00:00:01 John Daub: Welcome to Omagari in Akita Prefecture in the north of Japan. How you doing? In this live stream I'm gonna be taking you inside the Japanese fireworks museum. This is a place that has the history of Japanese fireworks as well as so much technical knowledge and details on how the fireworks are made and exploded into the air and even what fireworks—what hanabi (fireworks), which is the word for fireworks, means. And we got permission and access. I know it'll tell you no photography but we have access to go in and show you around today. This is the building in front of us and on the third and the fourth floor of this building you get a chance to see inside. I believe it's free, I didn't pay any tickets. There's also a really nice walk around here and you can see all over the place. As I'm walking around the city of Omagari there's fireworks everywhere including the manhole covers.

00:00:58 John Daub: Four times a year they have a fireworks festival in Omagari. Usually it's just once a year in the summer but here it's like four times a year if not every month. They really love fireworks. This is Fireworks City pretty much. I'm kind of excited to show you it because a lot of the history for people who backed the Kickstarter—because we're putting on our own fireworks festival here in Omagari in one month's time from now which is incredibly special. I can't wait for that. This kind of will lay out what we're about to see and after this I'm going to be going to the manufacturers where they're making our hanabi right now and get a chance to film the company doing that for the documentary. Welcome inside. This is the mascot for the town and he has fireworks on his cheeks. Looks like a snowman. Cute.

00:02:06 John Daub: Alright we have to follow the protocols here. Wear a mask which I'm doing and wash our hands. Sanitize it. Before we start I want to show you here a massive fireworks poster. Look at that. I don't know how they take pictures that beautiful but the photographers find a way to capture the fireworks with a dark sky and yet get the stream of fireworks. It's not easy to do I think. That's from last year. Around the corner, they have fireworks vending machines, which are pretty neat. They've wrapped them up in fireworks. That means buying a drink from here, a little bit more special. But the good stuff is up this way. And we're going to be taking not the elevator, but the stairs.

00:03:07 John Daub: There's a couple of school kids, school tours that are going around. So we'll try to be careful here. Konnichiwa. All right. Third floor. Here we are. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the National Fireworks Museum. Just really quickly, I want to show you here. This room right here changes every six months or so. And they kind of highlight some of the things that have been happening with the fireworks industry. I had a breath just from rocking the stairs. But this was really interesting. This is the chart. I believe it's from 50 years ago. Of what the layout at Omagari was like. How many charges, how many areas of launching, cannons that they had. And I'm just going to pan around here. Just take a quick look. This is a '69th one. I think it's like 40, 50 years ago. No, no, no. That's 1995. Not too long ago. But look at the way that they've laid out the charges here. That's incredible. This might not be here if you come to visit. They change this all the time. But just look at the details on there. One thing goes wrong, I think they all go. Everything goes wrong, right? This is miniaturized. These don't actually work. Hey, Jennifer French is here. I shall get a dynamite drink on my way out. That you can be sure of.

00:05:09 John Daub: All right, let's go up to the fourth floor. We had a really strong rainstorm here about an hour ago. Okay, this is the main fireworks museum floor here. And I like the start. It kind of sets up the history of it. The world renowned Japanese hanabi. And you can see on the river all the people that are on the bridge probably looking up. That hasn't changed over the years. The origin of the fireworks is all written on the wall. And I like the fact that some of this stuff is in English here, which makes it pretty interesting. Because not everybody can read Japanese. Fireworks marbles with splendor and beauty categorized legally as pyrotechnics. And it talks about the history of fireworks. And the first fireworks—the birthplace was in Venice. And there's some art here to depict. I guess fireworks was not always used for peaceful purposes. I don't want to know what's going on there. I guess if you wanted to get close to fireworks, that's about as close as you can get.

00:06:30 John Daub: There's some history of the Japanese fireworks here on the wall too. And I found this particularly fascinating since the documentary I'm making kind of lays this all out. But as I've told a lot of the people for the Kickstarter project, the primary component of the fireworks is gunpowder introduced in the 16th century. But fireworks, which is called hanabi, gained monumental popularity during the time of peace. Because they didn't have anything else to do with the gunpowder. So they started to launch it up. But it was then following the Meiji period where numerous varieties of chemicals became available in Japan. And it came from overseas which brought colors. So most of the fireworks back then were just white. And they turned into colors during the Meiji era with more trade. You can check it out here. That looks like the Meiji era. Man, I would love to have been in this picture. 150 years ago hanging out in Japan. That's what it looked like. Pretty cool. You can see it all laid out. Some of the old pictures of launching fireworks up here. You can see them in the exhibition floor on the fourth floor here. It's kind of neat. This is the picture that I showed on the fireworks festival page. Fireworks being launched back in 1733. Although this is actually Omagari. And I'm learning this now for the first time. But it depicts fireworks in Japan. So it wasn't too far off.

00:08:20 John Daub: 1733 was when the first Sumida River fireworks took place. And that was because of a famine where almost a million people died. And just to kind of memorialize them and remember them, they launched up 20 fireworks on the Sumida River. This lays out the process of fireworks here. I'm just going to take you around it really quickly. I'm explaining it in the documentary. But the hanabi production process, how to make a shakudama (large spherical firework shell), is laid out here. From here. And it comes from just an idea. Then the powders have to be mixed. And then they take the powder and make it into balls. And it's a pretty unique process. I shared that with the people in our Discord server. Then it's packaged. And they use these kind of filters here to separate the balls. Which will give it different colors and explode at different times. Then there's the fuse. And then putting it all together. Do you see that? That's pretty interesting. They take the two halves of the shells, which are round. Put them all together. And if you look inside there. There's like a projectile mapping which will show you how they put everything in there. Maybe we'll come back to it. Right now they're showing it being taped on the video screen. This is the tape that they used to wrap the outside of the fireworks shell. Which is pretty interesting. It comes to life with the projectile mapping. I guess I'm moving too fast for it. And then they put on the outside of it the master who created it. Will write the name. And for those backing the fireworks projects. You'll get your shakudama kind of written like that by the master himself. And then eventually number 10. It is put in a cannon and launched.

00:10:12 John Daub: But this is really interesting. It's autographed by—what I learned yesterday. And through the whole process of watching the fireworks being made. You see exactly how much effort and time is put into each one of them. So there's a reason why it's not that cheap. If you buy like a Roman candle. Which is just a couple of spurts of gunpowder popping into the air. That's like five, ten dollars, right? Well those can be actually made by machines. It's not really that tough to make those. But I'm going to show you now why the shakudama can cost like a thousand dollars or more. And in the documentary I'm kind of explaining why it takes so long. Look at the details and intricacy inside of one of the shakudama. There's so many different layers and levels to it. Each one of these. This is just a sample. But each one of these would show a different color inside of it. They set it up like this with those filters I showed you before. And then when it explodes the fuses right here. You'll see all these colors when the firework explodes. And this takes so much work. And yet it's over in like 30 seconds, right? You can see the big ones here. These balls. They start off as little teeny pellets. Maybe very, very small. And they create them in these kind of a cement mixer things. And it takes one millimeter. Takes one day for it to get bigger. So these balls are quite large. Maybe two centimeters in diameter. So that probably took 20 days to make one of those balls. So I just want to point out to make one of these balls. It takes 20 days. And that kind of time and effort and all made by hand gives it a lot of value.

00:12:10 John Daub: This one is pretty interesting. You can see they've taken the little teeny firework shells and they put it into one big one. So this will have a very unique, very unique explosion. These look really cool here. Do you see these have? I guess when you light them, they're the ones that you want. They go like that. But you can see these are generalized ones where you can come up with just a template to make something creative and then start to add color and different things in there to make it even come more to life. And the secret is in the production of it. And a lot of the fireworks manufacturers are very guarding their secret very closely. They won't show me certain things. I showed this in the video I made about fireworks before. But you can see the shell. That's the size of the shell and actually how big they are when they explode.

00:13:01 John Daub: This one is a size three. And a lot of people have been asking me about the sizes of it. This is considered a size three. It's about a quarter of a kilogram, 250 grams. It's just my hand. And it'll be launched up and it has a blast radius of about 50 meters. And you'll launch that up about 120 meters. So it's not too big. It goes up that far on the Eiffel Tower. It's a nice blast. And these are the ones that you'll see the most in Tokyo, in big cities. And maybe sometimes you'll see a number five, which is close to a kilogram, 900 grams. There's my hand next to it. So it's, I don't know, it's like a handball. Not quite, maybe half the size of a basketball. And this one has a blast radius of 75 meters and has to be launched up 200 meters. And you can see it's much, much bigger than the number three. But it gets even crazier than that. That's a number five. All right. Here's the number seven. The number seven is 2.7 kilograms. All right. There's my hand next to it. This is a soccer ball size, maybe. And 20 centimeters in diameter here. But when it goes up 250 meters, it has a radius of 100 meters. A blast radius. That's pretty impressive.

00:14:37 John Daub: So we don't see these inside of the cities because the buildings are too close together. It's a little bit dangerous. So you see these more on the countryside. Then we get over to here. And this, Mama, is the one that eight people on the Kickstarter backed and they bought these. This is almost 10 kilograms. It's 8.5 kilograms. And let's see here. This is the size of a watermelon. This is my hand. It's massive. It's pretty big. And you can see the number 10 called the shakudama. This is a shakudama. It's blasted up 300 meters. This is how massive it is, which is higher than the Eiffel Tower, like Tokyo Tower. And then it explodes with a radius diameter here of 140 meters, which is massive. So from end to end, almost 300 meters, which is crazy big. And the insides, how intricate. I just showed you what it looks like on the inside. They have one here at the museum. This is a nishakudama (double large spherical firework shell). This is double the size of this one here, the shakudama. And this one is, I don't know. I remember in elementary school, we had kickballs this big and nobody could ever really kick it that far. In fact, it bowled over a couple of the smaller kids. But this thing has launched up. This is massive. This is a nishakudama, 450 meters. And it has a blast radius here of 225, which is half a kilometer wide.

00:16:09 John Daub: You see down here, they don't even have a sample of it next to it, but it would be like it. It's basically half the size of me. It's massive. 420 kilograms is the yonshakudama (four large spherical firework shell), which is shot up almost a kilometer, 720 meters, 750 meters. And that one has a blast radius of like 750 meters. It's like sometimes you can get a kilometer wide. It's crazy, right? That's the yonshakudama. That's the one that I showed before. But this is the nishakudama. This is pretty impressive in itself. The thing that makes these really expensive, I showed you that the balls, to get this big, it takes 20 days. So to get them for this big, they probably have very large balls inside, and that probably takes over a month to make the balls inside of that. So it takes a very long time to make that, not just putting it together, but to create the balls of gunpowder, the balls inside of it that explode. That takes time. A lot of time.

00:17:15 John Daub: I put a picture on Instagram here, but this is the launch ground, and this is where we're going to be watching from. I'm pretty excited about this. So I'm coming back here for a live stream on October 10th. This is the main road, and I believe this is where the photographers are here. So I'm going to be sitting here for a little bit longer, and I'm going to be setting up a camera here, setting up a camera over on the side of the river here. I might have a drone in the air, I might have a camera over on this side so we're going to cover the fireworks from so many different angles it's going to be really interesting. But they launch it from here just across the river and you're watching it and it's super close to it basically. They launch it up and you're looking almost straight up at this amazing ball of light in the air. So this is Omagari station. It takes about 25-30 minutes to walk to the fireworks launching area and it's dedicated to launching fireworks it's crazy.

00:18:18 John Daub: Who'll be operating those cameras tripod most likely. I asked Peter to come but he's going to be in Yamanashi I believe. Not sure. Yeah I like this one there's a lot of history involved with Japanese fireworks and the international community. So if you're interested in that you can go to the website and you can see the fireworks really does bring people together. This is a I believe a German newspaper showing the fireworks exploding 700 meters it's pretty big. But the great thing about fireworks is it's sort of opened up Japan a little bit it's in a way where it's required international cooperation to continuously get better and better at this. And Japanese fireworks makers and foreign fireworks makers will be sometimes coming together to have competitions but also talk about new techniques and things to take to the next level. So I think that's a really interesting thing to see as we head into the next level in Japan throwing up fireworks.

00:19:15 John Daub: [inaudible] We're looking towards that direction. Oh, man, I can't wait for October to get here. Hey, WRX Turbo's in the house. I said Jennifer French had left something before. Jeff Ang, hi, John. Enjoying the tour. Get something refreshing after. Thank you. Marty Dimmer's here. Can't wait for the arrival of the packages. I hope it comes soon, Marty. It's imminent. Maria, thanks always for showing us Japan. You're very welcome, Maria.

00:20:23 John Daub: The future of hanabi. I saw this at the end. The thing is, it's not really, these are not really translated into anything. Just kind of lays out where it's come from and where it's going. And I think that they're going to be using more technology in the fireworks. But it's something here in Japan. And here they're showing at the viewing points. And the best ways to enjoy fireworks. Which direction to be sitting at and how you should watch it. And if it's from this point. And usually they'll have seating at the fireworks festivals that you have to pay for. But really there's no bad place to sit and watch the fireworks. Anywhere you sit is you're going to be able to see it. But I want, look at the colors in this. That's why they, it's hard to tell. It's hard, very hard to tell the amount of work that they put into making the fireworks. Because it's just a flash of light for a lot of people. But inside of there you can see so much details. Look at the colors. One, two, three, four different, four different levels of layers inside of that shakudama, I think. So that's very important to kind of, to know the colors. Look at this one. That's not easy to do something like that, right? So just the white ones are beautiful. But when you start to add color in there. The complexities of it. That's not easy to do. So I'm hoping by making this documentary and you getting a chance to see how hard it is to make the fireworks. That when you do watch them, you have a great appreciation for that.

00:22:04 John Daub: Here's the creative fireworks founder, Isao Sato. He's from Omagari. And every industry has an innovator and a leader. And he's somebody who brought people together. This is kind of neat. I guess I can take you in here really quickly. All right. It's actually been done for us. So I only have to push a button, but you have to wear gloves if you're going to mess around with it. You can actually in this room here. And this makes it really family friendly. You can put together the fireworks and create your own fireworks and I'll show you what it'll look like if you explode it. So you can pick any of the colors that you want. And then just there's a timer. And then I'm going to press this button. That was pretty colorful. And it shows you by the format that you used, how it will change. So if I just take this one out, I'm going to put one of these in there. Let's see if that changes it at all. Can you see the one color I added? Oh, there it is right there in the center. I saw it. I messed it all up with that one. Put this away. So there you have it.

00:23:47 John Daub: My mask on here. Yeah, it's really cool place. And I think if you're coming to Omagari for the summer. For one of the fireworks festivals, even if it's in the winter, spring, summer, fall, there's one major festival happening four times a year at least. And I think they have one once a month. Maybe not today, but this seems pretty neat just to set up what you're about to see. And it's neat to see it in a video like this, but it's definitely better in person. And this place is free. I didn't pay anything. So maybe I should. Lovely Takelo is here. I can't wait to watch the fireworks festivals. It's going to be so exciting. Tony P. Tim Lawson's. When I lived in Iwakuni, I watched a great fireworks show during a Sakura festival on the river below the castle. Oh, yeah. Iwakuni must have a really pretty one. That's the one with the Kintaikyo (Kintaikyo Bridge), which has the five arches over the river. Iwakuni is a beautiful place.

00:24:53 John Daub: And we have a safe place, too, because we have our Marines stationed not too far away. U.S. Marine base is there. Yeah. I don't think it's too far away. You see those mountains. I guess you can just sort of see it. The weather's not perfect. That's where we're going to be having the fireworks festival next month. I got to go down to the river. Riverside. I believe it's just over there, but I could probably walk there following this river all the way into the big, big river over there. And I'm looking forward to that very much. If you like this video, give me a thumbs up. Encourage me to do more museums. I even like the carpet here. The public. Jeff, thanks for asking about that. The public is not invited. We're asking you to stay at home as I follow the carpet around. Even the carpet has—I thought it was flowers. It's not. It's fireworks.

00:25:49 John Daub: We want people to stay at home and stay safe. And Akita Prefecture is not a place that has a lot of infections, so they don't want a lot of people traveling here. Although there is a go to travel campaign in Japan where people are coming to visit. But they're kind of busy. They're kind of discouraging people to come. And one of the reasons I wanted to do this is that people who can't come to Japan can still watch and enjoy the fireworks through this Kickstarter campaign that I did because I wanted to help the industry. They've lost like five billion dollars or something. And this is just a drop in the bucket, but kind of helping them promote the fireworks. That's a good thing. It's priceless. I said that's it. I want to look at it in that way.

00:26:29 John Daub: So there you have it, guys. Thanks so much for watching. I hope this is a kind of informative. And helps to set up what you're going to be seeing next month. You won't see the nishakudama, but we're going to be seeing a lot of these over here. The shakudama. This is a big mama. And number sevens. You'll be seeing those and a lot of number threes and number fives right here. Very interesting. I got to go to lunch now and then I'm going to be going to the manufacturing plant where I'm going to film them creating our fireworks. I'm not going to live stream that because that's special. But I will film the heck out of it. And make a really good documentary for this. Have a good day, everybody. Thanks so much for watching and sharing with me the museum a little bit. I'll see you in the next live stream. Maybe tonight on the way back to Tokyo. Or tomorrow back in the big city. See you later.