00:00:00 John Daub: Hey everybody, how you doing? I'm in the countryside in Hokitown. This is in Daisenmachi in Tottori Prefecture. I thought I would just spend a couple of minutes with you, just show you the beautiful countryside here. Check it out. Do you see this yellow golden looking crop? This is rice, and it's just about to be harvested. Most of the areas around here have already started to harvest rice. And up above there on the top of your screen is Mount Daisen. Daisen is the Mount Fuji of the West, they call it. Right now, the summit is engulfed in clouds, but every now and then, the clouds will blow away and you'll have a beautiful view of Mount Daisen.

00:00:56 John Daub: But you can see here, we're filming over here on the left side. There's the cameraman. That's the audio guy. He's taking some clean audio of a certain area. And then there's the director. And we're filming off of the street here. I thought I'd just take a couple of minutes and show you around. So while they go. A lot of the time, yeah this is an NHK shoot. A lot of the time when I'm out here shooting for this show, most of the time I'm just kind of sitting around. I'm either editing video inside of the, we have a special truck that we go around to locations with. Either I'm editing video in there. I'm making phone calls or setting up my own shoots. But we flew here at, I woke up at 4:30 in the morning and I went to the airport by taxi. We flew on a six o'clock flight to Yonago. And then right away we came out to here. And just a couple of hours later, we have sites like this, which is just incredible.

00:02:14 John Daub: That's rice down there. That's just harvested and drying. I think I can take you down there for closer look if you guys want. Let me take you down there. Hokitown in Tottori Prefecture. Just kind of a quick look at the countryside here. Hey guys, it's really peaceful, really beautiful. And I'm kind of digging the sound of the crickets. Just that light sound of nature.

00:03:11 John Daub: I'm going to try to take you down there for a little bit. Just to show you the last time I went out down into the fields. There was a big snake there. So I'm going to hopefully not discover the snake. All right, check it out. So you can see kind of just going to go into the field here a little bit. You can see the rice on it. Do you see that? So that's rice that's drying after being harvested. The golden fields that I just showed you. After it's dried, the farmer will take it down to a machine that separates it from the stalk. And this is the local way that they've been doing rice for a long time, putting it on poles like this. And you'll see this outside of Tokyo. You can't see this in the city of Tokyo, but unless you go to Okitama out to the mountains, but a lot of the countryside in Japan, you just see at this time of year, lots and lots of golden fields like this.

00:04:18 John Daub: Alright, I gotta hike up this mountain here. Lots and lots of golden fields. And if you're in Niigata or Akita, it looks like what would be like Nebraska of Japan. Just gold all the way to the from the Sea of Japan all the way to the mountains. And that's sort of the sight that we have here. Sorry, check it out guys. Just this view right off the side of the road. Nothing particularly special about this road. But we drove down this street. And then on the right side you can see this. So we stopped to get a picture of it. There's the road sign. If you guys are digging these like spontaneous videos from the road from the location shoots, hit that like button. And I'll know that you guys like it. So I'll try to do some more of these while I'm here in Tottori Prefecture. Now I'm gonna be filming here for a few days, almost a week. I'll be here till the 22nd or the 23rd. And then fly back to Tokyo.

00:05:43 John Daub: But the purpose of this is watch the NHK show. I can't really, I don't want to give it away. But it's gonna be a pretty cool show. But the reason I wanted to go live is just to give you a little taste of what it's like away from Tokyo. And you can kind of feel it in a live stream. If I edit this I have to put music in. But if I stop talking, the nature.

00:06:25 John Daub: I'm filming here. Here. Oh, a rice paddy field. Then let's go. They're gonna be filming this direction. I saw a snake last year. I was filming the ending to the Wagyu episode. And when I was filming the ending to the Wagyu episode at that place, a big massive snake had just, I mean I think it was like a python. Like it looked like, I don't know what it was. Just huge. And I freaked out. And I ran to the car. And never went back there again.

00:07:24 John Daub: Alright this is kind of a cool sight here. Alright see I had to hurry up because they're filming this direction now. See the problem with the blue car is that it's a blue car. And it just sticks out. So we called the car to move because we don't want a blue car in the background. That's pretty funny. There's a little commercial for you. Ah that's a beautiful sight. Look at all the layers of the mountains. Can you guys see this in HD? I hope it's a good resolution. 720p or something. But I can see like 5 or 6 layers of mountains as it goes deeper and deeper and deeper in the Tottori prefecture. It's really beautiful.

00:08:48 John Daub: I didn't really have much to say in my scene that I took right before. They just took me walking. I was just walking down this road. And they'll have a narrator just narrate over it for me. So the great thing about working with NHK is that you don't have to really, you have a team of people. And the team will usually take care of most of the stuff for you. Um you just, I'm just here to report. Like I research some of this stuff and learned about it and I have to get ready to ask people questions and get answers and make it interesting. This is interesting by the way.

00:09:25 John Daub: What's this? It's like a little log cabin. Pian Piano. That's the name of it. Pian Piano. A little log cabin look to it. But we're right off of the mountain and in the winter it says here that you need snow tires to go up there. Check it out. Double tire. Chains. Double chain. So if you have two tires you need two chains. That's what the sign says. I flew my drone here in a drone cast I believe a year ago. So if you want to see that you can check out from the sky but it really is beautiful. It's just nice. You know the best feeling is to be out of Tokyo and to be in a place like this just for a little bit. Now you can see why you don't want the blue truck in the background. So this is Hokitown in Tottori prefecture. And I'll be in Hokitown which is right off of Mt. Daisen which is right there. And I'll be here for a few days. I could do a meet up but I don't think there's any people who watch the show in Tottori right now.

00:10:56 John Daub: We have a lot of dead time. They're moving. They're moving to another spot. Every time they move I know that I'm going to have more and more time to be here. But it's neat. Whenever you have a person in the foreground of the shot it gives you like an image of how big the world is you know. See those little people walking by. You know Wang Yao Tan writes in here do I work part time for NHK. I used to do reports for them almost like two a month for some of the shows 10 years ago but I don't really do a lot of NHK these days. I don't do a lot of stuff for television because I'm working on Only in Japan. But when I'm working on a show I'm working on a lot of NHK. We scheduled this like six months ago.

00:11:48 John Daub: I'm trying to see if there's anything I want to drink. Nothing. I might could go for a coffee though. I could go for a coffee though. Well it's between emerald mountain blend and emerald mountain blend but it's got 100% junio. All right. Let's try that. And this one is hot because we have emerald. It's not an emerald mountain but we have an emerald color. So the coffee can goes sort of with this motif. Okay. to get out of the shot I want to make sure that I'm not in the shot I think I have known this director for a long time so I can kind of think the way she thinks so I know what she's going after here I better get out of the shot the great thing when you work with the same team over and over again you can kind of get an idea of what's going through that other person's mind another creator and that's one of the reasons why I when a team gets put together sometimes they'll pick me to be a reporter because I kind of get an idea of the sense of their creative creativity and so it makes it easier to work together make a good final product for everybody but it is really beautiful to be out here and away from Tokyo just for a little bit and then go back to the city these are rice fields scorpion core universe writes in is that a rice field yeah this is a rice paddy that is just about being ready for harvest I showed you down there if you look down there you can see the rice field and the rice paddy that is just about being ready for harvest I showed you down there if you look beyond you can see where those have been harvested by the farmer in fact the farmers starting to go down there right now to check the harvested rice and the golden when it gets to this color it's time for them to harvest or shikaku and they just they they cut it down probably by machine I don't they do it by hand they might they might still do it by hand here and then they had they let it out to dry but yeah this is prime for being harvested that's a lot of rice I can feed a lot of people they might they might still do it by machine and then they have to go to the farmer's market for other produces for these people just these two I think it's owned by one family but the rice fields here the harvest is now actually most of the places have actually harvested the rice already so the reason why we stopped here is this is one of the few places that haven't harvested yet we were driving around the area looking for places that haven't harvested that you can get that feeling of autumn that gold color and this is one of the only places available and I think that they've just asked the farmer to film them to film her which would be pretty cool and that means maybe I should I should go down there and just check it out and see if they want me to go down there and talk to her hey Kenneth thank you Kenneth Johnson this drink is sponsored by Kenneth Johnson thank you buddy oh that's good that's real good I had if you check out the Instagram feed I had a wagyu ramen and this morning I got a chance to talk with a rancher who who owns about 200 wagyu and I got to massage the wagyu again and get a chance to play with the little ones and saw one that was born 48 hours ago I saw a brand new wagyu enter the world that was really nice so I put all that on Instagram so if you want to check out look at the Instagram stories and I'll be putting up stories about that all day there's that blue van on the move again that's Mount Daisen for those of you who are in the Instagram community if you're interested in that those of you who are joining us right now they have rice I put this in the put this away she's checking the rice to see if it's dried that's what they were doing so she's got um little pieces of the rice from here that she took to sample this is the rice that's hanging to dry and to see if it's ready for them just to put it in the back of the truck and make rice I guess that's what's for dinner rice because rice is nice it's very quiet and I don't know like normally tourists don't come out here that's what makes this kind of special uh writes in shinkansen versus flights always wanted to ask this wow shinkansen versus flights I'm gonna have to say I'm gonna have to say um flights for me because I live here but if you got a JR rail pass if you have a JR rail pass go with the shinkansen because it's just cheaper if you're like me and you live here flights because it just makes sense to take the shinkansen to Kagoshima takes like 11 like it takes a really long time I think it's like 10 hours from Tokyo but a flight is 90 minutes and it's it's like 7,000 yen right so and the shinkansen is like $400 so make it doesn't make any sense to take the shinkansen unless you have a rail pass but if you have if you don't have a lot of time take that just fly because there's so many budget carriers that weren't around that weren't around like two weeks ago that are here now I'm supposed to be on break until 3 okay if they need me tell us about Peter Barakan and his shirts I did I talked all right when I went to Ogasawara I talked to Peter Barakan had made a show in Ogasawara like three months before me I want to make sure I get out of the way he made a show three months before me and we were talking about Peter Barakan with the guy was interviewing there about the history of Ogasawara by the way that episode is coming like like right away it's I just didn't have time to upload before I left here and Peter Barakan is such a gentleman I mean the people of the island of Ogasawara could not say enough about how kind and nice he was but they didn't mention his shirts a c100 you can see the audio recording audio but he does it away from the camera so you don't get dumb so you get cleaner audio the c100 still is a good camera if you have the dual the dual focusing it's HD so that means that this episode is gonna be an HD I love road signs whenever you go on a trip or you travel make sure you take pictures of the road signs road signs are good to have in a photo album to give you a give you the the placement of where you are Mount Daisen is just up there I like how they put it in in Korean to look at that and there's a golf course hotel lots of stuff around here Daisen Hills because that's like Omotesando Hills but at Daisen not sure I'm gonna try to look back at all the questions here um I don't know if it's Koshihikari each region of Japan has kind of a specialty Koshihikari is the most popular rice it's it I think it's just because it's the most delicious rice there's a car coming it's one of the most delicious rice is to eat so it's the most popular um variety of rice but I don't it's hard to tell miss your farmer usually it's written on the bag that's how you know oh okay all right now I know what he did here he's so this sign that they put up there it's telling you that the road is closed I guess at this time and they're gonna be doing a walk and I did this walk last year to see the autumn colors of Daisen so in in about a month from from now all the colors are gonna change to autumn colors like red and orange just like a fireworks show up on the mountain there you can see right now it's still green but when the turns color they close down the roads and you can walk no cars going through there just to through all of the canopy the tunnels of of colorful leaves it's really beautiful and I did this last year so if you take a look at the live stream you can see what I'm talking about but that's sign is saying when the festival is it's between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. the road is closed and they also use the ski lift they have ski lifts before the snow falls you can ride on the ski lift and it'll take you through all of the trees and you can and what while the ski lift is moving you can take pictures going up the mountain and see all the colors of the of the autumn on the mountainside which is really a good use of the ski ramp and it also brings in more tourists also brings in more tourists I thank you Matthew Burns thank you very much appreciate it so here's I'm just gonna pan yeah John is here Lynn Bloom Sahn yeah thank you and if you hear in Tottori come and say hi mhm that'd be pretty weird this is a field that's already been harvested you can see the difference there now in June during the rainy season these are flooded June July August it's usually flooded and then around September it starts to dry up naturally and then October it's harvested and now the [inaudible]. There's nothing here. Although the one under behind it probably belongs to another family that hasn't done it yet.

00:24:17 John Daub: Yeah, Tim, that's right. Tim has it right. All right, while we're waiting, let me just take you down and we can see, oh, those are the same farmers. They've moved on. So I guess they own all of these. I guess they own all of the fields here. They're checking out the rice that's drying there. There might be some snakes. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Then we'll stop here. He said that there's probably snakes here. Oh, no. But I like the sound. I've come here just to get the sound. Listen to it. Can you hear it? He said there's probably somewhere here. I don't know if there actually is a snake, but like 100 crickets, maybe more. I don't know. It's a nice sound. It's a nice sound. I would love to live out here. Snakes on a field. That could be a new movie from Nads McGee. I'm not looking behind me, PMX. Such a beautiful place, Tottori Prefecture. And I think if you want to get off of the beaten path, I made, I'm not doing a meet up with a snake. You got to be reading the live chats to actually experience what I just saw. But last time I was here, I saw a massive snake and it scared me. I decided I was never going to go into a field. I'm not going to go into a field. But here I am.

00:26:34 John Daub: So I did an episode called the Japan Night Train Experience about the Sunrise Izumo about three years ago, four years ago. I think it has like six million views on it. It's done very well. And that night train will take you here to this area, to Yonago, Matsue, and Izumo Taisha. Izumo Taisha is one of the most significant shrines in Japan, believe it or not. But the train will take you there. And this area of Japan on the Sea of Japan side is so beautiful. It's so beautiful. And what makes this really special, Daisen, is you can see the outline of Daisen, which they call the Mount Fuji of the West. And right near Daisen, just I think it's like five kilometers or less from Daisen, you go all the way to the Sea of Japan. And just five kilometers between the Sea of Japan and Mount Daisen. And that's what makes this really unique. It's just kind of this valley. That's nestled. And it makes it perfect for things like wagyu. Because Tottori won the Wagyu Olympics last year. And one of the reasons why is they just have a really incredible place here. Hey, Brock Kenneth, thank you. Whoa. Thank you very much, Brock. And Matthew Burns, best spot to see a metal band. Not here.

00:28:05 John Daub: One take is sort of OK. All right. All right. One take. OK. I've been called to do one take. So any less. All right. So I'm going to put this on a tripod and do the scene live, OK? So you guys can see what I'm doing.

00:28:40 Staff: John, do you need it?

00:28:43 John Daub: Do you need it? There's a snake. There's a snake.

00:28:51 Staff: Over here?

00:28:59 John Daub: From here? Oh, the snake. Straight here. Oh, the snake. Oh, the snake. Up there. Yeah, up here. Oh, wow. So go film here. Can you film here? Can you see that? Wow. OK. Go film there, OK. All right. I'm going to go film there. Hi.

00:30:52 Staff: OK.

00:30:53 John Daub: What's happening?

00:31:02 Staff: Yeah. Yeah, you go back.

00:31:34 John Daub: You can't sleep?

00:32:10 John Daub: Now I'm going to go, OK? Yeah, I'm going to go, film there. OK. See that? OK. Do you see that? Yeah, there it is. OK. I'm going to go film there. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Sorry. Work. Did you guys see me? No, I wasn't. You were kidnapped. Did you see that? The director picked you up. She didn't even know she was live. We totally punked her. I don't think she cares, though.

00:32:53 John Daub: So, I gotta go now. So, thank you so much for watching this live stream. This stream has been sponsored by Brock Kenneth for his amazing contribution. Which, yes, YouTube might probably take 30%. It's a gift. I appreciate it. It's what it is. It's what it is. Alright, guys. Thanks so much for watching this for 30 minutes. It's kind of a scene that you're not going to see anywhere else except on a live stream. Could have been boring as heck. But, hey, you know what? How often are you going to come to the roadside in the countryside of Tottori and see this? Right? I'll see you again. Thank you so much for hitting the like button. I'll see you guys again soon. Bye-bye from Hokitown and Mount Daisen. And the Mount Fuji of the West.