00:03 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Akita Prefecture. Look at that tōdai (lighthouse) in the distance. This area is called Nyudozaki and it's on Oga Hanto (Oga Peninsula). Oga Hanto is a peninsula in Akita. How you doing everybody? I hope you're doing well. It is a pretty unusually warm day in Akita, usually in the winter. It is very, very cold and there's loads of snow, but as you can see around me, there's just a little bit patches of it here. Right there you can see a little bit of snow, not a lot. And that's the Sea of Japan behind me. And it's a beautiful day to be here.

00:41 John Daub: And I'm so happy I got on the Shinkansen this morning. Some of you might have watched me get an ekiben and make my way with a minute to spare onto the Shinkansen. And I've come here. And tonight at 6pm, I'm going to be taking you, if you're still awake, to the Namahage Sedo Festival. And this festival, this matsuri (festival), is so incredible. They've limited the tickets to, I don't know, roughly a thousand people or so that are invited. And I think it's pretty nice because so many of the festivals have been cancelled. This is one that's still taking place and they've invited me, so I'm pretty excited.

01:15 John Daub: But before that, I wanted to bring you here. This is a restaurant that usually caters to tourists and sometimes locals will come here too, I think. But because at this time of year, they don't actually make this. They make this cuisine, but they do serve it. And you see that in front on that sign? That is what they would call yaki-ishi cuisine or hot rock cuisine. And they basically take a hot rock or stone from this area. And there's a story behind it. And then they put it in there and that's how they cook it. And whatever's inside that tub meets a violent end. And that's what you're going to see today. So I hope you're excited. As excited as I am. I'm stoked to see violent hot rock soup cooking.

02:06 John Daub: And the master of the restaurant is very nice and has allowed us to film inside. And I'm with some friends. So let's open the door and come inside. Welcome to this nice restaurant. Hey, Jennifer Santos is excited. If Jennifer's excited, so am I. Alright, these are the dishes that are lined up for us. And you can see inside of the kitchen. It's like there's something good going on in there.

02:52 John Daub: I'm not sure exactly where the hot rocks are. Is there a stone? Can I go inside? But you can see, they're over there. Oh, there it is, there it is. There's the hot rocks. I can see them. Wow. They're right now jacked up the heat. And you can see those rocks. Now those rocks that you see there in the distance that are going to be put into the, into those, these wooden buckets in the foreground. They're going to be meeting a soup inside there. There's a stone in there. I can see it now. And those rocks actually are special rocks called kana-ishi. And they're from this region of here in Oga Hanto. And they cannot, apparently by law, be taken away from this area. And they're a very special rock for Oga Hanto.

04:03 John Daub: And so we're going to be having this very mystical rock as the catalyst to heat our lunch. And there's some things right there boiling away. It's interesting. This is a massive kitchen. In Tokyo, the kitchens are nowhere near this size. I wanted to introduce you to the team at the Akita Inaka School. How you doing everybody? Good. Yeah.

04:35 Akita Inaka School team: So they're going to be traveling with me for the next 48 hours or so. Do you want to introduce yourself? Jiko shōkai (self-introduction). English. English-de. Hello. I'm a Japanese teacher. Nice to meet you. Hello. My name is Sayaka. I, take me to Japan. Yay. Tom. Tom, one more. Yes. Hi, I'm Yuji. Japanese language teacher. Nice to meet you. Hi. I'm John. I'm your, your humble correspondent here.

05:12 John Daub: So I'm happy to have them along on the, for the ride and they're going to be able to explain some things that I have no idea what it all is. So you can see they're going to be bringing this, this plate over, this tray over and I guess there's a soup. There's some pickles here that look like dessert. Oh no, not this. This is something that I don't like to eat. It's like, like this fermented squid dish. You know who would hate this? Shane. I don't even know if he's awake. Canadian Shane. He hates anything fishy. This would totally creep him out. Totally creep him out. Hisako loves it. That's weird. Hisako, you're weird. It's like, I love it.

06:02 John Daub: Um, you can see the menu up here. Check it out. Sasara soba [?], ramen, kani ramen right here. So this is crab ramen. This is normal ramen. That's a really cheap. It's about $6. $6 for a ramen here. Uni ramen, which is sea urchin ramen is $15. So when you add in the fresh uni or sea urchin, it really elevates the price to like almost three times. And if you can see over here, they just basically catch it from the sea and bring it straight in here.

06:35 John Daub: I know Ronald, this is hot rock ramen. And you can see here's the owner, some of the pictures he has here. He's the one who was explaining to me a little bit about the cuisine. And I asked him about the law saying that you cannot transport these hot rocks out of Oga Hanto. And he says, yes, it's true. They will arrest you. Nothing good comes if you do decide to take the rock out of Oga Hanto.

07:08 John Daub: Ah, you made a hit though. Yeah. Look, owners met a lot of famous people. It's the first time he's meeting John, the YouTuber. Maybe one day I will have my photo on this wall of fame. And tonight at 6pm, we will be seeing those monsters. One blue, one red. There's a story behind it. And at 6pm all shall be revealed. Probably. I just know it's a bigger one over there, but we do have tickets, right? Ticket. We don't have the tickets. We forgot the ticket. We'll find the tickets. We can print out new ones. It's called contraband. Whoa. That's what it looks like. We're going to have these dudes dressed up attacking us. I guess they take the little children from the village to the mountain and cook them. I don't know the legend. So what do they do with the little children? They see a lot of questions, but it's apparently quite amazing festival.

08:29 John Daub: And you can see, this is what we're going to be watching tonight. There's fire. There's monsters. There's mayhem. There's taiko drumming. There's just an amazing festival. And because of the pandemic, we're limited to a certain amount of people that can come and one of the people that are gonna be here to bring you the story, and we're going to see this happening. But after lunch, because right now, we're moments away from having these hot rocks coming in. And totally destroy. It's a violent end to a soup. That looks so grim. So good it does look pretty good. I'm getting hungry. That ekiben that I ate this morning was about five hours ago so I am getting a little bit hungry.

09:17 John Daub: You have some questions you can ask in the comments below. I will put chapter lists in here so you can skip around and just get right to the food if you want to. This is such a popular or famous part of Japanese cuisine, regional Japanese cuisine. This ishiaki, just to be called iso yaki but they change it to ishiaki because it was easier for the tourists. And you know again like they don't make this kind of cuisine like at this season. This is out of season but I'm glad that they still have it on the menu to show so they prepared five of them for us now. They would actually the fishermen so this cuisine has a tale behind it and I can tell you this tale before we get the food because I'm just gonna focus in on this massive rock boiling everything.

10:06 John Daub: So they wouldn't now they cook it in these wooden buckets okay but before that the reason why the tale goes that the fishermen would get bring the fish and they would have they'd have their soup but they needed to heat it up so they would take the hot rocks and just these like kana-ishi or these actual lava rocks they come from the ground it's from the volcanic activity. This is a very volcanic area. Oga Hanto has actually had an imploded volcano a hundred thousand years ago that made kind of a lake here. It's weird. We're very unusual island but they took these rocks they would heat them up and then they would find like places in the rocks along the coast that look like pots. If you just walk around sometimes you'll find like these areas in the rocks that look like they've been dug out a little bit and they put all the ingredients in these holes in the rocks along the coast then they would take these yaki-ishi or this kana-ishi these hot lava rocks they're very special rocks and then they would put it into those holes with all the ingredients in it and boil it and cook it and then they would eat out of the rock on the coast. How cool is that it's like a picnic that's perfect.

11:20 John Daub: But that tradition continues but in wooden buckets because who wants to eat on the coast like I don't know it's kind of could be a little dirty out there. But it was an amazing story in any case. I'd actually like to try that the old way. But this is the way the fishermen ate it. It's crude. It's violent. It's everything you want your food to be. Just all boiled together. Imagine all those juices. Now, the hot rock is so darn hot that apparently the meat of the shrimp and the fish, it tightens up really quickly. It's not a slow cook. No. This is like a violent, quick, and then the meat is usually pretty tough. This is what I've been told by internet sources. The great thing is that we can have this filmed five times. It's five people, five times.

12:55 John Daub: Okay, so this is what it looks like. And that looks really good. That looks so healthy. Oh, wow. There's some fish. There's some negi (green onion) in there, some seaweed. There's a shrimp. And they're going to put that hot rock in there. That is a massive miso soup. What do you call this purple slime? Shiokara? Yeah, I'm not really into that. Someone want to eat mine? You can keep the purple slime.

13:32 John Daub: I'm going to be sitting here. All right, here they come. She's got it. It's a tough job. Hello, mama. Look at that. There's a lot of seafood in there. On the side here, we got a bowl of rice. We got a bowl of rice. Purple slime with fermented squid. Very nice. Orange. Where are you going? Here? It's dangerous. Okay, run, run. Next. Whoa. Turn that way. Look at that. That's my soup. Dudes. I'm going to sit here. It smells good. It's so good. It's good? It's good. Thank you. You're so cute. Thank you. Eat this. Yes. Do you realize this is a thorn? Yeah. Do you realize thorns? With thorns. Wow. How long is it going to boil for? Forever. I believe that actually. Getting hungry. Violent soup. Look at it! It's still boiling! How long is it gonna boil for? Can you eat the rock? Why would I ask that question? I know the answer.

15:57 John Daub: We hope you will try it. Hey Dom. Wow. So this is a kana-ishi they call it. And this hot rock is... Now all the ingredients were not cooked. It's right now just totally obliterating anything that was inside there. Just gonna see how hot it is. It's hot. It's hot. Don't do that. Do not touch the rock. It's that hot. Do it. Do it with your tongue. Alright. No thank you. Oh my. Alright. It's starting to simmer down a little bit. Wow. But you can see all that violence from the heat has really added some froth onto the top of it. Um. Wow. This is a lot of fun. I think all foods should have a violent end to it like this.

17:13 John Daub: Now. After you've seen this amazing rock cuisine. Ishiaki cuisine. We have to try it. We have to eat it. And this means this is gonna be a verdict. And right now it looks and smells amazing. It's still boiling. Like can we still eat this? Should we wait till it stops completely? Or. Can I wait? Itadakimasu. I think you removed the rock. Or no? You took the bowl. Kono mama. So just to show you the rock looks like this. And it's still sizzling. It came out and was hissing at me. You can just put it in the stone. Can I just put it in the stone? It's okay. Amazing. This is gonna get in the way. Wow. The rock. How good is your chopstick skills? Can you pick a big rock out of it with the chopsticks? How strong is your chopstick skills? Cause this is like a good 2-3 kilograms. That looks like my Japanese skills. That is so heavy. That was good. Try picking up anything this heavy with chopsticks. It is a complete test of your strength. Of these three fingers here. One, two, three, four. Four fingers. Sorry.

19:21 John Daub: Alright. Let's get in here. Now I'm already finding some amazing stuff in the soup. Check it out. Wow. So what do we got here? So we got a shrimp here that is actually really tough. I can already feel the volume of it. What is that? You got a full fish head in yours. That's not fair. I don't have a fish head in mine. Why do you get the fish head? You have a fish head? No, you have two. Everybody's got a fish head. That's good. Maybe I have one in here. Alright. I'm not sure what we have. Hey. Oh, I do. Whoa. That is slightly... What you're saying is vegetarians will not like this. No. Maybe not. Imagine bringing your vegan friend here and discovering this in your soup. To the side here. Oh, so you take the head out and put it in the bowl. You're heading into a new direction. Thank you. See you later. Take the head out and put it in the bowl.

21:10 John Daub: Alright. So I guess we can also take some of the other stuff and put it in the bowl. And then we can eat from the bowl. Wow. It's just basically just a day. He just butchered the fish. He didn't even cut just three pieces of fish. That's amazing. It's just the full fish is in there. That is so cool. I guess fishermen really were lazy back then. It's like, oh, we're not going to cut it. And he's going to... But he's been cutting in two pieces. Yeah. Two cuts and that's it. Wow. It is so hot. Look at the meat on this. Mmm. What's the name of this fish? Madai. Madai. In English, madai. There's no English to this fish. Tai. It is hot. Madai. The rock. I'm not going to burn my mouth. Back home, S. If you put it in here, it's lit. Oh, it's still hot. How many seconds can you touch the rock? One, two, three. You can feel it there. So it's still pretty hot. And it looks like the rock has cracked. And apparently on my sources, the internet, says that the rock will crack after three times of being heated. So you can recycle these rocks and use it again. But after the third time, I guess they go back to where they came from.

23:22 John Daub: Wow, this is so good. Some vegetables in here. Mmm. Yeah. So good. Mmm. Very good. There's not a lot of tourism going on here. So the parking lot is really empty. And, you know, I do like supporting local businesses. And it's nice to be here and be able to eat some good local cuisine. Because we can't get this in Tokyo. Can we? You can't bring the rock to Tokyo. Yeah. That's true. If you can't bring the rock to Tokyo, you can't make this. Therefore, you can only eat this. That's probably one reason why they have that rule. Or law. If you take it, you end up becoming part of the soup yourself one day. At the Namahage Festival. Yeah. This fish is really good. And the meat, the way it's cooked, the meat just comes right off of the bones. It just falls right off. I love that.

24:53 John Daub: So, Akita Prefecture is up in Tohoku. It's on the Sea of Japan side. By Shinkansen, it takes almost four hours, three and a half hours to get here. And the train stops at Sendai, Morioka, and Omagari, and Akita. It might have stopped at Kakunodate as well. But it's a pretty comfortable ride. There were only six people on the Shinkansen coming up here. And I came here on the JR East Tohoku Welcome Pass. This one here. If you've never seen it before. Boom. So, this allows me three days of unlimited travel in Tohoku Shinkansen. Starting today until the 14th. You gotta tell them the date in advance. But that's a pretty cheap price. Because the ticket would have cost me 18,000 yen to come up here. So, it's pretty cheap.

26:02 John Daub: Wow. Alright, I'm gonna try now a dish that I don't like. Which is purple slime. If you'd like some purple slime, click the like button. No, no, no. Don't do that. Just click it anyways. But that's an ocean in motion. That's not actually a lot. So, this is squid. And, um... Oh, I'm not, you know... I'm not a fan, but... I know some older people who are. Oh. Oh. Oh, that means... It tastes too bad. I love it. It's like one of these things you love it or hate it. I'm starting to turn red from the... You are my enemy. If I eat it enough, perhaps I'll gradually start to like it. That happened with natto. Mmm. It tastes like Windex. Like, I'm sure it's... Anything that tastes like this has to be healthy. Or else no one would eat it. I mean, do you eat it for just the flavor? Oh, I like some, you know... Not me, but... Fermented squid slime. Yeah, squid and the... The niso inside. Oh, is this the niso that it is? Oh, really? With sauce. Oh. But you like this? I like it. You love it? Is it in your ranking top five, would you say? Yeah, I... What? I hope. You hope. So... This is top five in your... So nice with rice. So nice with rice. Sounds like a song. Everybody else likes it.

28:39 John Daub: I think if I move to Akita after one month, I will just be... I'll be making this homemade in my house. Yes. Yeah. Hey Kanae, what's for dinner? Purple slime. Shrimp slime. Just the way you like it. Extra fermented. This is also... In Tokyo. Oh. I know. Everywhere. Even in convenience. Really? You can get the pink slime at convenience stores. 7-Eleven. Really? If I knew this... Why aren't my friends Tabi Eats doing this? All right? Why aren't my friends eating... They always eat like bread and all these normal foods. Try some of the foods that they're not gonna like, huh? Unless maybe they do. Convenience store bakery goods, come on. Go for the slime. The rice is great. The rice is good. Good. Akita Komachi rice. It's good stuff.

29:57 John Daub: All right. Do you have any questions about this soup? I'm happy to answer it. There's not a lot of vegetables in it. I notice it's mostly just the fish because back in the olden days, which is like, I don't know, before the tourists came here, I guess the fishermen just ate fish. So they didn't put many vegetables in here. There's no carrots or onions. Just miso soup. Miso, by the way, is a fermented like a bean paste, soybean paste, and it's quite good. There's different kinds of miso too. That in itself is a new, totally different episode. Yum. Champon Neng Sumo writes in, I want daikon. Yeah, daikon would be pretty good too.

31:03 John Daub: So there you have it. It's about 1:30 right now. And at 6 PM, we're going to be at the Namahage Sedo Festival, matsuri. And I'm going to bring you with me because you cannot come because you're living probably in another country. So of course you cannot be here. But if you are watching this, I'm going to bring you with me. If you're watching this channel, you will be here and get a chance to share with the experience. I'm going to tell you a little bit about the history of that festival at the festival. But it's pretty lively and there's not a lot of good videos on this I saw on YouTube. So I'll try to get something better than 720p, but that's the format that we have for the live streaming. But I think you're going to feel some of that energy by watching it live. So if you're still up at 6 PM Japan Standard Time, which is like 4 AM New York, 1 AM California. You Californians might want to be up, right? You some Californians get a brewski and join us.

32:07 John Daub: You should mix this with your favorite food. Oh, really? Oh, you just want me to go back for some more slime? No, I don't. No, no, no, no. This one. You wanted me to put it in the slime. No, that's a misunderstanding. It's a misunderstanding. All right, so it's this one. What is this? This is a kind of a seaweed here. This was buried underneath the orange. This is a kind of a seaweed. Not a fan? Is it your top five? Bottom five. Right away, I know that it's from the sea. You know, it's interesting because you would think that this is a sea. There is no need to be delicious. It's just reliably flavor- increases the flavor. There's almost no flavor. You need this, this sweet sauce to add a little bit of saltiness to it. And by the way, you some of you people you don't put soy sauce on your rice. That's not a topping. All right, soy sauce is not a topping. It's strange. So when you could remember my mom did that. She got a bowl of rice and she goes, Oh, soy sauce since just put it on there. What are you doing? You just corrupted the rice.

33:34 John Daub: I don't know. I was just shocked. Like I had my friends from France for visiting and they did that too. They go, oh, rice. And they just took the soy sauce and they just poured it all over the rice. Like, why would you do that? The French way. Um, actually we have very few French viewers, so I don't think anyone's going to be offended. And if you are, let me know. That's the way you eat your rice. Um, very good. This is an extremely interesting meal. And, um, if you have any questions about it, leave a comment down below. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to be at the Akita Inaka School, um, which is about an hour away from here. More than two hours away from here. We have a long drive. And tomorrow morning, we're going to take a look at a Japanese school. So if you're interested in learning about Japanese schools here in Japan, the Akita Inaka School probably is one of the top options because I don't think you can really pick up Japanese in the city just because there's a lot of other distractions, a lot of other foreigners.

34:38 Akita Inaka School team: I think if you come out here, there's nowhere to go. I mean, there's places to go, but there's nowhere where you can, um, I guess it would be like total immersion. Is that the case? Or do people come here just for the experience too? So... Well, basically nobody speaks English. And everyone is so friendly that whether you like it or not, you will start speaking Japanese.

35:10 John Daub: That's a good pitch. So we'll learn more about this tomorrow. Um, and I'm really curious because I actually have never been to a Japanese school. I learned everything, um, raw. Somebody said that this word means something different. I learned it raw dog and I don't even know what that means. I just heard it used once. I thought it just meant with no, just on my own. All right. That's how I learned my Japanese and just talking to people. So tomorrow we're going to go in the morning. The point is that tomorrow we're going to be at school. I'm going to figure this out. And I want to see, um, what are some of the activities and what do you do if you do come to a Japanese school so far away from Tokyo? What kind of experience are you going to be having if you do come here? Right now, there's no immigration. There's not a coming here to Japan so I think this is something you could put on your list if you're thinking about coming to Japan because learning Japanese language it opens up a lot of doors so when you do travel around and you know even just a little bit of stuff it makes people smile and introduce you to a lot of things that are off of the tourist path.

36:38 John Daub: Off of things that you maybe would be looking for but you can't find unless you can speak a little bit of Japanese and that gives you a great understanding into the culture. I know because after I started speaking a little bit Japanese doors started to open so many doors. I'm lost all the time. I mean if you have any questions leave and stop typing in raw dog with wasabi what is that gogo fishing look I don't even know how to use it. I believe it means just doing something on your own just it's raw there's no ketchup or mustard on that dog you understand it's just what it is that's what that means to me it's just a hot dog with no ketchup or mustard no bun it's on your own that's what I thought it meant I'm serious it's something obscene I have no idea. If you know what if it is that's that because you learned it as an obscene thing and I did not learn it that way it's cultural.

37:32 John Daub: Um so tomorrow we're going to be discussing that and if you do have some questions um you can leave them in the comments below uh hit the like button because liking is loving and loving is sharing and sharing is commenting on the live stream because leave a comment that's what you should do. All right uh oh we got some people here. I am looking at attending Akita Inaka school so this will be good for me to watch J Jersey girl that's good to hear yeah you're coming with me and we're going to be doing it live. Is there you have wi-fi or something out there yes sometimes it depends on the you know the weather are you sounding like it's like what there's no wi-fi but there's 4g right there's a signal there's 3g yeah to go a bit higher than the inspector signal you know you have to oh you have to go to elevation and get oh boy no no we do have each other yes okay good this is all right so it's possible to do a live because this is actually really inaka (countryside) I believe it was an abandoned school right it was an abandoned school turned into something so yeah so this is going to be it's probably like really super fast uh internet here we're gonna find out tomorrow let's get a lot of fun um any other questions here looks like we're done here.

38:58 John Daub: I did see Hachiko I actually put it on Instagram when I came into Akita Station there was an inflated Hachiko Akita Inu it was massive you can go see that on Instagram I posted some little snippets of video um inside the station there's some pretty interesting stuff and Akita has a lot of pride in it a lot of pride in the fact that this is actually attractions here omagari there's like two akitas that i found one is south akita north akita and kiritanpo which is this really delicious soup is not found in the south of akita it was weird because when i was spending time in omagari which is where the fireworks is very very famous nationally um omagari is the fireworks central of japan um they didn't have kiritanpo which is crazy which is the food like all the tourists want to eat when they come to akita which is like um grilled rice dumplings it's cool it's so good um but they have udon down there but akita is very proud if it's akita inu and it's namahage culture and uh a lot of the really amazing things that you can find in this prefecture it's worth traveling up to tohoku.

40:09 John Daub: Um good so uh edrick luang writes in here hi john will you ever do an episode about tsukemen you always do ramen so actually i don't always do ramen i do more i like udon better so i thought it would be great if you could do tsukemen that's a good idea um i think a tsukemen guide might be really interesting because there's lots of places um to get it and why how did tsukemen come about some of the history behind it um japan ramen guide friend of mine named cody knows a lot about this so he might come along for the trip but i do have a ramen episode a noodle episode coming um probably in march that i'm editing uh got a lot of episodes that are coming tsukemen is really good.

41:00 John Daub: All right so thanks so much for watching i will take a look and see if i missed anything i can't for still right now i can't get back and see any of the super chats there's still that bug there's still a bug in the app here the hedge monka i see that right there and that's about it that's all i see it's crazy don't know there's a bug in the app we'll try to get this fixed yeah thanks everybody for watching um i'll be back at around six unless i find something really interesting maybe we're gonna find something interesting after this but until then we're gonna explore the great great areas of akita and if we find something interesting might go live but 6 p.m mark your calendars which is only like four hours away we'll be back for the namahage festival which is going to be so awesome see you then guys thanks hedge monka