00:00:07 John Daub: Greetings, hello everybody and welcome to Tokyo. This is another live stream and today we're going to be meeting my friend Dean Newcombe who is a partner in crime on NHK World Journeys in Japan. But he's also got an adventure series called Runaway Japan and we're going to be talking with him about traveling around Japan. We both of us have been just about, well, maybe everywhere between the two of us. So let's just meet with Dean who has his thing on there. There he is! Wait, that's KG. I see Dean right there. How you doing? Slide in there. Mini me.

00:00:53 Dean Newcombe: I thought it would be more interesting today if I appeared with my steps.

00:00:57 John Daub: Yeah. How you doing KG?

00:01:00 Keiji: Good.

00:01:03 John Daub: So the channel that Dean has is called Runaway Japan.

00:01:06 Dean Newcombe: Yeah.

00:01:07 John Daub: And you can see that on YouTube anytime. It's an adventure series and we're going to take a look at some of the clips there. And also a video with KG I think might appear in an episode that we'll be showing you. But how you guys doing? So far we are about a month into self-isolation. What's it like? What's it like where you live?

00:01:30 Dean Newcombe: You know, actually I feel we're quite fortunate. We're a family of four and we've been together for a long time. We've got each other. And so being locked down is not the worst thing at the moment for us. No, we've been enjoying. This guy has just started doing his schoolwork. I, like you John, just have a million things always that I have to catch up on. So it's a good time to kind of self-reflect, right? And think about what's next. I'd actually just finished uploading all my content from season one. So anyway, I was at this kind of crossroads about what is happening. So it's come at an interesting time.

00:02:10 John Daub: Yeah, this is an interesting time, a historic time for all of us that are self-isolating, making the best of it. And I'm so happy that both of you could join us today. So I met you, how long ago was that? Do you remember? It must have been like five, six years ago.

00:02:28 Dean Newcombe: Yeah, yeah. And I think the first time we met was because of our mutual reporting on NHK World, right? And you'd seen me on Journeys in Japan, I'd seen you on Journeys in Japan. And we're like, hey, we should meet up one time. And I think you said, hey, I really like this place, Sangenjaya in Tokyo. And we met up there. And you took me to the passing cages, which is pretty interesting because as a British guy, I'd never really swung a bat before. So yeah, it was a bit...

00:03:01 John Daub: I think we also did some live streams that day. So if we go back and only in Japan go, we'll be able to see some of that.

00:03:07 Dean Newcombe: Yeah, we did some live streams from that day that we first met. That's crazy.

00:03:12 John Daub: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's something like, you know, my friend is making a crazy adventure series in Japan and today is my friend made a crazy adventure series in Japan. Wow, that takes us back a long time. How long have you been doing Journeys in Japan on NHK World?

00:03:29 Dean Newcombe: Yeah, I think that I am now the most featured reporter for Journeys in Japan. I'm pretty sure. I've done about four weeks. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the pace has slowed down a little bit these days. I'm doing only, you know, once or twice in a year. But keep doing them. I still really enjoy them. The directors of that program tend to come up with something that we haven't really seen before or a new place that we haven't been, which is great for me because naturally I'm inquisitive to see places in Japan. And they always take me, you know, someplace I might not have found on my own.

00:04:05 John Daub: Yeah, I love that show because I've been doing Tokyo Eye since 2008. About 12 years. Not so much lately. I might be in an episode coming up soon, though. I'm not going to... about self-isolation in Tokyo. But it was nice when I was invited onto this show that we could travel all over the entire country. I just saw that one of your episodes dropped about two weeks ago up in Hokkaido, Asahikawa.

00:04:34 Dean Newcombe: You didn't know?

00:04:35 John Daub: Yeah. It did. It did. You're right. You're totally right. And I actually put it up on my Facebook and I said in my comment, I said, maybe the best Tuned in Japan ever — which has a lot of bias attached to it, right? You know, like, hey, I'm number one. But the reason I think that that was really special is because I was actually a co-reporter. I did. There was another reporter in there. Another reporter who was kind of the main reporter. And I was there kind of to, I guess, raise the bar. And I raised her up. Her name is Aki. And she's in a wheelchair. And the program basically focuses on the challenges of seeing Japan in a wheelchair, but what can still be achieved despite your physical condition. And so I thought, you know, that was a really, really special episode because it goes beyond just a subject of travel, but also has that kind of human element in it.

00:05:37 Dean Newcombe: Yeah. I only saw about five minutes of it, but it looks really, really good.

00:05:42 John Daub: So that's available on playback on Only in Japan World or the JIB TV website. You can't see that on YouTube yet. Nobody has illegally uploaded it to YouTube.

00:05:58 John Daub: I'll, in the last part of this live stream, I'll tell you, I'll take some of your questions. But I want to focus on Dean and his son, Keiji. So, Keiji, how old are you?

00:06:13 Keiji: I'm turning 20.

00:06:14 Dean Newcombe: I'm turning 22, seven years old this year.

00:06:16 John Daub: Oh, wow. Seven.

00:06:20 Dean Newcombe: Yeah. Yeah, seven, really soon. In like, eh? One week. Two weeks?

00:06:25 Keiji: One week.

00:06:28 Dean Newcombe: Six more days.

00:06:29 John Daub: Oh, your birthday's in six days. Hey, happy almost birthday.

00:06:36 Dean Newcombe: Happy almost birthday. What do you want to do on your birthday?

00:06:43 Keiji: Barbecue.

00:06:43 John Daub: Barbecue. Oh, that sounds good.

00:06:47 Dean Newcombe: Yeah. We're trying to think of things that we can do at home, which would be, you know, not something that we do every day. So, we haven't done a barbecue yet, right?

00:06:56 Keiji: Yeah.

00:06:56 Dean Newcombe: So, we're going to try and do that in the garden. The weather is perfect for that. We've had some sunny days. It either is thunderstorms or it's so sunny and nice outside. It's super nice today, huh? Yeah?

00:07:08 Keiji: Yeah.

00:07:08 John Daub: It is. T-shirt and short weather. Kind of enjoy it there. Yeah. All over the country. Keiji, now you've been on some adventures with your father. You've traveled Japan, got a chance to hike. The Sabakaido, which is from Obama City in Wakasa to Kyoto. How was that? Were you tired?

00:07:30 Keiji: Yeah.

00:07:31 John Daub: What was your favorite part of hiking with your dad?

00:07:40 Keiji: Exploring and making more friends.

00:07:44 John Daub: Who did we make friends with?

00:07:47 Keiji: One is a girl called Kokoro.

00:07:51 John Daub: Oh. And one is a boy called Yuki.

00:07:56 Dean Newcombe: Oh, yeah. Where did we meet Yuki?

00:08:00 Keiji: In the wild.

00:08:02 Dean Newcombe: In the wild. The meeting of Yuki is pretty cool because it was the end of the first day. And the hardest bit of the Sabakaido walking from Obama, walking from the coast, is that you have to kind of climb up about a thousand meters. So, we did that. It was super hard to the top. And then we came down the other side into a little tiny mountain village. And that's where you met Yuki.

00:08:33 Keiji: Yeah. And his mom.

00:08:35 Dean Newcombe: Yeah. In a population of about 30 town. You know, just a handful of houses that were all farming houses. Wow.

00:08:44 John Daub: And we became friends, didn't we?

00:08:47 Dean Newcombe: Yeah. They actually, I mean, you'll see if you watch the video, but they actually saved us from the bears and invited us to stay with them. Oh, that's so nice. It's one of those kind of typical, like, amazing Japanese hospitality stories. Yeah. That's what makes this such an amazing country. Just things happen. When you go out on an adventure, when you don't plan it too much, things just happen. People invite you. It's like when I'm hitchhiking, people invite me to do homestays with them or take me to their favorite izakaya to eat some bizarre food. These things are just the unplanned portions of it is what makes it so memorable, I think. And that's Sabakaido. I want to show some of the video of it.

00:09:27 John Daub: We have another video queued up, actually. But how are the signs? What was it like hiking the Sabakaido the way that it is today?

00:09:40 Dean Newcombe: Actually, it's almost not signposted. So I have a good friend who told me about this hike, and he's done it many times. And he really recommended it to me. His name is Daniel, if he ever sees this. And I was like, wow. I wanted to try it. And I did it solely off the back of his recommendation. But when I started doing it, I realized it's not something that people – there's no real guidebook out there for it, especially in English. So there's very little information about it. And then when you're walking the route, there's not many signs telling you – in fact, there's almost no signs telling you where the route goes. But you can pretty much follow it. These days, it kind of skirts the main roads. So it used to be a kind of mountain path, and now they've put a main road in it. So it's a little bit like the Route 66 in America, where you still have the old roads, but you have the new roads now as well. And we skipped one small section where it went off the road just because of not knowing. Like, I'm kind of going up a winding road, and I've got now a path going into the mountains, which is just a single track into the forest kind of. You can see it. You can picture it, right? And so we're thinking, without being able to read the kanji of what lies ahead, do we really want to risk going in there because we don't know where it comes out? So I stuck to the road, and I went with that. Perhaps if I was on my own, I would say.

00:11:12 John Daub: Sorry, that's the video that we have of you and KG that we have queued up for later, right, when you guys went on that trip? All right, let's come back to this. First, I want to talk a little bit about your series called – Runaway Japan. So if you go in and Google it here, you can see it on the bottom of your screen here, Runaway Japan. You have put up an entire TV series on YouTube. That's crazy.

00:11:43 Dean Newcombe: Yeah. Totally, totally crazy. Several years back now, I'm doing a bit of Journeys in Japan. I do a lot of kind of talent work and commercial work in Japan. And I'm thinking, you know, I have this idea that I could make a TV show by myself or with a team of friends. And we could put that out, and it could be about all of the things that we enjoy. So in some ways, it's quite like the decision I guess you made originally when you started doing Only in Japan, except for the vision that you were like, okay, I'm doing it for YouTube. I thought that I was doing it for TV. And we did put it on a channel called J-Sports in Japan, a cable channel, because it's very adventure-y, outdoor-y. It has some – I wouldn't really call it a sporting show, but it has some sports in it. And then we put it on a program called Catch Japan on NHK World. But if that was the only place I put it, and then I couldn't really say to anybody, hey, go and watch it. Here's the link. You know, it was just kind of on TV, and that was it. It was over. That seemed super sad, a bit sad. So I made the choice to put it on YouTube basically starting last year. And then I uploaded until like a month ago.

00:13:06 John Daub: Let's take a look at a clip of that, and then you can talk a little bit about this. I think when I open this window, it automatically starts. There we go. The opening is so beautiful. Oh, is this it?

00:13:21 Dean Newcombe: Oh, wow. You put so much work into this. We're looking at the opening, the 3D animation of it. And now you guys are kayaking and hiking. It looks like you met a geisha. And then the shadow of the toy.

00:13:39 John Daub: So we're looking at this right now. This is the actual series that you created for what was supposed to be TV and then put this on YouTube. And anybody can now watch this for free. This is so cool. How many videos in total are on your channel?

00:13:56 Dean Newcombe: Okay, so we got... We got 11. Basically, there's 11 episodes, but I split them into four pieces. So that makes 44. Plus, I threw up some bonus videos here and there of other things that didn't make the final cut. So I think in total, we probably got like 100-odd videos now. It's a lot. It's a lot of content.

00:14:18 John Daub: And you broke each episode into part. So if you look through the YouTube series...

00:14:27 Dean Newcombe: Yeah. When I made them originally, I didn't know where we would air it. So it has a four-part break system to it anyway where you would normally put advertising. You look a little scruffy there, Dean.

00:14:39 John Daub: So it was quite natural to... You look a little scruffy there, Dean. A bit different than today, right?

00:14:45 Dean Newcombe: Wow. So we're watching now. Episode seven is the one you're showing. So the other thing about these episodes is I film them continuously, consecutively, back to back. No breaks. Episode one all the way through to episode 11. Traveling Tokyo all the way to Shimane. So the reason I'm looking so scruffy is because we've now reached... Where are we? We're in Wakayama at that point. And I've done probably... What have I done? About 30 days of travel. So I... Well, I'm just looking to still be alive, really, considering I've got from Tokyo to Wakayama by running. Cycling, kayaking, hiking, and never using a train, bus, or a car.

00:15:36 John Daub: You're in pretty good shape. So you can do something like this, right? This is pretty adventurous.

00:15:43 Dean Newcombe: Yeah, it's adventurous. And it was hard. And at the time I made this show, also, like, probably the best condition I've ever been in. You know? And actually by making the earlier episodes, I was slowly conditioning my body to... I was getting even fitter and fitter.

00:16:00 John Daub: Wow. So you're building up a little bit of fatigue, but you're also getting used to the fact that, like, on a daily basis, you'll ride 100 kilometers on your bike.

00:16:09 Dean Newcombe: Right.

00:16:09 John Daub: Marty, I'm looking at some of the comments here. Marty writes in here, before social distancing. This was life. What it was like. You can go back in and take a look at Dean's adventure with his friends here. You actually climbed Mount Fuji in this series as well, right?

00:16:25 Dean Newcombe: We did.

00:16:25 John Daub: You climbed Mount Fuji in this series as well. We start at Fuji, yeah. So back in the early days, we kind of tested the concept and did a little mission from Tokyo to Mount Fuji. And then when we realized that we were going to go for this and make season one and do, you know, 10, 11, 12 episodes of it, I thought, well, it's only fitting that we go back to Mount Fuji and we start at the top. So episode one is me making my way to the top of that as a back story. And then episode two, we officially kick off going, okay, we're going to Mount Fuji. We're at the top of Fuji. Let's begin the adventure.

00:17:04 John Daub: Oh, that's exciting. And this series, why did you make this, basically? I'm one of the people who were there when you were just starting off with as an idea. So why make this? What did you want to do with this? What are you telling the world with this series?

00:17:31 Dean Newcombe: I think, you know, I wanted to show people a little bit of what I see from living in Japan. You know? I traveled around quite a lot when I was in my early 20s doing modeling and stuff like that. And I ended up being in Japan. And I'm still here because I love the country so much, right? It's just an amazing country to live in. And even now, I'm learning about Japan all the time. You know, it's like this big onion and I just keep peeling off layers. And, you know, you've been here even longer than me. It doesn't matter if you've been here 10 years or 20 years. It's so hard to, like, really understand this country. Which for me makes it so fascinating. And I wanted to show Japan. So on the screen right now, we're looking at a Shinto dedication. And it's got history. It's got culture. But it's all from a point of view of me seeing it and who I am. So I like to have adventures. I want to do things that people haven't done before. I want to also kind of push myself and find out what I'm capable of. And that doesn't mean just physically what I can do. But also, I think mental strength was harder for making Runaway. And I think it's very similar to when you did your hitchhiking experience. You know, to put yourself, you've kind of, you've got to challenge yourself to say, okay, I'm heading off and I'm going to be away for like two or three weeks or whatever length of time you choose. And I'm going to be on my own. And I don't know where I'm going to be staying tonight. You're putting yourself through a certain amount of discomfort. And then through that, you probably have some of the most amazing experiences you ever have. You find places you didn't know existed. You meet people that you didn't know existed. And you have an adventure. And for me, that's kind of what has kept me excited all my life. And I wanted to bring that kind of content to Japan, I guess.

00:19:20 John Daub: I'm going to run, hold on a second. I'm going to run the video in the background as we talk for a couple more minutes. Just to show you a little bit about Runaway Japan. This is a series that you can watch on YouTube. Right now. And it'll probably... How long is the entire series, would you say? Like, it's several hours. If you watch all the videos?

00:19:41 Dean Newcombe: Well, I made a playlist for season one. So you can like binge the whole thing. And I think it's about five and a half hours.

00:19:49 John Daub: Yeah, that's incredible. Just free content on YouTube that you can watch. That's like television worthy. This is like watching an action adventure show with maps. Detailed information about the place. Places that you go to visit to. Meeting with local people. This is exactly the kind of content that I love to watch on TV, actually. And it's here on YouTube, which is cool. What's your ideas of starting season two?

00:20:21 Dean Newcombe: That's the big question, isn't it? It's the big, big question. I've been thinking about it for a long time. And I thought that... I kind of want to know what people want to see next. So, like, if there's anybody... You know, you've got a really amazing fan base. You know, if anybody out there now is listening to this, looks at it and sees what they like, sees what they don't like. Those kind of comments would be fantastic for me to hear. So I kind of know what direction to go in next. I can say that it's pretty much impossible for me to ever do what I did again. Because of the years of dedication and the amount of money that I pumped into producing it. So, you know well, right? Like, it's just got a lot of layers. It's got the graphics. It's got the narration. It's got the subtitles. It's got sound correction. The production quality of Runaway Japan is incredible, I think, for...

00:21:16 John Daub: And this is your first time producing your own series, right?

00:21:18 Dean Newcombe: Correct. First production, first direction. It's remarkable work. And the amount of love and affection that you put into it. To grooming it with the animations, with the subtitles that you can see in Japanese for viewers here. It's really extraordinary to me to see the amount of work that you put in. And with the transitions here, it's incredible.

00:21:39 John Daub: I think that makes it more of an adventure. A really professionally made adventure. And yeah. So I'm looking forward to part two, part three. Season two, season three. To see more of what you can do. We've reached the end of it. Let's hope we can keep going. I think instead of me doing like another, you know, 50-day adventure, put us on the map. This is what we're capable of doing now. And I think what I want to do next is make... It doesn't have to be a season of adventure. I want to make more content for YouTube. For a YouTube fan base. And I want my family to be able to be a part of that. So, you know, Keiji did amazing in the video that we'll see later. Where we did the Sabakaido together. I've got a newborn. I've got a little three-month baby. So he can hopefully, you know, grow through the ranks and come with me on some more adventures. So it would be nice to be able to... Continue to be me. Live adventures in Japan. As I would anyway if I didn't have a camera. And then just share those moments with people who are interested in seeing.

00:22:40 John Daub: Right. I think that's great. What's your son's... Your newborn's name?

00:22:45 Dean Newcombe: Tao.

00:22:46 John Daub: Tao. Cool. Tao.

00:22:51 Dean Newcombe: Yeah, we've got Tao and Keiji. You... Are you okay, buddy?

00:22:53 John Daub: So let's get Keiji involved here. Keiji, you are also an adventurer. What places in Japan do you like to go?

00:23:08 Keiji: Nara.

00:23:09 John Daub: Nara. Oh. What's good about Nara? Because many people don't know where Nara is. So tell us something about Nara.

00:23:26 Keiji: So Nara is like Japanese. Old.

00:23:28 Dean Newcombe: It's an old capital, isn't it?

00:23:29 Keiji: Yeah. So it's very Japanese. It's a very Japanese city, yeah?

00:23:33 Dean Newcombe: Yeah. And my grandma is there.

00:23:35 John Daub: And your grandma is there? Oh, cool. And... What is that?

00:23:43 Keiji: So many animals.

00:23:44 John Daub: Deer. Deer. Deer. Yeah.

00:23:51 Dean Newcombe: We've been to Nara a lot of times, yeah?

00:23:52 Keiji: Yeah. Yeah. It's a beautiful place.

00:23:54 John Daub: I also really like Nara. Nara is a lovely size, you know? It's a smaller city than the big Osaka and maybe even Kyoto and Tokyo. Nara is a lovely size and it's very, very cultural. Nara also... That's also where they have the guy who's making the mochi really fast. Nakatani-san, I think, is in Naramachi. Yes. They have a lot of old festivals there, yeah? A lot of old festivals in Nara, yeah.

00:24:19 John Daub: Yeah. I've only scratched the surface of Nara. You can spend a week, two weeks, a month there and just hike around outside of where the tourist areas are, the tourist places, the temples and shrines. The whole prefecture, that whole area of Nara is extraordinary to explore. What people probably don't know, I'm seeing is kayaking at the moment. But when you go to Nara, you can see the... When we first saw the video today, it was hiking, right? Deep in the mountains in Wakayama. Well, that trail leads us through Wakayama prefecture into Nara prefecture. So when people think... Anybody that does know a bit about Japan has always been here and visited places. When we think of Nara, we do think of that old capital. We think of Todaiji Temple. We think of the deers. But half of Nara is also forest, mountains. We ended in a place called Yoshino, which probably is... Nobody's ever heard of, but that has some of the best... Yoshinoyama. Probably all of Japan. Nara.

00:25:28 Dean Newcombe: Number one spot for cherry blossoms in Japan.

00:25:29 John Daub: Nara. Yeah, yeah. Inclined place. Yeah. What is this? We're looking on the screen here, Dave. We see some kayaking. Yeah. This is the most adventurous and hardest, most stupid things to try and do.

00:25:47 Dean Newcombe: I love stupid things to do.

00:25:49 John Daub: I love stupid things to do. I love the whole series. So nobody watching ever try and do that. That's the first point. We've been going now for... We've reached the 11th episode. We've done 46, seven days. We're coming up to the end. And we're thinking, how do we end this epic journey in the most epic way that we could? So we were actually asking people on social media to vote, where do you want us to go next? And we would always give them three options. And so I came up with this idea. We're in Tottori. I thought, well, we could go to Shimane, but that's just next door. I could walk to Shimane. And that's not very exciting. And then I noticed that Shimane has this big island or group of islands called the Oki Islands. So I'm like, let's make the endpoint the Oki Islands. And I'm like, okay, so how are we going to get there using only physical means? That means I can't take the ferry, right? So my only choices are I swim, and that would end really badly, or kayak. So then I start researching. It's 45 kilometers in a straight line, which you can't do in a kayak, especially when it's choppy. So you tend to do this zigzag movement, right? So it's probably going to be about 60 kilometers of kayaking. Can that be done in a day? I start doing my research. It could be done, but it's pretty close to the limit of human capabilities, I think, especially as I'm not a professional kayaker. I have experience. But what the hell? It's runaway, right? We give it a go. So we hired a fisherman to take the camera crew or the rest of the team we had, and they kind of followed us in this little boat that was bobbing around.

00:27:29 John Daub: This is a serious production. This is serious.

00:27:34 Dean Newcombe: Yeah, it's the real thing, huh? I mean, we could have done it on our own, but the thing is then we'd have no shots like this, right? We'd have only had GoPro shots from the point. We wouldn't have been able to get any perspective of what we were doing.

00:27:46 John Daub: Right. Yeah. And also, if anything had gone wrong, in the middle of that kayak, you're more than 20 kilometers from any land, right? And also, you can't navigate.

00:27:57 Dean Newcombe: Right. So when you get to the middle, you can't see anything. It's just water. So it's so easy to go off course. So many times, the fishing boat would just be on loudspeaker going, Migi, migi, migi, hidari, hidari, just kind of repointing us in the way that we need.

00:28:12 John Daub: So, John, it took nine hours.

00:28:15 Dean Newcombe: We were just kayaking constantly.

00:28:17 John Daub: I'm watching the end here. You guys look like you're beat up.

00:28:22 Dean Newcombe: Oh, we were messed up, mate. My biggest problem was because I looked like this idiot in a bow tie, right? And I didn't put on a wetsuit or anything. I just have a shirt. And so you're constantly getting wet from the spray of the water. So even if it wasn't a particularly cold day, by the end of it, nine hours of being in just a wet shirt, right?

00:28:45 John Daub: Right.

00:28:45 Dean Newcombe: I was shaking at the end. You'll see me trying to eat a banana, and I'm shaking.

00:28:52 John Daub: This is quite... I'm looking at this. Duncan was such... These are the co-reporter, the co-stars on the show.

00:29:02 Dean Newcombe: Yeah, right. And, yeah, it just so happens that he can do graphic design. He does a lot of motion graphics we see in the show. He can edit. He shoots. And he can do probably more than 100 press-ups right now. Just drop down and give me 100. You know, he's a seriously fit, strong guy. So if you're going to have anybody in your kayak, you probably want him. Yeah, we want Duncan. More Duncan.

00:29:32 John Daub: What was the most... I get lots of stories. I want to get KG involved, and we're going to switch away from Runaway Japan. Again, you can go and see Runaway Japan right here. Runaway Japan on YouTube. There's five hours of content, which is crazy. And there's only a couple of thousand of views per episode, which is even crazier. This thing should have hundreds of thousands of views. So, yeah, start from episode one, and you can work through the entire series. And follow Dean as he goes. You started at Mount Fuji, and you go all the way down to Tottori, right?

00:30:08 Dean Newcombe: Yeah. Correct. Meandering on his own human power towards the goal. And even the ending was pretty emotional. I remember that's the one when you're... I'm not going to ruin it, but I like the ending of the series, too. So, you're going to want to watch to the end.

00:30:26 Dean Newcombe: It's touching.

00:30:26 John Daub: It's a different way to see Japan than just through travel shows. By incorporating adventure and exercise and using your own body, that's another way to travel. That's another way to have an adventure. And I think that your show inspires that. There's no one way to see a country. But this is one way. Don't kayak to the island. Or don't try to do something too crazy unless you're a professional. But thinking of crazy things to do is my favorite way to have a goal, a funny goal. Or why are you here again? I went to Darjeeling. I went to India just to drink tea. I wanted to sit in Darjeeling and look over the Himalayas and sip tea. So, I traveled overland from Beijing. All the way down to Darjeeling. And when I arrived in Darjeeling and was sipping that tea, it had so much more meaning to me. Because I had worked really hard to get there. And I think when you watch your series, you are also watching it and working with Dean and Duncan to get to the end. And you feel this elation at the end just like whenever you reach a goal. That's what makes this series great. And I cannot wait for season two.

00:31:46 Dean Newcombe: Yeah. And with KG. More KG adventures.

00:31:48 John Daub: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So, big up to the rest of the team. So, there's Natalie, Megan, and Tim, who you also see appearing in the show. And we look like Power Rangers, right? I'm red. He's got blue, green, yellow, and pink.

00:32:08 Dean Newcombe: We're all different.

00:32:13 John Daub: And actually, probably we will see Duncan back pretty soon, I think. Me and Duncan are thinking now about ideas. And then, yeah, this is my new. This is my new advice. Captain, right? Right. We got KG in there. Let's take a look at KG now. I want you guys to stick to the end because we're going to be talking about our favorite places to visit in Japan. It might not be in the show. It might be something that's personal. We're going to talk about this. But I want to show you the video of where KG and let me change the media source here. Where KG and here it is. Good. All right. Your video is going to pop up here. And then you can see that. And you can see what you can remember. 82-kilometer adventure on the Sabakaido. There's KG on the screen. It's a 12-second delay for you. I saw KG on the screen. There he is. I saw him. There you go.

00:33:30 Dean Newcombe: Good good memory. KG and Dean, tell us a little bit about this episode and what's going on and why you wanted to hike the Sabakaido together.

00:33:42 Dean Newcombe: When did we do this? Do you know?

00:33:46 Keiji: A month ago. I don't think it was like a year ago. Something like that. Summer.

00:33:55 Dean Newcombe: Summer. Yeah. So you can see how fast he changes. It's so cute when I watch this now because he was so little and he's doing his sketches. And so it started off really as just maybe this is what I want Runaway to be. I wanted to go and do this and I wanted to see how this experience would be for KG. We have a pretty unique life together anyway because he's a Japanese boy growing up with an English dad in Japan. And so he's bicultural and bilingual. There's Daniel. There's Daniel. Yeah. And so I wanted to take him on this adventure. I can't take him on a kayak trip to the Oki Islands, right? And I can't take him on a 50-day adventure. But we could possibly do a three-day hiking slash camping trip. And it's safe enough that I could have him along with me. I could look after him in that kind of environment. So we set off to do the Sabakaido. And I thought traditionally the Sabakaido. Saba is mackerel. Kaido is road. So it's the mackerel road, yeah? So it's all about can you traditionally people would take the mackerel fresh from the coast of Japan. And they would take it all the way to Kyoto. So we wanted to repeat the steps of the people from ancient times. And instead of taking a fresh fish, we took a can of mackerel. Because it was a little bit... I didn't think we were going to be able to complete the journey in just a day. So I thought I better take a can otherwise my fish might get smelly. Then we took a can, didn't we? And so the guy that you can see on the screen with me is called Daniel. He's walked the route maybe 20 times, you know. He used to live in Kyoto and he knows the route so well. So he's our advisor. We go to Kyoto. We find out... We see the market and where they sell this fish. We find out all the back stories. This is Nishiki Market. I did an Only in Japan episode here with Kevin Reilly. And I think anybody that's been to Japan has probably been here, right? Everyone goes to Kyoto and everybody goes to Nishiki. So we find out all about the history and the culture of saba coming from the coast of Japan. And then we put ourselves to the test. We head out there and we get ready for our epic journey. But there's a twist, right? Because do you remember something happened with the weather? What happened?

00:36:23 Keiji: The weather was really bad. It was raining like every day.

00:36:36 Dean Newcombe: Half a week. And then finally it stopped and we started our journey in Daimonji Mountain. Oh yeah. And we went to Daimonji Mountain now in Kyoto. That's what you're seeing here.

00:36:48 Keiji: Yeah. And Keiji's right. It's just the heavens opened. We went out to do this trip and the heavens opened. And it was like, okay, it's going to rain for like six days consecutively heavily. And that would just make the rain stop. And it was really like difficult, but probably dangerous as well. So I thought we can't do it. And so where did we go instead? We were over... We had already driven over to Kyoto. So we couldn't begin the journey. So we decided to drive around Fukui. Yeah. Do you remember anything that we saw in Fukui?

00:37:16 Keiji: Yeah. What? We ate like saba.

00:37:21 Dean Newcombe: Yeah. We ate the saba. Stabbed on a stick.

00:37:27 Keiji: Stabbed on a stick. And it was sashimi.

00:37:30 Dean Newcombe: And what was that? What else did we do? And we got a lot to... So the station, hotel, and dinosaur museum.

00:37:44 John Daub: Oh, what museum? Dinosaur museum!

00:37:47 Dean Newcombe: I love that place. That's the best dinosaur museum in Japan by far. Hands down. It's the best.

00:37:54 John Daub: Yeah. And that museum actually looked a bit like a jellyfish.

00:38:07 Dean Newcombe: Yeah. The museum looked like a giant jellyfish, huh? Or a giant rugby ball.

00:38:13 John Daub: A giant rugby ball. Yeah. It's a really neat space, huh? It's a massive building. And most people haven't even heard of Fukui Prefecture. But it's the dinosaur capital of Japan. Lots of fossils from there. And hence, they have a dinosaur museum, which I know that you've been to as well. I went there when I was hitchhiking. In fact, I talked with the curator of the museum and he let me film. So there's a Only in Japan Go livestream where I'm walking around the dinosaur museum, which is pretty cool. So you can go... Where's the camera? If you go back to Only in Japan to my hitchhiking days, it's the world's best dinosaur museum. I think it's what the episode's called. It's pretty cool as some scruffy dude hitchhiking walks around in an orange jacket. It's a unique experience.

00:39:01 Dean Newcombe: It was pretty fun because when we watched the hitchhiking video together, we were in the living room sitting down on the sofa watching your hitchhiking video. And then a lot of the places you went to, I'd either been to with Runaway or when you went through Fukui, we'd been there together. So like, KG is like, oh, it's a dinosaur museum. We've been there. And remember you see the T-Rex and stuff?

00:39:24 Keiji: Yeah. It was moving.

00:39:24 Dean Newcombe: Yeah. And the food, the dinosaur themed food. Yeah. The cafe was pretty cool. And dinosaur coffee, maybe. A dinosaur latte or something like that.

00:39:33 John Daub: Yeah. That was a pretty cool experience. Yeah. It's really nice, but the experience is overlap. And it was almost stormy. And like...

00:39:41 Dean Newcombe: It was seriously stormy. It was raining and... Some of the heaviest rain I've ever seen.

00:39:44 John Daub: Oh, wow. We're seeing it right now in the video, the rain at the temple there. You know...

00:39:54 Dean Newcombe: Yeah, right? It's a... Wow. But the rain is beautiful. The rain really is beautiful. And that's a shame that it was raining, KG, because the rain is really, really, really hot.

00:40:03 John Daub: But the background at the dinosaur museum is fantastic. There's a massive Brontosaurus that you can climb on. It looks like an Indiana Jones obstacle course right behind the museum. So you got to go back to Fukui now for that. Just the playground.

00:40:23 Dean Newcombe: It's the most epic, awesome playground that I never played on, because I was too big. They wouldn't let me play. I tried, but they said no. And why would you want to, you freakhead?

00:40:30 John Daub: Not really. If you do it, right? You could do it, send John a video. And then he's going to be like, man, look, I achieved a life goal through KG. Yeah, maybe when Tao's about three years old, he's going to enjoy it like crazy.

00:40:46 Dean Newcombe: Yeah, you guys can both go. He's a sweetie.

00:40:49 John Daub: He's going to take it. Yeah, Fukui is one of the prefectures that we don't know a lot about. I remember Obama City was really famous when President Obama was elected in 2007. And then in 2008, people were going, why would they name a city after the President? Well, you know what? It was named that a thousand years ago. And Obama was one of the most prosperous cities in Japan, because this is where a lot of the trade was coming in. The first elephants that came to Japan came through Obama Port. A lot of the fish, a lot of the goods that went to the emperor in Kyoto came through Obama Port. So it was one of the most prosperous cities in Japan. And as trade moved to the United States and across the Pacific, that's when the ports, on the other side, started to get more popular. Kobe was always a pretty big port. Nagasaki, of course. But Edo was not until the United States and the trade across the Pacific became more popular.

00:41:58 Dean Newcombe: Fukui is like this lost prefecture, I think, with so much history that has a lot of things that Kyoto has, but just on a different scale. And they're older and more authentic.

00:42:04 John Daub: And that's... Yeah. I gotta go. We both gotta go back. Get some saba. Get some mackerel. Right. I mean, did you see that temple that we were looking around? Yeah. Like, no one's ever even heard of this temple, you know? And I'm embarrassed now because I can't think of the name as well. But watch the video and you can find out what that is. I just couldn't believe that a place that spectacular with a Buddha, which is almost the same size as the one in Nara.

00:42:45 Dean Newcombe: Yeah? It's bigger. Fifty meters. And that temple. And thirty meters Nara.

00:42:53 John Daub: Wow. If Keiji's right, then I'm extremely impressed. Keiji's claiming it's actually bigger than one in Nara. That is not possible, but it's pretty cool the way Keiji says it. I think that one is the biggest wooden structure in the world, but in Nara. But that's... That's right. Maybe this is second. But I'll tell you what. One of the most beautiful sights, waterfalls, and nature scenes that I've seen in Japan is a waterfall shrine in Fukui in the Wakasa area that Kanae and I went to last year. And there's so many things that I want to go back and cover in Fukui. It's just hard to get there. There's no Shinkansen. You have to either go to Kanazawa and then take a local train or you can come around to Maibara or to Kyoto and then take a local train into Fukui. There's no... The best way is to Shinkansen to Kyoto and then go up by local train. And that's also a blessing because it keeps it so pristine, so beautiful and untouristy, that area.

00:43:40 John Daub: And this is the next segment I want to get into. What is your favorite... Now, Dean, you... Not just through NHK. You've been traveling a lot. The one thing that a lot of you don't know about, Dean, and I'm sorry that it took 40 minutes for me to talk about, was after the Great Tohoku Earthquake and the Kumamoto Earthquake, Dean... Yeah. ...was one of the first people to go and help. I believe the Kumamoto Earthquake, I remember seeing your van get down there and you were helping people with the construction.

00:44:08 Dean Newcombe: Yeah.

00:44:08 John Daub: I remember. I didn't know you personally, but I was following you on Facebook, all of your... the things. And I believe when you came to Japan was when the Great Tohoku Earthquake hit, right? Around that time?

00:44:25 Dean Newcombe: Yeah. Well... Yeah, basically... I think, I mean, partially correct. I lived in Japan before the earthquake happened, but for a year it was kind of like, Dean comes to model in Japan and then he moves on. And I was actually headed for LA to go and do the Actors Dream in Hollywood. And, yeah, March 2011, the earthquake kind of flipped everything upside down because that happened. I'd only just left Japan and I still had so many friends here. And I decided to go back and do a little volunteer mission, head up to Tohoku and see if I could help out a little bit. I thought, I have super limited Japanese and a nice able body, so surely I can be of help. And so, yeah, I headed back and I thought I was going there for maybe two weeks or a month and I ended up staying about nine up in Tohoku. And I would come back to Tokyo occasionally, do events, raise money, tell everybody to give me everything I could. And then I'd go back with a huge truck and then give it all away. And it's a good time in my life. Those were really tough times.

00:45:27 John Daub: It was that earthquake that the reason why I started Only in Japan. So many things in Japan were really tough at that time. And I remember it was you. I had so many friends that were up there, Mike Connolly, Jamie. He was in charge of It's Just Mud, I believe, the Foreign Volunteers Japan. Yeah, It's Not Just Mud. A lot of charitable groups. People were so giving of themselves. They didn't really... They just gave. My friend Mike Connolly was using his own money and he didn't have a lot of it to fund truck runs, paying for the gasoline and the rental trucks, running stuff for Second Harvest, I believe. We went on a couple of trips, Mihono Seki and... Oh, wow. We were all over Tohoku delivering food and stuff. It was a tough time. And then I think it was that same volunteerism that led you to Kumamoto after the earthquake to help to rebuild there. And I was there not too long ago, just about six months ago, and they still have some damage from that earthquake. They never really fully recovered, which is something that we have to remember here in Japan. We always have natural disasters, things that just knock us out. All the time. It can happen at a moment's notice where people will lose everything. And the stories that come out of that are just heartbreaking. And the longer you live here, the more you get used to it too, which is really tough.

00:47:04 John Daub: What was that like living up in Tohoku after the earthquake for nine months?

00:47:12 Dean Newcombe: It was the time in my life where I could do something like that. I was young. At that time, I didn't have kids. I wasn't married. And so... I could kind of dedicate my life to doing that. And I didn't do it just because I'm a really, really nice person and I'm very, very charitable. I enjoyed it. It was a hard time for a lot of people, but for me, it's some of the best memories I have in Japan. Because I felt like I was doing something really worthy of being alive. I was living my life in a way that was helping people. I felt like I was making a difference. And of course, I was learning all the time. I was learning from doing that. And I'm so grateful that I could just have that experience in Japan.

00:47:58 John Daub: Yeah, that was... Going up there a few times, that was really tough for me to see that too. But I got a chance to meet with a lot of the volunteers, make new friends. And when you're working together doing something like volunteering, it really develops strong friendships with other people. That whole year is a year that will stay with all of us. A lot of my foreign friends left. There weren't that many that were here through 2011. Most of them... They were called fly genes. They are foreigners that flew away. And the ones that stayed. Do you have a name for these? What's the name for the opposite of that? I don't know. Is there one? I don't know. Because I think I've been around. I just remember the fly genes. The people who had free flights to go back to Europe or didn't want to stick around because of the uncertainty. And then there were people that were said, this is my home. I'm not going anywhere. And my home needs me. And volunteered and helped and did what they could do. And I'm not really good with a hammer. I hit myself more than I hit the nail. So that's why Only in Japan was what I could do to help. To try to bring more attention to the cultures and the misunderstandings and show what the real underbelly of Japan was. Yeah. So that's what I've been doing to help Japan. And now with the coronavirus, I think we might have to restart. So it's going to be hard to get tourists to come back to Japan a little bit. I feel like there's some similarities to the disaster. I mean, it's coming up to 10 years next March, right? And something very similar is happening now. It's like this reset button. Everybody's rethinking what are we doing now. And people like you and me consider. Like where we're living. And is Japan the country for the rest of our life? And you get the people who are short-termers leaving. The people that are long-termers stick it out. And I'm sure your content just continues to kind of educate people about Japan and inspire people to come and visit.

00:50:09 John Daub: Yeah, despite the earthquakes. Keiji, have you been in a big earthquake before? Sit up, buddy. Have you been in a big earthquake?

00:50:20 Keiji: No.

00:50:22 John Daub: Just small ones? He has the child ability. I have one.

00:50:28 Dean Newcombe: Go on.

00:50:28 Keiji: My biggest one was Shindo Roku.

00:50:33 Dean Newcombe: Shindo Roku. So it's about magnitude maybe five or something?

00:50:40 Keiji: Magnitude six.

00:50:42 Dean Newcombe: Magnitude six? Oh, Shindo Magnitude. He's also my translator. Shindo is the Japanese scale for strength. In the West, we use magnitude. In Japan, we have another scale that goes up to seven. And six is pretty strong. And that'll give you a good shake. When you grow up with it as a kid, it's not as scary. And my daughter? Yeah, my daughter. With my grandma in the morning.

00:51:09 Keiji: When my grandma was putting butter on the bread.

00:51:14 Dean Newcombe: Putting butter on the bread. That's hard to do in an earthquake, isn't it?

00:51:17 John Daub: It is very hard. Was it scary?

00:51:19 Keiji: Yeah.

00:51:21 John Daub: Keiji, we're getting some questions here. And this is the part of the livestream, the last 10 minutes, where we're going to give you a chance to talk. If you're watching. Where's the camera here? I got two cameras going on. This is the part of the livestream. If you have some questions for Dean and Keiji, let's give them some questions about living in Japan, traveling in Japan, what's it like traveling with kids. Whatever you have on your mind. you can go ahead and let us know. We want to hear, and KG will be able to answer your questions. KG, what's it like? So KG's not going to school right now, but he is, sort of. What are you doing now, KG? Are you going to school?

00:52:11 Keiji: No, not at all.

00:52:12 John Daub: Why not?

00:52:14 Keiji: Because of this coronavirus.

00:52:16 John Daub: Uh-huh. But were you meant to start school?

00:52:20 Keiji: Yeah.

00:52:22 Dean Newcombe: KG is seven. Seven, by the way.

00:52:26 John Daub: So what are you doing now?

00:52:30 Keiji: Maths, English, Hiragana, online drill.

00:52:36 John Daub: Oh, online drill. He has a, the school that he was meant to go to sent him some, like, online test kind of thing. Just some math equations and some Japanese language stuff. And he tends to whiz through that. I think he's a pretty smart kid. He'd be, bah, bah, bah, bah. He gets through his iPad stuff pretty quickly. And then he has it pretty difficult because then I, like, throw this massive English book in. And I'm like, okay, well, that's what the kids who are seven years old are learning now in the States. So you need to be able to do that. And you need to be able to do the Japanese at the same time. And everything else. Maths. So hard.

00:53:22 Dean Newcombe: And basically, there's sometimes not. Sometimes we decide that the book, the questions aren't very... Clear. Right. Disney.

00:53:28 John Daub: At KG. Disneyland or Disney Sea? Which one do you like better?

00:53:44 Keiji: Disney Sea.

00:53:46 John Daub: Why Disney Sea?

00:53:52 Keiji: Because there's a lot of things that are fast and spinning around.

00:53:54 John Daub: It's really fun place. So. He picks the adult. The more kind of adult of the two. Right. And we were there not so long ago.

00:54:00 Dean Newcombe: Right. Yeah. Not long ago. Well, why were we there? Was that to your birthday or something?

00:54:10 Keiji: Maybe. Yeah. Wasn't that. Yeah. I think that was a six year old birthday treat to go to Disney Sea.

00:54:15 Dean Newcombe: Yeah. Now I'm turning to seven. Which is super fast. Sorry, Dean. Most of the questions are going to KG. Yeah. To you. Yeah. That's good. Okay. KG. What do you want to be when you grow up?

00:54:56 John Daub: YouTuber.

00:54:59 Dean Newcombe: The doctor.

00:55:01 John Daub: And a YouTuber. YouTuber. It's a pretty unique concept. A doctor slash YouTuber. That sounds pretty cool.

00:55:20 Dean Newcombe: But I'm already doing YouTube. You're already doing. The YouTuber came first. I like that a lot. So his dream job would be... So you want to be a doctor?

00:55:36 Keiji: Yeah.

00:55:36 Dean Newcombe: Yeah. That's great. We need more of those. Like now. Seriously. So KG, do you speak Japanese? Do you speak Japanese?

00:55:46 John Daub: Oh. I'm not sure. We're in Japan. We're in Japan. But every now and then, I will get English because daddy teach me a lot of English more often than Japanese right now.

00:55:54 Dean Newcombe: But if you want to speak to your mum, would you use Japanese? What language do you use at home? For me, Cotondo English. I think he defines exactly how we speak because we speak. We're mixing the languages constantly. So. So my wife will speak in Japanese, I will generally speak in English, but we will listen to the languages in the opposite tongue. And then Keiji is probably the best at just kind of mixing it up. If he sees a Western face, he'll speak English to them. If he sees a Japanese face, he'll speak Japanese. And he's been doing that for years. And it didn't matter if that was somebody like you, John, that came to Keiji and said, Oh, konnichiwa, hajimemashite. He would say, Hi, nice to meet you. He would just instantly switch. He doesn't care what language you speak to him. He just cares that you're a gaijin, and therefore I'm going to speak to you.

00:56:50 John Daub: Keiji, there are some foreigners who can't speak English. There are. What should I do? Your face is a gaijin's face, but you can't speak English. What should I do?

00:56:50 Dean Newcombe: What should I do? What should I do? I said some people look like foreigners, but they might not speak English. So sometimes you can get in a little bit of trouble. Komaru deshou? Dousuru? Ha ha ha ha ha.

00:56:59 John Daub: Daniel writes in here, hello from Charlotte, North Carolina, for Dean. Are you fluent in Japanese? And if not, is Keiji motivating you to become fluent? Thank you, Daniel. Okay, good question. Yeah, I'm totally fluent in Japanese.

00:57:15 Dean Newcombe: Really? Really?

00:57:19 John Daub: Not at all. No, conversational Japanese. This is the high level. This is the high level. And you're this level. This level.

00:57:27 Dean Newcombe: Keiji's keeping it real. He can poke holes all over my Japanese because I can't read and write like you. And I always make really silly mistakes, right?

00:57:40 John Daub: Yeah. Nah. But I get by. I can speak Japanese enough to kind of live my life here. And is Keiji motivating? Like, absolutely true. Yeah. By having Keiji in my life and my wife is Japanese. After meeting them, my Japanese got much better. And at some point, and maybe now because we have more time than ever before because of the coronavirus, it's time to sit down with Keiji and I will finally study Hiragana, the Japanese alphabet. And this will be my... Japanese alphabet? Yeah. And you'll be learning Japanese. And you'll be my teacher. No, me.

00:58:14 Dean Newcombe: No, you.

00:58:17 John Daub: Yeah, that's good. Keiji, you teach your dad more Japanese. He needs to work on his conversational skills. More Japanese, maybe. I don't know. I need the help. I don't know. I need all the help I can get. Yeah, Kanae and I will speak more Japanese. But she's... Sometimes I'll say something in Japanese and now she responds in English. She's forcing it. Where, look, you don't want to teach me English. Right. And I said, this is Japan. In Japan, we speak Japanese. And then she's breaking that convention. She's, now, we speak in English. It's very hard. It's very hard. Ultimately, I feel like they win, you know, because their English just gets so good and our Japanese just plateaus and we just can't... We can't take it to the next level. So we always sound like we're a small child no matter how good our Japanese becomes because we always have this weird foreign accent.

00:59:20 John Daub: I'm looking around to see if Kanae's not watching. Yeah, blame the wife. It's the wife's fault. Hey, wait. Wait, KG, can you do the impression of me speaking Japanese? What? An impression of Dean speaking Japanese.

00:59:40 Dean Newcombe: Dean no nihongo. Dono hanashikata. Dean no hanashikata. Papa no hanashikata. Can you do that?

00:59:40 John Daub: Hey, you can listen to this. He doesn't say it. Oh, I say it. He's always saying to me, so... Japanese, Japanese, Japanese. He's spoken extremely flat. And I tend to have my English accent on the Japanese, so I'll say, Konnichiwa. Konnichiwa. Boku wa Dean desu. Hajimemashite. And so it's Japanese language, but it's got all these ups and downs in it. Sounds ridiculous. Konnichiwa. Konnichiwa. Konnichiwa. And I sometimes say, I say stupid things like, Oh, how do you want me to say it? Oh, I don't know. Eh, but Papa's Japanese is cute, right? A little cute.

01:00:17 Dean Newcombe: Kawaii desho. Papa no nihongo. Kawaii.

01:00:23 John Daub: Kawaii? Kawaii? Kawaii? Silly.

01:00:29 Dean Newcombe: It's silly. Yeah. They say my Japanese is silly, too. It's not, it's not as cool.

01:00:40 John Daub: Papa... Papa, it's silly.

01:00:44 Dean Newcombe: We try so hard for years to get to our level, and people just smile at us and go, Chotto, ne? But it just means basically, Ah, you're trying hard, but you haven't...

01:00:53 John Daub: Yeah. And then they'll say the most insulting thing. Your chopstick skills are so good. Like, what? People tell me, really? After 23 years, I can pluck a fly from the sky. I probably could if you give me some time. It's a Karate Kid thing. Try it. I'll tell you.

01:01:20 John Daub: Um, is there anything that we forgot to tell the people, Dean? I've seen some good ones. Not a lot of questions came in. People are shy. They're gun shy here. Where's the, where is the one, this is from Jonathan Chung. Thank you. Where is the one place you want to go in Japan and haven't gone to that's like, a desire or a bucket list? That's good. That's Jonathan. That's deep. Have you got some? Do, do you have somewhere in Japan that you really want to go?

01:01:52 Dean Newcombe: Yeah.

01:02:00 John Daub: Or it could be something that you haven't done that you wanted to do. Like if you were going to make a YouTube video now with me, what would you want to do? Like, never in Japan...

01:02:10 Dean Newcombe: Never in Japan. I haven't done but... For a long time? Yeah. What is it?

01:02:14 John Daub: Fishing.

01:02:15 Dean Newcombe: Fishing. Ah, fishing. So I think Keiji really wants to do activities so I will try to make that as exciting as I can if we're making it into a content. So if he hasn't done fishing I will take him somewhere in Japan which is amazing. Maybe even back to Tohoku and get him one of the fishing boats with the fishermen that I met back in the day and we'll make a video like that. Iwate Prefecture is really beautiful for that. Iwate up there and Aomori. Miyagi is pretty good. And Tohoku is perfect for fishing. I haven't been to Akita Prefecture. I think we were there in your... I was there not too long ago. Oh, we were in Yamagata. We went to Ginzan Onsen in January. Akita is beautiful too. Oga Peninsula, the peninsula area up there. Stunning.

01:03:05 John Daub: Yeah. How about you, Dean? Where do you want to go?

01:04:03 Dean Newcombe: I think I'm down to like two prefectures that I haven't been to. So one of them is Akita and the other one is... You have not been to Kochi? Oh, that's so wrong. That's so wrong. And you know the funny thing is last year I went on a mission to go to Kochi because it's so wrong that I haven't been. I've got to tick that off. So it's on an island called Shikoku which is one of the smaller of the islands of Japan. Right before you've got Hokkaido and Honshu. And then down here you've got Shikoku. Hokkaido is like the biggest. It's big, isn't it, up there? So anyway, you've got Shikoku and it's in four prefectures. And I've been to three of them. And I start driving from Nara. I go across to Kobe, over the bridge, into Shikoku, and I'm heading down to Kochi. And I get like almost at the border and then kind of run out of time and realize if I'm going to get this rental car back in time and get my flight back to Tokyo, I need to kind of turn around and head back. And so we had this great holiday. We had a great time. Doing all of these things on the way to Kochi and then all the way back, missed actually getting to Kochi. So it still eludes me. One day I will go there. It's not easy to get there. There's no Shinkansen. You have to fly to Kochi. You pretty much have to say, I'm going to make Kochi my vacation spot. You know, like settle in there for a week. But it's so worth it. The Shimanto River. The longest undammed river. It's such a natural place, Kochi Prefecture. I think I have two videos on the other channel and a dozen live streams from Kochi. Shikoku in general is so awesome. Shikoku. Good place for adventures. If you've been to Japan maybe two or three times before and you haven't been to Shikoku, that is extremely high on my list. Start in Ehime, maybe start in Matsuyama. Dogo Onsen based on the center of the Shinkansen. Yeah. It's a spirited away anime. This beautiful bathhouse. And just make your way around Shikoku and go into the center, into that mysterious steamy jungle-like area that's so pristine. The food, the people. It's just, wow, what am I doing in Tokyo? I don't even know why we live here, you know? Let's live in the jungle of Japan. When I was making season one, people were saying, okay, what's season two going to be? A lot of the time I said, well, perhaps it will be the Shinkansen. And they were like, oh, what? We're going to have to do it. But then when I got to Shikoku, I was like, well, this is a little bit more than just... It's really fun. And I love that it's in the middle. I think that's something that even maybe me and Keiji could do or Keiji could do part of it. And, yeah, a whole loop around Shikoku Island would be really interesting to do. Maybe I could live stream every day on that wall or something. That'd be great. Yeah. Maybe that's what's next. I don't know.

01:06:04 John Daub: Have you ever traveled with your wife? Do you travel with a family? How do you get around? By car? By train?

01:06:19 Dean Newcombe: Yeah, I totally do travel with a family these days a lot. Yeah, generally it's just my job that takes me to places without them. So when I'm shooting model acting, TV presenter kind of stuff, I'll head off on my own. And then when I have time as a family, we'll head off and we will throw in a little YouTube video if we can. So when I did Sabakaido, it was just me and him. Yeah, maybe next time we all go away, it'll be four of us. We'll see. And I do have the car. So these days, because of having kids, we tend to do car travel. So I'm a big eco guy, so I've got my electric hybrid. And I drive around in that. And it's nice and big, loads of space for luggage and camping gear and stuff like that. So it's fun. That's kind of our way to get around.

01:07:06 John Daub: It's a sure-to-please rites in here. And Nasha Broad wrote in the link to Runaway Japan. So if you want to go check out the series, it's pretty awesome. Sure-to-please rites in here. What is the one thing that inspires, I wouldn't even say Western or anybody to live in Japan. What inspired you to live in Japan, Dean?

01:07:29 Dean Newcombe: I think that's just what the universe kind of had in store for me. I never had a deliberate thing where I said, you know what, I'm going to live my life in Japan. I was just going with the flow of life and going with the current. And I traveled to a lot of countries before I came to Japan. And I did think that Japan was going to be three months. My three months became a year. Because of the volunteering, I came back for a second time. And that's what then really grabbed me. And Japan, in many ways, is an easy place to live. People are very kind to you and welcoming to you. And if you can get past the language barrier, then it's a really superb place to live your life. Keiji! So yeah, I feel like Japan shows me as much as I chose Japan.

01:08:14 John Daub: Keiji, do you like Japan? Dean, where are you from again?

01:08:19 Dean Newcombe: From the UK. From the UK. And Keiji's been to the UK, haven't you?

01:08:24 Keiji: Yeah, only. One time?

01:08:28 John Daub: Do you like the UK or Japan? Where do you want to live? Japan or...

01:08:46 Keiji: Both of them, it's really...

01:08:49 Dean Newcombe: He's going to be a diplomat. That's a very good answer. You can't go wrong. They're both good.

01:08:54 John Daub: It is, isn't it? Yeah. They're both good. You can't pick one over the other.

01:08:58 Dean Newcombe: What was good? What was different? Everyone is so... People are pretty outgoing, I guess.

01:09:15 Keiji: Conservative. Most of the time.

01:09:17 Dean Newcombe: I guess if you go from Keiji being around Japanese people most of the time to going to England, it's a bit like, wow. You know, people are loud. They speak to each other randomly at bus stops. You know, they don't just all wait patiently in line. You know, people go, oh, it's lovely weather, isn't it? Right? And they talk a lot, like me.

01:09:41 John Daub: That's great. Thank you guys both so much for staying. You're a warrior, Keiji. You've been able to hang on for an entire hour. Good job.

01:09:54 Dean Newcombe: Yay. One hour on YouTube. That's like worth 100 points out of 1,000. So you got to keep going. I got to keep going. Are you hungry?

01:10:00 Keiji: Yeah.

01:10:01 John Daub: Good job, guys. Thanks so much. Once again, this is Dean. Dean Newcombe and his son, Keiji. You can see them on Runaway Japan, which is a fantastic show that will keep you busy for five hours. And we're looking forward to seeing more things. And Dean, you're going to come on... You're going to Japan again, right? We'll see you again.

01:10:23 Dean Newcombe: Oh, yeah. If you're happy. We will be back. There were some videos on the other channel in Ibaraki where we drove around Wagyu farms and food challenges last year about at this time, actually. And we'll be back. Maybe next climbing Mount Fuji off season would be something I'd like to do. I'd love to do that. Nobody there now. Social isolation. There's nobody there. At the top of Fuji. That's about as isolated as you can get.

01:10:47 John Daub: Absolutely. Thanks, guys. I'll talk to you later after the show finishes. All right. Bye-bye. All right. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. See you.

01:10:57 John Daub: That's great. I'm really happy to have a chance to talk with my friend Dean and his son, Keiji. They came and visited me when I won the one million subscriber award at the YouTube Fan Fest. And they came as my guest. And Dean took some pictures. And that was the last time I saw them. They live on the other side of town, so I don't get a chance to hang out with them. But through... Through the media like this, we get a chance to meet up with our friends.

01:11:26 John Daub: Guess what? So I'm going to take some of your questions now. But I also want to say on Saturday, yeah, Saturday night, I'm going to have Miyu on the show again. Miyu is somebody who was on Only in Japan about two years ago, Only in Japan Go, in a segment we called Ask Miyu. She's a high school girl living in Tottori Prefecture. Now she went to college. Two years ago. No. I think that's three years later. She's going to be on the show again. She's grown a lot. And she went to the United States and studied English. So she's even better. So the Ask Miyu segment will return for part two. Long time no see, Miyu. But she's going to be answering questions about Japanese life in Osaka University in Tottori where she lives. And take some of the questions. And I get a lot of questions for her too. Because I haven't seen her in a while. She was away when I was visiting her family. You can see. Here's the video. That's the last time we talked. We took questions from all of you. So Ask Miyu is back. On Saturday night, which is Saturday morning. I believe. In the United States. So that's going to be a lot of fun. And I also have my friend Ruth Jarman on Monday. Which is Sunday night. in the United States. We're going to be doing a meetup with Ruth, a friend of mine, and talking about Niigata Prefecture as well as Koch Prefecture and some of the other places, golfing in Japan, some of the things that Ruth likes to talk about. We get a chance to talk about that on Monday morning, which is Sunday night in the U.S., so it's things that you can bookmark. We have a lot of more interviews coming up. But I want to once again thank Dean Newcombe from Runaway Japan. Runaway meaning a play on words, I believe, running and traveling, and runway, which is what is part of his job. We didn't talk a lot about it, but he's actually not just a TV reporter, but he also does modeling in Japan. And Kanae and I have walked around Japan, walked around Tokyo, and have seen him on billboards. It's pretty cool. He keeps in pretty good shape.

01:13:51 John Daub: Thank you. He's a good friend of mine, and we'll be working together on several projects this year. So yeah, you'll see some more of Dean. When I told you about some of the stuff that he did up in Tohoku and down in Kumamoto, it really warms my heart to know that I have inspirational friends like that and to see what they're doing down there. It inspires you and makes you do more as well. And I'm just really lucky and blessed to have Dean as my friend. So thank you, Dean, for the time. Definitely go check out his website.

01:14:28 John Daub: Thank you, guys. Take care. Have a good one. Bye.

01:14:36 John Daub: Bye. The mic, it's just not a good mic. It could be. Something could have been busted from it. I don't know. I'll have to check it on the gain and stuff here. Hold on. Maybe that's a little bit better. Is it? I don't know. Go ahead if you want. You guys can ask me some questions. Wagyu in a can today. Adam, we're going to do that tomorrow because I wanted to do this with Dean today. Today, Kanae will be doing wagyu for lunch tomorrow. We just ordered a kaiseki bento, which cost us an arm and a leg, and that'll be coming next week because we had to order it about five days in advance. So that's going to take some time. Marty writes in how Jaya is doing. Jaya is YouTuber Tokyo Lama, L-L-A-M-A. He's doing good. He's got his front yard all set up and the scaffolding, I believe, is coming down or it's down. And Kanae and I will go up there as soon as the state of emergency is lifted or the numbers are down enough where we can rent a car and go up there. We would love to do that to go check out how Jaya is doing. But he's doing well. I talked to him online, which is a messaging app that we have here in Japan just a few days ago, and he's doing good. Up where he lives, he has a lot more mobility because he's out in the countryside. But he's... He's fine. And his wife and his family is doing good. Thanks for asking about him. Ask me you, how is this canned Wagyu? I don't know, Brendan. I'll ask her a lot of questions. The headsets is Audio Technica. Audio Technica. They were El Cheapos, about 40 bucks, I think. I actually was just chatting with Paolo about two nights ago to congratulate him. They're waiting, expecting a son or a daughter. I'm not sure. He wouldn't... He didn't tell me. I didn't ask. But he's going to have a family in a few weeks, I believe. So I'm really happy to see Paolo doing well in this isolation. Ruth is Hana's mother. Yes. Yes. Yes. So Hana's mom. Meeting with Hana's mom should be the title. Hana's mom will be with us. And I knew Hana's mom before I knew Hana. And she's a super positive person with a more extensive look on Japan than me, which is crazy. She's been here longer and traveled maybe even more than me. A lot of the things that her job entails is going from prefecture to prefecture. And we went to Niigata's Sado Island, to see Kodo, the taiko group. And we've been there, what, two, three times together now, as well as Miyazaki and Kochi. So it's nice to work with Ruth. And I'm really happy to get a chance to talk to her on Monday. I'll try to put that live stream before you go to bed in the East Coast so you can put in the reminder and join us. I want to set these OBS live streams up a little bit earlier. Yeah. Ruth is the liveliest woman you'll ever meet in your entire life. She's like a cheerleader. It's incredible. You cannot help not being affected in a positive way by Ruth. And the latest live stream we did was the abandoned houses about two and a half months ago on Sado Island with Jaya. That was an amazing live stream. Maybe I can try to pull this up. But I'm going to be really happy to have a chance to talk with her and bring her on the live stream. We'll probably pull up some of those videos from our days when life was different. I wish I could go back to those days. That was before Hokkaido. Oh, there it is. Okay. Wow, 104,000 people watched that video. That's amazing. That's amazing. Here, I'm putting the link right there so if you guys can go and check that out. It would be pretty cool to get Hana in on that live stream as well. Yeah. Thanks, guys, so much. Keiji has a sibling. He has a new brother, a younger brother named Tao, T-A-O. And it's a pretty cool name. It's a strong boy's name. And he's just like a pineapple size. He's not quite big enough to be on the stream yet. But he's growing fast. And he was born just a couple of months ago, I believe, February. So Dean's family is growing too. And, yeah, Kanae and I, maybe we will too. I'm not going to speculate at all. When we were in the US, even when she does get pregnant, when somebody gets pregnant, you don't want to talk about it. You don't want to jinx it. That's another thing. You don't talk about that kind of stuff. When it happens, give it time. You got to make sure. How far does that part of Sado? How does far that part of Sado? Sado is about a... It requires a ferry ride. It's a butterfly-shaped island in Niigata that is really mysterious, place that I think everybody should go to in the summer. It's like it turns into the earth celebration, people camping on the beach with taiko drums. It's one of the most surreal experiences. This year, I believe the earth festival is still going on and I'll be going there and we're waiting now to see how they're going to do it because that's not until like the middle to end of August. So I definitely want to go out to Sado Island as soon as possible. Yeah. I always love Sado Island. Yeah, only in Japan junior. I was pretty happy when Keiji said that he also wants to be a YouTuber. That was cool and he came to when I received the 1 million award from YouTube to the FanFest and his eyes were so light up. And he puts me on the same level as Kamen Rider who was also there. because he has a YouTube channel, and he said, John is the same level as Kamen Rider. I was like, whoa, that's pretty big. Hey, Antonio, Antonio Bisinga Vlogs, thank you so much for that, from the Philippines. Appreciate it. Jennifer's doing well. She's also in self-isolation with her babies, and I don't know. We'll see if we can get her on the show. I'm not sure. Yeah, all my friends are doing some great things. Kevin is also keeping busy with recipes, cooking in his studio. You got to keep life going. Try to keep natural, the way things were before, as long as possible, to keep a normal life, despite having to stay home. You can have a little bit of fun as well, and thanks to the miracle of OBS and the internet and YouTube, we can have so many people here. I'm so thankful. We had about 500, 600 people watching, and that makes me really happy. What part of Japan do you hope to visit when restrictions are more relevant? I want to get back up to Aomori. I also want to go to Tottori, and Tottori Prefecture, and Shimane down there, and I want to get back to Niigata, and I definitely want to get to Kochi and Miyazaki. There's no place that I don't want to go. Hokkaido, I'm okay with, because I was just there, but I'm really in love with Kochi, because there's so much stuff inside of there that I want to explore a little bit more, and the fact that I have a lot of relationships there. Miyazaki, the food there is so good. I want to get some more on Miyazaki Wagyu. I want to get more Wagyu episodes, farm-to-table type of stuff. I want to get into some tofu and some other stuff, miso and things like that, so I'm working on things that are out there. Yeah, I'm looking at some of the questions that you're asking. Last one. One more question for the road. Anybody? Anybody? Bueller? Bueller? Can I and I are just starting our day. We woke up a little bit late. We've been waking up later and later. I think you get a little lazy in self-isolation, just a little, but it's important to get back into a routine. This is the part where you can write in where you're watching from if you want. The anime opening should be finished in a week. The window that the animators gave me was May 10th to 23rd, that it would be completely finished, and that's when I'll be launching the new channel. I can't do it without the animated opening, so I've been waiting for the opening. I'm going to give the animators as much time. It's not like I can go out and film episodes out on the road anyways. I do have about a dozen episodes that I can edit and put on to the new channel, but I'm going to wait for that animated opening. It's really close, and it looks so good. I picked the music out. We have the background sounds into it. Peter said he's going to help me with a new title call, so it's going to be pretty cool. The music is different, by the way. I put in a little bit better music. We'll find a way to have those intro beats and stuff. Those are just a flute and royalty-free intro beats that put together. I didn't spend a lot of time, but I had to compose everything myself. When I started, I had no money. I was in debt, way in debt. You just made do with what you had. Peter's voice for the new opening still, he's going to do Only in Japan, but not in the same way. I can tell you that much. It'll be a new one, but it's not going to be the same way. We want to make it more interesting, let's just say. We've been talking about this. More Peter than me. People are jogging. Matthew, thank you for that. People are jogging, but a lot of them are now wearing masks because TV showed that after you breathe hard, the moisture from your breath goes quite far back, like about five meters, which is about 25 feet. It's pretty far. I haven't been jogging at peak times. I try to jog at weird times, like middle afternoon or really late at night. I can't run as much because I sprained my ankle and I've been putting on weight really fast, which just stinks. Oh, the animated opening with hat. Animated opening has hat. We had to go with hat, right? We had to do hat. I was looking for a picture of it, so they put a hat on there. You guys might like that.

01:25:50 John Daub: It's again, Michael, between the 10th, which is really soon, and the 23rd. I'm just going to give the animators a cushion. There's no reason to push them to work harder. I can't go out and produce new videos, so I'm going to have to release what I have, and I'm not sure when I can go out and film again, so I'm not going to push them. There's no reason to. They're going to do their best that they can do. Nobody likes that people, are you done yet? Are you done yet? Are you done yet? Are you done yet? Are you done yet? Are you done yet? Are you done yet? Are you done yet? Yet like this I'm not gonna say they know that I'm breathing down their neck I'm looking at them right now um thanks guys so we're gonna end it right here uh if you have any comments or questions leave me a comment below i really appreciate it because i do look at these every day and if it's a question you'll find that i'm pretty receptive right now because we're all inside hit the thumbs up button if you can give me a like because liking it means that you like this format and right now we're at 320 likes way way too little for me to say that this is a good format i'm kind of worried about it actually so hit the like button and if we can get over a thousand then i'll do another one of these we do have ask miyu and we have ruth and we got another friend that i think is going to be lined up for the end of next week so we'll keep it going we got a ton of live streams and kanai and i will we'll have delivery food next week we took a break from food this week and we'll be back on it next week bye have a good day have a good night wherever you are in the world that was a motorbike delivery truck i'm really hungry bye guys