00:00:01 John Daub: That was pretty crazy. So I started a live stream that I could not enter into because we took these bicycles, these ones up here with Sano-san, who's a professional bicycle racer, up into the mountains. And guess what happened? There was no signal. And we were trapped up there. We could not escape. He's already ready to go home.

00:00:27 John Daub: We have something to introduce to you. So those of you who have been waiting, how long do you think they've been waiting? Yeah, forever. So this happened here. So Dean and I, we were trapped up here, and we couldn't escape from the situation. We actually jumped from a bridge, and they gave me a certification. And Dean said that they should cross off the word bravery because apparently I screamed like a girl. Is that right? Well, the good thing is that they're going to get to see that, right?

00:01:09 Dean Newcomb: Nobody should ever see me screaming like a girl. No, they already have. They saw my butt screaming in an ice festival.

00:01:16 John Daub: Yeah, I think he went like one level beyond that. So all the screams that I heard in that festival, it was like the next level. Was that the manliest scream you've ever heard?

00:01:27 Dean Newcomb: Yeah. Men can scream.

00:01:30 John Daub: Okay, never mind the scream. This is a different issue. Today, we're going to be introducing you to the bicycles. And talking about bicycles, we're bicycling around Mount Fuji. Now, these bicycles, you can get these bicycles from Fuji City, right? At the Shin Fuji Station? Yeah, you can get right off the Shinkansen (bullet train) and get on one of these bikes. And I thought this was a really cool idea to bring to you because I know you can't come to Japan right now, but I think this is a pretty cool idea because these bikes have so much power. The battery is inside that thing. And the name of this company is Merida, right? So Merida is actually a sponsor of Sano-san, right? So Merida, you have a Merida bicycle. This, everybody, is Sano-san. Sano-san is a professional bicycle rider. And yes, that is Mount Fuji in the background right there. 3,776 meters of beauty. And this is Sano-san's truck.

00:02:23 John Daub: Sano-san, which one is Sano-san? All of them? That is all Sano-san. That is all him. Is this high school Sano-san? High school Sano-san? Olympian Sano-san? This is Kyono-san. Yeah, this is the Kyono-Sano-san. There's many of Sano-san's. And this is the original Sano-san. This is Mask Sano-san right now. The real one.

00:02:51 John Daub: Thank you, Nosh Abroad. Maybe next time don't jump off a perfectly good bridge. Yeah, we were kind of asking ourselves that question. Actually, you know what was scarier? Being late for this live stream was scarier than actually jumping off of the bridge. I was thinking of all of you guys waiting and I'm really sorry about that.

00:03:11 Sano-san: So Sano-san, you live in Shizuoka, right? Yes, that's right.

00:03:16 John Daub: Where do you practice? And why do you run around here in Fuji City?

00:03:23 Sano-san: This place is close to the mountains. And you can run on the river with your bike. The scenery is nice. It's very easy for us to run around.

00:03:34 John Daub: He likes to ride around here because there's lots of rivers and ride along the rivers and good views of this. That's, you know, if you're going to be training, Mount Fuji is where you would train for bicycles because there are many uphill paths, right? Many, many uphill. Yeah, we say uphill is sakamichi (uphill road), right?

00:03:57 Sano-san: So how many kilometers do you run every week?

00:04:02 Sano-san: Every week... Yes, 300 to 400 kilometers.

00:04:06 John Daub: 300 kilometers per week. It's amazing. Actually, we wanted to take you up there to the mountains, to the waterfall. And it had a lot more information and scenery. And it was a much better place to do a live stream. It's just there was zero signal. And I actually asked if there's a signal and everybody said yes. And guess what? Dean, there was no signal. We're showing you instead in front in a parking lot, which is even better, right? Because hanging out in the parking lot is awesome. This is a pretty cool van.

00:04:46 Dean Newcomb: Do you want to see the bike? Do you want to compare the bike? Let's take a look.

00:04:49 John Daub: The bike looks really high. Dean, try to pick that up. Is it that light? Or are you just that strong?

00:05:01 Dean Newcomb: One pinky.

00:05:05 John Daub: Oh, you had to take the water off. That's not fair. Ready? Hup! Oh, my word.

00:05:14 Dean Newcomb: Hold on. Let me... I got to see if I can do that. I can do it. 7.5 kilograms? I did it. Both tires. No, impossible. How did you get your fingers so strong?

00:05:27 Dean Newcomb: I have strong fingers.

00:05:31 John Daub: Strong fingers. But that's a light... This is 7 kilograms... You know, that's... There's a carbon fiber frame.

00:05:40 Sano-san: Yes, yes. Carbon fiber frame. But rear wheel is aluminum. But from this car, it's carbon.

00:05:51 John Daub: So, your training is speed, right?

00:05:55 Sano-san: Speed.

00:05:57 John Daub: How many kilometers per hour is the fastest?

00:06:00 Sano-san: When I was in the race... In Spain... 100 kilometers.

00:06:04 John Daub: He went 100 kilometers per hour in race in Spain. Was it downhill?

00:06:14 Sano-san: Yes, it's downhill.

00:06:15 John Daub: Holy... Oh, my gosh. Wow. I've been with a pro cyclist before riding and doing a downhill stretch. And I went about 55 kilometers per hour. And I was so scared. It's scary, isn't it? 100 kilometers per hour.

00:06:29 Sano-san: But for me, today's bungee jump is more scary.

00:06:32 John Daub: He did the bungee jump too. Bungee jump was scarier than going down 100 kilometers down a hill in Spain. And more hard. Because 100 kilometers... And you're... You have to keep yourself safe, right? You can't just throw yourself off a bridge. But you believe in bicycles, right? You can trust them, right? You're using your bicycle well. The bicycle is like an extension of your body when you're riding it as a professional. Just like a knife is to a chef.

00:07:01 John Daub: So you believe in this. But today, I couldn't trust bungee jump. That's why it's scary, right? I didn't trust the bungee. And in fact, I backed away and tried to get out of it. And Dean made fun of me until I kept going. Dean, you would have kicked me, wouldn't you?

00:07:13 Dean Newcomb: We did rock, paper, scissors to see who would go first. And I lost, but I still went first. Out of pity for you. I pity the fool.

00:07:24 John Daub: So, Sano-san. Fuji-san... So, the viewers... You speak English, right?

00:07:31 Sano-san: Just a little bit.

00:07:32 John Daub: A little bit of English? So, if the viewers... If the tourists want to go around Mt. Fuji, how long does it take?

00:07:46 Sano-san: One round? Around Mt. Fuji? About... Six or seven... A day... Hour. Seven hours. Eight hours.

00:08:06 John Daub: So, it takes about six to eight hours. Our speed? Nine hours. But if it's ten hours... If it's summer, you'd be able to get around it, right? This is something that I really think we should try to do, Dean. You can go around Mt. Fuji on a bicycle in... Sano-san, in maybe five hours.

00:08:29 Sano-san: Really? If you work hard.

00:08:30 John Daub: If you work hard, he can go around Mt. Fuji in five hours. Dean and I can probably do it in ten. We'll take these electric bikes and do one lap. And Sano-san will do two laps on the... That's a race! And a race, yeah. I would totally... Sano-san does two laps... We do one lap and Sano-san does two laps and see who does it first. Many, many uphill. It's better than e-bike. The e-bike is gonna do it, yeah. How many kilometers? Small circuit. 120 km. 120 kilometers to go around it once. You want more? About 150 or 160 km. If we want more voluntarily, okay. So that would be more for people who are like cycle hobbyists and have experience of riding that much. Because anything more than 100 km in a day is quite a long way.

00:09:26 Sano-san: If you get lost, how many hours is it? If you lose your way, how many hours is it? Maybe never. One hour.

00:09:43 John Daub: Well, the point is like... I think that this is a pretty interesting thing that you could do. You can rent the bicycles. These batteries last about... Sano-san, how many hours does it take to charge the battery?

00:09:56 Sano-san: To charge? It takes about 2-3 hours to fully charge.

00:10:00 John Daub: Yeah, so if you do it on high power, you get about 3 hours of it. So you probably can't do the whole day on that. You want to do eco mode. Eco mode takes 10 hours, right? Maybe. But maybe you can plug it in. What I like about these batteries is that they have like... Is it a USB charger looking thing here? So you can charge it while you're eating lunch maybe. But uphill, Dean and I were riding this. It's so heavy, but uphill, you feel like you're like a feather going up this thing with it on there. And the system here, you turn it on and it was pretty... It's quite a nice modern setup, isn't it? I actually really liked it. There's a light here and then this button will control if it's on high normal or eco. And then the more you use the battery, the faster, of course, it's going to die out. And if the battery dies, then it's... It's so heavy. It's really, really hard.

00:11:02 Dean Newcomb: Should I try?

00:11:04 John Daub: Dude, you cannot do it. I'll let you use your thumb. How about that?

00:11:07 Dean Newcomb: Let me try. Okay, one hand. Oh, you're just showing off. I can't even do it. I couldn't do it with two arms probably.

00:11:14 John Daub: It's more than 20 kilos. It's a completely different bike. Are you just showing off? You're just showing off. Should I do reps? Oh, gosh. We love you, Dean. So basically, you can ride around here. And I want to try to give you some more information. The reason why it's a little bit challenging is, there aren't many convenience stores around here, right? In the middle of the circuit. But there are some stores around here. Okay, so there are convenience stores, and I think this is really important. There's many places along the circuit. Probably, there's no convenience stores around here, right? Like 10 km, 20 km. Of course, there are. And there are telephones all the time, right? Except for the place we were at. That's the problem. There are also places where there is no phone signal. So that was a little bit scarier. Guess what? We found one of them doing this stream before.

00:12:17 John Daub: So actually, we have here in Fuji City has set up courses where you can go around on these bicycles. There's also a tea course or T circuit, right? So a green tea circuit. What does this circuit look like? Of course, the field. The tea field. And in the back, in the distance, you can see Mt. Fuji. Yeah. So we wanted to actually bring you part of the circuit, but there was no signal. Of course, you know, you can see up here, there's Mt. Fuji right behind us. You see that right there? So whenever you're riding the bicycles, you have this beautiful view of Mt. Fuji everywhere you go. I have to tell you right now, like if you're coming to, when you're coming to Japan and you want to see Mt. Fuji, just renting a bicycle, taking it out, and then going all over the city of Fuji, it's kind of an experience in itself. To spend the whole day doing it is awesome. Because every single angle, Mt. Fuji is everywhere. You look up, it's there. Just like, look, I'm looking up. It's there. You see it? It's there.

00:13:23 John Daub: Yeah, the good thing about Fuji is it's quite close to the ocean, right? So the difference between Shimizu Bay and Fuji, you know, it just goes up that 3,776 meters. I remember 76 because that, 1776 was the year that we defeated your country and gained our independence, Dean.

00:13:42 Dean Newcomb: Huh?

00:13:45 John Daub: English. They don't understand what we're talking about. No idea. Revolutionary War. Did that happen? King George, how dare you. Look, no taxation without representation or we're going to dump your tea in the harbor.

00:13:55 Dean Newcomb: No, the harbour.

00:13:58 John Daub: All right? The harbour. I'm bringing back old wounds. Although none of us was alive. We don't know what we're talking about. Yes. Now we're allies now. My eyes are supposed to be in there. Bloodshot from the bungee jump. So I'm going to try to take you maybe tomorrow and show you a little bit more about the bicycles if we have a chance and find a signal. But some of the locations in Fuji City are pretty interesting. You can go all the way to the seaside where there's an amazing fish market.

00:14:24 Dean Newcomb: You're going to the fish market tomorrow, right? Fish market. You're not going?

00:14:30 John Daub: I'm not going. Tomorrow to the fish market. Oh, I wanted to go to the fish market. Shirasu (baby sardines)? I told the harbour. Oh, too bad. So we can't go. But you can go to the fish market with the bicycles and start from the ocean and then go all the way up to the fifth station of Fuji, right? So you could take the bikes and go all the way up to the fifth station maybe and these... The batteries should get you. The batteries should be able to get you to the top and then back down.

00:14:58 Sano-san: You don't need it.

00:15:00 John Daub: You could probably just coast it. Oh, it's so much fun. I've done that. I've actually just driven up with my bike and just free wheeled down Fuji. So that's really interesting. So I think to go from the sea to there... And Dean told me something really interesting. We want to leave you with one piece of interesting information.

00:15:20 Dean Newcomb: You say it. I don't remember.

00:15:21 John Daub: Take the bottle of water to Shimizu Bay where the ocean is. Scoop up a bottle of water. You can take the bike because you have the bike now. We cycle up Fuji to the fifth station. Climb up to the top of Fuji when it's in season. Not now. Pour your water on the top. And so I've heard it will take a thousand years for that same water to get all the way down through the groundwater table and back to the ocean. So I think that's a really nice thing. From the top of Mount Fuji? Yeah. Okay. So you have to climb it. So you have to climb it as well. That would be a pretty good episode to do.

00:15:55 John Daub: I did this. I tried to do this once before. But with... I had a Kilimanjaro coffee from a vending machine. Georgia Kilimanjaro 5050. It's good, right? And then I took that Kilimanjaro coffee. I took the Trans Mongolian Railroad from Beijing to Moscow. I went all the way from Japan overland to Africa. And then I climbed Kilimanjaro. And then on the top of Kilimanjaro, I drank the Georgia 5050 Kilimanjaro coffee. But I couldn't drink it. Because it was frozen. It was frozen. I didn't think about that. Three months I carried this stupid can of coffee. And I got to the top and I couldn't drink it, which is my goal. I tried to lick it. I didn't want to lick anything when you're up there, Dean. You know, it's like 6,000 meters. The roof of Africa, they call it.

00:16:51 Dean Newcomb: So probably your little water thing isn't going to work.

00:16:54 John Daub: It's going to work. Crystallize. It will be like, you know, five degrees, two degrees. It won't be mine. No. It's going to be. It's sometimes actually night. Maybe minus.

00:17:09 Dean Newcomb: Minus.

00:17:09 John Daub: Okay. So all they have to do is wait until it's daytime and they'll be fine. You know what's going to take 1,000 years, Dean, for that water to melt. Okay. There's still snow up there in the middle of summer. It's true. It's very clear now, though, isn't it?

00:17:21 Sano-san: Yes, it is.

00:17:22 John Daub: Did you hear that it has snow on the other side? Because this is the south side. So from Shizuoka, they get the clear view without the snow. And then from the Yamanashi side, you can see snow on the mountain. I believe that's quite cool. I believe that the great thing about this bicycle ride, too, if you are a foreign resident of Japan and we do have this Go To campaign, which has kind of been canceled, we don't know what the future is going to be. But coming down here, renting the bicycles, there's really nobody out there. You can social distance all day long. There's nobody really out there on some of these paths. The road that we came on, we saw like a few trucks or something, a lot of green tea fields. And I thought that that was really cool. I had a chance to drink some of the green tea. Just I didn't enjoy it because I knew there was about, you know, several hundred people waiting for me. I was quite stressed. As I said, like waiting, knowing that you guys are waiting was scarier than the bungee jump like I had to say.

00:18:15 John Daub: I'm going to take some of your questions really quickly here. Sorry to keep you waiting. Raymond Centeno, please show the bungee jump footage will be shared one day. Screaming included it will. If John doesn't do it, I will steal the footage from him.

00:18:29 Dean Newcomb: No, you will not sneak. I scream. Scream alone was really, really bad.

00:18:33 John Daub: In fact, if you are a Patreon supporter or you are an insider, I will show you the footage tonight as just a promise. OK, like I got to edit this up. I will show you the footage tonight on the computer. If you are a patron support, I can't share it to everybody. I need a firewall. I will show you tonight. So insiders and travelers, I'll share the link with you. I'm not going to keep this private. I don't want everybody to see it. It's really bad, Dean.

00:18:56 Dean Newcomb: I love it. Really? You did. And you played it twice.

00:19:01 John Daub: He's a camera. Raymond. Yes, we'll do this. It's Mario's Challenge Adventures. Nice seeing you again, John. Use this for another job. Good night. Vaughn writes in here. We need someone like Dean in our life.

00:19:13 Dean Newcomb: I'm here, man. Thanks.

00:19:16 John Daub: You're going to have to come over here to Japan, Vaughn. And we'd love to bring you some Tim Tams. Tina Smith's here. Mike D. Have an ice cold Pocari Sweat. I'd like one of them right now. Actually, we could use a drink. Is there a vending machine here? I'm a little confused. I want to drink a vending machine. Michael Sassano. Here's a fun to start the bungee jump. How about one to end the bungee jump? I don't want to do this again, Michael. Everyone's really kind. Young HQ. Welcome, traveler. Young HQ, watch tonight. The live stream. I will show. Nosh Abroad, don't do it. And Brenda McSee, how's it going? Nosh, thanks so much for holding down the fort to all of our moderators, too. Food Loaf. Thank you, Food Loaf.

00:19:53 John Daub: So I'll try to show you some of these bicycles again tomorrow. And again, this is Sano-san's amazing bicycle. And Sano-san, will you be in the Olympics next year? Will you participate in the Olympics?

00:20:05 Sano-san: I will participate in the Olympics on the side of the mill.

00:20:08 John Daub: Sano-san will be participating as a spectator watching the cycling for the Olympics. That's good. I'll be cheering him on, cheering on the other race contestants. Thanks, everybody for watching. I thought this was kind of interesting. If you're thinking of coming to Fuji City, those bicycles are available for rental at Shin Fuji Station, which is just there. Very cool, right? That's the best rental bike I've ever seen anywhere.

00:20:31 Dean Newcomb: You're just saying that? No. Have you ever seen a rental bike that's in that good condition? Well, they're new. They're brand new. And normally you get a mamachari (mom's bike) or something. This bike will actually get you where you go. That's a pretty cool rental bike.

00:20:46 Sano-san: Eh, rental is expensive, right?

00:20:48 Sano-san: Cheap. It's cheap. Maybe. Maybe cheap. This is maybe cheap.

00:20:57 John Daub: I'll find this information out for you. Maybe cheap. Cheaper than a car. Maybe cheap. Yes. Cheaper than renting a car. Yeah. But it's more than a can of coffee. Georgia, Kilimanjaro 5050 frozen at the top. Dean, I'm telling you, your idea won't work. Thanks, everybody for watching. We're going to go watch the sunset and try to film that. Maybe I'll do it live. I can't make any promises. But enjoy the last couple seconds looking at Mount Fuji. You're here with us. I'll do another livestream tomorrow for sure. And maybe tonight. Is it time for midnight snack? I don't know. I'm kind of hungry. Have a good day, everybody.