00:03 John Daub: Good evening, everybody. I'm in Hotel Hanano-yu in Bandai Atami. This is in Fukushima Prefecture, about a three-hour trip from Tokyo. And I'm staying at this amazing ryokan. Now, ryokan is a Japanese-style inn (traditional inn). It's like a really traditional hotel. You can see right from the floor where the guest rooms are. They have a beautiful tatami layout with a flower and some information on what's going on in the hotel. This is for a 2,000 yen private bath for couples.

00:40 John Daub: Yeah, that's right. This hotel is just massive. If you take a look at the map, which is in the elevator. The elevator is pretty classy. It's all gold. This looks like something from a scene from a James Bond movie, Goldfinger. Oh, somebody's coming on the elevator. But I just want to give you a tour of what a traditional Japanese ryokan is like. Hello. Kawaii. So they're going to their room.

01:24 John Daub: In a Japanese ryokan, you have to wear traditional yukata (light cotton kimono), right? This is sort of standard for everybody. So I'll give you a look at what mine looks like here. A little fashion show. And these come in the room, so you don't have to ask for them. They're automatically given to you. If you want more, you can take them from here. And they even have a little guide for tall people, 180 centimeters, which is about 5'11". You can get extra large yukatas here. And for taller women, here's one for 170. I guess guys can wear that as well. And they have a drawer full of yukata in different sizes, which I thought was really unique. They also put the exit signs on the floor. So they have one at the end of the hall there, but they put it on the floor so it doesn't make it look too bad, right? That's a really good idea.

02:23 John Daub: So this is the hallway leading to the room. Now I'm going to take you to my room, okay? So this hotel, Hotel Hanano-yu. Typically, I'll tell you about the prices later, but just a warning, the room is pretty awesome, okay? It's pretty awesome. And I've been in a lot of ryokan before. This one, it's like brand new. Everything has been renewed. It's all really clean. And in the corridor, again, you can see the Japanese style, like a little flower place between the doors. I thought that's a nice touch.

03:04 John Daub: All right, here we are. Are you ready? Okay, I put a do not disturb sign so nobody bothers us. Now there's my shoes. You got to take your shoes off at the door, and you can take slippers. All right, just pretend like the door was not open, okay? All right, let's do this over. All right, the first thing that you see when you enter the room is there is a little area which looks like a kitchen, okay? There's a mini bar, a fridge. It comes with some water. Yeah, it comes stocked with beer and cola, and that's my water, so you can refrigerate something. And there's a hot water boiler right here. There's also some coffee. There's some cups. It's really classy. There's some glasses for beers. This is the private onsen bath (hot spring bath). We're going to be back in there in a little bit. First, I'm going to show you the room.

04:29 John Daub: Are you ready for this? This is just super cool, okay? This is awesome. All right, so I'm going to open this door, and you're going to be exposed to the coolest room, at least that I've been in, for myself. All right, this is just for me. Welcome to a Japanese ryokan room. Wow! Isn't that absolutely amazing? Look at this. This is, for me, one person. This has to be some mistake. When I came into this room, I thought it was a huge mistake, and it's not. This is the room that I'm in. So, let's take a look at this room. My jaw dropped. Because that is a lot of space for one person in Japan. It's one of the most compact countries. Granted, this is Fukushima Prefecture. Things are a little bit more spread out than Tokyo. But, yeah, I opened the door, and it was like, this is crazy. Because in Tokyo, this is twice the size of many people's apartments.

05:47 John Daub: The first thing that you notice is the tatami on the floor. It's very clean. This looks like it's brand new tatami. It smells like it's brand new tatami. It has a really natural tatami smell. Hard to describe. Like, kind of like a really clean barn on a farm. What I love about this room in particular is this little teeny seating area. Do you see this? That is pretty cool. You have, right here on the floor, a table and a chair. Now, this chair is one of these sit-on-the-floor types of chairs that's in almost every Japanese room. The staff knew that it was just for one, and they only put one chair out. Pretty cool. They knew it was just for me. I'm going to show you what's in that closet in a minute, okay? But there's one chair set out for me. I thought that was pretty cool.

06:53 John Daub: You get a shibori (wet hand towel), which is wrapped, so it stays moist. So, you clean your hands when you come in. And, usually, there are Japanese confections or snacks that are from the local area. These are some snacks from the Bandai area of Fukushima. It looks really good. This one looks like it would go good with beer, so I guess they want me to take a beer from their refrigerator. But those beers aren't free. They're, like, five bucks a beer. Really nice touch. You're probably wondering, where's the bed, right? Well, some of you might be. Okay. All right, guys, I'm going to show you so many things. The bed is in there. And typically when you go to a Japanese ryokan, you go there for the meal as well. There's many reasons why you go to the Japanese ryokan. I'm going to tell you what they are when I sit down at the table and kind of just do a question and answer. So I will take your questions at the end of this live stream.

08:02 John Daub: But the bed, which is not here in this room, is in that closet. And typically when you go to dinner, the staff will come into your room, push this table to the side and get the futon out of the closet and then set it up for you. And then when you come back from dinner to your room, it's all set up for you. You're just ready to jump into the bed after eating a really big meal. And that's sort of the omotenashi (hospitality), the service that you get here at Japanese ryokan. So inside this closet, I'll start on this end. You can see all the futons. You see it now? There's the pad for the bottom and then there's the futon and there's extra seats if you have guests that come. And on the other side, you see there's some extra pillows. And you're free to take what you want if you want three futons. You know, you can go ahead and take it freely. It's up to you.

09:07 John Daub: Let's let me just look at this room a little bit more. Every Japanese ryokan has a flower and a scroll or a painting. In this case, it's a painting or some kind of tapestry on there. So that's a nice Japanese touch to it. The phone calls the front desk and these shoji (paper screen doors) are actually opening to the window. Right there. And you can't see through the window, but I have a nice view of the Bandai Atami area. That's another thing that I think a lot of people don't pick up on when they come to the Japanese ryokan. You see these lights? These lights are made from washi paper (traditional Japanese paper). This one is the most striking one. The one right in the center of the room. Do you see that on the ceiling here? It's flickering because of the light. But if you can bear with me through the flicker, you can see on the paper, you can see some of the rawness of the paper. They leave it in when they make it, and it has that really rough, wabi-sabi (aesthetic of imperfect beauty) texture to it, which is sort of incomplete, imperfect, perfect. And that really subtle glow that comes off of the paper, it's what sort of makes this room really special, too. It's the lighting as well. It's not too bright. It's not dim. It's just a really cool, even color, even brightness around it. And that's a touch that I don't think a lot of people might pick up on.

11:04 John Daub: So now that I've introduced you to the room, and there's like an auto light for the closet. This here, if you want to go out with your yukata, you can wear this as a jacket. So it's pretty stylish. And here, there's usually a toothbrush and towels for the onsen. Here's another yukata that came with the room. So this is a pretty standard tatami. And it's a pretty nice room. And it's for a family. I would say that this room is probably for a family of four, but tonight, it's ours. Which is pretty super cool. Now I got something else to share. We're not even close to done, all right? This tour is going to the next level. So this place, Hanano-yu, this ryokan. It has a private bath. It has a public bath. I'm a little shy to go to the public bath. If you're too shy to go to the public bath, you can walk around naked for five minutes and always find a new area inside this public bath area that I was filming for the show. But if you're too shy, and you don't want to go to the bath, this place has you covered, and I'm going to show you that right now.

12:43 John Daub: Here's the toilet. And this is the bathroom. It's one of those ones with the washlets (bidet toilet seats) on it. Every toilet comes like that. The smart toilet. Two sinks. You can see there's amenities as well. Probably Shiseido paid for that. Now, beyond this door lies my own private onsen. All right, are you ready for this? That is a bathtub made of wood. Yeah, it's made of wood. I think it's made of cedar. There's a carving in it. [?Yoshidai something?]. Here's the wooden nail in it. It's very well made. All the tiles around it and the fixtures look like a regular bathtub. And then there's this wood. Really solid wood. It smells like cedar. It has an onsen smell to it. I actually washed it out before I'll get into it. I'm going to fill it up. It does work. Yeah, that's onsen. I can taste the minerals in the water. So you get an onsen right out of the tap. So I'm going to let that fill. That's cool.

15:03 John Daub: There's a lot of hotels now that are putting the onsen piped right into the room. So, boom, there you go. If you don't want to go to the public bath, you have that. So while that's filling, it's going to take about five minutes. I'm going to do a Q&A with you, okay? So if you have any questions about the ryokan, ask away while I prepare this cup of tea. Another one of the amenities is that they leave you a treasure chest of green tea. And you can freely have a cup as you like. I showed you the hot water maker out there, right? These are bags. So one bag looks like this. It's full of green tea. Toss it in there. Fill it with hot water. And you get yourself some tea. So if you have some questions about ryokan, I'm happy to answer them. That's the great thing about live streams. This ryokan is called Hotel Hanano-yu. And I'm here for about between seven and ten days, depending on the weather, to film 13 different onsen in Fukushima.

16:48 John Daub: It's sort of a job that I really wanted to do because I want to see as much of Fukushima as I can. Because I used to live in this area and when the chance came, I said, yes, I'm going to come and do this onsen challenge. And there's three aspects to this trip that I think is pretty cool. Number one is the baths. The onsen baths are amazing. The first two years of my time in Japan, I did not go to an onsen or a public bath or a ryokan because I was too shy to take a bath in public and get naked. I just wasn't used to it. There weren't that many tourists to Japan in 1998. There weren't that many foreigners in Japan in 1998. It was a different world 20 years ago. Japan didn't have the Olympics coming. They had Nagano, the Winter Olympics in 1998. But it wasn't really as big as the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. And Japan was so expensive. People weren't coming here for vacation. So I really didn't know that much about Japan before I came here. And I was too shy to go into the bath. So I missed out for the first two years. What a waste.

18:05 John Daub: The last one was Yumoto Onsen near Iwaki. And I went to two different baths, two different places there. Yeah. So this one is called Bandai Atami. This hotel is Hotel Hanano-yu. Rooms cost typically $120 to $150. Okay. $120 to $150 or 14,000 yen roughly. That's basically the lowest price. And for this money, you're getting a lot. I mean, it's something that you can't pass up. If you think that that's kind of expensive, then you're going to regret not coming. Because what you get is the access to amazing baths and to the onsen 24 hours while you're here, or almost 24 hours. The second thing you get is like the most amazing Japanese cultural experience. You get the service. You get to see Japanese service full blown. Like it's just boom, right? Like in your face. Then you have the room like this, this amazing tatami room, right?

19:27 John Daub: The other reason is the food. And I had to tell you the biggest reason why it costs so much to stay at a ryokan is because you're given two meals. Typically in one day, two meals, you get dinner. Dinner is usually immaculate. It's awesome. You have local produce. It's all made by a chef. Usually that has, that is very well-schooled in Japanese cuisine. The plates, the trays, the platters that they give you, the sets, they're all beautifully decorated. And if you look at my Instagram page, Only in Japan TV. You'll see some of the amazing food that I had yesterday. Last night tonight was a little bit different. This ryokan has a what they call a buffet. It's all-you-can-eat buffet style dinner. And that's becoming more popular, but the course meals are like amazing. If you ever want to get really traditional Japanese food, seasonal food right now, it's autumn themed. Everything has momiji (maple) leaves. It's autumn. You want to go to a Japanese ryokan. I just, I can't imagine anybody coming to Japan and not staying in a Japanese ryokan. I mean, it just would be insane. Everyone tells me what do I have to do in Japan? Staying at ryokan.

20:57 John Daub: If you want halal food, or if you want a special cuisine or you can't eat meat, you're vegetarian, call ahead to the manager. Uh, and they will accommodate you. I had two friends visit me from the United States one of them was a very strict vegetarian she went to an onsen in Niigata in Yuzawa and she told him about her dietary needs she wanted all vegetarian food boom they got rid of all the meat even for her boyfriend which he was not he didn't really care that much he said it was still but it was still really good they changed the menu for them and they can do that if you ask that's part of the omotenashi the service that you'll get yeah so it's the food it's the room it's the service it's the tradition and the culture so it's really four things all give you this really incredible experience at the ryokan and you get to wear a yukata that you don't have to do it in summer you can wear the traditional clothes anytime here this Bandai Atami is an onsen town this is a place where there's a lot of other ryokan if there's a ryokan around a main water point where the water is coming out naturally like an onsen there's gonna be a lot of resorts and that makes it an onsen town like Noboribetsu in Hokkaido and Minakami in Gunma and Kusatsu [?] in Kyushu there's a lot of really and Beppu which is probably the biggest onsen town of them all.

22:30 John Daub: This particular room how much do you think this costs does anyone can anyone tell me at this point? how much they think this one okay the water is gonna overflow yeah you're right okay hold on a second I got the water it was only half full. All right so this room how much do you think it costs all right Florencia has a hundred and forty dollars Catherine 120 12,000 yen a night including the food oh these are pretty good guesses here 14,000 yen $250 $100 $120 $60,000 a night oh do you mean like yen 24 all right Rolf you're the closest man Rolf wins so this room costs two hundred and twenty dollars roughly two hundred dollars a night two hundred and between two hundred and two hundred and forty dollars a night it's 22,000 yen and you get this big massive room.

23:47 John Daub: Now there's one other thing I have to tell you about ryokan okay before I make this tea all right this is sort of important when you go to ryokan you're you pay per person and uh for a hotel you're probably going to pay for the room right you pay for the room at ryokan you pay per person so it doesn't matter if four people stay in the same room you're going to pay the same price so for this room I'm paying 22,000 yen just for me it's for one person um if you had four people in this room it would be eighty eight thousand yen it'd be about eight hundred dollars there's no like discounts there's no um room rate everything is per person there's a reason for that every person is getting the same service every person is getting uh to eat every person is getting a futon laid out for them and uh if you think about it does make sense um so if you want an extra person in your room you're gonna have to pay for them uh and even if you don't eat the food you're probably still going to have to pay uh I think some ryokan, you can probably get a discount if you don't eat the food. You can get a discount if you just want to stay in the room. But I got to tell you something. If you just stay in the room and you don't eat the food, you're insane. Because the food is one of the reasons to come. I told you there's four reasons for the tradition, for the onsen, for the service, and for the food. And the food is one of the most critical parts, isn't it? So you probably want to get everything. You want to definitely get the food. And don't skimp. Don't be cheap with the ryokan.

25:37 John Daub: So the water is halfway full. I just put it on the hottest, and it's onsen temperature. It's about 45 degrees, 46 degrees Celsius. Oh, it's got the mineral smell to it as well. You have body soap, shampoo, and a shower as well for anyone on the run. It is pretty hot. Gosh, I am just loving this room. Go to a ryokan. Recommend something to do. Go to a ryokan. I just want to stress one more time. I want to stress one more time how important it is. If you want to experience Japan, you're definitely going to want to come to a place like this because Japan is a country where there's so many things to do. And people, they go on the same circuit, okay? They fly into Tokyo or Osaka, and then they go to Kyoto. Maybe they stop in Kobe. They go to Hiroshima. And then they go to maybe Takayama or one other place. And then they go home. You haven't really seen Japan unless you've gone to a place that's way off of the beaten path. And these days, that's Fukushima. It really is.

28:21 John Daub: Before the 2011 earthquake, Fukushima was a place where Tokyo got some of the best vegetables. Fukushima is where a lot of the beef, Japanese wagyu, came from in the supermarkets. Fukushima makes some of the best sake in Japan. And I'm really happy to be here. And I'm going to do whatever I can to help Fukushima because I used to live here. And I do call this place sort of like a second home. The people are friendlier than Tokyo. That's another reason why I like it. It's just the countryside feel to it all. And look at all this space. Where would you do what would you do if with only six days in Japan? I would change my ticket and then stay a full two weeks. That's probably the time that you would need to really see Japan. If you only have six days then limit yourself and spend three days in Tokyo and then pick one other place. Don't try to do everything in one trip. It's not going to happen. You're going to have to come back a second time.

29:41 John Daub: There's something that's increasing. It's called the Japanese have been taking data on tourism in Japan for a long time. They call them repeaters, right? Repeater. And the repeaters are people who come to Japan again. You come the first time. And you get it out of the way, okay? You do your Tokyo. You do your Kyoto. You do your Hiroshima. You do your Osaka with Dotonbori. And do your street food and takoyaki. And you do what everybody else does and you go home. Okay? But you loved your trip. And then you start thinking, I want to see more. That's the gateway to all the other places. The way you see Japan. When people outside of Japan think of Japan, they think of the whole country, Japan. Inside Japan, everybody who's Japanese sees the country differently. They see it in regions. They see it in prefectures. Sort of like in the United States. If you're from New York, you think of things like California seems like another country. Like another place with a different culture on the other side of the U.S., right? Texas is totally different than New York. You get that feeling that you can travel in the United States. You get sort of a different experience in every different place. All the people are speaking the same language. That's Japan.

31:10 John Daub: Just one thing I can leave an impression on with this episode is that Japan is the same way. There are 47 prefectures in Japan. Each prefecture has its own little special culture, has its own special food, has its own regional dialect, has its own history. And Japanese people see Japan like that. They see Fukushima as being like a totally different tourist destination. They see Aomori. They see Shikoku. They see Ehime in Shikoku, for example. Or they see Kochi. Or they see Miyazaki or Kagoshima or Saga. All these prefectures in Kyushu. Everyone is different. Everyone has their own history. That's the mindset that Japanese have when they're tourists. But when foreign tourists ask me, where's the best place to go in Japan? I say, look, you should limit yourself to maybe two prefectures and then find one prefecture that's really interesting to you. When you see Japan, you're trying to see everything as the whole country. You could never do that with the United States or Europe, right? See Europe. Europe is huge. So break down Japan like you would Europe. There's all these countries in Europe. There's all these prefectures in Japan. So, I mean, I basically want to give you the feeling or the thought that maybe we need to think about visiting Japan in a whole new way instead of just visiting the country and seeing it as cities, big cities. See it as regions or states. And each state has something that's really super unique. Akita has Kiritanpo (rice ball skewer) has their own sake. Akita has their own rice. Okay. Akita Komachi. It's their own variety of rice. Every single that's just Akita. And they have Akita beef. They have their own breed of Wagyu. They have their own dialect. They even have a second Hachiko statue, you know, in Odate near the Aomori border, which I saw on another live stream.

33:04 John Daub: So I think if you're asking me what to do for six days, I got to say to you, look, if you're asking me, I would pick one pre... I would go to Kagoshima and spend six days in Kagoshima. That's what I would do. That's what... If you're in New York, you'd spend seven days in Florida, right? You go to Disneyland and you'd be in Florida. If you're trying to do the whole country in six days. It's going to be really hard. Because maybe I think people are thinking about it too big. I don't know if that makes sense to you, but that's my thoughts on this. So Emma has a good topic. That would be great if we can understand the language. I don't know. I think if people aren't going to understand you in Kyoto, they're not going to understand you in Osaka. They're not going to understand you anywhere else. So I don't think it makes a big difference. I noticed that if you're patient, everybody will try to communicate with you in English. And if you have Google Translate, which is a free app, you can communicate with anybody if you just type in there and show them what you want to do. I think we have to use technology now to bridge the gap. And there's no place in Japan you can go and feel like you can't communicate. If you have a smartphone, you can communicate with anyone in the world because you have access to an app called Google Translate, which is free. And you can even verbally translate stuff. So there's not much of an excuse. And there's lots of third-party applications to help you translate. So there's no reason not to go out to the countryside because you're afraid you can't communicate. Just spend a little bit of money to get a pocket Wi-Fi for a week or get a SIM card for your smartphone at the airport, which is pretty affordable. You're going to have access to communication. Japanese people are one of the most helpful people you'll find. Even if you can't speak a word of English. That's the Omotenashi spirit. People see you as a guest. Not everybody. Like 99% of the people will see you as a guest to their country.

35:05 John Daub: And like I can speak Japanese. But when I came into the lobby, the person is hello. Well, you like people are very interested in making me feel welcome. The big mistake. Sometimes they're too helpful. The last hotel thought I would be more comfortable in a Western style room. So I had a bed and I much prefer to be on a tatami floor, not in a bed, but they have Western style rooms and ryokan as well. And some Westerners don't like the tatami. And I was like, you know what? That's nice that you're thinking about me that my comfort level. But I would prefer to have had a more Japanese style room. But sometimes people want to make you feel comfortable, sometimes too comfortable. Do you live with me? No, I was doing a homestay in Tottori and now I'm in Fukushima. Would you do a video where you go out and pick a random person to take to dinner? That's not a bad idea. I like that. I also like a lot of the ideas people leave comments in the YouTube videos. Leave a comment here if you have an idea. I love to hear it as well as if you have a comment on I read most of the comments. I also have a lot of comments on Instagram as well. But leave a comment. Definitely. If I don't get to your question, when does the biggest fish market in Japan close? Tsukiji that will be closing, I believe, this year or by next year. Koike-san, who is the current governor of Tokyo. Tokyo is not a city. It's also like a state. The governor of Tokyo, she closed the new Tsukiji down, which is in Toyosu, because they found poison in the sand and she did the right thing. I guess corruption had like they cleaned it up too fast without checking the area. And when she became the governor, she did an environmental check and found that it was poison. So they've been cleaning that up despite all the economic impact. I think she made the right call. And I guess it's going to be by the end of the year next year. Yeah, they're going to move Tsukiji to another area. I'll be there to cover that.

37:26 John Daub: Couldn't believe how clean. Japan puts a lot of countries to shame because of the cleanliness. People have this certain personal responsibility where if they see something in front of them, trash, they'll pick it up. And I guess in the West, we think it's somebody else's job. At least I did when I was in the US. That's the janitor's job. He's getting paid to do that. So he should do that. But here in Japan, when people see something that's a mess, they'll pick it up or they'll make sure they pick up their own trash. Not everybody. But like 99%. It's getting cold. You must be cold in Fukushima, too. Yeah. You know, the weather it started. It was snowing a little bit today. I was on the coast in Iwaki, which is warmer now on the foothills of the mountains. It's a lot colder here. You need a down jacket. These are some really great questions. And thanks for the super chats, guys. That's how I pay for the bandwidth. I appreciate that. Who's the mascot of Fukushima? I don't know. I know in the city of Aizuwakamatsu is Aizu Wakamatsu. And I did a report with him in the Super Spy episode on the main channel. Where in India are you from? I'm not from India. My mother is. She was born in Mumbai. Yeah. So she speaks Marathi and Kannada, which is the Bangalore dialect. Karnataka. I think that's the region and Hindi and English. So she speaks four languages. Not too bad.

39:03 John Daub: Is there any radiation there? I don't think so. I didn't do a check, but no, no. Fukushima is it's a huge imagine it as a state. Okay. When we say a lot of people's images, what the tragedy that happened on the coast there after the tsunami, that the utility didn't check that it had a backup power system and all that mess happened. Okay, that's on the corner there. That's really isolated right now to that area. I personally I don't 100% know, but I do know that I don't feel in any danger or sick or anything like that. I'm not. Fukushima is a very, very big prefecture. Okay, it's huge. There's Hokkaido. There's Iwate. There's Nagano. Fukushima is one of the big ones, and it's got mountains. It's got oceans. It's got plains. It's got everything. It's like New York State. Okay, so something that happens in Manhattan that doesn't really affect Buffalo. Okay, so when we say Fukushima, I think of the prefecture. Everyone thinks of that location where the tragedy happened. And I what I want to put in your mind is that there's places on this in this prefecture. That's as far as Tokyo, if you draw a line around it, or I believe it's about that big. It's a pretty wide area. You can drive from one side to the other in like two to three hours. Okay, so it's a pretty big prefecture. So, yeah, there's no problems in the Aizu Wakamatsu area, for example, or here in the Bandai area. All right. I don't think that there's any radiation, not anything more or less than would be in Tokyo. Okay, so don't worry about that. I don't want to go in too much about it because I'm not a professional. I'm just telling you what I think and I've heard. And yeah, I drink the tap water. I swim in the sea. I don't really have any worries about it.

41:14 John Daub: How cold is Japan in January? It depends. I mean, Hokkaido. Again, you're thinking of Japan as the country that it's like one place. But there's Hokkaido where it's minus 40 degrees, OK, with wind chill factors that are ridiculously cold. And then there's Okinawa, a tropical, well, a subtropical, almost tropical region of the world that's warmed all year round. So Japan on the whole has weather just like the United States from Maine all the way down to Florida, OK, with that in mind, Tokyo is four seasons. So it's very similar to, I guess, Tokyo would be similar to Washington, D.C., OK, so the weather in Washington, D.C. is very similar to what you get in Tokyo. It does not snow. If it does snow, it's very, very light and it melts the next day. That's Tokyo. Osaka is warmer. Do you think it will ever snow in Tokyo? This snow in Tokyo? I don't know. It usually snows once. We usually get one good snow, usually in February. But you never know. After Tokyo, what area of Japan do you recommend first time travelers? Osaka. We call Osaka the kitchen of Japan. I'm in Fukushima, so I want to say Fukushima, too. You should come to Fukushima because it's a pretty cool place. But Osaka as well. You know, go see my friend Kevin Riley there. Kevin is like the king of Osaka. So if you do go to Osaka, give him a shout out. He's got his own YouTube channel called Kuma's Kitchen. Give him a shout out.

43:22 John Daub: Kevin's really nice. He has I have basically right now no free time to do meet ups. I did one in Malaysia, which was awesome. I can't believe 15 people showed up to say hi. I thought maybe there'd be like two or three people there, 15 people. And I remember coming down, finishing the event that I was there to work and do. And there's like these people, they stood up and go, oh, John. Oh, man, I've never been so happy because it felt like I had a family that, you know. So that was a pretty cool feeling. So I'm going to do more meet ups, but just don't think I'm going to be doing meet ups for another month or so. I really appreciate the questions. That was fun. I know you have a lot of questions about traveling around Japan again. Six days or a week is not enough. If you want to come to Japan, take off two weeks because it's worth it. Number two, stay in a ryokan because it's worth it because you have to have that traditional experience. I'm in the lobby or in the lounge. I'm going to go down to the lobby. OK, let's see if the golden elevator works. Ha ha. This is fun. So sometimes every now and then live streams will go to a ridiculous level and end up being like an hour and a half long. Right. This could be one of them.

45:06 John Daub: Oh, here's the elevator. We're going on a field trip. This is how big this onsen is. OK, look at the map. This is how big this hotel is. Do you see it? This is the onsen. And you can see here I'm in this tower and there's a second tower. This is the onsen. I told you it was big, right? It's like a lake. This is all geothermally heated water pumped out of the ground. And then you can see it looks like a town. This is the first floor. All right. It's getting late. So there's nobody really down here in the lobby. Why do they have an American flag? How do you say Japan thing? It's called Las Vegas, Las Vegas. No way I'm going in there. If I go in there, they're going to make me sing or something. I'm getting out of here. Maybe I've got your pole machines. How cool is that? So there's a gift shop here and they sell stuff inside the onsen. Some local confections with green tea. Wow. Beautiful tree. Fukushima has one of the big. This is one of the biggest sakura (cherry blossom) trees in Japan. Anybody know how to play the piano? Look at the big windows. You get a real sense of nature when you come into the lobby.

48:27 John Daub: Do you want to see how cold it is? Oh, my God. It's raining. I could just about see my breath. It's pretty cold. Oh, my gosh. Ha ha ha ha. There's a look back at the hotel. I'm going back again. This is crazy. What am I doing out here? There's the sign for the ryokan. It's freezing. Are you cold tomorrow? Yes. Oh, yes. It's going to snow. It's going to snow. Thank you. It's raining. Tomorrow is going to be really cold and there's always a chance of snow. That's pretty cool. I didn't notice that. There's water pumping in the water. I can feel heat from it. This is onsen water. So it's warm. That's pretty cool. I didn't know that. That's where the onsen is. So there's an outdoor onsen. But this one here, I'm going to show you the map real quickly. So there's two buildings. This is Shofukan. Kan meaning like a building or yeah, building. Kan and Kafukan. Kan is a building. And there's the two towers. I'm in this one. I'm in the seventh floor. And on the 10th floor, there's a bath. Okay. It's got a window and you have a nice view. Today, it's for men. And then women are down here tomorrow. This is for women. So it sort of rotates.

52:05 John Daub: Now, there was a time a couple of months ago, I went to a bath and the woman, one woman didn't know that it had rotated. And that day was the men was there. So I walked into the bath. And right there was a woman. She had her entire robe off. Just her chest was out. And she was completely naked like a stranger. And she just went and like this. And I was like this. I thought it was my mistake. Like, oh, my gosh, did I get it wrong? No, no, no. She got it wrong. The worst part. And I went back out. I waited five minutes. I went back in. Of course, she left. The worst part of this story was that a couple of hours later, we're all like a community because we're staying there. I saw her at dinner. She was fully clothed. And I walked by her like this. I tried not to make any facial expressions. In fact, she completely ignored me and I probably would have done the same thing because I didn't know what to do in that situation to say hi, because once you've seen somebody, you know, naked, I guess you know them. Right. That makes sense. Like, you know them. Like I knew her. I mean, it was a complete accident and it was really embarrassing situation. But I don't know. What would you do? Uncomfortable and comfortable. Even though it's late, people are going to the bath. It's like a procession going to the bath. The women's bath on the first floor and the men's bath on the 10th floor in my building.

54:18 John Daub: I had permission today to film in the back. They only gave me 30 minutes. There's a 30 minute break when they clean the onsen, the baths. And they said, sure, you can go in there and film. This place is so big. I just I'm not going to do it. No karaoke for me. That's another episode. And I have 5% battery. It's telling me I got 5% battery. This is a great place to end the stream. Yeah, that was a nice adventure, everybody. Thanks for joining me for this fun, fun adventure filled with a lot of mystery and history. Yeah. So thank you. The public baths, they usually have a closing time. This one is closed at 4 to 5 in the morning, and then it's closed from 7:30 to 8 at night for cleaning. They told me. If I needed something to film and I didn't film it, I can come back at four in the morning. I'm not doing that. That's never going to happen. I'm going to go back. I think I filmed it up and at four in the morning. It's still dark. So I can't see anything still. So filmed this one at night. And you know what? Going. There's just two things that are weird. Being naked out in the snow, which is pretty cool. It's like, but, you know, you're completely naked and you're freezing. Like, ah, ah, ah. And then you run. You're into the hot water and your body's warm, but everything around you is like snow. It doesn't make it register. Like, why am I not cold? And it's all snowing and I'm naked in the water. To me, that's sort of like a surreal, cool experience. And then there's being naked at night in the bath that after being naked in the day for a long time, staying in a ryokan, you can do it at night and it's sort of I think a dead zone. Couples might be doing something in the late hours. So you have a CCTV camera just to make sure that no crime of passion happens. That's I guess the karaoke booth is good. It's getting a little randy over there, too. So thank you, everybody, for watching. I'll be live streaming all week while I'm here in Fukushima. I want to bring you a piece of this area so you can experience it. I like the live streams because that we can do it like this. I can see your comments and respond to you. And leave a comment below if you're not watching this live. I do look at the comments and read them. And these questions really help me make the content better. So all the feedback helps. Thanks, everybody. And see you tomorrow.