00:00:02 John Daub: Hey everybody, welcome to Fukuoka. This is Hakata Station underneath the new overhang here. The station is beautiful and modern, just like everything else in Japan. How you doing? Kanae and I have flown from Tokyo. We've arrived here in Fukuoka. I'm out of breath. The airport is just two subway stations away from Hakata Station.

00:00:27 John Daub: Now Fukuoka's main train station, like Tokyo Station, Osaka Station, Sapporo Station—no, in Fukuoka it's Hakata Station, and it's also Hakata ramen. Hakata ramen is thick pork bone-based broth ramen. It is thick and good and rich and delicious, and it is waiting for us in this building. A lot of the famous shops also have stores here at the station. You don't have to go find them out in the city. You can find them in places like this brand new Kita building, which is run by the post office. Or if you go inside the station, there's a ramen street where about a dozen of the famous shops are inside.

00:01:15 John Daub: But Kanae said that her friend recommended this restaurant, so we're gonna go take a look in there. She's gonna tell us more about it. I'm gonna go inside this store and meet her there. She's already ordered, so it should be there in a minute. Follow me, I'm so excited to go inside and get a bowl of Hakata ramen. If you've never had really thick pork bone ramen before, you're in for a real treat. It's interesting though—you would think it would all be inside a shop, but no, here it's inside a shopping mall.

00:02:12 John Daub: So we gotta go up nine flights of steps—it's up on the ninth floor. I told Kanae to order me an ice cold beer. The great thing about Japan is on the escalators, stand on the left, walk on the right. So if you're in a hurry, you can walk up on the right. We're almost there. I should've just taken the elevator. Two more—no, three more. It's on the ninth floor.

00:03:11 John Daub: Inside department stores in Japan, they have restaurants usually on the top floor. Alright, one more. There it is—restaurant floor. And there are several floors here. We're here, and there are several famous ramen shops here. The one we're going to is on the end. This is a chain, like a branch of their head office. This is called Kurume Taiho. Check this out—opened since 1953. So you know this is gonna be really good. Here's a preview of things to come. And I might have to go gimbal-less, 'cause Kanae's waiting for us. She's right there. Do you see her? Kita!

00:04:28 John Daub: Okay, it's here. The beer is here. Are the ramens gonna come? The beer glass is frozen. Ah, the beer glass is frozen. I am starving. So we've ordered a ramen set here. Are you hungry, Kanae?

00:05:04 Kanae Daub: Yeah, I'm so hungry.

00:05:05 John Daub: She's so hungry. We've kind of staked out a little corner here so we can answer the phone a little bit. Kanae's so nice—she's trying to open the tripod. But first you have to put it on. Awesome. How you doing? Good evening. This is cool—you can see them working in the background, right? I'm so hungry. Thanks so much for joining us, everybody. Hope the signal's good. What did we order? Do you have the menu?

00:05:46 Kanae Daub: Oh yeah. We ordered this beer. Also, the gyoza's here. Yeah, the ramen is mukashi ramen. Ah, this is the old style.

00:06:04 John Daub: Mukashi ramen (old-style ramen). She said it's not—it's the best one.

00:06:09 Kanae Daub: Yeah, best one.

00:06:10 John Daub: Oh, Kanae, someone wrote in—you're looking so pretty tonight.

00:06:13 Kanae Daub: Thank you so much.

00:06:16 John Daub: Alright, kanpai to everybody out there.

00:06:19 Kanae Daub: I have tea.

00:06:20 John Daub: You have tea? Kanpai.

00:06:26 John Daub: I have to chime in first. Ah yeah, before ramen. So if you've seen the Fukuoka ramen video I made last year, you know that I don't like the yatai ramen. The yatai (street food stalls) ramen is the old school ramen stands outside. I don't like that very much because it's gotten really touristy. And to be honest, a lot of the shops' quality has gone down. So most of the locals will come to places like this. You don't have to go far to find a bowl of ramen in Fukuoka. Sometimes the best bowl is at the station or right across the street from it.

00:07:12 John Daub: Kanae, have you been to Fukuoka before?

00:07:14 Kanae Daub: No. It's my first time.

00:07:17 John Daub: This is gonna be fun. So we've got some gyoza here. Oh man, I love gyoza. It's soft, it's salty, it's meaty. Ah, itadakimasu—you gotta say that. So one bowl, you get a discount, right? You get one bowl, the gyoza set, and then a beer is a thousand yen. It's so cheap.

00:07:58 Kanae Daub: Yeah.

00:08:01 John Daub: You like?

00:08:11 Kanae Daub: Yeah.

00:08:12 John Daub: I went up the escalator really fast. We started the livestream outside, so I wanted to give you a point-of-view so you can see where the area is like. Fukuoka station's changed a lot since I came here 20 years ago, because I've been living here for 21 years. When is your first time visiting Fukuoka?

00:08:30 Kanae Daub: I lived in Hiroshima in 1999, and I remember taking the Seishun Jidai Kippu (youth train pass), the local train, to come here.

00:08:41 John Daub: And so it was a very long ride, but I got here and I had ramen. That was 1999, the first time. It was a really good trip. Kyushu is one of the four main islands in Japan, and it's one that if you're coming to Japan the first time, most people will visit Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima—they stay on Honshu Island. Then the second time, they'll go to Hokkaido or somewhere else, the mountains of Honshu. Kyushu is one of the places a lot of people miss, and it's a shame, because they have the best chicken, amazing wagyu. The food here is top notch. The produce, all of the vegetables are extremely good—Kyushu's tomatoes, for example, and kuwai (arrowhead). The water is good here, so they got good shochu. Oita makes good sake, but most of Kyushu is shochu land, so we have really good shochu here. The beer, it doesn't really matter. But we're just seconds away from getting our ramen.

00:09:52 John Daub: One of the reasons I also started outside was because I knew it would take a little bit of time. This shop just opened, and if you ever want to film in a ramen shop, you want to go before it opens and get the best seat. Why did you pick this shop?

00:10:06 Kanae Daub: I picked this to follow my friend. They play poker. And I just asked her, so which one would you recommend? Ramen shop in Hakata. And she said this one.

00:10:32 John Daub: I learned this from Randy Santel. Before Randy Santel, a competitive eater, eats, he turns his hat around—it helps him to focus. This is incredible. Hold on, I've got to take a picture.

00:10:46 Kanae Daub: Well yeah, take my picture.

00:11:09 John Daub: Or you can take two bowls. Ready? You gotta take a picture. I don't want to drop it. 3, 2, 1. That's it. Okay, you better eat. That's right—you eat quickly, ramen, and you get out. Let me show you what we got here. Check it out. This is what I'm talking about. This is pork bone ramen. You can see the broth is so thick. The juices are in there. Beautiful egg in the middle there. Let me show you the noodles underneath here. These are straight noodles. The wavy ones will take some of the broth with it, but this looks so good. Can you see the broth? The thick pork bone—it's got that color to it. I'm looking forward to this. Kanae is already deep in hers.

00:12:22 John Daub: How is it? How many points out of 10?

00:12:29 Kanae Daub: 10 stars.

00:12:30 John Daub: 7 out of 10? Wow. I like the sweet flavor ramen? I don't really like the sweet flavor ramen—I like tonkotsu. It's kind of new for me. I understand that. Let's first try the broth here. It's rich, it's salty. It tastes very homemade. This is really good. There's something in it—you can taste all the ingredients. I like this noodle.

00:13:20 Kanae Daub: Yeah.

00:13:21 John Daub: I like the straight noodles too. Let's go and try that right now then. It's good. I don't like the hosomen (thin noodles) so much. This is not hosomen or futomen (thick noodles)—this is kind of hosomen, but it's a different size. I like it. I would have liked it no matter what, to be honest. It matches well with the soup. The toppings are next. Let's go for this egg here. Oh wait, the eggs are different here. I thought this would be a complete hard-boiled egg, but it's just a slice—it's been sliced. That's unusual. Let's get some of the seaweed in here. This is amazing.

00:14:29 John Daub: Do you want to put the extra garlic? Oh yeah, extra garlic—let's do it. This one is hard. This one is spicy garlic. Oh, spicy garlic please. White pepper? Oh, white pepper is good too. Spicy garlic sauce. Look at that. Mmm. Spicy garlic sauce. Let's get a spoonful of that. I'm in paradise.

00:16:06 John Daub: That was—I'm kind of feeling so sorry for all of you, because only us two are eating. Everybody can't eat this ramen. Her feeling is she wants to put the noodles through the camera and then give it to you that way. Kanae is learning about technology, slowly. We're gonna walk down after this bowl to the place that I don't like too much, which is the outdoor yatai, the ramen stands, and just take a look around. I haven't been there in two and a half years—maybe it's changed. I'm not sure if we're gonna do a livestream there, but we might—might give it a try.

00:17:02 John Daub: Kanai is someone who likes her ramen—she likes it a long time. It's really an incredible experience just to eat ramen in Hakata. It was two and a half years ago I was here when I was hitchhiking, and I ate like seven bowls of ramen in two days. And I was just sweating salt and sauce and soup—it was awful. I smelled like an animal.

00:18:12 John Daub: What's this tea?

00:18:14 Kanae Daub: Green tea.

00:18:19 John Daub: Okay, so they have chilled green tea, which comes for free. So you don't have to get a drink. One of the things people don't understand at Japanese restaurants is that you always get water or a drink or tea, and it's complimentary. You can usually have it refilled unlimited. So you don't have to get a drink—that keeps the prices of your meals cheaper if you want. The soup is nice. It's not unusual to not order a drink—it's not rude at all. So if you don't want a drink, you don't have to get a drink.

00:19:03 John Daub: Oh wow. So I finished the noodles, and that's pretty much ramen in a nutshell—in a bowl. But check this out real quickly. Inside of it, there's these crouton-looking things—do you see that? Here's a look at the pork bone broth. It's really beautiful. And these little crouton things add another dimension to the broth that I've never had before. It's hard to show you from the angle that I was showing before, so I'm putting the camera right into the soup. The noodles are gone, so technically I'm done with this ramen. But I'm probably gonna take a few more sips of the broth and eat any treasure that I find underneath there, and then we're done. That's how this works. I think it's like roasted pork fat—deep fried pork fat, roasted deep fried pork skin.

00:20:39 John Daub: I'm not gonna drink the soup—I'm gonna drink the soup. One more. It also has a spicy one. What you're telling me now? I want a black one. Why are you telling me now? You wanna eat one more? And we don't have the audience—it's like everyone's asleep in the US. But if you're watching this in playback, if we can get to 500 likes, I will. Oh baby. Yeah, this is the part where you cut out—usually in a YouTube video, you'll cut out the burps and the retasting of the ramen. But if we can get to 500 likes, I will take you and show you in livestream of the ramen yatai area. I can't guarantee we're gonna get it—the service has always been really bad there, and the ramen has always been mediocre. But I will take you to the ramen yatai stands on the river with Kanae. She's gonna buy some walking shoes—she only has high heels. So we're gonna buy some walking shoes en route. But in about an hour and a half, if we can get to 500 likes, I will livestream the yatai area. And at night it's pretty good. And this is a good way for us to test out the low light night sensitivity of the iPhone.

00:22:03 John Daub: That was very satisfying. Typically at a ramen restaurant, you don't want to stay as long as we have—and we've only been here for like 15 minutes. You eat and you go, right? You don't sit here like at a TGI Friday's or something. Turnover is important to the restaurant. So you sit, you eat, you get out. Sometimes I come to the ramen shop alone. If you're alone, you can sit and eat ramen—eat and get out. Just time for ramen.

00:23:00 John Daub: I needed one for the road. I'm gonna be savoring that salty pork bone broth for the next hour until the next one. We're here to ride the Seven Stars train tomorrow for a TV shoot, and it's gonna be quite an experience. But we have a media blackout—we're not gonna be able to livestream or use our cameras for three and a half days. So we're livestreaming as much as we can just to share Fukuoka, because we can't share anything while we're on the road. PVG is gonna be here tonight, and then we'll see him tomorrow morning at the station.

00:23:56 John Daub: We're gonna sign off, but I hope you enjoyed this experience. This was a lot of fun. And again, if you're just tuning in now, hit the like button. If we can get to 500 likes by the time we get there, I'm gonna livestream the Hakata Ramen Alley—the historical place where there's tons of stands. I'm gonna livestream that and share that experience with you. But this is where the audience must participate. You get the ramen—you really do get the ramen sweats. People blow their nose, they kind of reset their body when they have a big bowl of ramen. That was really good.

00:24:55 John Daub: The condiments—just one more time here. You have chopsticks on the table. Sometimes you'll have ginger toothpicks to get that stuff out of your teeth. And then you have chili pepper oil, sesame, and then you have that spicy garlic there. And then you have an empty bowl of ramen—that's a beautiful sight. Guys, it's up to you now—500 likes in the next hour. I think we can do it, and then I'll see you in the ramen alley. Kanae, jya ne (see you). We're out of here. Where'd she go? Kanae's right there. So we're out of here—it's up to you guys. Click that like button. We'll see you in a minute. Or an hour.