00:00:01 John Daub: Hey everybody, welcome to Hiroshima. We are in the Orizuru Tower building just across the street from the Atomic Bomb Dome, which you can see now in the center of your screen. Check that out. This building is pretty new, about two years old, and it gives really nice panoramic views of the city of Hiroshima. There's the river, and this bridge here is what the US used as a target because it was so easy to see from the sky. Now it's a main road that goes through the city. If you hang a left, you go to the Peace Park, which is right here. I'm going to take you around a little bit, and if you stick with me for a couple of minutes, I'm going to go upstairs to the balcony. They have a really nice terrace. You're going to love this.

00:01:03 John Daub: All right, let's take a look right here. I have a couple of stories to tell you that I learned today. Now this is what the Genbaku Dome (Atomic Bomb Dome), or the building that you see that's in ruins, looked like on August 5th, 1945—a day before the bomb went off. And this is what it looked like the day after. The ruins are right there, and this building is called the Genbaku Dome in Japanese or the Atomic Bomb Dome in English. It's now a reminder of that day because it's just a couple hundred meters away from the epicenter, or hypocenter, where the bomb was detonated 600 meters above ground. We almost have a beautiful sunset, and I want to take you up to the balcony terrace that they have here, which is just beautiful. But let me show you where the hypocenter is. They have some nice history along the walls here, but it doesn't compare to right over here—that's the Peace Museum. This is where you go in and see the city. They have an amazing exhibition of what happened, what the city looked like before and after, and all that happened afterwards. It's kind of devastating because it's not just the buildings that were devastated, but the people and some of the stuff that happened afterwards. It's a pretty tough experience—you have to be ready for it emotionally. But it's a very good museum.

00:02:59 John Daub: Here over here is where you can see the hypocenter, and I learned this today—I'm doing an episode on the main channel for this. So this is information I'm sharing with you. Hey, William Alexander, thank you. Hey, John—it's my birthday today. Happy birthday. Happy Tanabata—today is the 7th of the 7th of July, 7-7. This striped building here—do you see it? It was 600 meters above that striped building that the bomb was detonated. It didn't hit the ground; it detonated 600 meters above and created all sorts of damage. Well, you know the pictures—you can Google it. It's just an awful sight, a particularly violent day in the history of Hiroshima. Hiroshima has been defined by what happened in its modern history, not by its ancient history. It's kind of a sad thing, but it's now part of its history. You have to embrace that, learn from it, and even move on from it. And that's sort of why I'm here.

00:04:01 John Daub: So this is the floor below—now I'm going to take you up to the terrace. You're gonna love this. Right? This is the Orizuru Tower. All right, they're closing this off. I think you can make origami here and then throw it into this pit and see it fall to the ground. It's sort of cool. This is a pretty interesting building. Let's get out of here. All right, check this out now. So I'm going to go up to the terrace now. This slide is very, very cool—you can slide all the way to the bottom. This is a kid's dream come true. I'm not going to slide for you today, but I do love the steps here made of wood. It's just such a cool building, and you can look above the city of Hiroshima. That's just special. All right, we're gonna loop around a little bit. Level 9—this is a video game. I'm on level 9. That's the top level. This keeps you cool.

00:06:08 John Daub: All right, you're gonna love this. I'm gonna get a drink here. They have a bar that no one seems to be going to. Where is the bar? Is the bar closed? I'm gonna take you upstairs here. So check this out—this is the Hiroshima Orizuru Tower, Hiroshima Hills. Check this out for impact. Eh, bar mo shimatta? (Is the bar closed?) Shirobosu. (Closed.) Ah, zannen. (Too bad.) Oh, that's a shame. I was hoping I'd be able to get a drink or something before I go back. This terrace is stunning. It's a cool place to chill out. One of the drawbacks though—and it's kind of a big one depending on your budget—to come up here. It's 1,700 yen for this observatory, I guess you can call it that. That's about $15. I don't know if it's expensive or not, but if you have a passport, they say it's 1,000 yen or about $10. So it might be worth it to you. But the good thing is that you can come back as many times as you want during the day. They stamp your hand like you're going out to a club or something. You show them your ticket on your hand and they'll let you in any time during the day. So if you come in the morning, you can come back in the evening for this.

00:07:48 John Daub: And although there's this net probably to keep the birds out—you never know if someone wants to fly in here—you do get a nice sunset. The reason why I took you downstairs before I came up here was because of this net. But you still get a pretty nice view. And there's the Genbaku Dome, the A-Bomb Dome, which was, I believe, an industrial promotion hall or something. I don't remember my history too well. But it's a nice place. There's so many interesting things about it. In fact, I learned today so many things that I didn't know about, and I used to live here. So many things I didn't know about inside this park that aren't in guidebooks. So I'm looking forward to making this episode for the main channel. And the city has changed over the last 20 years. I was here for the first time in 1999. I lived here and then came back a year later and lived for another three months. And it's been a really good experience. I really love this city. It's one of the most livable places in Japan because everything is just close. You're surrounded by mountains. Do you see the mountains over there? These right here in front of us—that's Miyajima, the island of Miyajima in the distance.

00:09:19 John Daub: Miyajima is about 40 minutes by streetcar or about 15 minutes and then a 15-minute drive, and then I'm going to take a ferry ride to get there on JR. And it's a beautiful stay. I wish I was on the island right now, but I'm here in Hiroshima to film this—the Peace Park and the stuff that happened, the event that happened on August 6th, 1945. Everything changed that day here. I'm looking back at the view here—it's just really nice. It looks like something out of a fantasy movie. It's really chill. So you can stay here all day for that price I just told you, and you can get some pillows like those dudes over there and just chill out. They close the bar—it stinks. Because I wouldn't mind buying an overpriced drink. Note to management: keep it open five minutes longer. So let's walk around. It's about a 270-degree view up here. It doesn't go all the way around, but the other side there's not much to see except for maybe the station.

00:11:20 John Daub: So this is—that's where I used to live. You see this building right in front of us? That is the Hiroshima Municipal Gymnasium. That's where I used to go to work out 20 years ago. And then in the distance there, you can see Hiroshima Castle. It's not really noteworthy—I don't think it's in the top 10 of attractions in Hiroshima, but it's there. And if you just want to see a castle and you don't have much time except to see Hiroshima, that's something you can do. It's okay—it's not famous for anything in particular, but it's part of the city. I got so many stories from Hiroshima. After—I don't know—about 10 minutes away from the sunset, I would go out drinking with my friends. Probably did—you see right here? This open space is where the Hiroshima Carp Stadium used to be. They used to have the games playing right in the center of the city, and they removed it about 10 years ago. They started tearing it down and moved it to another location. But this is where the stadium used to be. So I would watch a game because it was so easy to get tickets and really cheap. And then everyone would go drinking out here—the entertainment district. And then afterwards I would walk back at like 11 p.m. and walk past the Genbaku Dome. And it always—I might have been a little tipsy, but it always brought a kind of tear to my eye and made me reflect on life right there. I would walk a little bit slower around that building every time. I didn't go drinking out that much, but must have been a couple dozen times over the many months I was living here.

00:13:03 John Daub: And then I would walk across this bridge and hang a right right there at that intersection, and follow the river all the way to Yokogawa, which is about a 20-25 minute walk back to my house. And my house is in that area over there where the massive buildings are. When the bomb detonated in 1945, just about 120 meters behind us, the impact went all the way down to the mountains here, you see. And that was all ash—everything was burned all around the mountains. Sadly, that's one of the reasons why they picked this location, because it was surrounded by the mountains that you see in front of you. And I don't know—could have been because it kept the radiation from getting out, or kept it in. I don't know. What I do know is that not that long after it, they did surrender, and the US forces were here. A lot of the pictures came from the US military that had jeeps going through and taking pictures. And that's what we have as the records. If you go in the museum, a lot of the credits for the photos come from the US military.

00:14:22 John Daub: And this is the main street that goes by tons and tons of shopping—it's called Hondori (covered shopping arcade). There's an indoor shotengai which I used to go spend a lot of time in when I was living in Hiroshima called Hondori. And at the end of Hondori behind the park is Okonomimura, where I've been eating okonomiyaki for the last 20 years as well—up there at Shinchan and some of the other restaurants. It's really nice. It's pretty cool, isn't it, this building? Okay, so about five minutes away from the sunset—I'm gonna sit down, chill out a little bit. Oh, there's a streetcar—tons and tons of streetcars. I love these little streetcars. I got some stories about that too. So during World War II, after the bomb drop, within two or three days—extremely quick—they had the streetcars running again. And that was a sign of pride for the city of Hiroshima. When the streetcars were up again, the tracks were still here. But to get everything fixed and the debris removed from the tracks and start running again helped relief workers come in. It got people to come in and offer assistance. So it was a big help to have the trains and streetcars running again in the city just a couple days after.

00:15:52 John Daub: And from what I learned from the museum, the biggest problem afterwards when everyone was burned was that they couldn't drink the water. Nobody had water, and by drinking the water you would ingest the radiation and it would kill you a lot faster. So people were very thirsty that day—they were told not to drink the water, and there wasn't any water to go around. It's not like we had bottled water back then. So for a day or two there was nothing to drink. And those who just couldn't bear the thirst and drank didn't last very long. Those that could endure could. And there are still some people that are alive. I interviewed a survivor who was in Kure, the next town over, and looked out and saw what was happening that day—the color of the clouds in the sky. He came in here and assisted with helping out the city afterwards, and just his story and hearing it firsthand really puts everything in perspective. You can see pictures, you can even see video of people giving testimonial accounts of what happened that day. But it's not the same when you sit across from somebody who was there—it really brings the event right in front of you in a real way. He was there with his eyes—the person in front of me had seen what happened in all those pictures and all that history I'd studied. It's just unbelievable. He told me how he looked out the window and saw people burning, the flesh—just the story. I don't want to crush you because of the beautiful sunset, but that happened and he saw that.

00:17:48 John Daub: I'm going to move back and sit down. There's some people here—they've staked out the ramp. So they've got the ramp covered. But yeah, you can get pillows and stuff. And in fact, if you order lunch at the restaurant down there, you can bring it up in this really nice box that you carry. They put little portable tables that you can carry to sit on the steps and eat your lunch. But yeah, you want to sit on the ramp, I guess, because the sun—I'm going to sit on the ramp here because the sun is over here. This is the Orizuru Tower building, and it's new—about a year or two old. The great thing about it is that it gives you really nice long views of the city of Hiroshima. It's really in the center and above it all. And wherever you look left and right, you can see that the city of Hiroshima is beautiful, just surrounded by mountains. When I lived here, as I said earlier, and that's Miyajima in the center—the mountains that you see, Mount Misen. And then we're going around—the Inland Sea is over there. You can see all the way to Shikoku. But it's a beautiful, beautiful place. The location is perfect, and I loved living here. Hiroshima was—I think this is the town I would love to come back here and live in Hiroshima again. It's such a livable city. Everything is close—it's compact. Like Tokyo is so spread out—it takes you 30 minutes to get everywhere. But in Hiroshima you can walk everywhere in 30 minutes. You can get everywhere by streetcar, by bus, in 10 minutes. So to me it was just a little bit closer, a little bit easier to get around than Tokyo.

00:19:48 John Daub: And you know, the one thing I asked myself is that a lot of this is a hot place for tourism—a lot of tourists come here. I don't know if it's because of the bomb or Miyajima or both, but it's amazing how many tourists are here in Hiroshima. I walked around today and just— of course a lot of people noticed me and I got a chance to take pictures with a lot of viewers of the show, which is kind of nice. They found me and said, "Hey, aren't you that guy?" I could be—I am. Take a picture. But it's nice to see all the tourists here, different faces from different places. And it wasn't like that 20 years ago—it was a different city. If you saw foreign faces, they were usually US Marines from the base in Iwakuni. So I had a lot of friends that were US Marines back in the day, 20 years ago. In Tokyo I do—Mount Fuji, the biggest volcano in the land—but in Hiroshima, I don't think so. If you do visit Hiroshima, I think you'll like this. You can stay in this building—I heard it was open till midnight.

00:21:25 John Daub: Crystal wrote in that the atomic bomb is not so powerful—I would disagree. Any atomic bomb is powerful—any bomb is powerful, you know? And the one they dropped, you can't compare it like that. It wiped out like 100,000 people right away. And back then the population wasn't that big, so 100,000 people—that's a big mass amount of people in seconds. And then afterwards the damage that happened—if you're talking about power, what was even worse than what happened on that day was what happened over the course of the next 20 years: people sick, leukemia, cancer, slow, painful, hurtful for the families. Now I'm getting into the stuff that I learned at the museum—that was, as far as I'm concerned, the most powerful of all of them. Because it was the only one besides Nagasaki that was used, and that was the most powerful of them all. Too many people lost too much for too long. I talked to locals and asked them why they don't hate Americans. Because people said I've been asked this, and I got a pretty good answer. And I will tell you in the main channel episode. I'm putting the tripod on this because I'm going to see if I can sneak a shot with my main camera for the main channel episode so you guys can see the history. So I'm going to put you down right here. You're now sitting where I was—on this deck. It's kind of cool, huh? And I'm going to go over there and just take a picture of this. Okay, don't go anywhere.

00:24:35 John Daub: Because of the net that's here, it's very hard to get a good shot out of this. So you have to go down to where I started this live stream. If you want to take a look and get a nice shot, you have to be down there—just one floor lower. It's nice here, but it's not. Oh, there goes the sun—see that? Do you see that now? There you go. We're going to watch it as it just goes between the net here. Ichiban Moose, thank you. Hey, Tim—you're welcome. We're just seconds away. Looks like just pixels. The mountain ate the dragon—dragon dark fire right in the mountain swallowed the sun. Yeah, it did. Yesterday when I saw this, Hiroshima has some beautiful sunsets, maybe because of the mountains around it. But it turned out like a pink purple cloud—the sky was so beautiful with the clouds. Maybe we'll get a little bit more color. But what I see right now is really beautiful. For those joining us right now, there's the A-Bomb Dome, the Atomic Bomb Dome known in Japanese as the Genbaku Dome. It looked different in 1945 than it does today—if you look at the pictures, there's no green, nothing. And since then a lot has grown here. And the Peace Park is the reason why there's so many trees—because they said that nothing would grow here, and yet it does.

00:26:54 John Daub: There's a tree over there called the Phoenix Tree, and it was in the blast zone. They said nothing grows here, and that tree continued to grow and grow and grow. It's still from 1945, and you can still see it down there right outside the exit. It's pretty incredible. So there's a lot of little things here that gave people hope—the tree was one of them, the fact that this was still here, the fact that they got the streetcars running about two days after. Little things gave people hope after the first 48 hours, which were probably hell because you didn't have water after being burned—the water was radiated. And then those two, three days people came in to help out and rebuild and reconstruct the city. But nighttime sunsets in Hiroshima are always beautiful—always beautiful. And the weather is a lot nicer than Tokyo too. It's a little breeze going by here. Even though the sun is gone, you can see the sky is still lit up—beautiful.

00:28:36 John Daub: Yeah, I think if the bar is closed, I might go down there and take a look at the Genbaku Dome. What do you guys think? We're close to 250 likes. It's up to you—if you want me to go down there street level, you have to start clicking the like button. I can't let you off the hook—this is class participation, viewer participation show. It's up to you—if you want to go down there, you have to earn it. We're a community, all of us. That was fast—I think some of you just forgot to click. Hey, Shadow Man, thank you—I will. I'm here now alone—Kanae is not here with me. I'm going back tomorrow. That's a mirror that you see here—I like the fact that they put the mirror there and it reflects back, so it looks like it is 360. So we're going to sneak behind here. And because you guys got 269 likes, we are going to take you down street level. All right—are you ready? Zip your bag. Do you think I can take the slide? Let's get out of here. If they close the bar, it's not worthy of my presence. Look at that—I'm disappointed. I thought this would be open. There's a keg of beer right there—even iced coffee would be good.

00:30:20 John Daub: All right, let's go down. Now this building, you can walk down the ramp all the way round and round if you want. And I would prefer to get there faster—it takes about 10 minutes to walk up and 5 minutes to walk down. Hey, Sandra, thank you. I guess I'm going to be drinking a lot tonight. Oh, did they close the slide? All right—you guys want me to do it? I'll do it for you. This is for Sandra too—thank you, Sandra. We're going to do this—this is crazy. Let's read the directions—I don't want to... It says caution. Please check caution notes before you use the slide. Children should accompany an adult—I'm cool with that. Be careful and make sure your keychain, bag or clothing does not get caught. Yeah. Hiroshima Tower cannot be held responsible. Okay—John, thank you. All right, let's do this. Wait—should I do the point of view of me screaming like a little girl or the point of view so you can see what it looks like sliding down? For you—you don't want to see me looking like a little girl screaming. I'm doing it now—I'm really doing this? All right—don't get stuck. I'm going to do this right now. And we're going down a slide inside of a building. Oh, I got to get my skin—I can go. Whoa—oh jeez. Ah—body. Oh, that hurt. Ah—I think I lost some skin.

00:32:38 John Daub: Edo asks for more—seriously. This goes all the way down to the bottom. I think I lost some skin—if I was 12, I would... All right, this time you guys can watch my pain that you caused me. Hit my elbow. Let's do this again—let's keep your arms in. It didn't say keep your arms in—I'm not holding anybody responsible except for me. I'm getting good at this. When it makes a turn it kind of hurts—my butt's all hot. Let's try this again—I didn't learn my lesson the first three times. On my back. From pain comes beer—thanks, Edo. One more time—three, two, one. You do one, you've got to do them all. Is there like a security camera? I never want to see this footage ever again. I'm going to go to the bathroom. Here we go—it's right here. See, there's like a curve up there. What kind of cool building is this where they make a slide for you to get down? Who came up with something like this? Click the like button if you want me to do one more slide—if we don't get to 300, I'm not going to do anymore. Three, two, one—go. Right there—that's where it hurts. Ah, get up, get up. All right, let's go see this Atomic Bomb Dome now. Look what you've made me do. Sandra, you're too funny—laughter comes at the cost of pain. Seriously, I hit my elbow pretty hard up there. All right, let's get out of here—thank the ladies for letting me come back in here. I shall not be back. It's very futuristic. Boom—we are back out on the street.

00:36:00 John Daub: So they have a gift shop on the right side, and on the left side they have a cafe—you see right there? It's pretty nice—I had a nice coffee here yesterday. Oh, so I think they turn it into a bar—you have to pay more to go up there. All right, we're going to cross the street here—we have a green light, which we say blue in Japanese—blue colored because it's a primary color. All right, we're on street level. My bottom is very raw—that was rough. But it was fun. If you're going to exit a building, do it on a slide. Never not—if you see a slide, if you're cool, you do the slide. If you're not, you do the slide. There's some information here. A lot of local people do come here often to pray and to remember. Just today when I was filming, a guy in his 90s came in a wheelchair with his son or grandson and went and prayed. He had to help him out of the wheelchair and made great effort to go and just pray by the Peace Museum. So here's some of the signs that you should see—they're historical in nature. They're not read by Peter von Gomm, which is a shame—they're read by me. Hiroshima World Heritage Site, Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Genbaku Dome. It's hard for you to see it as well. As a historical witness that conveys the tragedy of suffering the first atomic bomb in human history, and as a symbol that vows to faithfully seek the abolition of nuclear weapons and everlasting world peace. Genbaku Dome was added to the World Heritage List in advance with the convention concerning the protection of world cultural and natural heritage—World Heritage Convention. It's a World Heritage Site, is what that means.

00:38:31 John Daub: This one here in Japanese says Genbaku Dome, and says that it was declared a national site of interest in Showa 20—1945. I was born in Showa 49—1974. Go back 29 years and I guess that's '55 maybe. Preservation of the Atomic Bomb Dome, or Genbaku Dome. Oh, they do have it in English here—this is from March 1990. The city of Hiroshima intends to preserve the A-Bomb Dome forever. The reinforcement projects have been undertaken so far in 1967 and 1990. So basically, if you look inside of it—I'm going to walk around it right now—you'll see that it's been reinforced. There are some things in there that keep it structurally intact. So if there is an earthquake or typhoon or something that shakes the ground, it won't topple over because this is a symbol of the city. And you know, I did ask the Japanese guy I was with walking around here—is it insensitive that people... Because I know that was in the news at Auschwitz, people taking selfies, and it was very sensitive, and the curators did not like that. But I asked him, is it insensitive to be doing that here? Because at first I'm just confused—I've never... I have a picture with it, but I'm not smiling. But if you come here in the day, there are hundreds and hundreds of people coming here taking selfies, smiling with their families, posing in front of a ruin. And is that culturally insensitive? And the answer is no—because this is no longer just a ruin. It's a symbol of the city, and you cannot separate Hiroshima's modern history with what happened.

00:41:03 John Daub: And that's why I got two interviews—one with the survivor who came here and saw what was in this river on that day after, and how bad the devastation was. And then today we see peace, and we see lots of nature and trees and growth. What happened that day was just such an awful thing. I think we would like to think, also the person I was with today, that the people who lost their lives would hope that we kept this place a happy place. So now you see people on dates walking around here—they have almost rafting along the river, boats going through here now, tourist boats. So it's a tourist attraction. But I don't think it's something you need to worry too much about being sensitive about—unless you climb the fence and do something so bad. They have sensors in there now, and they light it up at night. But according to the locals here, this is the way. Of course the rocks here might have been moved, but they said that this is pretty much intact the way it was—they tried not to disturb it as a faithful reminder. Here's through the main entrance. Yeah, I do love the architecture of this building—old building built really tough. Again, it was renovated in 1967 and 1990, and since then I think they've done some cleaning and try to maintain it. But the cement, everything in there that's intact is the original, as well as this coloring and everything. Now the epicenter, the hypocenter, is that way about 100 meters over the building that I showed you about 30 minutes ago in this stream.

00:43:13 John Daub: I'm going to take you to the other side, and I think we'll get some color from the sky behind it. But the river is really beautiful—this park is such a beautiful park. In the morning tomorrow, I'm going to be here around 6 a.m. walking around trying to get some insert shots to see the life that's happened. I have a feeling that a lot of senior citizens come here to exercise in the morning. So I'm going to come here pretty early like I did with the last main channel episode—waking up at 4, 4:30 to film farmers setting up the market. I'm going to try to get up as early as I can to see who's here at 6 a.m. The last time I was here prior to this trip was during my hitchhiking trip in 2007. I hitchhiked and arrived just at sunset—a guy named Chago picked me up, half Brazilian half Japanese. He brought me, and we parked in a parking lot—I'll show you in a second when I come around. And between the buildings we could see this. I was like whoa. So both me and Chago got out real quick and ran over here—we were the only ones two years ago. It's sort of like now—although there are a ton of tourists in Hiroshima, you won't see a soul at this time except for that lady right there. And we had this whole place to ourselves. And this is similar to the view that we had—behind the Genbaku Dome is the sunsetting sky. It's purple—it's going to get a little bit more purple, I think, and there's a fiery pink to it depending on the time. And the building is illuminated—they turned the lights on about 10 minutes ago. It's not a very powerful one, so even when it gets pitch dark it's not blinding—it's just enough that you can see it's there.

00:45:41 John Daub: All right, we're at this point where if you want to continue, it's time to click that like button—we got to get the 500 likes in the next three minutes and I will continue. This is participation—these live streams depend on the viewers. We have 800 viewers—we should get 500 likes. This shouldn't be the question. So click the like button if you want this to continue, and I will take you to the bridge and the target, which is a T in the street there. That's where the Enola Gay that dropped the bomb were aiming for that, and they missed by 120 meters or so. I'll take you over there and give you a distant view of the A-Bomb Dome if we get the 500 likes. If you like this content, it's up to you—don't try to unlike and like again, it doesn't work. So I zoomed in a little bit so you get a kind of closer look. If you don't reach it, I will cry and sadly end the live stream. A super chat would help—that could override. I'm having too much fun. And once again yesterday it was Saturday night and there was a lot of—in one of these buildings I couldn't pinpoint where, but they were blasting really loud music. I was a little bit upset because it sort of disturbed the peacefulness of this park. I don't know—I think it was about 20 or 30 years ago it was still pretty raw—you couldn't be here and enjoy yourself. And now I think Hiroshima might have rounded a corner or taken another step, and people are starting to enjoy themselves around the area. Life is back.

00:48:10 John Daub: We're 60 likes short—I don't know what to do, I'm so conflicted. All you gotta do is click the like button. That clock on the right side is also quite famous. Diana of Markham, thank you very much—it's nice to see here. There's some birds in the trees—actually at night there are some bats that come around. Shadow Man overrides—he clicks the manual override. You know what? Hey Diana—okay, I'm gonna go and take you out to the bridge because it's such a beautiful night. I'll go a little bit further. So we started from up here—let me show you the building. Actually I could show you the building from over here, and then I'm going to walk back to the hotel. Patrick overrides—thank you, Patrick, appreciate it guys. We're going to cross that bridge that we saw from the Orizuru Tower over there. Yeah, this is the one place where I want to read all of the memorials, all of the plaques because there's so much modern history. The Aioi Bridge, the former Aioi Bridge was built in 1932. It was a distinctive T shape, the apparent target of the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. It was subjected to an estimated blast pressure of seven tons per square meter, 15 times greater than normal. Under this sudden pressure the bridge thrashed like a leaf spring being snapped back and forth with the slab floor up in the air—fortunately collapse was averted. And when repaired, Aioi Bridge was usable for over 35 more years. However age took its toll and Aioi Bridge finally had to be replaced with this new bridge in October 1983. The calligraphy for the name of the bridge on the Newell Post was written by Hirokichi Nadao, former Speaker of the House of Representatives—October 1983. Cool—it's interesting.

00:51:28 John Daub: Hey Edo—Edo overrides again. Edo, I'm continuing—you don't have to override anymore. This is basically where I would walk at night—this is very nostalgic for me. I would walk on this street and then at the end I would cross over and walk towards Yokogawa—the streetcars go there. There's one going by right now—they turn the lights on. From the T, which is right here—if I take a left and go back into the Peace Park, I was planning two other streams: a midnight snack run in Hiroshima tonight, and then the Peace Park walk tomorrow morning as a live stream. So and then maybe from Hiroshima Station before I go back, cause I haven't done any information on Hiroshima Station—it's such a popular station too, I better do that. Now we're looking across at the river and this is from this bridge—one of the nicer views. And that building on the left is where we started the live stream—you could see the terrace that I was on, that open top to it. Really scenic up there, and the window is from that window right there is where we started 54 minutes ago looking down on the Genbaku Dome right here. But at night it is quite a view. And I would stand right here sometimes walking home—I would stop and look back at the city of Hiroshima. And I couldn't believe I was here in 1999—like I'd never... I was working in a town called Okazaki near Nagoya for the first year in Japan, 1998 to 1999. And the company asked me—they said you've done such an amazing job as a teacher, and they asked if I wanted to join the head office and help them with other schools that were failing. If I would go there and help them out, and I said sure—the pay was pretty good. So my first project after that was to come down to Hiroshima and turn that school around in Yokogawa, and I did a pretty good job.

00:54:11 John Daub: And I did that for the next six years on and off. But the first city that I came after Okazaki was Hiroshima—so it's always been a second home to me. I always consider this a second home because I know the city quite well—the streets I know pretty good. I can walk from here to there and everywhere with my eyes blindfolded—that's not true. But there are a lot of moments where I would just walk around alone and couldn't believe that I was here. Because I'd studied World War II history just like a lot of you. And when you study World War II history, all the battles and things that happened, this is what ended the war in the Pacific. I think it would have been over anyways—but there's a lot of reasons why, and a lot of reasons like before Russia had taken over Japan, the US wanted to win. There's lots of different reasons—but Japan was going to relent anyways. Nevermind the history—I couldn't believe I was living here. And when it was time for me to go and I'd finished the project, I didn't want to leave—I just loved the city very much. And whenever I get a chance to come back it's a blessing—it's great, especially on a warm beautiful sunny day like today. All right, let's walk a little bit more because we still didn't get our 400—still 20 likes less than Edo overrided. So you know what? Okay, I'm going to go to that bridge over there—how do you guys like them apples? So let's go over to that bridge and then we'll say bye bye. It is different at night—this is an iPhone XS using Japan's 4G LTE on Docomo for those that want the technical specs.

00:56:22 John Daub: Javier says where is the T? The T is right there—do you see where the intersection is? That's the T. So if you go to Google Earth you'll be able to see the T—that's where I'm standing like 30 seconds ago. John, the graves are everywhere—people were disintegrated. If you go into the museum it's just so sad. When you go into the museum there's a stair that a man was sitting on waiting for the bank to open, and after the bomb all that was left was his shadow—and you can see his shadow on the step. And people stand there for a while. Yeah, this is something that I think you should know—the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum used to be 50 yen or like 50 cents to get in—it's just so cheap. They raised the price to 200 yen, about $2—it's still really reasonable. The reason why is because they renovated it—the museum was always a little bit retro to me, with Soviet Union missile war models made in the 1980s. They've redone it and it just opened a month ago—that's another reason why I'm here. So the Peace Museum has been completely renovated—it's open now and it's dark inside. Everything is really dark and all the exhibitions are illuminated with modern technology lights—LEDs maybe. But it's pretty good. So here's the Peace Park—I'll be back here tomorrow morning early, get the shot, make the episode. I can't do the live—it's hard to do the live streams and the main channel, so these are bonuses. These give you a little bit of insight, so when the main channel episode comes out you would have been here.

00:58:30 John Daub: All right, this is the Peace Clock Tower I told you a little bit about—which is right behind me, you see that up there? It's the Peace Clock Tower. It looks like that tower in Mito from a live stream two years ago. So the Peace Clock Tower—it reads like this: quarter past eight every morning, the mortal moment of the blasting back in 1945, the clock will chime its prayer for perpetual peace and appeal to the people of the world that the wish be answered promptly. May the chime prevail to the remotest corners of the earth! Unanimous with all the members of the International Lions Club striving for that goal, we present this clock tower to the municipality and the citizens—1967. I can read, see? It's just hard through the screen—and it's like a tongue twister: perpetual peace and appeal—a lot of P's. Perpetual peace and appeal to the peoples of the world—it's very hard to say. Try saying that 10 times, huh? Hey Sandra—Tokyo Dome is different than Atomic Bomb Dome, but I understand. Actually that's not a bad idea—I did that with Peter von Gomm about last year. We did a karaoke Ferris wheel, and that was at Tokyo Dome—the karaoke Ferris wheel. Peter and I—I think it got copyright striked because Peter was doing popular songs or something. It's a pretty neat clock from the 1960s—as you can see it's got that retro feel to it. I kind of like it—keep a little bit of our... It looked tacky in the 80s because it was the 60s, and back in the 2000s it's starting to be classic—like that Austin Powers 1960s look, pre-disco aesthetics.

01:00:36 John Daub: All right, this is the Atomic Bomb Dome for those watching right now, and we're on the other side of the river. And from here to the bridge we're going to be walking just to there—there's a cafe that I've been to a few times over there, you can see it in the distance. We're going to be there in about five minutes, and it's kind of a neat cafe—so you might want to stick around for that. You can see there's people—there's a guy in there relaxing by himself thinking. These are the kind of things that I used to do when I lived here—I would just sit on the chairs. We didn't have YouTube or internet or smartphone—I had a book. That's the way we were 20 years ago. So I would just sit in these chairs or walk—there's actually a story of one of the benches over there that I'll tell on the main channel episode. And there's the building I was in right behind it now. And you just think about stuff—and right now you can hear some of the nature. So I'm going to leave that up for the next minute or so.

01:03:49 John Daub: All right, I'm back. It's hard—people are asking me questions, I can't answer them. But yeah, this is exactly how it would look—look, the streetlights. I think this is the same streetlights—they haven't changed these lights in 20 years, that's for sure—they're the same. Steven, if possible could you do a live stream from Miyajima Island? I think I did two or three of them when I started this live streaming channel—if you go back to the beginning you'll find three live streams from Hiroshima, they were really well done. John, I don't know if I'm going to have time to go back tomorrow. All right, I'm going to take you over here—this, I get easily distracted, and I caught this in the corner of my eye, and I have my camera with me and I'm going to film this as well. So at night you can see there's the Peace Museum—I wanted to do this live stream tomorrow morning. You can see the flame, and if you remember about five years ago the president came here and paid his respects on one of the anniversaries, and he embraced one of the survivors of the bomb. And there's the Cenotaph—that's what it's called. And there's the flame, and that flame has been kept alive from the 1945 bomb—they kept it and it's been burning ever since as a way to remember. And there's a lot of fire—a lot of wood in the city, houses were built with wood back then except for the few that were standing. So it was really devastating.

01:06:06 John Daub: Thomas, you're very correct—Cenotaph, yeah. That's the famous statue—it's one of my favorites. I'm not going to tell the story because I always get really sad when I hear the story—you guys can tell the story in the chats if you don't know what the statue is. Peter von Gomm's already saying it—I'm already getting sad. And she got sick—she made a thousand cranes. I don't even want to say her name—she made a thousand cranes and got sick and died from leukemia. And they made the statue. Wow—this story always makes me so sad. Because despite being so sick and in pain because her parents couldn't afford the pain medications, and she knew that her parents were in pain because they saw her in pain, so she really tried to keep it inside so her parents wouldn't feel bad. This is a statue—this is her influence. And people from around the world and here in Hiroshima will make these paper cranes and they store them in these boxes and they change them. And after these paper cranes—there's just too many of them, thousands—they take the paper and recycle them into school diplomas, I believe, and wallets and things for people. You can actually put yours in here. It's such a sad story—you can see it inside of the museum. I got really sad when I read it—there's a book as well on it, I read it when I was in college. But when she was sick she made the paper cranes, and I think the story is if you make a thousand paper cranes you will be okay. I don't remember how short she was but she was almost at a thousand. So the entire world made up for it by making it—you can see it in those boxes. So whatever she was short, let's just say it's times one billion was made up for it by the rest of the world. That's a good story—one life can change millions of people for the better.

01:09:22 John Daub: So this is it—this is what I didn't want to show you until tomorrow, but I will. That's it—the eternal flame of Hiroshima. I wouldn't say it's gloomy—it's just dark. There's just not a lot of people—a lot of people don't come here. Tourists after they come here during the day on their bus tour, a lot of people just come here for the day. There's the Atomic Bomb Dome in the distance right in the center of your screen. People who stay here they're probably all tired out—they get an early start. But for me at night this is a good memory. Hey Matthias is here—thanks for the amazing live stream, looking forward to the main channel episode. Went there three years ago and the place really leaves a powerful impression—let's hope it stays peaceful for a long time. I think it will because the people have learned from this, and Hiroshima suffered greatly—I can't imagine anything bad ever happening to the city ever again. It's such a peaceful place—people don't take it for granted here, they don't take life for granted in Hiroshima. Hey Elizabeth, I see you're here too—stream makes me feel so at peace after a California earthquake. I'm sorry to hear that. The bombing of Tokyo in March 1945 was the worst in the history of the world—it was... I can't say it was as bad as what happened here because that happened in an instant, but what happened in Tokyo was also pretty bad. And it's on the government for not surrendering earlier—just war. They don't blame Americans—they blame war. It's true—it's just war, you move on. Love and peace—when in Japan they do the peace sign, when they do it here in Hiroshima it really has a special meaning. You can see the streetcars—you can hear them, the electric streetcars rolling across the tracks through the city of Hiroshima. And it's a nice sound for me—that's how I know I'm in Hiroshima, it's the sound of the streetcars.

01:13:15 John Daub: So we're going to be saying goodbye to the Genbaku Dome, and you can walk along here as well. It's at night—you definitely have to get out of your hotel if you're here and just take a stroll, especially in the summer when it cools down here. The sun is gone, the clouds are rolling in—tomorrow is supposed to be a cloudy day. I have to do the introduction to the show—I'm crossing my fingers it does not rain. We had a beautiful couple of days here, and as you can see the moon is out—so we do have a nice moon here. And as promised at the end of this, we're going to be going to the Genbaku Dome and the top part of the bridge is this really surreal looking cafe. It's so nice—I felt bad jumping in here just to get a coffee, but it's crowded right now. I bet a lot of tourists walk by here and go this place is awesome, I gotta have dinner here—and every table is full. How's the food? Yeah, it's all right—it's not bad. Well thanks a lot—I'm gonna do a couple more live streams from Hiroshima. I think when you're here it's an opportunity to share some stories and I have to take advantage of it—it's one of the cities you do have to come. And yeah, I don't know that there really isn't too much ancient history in Hiroshima—there is of course, but the modern history is real. To me Hiroshima is a place that's of great beauty on the sea—it's got amazing oysters, good lemons, a lot of good lemon desserts, it's got okonomiyaki which I did on the main channel episode at Okonomimura over there. It's got a lot of good stuff—I think it's a good place to come and eat.

01:15:01 John Daub: Besides you know the atomic bomb but it's still gonna be the big draw because people want to put what they learned right in front of them in history books. And if you do make a stop here to Hiroshima, yeah take a stroll around—don't try to rush it. I'd say spend a night or two and just yeah, I think you'll get a lot more out of your trip here because it is a very peaceful place and it's worth your time. Thank you everybody—a couple of notes before we go. All right, thanks for watching—thank you everybody. Before I go, if you're a Patreon supporter I gotta plug it—the Postcard Club is awesome this month. I have about 30 more with Tokyo 2020 Olympic stamps on it, and it's a postcard of the Olympic stadium one year before the Olympics start. So if you're interested in that it's on the OnlyJapan Patreon. And our Discord is roaring—we have 2,200 people on our Discord, so definitely wanna check that out and take this after party to Discord. I'm giving our moderators some warning—take it over to Discord and you can do voice chat, such a clearer than Skype—it's pretty incredible. And I might pop on there tonight. So have a good day, have a good night everybody—thanks for watching, thanks for joining me on this live stream. I'll see you maybe tomorrow morning from here as we do a Peace Park walk—or wait, what am I saying? I was gonna do a midnight snack run—so join me back in a few hours as I go for maybe a midnight snack run. Let's see if I still have it—this thing was like 80 minutes long. If I do you'll see me back—make sure you get the notifications on Instagram or Patreon or maybe even YouTube. Bye everybody.