00:12 John Daub: Good evening everybody. I'm in Abashiri, northern Hokkaido. This is the very north of Japan and it's snowing. There's snow on the streets. It's icy. It's pretty quiet compared to Tokyo. In fact, it looks almost deserted on most streets. This is the center of the city, central Abashiri. And I'm in search of food. Where will I eat? What will I eat? What will I find? These are the questions I expect to answer on Only in Japan Go tonight.

00:55 John Daub: Wherever you are in the world—could be morning though—I'm hungry. I actually got back from filming at the prison museum here, which is one of the top sites in northern Hokkaido. I couldn't believe how many tourists were there. I got back to my hotel. I've been out in the cold all day. I got wiped out, went to sleep, just woke up. And here I am out here in the city watching the snow fall peacefully. Do you see it? Look. You see it in the light. Streetlight is illuminating a parking lot on any other ordinary day. This parking lot would be just an ugly urban asphalt site. But today, tonight, it's like a winter wonderland. Which is pretty cool. It helps me tolerate the amazing cold. In fact, my phone could die at any time because it's so cold—batteries and coldness don't work together.

01:57 John Daub: This is the main street. You can see it's pretty much empty. It's so main they have Christmas lights underneath it. Apparently there's a lot of restaurants down this street. Here's a look going the other way. Now, what do you see? A whole lot of nothing. What am I gonna eat? All I can do is go forward. Daniel Keenan, thank you very much for the birthday wish. It's not until another four hours, my friend. It's like 8:30. Wait until after midnight. But yeah, this is sort of an adventure. I've had a pretty good time. I've been here a little bit over 24 hours. I arrived yesterday. This morning I was filming all day at the prison. Tonight I wanted to go out and see if I could find some place to eat. I slept a little bit too long maybe because in this city everything seems to close around 4pm. All the shops—if I go off the main street it just looks really, really quiet out there. So all I can do is go forward and be in search of food. Just keep going straight until you smell it, and then take a right until you step in it.

03:28 John Daub: Yeah. That's how I used to say how we get from my university to Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan. Anyways, I'm starting to see some restaurants. There's some life in front of us. See up there by the cop car. He must know where to go. Should ask him. Excuse me, sir. Where's the nearest donut shop? Thank you, Ben. I will have a cup of coffee tomorrow morning. I seriously want to go to sleep. Whoa! Alright, I'm starting to see—this intersection is the intersection. If you can see here, there is a restaurant there. Okay, this is interesting. Thank you, Andrea. Thank you everybody, I appreciate it. Wow, look at this. This is the Okhotsk Yaki Sakana Set. The Okhotsk Grilled Fish Set. That looks actually really fresh. It's freaking nice. There's every single kind of fish, they've labeled it around here. And the Okhotsk is the name of the sea up here in northern Hokkaido, off of the Sea of Okhotsk. And the prices look pretty reasonable.

05:09 John Daub: In Japan there's a proverb: never whistle at night. If you whistle at night, that means you're gonna get robbed. And I just heard some whistling. Let's track down the source of that whistling. Where did that whistle go? It's funny that they're whistling, cause there's a police car right over there, right? Where's the source of the whistling? I hear music. I smell something grilling. Follow your nose. Wow. I know that color. It looks like meat. But they're using copyrighted music. That's a big problem. We can't use copyrighted music with the show or else it's gonna be game over. But I seem to have found restaurants. This is a good sign. That means there's a lot of hope for me getting some food tonight, despite all the other shops closed.

06:17 John Daub: This is interesting here. What are they trying to prove? What is that? You think it's some sort of ritual or some kind of cult configuration? Very interesting. Humans made that. Sometimes it's hard to understand what we do as humans. Alright. That smells really good. It's the smell of grilled meat in sub-freezing weather. I can't believe I just walked by there. The distances that I go for you guys. I mean look at the street. It's absolutely deserted. And there's 269 people watching this livestream right now. And if it wasn't for you, if a crime were to happen, I was to get mugged or something, you would be here to witness it and call the police. Do you happen to know what the emergency number for Japan is? If you come to Japan, what number do you dial if you want to call the police? What number do you dial if there is an emergency for an ambulance? It's not 811. It's not 911. It's 119. Ben, it's not 999. 119. Or for the police, you can dial 110. Now, everything in Japan is like backwards. Look at 911 in the US and 119 in Japan. What's Japan trying to say? They're saying like, we're different. We're not the same as everybody else. We're 119.

08:18 John Daub: That looks like a cafe behind me. Here's a game center. Here's three vending machines. It would stink to be a vending machine in Hokkaido. You're just always cold in the winter. This is Hokkaido Miruju. I've never seen that drink before. That's Hokkaido only, maybe. Boss Coffee Double Impact. Like one impact was not enough. You need two. Sounds like a movie title. All right. There's a couple of stragglers. He just jumped like a... It's from a Seinfeld episode. They tried to ignore me. How do you ignore a man holding a phone on a stick? You know, there's a point where if you try to ignore me too much, I know you're trying to do it on purpose. If you ignore me, if you look my way and smile, that's acceptable. If you look at me and then look away, that's suspicious. And those are some suspicious characters back there going the other way. There's a reason why they're going the other way. There's a man holding a stick with a camera on it, talking to it. I would walk away too. To be honest with you, I would.

10:03 John Daub: All right. I believe we found where the night is. This intersection. There's a pachinko parlor that's closed right there. And on this side, there is a restaurant. And they have it in English too. There's Miyaichi Yoshida Izakaya. That's written in English. I could see Yoshida is the first. Mi is three. Yoshida Miyaichi. So I can read the kanji up there. I like the music. Can you go in by yourself? Can you go into an izakaya (Japanese pub) by yourself? It feels really lonely, like pathetic. Like, hey, I'm here to drink and eat. And I'm just by... How many people, sir? Just one. Where do they put me? At my own lonely table? This would stink. I have to think twice about this. Do you ever eat alone at a restaurant? People looking at you? Do you ever eat in a restaurant and talk to a camera on a stick? It's worse. It's worse than eating alone. It's because people think you have imaginary friends. They think you're talking to some made-up thing in your closet. And maybe I'm getting better at this because when I was a kid, I also talked to made-up spirits inside, living in my closet or under my bed.

11:33 John Daub: All right. There seems to be a couple of options now. Look at the steam coming out of there. This one is Uomaru. Oh, and that there is a chain, Shirokiya. I am not going to Shirokiya. There's no way. If you would kill me, Jennifer would kill me. How dare you say that in a French accent? You go to Shirokiya on a day like... You're in a place with good seafood. I can't do her fake accent. Is that copyrighted music? I don't want to ruin it. It's hard when you go to a restaurant. The menu looks good. Look at the sashimi. Do you see it? Wow. It's like a tower. Hold on a second. Let's get a closer look. Wow. Watch the ice. Look at that tower of sashimi. Active premium. It's like on a stairway. Do you see this? This is incredible. It's like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Plus a little like stage. Oh yeah. I'm really digging that. I'm talking a lot just to try to fend off the copyright infringements that could happen because it sounds like copyrighted jazz music. But nevertheless, that looked really good. I'm into that kind of sushi.

13:01 John Daub: Feeling forever alone. You know, I'm actually not that lonely. I'll be okay. I do this for a living. Not talking to a camera, but I do traveling. Some of you might not know, but I backpacked to over 70 countries by myself. Just a backpack. And just went over the course of several years around the world five times. Not in search of anything except for maybe adventure. I always found that if you travel alone, you always make friends. It's easier to talk to someone who's by themselves than to talk with someone who's with another group. And if you go with your other friends, you probably never look outside your circle. When I was traveling in Thailand alone, I would always meet... You always hear other English speakers and people from England. They never really traveled alone. They had like these little circles. And I could never make friends with people from England because whenever you talk to them, they're like wary of strangers or something like, who are you? How dare you talk to me? I think I only have two or three friends from England that were backpacking. Most of the friends that I made were like from the Nordic countries and Germany and Australia and New Zealand. Very friendly. Everyone was pretty friendly, but the English were pretty tough.

14:31 John Daub: Alright. So I have to make a decision here because my stomach is really rumbling. Hello. Whoa. So where should I go and eat? I don't know. I think they're going... Wait a minute. Where are they going? Was that an invitation to go and eat there? It's very hard. It's like, what should I do? Should I go in there now? If I do go in there now, it'll seem quite suspicious. Like, what are you doing in here, right? So this phone is getting cold. I can't see any of the chats anymore. I apologize for that. So chicken on biscuits. Thank you. Follow the girls, he says. That's a good choice. Let's see what they ask for this. I don't know. She's not dressed for this. She almost slipped. The phone cut off there for a second. This menu looks pretty good too.

16:39 John Daub: Oh man. Sorry. We were buffering. I found a fix for this. Turn the phone on and off and then it'll come back on sometimes. They're having a good old time over there. So a bunch of people just left the izakaya and they seem to be having a lot of fun over there. Oh yeah, you saw that? There seems to be rabbits in this town. Okay. Somebody told me while we were offline that there's also ramen. And I'm thinking I might go to this izakaya tomorrow. Yara Izakaya Seafoods. See, I'm kind of wanting this. This is some sort of music from another country. But it makes me look good. There's yaki taraba. I guess it looks like crab, huh? And hokke. Which I had today at the prison restaurant. Abashiri hokke. Oh, nice. What is that? That's like crab and stuff. Miso soup and crab and something. This looks like crab croquette. Oh, wow. Alright, you know what? I'm gonna go in here. And I can't just start streaming. Alright? So I'm gonna turn the stream off for a couple of minutes, okay? Let the phone warm up. And then, cause it's gonna get cut off. And then I'm gonna turn the stream back on. I'm gonna see if I can get some food, okay? So, just hang out for a second. I'm going in there. I would follow the girls, but that'd be a little creepy. Like, oh, I just saw you on the street. And, alright. I'm gonna go in here, alright? It's strange music. Shami-san. Alright, I'm gonna go in here. Just, everybody stick around for a few minutes, okay?

19:02 John Daub: Really? Alright, I got permission to film the food for you. So, I've ordered some sashimi. Looks pretty good. We have one of each. This is maguro (tuna), tako (octopus), and salmon. This is all from the local area. I ordered this, but I forgot what I ordered. I guess we eat it with a little bit of shoyu (soy sauce). And a beer for your cheers, everybody. I made some friends here. Bye-bye! Bye-bye! Watch YouTube! Yes, yes, watch it!

25:16 John Daub: So, that consistency is super good. Check it out. Look at that. It's been breaded and deep-fried, and it's crispy because it's right out of the fryer. And you can see it mixed in. It's crab meat in with the cheese. It's so good. Let's do this. This is the last one. I'm gonna take a picture. It's just too beautiful to not take a...

27:35 John Daub: So, that's what I ate. I'm gonna turn off the livestream. And, uh, I'll join you after I've finished eating. So, stick around for another couple of minutes. We're gonna walk back around the town with a full stomach for once. Because I've been wandering around for a long time. Alright. It was nice to see these two girls. They were actually two university students. And, um, one of them that was sitting next to me was more vocal. She talked to me. Not as shy as the other one. And she's studying farming here in Abashiri. She's from Niigata Prefecture originally. And she's up here studying as a student. And she was asking that she wants to go to the United States to study. And I said, well, New York City would be the most fun. But she wanted to go to a place that was more friendly and local. I said, maybe Ohio. Which is where I went to school. Ohio State University. So, of course, I'm gonna push my alma mater. But, anyways, I'm gonna eat this. Just stick around for a little bit longer. And, uh, we're gonna wander back the streets of Abashiri.

28:53 John Daub: Boom! I know you want some of this. If you do, you gotta come to Japan and get it. We're back! Hi, everybody! So, very big thank you to the people at the Miyaichi Yoshida Izakaya. Very, very good food, as you saw. Very, very friendly people. Um, actually, the manager, I told him how it's so cold outside. So the manager gave me one of these heat pads so I could keep my hand warm. Actually, I'm gonna put this on the hand that I hold the gimbal on. Because my hands do get pretty cold. Now I'm gonna stumble my way back to the hotel. So if you're wondering how I can stop the livestream and then come back, I just literally turn the phone off. And then when I turn the phone on again, the livestream just continues, magically. That was pretty cool!

29:54 John Daub: So I come in and I'm usually a little shy to go into places to eat by myself. But it's not really a big problem. I mean, there's people who do that all the time, don't they? And, uh, I came in and I said, is one person okay? And he's like, sure! Come on in, have a seat. They were very friendly. This is an interesting looking restaurant. I've seen on the street so many different really interesting restaurants. And I think what makes these restaurants interesting it's the snow around it. And just the glow of the light hitting off of the snow, it just makes it look really cool, doesn't it? So that, the student, oh, come back here. Hey now. So the two girls that I was talking to at the counter, she said that tonight it's minus 12 degrees. It's not as cold as yesterday. Apparently it was like minus 18. And that's what the rumor says. Don't quote me, but yeah, very, very cold. This is Celsius for all of you Americans. Um, I'm American too, by the way.

31:14 John Daub: There's a lot of all these snack bars or hostess clubs. You see up here, these are all like clubs that you can go to. And I'm not going into them, even though it is my birthday tomorrow. Again, here is some more like clubs in there. And you can tell because see all the taxis? All those taxis are waiting for guys to come out after the club to go home. Bad dudes back there. So I'm gonna head back to the hotel through these really quiet streets. I featured in the show, uh, Gretchen Brown in Arizona. And she's not doing so well. So I wanted to give a shout out to Gretchen, who's on dialysis. She can't eat any food. And she sends me messages on how if she eats any food with potassium or something, it's like game over. So, I'm laughing because she has a sense of humor about everything, which is something that I dig. And yeah, Gretchen, a lot of people are pulling for you and praying for you out there. So, stay strong!

32:46 John Daub: Yeah, we care about the people who watch the show. So, I really appreciate everybody who's writing me. And, um, I can't reply to everybody. I'll be honest with you. There's just a lot of people who write. I don't respond very well through Facebook. Um, but that's another reason why I kind of like this Patreon. And, I know I'm plugging it, but to use it for good, to do something with it instead of just save it or try to buy a big expensive car, I think it's better to use it and invest it into the show, to make a better show. And Patreon is also a place where I can communicate a lot better, so I invest more time into that. It's only 24 hours in a day, and I can't do so much with it. That's kind of creepy. Like some sort of sinkhole. Does anybody wanna put their hand in there? That's really scary. What do you think's down there? I guess it's just hot gas coming out. I should probably not put my nose in there. It's a little creepy.

34:04 John Daub: That's a street that I just walked down. This is a pretty cool city. I'm really liking Abashiri. A lot of tourists. I met a girl from Germany. I met two people, very nice people, uh, Natalia or Natasha, and I forget their names, but they were on the bus. I saw them three times! Just bumped into them. I wonder if I'll see them tomorrow. So, I'm really digging this place. It's very, very cool. And cold. So, I wanna thank everybody for watching this stream and all the streams from Abashiri that I, and this channel. This channel, I'm gonna do a stream about this channel, um, because we're coming up on the one year mark, but this channel was a massive experiment, I'll be honest with you. I didn't think it was gonna be successful. It was just something that I wanted to do because people ask me to put more content on the internet. And, uh, I'm a reporter by nature. Just, and I actually, by profession in a way, cause NHK asked me, I've done lots of reports for NHK and other TV stations, but this was a format that I didn't think would be successful and there's like almost 55,000 subscribers to the channel and that's just overwhelmingly amazing to me after almost a year.

35:39 John Daub: Yeah, I think the ability to go live anytime, anywhere, and bring you with me on a trip is ideal because I often travel alone. For many people, you know, who can't walk, like my friend Gretchen out there, or people who can't get to Japan, can come to Japan through this channel. And that's really important to me to keep making this show. So, if you're subscribing and watching this regularly, that helps me to keep this channel going because I know that's what you want. Despite me putting ads and everything in there, that all accumulates to help keep me full time doing this and keeps me out here on the road while hopefully I'm doing the best job I can do in making it interesting. Colin, I think you can reach one million on this channel? You know, maybe by next year I'll have a million on the other channel, but I stopped thinking about subscribers and views a long time ago because I think it's about just making really good content. And if you do that and you're consistent, whether you're new to YouTube or not, I think you can be successful on this platform. And that's a mature platform like YouTube. YouTube's only, what, 12 years old? I think 2006 it was founded. And a mature platform like YouTube, that's saying a lot. There's a lot of people who are making content. A lot of it better than what I make. A lot of it better than this livestream. But what makes YouTube great is that you can go from nothing to a million. And I've seen people do it. If you have an amazing idea and you have an ability to communicate with people through this medium, I think you can have a very successful channel. And you can make a living out of it. And that's crazy.

37:40 John Daub: I'm still kind of amazed that I'm walking on snow here. Not asphalt. Literally, I've been walking and crunching on crunchy snow. There's a 7-Eleven here. I'm gonna go in here to get something to drink. Then I'm gonna start editing the video that I took for the main channel. But this Only in Japan Go channel has been a massive experiment. And I found that it sort of has an impact on a lot of different people in different ways. And that means a lot to me. If you keep watching, I'll keep making it. How's that for a promise, okay? You keep watching this, I'll keep making it. We're gonna go to some amazing places this year and beyond. This year, thanks to Patreon, I have enough budget to go to some really cool places. I'm gonna go further than I went last year, if you can believe that. I'm gonna go to every corner. Before 2020, I'm gonna go to every single corner of Japan. And I'm gonna take you with me to some of the deepest, farthest, coolest, most unique places. Not just food, but all sorts of different types of themes. Adventure! Because now I can afford to do that bungee jump or that skydive or something thanks to the contributions through Patreon and the Super Chats. All this, this isn't going into my pocket, this is going back into the show. It's going, it helps me live and I know some people go crazy when they see a $100 Super Chat. That's going back into the show, one way or another. And it means a lot to me to produce that, it means a lot to me that this channel is successful. That people watch the content. And I'm sometimes speechless when I look at how it's increasing, but for me, I'm just having fun.

39:38 John Daub: And if you're enjoying this livestream, I'm thinking, should I do a midnight food run? Should I go inside the 7-Eleven and do a midnight food run? That seems wrong. This is my area 7-Eleven for Abashiri. They do make good coffee right here. But, just want to say thank you. Thank you! And I hope you have a good day and night wherever you are. I'm going to save the last 20 seconds inside a warmer place. I think I'm gonna take the camera into 7-Eleven and I better not. Anyways, have a good night everybody. Good day. And I'll be back tomorrow. I'm gonna do another livestream tomorrow. Hope you enjoyed it. See ya. I'm going in just for you. That's what you do. You do it for me.