00:03 John Daub: Welcome to Oishida Station, which has snow. Thank goodness. Look at this. It's beautiful out here. What a contrast to just a few hours ago when we were in Tokyo. You jump on a Shinkansen and you can come out here to the mountains. This is the foothills before we get into some of the Yamagata, Ginzan Onsen area.

00:29 John Daub: This is where the Shinkansen came in, and that's where they dropped off the birthday girl and I. How you doing, everybody? This is the OnlyJapanGo channel. This is what you subscribe for, live streams from all over Japan. In this series, I'll explore tons of Shinkansen stations, train stations, hubs, because I know a lot of people coming to Japan are very interested in knowing what you're getting into. So if you do decide to come to Oishida, which obviously not a lot of people do—we're the only ones on the platform—this is what you're going to be coming to.

01:02 John Daub: Now, we've already arranged it for the onsen. The ryokan we're staying at will come and pick us up, and we brought our suitcases here. So we're going to wheel out, and I was thinking that a Shinkansen station was going to be a lot bigger than this.

01:18 Kanae Daub: How is it? It's small, right?

01:21 John Daub: Yes, compact. I guess that's one way to put it. Yeah, it is very compact. Again, the Yamagata line, which is the O line, the local line, and then the Yamagata Shinkansen stops here. And it's just bizarre. The Yamagata Shinkansen will stop like every five minutes, it seemed, like a local train. Hey, you know what, I can't complain. Whenever you have a super express stopping out here in the countryside, it gives easy access for people with the JR Rail Pass and tourists like us.

01:53 John Daub: But what I've noticed right away is that it's colder. It's colder, and the food looks incredible. Look across the platform there—we have some wagyu beef. This is Obanazawa. I guess that's the name of the restaurant or the name of the beef, but I know Yonezawa is very famous here. But all over Japan, the regional places have regional wagyu.

02:18 John Daub: All right, let's see what they have here. This might be a short live stream. Now the Shinkansen departed very quickly—it was like a whistle stop—and I got some pictures of it off for the main channel episode. Oh, Kanae—that's where we're staying. Obanazawa is the name. That's where we're going. You wanted to go to this onsen, so she wanted to go to this onsen, so we went to this onsen.

03:04 John Daub: Hey, an async lad, thank you. Happy birthday to Kanae. Kanae's getting all these birthday wishes. All right, oh, and they got like onsen flags here. Check this out. There's only one exit to the Shinkansen station. That's the 20th anniversary of the Yamagata Shinkansen. Oh, they call the Shinkansen the onsen Shinkansen. Onsen Shinkansen—they should put an onsen on the Shinkansen. That'd be pretty cool.

03:36 John Daub: All right, that's pretty neat right there. So we're seeing some pretty neat regional stuff here. All right, let's get out of here. You have my ticket? She's the more responsible one. Let's see how we get—what do we do with these tickets? This is the ticket that I got from the vending machine yesterday in the live stream yesterday. You can see it was a little pricey to come out here: 12,890 yen or about 110 dollars.

04:02 John Daub: Oh, here comes the local train right now, sharing the tracks with the Shinkansen. It's a wanman (one-man train). All right, it's—there's two trains on it, but it's so funny because the Shinkansen was just on the same tracks. I guess the width of the tracks is not any different than the width of these tracks aren't any different than the Shinkansen ones for the Yamagata Shinkansen. Thus they need a different kind of train car. That's funny. Here comes the local train, the O line.

04:32 John Daub: All right, let's go say hi to everybody coming here. Yamagata is a little bit friendlier than Tokyo. There are some tourists. Look at that. Oh, everyone's got suitcases. They're going to Ginzan Onsen as well. So if you don't come by Shinkansen, you can come by local train from Yamagata City, I guess. There's some things on the ground here. What is this? A boat—Hanamaru, Benihanamaru. Okay, interesting.

05:11 John Daub: Okay, there's a festival here. Hanagasa (flower hat festival) is the hat, right? Yeah, it's flower hats. That's famous here in August. That would be pretty cool. Hey, getting started, thank you. Yeah, thanks everybody for the birthday wishes. I can see Tasty Chronicles, Terry, very nice. Mood, Dean, UFO Bob, Florencia is here.

05:42 John Daub: All right, let's see how we get rid of this car. I just wanted to explore the station a little bit. No, there's no Starbucks here. All right, so at these local stations here, they have the stairs that go over to get onto the other side of the platform. You cannot jump across the track—I know you can in India, although you shouldn't. Remember they're hanging from outside the cars in the Mumbai commuter trains. A lot of people come here to ski. And even out here, they're recycling. There's the recycle trash cans. That's about it.

06:22 John Daub: I guess this area is famous for these boats, and that's Oishida Maru, the Oishida boat. So there's a river here, and there's a rainbow. It's a fun place, and we have an hour to kill. The next Shinkansen's coming at 1:17, which is like 45 minutes from now. That's crazy. All right, this is—this is what? Are we supposed to do this? This is the Shinkansen station tour. This is a weird Shinkansen. See, oh wait, there's the sign. And then we're gonna go outside the station and see if there's even a convenience store here, because sometimes there aren't even convenience stores out in the countryside if you're going to a ryokan. And we're gonna do a room tour as well.

07:07 Kanae Daub: She does sign very nice.

07:14 John Daub: If you are gonna go into a ryokan in the countryside, bring coffee. All right, they never have coffee. I'm pointing at you—they never have coffee. All right, if you're a coffee lover, bring coffee. They always only have ocha (green tea) at these ryokan. So I brought a thing—it's like half coffee, filtered coffee. All right, let's make our way out.

07:33 John Daub: Sometimes they don't have these electronic turnstiles either. Oh wait, there's no place to put the ticket in. Kanae, we're country people. How do you do it? Oh, you just put the ticket here. It says "keep," no—no, it says keep. Just drop it there. It's the honor system. What are they gonna do? Right? And you can go through. Just go through and keep the ticket, dear customer.

08:19 John Daub: I love it out here. There's two vending—there's two ticket machines here. It's 12:35, but the window's closed because there's no train due here for a while, so they're probably eating lunch. Ramsey Silent is back—waves. Left Vegas 4am just walked out the door. Happy birthday, Kanae, from Ramsey Silent. I'm going to pass out at 9:30 pm. Get the thumbs up for Kanae. Thank you, Ramses. Yeah, nice to see you.

08:42 John Daub: All right, what's inside? Two exits—west and this is the west, and there's an east. There's not that much here. All right, that's an information center. Oh, cool. All right, can I—I'm just gonna leave the bag here for a second. Okay, not in front. I don't—if anyone needs the AED, I'll put this down just in case. You never know. Let's just take a quick look-see outside the station. Oh, it's not the auto doors—touch, which is smart, save energy. There's a schedule for the Shinkansen.

09:23 John Daub: And lo and behold, this is awesome. Welcome to the Japanese countryside. I love it. There's like nothing here. Well, there's something here. There's a bus, there's a few vending machines, there's a couple of taxis, there's some snow, but it's raining right now. I hope it gets— You found a ramen shop. Ramen, ramen. All right, that's very cool. There's a ramen shop over here. There's a convenience store that's conveniently located—closed. What? Yamazaki Daily store is closed. It's supposed to be open daily. That's why "daily" is in your name, Yamazaki Daily. What? There's no Lawson's. There's a 7-Eleven. There's just—what's that over there? A dango (rice dumpling) shop or something, and seems closed. Vending machines are open. There's another vending machine with snow on the top over there. You see that? This is hilarious. Yeah, beginning of January, I guess.

10:27 John Daub: So this is the front of Oishida Station. It's raining, which is a shame, but it's kind of cold out here. We're not gonna hang out too long in the freezing cold, but we're gonna get picked up by the onsen. You can see that there's some snow—it's real snow, of course—but it's raining. It's gonna be slush tonight. It's gonna start to snow, so we're gonna have to wait for the snow to stop.

11:01 John Daub: And then we're gonna have to wait for the snow again, which is good news because it's a soba shop. Is it open? It's got to be open if it's a train station. It's lunchtime. That's the information center. All right, we're gonna go in there next. There's lockers and restrooms here. There's a place where you can sit and go up—it almost like a stadium. What is this? All right, let's explore.

11:32 John Daub: You think our bags are okay? Can I— I think okay. I hope so. What is that? That's like a stadium. This is Yamagata Prefecture, Tohoku. It's about three hours.

11:40 Kanae Daub: Yeah, go on up. Be careful though.

11:48 John Daub: Alright, don't go. It looks icy. We're country people. You're from—you're born in Tokyo. Don't go off-road. Hurt yourself. Just advice. The ramen shop is—uh, there's cars in front of there. That's an option as well. So if you come out here, there's a ramen shop. I'm guessing because there's not a lot of money to be made out here that places are closed more often than not. It's first time snow in 2020? 2020 is the first time snow? It is cold. It's one degree Celsius according to the internet.

12:35 John Daub: Alright, let's go inside and take a look. It's like a stadium. Looking for like an NCAA national championship football game going on here. Or early, I guess. See the platform from up there. Oh, you can see the Shinkansen coming through. Alright, let's go inside this soba shop. It's supposed to be open 11 to 8 pm. Supposed to, I say, because you just never know. Kalpana Goel, happy birthday, Kanae. Thank you.

13:15 John Daub: Oh, here's the menu. Kanae, we could eat something here or else ruin our appetite. Oh, what's this? What's that? That looks good. Soba zensai (soba appetizer set). This is like yakisoba. Soba yaki miso on a spoon. How do you eat that, just one bite? There's some tempura. And it's handmade soba. Oh, this looks great, right here in the station. It's reasonably priced, too. It's all about six dollars. You can get this massive set for twenty dollars. And then, of course, they got booze. This is Yamagata, after all. People get tanked a lot here.

14:10 John Daub: It's great that you can leave your suitcases here. And I guess people are doing that. Take off your shoes and leave them at the shoe cabinet, so keeps everything clean. Everyone's got boots, right? And then you got the Yamagata sake—it's here. All right, let's go through the information—the little info center. This is the little info center. And that's where we left our bags. They're just sitting there because who's gonna take them, and where are they gonna take them to?

14:40 John Daub: Oh, can I look at these kokeshi (wooden dolls)? These are the—they're famous in Fukushima kokeshi, but they're part of the region of Tohoku. Kokeshi are like these really cute dolls made out of wood. You want a kokeshi birthday? Kokeshi—we can get one that looks like you. It's sort of—sort of looks like you. Sort of. I don't know. No, I don't know. And then, yeah, art, all kinds of ceramics. Oh, there's a walking tour here. What? So they have attractions—a treat for the sun for the senses? Interesting.

15:28 John Daub: The Nasu Neko (eggplant cat?)—come and see and taste it. Come see and taste it. They have—what? Coin locker. Okay, so you put your stuff in the coin locker and you just leave it there, too. The Oishida Station tourist information center is right here. Very cool. And it looks like this one is a dango shop. Oh yeah, but it's—on internet it's a 30-minute walking round trip, and we don't want to miss the bus to the ryokan. But the dango shop—apparently people line up for it even in this weather. Interesting.

16:04 John Daub: So let's see—there's a little teeny kiosk inside of here. Let's see what they have here. You can get coffee. This would be the answer to Starbucks. I like the fact you can control the strength of the coffee, and you can control whether or not you want milk and sugar by pushing the button. You have nine options like tic-tac-toe. And you can create the own strength. Yeah, it's like a weird Dotor—it's a famous brand. And there's ice cream, which is not going to be eaten in winter for us. Gift shop. Oh look at that—it's like a rice snack. These are omiyage (souvenirs), and you can buy stuff if you want to before the bus comes and take it to the ryokan. I'm not sure if they have a supermarket by the onsen, so it's best to bring some snacks with you or buy them at the store.

17:03 John Daub: Oh look, can I look? They got Yamagata Pocky, cherry flavored. So Satonishiki (cherry variety) is a very popular brand. Yeah, Satonishiki cherries. Yeah, should we get that? You want to try that? Hey, Tasty Chronicles—happy birthday, Kanae. And David Kimura again. David wants us to get ramen. I wish, I wish we had time. Maybe make some time.

17:41 John Daub: All right, let's get out of here. The reason for the doors to close is to keep the heat in, and then they'll close really quickly. That's an old phone. What? I haven't—look at this, like retro 1980s payphone. They've been taking out the green ones and then putting in this and the big dials for older people because the population is older. You can't miss the numbers. And they even have phone books. What? It's like retro out here. How cool is that? How cool is that?

18:14 John Daub: The window's still closed. I believe this is going to be a really short live stream, everybody. That's the train announcing the trip back to Tokyo. That's the train that we were on is making its way back at 1:33 here back to Tokyo. We'll be going there on the 10th to go back home, so just two nights and three days here in beautiful Yamagata.

18:43 John Daub: Lunchtime artist writes in here for John and Kanae. Happy birthday, Kanae, from Canada. Hey, thank you guys. Appreciate the birthday wishes. We're really out here. You can tell from the air quality, too. Here's a map, but it's only in Japanese. Oishida is right there. And if I zoom out, how far are we from Yamagata City? I don't even see Yamagata. There's Sendai. Oh okay, there it is. I see Sendai over here. Sendai is about—um, 1:16 to get there on local train, it looks like. There's like 25 stops or more. That's going to take forever. Yeah, there's a ton of onsen stations. You could spend a week here just going onsen hopping.

19:31 John Daub: Yeah, I love that the station name called Sakurambo means cherry in Japanese. It's called—do you see it right here? This one, 333 yen—it's 330 yen is in the name "cherry." So basically, if you translate that, it means cherry station because cherries are famous in this area. Japan's cherries have a different red color to it, and they're a little bit more sour inside. It's not red inside—yellow. Yeah, inside is a different color. It's just different cherry here. It's nice. It's not as sweet.

20:13 John Daub: Only one entrance to get to the train, but I like the fact that it's a nice train. They have the auto doors again to keep this warm, to keep this area warm in the winter because the winters are harsh here. All right, what do you want to do for an hour? I thought there'd be more here. Ramen? One hour. One hour. See, look—they say the early bird catches the worm. It looks like we caught—maybe soba or ramen. Yeah, I'm not sure. Maybe soba. Are you hungry?

20:40 Kanae Daub: Hungry? Um, yeah, I'm not that hungry really. I'm getting hungry. No, that ekiben (station bento) was big.

21:01 John Daub: Wait, okay, so I guess at the onsen we don't have food until dinner time, right?

21:07 Kanae Daub: Yeah.

21:07 John Daub: So it makes sense to eat something here. All right, what time is the bus coming? So one hour later, we gotta kill one hour from now. Just relax.

21:23 Kanae Daub: All right, okay. All right, so you want soba? All right, let's go. What you want, ramen?

21:30 Kanae Daub: No, soba's fine. I'm not disappointed with the soba.

21:37 John Daub: I'm pushing the auto door. We're walking back through the soba shop. I like the ikebana (flower arrangement) here. All right, let's get to this restaurant here. It looks like people are coming in here to eat soba. People beat us there though.

22:14 Kanae Daub: Yeah, what do you want to do? Should we go, go in? Or I don't know, I'm not hungry though.

22:24 John Daub: I'm not that hungry. All right, what can we get that's light and delicious? This yama yama emo soba—do you see there? It has like the mushi potato, which is so good and healthy and flows right through you. That's 900 yen. That's not too bad. I guess you could just get anago (conger eel) tempura. Look at that. I'm curious—are you guys curious about this as well? I'm curious about this one, just like a spoon of yakisoba miso. All right, okay, I gotta do that. All right, I'm in, I'm in on that. Are you guys in on this? Are you in on this? Are you in on this? Are you all right? I guess we're—we're in on this. Okay, let's do this. Let's do this for the Lunchtime Artist. You've got us lunchtime.

23:21 John Daub: Am I going to—what? Yeah, no, because it might be hard to stream because we're going inside.

23:31 Kanae Daub: You think it's hard? Too hard.

23:44 John Daub: All right, it might be too hard. She's the birthday girl and she said no. All right, so what we'll do is we'll put pictures on Instagram. Is that good? All right, we can do Instagram. I will do Instagram. Some people feel—

23:59 John Daub: That's true. Or I'm gonna take a break. Cut. Hashtag feed Kanae soba tempura for John. For Singapore. Thank you. I'm gonna stop the livestream, hang in there for like five minutes, and then when the food comes, I'll show the food, and then we'll end it. Is that good? Is that good?

24:19 Kanae Daub: Alright.

24:23 John Daub: You're gonna have to wait. I'll be back in about five minutes. You guys still there? You still here? Alright, we went into the shop, but they told us that it's too full, and they won't be able to serve us until lunch—in enough time for us to eat it before the bus comes. So Kanae's putting back on her shoes, and we're gonna go over and look at the ramen. Only in Antarctica. Yeah, we're back for a little bit more. Sorry, we tried to go in there, but the lady said sorry, they have seats, but they won't be able to serve us soba until our bus comes. So she said it's better not to eat here.

25:04 John Daub: Okay. Alright, so we're back on the move. You are watching Only in Japan Go from Oishida Station. We're gonna go look for some ramen. We have an hour. I know the rain stopped. Sorry guys. But there's more noodles. Oh, you can see the mountains, Kanae. Did you notice that?

25:29 Kanae Daub: No.

25:32 John Daub: It looks like Germany. Except not as high as the Alps, but we were at the Christmas market last month, around this time. I'm very disappointed with the manhole covers here. You'd think that they'd have something more spirited.

25:57 John Daub: Alright, let's see what we got here. We've now—we're now in new territory. There are a few cars here, and we do have an hour to kill. So I might have to shut the livestream down again for a second and then get back on, because it would be weird to—what? You won't even know. Oh, let's just see the situation. I only want to show a little bit.

26:22 Kanae Daub: Okay.

26:24 John Daub: Alright, we're gonna go in. We're gonna—is it crowded?

26:28 Kanae Daub: No. It's not lunchtime.

26:31 John Daub: Yes, they have space. And then I got the mabo (spicy mapo) ramen. Mabo tofu. That's tofu in there, and underneath here is ramen. Just wanted to show you—there's the menu up there. Check that out. And look at the noodles underneath here. This is pretty incredible. Oh man. Good?

26:55 Kanae Daub: I like the fact that they have manga back there. Behind you.

27:02 John Daub: Alright, so there you go. If you do come to Oishida station, there's options. There's the soba in there. There's this ramen place across the street, and that's about it. Convenience store closed. If you have time, you can go—you can walk around. They have a dango shop and other souvenir shop, maybe.

27:25 Kanae Daub: Yeah.

27:25 John Daub: Yeah. And if you can't, have some ramen. There you go. Alright guys, have a good day, good night. We're gonna do a Q&A and maybe a room tour tonight. So see you later. Bye from Yamagata. Hello, ramen.