00:00:14 John Daub: Greetings, everybody. Hello from the center of Shikoku in Kochi Prefecture, pretty much in the mountains. Hi, Eric. How you doing, Glenn? Nice to see everybody. Aloha.

00:00:26 John Daub: Aloha. And above me right here are Japanese koi nobori. Koi nobori are these really beautiful wind socks that you see at the end of April, and they go through May. Usually they'll go through Golden Week, and you see it for the first couple of weeks in May, and then they go away. They kind of represent spring. And in May, it's usually quite windy. These koi nobori come alive. And as you can see, when the wind hits them they dance along the pole. They come in various different sizes and they're very beautiful, especially out here in nature. You don't see these in Tokyo. If you're coming to visit, you won't see them in the city like this, and there's loads of them. This is a canoe and rafting zone, Kawarako. I put a link in the description. We're going to take you around a little bit here.

00:01:23 John Daub: At first I thought I would show you these beautiful koi nobori—look at them flying. This is along the Shimanto River, the Shimanto-gawa in Kochi. It comes from the mountains and goes all the way to the sea. The Shimanto River is the last clean, limpid river in Japan. It's not been dammed—it's all natural—and it's kind of a special place to all Japanese. It's the 10th biggest river in Japan and the biggest in Shikoku.

00:01:57 John Daub: Let me take you up this. Welcome back. There's not really great signal out here in the countryside, so we're doing the best we can. I hope it is in 720p. The lighting is really good—it's about 3:15 p.m., we have lighting coming from the side—and this beautiful shot of some koi nobori in Kochi Prefecture. There's some down there, and this seems to be a place where you could camp.

00:02:44 John Daub: Again, for those who missed, I'm in a place called Kawarako, which is along the Shimanto River in Kochi. We're pretty much in the center of Shikoku, not too far from Ehime, which is another prefecture. But this one is where I'm shooting about this river. And it's the last limpid or pristine river in Japan. And it's very special. Yeah, I guess if you're doing laundry, nosh, you would like to see this because naturally dried carp in the wind. It's really beautiful.

00:03:20 John Daub: It's like if I go over here, though, the 4G stops and then I lose the stream. So I'm handcuffed to here. You can actually see the Shimanto River down there on the bottom of your screen. And if I take you up, I think you'll be able to see it. Let's walk down here. Take a look at some of these other... Don't go over there. I have no intention to. But I will take you inside of this roadhouse, which looks very nice. It's extremely scenic. Very scenic place.

00:03:59 John Daub: So you can rent canoes, and we rented bicycles here. But you can rent canoes and you can bring them down here and take them towards the river. So that's where I'm going to take you to take a look at the Shimanto-gawa, which is really special. I'm surprised we have any signal at all down here. Oh, look—they're setting up a tent here from Kagawa. There's some canoes over here. And we're going, if the signal will allow us, out here to the Shimanto River, which is so cool. It's such a faraway place for a lot of people. I think this might be the first time even for Japanese to get a chance to see it. It's so famous around the entire country, but not many people come out here to see it.

00:05:02 John Daub: Wow. And a river runs through it. Oh, that's Legends of the Fall. Who was in A River Runs Through It? I thought Brad... And if you fall in and drink a couple of liters, you might end up with a healthier body from all the minerals in there. I do apologize for the lag. I'm taking you down here. I just want to show you this river. Oh, look at the water's dancing because of the light. Yeah, we did lose the video signal. It's hard to walk on these rocks here. All right, I'm taking you over. Just a couple more meters. I'm not going to take you all the way to the water unless you want to.

00:05:52 John Daub: Ah, all right. Well, all the other YouTubers show you around Tokyo—I'm going to show you this river with Minecraft quality. This could be Minecraft. You really can't tell. Look at the way it's glittering. The water's glittering on there. It's kind of like this emerald green color. It's really beautiful. The river is low—they didn't get a lot of snow this year, so there's not a lot of water melting off right now. But generally I think it's about five meters higher at this time, and when the rainy season hits it's very hot.

00:06:29 John Daub: All right, let me see—I gotta go to the next location too, so I get a lot of stuff to film. I'm trying to make the story of the Shimanto River. Now you can see the cleanliness of it—look at this. There's a little color to it, but it is the cleanest river in Japan. This may not be the clearest stream—I'm talking about the live stream I'm showing you right now—but it's the cleanest river, and I love the sound of the birds chirping. It's just been two days of non-stop birds. Go take a look at the Instagram—you'll see some of the pictures. They're absolutely stunning. If you want to see it in full like 4K, go to Instagram because they're photos and they're very high quality.

00:07:46 John Daub: I think that for Japanese, especially here in Shikoku, they're doing as much as they can to protect it because they know how valuable it is to have a clean river. In the 1970s and 80s, as Japan was booming—the go-go period of Japan after post-World War II, the economy was booming—a lot of the rivers in Tokyo became seriously polluted. I think it started all the way back in the 60s. And the Sumida-gawa, especially in the city of Tokyo, stunk. The Futako Tamagawa, the Tamagawa River near Futako Tamagawa in Kawasaki, was seriously polluted. It was nasty. And it wasn't until the late 90s, early 1990s, that they started to change it. And then these days, it's much, much cleaner. But here in Shikoku, we really want to protect the nature.

00:08:46 John Daub: I want to protect this rock. This rock has been sitting in this same spot probably for thousands and thousands of years. This is your family down there. But now it's time for you to move and try something new, like me in my rental car. So you, Rock, are going to go to a new location, to a new family. Are you ready? He's got no mouth on him. Rock is now hanging out with an entirely different group for the next thousand years. And I did it. I feel the power of the Shimanto River.

00:09:23 John Daub: All right. So I'm going to take you in through the office and then back to the car. And I got to make my way back. But I'm so thankful that we got a chance to see a little bit of the Shimanto River and the koi nobori. Free the little rock. Hashtag free little rock. Oh no, that's going to really mess up people in Arkansas. Free Little Rock. What's going on? All little rocks. The population of this rock bed is 10, 20, 100 times more than the entire country of Japan, probably.

00:10:14 John Daub: All right. So we're back. Last look at the Shimanto River as I head back to humanity where people are camping. Hope you enjoyed this. We're going to take one more look at the koi nobori on the way back. And you see these once again, for those joining us—you'll see the koi nobori. They're Japanese carp windsocks. Just at this time of year, they come out at the end of April. You see them over the tents over there. And they're here till about the middle of May. And for me, they signify spring. Some kids playing. They're nice. If I had kids, I'd want them to play out here.

00:11:22 John Daub: Look at these. These are nice tents. There's some koi nobori up there. Yeah, Boys' and Girls' Day—I believe that's 5-5, which was last week. Whoa. There's a ton of canoes. We found the canoe town. And a ton of people have been canoeing and kayaking the Shimanto River. Beautiful place to camp. If you are looking for outdoor activities, there's no better place than here in Kochi because it's all nature. And to get from the ocean to the mountains, it's like 50 miles. You get to really beautiful mountains, and then you can get to the coast in like 75 kilometers or something.

00:12:16 John Daub: Ah, thirsty. Oh there it is—Kawarako. That's the name of the place. Kawarako bus. This is what it looks like. And there is the Mark X! Mark X. Foreigner is driving. Watch yourself. Peace as he plummets into the depths of the abyss.

00:13:09 John Daub: And here are the bicycles that were rented. The great thing about this bike is the seat is so slippery. Your butt just goes up and down it and you can't control. We should have gotten one. Look at this. This is the one that we are riding. It's a really wild ride. But you can rent these. They're 15 dollars or about 1,500 yen from the Kawarako. And the only way to get here is like by car. I would love to go kayaking but you know what? I don't got time and there's one right through this door. You can see. I'm gonna get a drink. I heard that they have some nice stuff in there but I'm gonna get some veggies. Whoa! Log truck! It smells so good! That smells so good! Look at that big log! Awesome!

00:14:26 John Daub: Every day that a log truck pulls up and imagine you're driving and this one just starts toppling over. Kind of stink. Don't touch my Mark X bro. It's a lot of logs. This is from not too far away. So the logging industry is quite robust here.

00:14:53 John Daub: All right folks. I'm getting a water or something. Somebody created an icon from our Discord server. They could be from Gretchen watching. Oh they got the peach water here. And the nashi—the Japanese pear flavored water. And then just regular water. I think I'm okay. There's no Suica out here by the way, just in case you were wondering—there's no IC card usage out in the countryside. You're gonna have to use hard cash.

00:15:34 John Daub: All right folks. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you enjoyed this live stream. There's the koi nobori over there behind the building. By the way this place has showers. So if you do go riding all day you'll be able to take a shower here. Look at that green in the river. I love this. Have a great day everybody. I'll see you at the next live stream. I mean Kochi for another day. I leave to go back to Tokyo tomorrow night. Greetings from Egypt. I think it's a little bit hotter there but we have now hit spring in Japan and it's glorious. It feels wonderful. So see you in the next live stream and make sure you click on the subscribe button. And if you want to get updates go to Patreon because that's where I always put the link before I start the live stream. And then we're going to have a Discord server. You can get that—that's available if you're on Patreon right now. All right, see you everybody. Have a good one. Bye from Kochi as the Mark X rolls.