00:00:06 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to another episode where we're flying through Google Earth to a destination here in Japan. We're all self-isolating, so we cannot go outside or travel around the country, not yet anyway. The state of emergency here in Tokyo ends on May 31st, and then after that I can explore and take you with me. But until then, we're limited by Google Earth, this amazing software that allows us to travel anywhere around the world and take you on a virtual trip.

00:00:43 John Daub: I've got Google Earth open, and we're going down into Hiroshima, or Miyajima, Itsukushima (みやじま, sacred island), an island so beloved by me that I love to go here sometimes on Google Maps, Google Earth, Street View, and we're going to do that. I've got a lot of stories to tell you all about Miyajima. So let's get going on this amazing tour. First we're going to start right here in Hiroshima City. You can see the urban area where there's not a lot of vegetation, a lot of rivers going through there. It's a really beautiful city.

00:01:27 John Daub: I lived in a place north of the island, the castle—do you see the moat, the square in the center of your screen? I lived in an area called Yokogawa (横川) for about a year and a half, two years, in 1999 and 2001. The train tracks that arc above the city, that's where Yokogawa is, in the north part of your screen right now. I want to show you the Atomic Bomb Dome, called the A-Bomb Dome. This is the Peace Park. I would often walk through here when I was working, going to a shopping street called Hondori (本通，main street).

00:02:05 John Daub: On the way home to get to Yokogawa, I would walk past the Atomic Bomb Dome, which is right here. It's different when you look from the air than from the sidewalks. It's just one of these sites that makes you feel a lot of emotion when you're there—sadness about the people that lost their lives. Unfortunately, that's part of Hiroshima's modern history. You can see the T that the bombers used as a target right here. A lot of it is just a reminder. You can see where the stadium is in the center of your screen. This used to be the old Hiroshima Carp Stadium that's now been moved to another side of the city, and in its place there's something like a park.

00:03:05 John Daub: Hiroshima as a city is such a beautiful city despite its modern history, because of all these rivers and waterways going through it, right off of the sea, Seto Inland Sea (瀬戸内海). I'm gonna take you out now. This is just not that far away—Miyajima. This island is very special, as I said at the start, because it's like its own little world. On it there are deer that are the first things that will welcome you when you get there. You cannot help falling in love with this because it's just such a tranquil place. If you've never been to Miyajima before, I highly recommend you make a stop here. It should be number one on many people's itinerary.

00:03:58 John Daub: I think TripAdvisor had this as the number one spot in Japan for foreign tourists for many years before Fushimi Inari and some other sites around the country rightfully took some of the attention away. It was just too crowded. When sites get too crowded, you can also lose some of the attraction. So we're gonna go down now—let me show you Hiroshima wide one more time. You can see the city, and then Miyajima, or Itsukushima, which is the name of the island. Itsukushima Shrine is known for the floating torii (浮き鳥居).

00:04:37 John Daub: The ferry departs from the mainland and it takes about 15 minutes. It's not very expensive. A lot of you watching might have taken this trip, so definitely chime in with some of the stories you have. For me, that ferry ride—it's about a five-minute walk from Miyajimaguchi train station, and it's about a 15-minute ferry ride. They run quite often, every 15 to 30 minutes. There are two companies: one is JR, and if you have a JR Rail Pass, you can ride that ferry for free. The other is a private ferry company. I usually pick that one because I can't take a JR Rail Pass—I want to support the other business. But both go to the same place and offer the same kind of ferry boats.

00:05:35 John Daub: When you arrive on Itsukushima or Miyajima right here, you are greeted by the deer. I wanted to show you a Street View of the ferry terminal. Already you can see in this one there's deer. I'm gonna take you just over through here using Google Street View. This is the main road that you'll take to get to Itsukushima. I'm trapped here—it's almost like a video game. Whoa! We just went inside of a shop! How cool is that? This is really cool. Alright, here is the ferry terminal, right in front of us.

00:06:45 John Daub: I don't remember this big road being here. The Google Maps team couldn't get over there, but already you can see there aren't a lot of people here. Here's the sign telling us Itsukushima is here. We don't see any deer though—that's kind of scary. Not a lot of tourists. I wonder when they did this Google Map—all the shops are closed. So that means it must have been done when a lot of people weren't around, so early in the morning. The gate is even closed—this is the gate that leads towards Itsukushima. Google Maps team couldn't even get in through there; they had to go through the town.

00:08:00 John Daub: Alright, what are we gonna do? Luckily we can just go by brute force through here. There you go—we brute-forced got through the other side. Now it looks like a completely different day. We're going now towards Itsukushima. There's some more tourists here. I don't remember this construction. Oh, we're like way in the wrong area. Alright, this is one place we could go. There's the Grand Torii of Itsukushima or the Floating Torii. This is when the water is low—it's pretty neat. This is one of the great symbols of Japan.

00:09:05 John Daub: But again, I don't see any deer. Do you see any deer? I'm gonna pan around. I wonder if the deer are on strike. This is like a video game gone wrong—look, I got thrown into a restaurant, into the restaurant's bathroom. What's going on here? I'm inside of a sento (銭湯，public bath). This is too crazy. Alright, let's get out of here. Okay, we're back out here on the street. Here it is. I don't see any deer yet—we haven't seen any. All these here on the side are ryokan (旅館，traditional inns). Do you see up here is another ryokan—beautiful views of the sunset. This is a nice place to stay.

00:10:21 John Daub: This one here on the corner is such a beautiful ryokan as well. Each ryokan has a bath inside of it. I highly recommend anybody that goes to Miyajima spend the night—don't do a day trip. Spend the night. Because when all these day trippers go home, it is so beautiful on the island. That's when you want to be here, checking out all of these sites. The business owners are a little bit more friendly when all the day trippers go home. Oh, you can see in the center of your screen Miyajima's torii, the floating torii.

00:11:00 John Daub: I want to take you back to Google Earth—we'll go back through this town again. But when I come and stay here, I often don't stay in a hotel in town. What I do is I go camping and bring my tent. Usually when I'm backpacking or traveling in this region, the last time I was here I didn't have a lot of money, so I would explore the island. It's about a 45-minute walk, and now I'm going to take you to the camping spot. It's on the other side of this triangle peninsula, this part jutting out here. You can cut through the center through this road you can see in the center of your screen, and then the road curves around, goes down through a tunnel right here—which is so scary in the middle of the night.

00:12:07 John Daub: Usually I'd be in town until 8 p.m. and walk back at night—there aren't that many taxis. Then it'll take you out of the tunnel and you hug the coast until you get to the camping spot right here. It costs 500 yen, but if you come in the middle of the night, there's nobody there to take your money, so you can just pitch your tent in the back—this part that's now in the center of your screen. This part here is open up to camping, and it's a very lovely place—very soft grass. Just flick the deer poo away because it can get on the bottom of your tent, and it's not nice the next day to have to clean that. I had to do that a couple of times.

00:12:36 John Daub: But I want to show you right now a movie of my Hiroshima trip in 2003. This was taken in glorious standard definition, so the quality isn't very good. But you can see the island hasn't changed that much in the last 20 years since I was here—just the video quality looks more grainy. Now we can see here the tent incident. I was hitchhiking, pitched my tent here in the morning. I was eating some bread, and did you see right there? The deer took his teeth and opened up the tent and stuck his head in. This is how crazy the deer are. Then he went down there and grabbed something from my floor—just a wrapper. But this isn't the first time this deer popped into my tent—he literally ate a bread with a hot dog in it, half of it, and left it on the ground. Luckily I had more than one.

00:13:49 John Daub: Look how guilty the deer looks. Get out of here, I said. He knows what he did. It's awful. Guilty. I was a lot younger—yeah, I was like 27. This is 17 years ago—it's crazy. But I was standing in front of the ferry terminal, and not too far from here. Oh, there's some kids that I met when I was hitchhiking—everybody was coming up to you and saying hi. They're picking clams, asari (アサリ，littleneck clams), or little shellfish out of the sea to make miso soup in the morning. Lot of locals—there weren't that many day trippers back in 2003. It felt local, not a lot of foreign tourists in Japan at the time. But now if you go there, you'll see mostly foreign tourists.

00:14:40 John Daub: Here I am hitchhiking again, leaving Miyajima, October 19, 2003. Convenience stores haven't changed that much. Here's a guy who picked me up. So that's a pretty interesting experience that I had at the camping spot of Miyajima. I love this place—I've been staying here for over 20 years. When I lived in Hiroshima teaching English in 1999, I also stayed at this camp spot, and it hasn't really changed that much. The facilities have gotten a little bit better, but it's just a patch of grass and the nice proprietor in there. He never remembers me, but I remember him—he hasn't changed in over 20 years, which is pretty funny.

00:15:28 John Daub: The deer—huge troublemakers. They will not cooperate with you. Whatever mischief you're going to have to deal with, be sure you're going to be a part of it. They love to steal money as you put it into vending machines—something that has happened for many years. These deer just don't like to cooperate with the rest of the world—they've got their own agenda. Deer just want to eat. Miyajima has been around for centuries—this isn't a new tourist attraction.

00:16:35 John Daub: When you go there, if you do a day trip, expect it to be extremely fun but crowded. Itsukushima Shrine right here—you know, this is another story. I went once during the fireworks festival to Itsukushima Shrine. Now, the water when the tide is up will go all the way up to the shrine, and when the tide goes out like it looks like right here, you can walk to the Grand Torii right there in the center of your screen. They have a fireworks festival in the summer, and the fireworks are behind the torii—so that's one of those most Instagrammable images of Japan.

00:17:21 John Daub: Back when I was going there for the fireworks festivals, after the festival the monks would allow people to sleep inside the walkway in the shrine. They're very hospitable—sometimes it's kind of fuzzy because I might have been a little tipsy, but I believe they gave us some sake to drink, and we were having a pretty good time. There weren't a lot of foreign tourists in 1999. I remember spending the night here, and in the morning the monks had gotten up quite early to clean. We just left the few foreigners that couldn't find a place to stay—I was very happy that they put us up for the night. That was the first time I'd ever slept at a shrine. Shrine means they weren't monks—they were actually priests, and they were so friendly.

00:18:32 John Daub: You will have this sort of experience as you walk around. You'll have this kind of experience when you walk around the market area. If you go early in the morning when they first open up the shops, the store owners are very friendly—they might even give you stuff for free if you buy something and say, oh, try this one. Especially if you can speak a little bit of Japanese, they're happy to communicate with you. But I don't think it's the same with tourists, because it's the tourism that really makes this island's economy go. Without tourism, there wouldn't be any economy. So that's another thing that really makes me happy to go and spend some money, because I know tourism is a big part of it.

00:19:28 John Daub: From Itsukushima Shrine here, we're going to move up between the ferry terminal and in the middle—you can see the town. It's kind of a circular path that goes through there, and there's two of them. There's one that is a covered shotengai (商店街，shopping arcade). Do you see the roof, the white roof through the center of your screen? That is a shotengai—you can walk through there in the rain, and it'll cover you from the sun. Most people will come in the summertime—tourism is crazy in the summer, and it's good to get the sun off you because it's so hot. Behind there there's another road that you can walk through—mostly residents, but there are some hotels, a lot of restaurants. And then as you go further back, there's a garden which is beautiful to explore, and a lot of nature. Most of this island feels like a jungle.

00:20:25 John Daub: After you get from this area, the vast majority of tourists that go to Miyajima don't actually explore much of the island. In fact, I've never been to the other half of Miyajima, and that's a place that I would very much like to explore. The thing is, I don't think there are any roads to get there—you have to go by fisherman's boat and navigate around the island. That requires a little bit of money—you can pay and rent a boat. I don't think it's an actual tour that tourists do, but you can pay a fisherman, probably not from Miyajima but maybe from the mainland too, and they'll take you out in a motorboat. You can scuttle around—it's a really fun thing to do in the summer. I've heard of friends that have done this, and you can have a pretty neat experience.

00:21:22 John Daub: Let me show you the island—get up a little bit. Google Earth is also great because you can't really fly a drone around the island. I'm going to show you a place where I flew my drone when I was in Miyajima. You cannot launch where there are a lot of people. If you look around, the thing that makes it hard are these here in the middle of the water—I believe this is for seaweed or nori (海苔). They're harvesting seaweed—the seaweed grows quite quick, the water is very clean. You can see the shallow areas, that beautiful color. They're harvesting seaweed, so you just have to be careful when you go through this waterway. I believe the boats come around here.

00:22:15 John Daub: Look at this—there's like beaches on the other side of Miyajima Island that you might be able to get to if you have a boat. It's pretty clean water—this is the backside. Look at this little secret cove on Miyajima Island. I wonder if anybody ever goes here and swims. I don't see any roads—in fact, I don't see any paths to get around. This one looks like a little path on the right side here that goes through, maybe. But that's going to take you a full day to hike out there—you're going to have to camp and maybe hike back. I have not explored this area of the island before—it's very mountainous as you can see. Mount Misen (弥山) is in the middle of the island, more closer to the north side here where the ferry terminal is. You could probably walk there in about 45 minutes or an hour, or maybe 15 minutes if you run a little—that's one of the funny signs in Miyajima.

00:23:26 John Daub: Mount Misen is a beautiful lookout point. Besides deer on Miyajima, you can also see—Google Earth screen is frozen. Okay, yeah sorry. There you go—thanks guys. You can see in the center of your screen now this is where the seaweed is being harvested, and the ships that go through here. I believe the screen is not frozen anymore, right? We're back. This is looking now at the seaweed—that's what this is in the middle of the screen here. And the boats will go between the seaweed that's more dispersed on the top and the ones that are very close down the bottom. These are harvested by locals—usually you gotta get there by boat.

00:24:46 John Daub: This is so far from the island that the only way to get there is by boat, so fishermen have to get around by little teeny motorboats. Is that a house in the middle here? Only by Google Earth can you find these little hidden places on the island. I think there's underneath the trees—there's a tree canopy, there are paths that lead down there. So there might be some fishermen living up in the hills because it protects them from typhoons and any storms that might come in, or the tide that might rise. Who knows—but these are all I believe seaweed or harvesting something from the sea. It's really beautiful.

00:25:30 John Daub: What I showed you before when the screen was frozen—if you do rent a boat from the mainland and scuttle around, I haven't done this yet but I've had friends who told me, you find like these secret beaches. Look at the one on the backside of Miyajima Island. You can see it does not look like— it looks like a very beautiful beach, but it doesn't look like there's any road or path. Maybe on the top there—you can see on the right side of the beach there looks like there could be a path. But that's a very beautiful beach—probably it takes you all day to hike there. So it's nice to bring a little motorboat to get around to the backside. That's a full day hike from the city center to the backside of the island to get to the secret beach.

00:26:25 John Daub: Of course it's going to be a lot easier by boat to get there, but there's a couple of other secret beaches on the other side. I believe there's a road that takes you to right here, which is now in the center of your screen—so you can drive to here and then you have to hike down. It's a pretty rugged road, so you might want to take one of those smaller pickup trucks that they have in Japan. From there I think you can either hike the beach too, but it gets pretty rocky at some points, and you might have to swim around or there's some paths that cut across. There is a road here—it winds along the backside. It's a possibility to also rent a motorbike like a 50cc scooter—you can do that and get around Miyajima, and that might be really a nice option.

00:27:16 John Daub: The road goes all the way through here—it's not very populated, so if you do break down don't expect help, and don't expect 4G phone signal on the backside of the island either—it's very not good. Look at these beaches—that's so beautiful. This is like an unspoiled beach on the Inland Sea. You could probably park your bike here and walk down this rocky cove to hang out on the beach. To find this torii in the middle of your screen would be pretty amazing—so beautiful.

00:28:00 John Daub: So that's Miyajima Island. If you do take a look from Google Earth, you can find a lot of secret things inside of this island. On the whole it's pretty—I mean if you look from a distance it's not a very big island, but it will take you all day to get around. All these islands on the Seto Inland Sea that are between Shikoku—which is mini Australia, do you see that right there?—they're also navigable. So you can get a boat and explore the Inland Sea. They're so beautiful, especially in the summer—the water in this area is this wonderful blue. I don't know—it's got to be a different blue than other places; there's something original about it. But all of these little islands—most of them are unexplored.

00:29:11 John Daub: We'll start from Miyajima here, and this is Hiroshima in the center of your screen. If we just kind of float on Google Earth over this way, you'll find Kure (呉), a port city. I believe the Japanese military use this as a base for boats coming in and out—you can see because it's quite sheltered. It's very easy once you navigate in there—none of the waves or any of the problems from the ocean gonna affect the Inland Sea here. But down here you're gonna find Okunoshima (大久野島), otherwise known as Rabbit Island (うさぎの島). If you zoom in on Google Earth probably the little rabbits jumping around all over the place—it's just a photo but it's pretty cute to go and see that. So we'll reserve more Inland Sea stuff for another livestream.

00:30:18 John Daub: Hiroshima is such a beautiful place and Miyajima is the jewel—it's just that place that you gotta go to whenever you visit Japan; it's magical. I'm so shocked that I'm not going to be able to go to that place again—I'm so shocked that we don't have any deer on here. I'm gonna pull up the drone shots now and show you. This is a drone shot that I took from 2017—it's in 4K so it has to be—wow, it's quite big. There's not a lot of places to fly a drone legally here. Look at the color of the water—that's what I'm talking about with the Inland Sea. Right—look at the color of the water; there's the floating torii in the distance and the town in the middle. This is the spot where I flew the drone—you have to start from outside.

00:31:36 John Daub: It's all about launching it, and this was a safe place according to people on the island. The drone—just don't go too close to where people are. Just when you take off and land make sure you're at least 30 meters away from buildings with other people and cars, and don't go any higher than 150 meters. You can see Mount Misen over—it's a little bit over to the left; just monkeys on there by the way. I got a story about that but it's such a beautiful flight. I know some people have flown drones from here from the point, and if you do that you want to do it very early in the morning. But it's so loud with the drones—you're gonna annoy the locals and you're probably gonna have one of the very few police officers coming up and confiscating your drone.

00:32:24 John Daub: If they confiscate your drone you have to pay a fine of up to 5,000 dollars, and also they'll probably take it away and say you can pick it up in four months—which is a month after your visa ends and you've already returned home, so you're not gonna get your drone back. I'm just saying from an experience of somebody who did that. So there I am flying—that's over the ferry pier. Yeah, that's the beautiful color of the Inland Sea, this amazing turquoise color. Right—that's what I love about Hiroshima; it's right off of the sea but it's that color of the Inland Sea—it's just so different than the rest of the places in Japan. It's magical to me—it really is.

00:33:20 John Daub: If you have anything in the chat that you want to add I'll be looking over there as I take you now onto a Street View. We're gonna go into the town itself and see if we can Google Map it. I guess they went in the morning—that would be a real big shame if that's the case, but we're gonna give it a try. Wow, during the day this gets so crowded—it's nice; there's the ferry terminal. Oh is it—I guess I gotta go back up a little bit further more into the right here, and then it branches right. Yeah there we go—all right, let's go into the town. You can see already on the left hand side of the map there's a lot of stuff going on here.

00:34:40 John Daub: Loads of manju (饅頭，steamed buns), loads of little teeny stands selling street food—this is one of the best places in Japan for street food; I love it. Look at this—this is the first place; do you see in the window there? In Japanese restaurants they will usually put the menu out in front so you can see what's available—this isn't just for foreigners; this is also for Japanese. What time does the ferry stop working? Probably 9 to 10 p.m.—the later it goes in the day the fewer there are, and then it goes to one an hour and then they just stop. I'm guessing like maybe 11 p.m. for locals, but those ferries aren't very crowded—most of the tourists have gone.

00:35:53 John Daub: Again I would stay the night—pay a little bit more to stay the night here; it's just one of the most beautiful experiences, very traditional at night. These ryokan—you can see there's one right here; you see the ryokan, the yokan (羊羹，sweet jellied pastry)—that's the one right there. You can see it's got a ramen lantern outside—kochin (紅珍？); there's a beautiful ryokan, a lot of them are brand new too, and you can stay very comfortable inside tatami rooms—very traditional experience. So we're going to go down the market here—something he's loading up a vending machine; how cool is that? There's all these local businesses.

00:36:53 John Daub: A lot of the owners of these local businesses they're not actually from Miyajima—many of them have come from the mainland and set up businesses here and have become locals. Locals are pretty inviting of people coming to stay on the island—that's what I like about the island culture. Everything in this shop is 1050 yen, about ten dollars—that's hilarious; that was set up for tourists obviously. Oh look, here's a nice little restaurant—it looks like tatami booths; this seats are tatami. Oh there's the post office—yeah, there's the central post office in Miyajima. I've taken many postcards there to drop it off, and they put a little Miyajima postmark.

00:37:52 John Daub: If you hold on to your postcards until you get here you can get really beautiful postmarks on your postcards from different areas. Tourist places know that tourists like those postmarks, so some might have a little deer on it or they'll have a torii on it or something—just like the manhole covers of Japan; the post office kind of goes along with the fun of the local regions. Do you see right there there's an umbrella? You can buy these all over Japan but Japanese umbrellas have more than just five sticks that make it puff out—Japanese umbrellas might have 24, and it makes it a little bit heavier but it's so beautiful and pleasing, and it gives it a better shape to the umbrellas. Many of them have now Japanese patterns on the outside—you can't see them until it rains, and when it rains they get darker, and it almost makes you excited on a rainy day like today we have in Tokyo.

00:39:08 John Daub: Japanese umbrellas can go anywhere between ten dollars to twenty-five dollars—you get what you pay for; you're not getting ripped off. This is a large paddle—I can't remember the history of it but I remember this is also where the market starts, wasn't so far here. In the middle of your screen is a momiji (紅葉，maple leaf)—do you see that there? The momiji leaf is a symbol of Miyajima, the island Itsukushima, and behind this town there's a lot of parks that have momiji leaves, and in the autumn they're so beautiful. Momiji are like a Japanese maple leaf—it's so beautiful to see these in the fall. So autumn is the peak time—summer because the days are longer, and autumn because it's so beautiful to see the leaves changed on Miyajima Island.

00:40:06 John Daub: We're now walking down the tourist street and you can see it's still closed in the morning on the Google Earth. Oh you can see the Google truck going by there—so they only went in places where they could take a car, and they can only drive the car when the tourists are not awake yet—that's funny. Already you can see above the five-story pagoda, which is another symbol of the island. All the restaurants have windows that show what you can get inside—this makes it easy for tourists; you just point or you can pick a number. Sometimes they'll have a number and say number 25 and they go ah, and then they'll write and you'll get what you saw on the outside.

00:41:10 John Daub: If at any time you don't know, you feel like there's a misunderstanding, you can take the lady and take her outside or the guy and show them by pointing exactly what you want. Typically they will be like ah, wakatta (分かった，I understand). Another way to do it is just before you enter the restaurant, take your smartphone, take a picture of what you want and then show them the picture on the inside—that saves time of taking them outside. So just use your smartphone as a way to illustrate what you want from the menu. If you don't know what a katsudon (カツ丼，pork cutlet rice bowl) is or soba (そば，buckwheat noodles) or how to order it, you can just show them. Now it looks like we have gone underneath the shotengai—check it out above there.

00:41:55 John Daub: So in the summer this is so welcome, and in the winter not so much. Oh they didn't cover the whole thing yet when Google Maps team took the Street View here. You can see they put out a lot of tourist stuff like these—what is that there? Ah, deer in the center of your screen—you can see the little stuffed deer that you can take home. Also Anpanman is there, Melonpanna, Vikingman. And of course you can get ice cream, all sorts of goodies. As you go further towards Itsukushima Shrine, you'll find more and more foods. Ah oh, there's the police station there. All these shops are closed.

00:42:50 John Daub: If you do spend the night here, definitely you can eat in your ryokan and you're gonna have a fantastic meal. But if you get a chance after you eat, go check out one of the local restaurants—have a second dinner, maybe order the smaller dinner and go out and have a couple of drinks at a local izakaya (居酒屋，pub). That's when you get to meet the locals, and you might find somebody who has a day off the next day and says hey, I will take you up Mt. Misen or I will drive you in my car to the other side of the island—let's go on a little trip. I've had so many experiences where when I stayed the night on the island it opened up so many new experiences for me that wouldn't have been possible with a million other tourists on the island.

00:43:33 John Daub: So there's a lot of value in spending the night or two and really getting to know the people—and that opens up so many new experiences that are not in any way possible. That's been my success for this series, Only in Japan—when I go out I try to spend more time there talking with the people, finding the stories that only present themselves when you get to know the area. And that's so important as a YouTuber because you've got to find stories that other people have not already told. Here's another alley that will take you out to the parks in the back. This is a famous shop in the center of your screen where you can get the Momiji Manju (紅葉饅頭，maple leaf bun). It's a manju in the shape of the momiji leaf, and inside they have all sorts of different toppings—chocolate, custard, cream cheese.

00:44:42 John Daub: Now they started doing something about five years ago on the suggestion of foreign tourists—they took the Momiji Manju, which are basically little teeny cakes, and they put it on a stick, battered it again, and deep-fried it. Then all the toppings inside started to melt and come together with the cake, the deep-fried batter around it. It is one of the most delicious and unhealthy foods that you'll ever eat in your entire life—and be happy for it. Don't eat more than one or two, okay? Just trust me—you're gonna feel it for the rest of the day. But it does look so good, especially custard. If you ever had deep-fried custard and cake like this, it's paradise. They just started doing that—this shop traditionally only made the Momiji Manju cakes, but now they're all having it for the tourists as street food: deep-fried Momiji on a stick. I think it was about a dollar fifty or something—but so worth it.

00:45:42 John Daub: Now we're entering into Itsukushima Shrine—you can see because of the torii gate. When you enter you don't want to enter into the middle—that's reserved for God; he's gonna be making his way through there, and you don't want to bump into one of the deities. If you've ever watched Spirited Away, a Ghibli movie, you're not gonna want to bump into the deity—trust me, they're pretty big and formidable. This is the point that if you've ever been to Miyajima, you've made it. In the center now you can see with the tide up—it's so beautiful, the floating torii of Miyajima. There it is right there. Typically there are a dozen deer—I'm so surprised. Maybe Google Earth decided to blur the deer out—I don't know.

00:46:36 John Daub: Let's go a little bit more—there we go! The deer are here—you can see them lounging underneath the tree; they're kind of just relaxing a little bit. Do you see that? So if we pan over to the center, a lot of tour groups will come and stand where that blue chair is there. Now they put the chair on top of the chair so you can't sit there, and then when the tour comes through they'll take that down and they'll have a row standing, sitting, and maybe another person kneeling for the younger kids or something. They'll put the date in the red area there and it'll say Miyajima. Tour groups like to do that, and in the background you have the Itsukushima torii or the floating torii—it's such a beautiful picture.

00:47:28 John Daub: I'm gonna tell you over and over again: when you go to Miyajima, spend the night—forget the ferry. It's so liberating when you see the last ferry go and you're trapped on the island and you can't do anything; it is quiet, it is natural. And they illuminate the torii at night—if you get a beer or a drink and you sit along the banks, either on the beach or on the road back to the ferry pier, you'll see the sun setting with the red torii in the background. And it's so magical—it really is stunning. If we have some time at the end of this, I'm gonna go back and patch in a YouTube livestream that I did there showing the sunset. It is beautiful—you can see that on Only in Japan Go; I did several livestreams in 2017 highlighting the beauty of this.

00:48:28 John Daub: It is one of those places—moments at sunset that you never forget. Nobody's there, it's quiet, you have deer behind you, you have the sun setting with Itsukushima Shrine and the grand torii floating with those colors—purple, pink, all these beautiful colors of the sunset. Of course the day's gotta be not cloudy like this. If you do peek around this will take you to Itsukushima Shrine—we're going now straight this way. It's like my mouse lost the power to continue—seriously? Oh my gosh—did it just freeze on me? I gotta back up mouse—hold on a second, guys. Expect the unexpected—this would be the unexpected. Give me 30 seconds as I try to get the mouse back up.

00:50:01 John Daub: There we go—expect the unexpected. This mouse never dies like this—is it the wire or the charger? Interesting—not really. Thanks Gary, have a nice day. That's the wire—everything is USB-C; this is even longer. So next I'm going to take you down to Itsukushima Shrine for a second—there we go, we're charging. That's never happened where the mouse dies—I don't know. All right, we're on our way again. So this is the pathway that will take you to Itsukushima Shrine, and when you walk around from that point you'll come to this junction. This is where you enter and you can pay, but if you look up to the left almost we're almost there, you can start to see that torii that we had before.

00:52:14 John Daub: Here's the entrance to Itsukushima Shrine—I don't know how much it was; I think it was like 500 yen, about $5. There are times where the tide will be risen and it looks really beautiful. There's a point here where you can stand and you have a beautiful picture of the sea and the torii in the background—that's really beautiful at that time. But when the tide is out it's just a bunch of mud—it's not as beautiful as when the tide is in and just the water is filling up what's called the floating shrine. It's so beautiful. You can see the torii up there—so if you keep going behind the shrine you get to this, and there are some beautiful pictures that you can take from angles showing the torii in the background.

00:53:17 John Daub: Let's see if I can find some of those angles—and behind is the back streets; this is behind the shrine. You can go around it as well, but if you go through here it will take you to a road. Here's the Google won't stop there—this road will take you up to the pagoda as well. You can float around—there's the top of Mount Misen up there. The story of Mount Misen—I'll tell you really quickly here. I walked here for the first time in 1999—not a lot of tourists; there were more monkeys up there than tourists at the time. I thought they were cute—I was taking their picture and all that. I didn't have a digital camera so I wasn't taking a lot of pictures because you have to pay for the development.

00:54:13 John Daub: They started coming closer and I started making fun of them—you know, like going ooh; you're not supposed to do that, by the way—don't do that. But there was no one around to tell me don't do that. So the monkeys were in the trees—you know what they did? They reached behind to their bum and pulled out—they're like these little, you know—and they were throwing it at me, literally throwing it at me. So I booked it up to the top of the mountain to get out of there—I'm sure they're laughing. Do not underestimate the intelligence of a monkey. On the one side they're not very smart for putting their fingers up their bum, and on the other side if you were a 12-year-old that would be genius and funny. They're probably laughing about it up in the trees still—remember that guy 20 years ago? Don't make fun of the monkeys—respect the monkeys.

00:55:24 John Daub: If you go up Mount Misen I don't know if there's as many monkeys as there used to be, but they might have gone out into the inland. There's a lot of food because of the tourists so I'm sure they're around—I haven't been up to the top in a very long time. They're childish, those monkeys. So if we keep going back here I want to take you to the junction—is this where it is? Oh this is the tunnel—this will take you back to the shopping street. And then you have a choice—you can go up; it's just filled with all these really beautiful stairways going up to that pagoda. So you can go up to the pagoda, go straight to the deep-fried Momiji shop that's very famous, or you can go this way—and this way takes you back to the shopping street.

00:56:03 John Daub: So you can go back towards the ferry pier, but you're going to get to another junction. Look at the old post box there—I have that red post box there. Just take you down the street a little bit—look at these old wooden buildings; I love it back in the back streets of it. You can't miss the back streets—it's worth exploring away from the tourists. And on a hot summer day when you get tired of having tourists all around, this is the nice part of the town. You can get up there—maybe it's back towards the shrine. But if you go in the back away from the town there's some very beautiful gardens, very natural places where you can take pictures.

00:57:06 John Daub: This looks like where the locals live on this part. In general you can go towards Mount Misen—you'll find a lot of very beautiful gardens. That's where you would go to see the momiji, the Japanese maple leaves in the fall—it's so beautiful. There's streams going by—it's very natural; there are some deer. The deer are more in their natural habitat. And for those going to the camping spot on the other side, if you're looking at the Google Earth remember if you go back to the camping spot I guarantee you you're going to see those deer in their natural habitat—they're in attack mode. Those deer by the camping spot are like wild deer—they don't see so many tourists so they're not spoiled.

00:58:03 John Daub: If you use the satellite sometimes you can see some of the deer just walking around this area—you'll see a lot of babies back here too. This is the camping spot, which is nice to go. Miyajima in all of its beauty is the perfect place that you have to stop at when you go to Japan and you want to go to Hiroshima. Do the city as a day trip and spend the night on Miyajima—do the opposite of what people are typically doing. You're looking for nightlife—Miyajima does have izakayas, but you're going to want to get a good night's sleep, wake up early and enjoy the island before it is so overcrowded by day trippers.

00:58:53 John Daub: The times between 5 a.m. in the summer to 9 a.m. when the ferries start coming is a magical time on the island—it is so peaceful to go for a morning walk. And the time at night between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. is also very nice, with the sun setting—the town is so much more relaxed because the population is way down in the village. That's the time that you want to see this island. To me I can't wait for this self-isolation to be finished and I can go and travel again.

00:59:38 John Daub: Trevor Beck writes in: John, just wanted to tell you that you're my favorite Japan YouTuber. Also yeah I can't even say that, Trevor—go bucks, but thank you. It's Big Ten—go Big Ten. Thank you Bradshaw Studio—I really do appreciate that. A torii (鳥居) is a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of Shinto shrines—that is very symbolic; marks the transformation from the mundane to the sacred. Very much so—and when you cross underneath one of them you do feel more of the spirit. A lot of the torii gates are very massive in scale—what you see in the screen here is Miyajima.

01:00:26 John Daub: There's the Heian Torii gate in Kyoto which is a bright orange—it's massive; you can see it from far away. There's the massive torii gate at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo—you can see this from quite a ways away. When you go underneath it with the massive size of it you do feel like you are in another world—that's part of it, the surrealness of the size of these gates. A lot of people don't know the gate at Yasukuni you can go inside of it—there's a stairway that leads up to the top. One of the Shinto priests told me about it—he said one day I'll take you up there; I'm still waiting on that one day. I'd love to go and see that. Some of the other torii gates, also the massive ones, just a couple in Niigata that you can drive underneath—there's the one at Izumo Taisha (出雲大社) in Shimane Prefecture.

01:01:30 John Daub: Izumo Taisha, one of the big important shrines in the country—they are very impressive. That would be an episode on its own, just the torii gates. Right now I'm taking some of your questions here—if you have any on traveling in Japan or traveling to Hiroshima, or if you want to share some stories, definitely write it in the comments right here; I will be very happy to read it out loud and talk a little bit about Japan. I really enjoy these Google Earth streams because it gives me a chance to not just relive the old memories that I've had, but also—oh no way, do you see that? That's a battery vending machine—how do I zoom in on that? Old Toshiba battery vending machine that you don't see very often anymore.

01:02:18 John Daub: You can get two packs because tourists would come here with their Walkmans back in the 1980s and they would need batteries when they ran out—you couldn't recharge the batteries. So they would go to these vending machines from the hotels to recharge their Walkmans to have some battery sources. They're not so popular now because we all have lithium-ion rechargeable batteries by USB, but back in the day you'll still see some of these battery vending machines—how cool is that? So we're now going through the back streets of Miyajima. What's it like in January? That's a good question. In January there's still a lot of tourists—people are always traveling to Japan; it's just colder, the days are shorter.

01:03:37 John Daub: You're going to want to bundle up—there's sometimes a cold wind coming off of the Inland Sea, but it's less crowded, which is a good thing. And if you're staying in a ryokan you have the luxury of walking around the village and it's not so crowded. But also you're going to be spending more time appreciating the ryokan, the place that you stayed. A lot of the people who take the ferry to Miyajima in the winter will more take advantage of the restaurants and the izakaya and the small island hospitality, because it's different from the mainland. Hiroshima is further southwest so it's not as cold as Tokyo—it's fairer; it gets down to about 8 to 12 degrees in the winter, so it's not too cold—it's above freezing; it's comfortable.

01:04:42 John Daub: But it's not the most ideal time—autumn and summer and a little bit of spring is really nice. Hey here's for a copy of Star Wars—yeah, you know that Kanae has never seen Star Wars ever. She can't get—she's just not interested; she doesn't understand what it's about so she loses interest. She thinks it's a bunch of people in costumes running around like a plastic stage. I'll get her in there—she's got to see the whole thing; you have to strap her in and make sure her eyes with toothpicks are open, and then if you can get her through 20 minutes she's going to really enjoy that. Nice trip down memory lane—it was only one year ago; it seems so much has changed since one year ago, right? Absolutely.

01:06:10 John Daub: I want to go back towards the ferry pier if we can—this is the last thing. Oh there you can see a deer—very few people in the morning. So when the people start coming the deer know and they start coming out in force. But before the ferries open up you won't see a lot of deer. John from Edgardo Sanchez: what do you think of the idea of you making a livestream talking fully in Japanese? I think that's a really great idea. The problem is that 95% of the viewers wouldn't know what I'm talking about and the vast majority will come and leave after five minutes. But it might be something that I can do with Kanae for a little bit—maybe we'll do something just special as well.

01:07:05 John Daub: The beauty of the Only in Japan Go channel is that it is so much more flexible than the other channels where I'm editing content. All the new content will be going on in a new channel from now on, but there won't be any livestreams on that new channel—all of that will be right here. So I can take in your questions and interact with you more than just your comments on this channel, which is really cool. But I think an all-Japanese episode would be a lot of fun, and I like the fact that the pressure is on when we're live—I can't hide from it; I have to be—I can make the mistakes and you can learn from my mistakes. Look, I'm so glad for your question here because I have learned a lot of Japanese from other expats that are speaking in Japanese—because their Japanese is simpler and their pronunciation is a little bit easier for me to pick up because they usually speak a little bit slower.

01:08:18 John Daub: When it's native Japanese speed and level they use words and slang and things that I don't understand, whereas expats who speak Japanese will speak in traditional standard Japanese which is easier to understand. It's the response that's always been hard. So this would be a really good idea—all right, I'll talk to Kanae and see if we can set something up. By the way guys I haven't done it yet because I'm still promoting Patreon as a way to support rather than YouTube, but I'm going to be opening up the Join button, Sponsor, where you'll be able to have an animated emoji and just make it a little bit more fun and also to help out the channel. But Patreon has been the main place to support what I do here—that's why I got the postcard club.

01:09:15 John Daub: The value of the second level is that I'm going to be doing behind-the-scenes livestreams. So after I finish a livestream I can do a second livestream, and in that situation if there is a Japanese guest with me we can do Japanese language livestreams where it's a smaller group. And if I make a mistake that is insulting it won't be so harmful to my reputation—ego; I don't have much of an ego anyways. People are always making fun of me—I usually will just have fun with it. What is the best way to learn Japanese? writes Trevor. I think I'll be doing another episode on this so you can ask questions. There's a lot of other YouTubers that have been talking about this.

01:10:09 John Daub: I can just say the way that I learned my Japanese, which is the imperfect way: live here, be immersed in it, learn all the big bad mistakes and never take a class because nobody will ever correct you. And continuously making the same mistakes until they're habits and very hard to break again. I learned by studying from books and going to Mister Donut and talking with women that were in their 70s and 80s who had a lot of free time—they were pretty strict actually, but a lot of them thought that my mistakes were cute and they never corrected me, which is a problem. If you're learning English and you go to America the Americans will tell you right away oh you don't say it like this, you say it like this—oh you forgot to say a and the; they'll tell you.

01:11:03 John Daub: But in Japan they don't want to create a confrontation so they're hesitant to correct you. The result is my Japanese which is not fluent—anybody who is fluent knows that my Japanese is not that great. It's conversational and I can get around, and I can have a conversation with people, and I understand about 90%—to some vocabulary that's above my head but I can figure it out in context. But there are so many other YouTubers that speak better than me, and I think that I can always study and learn more. I'd love to go to a school—the problem is when I do that the sample lessons I'm disqualified because it's too easy what they're teaching me and it's not interesting to me, or they can't assess my level because I understand exactly what they're saying so they put me in an advanced level and then I can't understand anything that they're writing.

01:12:02 John Daub: So I'm a very weird level for school so I would need a private lesson—maybe I'll do it. I think this would be good to look for online lessons—online lessons would be fun. Is it better to learn formal Japanese language from the start? You know what? This is something that I learned from a marketing executive from drinking with him and getting work. And by the way I got most of my jobs not in meetings but drinking with the people afterwards because that's when they became friends and we could discuss the looser parts of it without being overly formal because I can't speak formal Japanese so well. I think it's good to learn formal Japanese—you should learn beautiful Japanese the way that it was meant to be learned, not the way that I learned it.

01:12:52 John Daub: The first thing that you can do is to make flashcards and learn hiragana and katakana—ai u e o. Hold it up and turn it around and then get your mind to recognize the katakana and the hiragana symbols. After you do that then start learning Japanese—don't start learning Japanese with Roman letters in the 26-letter alphabet that we read books in. Learn Japanese from hiragana and katakana—so make flashcards and then learn from the flashcards. I think you can learn it in 3-4 days if you just take it out several times a day, turn it around and quiz yourself—you'll learn it very fast. And then after that start learning Japanese the right way in ai u e o, ka ki ku ke ko, instead of learning it in the Roman letters.

01:13:37 John Daub: Once you start learning it in Roman letters it'll take you twice the amount of time and you won't have the pronunciation right. You're learning a survival book like Japanese Made Easy or something—Japanese is easy, but you should learn how it works through hiragana and katakana first and then it makes sense. If you don't learn hiragana and katakana it won't make sense to you—you start to have aha moments if you know hiragana first. So that's something that'll help you out a lot. We were supposed to be traveling to the west coast of the US, to Singapore, to the Philippines—we were gonna jet around in March, and because of this we've been just like you having to stay home. Singapore is back up on our higher itinerary to go back and visit too—we just couldn't go.

01:14:47 John Daub: There are a bunch of YouTubers who put together lessons, some free—yeah I think that's great. The great thing about YouTube is you have an ability to share stuff that you've learned, and if you can create an interesting lesson for Japanese on YouTube I think that's a great way to start. And having interaction—I think it's best to have a teacher, somebody who knows your weaknesses and strengths, and catch ball—make mistakes and learn from. That's the only way to really become conversational. But to learn the basics YouTube is great—you can learn a lot of things. Exhaust all of the free stuff that you can do—that's what I do; exhaust all your free avenues and then when you can't go any further you start to pay—that's what most people do.

01:15:47 John Daub: I thought John is so fluent in Japanese—isn't he? Compared to most—yes; compared to Kanae? No; compared to some Japanese? No. I can give a speech and I've been on TV live speaking Japanese—I don't know. This is drone footage from Miyajima that I took a while ago. The advantages to learning Japanese the right way is—let me go back to what the ad executive told me: before you break the rules, learn the rules—you understand? So before you start to break the best thing that you can do is to learn how to speak Japanese the right way, and then it makes sense to start to learn the slang second. Because you can't go back from this—this is the thing that a lot of people don't understand: if you start creating bad habits like I have it's very hard to fix that again.

01:17:26 John Daub: It's very hard to fix your bad habits. Duolingo is pretty good—yeah Japan was part of Duolingo; I haven't seen that in a couple of years so I'm not sure. Do you plan to come to the US anytime soon? No. This is the YouTube show from Seoul, Korea when I was there for the Creators Summit—it was pretty cool. Most—John doesn't speak fluent Japanese—yeah I speak good Japanese, conversational Japanese. I take your praise—I'll be humble and take your praise and say arigato (ありがとう，thank you), but I don't speak like a fluent—even after 23 years just because I've been when English is your main language that you use for work I'm using it all the time. Kanae and I speak mostly Japanese but she's through brute force trying to speak English all the time.

01:19:47 John Daub: And I said to us in Japan we speak Japanese and she doesn't agree—so she just speaks English and then I speak Japanese and we never correct each other and it gets a little impossible for us sometimes. My husband is learning German on Duolingo—very cool; it's nice I think to put the time that you have now into good use. Is the torii still under construction? I believe it's done—if you can look in let me see if I can change this window to Instagram. Instagram is a place where you can use tag searches—you can find out what is popular right now. I'm going to search Miyajima—let's go find the location, and then if you search the location you'll be able to find the recent posts—not top posts but recent posts.

01:21:08 John Daub: And then what you're going to see from recent posts—the construction is finished; I thought it was going to take a lot longer. There's the Momiji cake that I was talking about. But if you turn it from top posts to most recent you can see some of the stuff that has been—oh there's some beautiful images. The current situation right now because people are uploading all the time. This is a secret: when I'm scouting a location to see what it's like now I go to Instagram and recent uploads and I can see pictures from the area right now—usually like 20 minutes before; it's a very good resource. We had an earthquake last night in Carson City—yeah Nevada, we saw that; it was like magnitude 6.5—I hope everybody's doing okay.

01:22:17 John Daub: We rarely have earthquakes—it was quite strong and it cracked the highway—wow! I hope everybody is doing well; we get them all the time so we're quite used to earthquakes. But I know out in Nevada 6.5 or something—very tough earthquake. Instagram is also a way where we can see and relive old memories. Look at that curry rice—they put a little duck, a little chick in the center of the brown pool—that's cute. The great thing about Instagram also is this is the image that I was telling you about—this is where you can see the times of days where the best pictures are. You can see the phone lines of modern Japan crisscrossing across this shopping street, on the base those red chochin (提灯，paper lanterns) showing the shops that are open or the izakaya.

01:23:34 John Daub: And above it that five-story pagoda with a little bit of traditional and Mount Misen in the background—some of that green with the blue sky sometimes if you get it right. It's such a beautiful iconic image—this is a wonderful place. This is in the morning I believe—so the sun is coming from—oh it's hard to tell, but it's a time when the shops are closed so you get it with a cross light—you'll get something like this; it's so nice. Look at the deer looking up at you—you know what he's saying? You got food? No. They're the most popular part—the torii is great and all that, but it's the deer that really make you fall in love. These are the rascals—these are probably the same deer that attacked me 20 years ago; they're now adults.

01:24:41 John Daub: How dare you—I don't even know what the lifespan of a deer is. But if I ever find that one that came into my tent I've got a mugshot of her—no it was a her, and I will find her and I will get back my breakfast somehow. I was looking for one last question and I haven't found it—something about the island of Miyajima—anybody? I used to be able to speak Spanish—I studied that in college, and when I was backpacking around the world I spent one month in Guatemala in Antigua studying Spanish. I think it was with the homestay and the tuition it was less than $300 for the entire month of learning Spanish five hours a day with a private tutor, and the homestay was $300—that was in 2003.

01:25:24 John Daub: And I could speak Spanish pretty good—that's how the only way to get around South America and Central America you have to speak Spanish, and I could get around pretty good but I haven't used it in 17 years. So I often get if I speak Spanish I go back to Japanese and my mind crosses wires and I don't have the gift to shift gears—you have to use those gears all the time and I just don't do it. So my Spanish—I bet you if I had a week solid in South America I could probably pick it up again, but it's like a faded memory that needs like a B12 injection, a boost to get some energy back—hola hola mi amigo; it's been a while.

01:26:30 John Daub: Have you ever thought about doing GeoGuessr streams? Yes we have been looking—Nasha Brod has been introducing some things we can do on Twitch, some things where we can do quiz shows and things like this. I think that'd be a great thing that we can do—I don't even have to do it; I can just give you some trivia questions. I think it's better and let the viewers guess things from either old Only in Japan shows where I can show you clips or from just trivia and geography. My biggest hope from doing something like this would be that you would be able to learn something about Japanese geography—meaning when you do come to Japan you'll be able to differentiate the islands, then the regions within those islands and then the prefectures, then the cities, towns, urban and countryside areas.

01:27:22 John Daub: I think that'd be really fun for me to do because that's one of the things that's almost second nature—I know the geography of Japan so well from studying the map and making this show that that's one thing I could teach you very easily. And the highlands and the highways from hitchhiking them and things like this—so geography would be really fun. I'd have to set that up—I think it takes about 30 minutes to an hour to set up layers that can take you through and then just activate them and watch the chat—it would be a lot of fun. I've been to Okinawa—Kanae and I went there 2017 I believe for scuba diving on Ishigaki-jima (石垣島), and it's beautiful.

01:28:24 John Daub: I didn't see a lot of Naha—we basically got on another flight and went back. So when I go back I want to spend more on the main island and just drive around and get an Airbnb and spend a good 10 days on the main island and fish out some really incredible stories. Okinawa has got some—there are some tales that have to be told and people just go there and they look at the resorts and things like this, some of the street food and stuff. But there's some background stuff that is extraordinary in different areas of the island and then the other islands themselves, as well as some of the islands that are near Okinawa that aren't—that are part of Kagoshima would also be something that I'd like to cover and getting there by boat.

01:29:11 John Daub: There's so many different angles to tell a story—I'll never run out of material. And getting there and spending time is the only way to do that—so I'm looking forward to going back. We were going to go back to Okinawa this year—so I was going to be there in the winter, February after Hokkaido. I was planning to get on a plane and go to Okinawa to film some episodes, but because of what happened I had to bail and take a step back from that. I also had another video that I was going to do up in Fukushima that was canceled—a lot of the location shoots I did were canceled. So I'm now re-planning them now for June after the state of emergency ends—I'm going to go back and take a look at those places and make more episodes.

01:29:55 John Daub: But Okinawa is a place that's definitely—summer is bad because of the typhoons; if the typhoon hits you don't want to be on Okinawa for a couple of days—it's pretty tough. And then life just springs back because you're used to it, but it's not one of the places that you want to be when there's a typhoon—as well as Ogasawara and Aogashima and some of the islands; you don't want to be there when the typhoon rolls through. Livestream in Okinawa? I don't have any because this is—we were there before I started Only in Japan Go in 2017. And I told you why I started Only in Japan Go because it was a way for me to share with you the traveling without having to.

01:30:44 John Daub: Somebody was scuba diving and found some sea lions there—I didn't know that. This is what it looked like more recently—I don't know when was this? This was two days ago—oh so it looks like it's still under construction. This is why you look for the most latest—the latest videos. It looks like they still have the scaffolding around the torii there—that's really good to know; so this is from two days ago. Instagram is good—they tagged the times when they were taken; interesting, that's pretty good information. So yeah—I'll probably go back to Okinawa maybe next year now; I don't know if Kanae's up for it—maybe we'll go in June; it just depends on travel.

01:31:42 John Daub: And right now we shouldn't be going anywhere if you're living in Tokyo—the locals don't like it; they don't like Tokyo people around because we might—you just never know. And we'll wait until the situation gets better. I am watching a live camera right now; PMX writes in; he's watching a live camera—I'm sure there's a live camera of it somewhere. We have on our Discord server live cameras showing everything in Japan—I think every live camera is represented in our Discord server live camera. Wayne Grover writes in: hi John, great stories—glad I made it to the livestream; hope you're not going to be crazy stuck inside.

01:32:20 John Daub: I've been—I've got coronavirus hair. So Kanae and I are going to be when we operate the Join button that'll be one of the first livestreams where she shaves me down I think—and it's going to be a lot of fun. I don't think I'm going to shave it all off—I'm pretty sure we're just going to do the sides and the back; I can't—I got to live with myself. There's got to be life after this and I don't want to wear the hat in the summer—but we'll do that. Thank you Wayne—I appreciate that very much; I hope so too. But we're about 15 days away from the state of emergency ending, and then I'm planning already videos to go out and start to film again.

01:33:03 John Daub: So we'll be able to queue up that, and the new channel will be launching just as soon as the animated opening is done—I'm just waiting for the animators to finish up any work that they're doing there. Is there every other Australian dislike Sydney people? What? These have nothing to do with Miyajima. I have been living with bald for years—we all have; I have a receding hairline that has no limits. I get people—usually the teenagers who have not had to go through adulthood yet who can see the receding hairlines and look, it's a part of life—you'll live once; move on. Get beyond it and get back to the stories because that's what people really care about—not what you look like but if you're an interesting person don't let the way that you look affect the way that you live your life.

01:34:12 John Daub: Just shout out to all the young people. Is it easy to get around Miyajima for elderly? You know I think there is some walking—it's an island. But the thing is if you're going for a day trip it's about a five, ten minute walk from the train station to get to the ferry pier. Of course you don't have to walk on the ferry but to get onto the ferry does require a little bit of effort. When you say elderly—my feeling is you can still get around okay because if you can get on the airplane and travel here then you're mobile. When you get to Miyajima you're going to have to walk a little bit but the village is very small—that area and walking to your hotel probably is going to be about five, ten minutes.

01:35:08 John Daub: Sometimes if the hotel is not in the area they have a van that will pick you up and take you there, and when you are settled in your room the van will take you back to the town anytime that you want—that's how they get people to pick their hotel; they have this service. And you can in the village—I think it's about one or two or three kilometers but you can walk around and do a very good circuit in about an hour and a half or two hours and see a lot and not walk that much—you can go very slowly. The one thing that is tough is in the summer months it does get very crowded and it can be frustrating pushing through the crowds to get from one place to the other.

01:35:46 John Daub: But other than that I think that it's perfectly navigable—not a lot of stairs to get around unless you're going up to Mount Misen and that requires hiking or going up to the pagoda. It's pretty flat to walk around—there's a little bit of hills but it's such a pretty easy island to get to and to get around; it's only a 15-minute ferry ride. So I know you're going to love it—you have to go to Miyajima. I stayed at the Hotel Miyajima Via which is about a two-minute walk—really nice hotel. Yeah you got to stay in Miyajima—and now it looks like the torii is still under construction. But Instagram is one of the secrets that I use—oh there's the deep-fried; there's the deep-fried Momiji—do you see that?

01:36:31 John Daub: It's the cake on a stick that's been deep-fried and then they put it in this little envelope so then the guts don't drip all over your hand or the oil or something I guess—and it's so beautiful; it's so good; it's so delicious. Oh no I stop it—no I'm now tag surfing—if you surf you can click tags and you can surf it. It is so good—this thing; I am tortured looking at it. Oh look at that—the green tea ice cream with the Momiji cake inside the Momiji Manju—that looks so good. The street food here is legendary—there's the ferry with the rainbow going in the back. Instagram is great for navigating isn't it? You can see what people are thinking and what's popular right now—looking at the most recent uploads and this looks like old stuff right?

01:37:33 John Daub: When was this posted? This is from six days ago—interesting; people are just posting old pictures. So sometimes it's hard to gauge it but you can see probably on the island there aren't a lot of people going there to visit right now—so it might be a good time. That's an interesting one—looks like some sort of waffle pressed Momiji. Irvine writes in here about Hakodate (函館)—interesting. Yeah I'd love to go to Hakodate again—that is one of the best places to go to eat Hakodate. You know what? Next time I do another one of these Google Earth tours we're