00:00:02 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to beautiful Shiga. How you doing? You know this guy. Kevin Riley's in the house and we're at a Wagyu farm in Shiga Prefecture. This is Omi-gyu (近江牛), one of the top three Wagyu brands in Japan. I'm making an episode on what makes this brand in particular very significant.

00:00:23 John Daub: But we came out here and had the opportunity to meet with a famous ranch and hang out with the Wagyu a little bit and I thought I would share this experience with you. Kevin as well. Kevin is someone who has lived on ranches. You had the Herefords. Hereford cattle. And these are Wagyu. And I want to introduce you to number 41338. How you doing?

00:00:54 Kevin Riley: Hello.

00:00:55 John Daub: They're very, very shy and it's very hard to make friends with them. Oh, he's eating my hand. You want to scratch them underneath their cheeks? If you scratch them underneath their cheeks, you become friends for life. But I've had a really hard time, Kevin, getting to... So you don't want to make them upset. Love and peace, my friend. You're way, way bigger than I am.

00:01:31 John Daub: The Wagyu, the cattle here are two to a pen. I want you to see this. They're two to a pen and look at all the space that they have. I know a lot of people say that maybe the cattle are better off the Wagyu. Kuroge Wagyu (黒毛和牛) are better off roaming free. That's not the case at all. Here they're in a very stress-free environment. This is actually one of the best conditions, best ranches that I've ever seen. And I've been to a lot of them in Japan. This one is really good. You can see in their eyes how happy they are.

00:02:28 Kevin Riley: He finally made a friend, John. I got him. Right underneath.

00:02:38 John Daub: Kevin, you want to try for his buddy?

00:02:40 Kevin Riley: Yeah, his buddy's like, they're looking over like, hey, what am I missing out on? Come on, buddy, get over here. Love you, buddy. A little tuft of hair here. The ears, behind the ears. You know, I scratched them the way that I would want to be scratched. Yeah, right in there. You got to get it in there. That's right. I talk like this. Get in there.

00:03:04 John Daub: So John's been trying this for at least an hour now. And finally, finally. It's when you go live, right? We're buddies now. Check it out. How you doing? All the other Wagyu are watching me. They're all watching me. I think they got over there through the fence. Now this is when you start to become friends with them. It's so hard to build trust with animals and you have to scratch really hard. You happy? Happy Wagyu.

00:03:58 John Daub: Oh, he's so warm, Kevin. These are girls. They said they're all female here. It's different. We always had steers. That's my favorite one. I'm going to name this one Louise. Once you get one, Kevin, they all start to become friends. Hey, Mr. Potter. Nakayoshi (仲良し, good friends) is here. I'm telling the shacho (社長, president). I made friends with the Wagyu.

00:04:48 Kevin Riley: See, I told you. Look, now this Wagyu wants some love here. And this one as well. They want some love. And the other one is going to get jealous.

00:04:54 John Daub: I think everybody is going, hey, hey, wait a second. Look, he's back. Are you two-timing me or what? That's my friend. Look, he's very easy to scratch. The other ones see this. We become friends. You want some love? My love is only here for a moment. If you want some love, my hand is love. It will scratch you in places that you will never scratch yourself. This is our best friend. I love this one. But I'm looking at Luis. That's a nice bit of brisket in there. Oh, you're getting... Sorry. I'm just looking at the brisket. I'm getting hungry.

00:05:31 Kevin Riley: You would. He's thinking about the meat already.

00:05:35 John Daub: Kanai, don't watch this. She's jealous from all the massaging. My wife's jealous. This is what we call a hard massage. Oh, he's so happy. So happy. You could have given some of this. Look at him. Did you see him? He was laying down and his head on the grass. Keep doing it, Kevin. Dude, give him a turbo charge.

00:06:15 Kevin Riley: Look, I know that a lot of people... Some people are not comfortable... Well, look. There's some mating going on there. That's the most action we see. They're both female, but I guess they're scratching each other's backs, maybe. Also, we used to have our guinea pigs groom each other and they were both females. Certain times where... They're in heat. Cows, all animals have a heat cycle.

00:06:46 John Daub: Omi-gyu is one of, as I said, one of Japan's top three brands, and we just had lunch eating Omi-gyu from this ranch. But I think it is... What Kevin and I were doing... We're making an episode about this. We really want people to understand that when you treat the livestock with a lot of respect, it's still livestock. But when you treat them right and you give them massages and you do give them love while they're here, not only do they reward you with better meat, which is their purpose, but it also feels good. I love these animals, but I know ultimately they're going to be food.

00:07:22 Kevin Riley: Somebody just asked, when do they feed them? This is actually their dinner. Cobra bibap. They got fed at one o'clock in the afternoon. This is their dinner and pretty much for the rest of the day, they're going to sleep. In fact, if you look over here, John, there's a couple of them already. Oh, they're already siesta. Siesta time.

00:07:43 John Daub: How you doing? This is the hand that will make you feel good. Come to the hand.

00:07:52 Kevin Riley: Now the rings in the nose is to control them when they need shots and need to be moved without hurting them. They can use the rings. And what this does is it actually... Instead of pulling them, having the rings in the nose makes them comply a little bit quicker. I know it looks... Some people might think it's cruel. It actually is the opposite. It's going to be very hard to convince people of that, right? But it's the truth, right? I mean, if you've lived on a ranch and you know how stubborn the cattle are, having the ring in the nose just makes it go a little bit faster. And after a while... I got a lot of friends that are humans that have rings in their nose. They're extremely strong. They're very strong.

00:08:36 John Daub: So there you go. Kevin and I are going to be doing... Maybe we'll do a livestream tomorrow morning walking around or something. But I'm going to get the drone and film the farm for the edited episode. I'm so thankful that we were invited to come here to Shiga and take a look at some of the cattle. This is the Morishima Bokujo (森嶋牧場). I'm thankful for Morishima-san, who is the shacho of this ranch and giving us access to come in here and take a look. And he also gave us lunch. They're all beautiful creatures here. Look at their pens. You can see from up here how clean they are. It's very clean.

00:13:29 Kevin Riley: The tags on there correspond to the national Wagyu database. So you can track where the beef is. If you ever want to make sure you're getting real Omi-gyu or any Wagyu from Japan, ask for the 10 digit number, five on each ear. And I think there's the five big ones and there's five numbers above it. JP141434133. And then you can see when they were born, you can see their lineage. You can see their family tree. And not a lot of meat in other countries does something like this, where they show you the lineage of the livestock.

00:14:11 John Daub: I love that in Japan. We know where all our food comes from. You know, like vegetables and things. What farmers it's coming from.

00:14:18 Kevin Riley: Where were you in Canada? Shane's from Canada. I was in British Columbia. Oh, BC. I was in Kamloops. That's where we had our ranch. And then the island.

00:14:51 John Daub: Do you see the beautiful sunshine and nature around here? Views of mountains in the distance. Very nice.

00:15:12 John Daub: I want to say thank you to everybody. We just wanted to give you a little look inside of the Wagyu ranch. If you have any questions, leave a comment below. This is one reason why Omi-gyu is so delicious because they're raised in such clean areas. Look at that. It's so clean. And when they have an itch, staff is here to scratch them. This gal's scratching her bum on the railing there. Look, she's doing the bum shuffle. This lady got back. Look, she's so happy. Happy girl. They're in very good shape and they're happy. And that's, you know, while they're here alive, this makes me feel really good that they're having a good life here on the farm.

00:16:45 John Daub: All right, folks. Thanks a lot, Kevin. It's nice to see you. Always. Kuma's Kitchen, K-U-M-A-K-I-T-C-H-E-N is his channel. You need some Omi beef, man. Would it taste like lunch? Definitely. I'm going to go get some Omi beef. Don't, we shouldn't be talking about lunch in front of them. We did eat Omi beef from this ranch. Beautiful area, beautiful day. It's nice to see Kevin again. We'll have another live stream probably either tonight or tomorrow morning from Shiga Prefecture here. This is the view. And this is why Omi beef, one reason why they're so delicious. They live in a beautiful place. And you can see there's some other houses where they're just kind of hanging out and enjoying the day. It's a beautiful place to just chill. You know what I mean? Get delicious. Arigato gozaimasu. Thanks everybody. I'll leave you the last 20 seconds from the front of this, just looking and see how these Wagyu are hanging out. These are the ladies. Bye everybody.