00:05 John Daub: Welcome to Kochi Prefecture. I'm out here in the middle of nowhere. This is awesome. This is a roadside stop, like a restaurant here in Kochi in Nankoku, which is a really beautiful area of Kochi. Check this out. There's some sort of Neko Bus-looking car. But if we pan up, we'll see the sign for the restaurant that we're going to be having the largest ebi fry, which is a fried shrimp omurice, an omelet on top of a rice dish.

00:36 John Daub: We're going to be going inside the kitchen. This is Yuzu-an. Yuzu being the citrus fruit that's very famous here in Kochi. It's just right off the road and in front of a really beautiful rice paddy. Look at that. They're just starting to harvest here in Kochi, which is interesting because I was over in Akita and Niigata just last week and they had already finished the harvest. So Japan is always in different stages of this and here in October. Kochi Prefecture is very famous for katsuo no tataki (seared bonito).

01:22 John Daub: Oh, it's so good. Look at that. That's also on the menu here. And in fact, I heard that there's something with that related to dessert. I couldn't understand what he was talking about. But this restaurant is kind of out there. The purpose and mission of this place, Yuzu-an, is to just make people happy. And it's so insane and bizarre and crazy and nonsensical. It all starts with the owner and his name is Kondo-san. And we're going to be talking with him too. Kochi Yuzu-an. That's the owner right there in the yukata. He comes out here and he grills or sears the fish, the tataki, right here in this little shed.

01:58 John Daub: And if you saw the thumbnail to this video, you'll know that there is a shark out in the middle, but someone has toppled him over. It's kind of a shame. There's just so many bizarre things that make this the weirdness. I wasn't expecting that. I guess there's a reason why you don't go around the back. All right, let's go inside here.

02:56 John Daub: You can see the tataki uses this kind of dried grass. And that's how they sear it. He'll put it in there and then it brings out a lot of smoke and a lot of fire. And the tataki, the bonito fish, will cook very quickly. It's a weird restaurant. There's a lot of objects in here. Ah, Kondo-san, konnichiwa.

04:03 John Daub: This here is Ryoma Sakamoto. I've told you the history so many times, but one of the great samurai from the Meiji period that helped usher in a new era for Japan. I can't believe I'm eating here. I had to start this livestream a little late because there were so many people that had come and it was a little bit unusual for 3 p.m. This is a very, very late lunch. So this restaurant is famous for having the largest ebi fry in the world. I'm going to be getting this omurice with the ebi fry on top of it. We're going to see if it really is this big. That's kind of massive. That's like one meter long.

05:44 John Daub: The restaurant is now pretty much empty. And we've been kind of waiting for this. Because he was so busy, Kondo-san, we actually helped to bus the tables before we started. That's kind of cool. Here in front of us, do you see these really large statues? That's also Ryoma Sakamoto. And you'll find him at the entrance. It's pretty massive here. And there's loads of little teeny things and knickknacks. I think if you ever go to a roadside restaurant, you're always going to find some interesting things and objects or antiques and things looking at you. It's pretty creepy UFO guy. But I do like the view outside.

06:44 John Daub: If you do come to Kochi, you're going to want to get a car. I think it's really hard to get here by train. Hitchhiking might help. Okay. Kondo-san, how long ago did this restaurant start? 32 years ago. 1989. Wow. So, what's the concept? The concept is a fun restaurant. Just fun. Have fun. Very important.

07:37 John Daub: Let's get in the kitchen. Time for some ebi fry. Can I open it? Oh, I can't believe it. It's that big? This is big. It's sticking out of the plate. It's bigger than the plate. Wow. Look at it. This is the biggest ebi fry right there getting a little boil action. So I've ordered it officially now because I just said that and he put it right in there. So I guess it wasn't Photoshop. It's pretty big.

08:40 John Daub: How many people are watching right now? Right now, 880 people. Well, America is sleeping right now. So it's usually about 3-4 people. People living in Japan are watching. The question is though, could you eat an ebi this big? The answer is probably because I'm really hungry. Tipping is not usual in Japan, so you wouldn't want to tip. You can always say gochisousama deshita or thank you after the meal. And that's really appreciated. But people work really hard and service is usually included into the bill.

10:01 John Daub: This is a super interesting place. And I'm so happy that we have access to come here into the back of the kitchen to show you some interesting stuff here. I heard that the dessert is pretty out there too. Here comes the egg. The shrimp could be coming at any time. In total, it takes 8 minutes to make each one of these. So after you order it, it's approximately 8 minutes before it comes out to you. The most popular dish is omurice. Omurice is the most popular item at the restaurant. Beautiful. Kondo-san is garnishing it. Look at that. Beautiful salad on the side there. And we're waiting for that big massive shrimp.

12:07 John Daub: They also have a lot of really interesting food challenges. So if you're a food challenge kind of a person, yeah, you'll get that here. We're just minutes away from me putting a super hot shrimp into my mouth. That's an omurice. And we're going to put the shrimp on top for impact. That shrimp really is doing a good job. It's got a nice golden color to it now. Nice. That's the biggest shrimp I've ever seen. Lotus root. Oh, so this is part of the lotus root on here. Okay, the stalk of it. Interesting. You guys don't eat that, the stalk? No. But it's good. It tastes better than regular celery. So that is the stalk of the lotus root.

14:41 John Daub: It's so big it needs extra attention. So the finishing touch is in here. This restaurant, again for those that are joining us, it's called Yuzu-an. I'll put a link in the description in Google Maps. I actually put the Google Maps in the description as well. And it's pretty unique. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I had to come here after all the other customers had gone and we have access to the kitchen to show you some of the good stuff. And that's part of the fun, the access getting behind the scenes and seeing everything being made here. The omurice has been made. Now we're just waiting for that shrimp. And I guess they're putting a sauce on there too. Of course, there's gotta be some kind of a sauce. I'm not a big ketchup fan, but when it's put on an omurice, I'm cool with that.

15:43 John Daub: You have to wait for your food. Live streams are tough. I can't cut to the chase. Like if the shrimp is gonna suffer, we gotta suffer with it. I'm a shrimp tail eater by the way, just so you know. I like to eat the tail. Oh, there's the sauce. We've been sauced. Demi-glace sauce. Oh my word. Beautiful. All right, let's take it out to the table with the alien. Knife and fork. That's really big. It's as big as the picture. It's as big as Sakamoto Ryoma here, who is way bigger than me.

17:24 John Daub: It's being wheeled towards the table. He talked to the customers, said there's an American YouTuber who's gonna eat this. Whoa. That is a feast. Everybody start taking pictures of this here. And this is by far the most mega juicy looking shrimp I've ever had in my entire life. I've never seen an ebi fry this big before. Have you? It's not a meter long, but I would say maybe we need a tape measure for this. I'm guessing that it's about 25 centimeters long, which is a quarter of a meter, which that is pretty insane, I think. Right? That is craziness. My stomach is growling. Let's try to eat this here. Foot-long shrimp.

20:07 John Daub: Oh, I can't lift it. It's too heavy. Whoa. Do you see that? That is so voluptuous, voluminous. That is a massive shrimp. We're just gonna eat it now. I'm so happy right now. So omurice, you actually wanna be eating it with like a fork and a spoon or something. You don't have to eat everything with chopsticks. We're gonna get rid of the vegetables. It's just getting in the way. Mm, okay, here we are. I'm gonna go for the omurice first.

21:40 John Daub: Omurice is basically an omelet on top of rice that has been ketchup-fied. Ketchup-fied, it's like infused with ketchup. Mm, you don't want the egg to be cooked too hard. The secret is to make the outside of it, to cook just the outside of it. And then when you roll it over and cut it open, it just flops on top of the rice. That gives it that really cool effect, which is really cool to see in person too. It can be made into a performance here. And then there's a sauce, like a demi-glace sauce, which really makes it, adds that savoriness to it, which I think is really good. Mm, mm. All right, let's get to the shrimp now. That's what you're here for.

22:34 John Daub: You're here for the shrimp, right? This shrimp, this is not some dude. You can play the 2001 Space Odyssey thing as the shrimp enters into your screen and projectiles out of it in slow motion. I don't know, can you eat the head? Do people eat the head? Does anybody eat the head? Can you eat the head? Everybody's saying no. You know what? I'm gonna come back to the head. When it's been deep fried, you can eat the tail of it. In fact, it's loaded with a lot of meat. It's loaded with good stuff like calcium. So you can eat it. If it's raw or it hasn't been cooked, you can't eat the shrimp tail. But if it has been cooked, you can. Deep fried anyways.

24:54 John Daub: All of it. The boss is gonna come over here and tell me. The boss is coming. Excuse me. Kondo-san. Fried shrimp. Can you eat the head? Hold the horn and the mouth. And then, pop it. Oh! It's like this. You can't eat this much. Oh, this area. The brain. Oh, the brain. Thank you. I'm glad that I didn't eat it. That would have been disastrous.

26:07 John Daub: All right, let's get into it. The world's longest shrimp here. I'm gonna say the world's. Probably someone's gonna prove me wrong, but it's the world's largest here. This shrimp is so thick. One bite is like eating one normal shrimp. I'm serious. It is so much meat on this shrimp. It's not just cut and made and stretched longer. There's so much meat in this shrimp. It is very, very tasty. I put some more demi-glace sauce on it to try to give it some more, something rich here. This is so good. So the price of this is 2,650 yen, which is about $25. And I'm guessing they get the best of the best when it comes to the shrimp, and you're gonna have to pay for that. You want the good stuff, you gotta pay for it. It doesn't come cheap. So $25 for this entire plate.

27:47 John Daub: And if you look at the menu, it gets even wackier because for dessert, you can eat the brains, he said. Oh, for dessert. The dessert is sashimi ice cream. I've never seen sashimi on ice cream. Never heard of the combination mentioned or uttered. Probably I'm the first person ever in English to say sashimi ice cream, but that's one of the dishes. And I'm thinking about it, and I'm not sure if I'm gonna go with sashimi ice cream. I don't know, would you? It's like, that's a lot to handle. Wasabi ice cream is good. Sashimi ice cream is good. Hmm, really makes you think a little bit. It's on the menu.

29:10 John Daub: You wanna see the menu? This is tataki, and there's Kondo-san. He's firing up the tataki. This is seared bonito, and I love this. It's a specialty of Kochi Prefecture, and I would actually love to order this, but I get a feeling I'm gonna be really full after this. They do serve whale here, and this is something that might turn off some people, but it is on the menu. I'm not gonna eat that, though. If we can get to 1,000 likes, I will eat it. I will order the sashimi ice cream for you. It's up to the community. Participation is needed. I think we can do it.

30:31 John Daub: I can sit here and eat this all day as I watch the like counts going up. That shrimp took like seven bites. I'm watching it live. I see the same numbers that you see. If you click the like button, I will order it. I want to talk to Kondo-san and ask him. I have lots of questions. Kondo-san actually used to have a chonmage (samurai topknot). And when he had the chonmage, he ran for political office here. But if a politician wants to win, shaving your head, that would get my vote.

32:38 John Daub: We're about 300 likes short of an ice cream cone. I think it's a sashimi sundae. I guarantee you, you're going to want to see this thing. Look at the view from this table. This is a reason why I love to leave Tokyo. You'll never get a view like this in the city of Tokyo. Never. Again, I'm in Kochi Prefecture. This is called Nankoku, this area of the prefecture. And it's very famous for many things. Not too far away, you see the mountains in the distance there. And they have some of the best rivers and water in all of Japan. The water here is incredible, which also leads to some of the best livestock and the best vegetables. Having good water is the core. It's the basis to some of the best cuisine, too.

34:12 John Daub: This place is not on the Shinkansen tracks, which means that it requires some extra travel. It's a little bit tougher to get here. And as I said in the livestream before this, putting in the effort and going just a little bit further, really, you're rewarded with this. You're rewarded with this. It's a bizarre experience, and it's so worth it. I mean, I'm pretty sure you could probably find some weird stuff out in the middle of America, too. That's the great thing with traveling.

34:52 John Daub: This is the stalk of the lotus root here. Check this out. I've never eaten this before. I didn't know you could eat it, but it's got holes in it. It's porous. Lotus root. Whoa. It's very interesting. Kind of a celery consistency to that. I like that. Let's try some omurice with it. Like an hors d'oeuvre. Mm. That works.

36:03 John Daub: Looks like I've got dessert. How many likes? 730. How many stars do I give this out of 10? The omurice is a solid 8 out of 10. I've had better, and I've had much worse. So solid 8 out of 10 for the omurice. The shrimp, that's like a 9½ out of 10. It's very almost impossible to get a 10 out of 10, but when you get a one-foot shrimp, how could you not give that a really high ranking? That shrimp was almost as big as the photo. It's not false advertising. You know why this is real? Because this is smaller than the actual thing, but looks like they made the shrimp the actual size on the menu. That is pretty killer.

37:49 John Daub: This was a very interesting lunch. I'm gonna clean up and it looks like I'm gonna have to go recruit Kondo-san. So I'm gonna be back in another live stream in about five minutes, and I'm gonna do the ice cream, okay? I think that we seem to have done it. Go to the Only in Japan Go channel, and I'm gonna set up a new live stream right now, and we're gonna do it. Because I think it's gonna take some time in between it. I think that the sashimi ice cream thing deserves its own live stream. I don't think it should be in an ebi one. It's so weird that it deserves its own. Let's do round two on this. Look for the link in the Only in Japan Go channel. It's going to be on the top page, and you'll see upcoming live streams. Look for it in about one minute from now. See you then. Time for some sashimi ice cream. Oh, my.