00:06 John Daub: Welcome everybody. This in the center of your screen is one of the most beautiful sights in Fukushima Prefecture. Do you see this? I'm on a little hill just over the small scenic town of Ōuchi-juku (大内宿), an old post town from the Edo period that hasn't changed much at all since then. This is one of the gems of Fukushima, not that far away in Minami Aizu, very close to Aizu-Wakamatsu. In this live stream, we're going to be walking down this main street. I'm going to share with you some of the experiences and some of the street food and some of the restaurants and some of the ideas and some of the things that you can do here. By the end of this live stream, you will be an Ouchijuku master. Pretty cool, huh?

00:37 John Daub: How you doing everybody? This is the observation point. I wanted to start here because the lighting isn't so good. You need to bring a light if you want to do a photo of yourself from here. But this is the perfect place to start this live stream. I think you have to do it from above. You can probably fly drones here. I haven't checked the DJI map yet, but it is a really pretty sight. You don't really need a drone if you have a view like this, right? So I want you to take a picture mentally of this right now, because this is where we're going to be walking over the next 30 minutes or so. Everybody who joins the live stream after this, tell them what a beautiful view that they missed. They should have gotten the notifications. Right over there is a little temple and we're going to ring the bell over there.

01:42 John Daub: I'll tell you the history of that little temple, at least what the meaning of it is. But there's some stairs here that allow you to get up to this beautiful observation deck of Ouchijuku. Now this town is an ancient town. It's a postal town from the Edo period. And after the Meiji Restoration, it's been preserved the way it is. It hasn't changed much at all. This might be the postcard for the Patreon postcard club too. I took a really beautiful picture from here. Green, lush, purple mountains in the distance. Looks really nice right now. I hope you're seeing this in beautiful 720p. The signal isn't too good up here. It's so beautiful with the mountains there. You can see the roofs are thatched. Some of the houses here have redone the roofs recently in the front. Do you see that?

02:49 John Daub: Oh, it's the 12 o'clock bell. Listen, it rings throughout the town. Let everybody know it's lunchtime. Anyone recognize that tune? Thank you WRX Turbo in the house and Shane, our friend up there in Canada. Nice to have you joining on this adventure. That was not Metallica. Who wrote that? That's not morning exercise music because it's now noon. I just had lunch. Now this little temple up here—is it a temple or shrine? I think it's a temple. The roof is thatched. But what is awesome about it is there's life on this temple. Look at it growing from the thatched roof—grass, weeds. It's awesome. This temple is also very famous for child safety. So I'm going to give a little prayer for Leo and all the kids out there that are watching, all the parents. This is for you.

04:23 John Daub: Bell rang eight times so it rings across the Pacific and Asia to you. Let's go down the steps here. It's going to be fun. There's also some street food here. But because there aren't so many tourists, a lot of the shops have closed. Ladies are copying me. That was my third time to ring the bell. I've done it before. Trade free cow 12 [?]. Wow, beautiful temple. Glad you can join. I'm so happy to get you again. Welcome again. I'm trying to hit different time zones as well. If you didn't see the view from the start, go in the playback and watch the first couple of minutes. It was so worth it. This is basically a little shukuba [?] outpost town. There's no convenience stores. No game centers, nothing like that. This is the slice of Japan that I'm looking for when I come to Japan, right? If you got to get out of the city of Tokyo, you can look for places like this. You can feel it, right?

05:50 John Daub: Look at this babbling stream coming down from the mountain through the town. And as we walk through here over the next 30 minutes or so, you're going to see this in front of every single shop. And they would wash the daikon radishes and the vegetables in this stream. It's different now that it's cloudy. I think it's better now. The greens are greener. Yeah. So that's where we were about three minutes ago up there. I'm doing this live stream right now too because I know it's going to rain. The clouds look pretty ominous. Here's a view going down. It's so much better from elevation. But this is what the street looks like from the top of it looking down. If you go straight, there are some parking lots that you can come here and drive to. Tabitha Delk from Arizona, welcome. Thanks for joining me on this adventure. There's that babbling stream I was talking about. And you're going to see it go through the town on both sides. It divides here, goes underneath the street. And you can see it here as well. The water, you probably could drink it. But because of the wildlife, they say not to drink the water without treating it because there are some wild boars and other animals that might go wee wee in it. Destroy the bacteria and all this other stuff. But it depends how strong your stomach is. Maybe. But I did not tell you to drink it. OK, I told you not to. So don't do it. But if you did, you probably would be OK.

08:25 John Daub: Now, Ouchijuku is the word. Juku means like a hotel or an inn. So traditionally, these were inns. This was a lot different back in the Edo period. It was more vibrant. Lots more people, travelers coming from one place to another. This is on one of the kaido (main roads), one of the big five that crosses through here. I can't remember exactly what it is. I don't want to make a guess and upset a lot of people. But it is one of the main five. So you might want to look that up. I see Shane's badge right there. It does go fast. What is that like a lavender? Loads of tourist shops? It's a post office right there, a place where you could send your postcards if you wanted to bring them all the way here. But there aren't a lot of tourists normally in the summer. This would be filled with people coming from all over the world. And right now it's just us. I think I saw two other foreign domestic tourists and there's a Helen up there who's a writer for one of the publications that's joining this production. This might be my favorite little mountain hut. Again, they have things growing on the roof. I love that. But they also make these homemade trinkets and things.

10:05 John Daub: All these are handmade. So I might buy something for Leo as I burp up some negi ramen. I found a cat here. Hey, second breakfast is in the house. How you doing? I found a cat in between here. Maybe if we call it will make an appearance. There's a sign here that says the cat will come out and play. Maybe there's a neko inside a cat. I'm serious. I saw him before. It's mating call. Nothing. Shane, cats do that only in anime. Okay, they make normal sounds. Okay. Oh yeah. That's not gonna get like some maid cafe dude coming all over me. Okay. Hey, what did you call me? I heard yun yun. No, I want a cat not some otaku dude. Look, I don't see the nyan nyan. It's not nyan nyan. It's scaring people away. People walk in the wrong way now. There's a dog. That's a dog. That'll get the cat out. Can I borrow that dog for a couple of minutes? Here's the post box. Check it out. I should bring the postcard club postcards here and send them from this town. Pretty cool. Yeah, it's pretty cringy when some middle-aged dude goes nyan nyan. It's true. Don't do it. Just refrain. I did it so to stop others.

12:30 John Daub: I like the way you see they change the roof like once every 15 years and up there. That's the chimney. So they do have a fire in the center of it and the smoke will come out in the winter. I actually did a live stream here street food 2017 winter. I was here and you can go back in the archives of this channel and see me in the snow. I think it was snowing. It was super cold. I remember that and I ate street food up here. It was a lot different because there are way more tourists back then. Now there's hardly anybody but check that out or I'll put a link in the description later on. I also had somebody with me. I was doing an onsen tour for Only in Japan production way back in 2017. Hey Raymond Santana is here for some bits to Irving's kibble. I'm going to go back to the kibble in bits.

14:00 John Daub: Alright right here. Check this out. So if you do come to Ouchijuku, highly recommend that you try this. This is the local food. This is called negi soba (green onion soba). And if you check out my Instagram instagram.com slash onlyinjapantv one word, you'll see a story right now where I tried to eat the soba with a piece of negi. They just give you a big piece of Welsh onion and you have to pick up your soba with it. It doesn't work the way you want it to sometimes but it's the local food and it's usually quite strong these negi but here it's a little sweet. I was surprised it still has a bite to it but it's a good snack and it's a local specialty and you have to try it here. I don't know, costs about seven eight dollars maybe. I tried it. Let me see. I can check out the menu. I just ate it for a production that I'm here filming with another group and this is where I ate the negi soba. How much was the negi soba for one person? 1100 yen. Yeah it was about ten dollars. A little bit about ten dollars. And the lady brought out some warabi (bracken fern) which is a mountain vegetable.

15:49 Staff: This really actually that's what I'll be right there. Oh like a Japanese ginger. It looks like a ginger. Yes. Try it. Yes, it's good and delicious. Oh, it's delicious. It's good. Oh, it's good in fried rice. How much? What? How much? I bought it. Try it. It's good with miso. Miso is good. You can cut it into small pieces and eat it. You can do that. There are many ways to eat it. It's good. It's healthy. Thank you.

17:41 John Daub: Please show me delicious food. That's freshly picked myoga (Japanese ginger). They're checking for you. I think she said myoga. You can't eat all of them. This thing is a little bit hard. They're surprised. The group. That's my posse over there. Myoga, isn't it? I bought a lot of them. I bought this for all of you. If you want one, send me a message on Discord server. I'll put it in the mailbox for you. No guarantee it will arrive. Probably the mailman will eat it. Just like some of the postcards. Every now and then one does get butchered. Back to the street. That was fun. People are really friendly here. That's another reason to get out of the city of Tokyo. Just talk to people. John Kimura is in the house. I better get some gifts for Kanae. She's going to like the myoga. I'll take a little bit of that and put it into some fried rice. Thank you, John. Myoga is like ginger. It's got the same kind of consistency as ginger. It's got a little bit of a bite to it. It's so good in soup. It's a fresh taste. Look at that. The mountain on the back of it on the right. This is so beautiful. I wish you guys were here. It's not the same without people. It's just us. I know you're here, but can you make it into a drink? I think you can. I think they do have myoga drinks. They must. Myoga ale. Ginger ale. I'm going to get some soft cream here. Some ice cream. Great with tofu. Yes! JKO Adventure, you got it right. Great with tofu. I think maybe this is where our signal is coming from. That's where the music comes from. The local speaker system.

20:09 John Daub: What makes this town so awesome is as I walk and we started from up here, so you might want to go back and check out the beginning of this live stream. As I walk through the town, I can hear the stream on the sides of the road. It's just a little teeny detail that really enhances the experience here. Now when there's a lot more tourists here, you're going to hear tourists talking like me, ruining the experience of others who came for relaxation and tranquility. That is not the case today. Because I will stop talking for the next 10 seconds.

21:16 John Daub: That was more like 30. It was worth it. I love that. I love the little things that the locals do. They put flowers there. It's very colorful. It's summer. But what makes this town great is it's awesome all year round. All four seasons. Autumn is of course going to be lit up like fireworks. All the different colors of the trees going up the mountains. It's really magical in October, November. From December, the snow falls here. Everything is white. The Minami Aizu area is quite cold in the winter. There's a shrine in this direction but I think you have to hike there quite a ways. They do get a lot of snow. When I was here filming, take a look at the livestream I did here in 2017 in the winter and you'll be able to see it. I believe there was snow still on the ground. There's a lot of confections and miso which they make here too. It's really good. Countryside miso. You can use it in miso soup. You can also just eat it as it is sometimes. That's really good with this myoga. Sticks of ginger or something like that. I can still taste that myoga. It's such a fresh taste. Hey, Roma! It reminds me of Shirakawa-go. It does! It's got that Edo era feel to it.

23:54 John Daub: Here's another building. Oh, they got some fish. Let's see what they got. Some street food. I ate here last time. This is imo-mochi (potato mochi). What's different? We haven't put sauce on it yet. We'll start with the sauce. Okay, I'll take this. Thank you. Imo-mochi. Okay. I live in Japan. Oh, you live in Japan. Thank you.

24:53 John Daub: Alright, this I saw this when I was walking up here. Check this out. I gotta of course get some street food and share with you. Up and down the street, again a lot of the shops are closed just because there aren't many tourists here. People just are waiting for Japan to open up a little bit more. Even the domestic tourists haven't come here. Imo is potato and mochi is mochi. So I'm guessing it's like a potato starch mixed in with mochi. We're gonna find out right now. Or just two big pieces of potato. It is big mochi. I know this is gonna be really good. Alright, here. Let me get a view of it with the babbling stream. It's like two little pancakes. Ah, and they put the tare on it. It has a really good smell. It might be like a shoyu or something. I'm not sure if it's sweet or not. We're gonna find out. Yeah, definitely hit the like button. I just saw it. Thanks so much. Randy! Hi John, you make awesome videos about Japan. Thank you, Randy. Itadakimasu. Tell me if a car comes. I don't think they'll come very often. Oh my gosh, this is so good. Oh my gosh. It's a little bit oily on it. So it's actually warm. It's warm. It's not sweet. It's salty. But let me show you on the inside. Thank you for the food fund, David. Check it out. On the inside, it's mochi, but it's not mochi-mochi like chewy. But it's got a chewy consistency, but it breaks apart in your mouth so delicately. It's like between tofu and mochi. Just a soft mochi. Oh man, this is so perfect. And it's been lightly fried to give it that color. But they have tare on it too, which gives it some salty taste. This is so good. Oh man. Hey, don't fuss around this. This is mine. I only share it with Kanae. Oh man.

27:26 John Daub: I just heard some thunder. Alright, this thatched roof here, earlier when I was filming, they were working on it. You can see on the side here, they're putting in the new parts to the roof. You can see this going on. They're working really hard to fix this area up. I think when tourism does return, it's going to be even more beautiful. There they have the straw for the thatching. This place is going to be really beautiful in a couple of months. This is the old straw from the roof. The rain is starting to come down now. I'm in [inaudible]. Where'd my posse go? They left me. Where'd they go? I actually ate at this shop three or four years ago. You can check it out. It was a little bit different last year. I had the fish in the winter last year. We better go. I'm going to be trapped in this rainstorm. We've basically navigated the entire town. It's not that big. That's something I want to point out. The shops are getting ready for the rain. They're already starting to put down the curtains to keep the rain off of the goods. Everyone's selling negi soba. There's soba at the shop. The shop at the front of the street also sells soba. The one that I asked about the myoga from, they also make it. That's where I ate for the production. I'm here to help film. This is so good. I've totally destroyed it. Look at it. Potato imo mochi. Only in the countryside. This is the street food that you get out here. It's so good.

30:11 John Daub: You don't have to travel far to be out in the middle of nowhere. Just on the back of the village is nothingness. It's like rice paddies and bamboo forests and things like that. Amanda wrote in a good question. That's what I wanted to end with. How do you get here? How do you get to the middle of nowhere? It's not that easy to get here. If you're coming on a JR rail pass or the JR East pass Tohoku area, which they have right now. That's what I'm using right now. The JR East Tohoku pass. You can take the Shinkansen to Koriyama. From Koriyama, there's a bus that you can use the pass with. You have to go from Koriyama to Aizu-Wakamatsu by JR bus. I do like the bus because you see a different view out the window. When you drive the highways, it's a totally different feel from the train. It's a nice break from riding the trains. When you get to Aizu-Wakamatsu, there are buses that come here, but you can book tours from Aizu-Wakamatsu that will take you out here. I heard there are three hotels on this street that you can stay at. If you do decide to stay at Ouchijuku, I bet you it's really interesting, but after around 4pm, I think everything just closes down and you have to eat at the place that you stay. In the morning, again, in Japan, the sun rises at around 4 o'clock in the morning. Keep that in mind. Meaning, if you have jet lag, you're in luck. You can just start hiking at 4am. There's a dam not that far. I think it's about a 45 minute hike from here. There's some nature and stuff all around here, but back in the Edo period, that's how they got around. They walked. You can follow the old kaido, the roads that went through here. That's why Ouchijuku exists, because it was on a main road coming from Edo through here to somewhere else.

32:17 John Daub: Fukushima was a very important place back in the... Aizu-Wakamatsu was a very important samurai town back in the Edo period. During the Boshin War, they burnt it down. The Aizu-Wakamatsu Tsuruga Castle. The history of it, I won't spoil it because I don't want to ruin or misinterpret any of the history, but definitely worth checking out the Boshin War, which is the Japanese revolution for the Meiji restoration in the Edo period. Samurai versus the government. That history is so strong here. What I love about this town, Ouchijuku, is that it hasn't changed much since the Edo period, meaning all of the 20th century just stopped in time. We're still in the 19th century here. That's cool. That's very cool. So much so that you see people here just sitting and eating the way that they did back 150 years ago. You sit outside on tatami mats, look outside at the view, and you can have your negi soba, which is right there. I ate this last time. This is a cool place too. They have a really nice inside to it. Now, last but not least, there's a sake shop here. You get some booze. So if you do stay the night here, you can buy a couple of bottles of booze and just drink in your room, I guess. Watch Netflix. There seems to be decent Wi-Fi and 4G signal. Again, I'm using a pocket Wi-Fi router. Check this out. So I'm using a Wi-Fi router right now, so. It was just slightly stronger than the 4G LTE. I think this is SoftBank is stronger here. I could use some sake.

34:16 John Daub: The pan around here from different angles, this is so beautiful too. If you're an Instagrammer, you travel around for photography, this is a great place to take pictures. Come in the autumn and in the winter when the snow falls, the autumn when the leaves are changing all around it, but summer's nice too. The days are longer in the summer. And in the spring, you have the cherry blossoms. I don't know how many there are around here, but that little white and pink really makes a huge difference on the landscape. And it's nice in the rainy season too because the green is greener. The green is greener in the rainy season. And that, my friends, is really cool. I'm now about 10 meters away from the entrance and look what I'm in the middle of nothingness. Which is so awesome. Look at that little road. Yeah, they only had 802.11b. This is like, they only had dial-up in the 80s period. It was 14.4 megabytes per second. America Online was in the 80s period too, right? When I came to Japan, it was dial-up. I used to have to call, get telephone cards and call America Online in the US for one minute to download all my emails at one of those gray telephones all over Japan. That's how long I've been here. I was here before the Internet. Internet cafes started to come the next year. Oh, there's a dragonfly. How do I get the dragonfly to move? Just pretend to throw stuff. Unmove dragonfly. Oh, good. Do you see that? Alright, the quality is way down. I just saw that there. Alright, folks. Let me just take you back to the main street. Thanks so much for watching. This is a dragonfly. No fly zone. That's right. I wanted to scare it off because I wanted to see it in flight. In action.

36:40 John Daub: So if you do like these countryside streams, I want to do more stuff outside of Tokyo. I know that that's a huge attraction. But I want to show you options. And over the next, the rest of the year, I'll try to get outside of the city and start to travel more. I got an appointment for my first vaccination on the 30th of June someplace. You know, thanks to Twitter. Big shout out to a tweeter, Yokohama Life. Set up a nice website that helps people find places in English. So if you're an expat in there, you can find a place with the help of other people in the Twitterverse. And Twitter too. Only in Japan TV. What's the akiya (abandoned house) situation like in the region? It's not good anywhere. But I think because this is such an attraction, these used to be akiya, but a lot of them have been renovated. I think there's a couple of them being renovated right now. So I don't believe that there are any akiya on the street. I know that family members have had these buildings in their family for many, many generations. I don't think it's changed much at all. And they make a living from it. Like the owners of this shop. I've probably been serving negi soba for a very long time. Hear the crows in the distance. Toby (crow).

38:03 John Daub: If you have any questions... I hope you enjoyed this livestream. I'm so happy. Yesterday, I took you into the bath. Into an onsen bath. You gotta check out that livestream. It was last night at 11pm. I rented a private bath. So if you have tattoos, if you're coming to Japan for travel with a family, or you're a little bit shy about going to the public hot springs, you can rent a private bath. So I showed you that option last night in a livestream and took you with me. And I was... That's maybe the fifth livestream I did in my life where I was completely naked. Except for a towel on my head sometimes. So you don't wanna miss that. I showed you what the room looked like as well before we started. And the one before that, I took you to Tsuruga Castle, which was burnt down in the Boshin War. That's like an amazing story, but... I'm so happy that that castle was rebuilt and it looks so beautiful. On Instagram, I have a 360 hyperlapse going all around Tsuruga Castle. It's like a 360 look at it. You might wanna check that out too. If you have any questions, any time, leave me a comment on this channel or go to our Discord server and I'll try to help you out. And we have some really good moderators that will help you out too. Thanks so much everybody. I'll do another livestream tonight. I believe in Yonezawa in Yamagata. That's where I'm heading next. I'm gonna be trying Yonezawa beef, which is very famous Wagyu. And maybe I'll do a midnight snack run. I don't think anything's open at midnight, but I will do something tonight in Yonezawa and then tomorrow morning before I have to head back to Tokyo and see Kanae and Leo. It's been a pretty amazing trip and I'm glad I'm out here. Stay safe everybody. Have a nice day. Don't see that cat. Doesn't work like that. Sorry Shane. Think I scared him away. Thanks Tony P.