00:00:02 John Daub: Hey everybody, welcome to Hiroshima. I'm now in front of Okonomiyaki Okonomimura, which is a town of okonomiyaki. I did an episode here about five years ago. This is the steps going up to it. This is a great starting off point to where we're going. We're going to walk the shopping street all the way from here, which is kind of on one side of it, all the way to the other side of the shopping street, where we're going to find the Peace Museum. So let's start from Okonomimura and let's get going. If you're thinking about coming to Hiroshima, you're going to love this stream because this is everything that you want.

00:00:42 John Daub: After living here for 20 years in Japan and some time here in Hiroshima, this is the one thing I think I wanted to see. So let's start. This is Parco, the big well-known department store in Hiroshima. Of course, they got one in Tokyo and Osaka, but the one in Hiroshima is very central and the starting point of Hondori. So it's on the other side of it. Now we're on a Monday, so it's not going to be so crowded, but on the weekend, whoa, watch out. This is the place where all the young people come. And me.

00:01:03 John Daub: There's a lot that's changed. This building is new here, Socio Terrace. Behind me, the building, this one is not new, this blue one. This is Mario's Desserts. This has been here for a while. This is also Mario's Italian. I don't know if they're related, but that's also a date spot where you can get really cheap pasta, a date spot for people in their 20s. If you go on a date, you're going to spend a lot of money. Mario's might not be the place, but it's very nice. They do good desserts here. And this is the start of the shopping street right in front of us. I love Hondori. I've spent so much time here. It's sort of the new entertainment place, kind of like Harajuku and Shibuya, but a lot less crowded.

00:02:06 John Daub: On the other side of the tracks this way—I'm calling them tracks, but they're not—is the entertainment district where adults go. Whoa, what is that? That looks really good. All right, we're coming back for that. I can't eat right now, I just started. Hey, Dr. Zark, thank you very much. Look at that. Go for the dessert. Dr. Zark, how dare you? I just started. Can you just hold up? We're going to discover a ton of other stuff. We just started. Let's go down the shopping street. This is Hondori.

00:02:37 John Daub: Now the entertainment district is about three or four minutes walking this way, and that's where you're going to find a lot of rougher people, different class. Somebody just smiled at me. Some tough town, but it's interesting to go on the weekend. That's where you'll find a lot of the Marines doing some rest and relaxation on that side of the tracks. And yeah, when I first came here 20 years ago, a lot of the Westerners I met here were Marines because the base in Iwakuni is not too far away. Of course Starbucks bought a property right on the corner here so they have to represent, but there's a lot of other coffee shops down this road. It's about a kilometer, so buckle yourselves in, get a snack and let's get going. Do not forget about the alleys here. You'll find little teeny cafes that serve nice lunches for about a thousand yen or less.

00:03:38 John Daub: Shonen Jump has a store here now, the Jump Store. For those interested in Dragon Ball Z and One Piece and the Shonen Jump dynasty, you can get all of your stuff in there. It's not quite the same on the weekdays though; on the weekends this is just full of people. It's a place where you want to come to be seen in Hiroshima. You kind of walk down Hondori and go hey look at me, you like my hair, I'm sporting a pretty nice jacket today. Yeah, you do that here. Every town's got one of those now. During the week during the daytime you can't ride bicycles through here, which is good because I remember back in the day people were flying through here from time to time. People get hit by bikes, so no cycling between 10 and 8 p.m. You got it, don't break the rules. I never really see any police down here but there'll be some old guy who will jump on you. The senior citizens are the police; they're very good at that.

00:05:04 John Daub: This is a Hiroshima Carp jersey. I love it; the color reminds me of my Buckeyes, kind of a scarlet, very bright though. Hiroshima's team, baseball team called the Carp, are very strong, but 20 years ago they stunk and they don't even have the stadium there. They ripped it out; it's just a hole in the ground, well it's a park now, but the stadium is moving a lot so that's good. Over there they've got a very successful team and now they can sell a lot of stuff. The Carp right there have the same symbol as the Cincinnati Reds, but you'll see a lot of their memorabilia around Hiroshima because it's a winning team now.

00:05:48 John Daub: This game center here on the right with the Space Invader looking thing right up there—I think this is a Sega World, it's now a Taito Station, but I used to go up here 20 years ago. No we didn't have PlayStation well we did but we didn't have a lot of game center games at home. It was still better to go to the arcade and I would go in here and get purikura on the second and third floor and I think you can still do that. But the shape of the building has not changed in the 20 years that I've been coming down the street and it's neat to see it's still here, still sporting some pretty cool games. The first floor instead of purikura is now UFO catcher stuff, but to me it's just Marine Crepes, that's Harajuku.

00:07:05 John Daub: All right, so there is a break in Hondori where you have to cross the street. All the shotengai (covered shopping arcades), the long ones are like that. You can see it up ahead. Now of course there's shops left and right of me but what I love about this is the city of Hiroshima is very famous for its streetcars and you can see the streetcars going by. Those are some buses every couple minutes from the other side of the street. I think I talked about this yesterday but the streetcars are called chinchin densha here. They're kind of a sign of pride because two days after the bomb, those trains were back up and running. And that's how they got a lot of relief into the city of Hiroshima. So two days. I mean, it's just incredible. Gave a lot of hope to people. And now you can see it at the end of the street. It gives us hope that the street will one day come to an end because it's a very long one.

00:08:20 John Daub: I believe they have Matsumoto Kiyoshi, but in Hiroshima they have one called Wants. I don't know, it's kind of a funny name. Hey everybody, want to go to Wants? I'll meet you at Wants. I'm not sure that's... It's just kind of funny. What do you want? It's a chain from Hiroshima. I believe it's from Hiroshima, but I don't see it anywhere else but here. I want Wants.

00:08:58 John Daub: Starbucks may have the corner, but Tully's has the center. Tully's Coffee, which is now an out-of-business coffee shop chain from the West Coast in the U.S., is still strong in Japan. Do watch out. See the green light up there? Sometimes it's red, but you're walking and enjoying yourself. You forget to stop and I've seen some close calls. The drivers are pretty aware that this is a pedestrian crossing. So I haven't heard of any accidents, but just be careful. You can get distracted and keep walking.

00:09:35 John Daub: There's a summer kimono shop. This is nice. I'm gonna spend a second here. Look at the new fashions. When you do get a kimono, or sorry, a summer cotton kimono called a yukata, you probably want to do it before the season starts. A lot of the good ones are gone. And if you do want to get one tailored, you should start in maybe April because demand is high.

00:10:07 John Daub: All right, I love Hiroshima also because everything is close. I think I said this in another live stream. This is the fourth or fifth on the Only in Japan Go channel. I did a few of them in 2017 when I was hitchhiking. I spent some days here passing through. Everything is close in Hiroshima. It's like just living in Shinjuku; the entire city of Shinjuku, everything is in one area. Where in Tokyo it can take you 30 minutes to get from Shinjuku to Ginza, 30 minutes to get from Asakusa to Shibuya. Everything takes about 30, 35 minutes. Here in Hiroshima, everything takes 30 minutes to walk, 10 minutes to ride. And that is convenient. I like that. From here to get back to my old house, it takes 30 minutes to walk or 10 minutes on the streetcar.

00:11:21 John Daub: We're going to go to this intersection, but we're going to miss it on purpose and get the next light. McDonald's Japan. What do they got rocking today? The value lunch. So a Big Mac set is now $5. That's actually reasonable. And that bacon one looks pretty good. These are some value meals down here. Oh sorry, the Big Mac set is about $5.50, $6. And then these are $5.50. It's a chicken filet. I don't eat McDonald's much ever, but I know when you're traveling it's nice to get a little bit of home every now and then. For me I feel like I am home, so I don't have to go to McDonald's. Wow, there's a baseball Carp macaron. Carp is the baseball team. Oh this looks really good. I love macarons. Check out the colors on them.

00:12:33 John Daub: We've come a long way. This is the break I was talking about. We're most of the way. Hey Moipi, buy something to drink. Love McDonald's. No McDonald's. You got it, no McDonald's. If you are a long-timer and nostalgic about Hiroshima, you've been here for a while or used to live here like me, you'll know what the second floor shop is that's closed down now. And I'm really sad that it's closed down. It's called Sam's Bar. And I remember fondly some weekends I would spend in there because it was the only place you could get non-Japanese beer. They'd have all sorts of international import beers. I think I got a Red Stripe once from around the world. And Sam was this old guy. He seemed like he was in his 80s. But I thought he was living until his hundreds when I saw that the shop was still here above. But it's out of business. The signs are still here, but his shop is closed down.

00:13:29 John Daub: I'm going to take you to the entrance more for my own nostalgia than for entertainment value. But I was sad when I saw this; it was out of business. And this might come as news to some people watching. Here is the sign. This is history. Sam's Cafe 13. Welcome home, Sam's. And he had a sign here. I mean, it's an old, old bar. He had the rebel flag in there. He didn't know what it really meant. Haha. And then there's no sign in here and the door is closed. I love coming up here. The second floor is what he owned. I guess he passed away and nobody took it over. But it was the first time where I really connected with somebody. He just was so easy to talk to because it was bilingual. My Japanese skills were like nil 20 years ago. But every time we left, he had the secret door around the back and you would pay and he would say thank you. And then as you're walking out he would sneak through the secret door to say thank you one more time. And that little teeny gesture always meant a lot to me. And it was one of these little things that you notice about Japan's customer service. There's just these little things and they all start adding up to make something big. And it's sad to see that Sam's Cafe is closed. Looks like it's been closed for a while. The stars and stripes flying high in here in Hiroshima. So it's sad. If you did pass away Sam, rest in peace.

00:15:16 John Daub: If you do go straight from here this way you'll go to Hiroshima Castle, which is not really that popular but it's a castle. It's worth it, might be worth it. Lots of Westerners. You can see that people wearing shorts are usually Westerners. That's how you could tell. Japanese usually wear long pants even on hot days. And we Westerners, we show, we wear shorts. I'm wearing shorts, of course I am.

00:15:52 John Daub: Look at that. So this represents, I believe, all of the high schools in the Hiroshima City area. Every high school has a different uniform. It's kind of neat in this window to be able to see all the styles of the schools, junior high and high school, and in the back the boys which are a lot simpler. Just the color of the pants and the shirt is different, a little bit of the style. I can see the collar styles in some of the schools are different. You see that? It's interesting. And I believe you can't buy the uniforms of the school. You have to be and there's some of the ladies working in there. You have to show proof that you're at that school. So you can't buy just any uniform. You could probably have it tailor made, but not from a uniform shop.

00:16:51 John Daub: Oh, this Mister Donut has been here forever. This one also was here 20 years ago. And I remember going in there waiting for friends, getting a donut. This is the only place in Japan that you can get a bottomless cup of coffee. Meaning if you wanted a refill you could get it for the same price, usually about $3 for a cup. It was a small cup but you can, I think I had five cups once. That was the most I ever got out of the deal. I just kept drinking and drinking it. And I said you know what, I'm not going to get my money back. Actually I did, but I just wanted to see how much I could drink. And after a while it's like you know what, I'm wasting time just sitting here drinking coffee. My time's probably better off not sitting here drinking coffee. Sometimes time is more valuable than coffee. It's hard to believe for coffee drinkers out there.

00:17:39 John Daub: And we're getting to the end of Hondori now. And that means we're going to shift over to the other side of the street. You can go straight and then you get to the Peace Park. We ended the last live stream last night at a cafe on the other side. Let's take a shortcut through this Taito game center. Oh no I can't. I'm afraid of the Space Invaders lady. She's going to bust me if I take a camera in there. I better not do it. Somebody should let the cage door open, huh? I'm sorry little guy. I'll save you. I can't, it's locked. I'll save you. Come on out. You can come out now. I can't take him out. He's going to have to come out on his own. All right, all I did was open the cage. What happens after that is not on me. That's all I did, I just opened the cage.

00:18:55 John Daub: Now we're leaving Hondori. We're not going to go to the main street because there's a couple of stories that I have here to share with you. Hiroshima like Tokyo also has these bike sharing systems. I think it's the same thing from Docomo. So if you register in Tokyo maybe you can use these. I don't know how the system works. They're mostly set up for locals not for tourists. So that's something to keep in mind. These are not for you, they're for them.

00:19:24 John Daub: Hey Jackie, thank you very much, I appreciate that. Hey Cory, Cory Krabbenhoft, I wish you could send me some stuff, some sumo stuff. And Brigade Leader Haruhi Suzumiya, that's a long one. Could you find a Vocaloid shop for us? Hatsune Miku. If I do it'll just be... I don't even know where that is. So I don't know, I'll try. Hey Oli, Oli Ramon, thank you. And keep up the great work from Joshua Skidmore. I appreciate that guys. Ah there's a red mailbox, I love these. I love everything. Oh this is a little shortcut. I could get from one side to the other through here. Now they have a Uniqlo but this is kind of a secret shortcut that locals take to get around. Because if you don't go through here you have to go all the way around. It's kind of a far thing and there's a traffic light. We would take the Sun Mall shortcut back in the day. And by we I'm talking about the smart people. Over here you can see the green at the end of the street. Oh I'm blocking traffic. This is where I parked in 2017 with my ride. And there's a parking lot there and we got out. And you can see the Gionbaku Dome lit up at night from there. You can also go this way, we're not. We're going to go this way because there's more stories to tell. We're going to the main street.

00:21:16 John Daub: Phil's Gundam kits. How long are you in Hiroshima? For just until I guess three hours from now I'll be on the Shinkansen back home. I came here to film a main channel episode and I did that because I wanted... Next month represents the 74th anniversary of the atomic bomb being dropped here. And it's such a deep topic. I'm not someone who shies away from a tough topic. I'll jump right in. And I was introduced to a guide who is... Of course he's not born at that time or even experienced it, but he's doing these tours based on his uncle who shared his experience with me, somebody who was there when the bomb was dropped. So I interviewed him for the episode and then I took his nephew's tour and he brought his 10-year-old son with me. So I thought it was a good one to connect generations because now the stories of Hiroshima are not being told firsthand like they were maybe 20 years ago. It was survivors that would do a lot of these tours or talk about what happened, the red sky, the black rain, things like this. Now it's third generation that are telling the tours. So things have changed a lot in Hiroshima.

00:22:37 John Daub: You can hear the streetcars rolling by. It always makes me feel good when I hear that. It's just a nostalgic sound of when I first came to Japan because Hiroshima is my second home whether I like it or not because it's the second place that I lived. You can see them rolling down there. That station in the front you can't see right now, that's the Genbaku Dome-mae, the atomic bomb dome front station, and that's where we're going right now. Murph 580s thank you, thank you twice. Oh this one's going to Hiroshima Station, you can see on the side. I like that. They do it in English and Japanese. They didn't always do that. 20 years ago you had to know the... It was actually a good thing when things were not written in English because you had to learn the Japanese for everything. And if they had... I would be way more lazier if I had the English. It was like this. You see on the bus? Bus is still pretty non-Western friendly. Oh this one's going to Yokogawa. That's where I used to live in the middle. That's the kanji for Yokogawa. I could jump on this and go back to my old apartment, knock on the door and really freak out whoever's in there.

00:24:01 John Daub: So above the orange Jeep is where the old Hiroshima Carp Stadium used to be. They tore it down I want to say like 5, 10 years ago. And it was sad for me because I remember it was so easy to get a seat to go and watch the Hiroshima Carp because they stunk. No one wanted to go. But I always liked just feeling the baseball game. And it was a beautiful outdoor stadium. So you'd be able to get seats just about anywhere and they were cheap. So yeah I would just walk 20 minutes. Yeah it's 20 minutes from my apartment to the stadium. Sit down, get a cheap seat, get a drink, get some food, watch them lose. And then afterwards like a group of people would go out to some of the restaurants in here and we'd make a really nice night out. It didn't matter if the Carp won or lost. It was just that there was a game and it was something to do. And now it's gone. So all those memories of losing are erased as well. Probably for the best. But it's sort of just this open area. You can find it from the fake Tokyo Tower there. It's not really a Tokyo Tower, it's a signal tower, probably for 5G coming soon.

00:25:30 John Daub: Okay a couple of things here after this van goes by us. This is the building that I started the live stream on the left side here. I started the live stream here last night. And in a couple of hours I'm going to do a Hiroshima Station live stream from there to show you there because it's such a popular station. I think it'd be useful for people. You see all these origami on the bottom here? You can launch these from like 13 floors up. Check it out. There is a platform that you could stand that's glass and drop it. And your origami paper crane will fly down. And if you're lucky it won't make it to the bottom. It'll get stuck in here. That's what I was trying to do and it didn't mind. I think it made it to the bottom or it gets trapped in one of these other silver ones. It's pretty cool. Hey John it's Saki from Discord. Hey! Has it been getting hot in Japan? It looks cloudy today. Keep up the great work. Yeah you know summer is here. Yesterday was a lot hotter because we had sun, blue skies. Today it's overcast which is perfect because I did the opening to the show. You don't have any shadows on your face when it's overcast. That's a good point for video. But it's getting hotter. I can already feel the humidity. I'm gonna have to change my shirt before I get on the Shinkansen. That's why I stack like five black shirts in my bag now. You can tell if I need to change my shirt if there's a big salt streak across the black of it. But it is getting hotter. Probably this week we're gonna start to see the massive humidity. And by the end of July it's like a sauna really until the end of the first week of September. And it's almost like clockwork. It's just always like this. Because it's the rainy season, it's always gonna be slightly cooler when it rains before and after. And then it gets hot and then it'll rain again and cool everything down.

00:27:30 John Daub: This shop, this Orizuru Tower also has a rooftop bar which I didn't... Isn't that the same? I guess they kicked me out and then they started the bar and you have to pay more to get back in there. They got quite a racket going on here. This Hiroshima burger is not very famous but they're making it famous. You make it famous by putting out a sign. I'm sort of making fun of them because I think this is a pretty cool building but it's just totally made for tourists. And I kind of make fun of that a little bit. This is also a sign that the city of Hiroshima has sort of turned the page. They have this tourist attraction right across the street from the Atomic Bomb Dome which is right there. You see that? The structure behind the tree is the A-Bomb Dome, the ruins from August 6th, 1945. This here is the Atomic Bomb Station. But you can probably walk from Hondori, that side, all the way to here in about 10-15 minutes. Took us 28. We're kind of doing it at a more leisurely pace.

00:28:49 John Daub: Hey Christian Martin, thank you! You're very welcome. I might actually snag a snack here so we can keep this livestream going for a little bit longer. It's a neat little cafe. Check it out. I like that it's open here. You can sit outside right across the street from it. But you wouldn't ever think... You can always tell the tourists right? They dress like tourists. They dress like me. What am I talking about? I'm not a tourist though, I live here. You would never think of putting an outdoor cafe or a tourist place like this across the street from the Atomic Bomb Dome. It was just a sad place. You had to feel sad. But I think 75 years... Next year will be 75 years. I think there's a time where you have to move on to the next chapter. Not forget the past but sort of move past it. I think Hiroshima is there now.

00:29:46 John Daub: The city is quite ancient you know? I mean it's from the early 16th century. History goes back where a feudal lord that lost the fight against Tokugawa Ieyasu at the Battle of Sekigahara. He lost and lost his land. He was the one who started the city of Hiroshima in 1530 or 60. I can't remember but it was the 16th century. There's a ton of history that people don't know that gets lost in the modern history. Now this here is a relic from that survived the blast. Do you see this here? You can see the shadow on there from it. And it's listed here. The atomic bomb struck Jizo-son. As the thermic rays struck the tombstone almost perpendicularly, the sides of the part shaded by the statue of Jizo-son, the guardian deity of the children, remained smooth while the other parts became rough on the surface. So this was... This survived the blast, the epicenter, the hypocenter which is just a couple dozen meters from here. Like 30 meters from here I believe. The atomic bomb struck roof tiles of this temple. So this used to be a temple. You can see there's a picture here. But this is still in the original position just across the street of it. And you can see... I guess they're saying that the rays... Maybe the bottom part isn't original, doesn't look so, but the top is. You can see how the rays... Yeah guess you can see the discoloration. Oh wow! So the... It's gotten quite hot and it's so smooth here. That's very unique, different. There's several relics like this, things that are left over from the blast. If you walk around the city you'll just discover them. It was very destroyed, the city of Hiroshima. But not everything went down, just like what's in front of me right now, the Genbaku Dome.

00:32:22 John Daub: So this is just about a hundred and some meters away from the hypocenter. And it's in pretty good shape. You can notice on the top of the dome there. I don't think I said this to people yesterday but how the rays went through warped the dome in a certain way from the direction it was coming. It's more noticeable on the other side. So took 30 minutes to get from Okonomimura to here. Probably can do it in 20 or less. It's about a kilometer away. But yeah this is a place where I would come quite often just to pay respect. I used to walk from Hondori, the walk that we just did, so often. But I would always stop here or go around this park. Not just because it's a beautiful park but also because... When I see people taking selfies in front of the Genbaku Dome... Because I've been here for so long and I know the other generation of the history here. The second generation I guess. This is we're now in the third generation. People were pretty somber, very sad and it was not a pleasant thing and still is. But now with more tourists people take selfies with big smiles in front of a ruin where so many people lost their lives. I think older generation wouldn't like that very much. But the newer generation in Japan is not as connected and have moved on a little bit more. You'll see in the main channel episode coming in a couple of weeks. I'll start editing that tonight.

00:34:13 John Daub: Michael Kelly thank you. Joined your postcard... Yes! I saw that notification come up! We have an awesome postcard this month for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. It's a limited edition stamp that has been discontinued because I bought like 250 of them. And I've been saving them up. It's a 10 yen GotoCharity for that stamp and that's in the postcard club. Thank you so much for joining. I saw the notification. Probably sleep through the stream. Get home safe. Thank you. I'm going home in a couple of hours. And there'll be another live stream of Hiroshima Station I think for you. But for me it's always going to be just as... I always stop and reflect and think about the history that I studied, the things I've seen on TV. But it's more than that. I think about the city itself. And instead of seeing the US side which is how I grew up, I see the Japanese side, the tragedy of it and the suffering. And the museum which is over there. This is where I'm going to take you right now. This is the last place. This place really drives it home. After you go to the museum everything changes.

00:35:28 John Daub: And I see Jose just joined the postcard club. A notification just popped up. Oh so this water fountain here by the way, that right there on the back of the Genbaku Dome, that used to be a water fountain as well. So for those of you who are wondering it's no longer of course in operation but the ruins of it is there. I have another story that I want to tell you over at the live chat. So there are some seats here. I'm going to tell it to you because you're watching the live stream now. If you're interested enough to watch the live stream now I'm going to tell you a story not many people know about this. Local guides will. All right so over here you're going to see a bunch of benches. See this is a bench here. People will sit on right there on the left side. And there's a streetcar going by. And you see where those two people are right now in the center of your screen? There's a bench there too. But that bench is not a bench. That bench is a piece of the Atomic Bomb Dome that fell off during the blast. And it fell right there right on the river's edge here. And it's hard for you to notice. I don't think a lot of people will. People will go and sit on it. And it's now a bench I guess. But if you look at it it is a piece of the building. And you can sit on it like a bench. Tourists don't know that it's a piece of the building and they'll sit there and they won't know. And then the tour guides will tell them and it freaks them out. That's something. Sit on it. I'll sit on it. You can see the grooves in it. There, are you happy now? Somebody watching told me to sit on it. This is a live stream after all. You know things can happen because of you. Hit the like button by the way. We're really late on it.

00:38:01 John Daub: These boats here, these tourist boats, also the older generation would not like these that much. Because following the bomb this was just a very horrific scene that the older generation can't erase from their memories. And now you'll see people kayaking, taking these boats that you stand and paddle on. And that's how I know that Hiroshima has turned the page. And now the city is starting to instead of living in the past it's starting to move on to the future. And that's a good thing you know. I would think that the people who perished that day would want the city to be happy and to eventually move on. And I think that they've done a very good job of preserving the past which you see there and then moving on to the future. Because you can't see the future if you're always living in the past right?

00:39:01 John Daub: Yeah if you want me to take you... I was going to end it here but we got a nice base of people watching. So click the like button. Let's see if we can get to 600 likes and I'll take you over to the Peace Museum to the entrance of it. And you would have walked all the way from one side of the city to the other. And this is what I'm talking about when I tell you the city of Hiroshima is really small. That there over those trees that I just showed you is the Peace Museum. This is one of the most... Oh wow. It will change the way you see the city of Hiroshima. And I'll take you there. But we got to get to 600 likes. And if we don't I probably will still go. I will probably still go. We've been overridden. Sometimes we get overridden by my silly like demands by people giving super chats and I just have to go anyways. I'm not going to let you down. But just hit the like button anyways because you want to. Alright in the distance is the Cenotaph. And I'm going to take you there right now. We went there last night when it was dark but it's different in the daytime. This is where of course President Obama was here five years ago I believe it was five years ago for the 70th anniversary where he embraced one of the survivors that had such an emotional impact to the rest of the world, the residents of Hiroshima. When the President... That really put if there was any doubt that the war was over... Of course it was. That did it. And just the embracement that we will always be friends. And that made a big deal to the older generation.

00:40:42 John Daub: So he's a guide here. This is interesting. You see he's got here no nukes. So it's turned into a very peaceful city. And of course the older generation you would see them making sure that this never happened again. It's the second generation typically. The third generation the younger generation has sort of moved on to that. And they'll still promote like no nukes. Everybody does that. But you don't see them out here as much. Maybe because they're working. It is Monday. But the second generation in their 60s is usually out here making sure that that message is not forgotten. Every generation has its own message I think. So we're gonna walk back across this bridge because I said if we get 600 likes I would do it. We're like almost there so I might as well do it now. Hey Luis you're very welcome. Luis from Switzerland. And Dr. Zark you got it. All you gotta do is tell me your address brother and I'll make sure you get a postcard if you're not in the postcard club. I appreciate the support.

00:42:06 John Daub: Alright and we stop at these markers. Zero milestone of Hiroshima City, the intersection of main overload traffic routes. This point was also used as a main stop on water transport. Alright so as I said Hiroshima's history goes back a lot further than... Hello. Hello. And nowadays you can see across the street they have boats that travel from Miyajima Island all the way here. Let's go see how much they cost. Actually I'm really interested. This didn't exist 20 years ago. So we must investigate. We have to investigate this. I wanna know. This is your authoritative livestream on Hiroshima's walking in the center of the area. This has to be now. I gotta add this information in. Alright this is Hiroshima Prefecture and we're in the city. So you can see that the boat will take you from the World Heritage Site. It's not that long... The way to Mt. Misen is right here. This is Miyajima Pier. Let's find out how long it takes... Oh! It takes 45 minutes. So you can ride the boat for 45 minutes and get there. It's like going from Asakusa to Odaiba on the space boat. But there's no space boat here yet. We've gotta change that. We gotta get our space boat here.

00:43:40 John Daub: Space boat. Must be said every livestream. Graham Kamer thank you. Scottish CND will be there in October. David Kimura's back. Hey David! Oh Dr. Zark wrote to say that he joined. Thanks for showing us around. This is from Murph 580s. I need to come and visit and see this beautiful city. You absolutely do. Wow! Wow! I wish I had time I would jump on this boat next time. Okay next time we're doing this we're gonna take the boat all the way to Miyajima. Okay? It's a promise. Boom. Done. In stone. We're gonna do this. So these boats leave like every 30 minutes. This is like the Asakusa trip to Odaiba. It's very frequent and it takes 45 minutes as it wrote here. And then the return trip. You can do a day trip by boat. Oh no you gotta stay on Miyajima. Do not do day trips. Listen this is... Alright got like 1100 people watching. Do not do day trip to Miyajima. Alright do it if you have to but stay on the island. It's so beautiful. Do not stay in Hiroshima. Spend a little bit of money. Stay on Miyajima. It's awesome. The city is completely different at dark and you have the whole place to yourself. I love it. And be a local and wake up early in the morning and see what it's like at 6 in the morning when the locals come to dig clams out. And it's just a different vibe when the tourists are not there. It's the most lovely island in the world. It's a little island. It's 2000 yen. That's very reasonable for a 45 minute ferry ride. So there you go. There's all the information you need. There's a nice little ticket booth with information telling you when the next boat is. It's very cool. Oh that's a nice little map. This is where you would board. And we will one day. Not today.

00:45:45 John Daub: Alright I asked for 600 likes. We're well beyond it. What have they got? Salty milk. Really? Hiroshima lemon sorbet. Should I get one? Should I get that? I'm going to get that. Or the matcha green. What do you guys think? Hiroshima lemon or matcha green. Tough call. Hey Ollie Romone thank you. Good night. Keep up the great work John. Hope to meet up. I'll be in the US in a couple of weeks. I don't know if we'll have time to meet up. Aaron Nelson thank you. And Lucius Kwok. I was in Hiroshima to take the ferry to Matsuyama from you. Simon the postcards are sent. And I would actually hurry. I only have about 20, 25 of them left. Of the 200. They're on the Patreon. I think it's patreon.com/onlyinjapango. I'll put a link in the description later on.

00:47:08 John Daub: Dude's checking this little bike. All right let's go to this Peace Museum. I'm trying to think what ice cream I want. I don't know if I'm going to live stream street food. I will definitely get something at Hiroshima Station on the way back. How about that? The doctor... I'm big apologies to the doctor. You got to keep this moving. So we're going to follow these school kids. Yeah. Okay here we go. That's what the boats look like that are going towards Miyajima. They're flat and they don't take a lot of people. So I guess in the summertime it could be a case where you have to wait a while. Oh and we got our moderator Ramsey Silent wrote in the Patreon address. I appreciate that. I appreciate the support. It helps me go on these Shinkansen trips to destinations around Japan.

00:48:11 John Daub: What you see in front of you right now is the statue to the paper cranes. I'm crossing the street illegally. Don't do that. Cross at the crosswalks. Here's the signs. My dad always says take video of the signs. So this is the Atomic Bomb Dome. Getting all this. The cenotaph for the atomic bomb victims and Hondori. That's the shopping street we just came through. Came from and we're going right now to the entrance of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Yeah. I have to go. I always get sad when I see this statue. So right now we're across from the Genbaku Dome. You can look back across these flowers. It's beautiful. You see a lot of people after the bomb had dropped said that nothing would ever grow here again. And now you look from the buildings or even from Google Earth and you look down on the Peace Park. All you do is you see green. That's the reason why there's so many trees here just to show you that there is growth. And after what happened 74 years ago we've got a lot of life back.

00:49:40 John Daub: Yeah I showed you a little bit of this yesterday. Let me just show you some of the paper cranes for a second and then we'll move on. If you do come you do have to stop here and read the story. I get sad talking about it so I'm going to try not to. It's also one of the features of the museum. And people will donate loads and loads of paper cranes to make up for the ones that she didn't finish. The paper cranes are then recycled and they make up for the damage. That's pretty interesting. Not just art but they use the paper to make diplomas for school kids and other stuff. So nothing is wasted from them. But you can't keep them forever. Oh wow. I said Joshua signed up for the postcard club. I'm getting notifications. Thanks guys. I appreciate it. I hope I have enough postcards. If we get too many people signed up I'll get in trouble. Thanks David. I'm going to buy an ekiben on the train. I don't know if I'm going to do a livestream. I've done too many of the ekiben livestreams on the Shinkansen. But I'll tell you what. I'm going to put some pictures and some stories on Instagram from the ekiben. I'm definitely getting an ekiben. So if Kanae is watching I might not be that hungry for dinner. Just a little heads up. I've got a plan for that. You know what I mean? It's not that far away.

00:51:11 John Daub: This is a cenotaph and the flame that will burn. I didn't know that. But the guy just said yesterday he told me that the flame was taken from 1945 like right after the bomb. And they've kept that flame burning just to remember as well. And they have backup flames. I said what happens if it rains or what happens if that flame went out? And he goes no no we have backups. There's one in Miyajima that's burning and then there's another one at NHK as well. And probably one somewhere in the basement somewhere. And they have to keep... Yeah we don't want to lose that. Japan has lost a lot. Mr. Seiichi who was my neighbor he was in World War II in the Philippines. He was what 16 I think when he went. Nobody really wanted to go. And he lost all of his childhood, all the photos, all the paintings, memories, writings when he was a kid were gone because of the war. So people don't have a lot of memories from that era. It was just all burned or destroyed. It's amazing that Japan has this. And it's amazing that Japan has as many relics as it does in the museums or protected especially in Tokyo which was so harshly bombed in 1944 and 45.

00:52:34 John Daub: Alright this is the cenotaph now. And in front of us is the Peace Museum. It's a very iconic shape to it with two corridors on the left and the right. You will have to walk from one to the other. The main exhibition is in here and then you'll walk the corridor. And this is where you'll see which is now dark. It's very different. If you went here a year ago or 20 years ago it's a totally different exhibition. I don't want to say totally different. It's now been renovated so it's a different experience let's just say. So I'm going to take you to the entrance. And we'll look back through the cenotaph here. Let's look back through the cenotaph here. Yesterday I was here and a guy in his 90s was being pushed by his son. And his son helped him out of the wheelchair. And he stood up with the help of his son and a cane. And he walked from here very slowly and got in front. He threw some money and then he prayed. He prayed through there. And I think he does... I didn't ask him a story. That's just such a personal thing. But my guess is that he might have been here or lost a lot of people and comes here to remember them. So a lot of survivors do come back here. And there's not that many left. That's another reason why I'm doing the Hiroshima episode. I really want to make sure that we preserve some of the first-hand memories, some of the first-hand experiences of what happened that day. Because we're not going to have them forever. Nothing is forever. But YouTube might be. Are you listening to YouTube? You can't do not delete this video I'm uploading about Hiroshima. You got that? It's important. That's right.

00:54:40 John Daub: Alright so we're going to walk this walk away. And everyone who's now walking across here has been through the exhibition on the inside there. And then it wraps around. You can't go into this building anymore I believe this is a... When I used to live here in Hiroshima this was like a community center. And I got information on things that were happening around the city. We didn't really have internet that much. It was expensive. I went to an internet cafe and I had to pay $10 an hour to access it. So I would have to get on my bicycle or walk down here to get around. And I see James signed up for the postcard club. This is the most postcard club signups I've gotten ever. The main building of the Peace Museum is undergoing earthquake proofing. That's good to know. So that's what this fence is for. It's nice that they're kind of allowing us. But I think maybe we can look between the cracks. Let's see. Maybe there's something. I can't I'm not going to be able to see. So you guys tell me what you see. Do you see anything? Just cars. Benjamin writes in cars. Okay so it's a parking lot. Guess the earthquake proofing team is off today.

00:56:07 John Daub: So there's the Cenotaph. There's the Genbaku Dome the atomic bomb dome for those that are joining us. This is the last time you're going to see it in this live stream. But I'm going to be back here. I'm always back here. This is my second home. I love Hiroshima. It's a long view from the Peace Museum all the way to the atomic bomb. And let me go back to this walkway. You can see a lot of people will take pictures from here. And when they have the memorial on August 6th this will be full of people. And at night they will release lanterns into the river so that it's such a beautiful sight. It makes the world news every year. But next year in 2020 will be a special year. The Olympics will be going on. Hold on a second. I believe the Olympics will be going on or just ending when they celebrate the 75th anniversary of the atomic bomb drop. So I'm guessing in a year from now this will be quite something that people talk about a lot in the Olympic broadcast on NBC in the United States. They're going to be maybe even coming here and bringing it live. I don't know. But a big deal here in Japan. It's a big deal everywhere. I hope it is. Because Hiroshima and Nagasaki both lost a lot.

00:57:46 John Daub: You would exit from here. No you can exit from here but you enter here. And this is where we're going to say goodbye. Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims. Oh is that now the other? That's the other building maybe. Used to be a community center 20 years ago. Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound. It is estimated that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6th 1945 caused approximately 140,000 plus or minus 10,000 deaths. You don't want to miss anybody by the end of December that year. The Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound houses and memorializes the remains of approximately 70,000 victims discovered in various locations throughout the city or buried or held in temples and graveyards whose identities of surviving relatives are unidentified. This is important information. I think someone had asked me about this before. There's an Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound and it's 200 meters this way. Oh I walked by there. Yeah it's out there by the T intersection closer to where the target was. There you see this mound. But you know reading it makes sad. If you can imagine 70,000 victims are there. That's sad. I got to change the view. I'm sorry. And then here we are. This is the entrance to the world famous Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It's written in very humble font to show. And entrance is 200 yen. I think I can show you a little bit in here. I don't want to go inside. You're supposed to have permission. I had permission yesterday to film. That permission is in forever. I'll have to go in and reapply. But you can see this is where you would get the tickets inside. And it's 200 yen. You can see the price listed on the top of the screen. There. 100 yen. And it's free for kids. It should be.

01:00:11 John Daub: If you are a kid I'll tell you this. You know Hiroshima to me is a lot more than its modern history. This is my home in a way. It's a second home. So I have a connection here beyond what tourists will see. But you do have to come and see this museum. I think I've been in here about 20 times. Whenever friends would visit me I would go along and try not to be too affected. But if you are with a kid you probably want to make sure you talk about this before you go in there. Just to set them up because they'll see some images that are very hard. But I want you to imagine that day. Kids didn't have a choice. They saw what they saw. And it was very sad and traumatic. I can't imagine that day. You couldn't drink the water. So people couldn't drink water for two days until more water had been trucked in from safe zones. You drank the water and it was like instant. It was toxic because of the radioactivity in it. So you can't imagine not drinking water after being burned for two days just so you could survive the pain. But if you do have kids my point is if you do have kids you want to make sure that you talk with them before you go in there. Because it's very very hard. It's very graphic. Especially the second part of it. But it's huge photos of what the city looked like before. And then the next stage is what the city looked like after. And then there's the third stage as a tourist or as a resident walking around the city of Hiroshima and seeing just how beautiful it's become. And what an amazing place it is.

01:01:54 John Daub: So there you have it. We've walked in an hour. Yeah I know Fidel. This is a horrible horrible way to end. I want to put a positive spin if it's even possible. You can't. You have to be respectful. But you also have to remember that this is 75 years ago. And I think the city is ready to turn a page not to forget it but to move to the next chapter and look to the future. And it's nice that this peace park is here because it's a way to remember the past. But it's also a place that you can come on a date and enjoy the green here. And I think that the victims and the survivors and the people affected by it would want that right? We don't want this to be a place where people come here and be sad. We want a place where you can understand and respect the past but also move on to the future. And I think that's what Hiroshima's future will be. I think the city will be remembered for something else I would hope than just this. And if you do come here it deserves a lot more respect than just one day. All right if you come in here spend two or three days and kind of take it easy. Because I think if you give a city like Hiroshima some time it will surprise you. The people are really friendly. The food is incredible. Miyajima is worth spending the night and the city of Hiroshima on its own I would spend more time here than in Tokyo. Why? Because this is my second home and I love it. And I do hope that you do. So if you have any questions leave a comment below. I really do appreciate it. Thanks for the thumbs up. And thank you so much for the super chats that will pay for my lunch and my ticket home. So much appreciated. Do you click the subscribe button? And if you want a postcard there's the Patreon postcard club for those that are interested. I'm sure moderators will leave a link. I'll put it in the description. See you at Hiroshima Station in a couple of hours as I recharge my phone battery from this long one. We'll be back in a couple of hours to click the notifications. See you guys. Have a good day. Good night. Enjoy Hiroshima when you come here.