00:03 John Daub: Greetings from a very wet Akita at Tazawako, or Lake Tazawa, in Akita Prefecture, Semboku City up here in Tohoku. That's the lake beyond those raindrops there. How you doing everybody? I'm here at a pretty unique place right off the lake. They have craft beer and she's actually pouring it now. We don't want to miss this. This is all locally made craft beer. One of those is for yours truly and I'm going to give it a try.

00:44 John Daub: And I'm going to take you around this really interesting countryside Japanese craft beer lodge. You can take a look and see what it's like to be here. I know a lot of people are locked down or can't travel at this time. Well guess what? You're joining me here in Japan for some brews. So sit back and relax for about 15-20 minutes and we'll get some food here too. Should be a lot of fun. Oh man, is that mine? I want the big one. Big one. Mr. Das would be proud. Those are big mugs. What is this beer? IPA? No, it's Pilsner. A lager. Ah, this is a lager. It's golden color. This is different. Ah, that's a special beer. Special means good.

01:57 John Daub: Hey, Eugene Holberts here. How you doing? I wonder how many liters she can carry. It's like Oktoberfest in Munich. That one is mine! Ah, let's toast. Cheers! Cheers! Yay! Yeah. You too buddy. Yeah, you're famous. So, cheers everybody. That's nice.

03:19 John Daub: So I'm here in Akita to take a tour in the Senboku City region. I just got up and came here. I'm up at Tazawako Station, which is a Shinkansen stop. You know, the green and the red train, the Tohoku Shinkansen. That train is so unique. It's green on one side and it's red on the other side. And it parts at Morioka Station. Half of it going up to Aomori. The other half going towards Akita. And it's just, it's like the two trains kissing. So if you take a look at the Instagram story, you'll see the two trains linked together. And one of these days I'll get them separating at Morioka Station. But this is a train. Tazawako Craft Beer.

04:00 John Daub: And it's just kind of neat to take you on a little bit of a tour outside of Tokyo to the countryside. Now, I was expecting a little bit better weather. But I'll tell you this. For the next 36 hours, I'm going to be here in Akita and bringing you some pretty amazing stories. Including onsen and autumn foliage. Rain permitting. And some really amazing food here in this region. I know that in the autumn, this area is so popular. Check it out here. This area, you can see one tree. I might take you outside just so you can get a look around the lake just for a second. But let me take you around the brewery. And I might take this with me. Alright, follow the beer. Chotto itte kimasu (I'll be right back). Just follow the beer here. Just bear with me.

05:04 John Daub: This restaurant is quite large. I was pretty surprised when we came in here. How wide it is. Look at this. Lots of people in here. And I'm just always reminded that out here in the countryside, we have so much more space compared to Tokyo. It's meant to show off the lake that's right in front of you there. So I brought my beer with me. I wanted to show you some of the offerings that they have here. And then take you outside. I'll have to leave the beer behind, I have a feeling. I'll have to go to the refrigerator. And of course you see Hachiko. Hachiko is originally from Akita. It's an Akita Inu or an Akita dog breed. And yes, here he has his own beer. Hachiko has a beer. You better believe I'm bringing this back.

05:57 John Daub: Now Kanae doesn't drink alcohol. But I'll bring one back for Kanae's dad maybe. That's hilarious. It's got to be really good. You know what, I'm going to buy one and then maybe we'll try it tonight in the hotel room. And we'll do some kind of a live stream. This character here on these beer bottles is Amabie. I believe it says here Amabie. I don't know if that's a beer name or the name of the character. But in Japan it's a folklore character drawn to get rid of the coronavirus. So you'll see this in a lot of places. But you can see that bird has its own beer. And then some local brews here. This Namahage beer looks pretty interesting, right? Whenever you see a character, don't judge a beer by its label. But I'm going to because it just looks really cool. And then we have some other really interesting brews here.

06:50 John Daub: This is a reason to travel now. And more and more, this is actually right here. This one beer I'm drinking right now has a fruity, hoppy taste to it. And then you can buy even the water down here because the Akita prefecture water is really good. And they have a store where you can buy some brews. And of course some sausages in that refrigerator right there. Wow. Alright, I'm going to leave my beer here. It's kind of weird to have a beer sitting here. Just stay there. And I'm going to take you outside for a second.

07:32 John Daub: Hey, WXTurbo is here. How you doing? Eugene, for the snacks. Chan. Did they make some Hachiko's swim through beer to give you the dog taste? That'd be pretty cool if they did. Boy, it's raining pretty hard out here. You can see the autumn colors all around. And we drove here from Tazawako Station. And it was just absolutely beautiful. Now the rain, the window was all wet. But look at the view. Look, the guys are all freaking out. Like, what are you doing outside? That's what it looks like on the other side of the window. Alright, check it out here.

08:22 John Daub: The name of the restaurant is Orai. So you can find this on Google Maps. I'll put a link in the description if you want to check it out. It's kind of neat. Fun. You see that? A little early for the beer. Shh, I know. Don't tell Kanae. Here is Lake Tazawako. Right here. With this beautiful tree that has just turned colors. And I gotta come back for the food here. But just walked through that puddle. We can do some nature hiking. I hope no one takes my beer. Ah, my shoes are all wet. Someone's gonna take my beer. Whoa, manhole! Nice manhole cover. Yes, you're joining us. Look at how nice this place is.

09:29 John Daub: I remember when we were driving up here, I'm like, what? This is too nice. This is so countryside. Now, I don't know how I get down here. Oh, there's some stairways. Okay. I want to take you to the lake just really quickly and then we're gonna come back in because I ordered a lot of food. And I don't want that to get cold. Oh! That's what I'm talking about! This is Lake Tazawako. And there's a beach here. It is not the best day to be out here. And there's nobody here. But I can tell you this. It feels good. I'm not afraid to get a little wet. The gimbal, on the other hand, is afraid to get a little wet.

10:41 John Daub: Just be happy. It's me out here. I don't think that the weather's gonna get any better. Do you? I don't think the weather looks like it's gonna get any better. Oh, next time I want to... Look at this nature hike! I can walk around the entire lake. Looks like. I'm not gonna skinny dip! Who wrote that? Daniel? Skinny dipping. It's like freaking cold out here. Wait for the cars. Safety first. Let's go get my beer. I hope the waitress lady didn't steal my beer. Just take the nature hike road. It's much more fun when it's raining. I guess. Now there was no... My 4G signal had no... Ah! Whoa! No! I'm gonna have to change my socks. I can't get up this hill. Beast mode. Beast mode. Nature. Smells like nature. Those ladies are looking at me. They're like, what is that guy doing? I'm a YouTuber. City boy. Hey! I'm totally becoming less city and more rural. I've been traveling a lot. Alright, we're back. Alcohol for the day.

13:14 John Daub: I'm gonna pour my alcohol. Follow the beer back to the table. Oh, she... Face shield lady brought our food. Sausage is here. Let's have a good time. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. They were watching the show. Hold on, let me get... This looks a little wet here. Hold on. You guys feeling okay? You look a little wet in there. Ah, we're back. Beer food. What is this sausage? What's in it? Gyoza garlic. It's like a garlic pancake. Some sort of... It's like a pork. It's not pork. It's Akita pork. And then we have some tofu. It's not cheese. It's tofu. Hold on a second. There's water in the mic. It's all Akita's. Yes, please. I hope there's a little bit of water in the mic. How you doing? We're back. Actually, I stopped the stream for five seconds and I blew really loudly in the mic and it dried it out. Alright.

15:36 John Daub: This is beer... Japanese beer food. This is Japanese beer food. Ai-chan knows. It's gobo on there. Gobo (burdock root) is burdock root. And it's been kind of shredded and put on this really well prepared piece of pork which is right here in Akita prefecture. And then you have some mushrooms which are very famous in the fall. This is quite a meal here. We also have Akita Komachi rice served in a western plate, not in a rice bowl. It kind of gives us this feeling like we're in the Czech Republic. It's pretty awesome. And then we have some soup here to warm up our souls because we were outside in the rain. Enjoying Tazawako. And the guys got other dishes. We have curry rice here. A Japanese staple. It's so good. And... What is this? Hamburger. This is a hamburger. Ooh. With demi-glace sauce. And Akita vegetables. Nice. And same hamburger. Oh, is that katsu curry? I like katsu curry. Wow. It looks good. Yeah, katsu curry. Curry is one of my favorites here. Yeah, I'm just hanging out with the boys today. No ladies, right? No ladies. Just the server. Just hanging out with the boys here. So let's try some of this beer food here and see how it goes. I'm gonna put this here. Here you go. Dig in. Dig in.

17:24 John Daub: So for this tour, it was really interesting. For 14 days before I decided to come on this, I had to take my temperature and report that before I could get in. And they took my temperature as well. As well as all these safety precautions. So, Japan has opened up to the Go To Travel campaign. So a lot of people are traveling around. Japan East, JR East has a Welcome Rail Pass that's opened up for non-Japanese passport residents that are living here in Japan. So you get a chance to travel by Shinkansen all over the place for a very, very affordable price. Like 12,000 yen for 3 days of unlimited travel up to Tohoku including Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima, Yamagata, Akita. It's pretty amazing that you can travel around at such an affordable cost. I think a little bit of Niigata up to Echigo Yuzawa. Let's get to it, you know. Jonna beer. Alright, let's try... start off with one of these sausages here.

18:37 John Daub: I'm gonna cut it up for you. And then show you. It looks like it's... It's got some kind of seasoning inside of it. It looks like it's pork. It's gonna go really good with the beer I think. Salty. It's got some good seasoning to it. But the consistency of the sausage is very good. So this pepper. It's not green onion, right? What is it? Ah! It's garlic. The green top of the garlic that usually they cut up. They put the green garlic inside of the sausage and there's an amazing consistency including the snappiness of the outside of the sausage. This has been boiled. The sausage is not barbecued but boiled. Which is also another way to prepare it. Mostly in Germany we boil the sausages. I say we because I'm 25% German. Oh! I forgot to say something. That's what's inside of the sausage. Interesting. It's got a really good flavor. This is Akita, right? It's grown here in Akita.

20:20 John Daub: The great thing about traveling outside of Tokyo is that you get to eat regionally specific cuisine. Meaning the pork, the meats here are from this region. The vegetables are all grown in this region. It's kind of neat. It's a good reason to leave the city. Have some beers. Now, I'm really really curious about this here. Let's dig into this. Hey, John Kimura is here. How you doing, John? Persnickety! Enjoy your beer. You got it. I think I might need something stronger than a butter knife. Maybe this meat is that tender. Try a little bit of that gobo. The burdock root on here. Shredded on here. That's really good. So you got a pretty good bite size. Wow! There's a little bit of miso in there. The miso, again, is very famous outside of Tokyo. You eat miso in rural areas. Looks like homemade miso in there. It's got that miso element to the pork with something else in the sauce. The gobo gives it like the meat. We all know what meat tastes like. It's a fatty piece of it. The miso sauce really comes together with that gobo on top of it. It gives it more of a washoku, a Japanese food type of taste to the pork. It's not like your grandmother's pork chop in the United States. This is Japanese. You can tell. I don't think it's wild boar. Although, we do have that in Japan. Wild boar. Let's try one more piece of this pork and see if I can get some of this miso on here. Some of the mushrooms. Nice. I lost it here. Whoa!

23:27 John Daub: Now have a bite of the Akita Komachi rice. That's how you do it. When I eat rice, I like to put a big mouthful in my mouth. Take a big chunk of it and put it in my mouth of rice. Then I'll take miso soup or whatever soup is available and add that flavor into the rice. That was a really good comment here. Jonathan Chung writes in here, fork. When you come to a restaurant that's serving non-Japanese cuisine or wants to give a vibe that it's non-Japanese, they'll give you fork, knives, and spoons. When the rice is served on a plate like this and it's not in a traditional Japanese rice bowl, you can pretty much be having it with a fork and a knife. You could ask for chopsticks too if you want it. They're not giving me the fork and the knife because I'm a Westerner. Are they? I'm pretty good with chopsticks. Depending on the place, you have to go with it. I remember when I first came to Japan 23 years ago, and they gave me curry rice. They gave me a spoon and I said, I want chopsticks. Don't give me a spoon because I'm not Japanese. I got the chopsticks and I found that it's easier to eat the curry rice with a spoon. I looked around the restaurant and everybody had a spoon. Sometimes you have to look around you and read the air. You know what I mean?

25:25 John Daub: Last but not least, I want to try some of this tofu. This looks really good. Check it out. Again, when you get out of the city, the tofu is usually homemade. This looks very, very soft. We're going to give this a try quickly. A couple of beans on here. Wow. A lot of people say that tofu doesn't have any taste. I think that that's not exactly true. If the tofu is made fresh, and I've had it made fresh, it takes the taste of the beans a little bit. There's kind of a greenness to it. There's a vegetable taste to tofu. Tofu for cooking, when it's like a harder, rubberized, it'll take the taste of the sauce around it. When you get soft tofu, usually it still retains some of the essence of the soybeans that were used to make it. That's a mark of really good tofu. It means that you can eat it raw and you still get some flavor from that. You feel pretty satisfied with just a piece of tofu. If you have never had really good, fresh tofu, then you're missing out because it's very easy to say that tofu is not, I don't know, not an exciting food because it's just a piece of soft, white paste looking stuff. But actually, really good tofu does have really good taste to it.

27:02 John Daub: So there's some beer food for you. I'm going to be taking, I'll try to get some of the beer and tonight I'm going to be staying at Tsurunoyu. Ah, I'll be staying at Tsurunoyu, which is an incredible... I don't even know if there's a signal there. Is there a signal? Probably. If there is, I'm going to take some of the beers from here and you can track me back and maybe we'll try that Hachiko one in the room or something. Do a little pow-wow. But I want to show you what Tsurunoyu is. One of the most famous onsen in Japan. It's a white bath onsen where the minerals coming straight from the ground into this bath. Really, really old and traditional place and I haven't been there in 20 years. So it's the first time since 2002, I think. It was the last time I was there. So I'm really looking forward to this and I'm going to take you with me. I know a lot of you can't travel at this time. I kind of can. So be prepared for some more adventures for the next 36 hours. Akita Prefecture, Senboku City. See you in the next livestream. Enjoy the last 10 seconds of lettuce sausage. Looks pretty good, huh? Indolent autodidact. Thank you. Did I get that right? I'm trying really hard. I'm trying really hard. Jeff Ang's here. Cobra Bebop. Thank you. Ji-Man Cole. Raymond Centeno. I think there's water in the mic. I think I got it out. I think so. Ami87. Always good to see fungus. USMC. Chan. Jennifer. Eugene. WX Turbo. Bob Joe is here. Kanpai. King Wong. Luis. Michael Sassano. Bob Joe. Thanks everybody.