00:00:01 John Daub: Greetings to Shiraito no Taki (White Silk Falls) waterfalls. We're here just kind of doing a little pit stop on a trip around. I wanted to show you a place because I used to live in this area. I used to live in Fujinomiya about 19 years ago. You can see I'm going to take you to one of Japan's top 100 spots. It's one of the top 100 waterfalls in Japan. They rank everything in Japan. But we're going to do a very quick walk around here and then we're going to leave. So I thought we would share this with you really quickly.

00:00:37 John Daub: How you doing guys? It's nice to be in the great outdoors. There aren't a lot of people around and we're going to be social distancing. But I wanted to show you up here. Check this out. Look at that right there in the center of your screen. That's Mount Fuji and you can see the snow has melted a little bit over the last couple of months. We've been indoors for two months straight. Now you can see. Wow. Look at that. That's really beautiful. We're on the backside of Mount Fuji. This is the Fujinomiya side. We just went through Aokigahara Forest to get here.

00:01:23 John Daub: Tony P thank you so much. Yeah, don't touch anything and social distance from everybody. All right, shall we? This is my Mika no mask that Mika gave me from Tottori Prefecture. I guess we got to go down this way. So join us as we go on a mini adventure. We're just taking a break. We've been stuck inside for such a long time.

00:01:55 Kanae Daub: Ice cream.

00:02:01 John Daub: Wow. That's Mount Fuji milk ice cream. It's nice. They're closed. A lot of the places are closed. This place was closed for a couple of weeks when things were really bad in the area. Now it's sort of opening up again.

00:02:25 John Daub: Now there are two waterfalls here. We're going to walk 400 meters towards Shiraito no Taki waterfall. Taki means waterfall in Japanese. And then Otome no Taki waterfall is on the way. And the two of these come from Mount Fuji. See that snow melting on the top there. That's where this is all coming from. I know I've never seen Mount Fuji from this angle. I used to live in Fujinomiya so I've seen it from this side. It really is beautiful. But I never seen it in May with the snow still on there melting like that. Like little strands. Like a woodblock print. Yeah, the snow is all gone. It's about 22 degrees Celsius right now. And hopefully we have a signal for this trip.

00:03:18 John Daub: It's beautiful. They've done a lot with it. Oh, I have been here when I lived here. It's a little bit far from Fujinomiya Station. Let's keep our social distance from this family here. But they've done a really good job. This is all brand new. Look at the walkway. These beautiful buildings. Dark exterior. Very Japanese looking. Yeah, it's kind of fancy for Fujinomiya. This is the Fujinomiya I lived in, year 2000. I was teaching at an English school about half a kilometer away from Fujinomiya Station. Had an apartment there. I used to throw open the shoji (paper sliding doors) of my window. And boom, Mount Fuji was so massive. Now I live in Tokyo. It's not quite the same.

00:04:20 John Daub: Oh, we could have parked here, Kanae. It's 300 yen. The parking spot we stopped was 200 yen. So it is open. This attraction is open. Fujinomiya yakisoba, 400 yen. Oh, look at that. They got some fancy cafe. Very nice balcony, Kanae. It's hard not to want to check that out. Fujiya Coffee. They have takenoko (bamboo shoots).

00:05:01 Kanae Daub: Yes. It's cheap. The bamboo is cheap.

00:05:03 John Daub: Oh, she told us the bamboo is cheap. It's cheap. Very inexpensive bamboo sprouts. Wow. You want it? You want to buy it? 500. We can come back. Okay. We'll come back later. Hey, look at those doggies. Let's keep our social distance from those dogs. Kawaii (cute). Get up to a good five meters from those doggies.

00:05:54 John Daub: We're 230 meters away from the waterfalls. I can already hear it in the background. It doesn't have a lot of people here, but those merchants that are out here, I think they're pretty happy just to see people. But we really have to keep social distancing. And this is basically a pit stop on the way home. Buy some bamboo to cook on camera. Kanae, how do you cook it?

00:06:16 Kanae Daub: How do you cook? They're like, oh, we can put the takenoko with rice.

00:06:24 John Daub: Oh, konnichiwa. Konnichiwa. Oh, imo (potato). Hoshi imo (dried sweet potato).

00:06:29 Kanae Daub: You want to buy one?

00:06:32 John Daub: Oh, no. Are we coming back this way? Maybe. Oh, we got a first view here already. Look at that. This is considered one of the top 100 beautiful sites in Japan. I love Japan.

00:07:02 Kanae Daub: You'll eat that potato soon, right? You can buy it. You won't eat?

00:07:08 John Daub: Yeah, let's try it. Support local businesses.

00:07:10 Kanae Daub: Okay. Yeah, buy one from the lady.

00:07:16 John Daub: Kanae's gonna buy one. I'm sure that they don't get a lot of sales these days. That's nice. She's getting some potato from the lady. We'll go back and see if we can get that bamboo. Wow, it's so beautiful. I'm so excited. We just have to be very careful and very respectful of the other people around. So we're gonna go down there. We'll be there in about two, three minutes. I don't know how close we can get. Oh, I guess we can get pretty close. There's some dudes down there. They're on a date. They're not social distancing because they're probably living together.

00:08:35 Kanae Daub: Did you get it?

00:08:39 John Daub: Hey, Brendan Walker's here. They gave a lot, obviously. Wait, they gave you more than one.

00:08:45 Kanae Daub: Yeah, I just said, can I get all of them? He said, if you buy two, I can give you this one too.

00:08:54 John Daub: What? So... Okay, I said, okay, I can buy two. Then she gave me one extra. And he gave me this shrimp. That's so nice. Shrimp rice cookies. That's a salesman. He said, if you buy two, I'll give you more. So we got... Yeah, they said, thank you so much for coming. But... Ah, they're so happy. Yeah, they're happy, but they kind of worried a little bit. Yeah. I can understand their feelings. Yeah, I know. They want to do some business, but it's really hard right now. Yeah. All right, that's good. We did some good. I'm happy. We'll eat that down at the waterfall.

00:09:40 John Daub: I can't believe I'm on location. This is awesome. I don't remember what to do. How do I live stream outside my apartment? What am I supposed to do? Look at that Mount Fuji. Wow, I'm live streaming. This is crazy. It's like my first time. I guess you never forget, like, riding a bike. I like this. Mount Fuji's going peace, baby. Can we make this an emoji on the Discord server, maybe? Look at that. That's pretty cool. So there's some souvenir shops here. Just a few people. Not everybody's wearing masks, which is slightly worrying, but all these kinds of chips and snacks from the area.

00:10:46 John Daub: All right, let's go down. Let's get down into the waterfall. I hope all of you are doing well. The governor of Tokyo ended the state of emergency today. But, all right, just for the record, don't go outside and try to be a hero like us. Just follow the steps that are in place. And don't follow the hypocrites on YouTube. Whoa! But for mental purposes, we needed to do this. We're gonna do this today. But we're gonna be super careful. And there's virtually nobody here.

00:11:36 John Daub: Sean's in the house. Help out those who really need it. Thanks for the wonderful views. You're so welcome. We're gonna be putting that to good use. We're not stopping that much on this trip because we don't wanna... It's way too early to be hopping into restaurants along the way. We wanna go and eat yakisoba. There's so many famous restaurants in this area that we wanna go to, but either they're closed still, or we're not at a stage yet where we feel comfortable going there and they feel comfortable serving customers. So we're just gonna be extra cautious, but we're gonna live our life.

00:12:24 John Daub: Mark Tudor says, take a lot of vitamin D. Oh, this is so beautiful. Feeling the cool air on my face right now. Or my eyes right now. Not all my face because it's under a mask. Wow.

00:12:50 Kanae Daub: You see a duck?

00:12:52 John Daub: Yeah. Where? Oh, there's a duck! Oh, it's beautiful. That's a... Because that's a country duck. The city ducks aren't as pretty. He notices me.

00:13:08 Kanae Daub: I know.

00:13:20 John Daub: I would love to camp here. I would love to just pitch my tent right there. Spend the night and eat at one of the restaurants up there. Look at the other side. Dave Angel says, don't insult the duck. I'm not even sure what I was saying. It could have been an insulting comment. I better be careful. I'm just too excited. All right. Settle down, John. Don't speak to animals.

00:14:04 John Daub: Once again, this is Shiraito no Taki waterfalls. It's part of the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park. And I used to live here in Fujinomiya City in the year 2000. And I came here once by bicycle a long time ago. It's changed a lot. The attractions. But the waterfalls have stayed the same. Hey, Wakamatsu is here. And Jim Mendenhall. How are you doing? I'm so happy to see both of you back outside and enjoying Japan. Thanks for all of your support. Thank you. That's awesome. It's really good to be back. Nice outing from John Wakamatsu. Thank you, John. I know it's not much. It's just a waterfall. But it's more than a waterfall to us today because we're finally outside again. Social distancing. There's not a lot of people, but we want to really support local businesses, but do it in a responsible way. It's hard.

00:15:18 John Daub: Wow, this is so beautiful. I'm getting some water on me from the waterfall. Here's a map of Shiraito no Taki waterfalls here. We're looking at this spot here. And not too far away is the Otome no Taki. This one's way more impressive, though. Our car is parked here, so we've got to walk around. Oh, wait, wait. No camping. No swimming. No fishing either. I hope the signal stays and we're in the deep countryside of Japan.

00:16:40 John Daub: Water's coming at us in the face. Sorry about the signal, guys. I see it's getting weak. Try refreshing your browser.

00:17:16 John Daub: Over here. Wow. I think I could just watch this all day. So I'm going to take you around a little bit and maybe the signal will get better. But what I'll do is I'll put some video on the Discord server and then some on Instagram. So if you want to take a look at this at a higher resolution, I'll do that on Instagram and on the Discord server so you can see that. But hopefully the signal gets a little bit better. Maybe try refreshing it, guys.

00:18:13 Kanae Daub: Can I take pictures?

00:18:19 John Daub: Listen, I blame my camera today.

00:18:23 Kanae Daub: Yeah. I forgot to put my SD card.

00:18:28 John Daub: What? You forgot your SD card? Oh, really? Hold on. You have it? I always carry an extra SD card. It's part of the trade. I carry SD cards. Some men carry other things in their wallets. I carry SD cards. I wish I had a drone that could fly around here. Oh, man. It's hot. Yeah. It's sort of cloudy. If it's not cloudy, I don't know if you guys can see this, but there's a lot of moisture, like small mists of raindrops coming off of the waterfalls towards the camera. It depends on which direction the wind is coming. But if the light hits it from above and the light is coming in, it creates an amazing rainbow that you can see, which makes this one of Japan's top 100 sites in the entire country and top waterfalls in the country.

00:19:49 Kanae Daub: I have bad news. Your card is full.

00:19:52 John Daub: Oh, you can delete some photos. All right. Let's let somebody else. There's another couple. Social distance. Oh, can I? We can go down. Oh, really? Yeah. These people went down. Oh, really? Oh, wow. Kabola's here. The stream just screamed super chat needed, which Kanae and I can use to support your local shops, et cetera, for what it's worth. Absolutely. Mr. Das is here. I know I'm driving. I know what that money is needed for. And Cheryl Phillips, great to see you guys out of the apartment, seeing nature and still keeping yourself safe. Good for me, too. Beautiful. Brenda McSee's here. Nice to see you. Happy couple. Maybe you could try some new Starbucks chocolate hazel banana crepe with beverage. That sounds so good. We can go down. Stay safe.

00:21:26 John Daub: Wow, look how pure this water is. Look at how clean that water is. Can you drink that? Can I nomeru (drink it)?

00:22:01 Kanae Daub: Maybe.

00:22:05 John Daub: All right, guys, we're going to go up and try to get a signal again. Okay, all right, let's go up and try to get a signal. Signal getting better. Hey Marty's here. Hey Marty. Hey Kabola from Denmark. All right, we're trying to get to higher ground so then you can get a better signal. If it's all Minecraft there's no point in you looking at a Minecraft waterfall although Minecraft isn't free. It's beautiful, isn't it? I'm glad we made this stop. This is... we're driving around Mount Fuji. We didn't really expect to leave the car but we saw this on the map. It was all my old stomping ground, used to live here so I figured let's just stop and give it a little look and show you a place that used to be my home.

00:24:01 John Daub: The Hawaiian architecture in... I could build that in Minecraft. Oh it's nice to see the water going there. It's not Niagara Falls but it is a product of Mount Fuji. If by the way if you're just joining us Mount Fuji is over there in the clouds. We had a view of it before that. Okay you gotta keep social distance from people. Don't touch anything. Yeah but can I... we're supposed to take a picture right? No this camera has an SD card here. We gotta take a picture like a real picture right?

00:24:56 John Daub: Hold this. Okay.

00:25:04 John Daub: I guess let's try to go up and maybe there's a better signal up here. Okay we'll try to take... we're gonna try to take a picture and then we'll share this with you on Instagram and Discord so that just in case this is such bad quality you'll have that picture. Postcard Club perhaps Marty that's a good idea. Check it out it's pretty nice here. Can I hold this? Picture wow I can't hold it wow so I'm gonna take photo. You did it yeah can I oh me oh the battery died no no okay hold this the battery died. I guess we could take a photo from here. Just a Kong writes in here I wish I could also go out this weekend thanks for the inspo John you're very welcome Jessa. All right we took a picture I did that just to take a picture.

00:27:04 John Daub: Now suck absorb this for the next minute okay I'm not gonna talk just absorb nature recharge everybody then we got to get out of here look at how small the people are compared to Mother Nature wow no we're not absorb the black screen all right let me give it one more try are we back no really I can see it nothing good day Morgan it's still dark can I are we back you can see me oh yeah Marty said kind of like that what's going on what I don't know what's happening with YouTube anybody there nothing it says we're live we can hear you not see you all right I'm not sure what the problem is all right guys I'm gonna go to uh Kabola says that we've totally wrecked it yeah I think so it's nice ASMR look hey guys I'm gonna go over you got no picture yet can I just got no picture on her phone we're gonna go over to Instagram video so I'll see you over at Instagram it's Instagram.com/onlyinjapantv Instagram.com/onlyinjapantv we'll do Instagram video on live.

00:30:53 John Daub: I'm going to go over to Instagram right now. It could be the fact that the signal is just weak as well. I'm not sure. Test channel. Thank you. Restart your phone. I might lose the signal. That means I won't be able to get back in. All right. Let me try to restart the phone. If it doesn't work, I'll see you on Instagram, okay? You guys can stay.

00:31:36 John Daub: Are we back? You mean this stream has a second life? I restarted the phone. Sorry, guys. I don't know what happened. It's what? Blurry? Can I say it's Minecraft? That's nice. Look there. All right. I know it's blurry. We'll try to get you up here. Welcome to mobile live streaming 101. When you go into a valley with a waterfall... She said no way. All right. We're back here at the center. Maybe the pixelation will go away. We can see more. I am not a crook. Looks like Nixon. That's totally Richard Nixon sign right there. There's probably 300 people over at Instagram waiting for me over there. Oh, can I show me? It looks a little bit better. It's just as beautiful on your iPhone as it is in real life. Wow.

00:34:10 Kanae Daub: Thank you, Tess. I see Tess went on an animated emoji.

00:34:21 John Daub: Can I do it? Take quiet time. Yeah. We have to do it. I have one more waterfall too.

00:34:26 Kanae Daub: Yeah, it's okay. I think we're good. I think it's time to go home.

00:34:30 John Daub: Can I like some of these T-shirts though? I like that one. I go to travel down to find me. Oh, that's cute. Up on the top of the mountain. I agree with that statement. The red one. How much was it? Maybe 2,000 yen? Yeah. But about 15, 20 dollars. All right, let's go and get... You want to get the takenoko, Kanae?

00:35:12 Kanae Daub: Yeah.

00:35:18 John Daub: All right. It's bitter. Bit bitter? So that's where we were, guys. I think we might have a view of Mount Fuji for those that are still watching over here. I'm going to go and take you to one more view of Mount Fuji after we buy some bamboo for the nosher. Noster. Here, camera on me. Thank you. This is my sister. Thank you. This is my sister. She's really good salesman. We almost bought some more stuff from him. We're wanting to get that takenoko. Actually, those oranges did look pretty good. Look at these cones in the shape of Mount Fuji. Do you see this Kanae? Look at these traffic cones. These are Mount Fuji traffic cones. It's cute. That's really awesome. Wow. It's only in Japan. Yeah, it's only at Mt. Fuji. Although it's hard to notice them as traffic cones. I don't know. I guess it's just an obstacle that's something in the way.

00:36:44 John Daub: Alright, let's go buy a big fat takenoko from...

00:36:49 John Daub: Hey guys, welcome back. Some of you went to Instagram stories. If I ever get cut off, I'll go live on Instagram over there to explain what happened. Sometimes YouTube is a little bit buggy. There are still some. Do you mean it's sold out?

00:37:04 Kanae Daub: No, they're still there.

00:37:07 John Daub: Oh, she's got like, takenoko rice and stuff. Oh, she's got cut bags of takenoko. Oh, they have king konatsu (small oranges). King konatsu are little teeny oranges. They're so good. I'm getting the feeling that everything is for sale here. Including the coffee maker. And the rice cooker's on sale. Everything's on sale.

00:38:01 John Daub: Alright, Kanae got one. There you go, Nosh. One for me, one for you. Oh, look at that. Look at these mushrooms here. Everything's for sale. Look, you can even buy the umbrella. Oh, she's telling me about it. There's a bamboo vending machine. I want to buy that coffee maker. Make coffee in the car.

00:39:09 Kanae Daub: Thank you. You're welcome.

00:39:17 John Daub: You're so stupid to say that you're going to go. I know. Everyone's going to go. You're going to go. Oh, really? It's okay. Everyone's going to go. [inaudible Japanese conversation about mixed marriages and intelligence, referencing Obama].

00:40:35 John Daub: I thought that was interesting. And then again, she said something kind of weird. Like kids of mixed race are smarter. Like Obama. I was like, okay. That was interesting. But hey, we got two takenoko. Yeah, two bamboo. I miss how friendly people are outside of Tokyo. I could probably have stayed there for like an hour just talking. I couldn't hear what she was whispering. Like some sort of inside information that can't be good to the people around us. She's talking about the other tourists perhaps. Maybe because I lived here she thought I was a local. No, I don't think so.

00:41:27 Kanae Daub: Is that heavy? The bamboo? How are we going to send that to California?

00:41:33 John Daub: How? California. I love manhole covers. It's for fire. Oh, hola! There's Mount Fuji, but you can't really compare it to an hour ago. It's a little bit different. I said we can go and see the waterfall from here. I used to live in Numazu too, by the way. Just for about 10 days though. I had an apartment. This is Mount Fuji's water here. Yeah, clear, crisp, cool waters of this mountain here. Volcano water. Volcano, I should say. It's hard to see. It's engulfed in clouds, but every 30 minutes or so the clouds will completely part and you'll get an eyeful of it. And then the clouds come in and then it's gone again. So, when I started this live stream about 3 minutes into it, you could see Mount Fuji full, like right on in your face. Now you can just see the sides of it here through the clouds.

00:43:01 John Daub: Alright, we gotta walk back in here. I want to say thank you to everybody. It feels good to be outside. We're not going to be going out too, too much. We just are stretching our legs. We got so excited being able to live stream outside and just have a mini break. As you can see, a lot of the places around here are closed. It's like it's closed, but nobody's really going in and buying stuff. We want to minimize our interactions with people for our safety, but also for other people's safety. Who knows? It's a good habit to have. Now we're off to go... Are we stopping up at the supermarket?

00:43:40 Kanae Daub: Possibly. Yeah.

00:43:46 John Daub: So there's Mount Fuji, guys. Thank you so much for watching. Oh, you can see the top of Mount Fuji now. Is there anybody up there? I think there's anyone up there. See anyone waving back? I don't know. Nobody. Thanks so much, guys, for watching and we will see you in another live stream. I'm gonna... I'll be back tonight, okay? I'm gonna be back tonight and I'm gonna drive around. My plan is to drive around Tokyo at night and live stream. That's a good idea, right? It's kind of... We're local then. I got to rent a car till tomorrow morning, so I'll be back tonight. It won't be the most convenient time for everybody in the US, especially in California, but we will be... You'll have something to wake up to then. Have a good day. Good night, guys. Mount Fuji says bye too.