation.

11:28 John Daub: It's a place that I'm coming back to today and I will be coming back more often because it's so close from Tokyo. It's about an hour and a half. It's about an hour and a half from Tokyo and you can take the Shinkansen as well. JR Pass is pretty easy. The destination I'm going to, you saw it in the Fukushima spy episode. That place is our goal. That's our destination. So I'm pretty excited about that. If you have any questions, you can write them in here.

11:56 John Daub: Fukushima City is not that close. This is Iwaki City. Right now I'm on the beach. I'm on the seaside about 65 kilometers south from where the tragedy happened. And about 200 and something kilometers from Tokyo. It's a good hour and a half by train to get here. It's just so hot in here. Let's get out of here. Look at how old this is. The rust caked on it. I wouldn't paint that over at all. It just looks good the way it does, doesn't it?

12:42 John Daub: This is an awesome onsen town. I'm looking forward to tonight eating the meal at the ryokan. And if I can, I'm going to film it. I'm also videoing this for the main channel. So you're going to see this in 4K. Well, HD. But I'm filming it in 4K. And I'm also filming it in 360 video. So we're going to have a virtual reality onsen tour. Which is going to be pretty cool. At least I'm going to try to do it.

13:10 John Daub: Let's see how it works out. There's my GH5 in the background. I was filming for it before. Usually I'm going to do some of these. I'm going to do these live streams after I've filmed everything. So if I have any surprises, I'm going to do them. But if I do this extra time, you're going to see a live stream and I'm going to bring you with me live. And then when you watch the show on the main channel, it's like you would have been there with me filming it. So that's sort of a cool experience.

13:33 John Daub: I'm really happy for everybody who's really happy that you're joining me on this tour and being a part of the show. The Only in Japan channel through these live streams. I'm also really stoked that they have really good 4G signal here for these live streams. Yeah. Oh, okay. Thanks for the super chats. Let me see if you have any questions. Matt J., have you been to Hirayu Onsen town near Takayama? No I have not. I haven't been there yet. Takayama is an episode that I'm going to do probably later on next year. I've been there about four times. I love it. It's really overrun with tourists now, but it's still a pretty good experience.

14:18 John Daub: Okay. So I'm going to change. I have more stuff than I need. This is all the stuff I'm using to film. That's the camera bag, my clothes. It's warm on the coast and we still have changing of the leaves here. The leaves are changing, but in the mountains, the colors are finished. I heard it's done. So yeah, you know what? It's supposed to be snowing this week, so we might get some snow onsen, which is pretty cool. So stay tuned. Make sure you subscribe to the channel and keep watching some of these onsen shows because I'm going to be doing this for over a week. See you next time. Everybody. Thanks for questions.