00:00:00 John Daub: From Abashiri Prison. This is the prison museum. Used to be a working prison, now it's just a museum. And I was here. This is the gate. I was here inside there for over six hours filming. They let me out for early release because I was on my best behavior. And I'm taking the bus back to the city.

00:00:23 John Daub: This restaurant right here had real prison food. I'm not talking about just normal food that looks like prison food. This is the same food that they cook in the prison, which is just a couple kilometers down there. The proprietor of this place let me fly my drone in the back and I got some amazing drone shots here at the prison. This is the bridge. If you want to see this, I'm making an episode for the main channel, so I'm not gonna cannibalize this show by doing a live stream in the prison, but I'll show you the bridge here.

00:01:11 John Daub: This is the prison bridge that people would walk across when they were incarcerated. It's pretty much this bridge is the walk of death. Because I'm in the middle of nowhere and this is sort of like Japan's Alcatraz. Literally, there's nothing here. When I had my drone up there, there's absolutely nothing around this area except for the lake. And it's freezing. This bridge spans the Abashiri River, which flows along the outer moat of Abashiri Prison. To enter or leave the prison, one must surely cross the bridge.

00:01:52 John Daub: Reflection in the river, I straightened my collar and crossed that bridge with the intention to wash my heart clean. It is not known by whom or when the bridge first came to be called Kagamibashi (Mirror Bridge). Yeah, that's not as good as my friend Peter von Gomm's narrating point, but it's not too bad. It has been cold. Luckily, today was not a very cold day. I mean, it was cold, but not super cold like yesterday where my face hurt after being outside for a few minutes.

00:02:26 John Daub: I want to tell you about this museum. This was one of the coolest experiences that I've had. I never thought that a prison museum could be this cool. Any museum for that matter. They've done an awesome job of bringing this place to life. Here are the hours. So right now it's October to April. It's open 9am to 5pm. And right now, it's the biggest that it's been. I got here over six hours ago. And I'm still here. Let me out for good behavior. But we've got a lot of snow here. I'm going back to the city. There's a bus coming to pick me up.

00:03:14 John Daub: Now the bus leaves every 30 minutes or so. But it's not reliable. There's the prison entrance. The bus will come through there. The prison bus to take us back. I thought this would be a nice time to share with you the experience of taking a local bus. Because what are they going to do? Tell me not to film? They probably will. I'm just going to try not to do it. I brought a lot of luggage. I've got a lot of camera gear. This is what I usually travel with. A backpack full of lenses and batteries. And then this has the camera, tripod, lights, stands, all the other stuff that I use.

00:03:54 John Daub: Here's the bus schedule. As you can see, there aren't that many buses each day. This is the February schedule. It starts at 9:30 in the morning and every 30 minutes until 4:30. If you are here at 4:31, you're going to have to sleep here or make the long walk home. Because there really is not much here. It's a Japanese bus stop sign. Usually red like this with the writing on it. Very cool. And any moment now, the bus will be coming through that gate to take me back to the city. Freedom!

00:04:37 John Daub: Here's some things that I learned from the prison museum up here. And I'm going to start editing this video tonight because it's just super cool. What I liked about this museum and what I learned. Oh, here comes the bus! I can tell you on the way. Here comes the prison bus. Out for good behavior. I've been waiting for you.

00:05:23 John Daub: I didn't expect the bus to be this crowded, but it is. I'm taking up two seats. Bye-bye prison. Good riddance. The gate, the tower with the rifle. Bye-bye prison life. Hello city life. Tonight I'm going to try to go and find some restaurants and then film in there. Try to bring you some of the local foods from this area. It's really good food.

00:06:40 John Daub: Where were you just now? We went to get the cultural... Oh, the Ainu... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I know them. They're from... They're from Indonesia? Oh, yeah. Sorry, what is your name? Ali. Natasha. Oh, they're from Indonesia. They came... They were on the bus when I arrived in Abashiri City from the airport. So, that's pretty cool. It's a small town. It's easy to make friends here. Pretty much everybody who's foreign is a tourist.

00:07:14 John Daub: I asked the proprietor, the manager of the Abashiri Prison Museum and he said, why don't you have any foreign staff? You could do tours in English. You get more people to come. They said, there's nobody western living in Abashiri City that could do that. So, that's a shame. The bus fare from the prison is 290 yen.

00:08:17 John Daub: Do you see this lake out here? I guess this lake is naturally hot. See you later. Stay warm. Thank you. I just got off the bus. So, it's 290 yen. But because they went to the Ainu Museum up north, so they're probably paying less. 140 yen.

00:08:43 John Daub: How do you get on the bus here? Let me show you this. Down here, this yellow box, you take what's called a seiriken [?] (boarding ticket) and it'll have a number printed on it. And that number corresponds to the board here. You see number one, two, three. So, the number of the ticket that you take is the price that you pay. Pretty cool, huh? They make the announcements where the next stops are in English, which is even cooler. Yeah, this is my warm hat. That's cool that they make the announcements in English and Japanese. And we're on the bus riding into town.

00:09:37 John Daub: So, if you escape from the prison, you know, you ran towards town, you can hide in one of these houses maybe. It's so beautiful. The next stop is the real prison. That's the museum. This is the museum. Real, you can see it out the window. Maybe there's the prison. That's the real one, that's where real inmates are. I wasn't really incarcerated, I was working, but the real prison is right here. I guess these people went to the real prison, they got family there maybe.

00:10:38 John Daub: See, they grab a ticket you see and that ticket will say on the board how much you pay. Right now they have number four ticket and the number four ticket is 140 yen. That's how much they're gonna pay and as you go further and further the price changes on the board. It's nice to get out of prison while still daylight too. I didn't see Toby in there. Toby is not the kind of crow that's going to hang out with. If we were in prison what should we eat? We could eat ramen, we also have izakaya (pub), we also have sushi. Those are the three options that are really popular here. The announcements are loud.

00:12:00 John Daub: It's kind of fun just to ride the bus like this. 335 people on the bus right now, that's how many people are watching. Butter ramen would be good. One of the reasons why I came to this prison was because they serve real prison food. Actually I didn't pay for it, they let me eat for free because I was filming it. That's pretty nice of them. The food is the exact recipe, the exact food they just send it over to the prison restaurant to serve to the tourists. So I think it was about seven dollars. For seven dollars you get miso soup, rice, a piece of fish and then two salads. They're small, very small.

00:13:04 John Daub: Now we're getting in front of Abashiri Station. Yeah, thank you Nathan for the super chat, thank you everybody, I appreciate that. We're going to put it to good use tonight at the restaurant. Oh there's some traffic now, this is what downtown Abashiri traffic looks like. Now look, oh here's the station, this is JR Abashiri Station. This is where you'd come by train if you're arriving. I'm going to the bus station which is near my hotel. A lot of people get off here.

00:14:20 John Daub: One of the things I wanted to say, the prison food here is pretty amazing because you can get the real prison food. But one thing that makes this museum really unique is that they have replicas of the cells that you can actually go into. I wanted to see what Japanese prison cells look like. How big are they? How much space do you get? Is the toilet in there? What do you have? Can you have a TV in the cell? Do you have books in the cell? How hard is the life? Are they like gangs like in the movies? You know, like the dudes that like other dudes, and then it's dangerous and you always have to watch your back and hold the soap. How do they shower? But they don't shower, they have baths here like once and the guards are always watching so nobody gets sexually attacked in jail like they do in America.

00:15:26 John Daub: I didn't see any people who could build ships or anything like that. I was talking with the proprietor, the manager, and we were having all sorts of fun. He watches Prison Break, the drama from Fox in the US maybe about ten years ago. You laugh because you know how different American prisons are to the prisons here in Japan. Now Japanese prisons you can't go in there and film. I actually asked a prison but they said there's no way with the privacy laws. So the next best thing is to go to the Abashiri Prison Museum which allows you to go in and film.

00:16:00 John Daub: A lot of people don't know about it but they're not allowed to go in and film. Me to film because I called a few weeks ago to get permission. You need a permit and they let me film in there. In there I can film the cells and how people live and get an idea. Now it's not the exact prison but that used to be a prison so it's pretty close to being authentic. And some of the worst people because this is like Alcatraz, just nowhere to go when you escape.

00:16:33 John Daub: You can get permission but you have to pay and you have to pay a lot of money. They don't let you in just for free. You know if you want to film in a real prison I don't think you can get permission. You can't even get permission to film in a real prison. You can't film in a police station for example. You have to set up a stage and make a fake police station in order to do something like this. So you can't make this type of dramas that you think you can't hear in Japan that we do in the United States. Even though the taxpayers pay for the police and stuff, it's not open to entertainment which is a shame. Because I'd like to see some like cops in Japan, you know ride-alongs and stuff. I'd love to do a ride-along and see some domestic disputes. But we don't have that kind of stuff in Japan like in the US.

00:17:33 John Daub: This museum though for me it was worth the fly here just to film that. But there's so much more and because I got done late I can't go to the icebreaker today. I'm going to go tomorrow morning to the icebreaker ship and try to film on the ship. I don't have permission to use my drone which kind of stinks but hopefully I can ask and get that.

00:18:04 John Daub: The next stop is the Abashiri bus terminal. So I gotta get my money together, it's 290 yen. I should have done that before. Ah, thank you. And it's as easy as that. Bye-bye bus driver. Thank you for your hospitality. This is the bus terminal and I'm back in downtown Abashiri, Abashiri bus terminal.

00:20:08 John Daub: Now it's good to have exact change and to know how much it is because there's usually a line of people behind you when you take the bus. If you don't have exact change you can use the change maker but while the bus is moving or when the bus stops you can go in and then get the change and collect your change and then get the change ready. So when you exit the bus you put in the exact change you can get off the bus really fast. Change makers on the bus, very cool. If you have a 500 yen coin it'll make enough change where you can get the right change to put into the receptacle. You have a thousand yen, it takes notes and then it'll give you a 900 yen and then 10 yen and you'll be able to put the exact change in there. It's a pretty cool system but it's not easy because you have to understand: take the ticket when you get onto the bus, hold on to the number, know what number you are and on the board there's this panel and the price changes according to the ticket. That's your proof that you got on in there, that's the price you pay and it's really sort of complicated if you're not used to it.

00:21:18 John Daub: Yeah that's a big bag. Oh baby and there's the bus stop. So there you go that's the end of this live stream thanks for joining me. Abashiri City has announcements. Thank you. That's the bus stop. Oh, there's a cop. Alright, so there you go. It was a warmer than usual day. Still below freezing, but a warmer than usual day here in Abashiri. So I hope you're staying a lot warmer than I am. Woo baby!

00:21:56 John Daub: Alright, so I'll join you again on a livestream in a few hours from a restaurant somewhere. I'm gonna try to pick something nice so we can share a nice dinner together. Tomorrow's my birthday. So I gotta do something special for that day too. This is a pretty cool city. I'm glad that I came. I wanna thank everybody on Patreon for making this trip possible. This streaming adventure, all of this trip, the hotel, the air flight, the food is all because I have a Patreon page and people have been giving to that. And I'm really thankful for everybody. So I wanna say thank you directly to those people on Patreon. And I'm gonna do a special livestream, question and answer for Patreon only supporters on Friday. I'm not sure exactly what time. But before I check out of my hotel.

00:22:48 John Daub: So this is how I work. This is a glimpse into how I make my show. Because I don't have a cameraman, an assistant, a staff, anything like that. I just do it myself. And instead of complaining or over planning, I just go and I do it. And this morning before I started the shoot, I met with the proprietor, the manager of the prison museum. And went over the plan of what I wanted to film. And he said he watched the show. He liked the content. He said that I do a good job of showing a positive side of Japan. And he let me film. He probably would not allow other YouTubers to film. Because I contacted him in advance. And I have a channel that has very positive informational content. He allowed this to happen. But he usually wouldn't allow people to come and film in there. Because he's very concerned about the image of the prison. I guess all wardens are. And you have to be very responsible about that. But it's also very hard to control social media. So he was very appreciative that I called.

00:24:05 John Daub: So I guess if you do want to film at the museum, or at the prison, or anywhere in Japan, if you call ahead and get permission, it opens up so many doors. He showed me around to things that I don't think I would have known if I hadn't had his help. And I'm very thankful for that. So yeah, you definitely need to have permission before you come and film in Japan at certain places. It makes your world, if you're a YouTuber, it makes your world a heck of a lot easier. And the content a lot better.

00:24:32 John Daub: Alright everybody, I'm going to say goodbye. I'm at the hotel. Have a nice day. I'll see you later tonight. If you're around or not asleep, I'll be streaming a couple more times. So see you then. Thanks for the happy birthdays everybody. Not quite there yet. One more day to go. Goodbye 43, hello 44. Oh man.