00:05 John Daub: Hello, greetings and welcome. Do you see this building right here? This is a cultural museum designed by Kengo Kuma. Look at this thing. How you doing everybody? It's massive. So we have exclusive access to go inside of the museum and take a look at the grounds. This is what they call Sakura Town. And if you were to look on Google Maps, there's actually nothing there. Just earth. I put a link in the description if you want to find out where I am.

00:34 John Daub: This is such an exciting project and it's very much fused with everything. Karuizawa is famous for animation and we're going to be going inside and taking a look. They also have yokai (supernatural creatures). Like Japanese gods, these creative creatures of the night that scare little kids and me too. That's all inside of here. So we're going to get a chance to look inside. I'm going to take you around this area. And also interesting.

01:04 John Daub: I'm going to introduce to you what's going on here because it's so new. Believe it or not, they've just kind of opened. They had the grand opening this month. Down there, this is the only Japanese shrine with LED lights. That's an actual honest-to-goodness shrine down there. So let's go down and take a look. The building over here on the right side, there's loads of shops. This is also the office of Karukawa where they're working here. And I love this because this is a place where you can see the people.

01:35 John Daub: This is a revitalization of this area here in Saitama Prefecture. It's great that they moved here and created something really exciting called Sakura Town. And hopefully people will come because of the pandemic. Not a lot of people are here to celebrate the grand opening. But I am. In fact, I'm going to be staying here in the anime hotel, which is on the sixth floor of this place. Yeah. And I checked in and the room is awesome. You saw there's a convenience store right there. And then there's this gem. It just looks like a big rock that has launched from the sky that crash landed here, planted itself right into the earth. And inside there is some pretty interesting stuff. Hope this finds everybody doing really well all around the world. Welcome to Saitama.

02:07 John Daub: Honestly, I remember about an hour ago I came outside and I looked up at this culture museum and it just blew me away. There you can see the sign right there. Karukawa Culture Museum. And over here you can see they have the Musashi no Reiwa Shrine. Let's go take just really quickly a quick look at the shrine and then we're going to walk back around and go inside of this amazing cultural center. Now it's actually closed at 6pm. So we're going to get a chance to look inside after hours. They're keeping the lights on for me. I feel kind of special. I am special. Shh, don't tell anyone.

03:27 John Daub: Harry Amann's here. Welcome Harry, a new traveler. They're cleaning up here. This is so cool. Look at the torii gate (shrine gate) here. Just at night you can't really get as good of a view of it. Just behind the gate there's a shadow of a shrine. And I want to move on inside of the building here. Just give you a quick look because I don't think we're going to get a chance to come back and see this. But I will be streaming from here tomorrow morning. I'm going to be doing a ramen episode. Just really cool. Look at that. That's so unique. Mike, you're not late. You're just in time. So buckle in for the next 30 minutes. We're going to be going into the Karukawa Culture Museum. Look at this thing. All right. Let's go inside. We have somebody waiting for us inside.

04:19 John Daub: The weather here is a little bit cooler. It was warm yesterday and it really cooled down. Winter is getting here. The fall autumn foliage is starting to turn in Tokyo. It's a little bit later compared to Tohoku. So right now all around the city, the leaves and the colors are beautiful, but you can't really see it at night. All right, let's get inside of the culture museum. It's nice and warm. Here I'm going to pan around and you can see the stairs where we started. It's a really modern looking structure. Again, if you look at Google Maps, there's nothing there. So what you're looking at is kind of like historical.

05:23 John Daub: Inside we go. Karukawa Culture Museum. Inside. You can see that's one of the historical characters for the coronavirus. Be safe everybody. They take the temperature, but I already did that. I'm safe. Everything is closed here. This is where you get the tickets. Even the windows here are very creative. Everything about Sakura Town is about creativity. It's a different world in here.

06:26 John Daub: Kore mo yokai desu ka? Yokai desu ne. Amabie (yokai associated with disease prediction). Amabie is the yokai of diseases. And coronavirus actually falls under that. So this is the yokai for that. Kind of a new take on it. I kind of like this take. Saikou daijoubu koi (this is the best, okay?). Sometimes you have to ask. Looking very nice. Hey now. All right. The elevators are closed because we're undercover right now. And we're going up to the second floor.

07:20 John Daub: Kochi. Hai, wakarimashita (yes, understood). Hey, Jari. How you doing, everybody? So we're going to go to the left here. It does feel like we're kind of in a cage. In a second, we're going to be unleashed into a new world. This is such like a maze. This is awesome. All right, here we go.

07:58 Nara Tomo: Minasan, chotto jiko shokai kikitai (everyone, want to hear a quick self-introduction?). Dare desu ka (who are you?)? Konnichiwa. Nara Tomo desu (hello, I'm Nara Tomo).

08:07 John Daub: That's Nara Tomo-san. Without her, I would be lost. We're inside of a staircase in the culture museum. Exclusive access, people. This is exciting. Fourth floor. Again, I'm in Saitama. This is the Karukawa Sakura Town. Whoa. This is awesome.

09:03 John Daub: Kishise toshokan (picture book library?)? Isse toshokan (isse library?). Ii desu ka (is it okay?)? We're going to take a quick look inside of here. But you can really feel there's so many things to look at. I love the black wall behind there. And you're just focused on the bookshelves in front of you. I'll try to go really slow here. But at the end of it is a surprise. All the little angles to it. Each shelf has like jutting out in a different direction. It's kind of interesting. Up on the top here, you have more information. You'll see little teeny things like an old calculator. It's pretty crazy. Oh, is that from the Karate Kid? That's Johnny and his Cobra Kai people. Nihon no shotai (Japan's something?). Cash register, maybe. Oh, that's kind of creepy. How you doing? He moves. Moves with you. When you move, he moves. Keep going, keep going. He's still watching us. Let's get out of here.

10:47 John Daub: Do you sell these books? No, we don't. You can't buy these books, okay? So don't get overly excited about trying to come in here with your wallet. It's okay. All right. Check this room out. It's amazing. This is the main hall. And it goes up eight meters and then the ceiling up to ten meters high. So I'm going to pan up now. It is really, really amazing. And they actually have, I think maybe it's something that you need to see in person. This might be something you need to see in person. But there is projection mapping of this. Look at this. This is so cool, right? Projection mapping on here, which makes it come alive. And these are the types of things that it's more than just a library, people. It's more than just a library. So there's a meaning to all of this. And I think for Japanese fans, we'll probably get a little bit more out of this, but there's a meaning to every single thing here. And you have to really spend some time and look at everything. It's pretty amazing.

12:26 John Daub: For those joining us here, we are in Saitama, Tokorozawa. Okay, there's the stairs go upstairs, but we're in the scenes. Elevator. So that's a big elevator. Whoa. And we're going into an elevator just for a short amount of time. When we get down to the bottom, yokai. Senpai daishabune (big ship of yokai?). The signal seems to be doing okay inside the elevator. Welcome to another new world.

14:16 John Daub: A world where you enter and you might not even come back because this is the threshold. From this point on, you are in the human world. And once we cross the threshold right here, you are entering the spiritual world. This is a world where people might not come back. Well, you'll come back. It's just I'm trying to build this up to make it really exciting. So yokai are like Japanese... I don't know how you would say. Some people say monsters, but they could be like, I don't know. They're not really bad. They're just scary. They're spiritual. And this is a yokai right here. And you're about to go into the Kadokawa Yokai Museum here. It is pretty cool. Let's go inside. Oh, I can feel the dead. The spiritual world. It's pretty creepy. I guess you could call it ghosts if that makes you feel comfortable. Whatever. But inside of here on the walls, as you go down this corridor, you can see all sorts of yokai. That is pretty creepy. Demons, yes, you could call these demons as well. Oh, look at the tongue coming out there. That's nasty. Oh, the creativity, though. Monsters lurking in all sorts of dark shadows.

16:03 John Daub: Look at that. That's not even a ghost. That's not even a head. That's like a hip. I hip sounds like something that a technology company making smartphones could call it the iHip. Oh, this is so creepy. Look at this. No face. Is that a girl or a boy? Whoa. You know, the good thing about seeing these kinds of images, it does inspire because a slit mouth inspires a new way of thinking because you haven't really seen monsters quite as creepy psychologically deep inside of your brain. Your psychosis. Are these monsters now? What they've done here is really creative. They've taken the history of yokai from all over Japan, all 47 prefectures here. This is starting with Hokkaido. These are the yokai of Hokkaido. That looks like me at the Noboribetsu Onsen Festival in February. There's one battling an octopus. But you see all sorts of really some of them are really creepy and some of them are pretty okay. I mean, I can hang out and have a drink with them. Not sure about this yokai, but some of them look pretty friendly.

17:26 John Daub: I mean, if the lights are on and there's a lot of people around, maybe, but not if I was alone in my bedroom and the lights were out, I would not want to meet her or him or it in the dark. You know what I mean? And if I pan around here, all 47 prefectures are represented here. It's kind of interesting. Just the other day I was in Tottori Prefecture and they have some yokai from over there, too. But some of these are actually in festivals and other events. They still celebrate these yokai. Look at this one here. It gets even creepier. You know, at first glance, it doesn't look anything weird. But the longer you look at it, the creepier it becomes. That's Tottori. Oh, Nara. Oh, that's Hyogo. There's Osaka. Kyoto has a lot of them because there's so many stories and tales from Kyoto going back centuries. So you'll see more yokai. Of course, the yokai is right there. But art is a little bit more interesting when it's a little bit creepy, don't you think? Nod your head if you agree.

19:20 John Daub: That's Aichi-ken right there. There's Shizuoka. Some of the yokai from Shizuoka. But it was really interesting when I heard this that all 47 prefectures have some sort of yokai to them. And that's really, really interesting. So the culture of yokai is not limited to just one particular area of Japan. Here's Kanagawa right here. You can see the yokai of Kanagawa. Which is really... Kanagawa is pretty creepy. What is that? I don't know. What do you guys think? No, thank you. Look at the poor geisha getting devoured by a hippo? I don't know. Let's keep going.

20:21 John Daub: Actually, I just made that up because I was in this room a little bit before. But when I turned the corner, I said, whoa. These are actual yokai that are in local festivals celebrated around Japan. And they have a video up here that shows these being used in practice. Kind of looks like almost like Burning Man, right? There they are making it up there. Very interesting. They've been doing this for hundreds and hundreds of years. And Burning Man is not that long. So this predates it. A little bit creepy. There's a lot of things in here that I'm not really sure what they are. This is from Indonesia, actually. This is one of the only things that comes from outside Japan, which is in itself deserving of a close-up. This is probably going to be scary for kids. So definitely bring them. Look at this thing. And you know, when you look at this, you start to think, is this real? Is this something that Indiana Jones dug up? Look at the horns in there. That is human. Or is it? So when you see the excavation of the yokai skulls, you really do start to believe that this stuff maybe it's not so much fiction. This is kind of real.

22:03 John Daub: Like, what's going on here? It's kind of creepy over here, right? Alright, let's keep on moving here. What is fact and what is fiction? What is real and what is not real? You have to start to ask yourself when you start to see excavated archaeological finds. Alright, inside of here is something pretty unique here. Let's go inside this room. What could go wrong? Whoa. This is creepy. Ah! So these could be things that are inside of your house. Just regular items that you would find in any sort of house. That is scary. This could be a tattoo. Kind of a spider coming out of the back of a beautiful woman. Or is it a woman at all? That, my friends, is a yokai. Okay, just be careful. Be careful with what you wish for. This beautiful woman is not a woman at all. It's a yokai. Look at the legs. Alright, so things may not... Things are not as they appear. But it's worth coming down here. You have to just take a look around here.

24:08 John Daub: Let's take a quick look in here. I just want to show you really quickly. I love that this is neat. It's kind of like a yokai festival going on in here. But it's a little dark. What you do inside of here is you pick up one of these trays here. And then when you get off course, you can see what's happening. Do you see this? But you need to have something white in order to see it. And you can walk around with this and search for a yokai. Let's just do this for a second here. They're doing some kind of parade here. So if you look, you'll find different things around here. Oh, there's something. Let's follow it. You can follow it around. So basically, this is a portal into the yokai world. You can't turn it upside down. You have to keep it flat in order to see what's going on. So it's kind of neat here. That's not a manhole. Very cool. I actually spent about 10 minutes in here searching for yokai. It's pretty creepy. Alright, let's continue.

25:44 John Daub: I don't want to go in here again. This one is really creepy. You dance. I don't want to dance. That there's Ruth. And Ruth... Wait, have you been the whole time here studying this dance? I see you've made a friend. You've got to go to the same speed. 3, 2, 1... Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. That was pretty good. Clint K knows Ruth as Hana's mom. Okay. I'm not going to laugh. What isn't making me laugh are these. Again, it's not that long before I go to bed, okay? These are not things that you want to have in your mind. The last thing before you sleep is this is not what it should be.

26:38 John Daub: Here's a typical everyday tatami room that you would see in an Edo-period con. Do you see a nice irori (sunken hearth) fire in the center there? But then if you look up, you have friends here that were not invited. In my room anyways. Zero Cool would invite them. Cool, I'll let them know. I'll let this head know. Hey, head. Zero Cool is cool with you going there. Just make your way to Zero Cool's house. But do not go to Florencia's house. She has not invited you. Stay away from Florencia. You are welcome in Finland anytime. Jardi has invited you. Oh, Jesus! Is that you? That is so creepy. That's like a scene from one of the James Bond movies where the statue comes to life. And that's about it. Very cool.

28:03 John Daub: Hey, Toro Toro Porco. Hello to Ruth and Cody S. Thank you. So there you go. I'm going to be here for a couple of days, today and tomorrow. And tomorrow is a ramen event that's taking place here. And my friend Cody, do you remember Cody from the live streams last week? Remember Cody from the live streams last week? He's coming over to Saitama to help me eat some of the ramen, which is going to be pretty cool. That's going to take place 10 a.m. tomorrow morning, moderators. So just so you know that. And we also have tonight. I think I'm going to take you out and look at some LED manhole covers. Okay. This place Tokorozawa in Saitama is very, very famous for having manhole covers, which I'm a fan of. I'm a manholer. But these manhole covers, they get LED lights in there. Why? I want to figure it out. I want to see the story. Again, another reason for you to come out to Tokorozawa and see this. Because again, if you look on the map, there wasn't anything here. Now there's a lot here. Very cool. Very cool indeed.

29:17 John Daub: Any questions? No? Leave comments in the comments below. And if you're interested in coming, I put a map in the description. You can come here and check it out. It is finally open. The grand opening was delayed a little bit because of the pandemic. And now it is open. And guess what? I'm the only one here because we're closed. And they're going to be turning off the lights. And I don't want that to happen because I know what's inside of here. And it is kind of creepy. Have a good day, everybody. See you in the next live stream. Probably in a couple of hours. Oh, and hit that like button.