00:00:00 John Daub: Hey everyone, this is Ogasawara Chichijima, a 24-hour ferry ride, 1000 kilometers out in the Pacific. This is the island I'm on. I just got off my motorbike, which is why I have the helmet on, and I kept it on to tell you the story about it, which is pretty cool. What a great day already. It's about lunchtime. I'm doing this live stream because I want to introduce you to the place that I'm staying. It's right here in front of me. This is Townhouse Mitsu, the first hotel on the island. In fact, this might be the first hotel in Ogasawara. It's been around since it was handed back to Japan in 1968.

00:45:00 John Daub: The owner, Kenny, I asked him if I could film the hotel. He's like, okay, sure. So the owner, Kenny, told me that this used to be also San Francisco, California. I'm going to show you a little piece of history at this hotel. So I'm also going to take you in the room. We're going to keep this live stream kind of short, so you might want to watch till the end because it's going to be kind of fun. Actually, there's Kenny going right now. This is the hotel, and it's also in the front a store with loads of vending machines. This probably has the best selection of beer on the entire island just for those who drink beer, and tons of drinks.

01:30:00 John Daub: That's Kenny, the owner. He came back to the island two years ago, but he grew up here. He knows so many things about the island. It's been amazing to listen to his stories about the history of this place. A lot of them I'm not going to tell you because I want to save that history for when I show you the main episode. This is where I've been staying for the last two nights. I'll stay here for one more night, and then I'm going to another location. Because you have to book hotels here at least a month in advance. I was lucky to find a place like this.

02:15:00 John Daub: Let me show you a little bit of the store. There's a post office little box here that you can leave your stuff; they come twice a day. The post office is always working. The typhoon is not headed this way, although typhoons often hit this area. This is the shop, called Mitsustore. Right now he's doing ohiru yasumi (lunch break). But you just saw—he's not actually sleeping; he went out. That store is open in the morning and in the evening, with lots of vending machines. I love the choice of drinks in the vending machines that he has, and then from here on out it's mostly beer. You got to give him credit. There's one tobacco machine. You're not allowed to smoke in the rooms.

03:10:00 John Daub: Oh, this is my motorbike by the way, guys. Let me introduce you to my motorbike. This is a Suzuki 50cc. It's enough for me. I only have it until the 9th. How I got it is top secret. But I eventually got a motorbike. I think if you really want to get something you can find a way to do it. On an island small like this there's always going to be one extra motorbike somewhere. I'll tell you about it in another live stream some other time. But this is the motorbike that I have until the 9th, so for the next four or five days I'm going to have a bike to explore. It's got a little dolphin on it. I like that. It's a nice clean bike.

04:04:00 John Daub: Accommodations on this island are really nice, but they're also really rare, especially in the town. This vending machine is my favorite here by the way. It's got craft beer. Check it out. Just like what—out here 1000 kilometers away from Tokyo you can get a pretty good selection of beer. Down here here's an umami IPA made by Yo-Ho Brewery. It's made with bonito flakes. That was pretty cool. I tried it yesterday; it was good. Kind of an eclectic mix of drinks. Me like. I'm going to take you inside and we're going to explore. I'll also tell you about the other accommodations available on the island and some things that you're going to need to do.

05:07:00 John Daub: You can see here Townhouse Mitsu. Now I want to show you this before we go inside. Right here is a piece of history. It's decades old but it tells you the address: FPO San Francisco California 96630 [?]. This means that this area here used to be considered San Francisco, like a possession of the United States, going back decades ago. Of course that zip code is no longer active but it's pretty cool to know what used to be America. Alright, let's go inside now. I'm going to show you the room that I'm staying in and a little bit of the inside of the hotel. It's very clean. There's the honor system. You got to take off your shoes at the genkan (entryway).

06:31:00 John Daub: So it's easy access. You can also when you're finished put your shoes up here in the box and take some slippers. Now if you're hungry in the middle of the night you can just take whatever you like and put the money in the box there. You're on the honor system and then microwave it and you have hot water. You can even take a magazine and relax here in this lounge. It's pretty comfortable. There's a washer and dryer in the back. I'm going to do the laundry tonight which is pretty neat to have that here.

07:23:00 John Daub: This is the oldest hotel and I'm going to tell you a little bit about that story when I go inside the room. I love how the floors creak; reminds me of my grandmother's house. I'm staying in room 13 and you don't actually have to lock the doors here. No one's going to go in. It's simple. It has air conditioning up there. So this room is a lot cooler than the outside. That's the suitcase that I brought in. I got some gifts in the bag and some clothes and scuba diving gear. I have my MacBook Pro to do some editing. I always bring an extra electrical cord to plug in all of my stuff for charging because I know there's only two outlets. That's my camera bag in the corner and then that's what you get.

08:27:00 John Daub: This cost me with breakfast about $65 and I think it's actually a pretty good deal when you think about it. Most accommodations start at like 10,000 yen for hotel rooms with air conditioners and this place is a bit cheaper because maybe it's a little bit further from the seaside. You've been watching the Instagram—you know I get to walk through a tunnel to get here but to get to the restaurant it's only like seven minutes walk so it's not really a big deal and I'm actually really happy that I stayed here to start. Because the owner Kenny just has so much information about the island and that kind of information is so useful when you're making a YouTube show like this to highlight the history—you got to meet people. So I've met the right people now after a few days and I'm on the right track to make a pretty good episode for you guys in the main channel.

09:28:00 John Daub: Yeah it's $65 is not bad and that includes breakfast—a nice tatami (straw mat flooring) room actually. The space is just perfect for one person. If my wife was here I'm sure she'd be able to fit. You've got a calendar, some hooks—I like it. I've been pretty comfortable here; it smells like tatami, it has a nice feel to it, it's just enough space. You also have a closet. This is the first time I'm opening it—there's extra futons and blankets in case you get cold. It never really gets cold here though; the temperatures are pretty reasonable even in the winter. Now this is the first hotel that I was telling you about because when Japan changed over from the United States to Japan in 1968 I believe this is how the story goes.

10:22:00 John Daub: NHK was the first non-military to come to this island. When they came here they realized there's no hotel on the island and it was at that time the leaders of the island said well we're just going to have to find a place for you to stay and they decided on this place. Townhouse Mitsu historically was the first hotel and was the only hotel for a very long time and the history goes back to when NHK first started to come here. Now NHK comes here several times a year different shows mostly for the domestic channel but most recently I believe Peter Barakan was here to highlight Ogasawara and that episode aired on NHK World last week. They didn't stay here; they stayed at the newer place called Patinn which is beautiful. Patinn opened two years ago and it's got like this art deco kind of theme—it's all cement but it looks so clean but the thing is the price is three times or two and a half times the price of this.

11:44:00 John Daub: That's further from the town center a little bit but they have a shuttle bus that goes in there so it's not a big deal but still I think I lucked out and found a really cool place. There is a TV—granted it's small but I haven't used it. I've been so busy; I'm editing stuff here all the time. There's a bookshelf if you're going to stay here for long term. I'm leaving tomorrow so I don't have enough time to put stuff in there and a refrigerator which I put some blueberries in that I brought from Tokyo. You can see there's some chocolate-dipped blueberries in our water. Yeah so that's what this room looks like. What else we got here—there's some phone numbers for delivery services, takkyubin (luggage shipping) services. He put some stuff on the door; there's a light switch—has a beautiful yellow glow. Typical room. There's a breakfast room downstairs on the first floor.

12:44:00 John Daub: There are 15 rooms here and it's packed right now. There's air conditioning in the room—you're going to want to have that just because it's so hot walking around. It's nice to settle in there. I spent a couple hours yesterday morning writing the script for the episode right there—it's pretty cool. And then there's the view from the window and it's pretty neat. You look outside and I'm still like I can't believe I'm here. Right in the center of your screen you can actually see the seaside—that's where there's kind of a bay where all the boats park. If you take this incline it gets pretty steep—there's a 10% grade. You gotta walk up the hill and there's some pretty cool stuff to see up there—a garden. As you get up higher on the hill you have a nice view looking down on the town. This is just I can see why they settled here in 1920—it's a beautiful harbor, a very nice place to live.

14:11:00 John Daub: 12 days is not enough—I could stay here for three weeks and I'd be so happy and I've only been here for about a week. This is my third day and I'm loving it here. Let me show you—there was no toilet or shower there and I don't mind sharing with everybody. It's extremely clean; everybody takes responsibility for themselves and make sure that they leave it cleaner than it was before and I love that about Japan—everyone just keeps it cleaner than it was before and the system just works out. There's a hair dryer, clean sink—it always has soap in there. And then there's a shower—this is the shower room. I've used this several times because you're always sweaty. It's immaculately clean and it's a community shower—everybody uses it, it's so clean. I usually just shower because I'm so tired at the end of the day.

15:49:00 John Daub: You can tell when somebody's there when the slippers are outside the door that means they're inside the room. So I can take you down one more flight of steps—I love the feel and the sound of the floorboards. There's a washer and dryer, breakfast there every morning—it's nice, they cook really good food. I think Kenny or his wife makes this really amazing omelet and yesterday there was like some kind of omelet pizza—I don't know what it was but it was really really good. I love the old stairs—reminds me of my grandmother's attic. Going upstairs—really steep steps. There's another toilet here once again, another bathroom and yeah this is a laundry machine and I'm gonna be doing the laundry tonight.

17:36:00 John Daub: They do have rental cycles—you can get it for one day for 1000 yen. If you want an electric bike it costs like $20, but like $18 for three days—that's really cheap. And if you want a human-powered bike you can get it for one month for $30 and that's pretty good too. Why buy when you can rent? And this is where I've been working on my computer here, just kind of chilling out. The reason why I don't go to the beach is because the wind is so strong out there. Here it's kind of sheltered and really nice. The birds are chirping in the morning and it's nice and cool around 7 to 9 a.m. When you come back from scuba diving you can hang your stuff out here. I haven't started the scuba diving yet but I will tomorrow. And you can hang your wetsuit and things like this out here—it dries pretty quick.

19:14:00 John Daub: We've been having some rain lately. So it's kind of neat to be out here and you can listen to the pitter-patter of the rain on the roof here and still be sheltered. I like that—you can enjoy a nice storm. Out here on the floor on the ground on the street is the manhole cover which I showed earlier. These are two dolphins. There's coral on the bottom and then there's the waves above and two dolphins going up with big smiles. That's pretty cool. This is the manhole covers on the island—these are the main ones. There's also another one with whales on it which are really beautiful.

20:16:00 John Daub: Of course I'm putting the GoPro on the scooter and giving you a kind of a stabilized view of the landscape going by. You can go up the hill and you get really nice views of the city—it's about a 10 minute walk if you keep going. There'll be a cliff that overlooks the town and it's just stunning. And you can see that on the main channel episode when I upload that in a couple of weeks. For the rest of the day I'm going to be going around the island taking B-roll and then I'm going to go try to get some shots of restaurants and food and get permission to film. I've been building into this episode. I filmed the opening to the episode out on the beach this morning—it took me an hour because I wanted to get it right. So you got to nail the opening—it's important to do a good job with the opening.

21:14:00 John Daub: And right now we're back where Kenny's shop is. You can see there's snacks in there—he's got all this stuff. How cheap—you can get a bottle of Corona or a can of Corona for $2.80. This is the same price that I pay in the city and it's got to come here by boat so they should charge more. I'm just saying—if I were them I'd charge at least 10% more because these things got to travel a long way. And this is such a tropical place. Let me just take you out here and you'll just get a sense of what this area is like. And the last thing I'm going to do is show you the tunnel.

22:01:00 John Daub: Straight ahead you can see the tropical trees—it's just so beautiful here and it's so groomed. It's very different from Aogashima. And I think the fact that it takes so long to get resources to Aogashima and everything goes through Hachijojima—that's what makes Aogashima kind of rougher. Here there's a boat once a month but it's a bigger boat and that boat pretty much is the lifeline for the economy here. It's beautifully groomed—it's just such a beautiful island and that's what I love about this place. They really care about the nature around them and you're going to see this in the main episode—they really take care of it. Now this started off as a whaling town and now it's a complete opposite where they're taking care of the whales, if not protecting it. And now the whales no longer fear the humans. It's the Galapagos of the East and why I didn't know about this place for the last 20 years—I'm kicking myself that I didn't come here earlier.

23:37:00 John Daub: So this is Mitsustore and Townhouse Mitsu—history going back as the first hotel on the island. And I'm pretty happy to be staying in room number 13—lucky 13. To get here it's pretty much a straight shot from the ferry. I brought all my stuff and wheeled it and it only took me 5 minutes to get to the hotel. Unlike Aogashima, Chichijima has more traffic lights because Aogashima had one and you didn't even need it—they just did it to show the school kids that in the world there are traffic lights. All around you'll see signs like this introducing you to the wildlife, to the plant life. I can't stress enough how much the people just love their home and that's how you know that people are just happy.

25:13:00 John Daub: There's a road sign up there—Kiyose Park and Patinn which is the other hotel, kind of the new hotel. You want to make a reservation like 2 months in advance there because it's very popular. And here's the tunnel—the creepy tunnel that I've been having to walk through to get to the town. I'm not sure the story—it could be the US military or the Japanese military bored it through. But I can tell you one thing—the US military had some secrets placed on this island and I might introduce it on the main episode. There were some secrets on this island that nobody knew about, and that might include the Japanese government as well. I walked this tunnel and on the end of the tunnel that's where the town starts—the ferry pier is right at the end.

26:35:00 John Daub: When you make your reservation a month in advance it's hard to know what are the best places to stay. I like this place—it's been around the longest, the owners are friendly. The owner speaks English—Kenny speaks pretty good English. In fact a lot of people on the island speak pretty good English, especially the people who are over the age of 55 because they were here when the United States possessed the island. Which is why a lot of the locals have Western names too—a lot of people have Western first names and Japanese last names. It's pretty cool—I love that. It's cool to see a diversity of people. A lot of local people don't look 100% Japanese—they look mixed. But the thing is this has always been a town that's very accepting of outsiders. They're just friendly and open.

28:05:00 John Daub: I thought Hachijojima really takes advantage of the tourists—they jack up the prices. But here I never get that feeling—I just feel like we're all here together, part of nature. So there you go—that's Townhouse Mitsu, kind of an introduction to what hotels are like here. I've got another 9 days on the island so there's a lot more adventure. I don't know if I'm going to have time to go to Hachijojima on this trip—there's just too much here to film. You have to book well in advance on these islands so just keep that in mind everybody. Booking.com and some of the other websites list these hotels here but it's better if you call them because I don't think Booking.com works good here. Not all places accept credit cards—you got to pay in cash. There's like 3 ATMs on the island—one by the ferry terminal and one at the post office.

31:28:00 John Daub: No convenience stores. There's at least one clinic and one or two doctors here. But if you get seriously hurt or have a heart attack you're probably game over. That's why a lot of old people are not on the island—they go back to the city where they can get the care that they need. Usually when you get to around 60 to 70 years old you go to the mainland because they can't care for you well here. If somebody does have a really serious accident there's only one ferry a week typically. And if you do have an accident this is why I'm being real careful with the motorbike—wear your helmet, don't try to be a hero. The ferries are once a week and if you have a big accident the Japanese Self-Defense Force will fly in and pick you up. I don't know if that's covered by insurance—you're gonna be helicoptered out.

33:30:00 John Daub: The speed limit's 40. What do I like about Japan? I love the safety, the food, people are friendly. Everybody has a sense of personal responsibility—that means they clean up after themselves and often they'll leave an area cleaner than it was before they used it. It's really a nice culture and the people and the food and the history is so interesting. There's a guy named Mano—I'm going to introduce him in the main show. He's the one who helped me get this motorbike. I'm going to put a link in the description. He's a drone pilot here and he has some of the most amazing videos of the island. He fixes shows for NHK and other TV networks. He speaks good English—he lived in Hawaii. Very professional drone pilot—his footage is amazing.

35:20:00 John Daub: I'll take you back to the room and I can show it to you. Mana no Moto—mananomoto.com. Guys go to mananomoto.com and you can see such amazingly beautiful photography. He has amazing drone shots—literally I'm looking like wow. He's been here for 25 years, I've been in Japan for 20 years—he's been on this island for 25 years, he also lived in Hawaii for 18 years. It's so cool just meeting people like this—you have to get out of your shy bubble and just talk to people and that's how you find stories. This was a good video—I hope you guys enjoyed this, it gives you some insight. Thanks for the good questions. If you guys subscribe to his channel and watch his videos and give him some comments he's gonna freak out because he doesn't have many subscribers. Just say hi from Only in Japan—he's gonna be pretty excited.

39:46:00 John Daub: Hit the like button if you like this content. I'm going to get ready to get on the bike and I'm going to start to film. I have my drone right here—there's one area that I can film the drone with legally. The other places I need a permit or I need to do it from a boat. So the drone laws are a lot stricter here and it was Mana who told me about the laws. The laws are different here than the rest of the country because this is a protected area—it's a national park. You have to follow the laws or else if I upload a video that has illegal drone footage the video could be wiped off of YouTube. The best way for me to do it is to do it properly and then the video will be up there forever—you don't take shortcuts. You can't film the drone in the town for example—you can't film from certain points. You can film from the sea anywhere but you can't film from the land which is protected. You can't film over 150 meters high—the drone always has to be within your visual sight.

42:52:00 John Daub: Japan has some of the strictest drone laws. They don't want the drone to fall on somebody—you need insurance. There's lots of reasons. The animals are protected in Ogasawara so if you injure an animal you're going to jail—they have very harsh laws protecting the animals. Animals might have more protection here than people but the animals have protection here. You can't do what you do in Japan—the animals here are very respected and protected not just by the law but by the people. And that's what I kind of dig about this island—people have a harmony with nature that you don't really get in a lot of other places because they live amongst it.

42:55:00 John Daub: Alright guys that's all I really wanted to say—we've gone longer than I expected. If you have any questions once again leave it below in the comments. Click the like button and I'll be on the island for another nine days or so so I will see you in another live stream. If Kanae is watching—hey Kanae I'll call you tonight. Alright guys see you everybody. You guys get a nice good look at the beautiful Townhouse Mitsu. If you want to stay here just call ahead because even this place is booked like a month in advance. Stay away from room 13—that's where I was. Just saying.