00:01 John Daub: Welcome to Nagano, Saku City. And there in front of us, that orange color—shuiro (vermilion red)—is a stairway that leads somewhere underneath that torii gate. And there are hundreds of them. We're going to find out and investigate where this goes. It is an extremely windy day. The temperature has dropped about 20 degrees, and it finally feels like winter again. How you doing? Hey, Jonathan, how you doing? Jason, nice to see you. Nice to see everybody here. I'm pretty excited. I'm going to be going up there. It's nice to go and visit local shrines every now and then—anytime you can, because this is one of the charms of the countryside. Another charm are the rivers, the beauty, the natural beauty of the places. There's a guy down there, despite it being super cold and windy, he's doing his best to try to fish off of the river. And there are some pretty good fish here.

08:13 John Daub: I'm using an external microphone with a wind buffer, a dead cat on it, so I hope that's not affecting the audio. Beautiful in this river winding through there. We've had a pretty mild winter. Today it turned really cold. It was snowing this morning, just a little bit, and now we have a really wonderful view. This is live, guys. This is what it looks like in Nagano right now, this very second, for the 500 people that are watching. Very cool. Yeah, it's a lovely city. Sister Haro, thank you! Look at the emoji! Incredible! Alright, we're not done. This isn't going to be a super long one, like one of these live streams where I go on for two hours. No. It's too windy and too cold. Let's go into this platform here, check it out, and then I think I can still take you up a little ways up this haunted stairway. This could be something. Cobra Bebop! Give us an animated thumbs up! I love those animated emojis, they're so cool.

09:25 John Daub: So this is kind of neat to be in here. What's this? Someone has tied these plants onto the side of the wall here. It kind of reminds me of a little Blair Witch Project action going on here. Don't laugh about that! Anybody else see that moving, get freaked out? Alright, let's keep going. Dina Porter. I love these animated emojis, we get a couple of them. Thank you Dina. And Kai H.—buy a drink on your way back down. Thanks. I'll see if I can find a vending machine, get something hot, warm up my hands. And really, temperature really did drop about 20 degrees with a cold front came through. Alright, let's make our way up to the top just a little bit more. Exploring is what this channel is all about, whether it's food or cities or out here in the countryside. We're going to roam around the entire country of Japan together. That's what you subscribe for and I appreciate that guys.

10:41 John Daub: So I'm going to bring you with me to some weird places, some cool places, and some never-have-been-visited-by-another-human places—which should be where I'm not sure because humans have been here since this shrine's been here for over a thousand years. Oh man, I'm tasting that lunch again. I'll share that with you. Oh, whew. Alright, keep going. Okay. Something's written there. "Thou that darest path through here shall find thy end upon thy ledge of thee." I don't know what that means. Alright, let's keep going. Kind of cryptic. Let's keep going. Shortcut writes in, wait for it. Wait for it. I think we might get a pretty nice view from this side guys. Wow. Okay. So this must be like a thousand years old, this stone. I'm just making this up, but it could be. I don't know. There's nobody to tell me otherwise.

12:00 John Daub: But I know that something that was built over a thousand years ago is probably made out of wood and the chance of it actually surviving is very small. But often there's... What? Do you see that? What is that on the left side? What is that? Hold on a second guys. This is pretty extraordinary and I did not expect it. What is that? Is that a ballistic missile? What is that thing? Alright, let's go. Alright, I'm going to have to keep exploring now. It looks like something... It's massive. Don't look at me. Look at this. Alright, we're going to go explore. It's a secret quote-unquote air-quote spaceship. I had no idea this was here. What? This is so awesome. I'm now walking towards my space boat.

13:11 John Daub: A really nice series written by the Dark Knight, who is a Discord supporter over there. He's very active over there. He's been writing a novel about me and the space boat where I'm a vlogger in space. It's amazing. I think he's on episode 8 now. But he's putting it together with a video narration and I'm so impressed with the creativity of it. It makes me want to blast into space. I'll share the link with you guys on the Discord server and again here in this video. But it makes me think of the Dark Knight and his creations. I'm telling a story. Look at this. Oh my. Pan up. Are those monkeys on it? If you build a rocket, you want a rocket. You know if you're going to build a lighthouse, it should look like a rocket. This is the most incredible looking building. All buildings should be shaped like rockets. Not five-story pagodas. Forget that. Shape it like a rocket. Sounds like a Def Leppard song.

14:20 John Daub: This is the greatest day ever. I found a building shaped like a rocket. Hey, we can go up it. No way! All right, we're so going to go up it. There's already a pretty nice view, but we can go up this rocket. All right, who wants to go up to rocket? If you want to go up to this rocket, you just started off as a mysterious shrine of orange gates that look like something that would just be kind of a boring live stream. I know that's what you were thinking. You came up here and you found a rocket. I could see that hardly a rocket. All right, if you want to go to the rocket, we need to go up there to get to 250 likes. It's up to you. We're going to go up this rocket. It's up to you. That's the community. You have 10 seconds to decide. I love it when you can participate. Yeah, this is live. You can click the button. You can make a decision here.

15:17 John Daub: All right, you got five seconds. I'm not going up. Five, four, three, two, one. We're nine short. How did that happen? Pretty weak. You guys are lucky that Shortcut bought you guys out with a super chat. You got to click the like button. You have to do it. It's just fun. All right, we're going to go up. Follow these people to the top here. Rocket. Yeah, look at the statues on the side of it. Look at the construction. It could be made out of Legos. That's so cool. They put a clock on the rocket. This is the greatest structure in the entire world. Oh, man. I bet you cool people thought of this. Only cool people would do something like this. All right, follow those kids up to the top. Let's get the rocket. There's an alien waiting. We might lose the signal, guys. We lose the signal inside a rocket. Where is this live stream taking us? We're almost at the top. I see the light. Here we are. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Awesome.

16:48 John Daub: This is the greatest building in Nagano. Oh, my gosh. Wait, you could keep going? Really? How many rockets have gargoyles? That's awesome. I don't know if we're going to see Mount Fuji. That's not Fuji-san. We're kind of on the other side in Nagano, but you could see there's a lot of farmland here. Really open countryside. It's really beautiful. I love the contrast coming out to the city just an hour, a little bit over an hour from Tokyo, and you're out here. Alright, let's do it. Whoa! Look at this space stuff on the walls. Yeah! Saturn. Uranus. Awesome. Alright, let's do it. I'm from the rocket, man.

18:35 John Daub: Hey guys, I just took the wireless mic out. Alright, hope you can hear me now. There you go. This is the top of the rocket. Check it out. You can see the river. Beautiful scenery. Can you open the window? Oh, you can't open the window. Sorry. No snow. It's very, very weird in this area. When I talk to people, they say it's weird that there's no snow. There's galaxy, man! Bitchy kids come up here and go, "Dad, blast off!" And he says, "I'm powerless. I'm just a little bit scared." That's a salaryman. This is the greatest short stream ever.