00:31 John Daub: Your breath, it's not like you're going underwater but you're about to go in snow. It's going to get a little windy, so brace yourself. Hey Chan's here, don't see you but I have my neck doesn't go that far. Sean, if you are in here, stay warm buddy because I'm about to turn off the engine, it's going to get cold. Nagoya John, much love, happy new year to you and your family. Thank you Nagoya John. Without further ado, attack! Ah it's cold. Get some cardio, get my mask on, keep people safe.

03:01 John Daub: The problem is I'm getting used to this cold. I don't want to stay inside either, I'm in between. My body's used to the cold a little bit. I'll take you over to that sign later, let's see what the science says. Are you ready? Oh my god, the snow's accumulating in my face. Look at this, I can't even see the vending machines. Joy, you probably don't see snow where you're from often. This is the joy cam, five seconds of this. All right, enough joy, let's move on. I was here, John was here. Let's see how long that stays there until spring. Hey Raymond, something to keep me warm, I could use a coffee.

04:09 John Daub: All right, let's get in here, temperature check for John here. All right, I'm 36.2, so I'm safe. Welcome to the michi no eki (roadside station). I'm gonna go to the left here and show you, this is a place where if you're driving by you can stop in and get some brochures. It's local information and things like this, you learn about restaurants and the area. If you're driving in here, this is the first stop. This means Yonezawa, and this zawa is the same character for Kanazawa, which is very famous on the Sea of Japan side. Yone looks like rice to me, so like rice zawa maybe. Yeah, here's the local restaurant, check it out. They've got of course soba, and I'm guessing that could be the local Yonezawa gyu or Yonezawa beef.

05:13 John Daub: I've eaten so much of it, I really want to apologize in advance. I'm not getting any of this because I'm so full from eating for the main channel episode and filming it. I have no space in my stomach, literally there's just enough for maybe ice cream. Hey Brontania, thank you. Yeah you better believe it, I'm gonna find something warm. Oh check this out, this is the Yonezawa trifecta. This is the number one most popular, it's got Yonezawa beef, all kinds, three kinds of Yonezawa beef like steak, thinly sliced, and then like a gyutan-looking thing. That looks great, it's about twenty dollars for that and worth it. So if you do come here, which I'm hoping you do one of these days, everything is by vending machine. You just have to put in your cash and push your button, you get a ticket which comes out of here, and then you give it to the nice people here and they'll call your number. Sometimes you get a little ringer thing here.

06:18 John Daub: Next door is I guess this is hot ramen. Look at this, oh that would be good. That wasn't full, so a bowl of normal Yonezawa ramen is 650 yen. That bowl looks pretty good, that's a basic but you can go to Yonezawa spicy miso ramen. Look at that big chunk of miso on there, that's about eight dollars and fifty cents, eight or maybe eight dollars with the exchange right now. So we got some good stuff, you can get an ajitama, sold out, all sorts of goodies here. I'm looking for like a coffee or ice cream.

07:07 John Daub: This is obviously a place of beef, and this is where that trifecta, the three beef bowls are. I'm getting some ice cream, it's a done deal. Wait, do I have to eat the ice cream in the snow? Was that a condition of it? You have to write the conditions. Oh check it out, look at this, hey guys they have wagyu A5 wagyu sushi. I don't know if it's A5, I just made that up, but it's A5 sushi. Look at that, nine dollars for two pieces. I had that last night, I'm not a big fan of the wagyu sushi just because I don't think it has enough flavor. I'm just glad that I'm not out there. Let's just look, if you're joining me on the live stream right now, look at that. I just came from Michi no Akiyama [?], I just came from here. I wonder if anyone has ever jumped in that, there's probably a car underneath there. What's underneath that? I guess we're gonna have to find out. UFO Bob, should I do it? This is how we have fun in Yonezawa.

08:24 John Daub: First zip your jacket up full on, second take off bag put inside dry place. These are instructions, please follow them to the mark here. Third remove mask so audience can see you in full fear on your life. Fourth buckle up, fifth just run and jump into snow pile and see if there's anyone underneath there. All right this is, I'm not gonna actually do it, I'm gonna do a practice run here. All right, that's what I'm going to see right now. No fear. Now what you see is fear. This is for you, Brontania and TDSDR and Raymond and everybody else who's supporting my warmth. I cannot enjoy warm coffee unless I'm cold enough, so I'm gonna enjoy whatever I get in here more by jumping into here. What if I can't get up? What if I fall straight into the bottom? We're gonna find out. What if there's like sewage in there? All right, don't psych myself out here.

10:00 John Daub: This is to the people of michi no eki. Thank you for inviting me to Yonezawa. Here we go. Three, oh wait hold on, I got gloves, getting cold. All right I'm gonna put my gloves on. It's no sense catching a cold, it's one of the symptoms of fun. Okay here we go.

10:34 John Daub: [Snow jumping sounds and exclamations; phone messed up, gimbal busted but recovered.] All right there's the imprints, you got your snow angel for sure. Amy JMV there you go, there's a deep one. My face went very deep into that snow, and that actually looks like a person right there. I learned that there's no sewage inside of there. So maybe if someone encourages me to do this, so if someone encourages me with the right whatever, I might jump in there. All right you know what, let's go back in. It's so nice and warm in here. This is how you enjoy it. Now whatever I get that's warm I'm going to enjoy it so much.

13:05 John Daub: Oh wagyu gyu-pi-tei [?]. Now that's Yonezawa-gyu. I've been filming this all day, you have no idea the moment I got on that Shinkansen and I arrived, my life has been wagyu. I've eaten like five times wagyu, quality wagyu. Oh gosh, this looks nothing like Pizza Hut. Oh there's snow got in here, oh it's cold. Oh my god. Things to do in Yonezawa: jump into huge mound of snow.

13:49 John Daub: Ah they have ice cream here. So I'm talking because if I talk I can also block out some of the copyrighted music. They got pizza here, different things, and then they have different kinds of ice cream. Oh they even have soft milk ice cream, look at this, so they got soft cream. What else they got? Yogurt, kids soft cream. I can go for that. Then they have the premium single and they got different kind of gelato. Okay we're gonna come back for this. First let me show you the roadhouse because oh it's kind of neat, little teeny kids place for kids to eat.

14:31 John Daub: What I like about the michi no eki, these roadside stations, is they also have all of the local produce here. You can get this cheaper than the supermarket sometimes, but you know it's coming from the local farmers. So all these things are produced by the farms here. Of course it's maybe a little bit before the snow, it's been snowing nonstop since I arrived literally. This morning I had to shovel the car out in order to be on time. I had to drive faster but you can't do that, so I was late. These mikan don't come from Yonezawa though, they come from Shizuoka, but they're here in Yonezawa now so that's okay. Oh I love these here, check it out. These are hoshigaki (dried persimmons). Do you guys know what hoshigaki is? These are kaki which are persimmons that have been dried, and I think there's a little bit of sugar. Sometimes they don't, they're all natural, but even with or without the sugar they're super good. Check that out, anpon kaki [?]. Oh my gosh they're like dried fruit, they're so sweet.

15:52 John Daub: We got some more local produce here. Here's some horenso (spinach), some tomatoes, local tomatoes. You can get some massive, oh this comes from Niigata which is the neighboring prefecture. This is maitake, some mushrooms. I love these, and kogomi which are like mountain vegetables. I like the way they're curled up like that, you can put this in nabe or soups, these are really good. Some shiitake right there. Here's some Yonezawa eggs, so you're gonna get they're always gonna be fresh from the michi no eki. They also have a really good selection, you can get Yamagata rice, bags of rice, honey. And I think the sake was over here.

16:58 John Daub: Oh this is amazake (sweet fermented rice drink). And some salad dressings, everything's really fresh I think. Jams, jellies. Oh omiyage (souvenirs). Hey do you guys know this stuff? These are milk cakes, they're only in Yamagata. It's like milk bars and they're so good. They got different flavors but the original I think is the best, you don't need to flavor it. The natural milk flavor is so creamy but it's kind of a hard like a dried milk cake. That's so good, you gotta get this. In fact maybe I'll get one. Do they have a cafe au lait? Oh here's coffee, milk cake coffee. I kinda want coffee so this is a good one. Oh that's like grape, let's see what else they got here.

19:12 John Daub: Oh sake, there it is, all sorts of good stuff here. One of my favorite sake from the area is Toko. Oh there it is, there's Toko, Higashi Hikari (east light), so it means east light. That's an awesome name for a sake brewery. Toko's one of my favorites, they got a lot of good sake up here in Yamagata. The thing is you can travel for food, I think if you're coming to Japan and you're coming here to travel, you're gonna travel for food is one of the reasons. So I mean I know a lot of people will go to Hiroshima for the Peace Museum and see some of the history there, Miyajima. The sites are great but also do it for the food because each region of Japan has like a lot of good sake. So I think if you're coming to Japan you're gonna travel for something really special to eat, and that's another one of the five senses. Don't go to McDonald's, go to some of the local Japanese restaurants.

20:24 John Daub: There's the Toko brand that I like but all of these are really good and they have pretty amazing pictures on them sometimes. You can judge a sake by its label but you might not be happy with the results, you can judge unsuccessfully, I think that's my point. Michael's son writes in here, not missing this live stream, no way Michael. I might have to jump in the snow again for Michael. Yamagata's got some wine too, interesting, I wonder how good that is. All right I gotta get some coffee to warm up and then maybe we'll go jump in the snow for Michael. Oh that looks so good, these are like apple pies. I'm always on the lookout for things for our Patreon supporters, michi no eki pie for the michi no eki. These are freshly baked pies, I don't know if they would make it to the US.

21:29 John Daub: All right I guess this is the food pit is where you get the coffee. If you can read katakana you'll know the top one says hotto kohi (hot coffee), hotto aisu (hot ice? [ASR error]). Sometimes if you're on the airplane and you're flying to Japan make flashcards for katakana and you'll be able to read kohi (coffee), hotto aisu. Then you can order off of a menu, I think it takes about three or four hours. You can learn the katakana alphabet and start sounding out words for pizza, coffee, things like this. Kurimu soda (cream soda). Then you can start to be literate and get around.

22:26 John Daub: Hotto kohi. Can't wait, I want to eat ice cream but when I saw the original apple pie I wanted to eat it. One original apple pie.

25:02 John Daub: Itadakimasu (I receive this food). This is rice ice cream, it's so good, it's chewy.

25:24 John Daub: All right let's take this over here. [Talking over copyrighted music.] When anything's in English I always think it's highly copyrighted. All right we're getting reports that it might be blurry, okay let's see if I can get the signal boosted a little bit. We'll go over to the window here. Oh my gosh I can't escape the speakers of the copyright music. Hello can you see me? How's the live stream quality now? Is it blurry? All right you know what, I can't escape it. Why couldn't they play something more like instrumental or something. Slightly improved, it's blurry oh no. Guys I don't know what else I can do here. Does that help? It seems like it's better here. All right Brontania thanks for the heads up, I trust in Brontania.

27:51 John Daub: I put ice cream in the coffee and pie? Oh it's here, thank you for bringing more Tohoku contents, love Tohoku. I was at this same rest stop in February 2020, that's from KY and KO. Thank you for being an insider for 15 months, I really appreciate that. All right let's try this, is it blurry again? And the music from Brontania reports. All right you know what, I'm going to go outside and eat this real quickly.

28:31 John Daub: Let's just kind of go outside, I can eat my hot apple pie. I can't believe that I paid, the snow has subsided, it showed the signal I think we should get a little bit better. All right this is the apple pie I just brought it back here. This is two dollars for this apple pie which is kind of a lot, it's not so big, it's like a nugget. Oh wow, it's really good crust and it's like concentrated apple jam or something, it's really sweet. And the guy's plowing where I just jumped. That was good, this is good. Thanks guys.

29:55 John Daub: I wanted to take you over here and show you the sign. When I got here it was like a blizzard, I can get my drone shots now. So Yonezawa Station I can hardly see, I was staying at Ogawa Onsen which is about a 30-minute drive from here. The snow is deep here, it's crazy, and it hasn't stopped snowing for two days and it's not going to stop tomorrow. Which means tomorrow when I'm at Ginzan Onsen it's going to be epic snow. You want snow falling at Ginzan Onsen with the lights, oh man I'm going to get some Instagram photos there. All right let's get back to the coffee. Stay warm my friends.

31:40 John Daub: The last thing I'm going to do for you before we go is this, this is the Oshidori Milk Cake, and this is coffee flavor but I highly recommend that you just try the regular one. It's part of Yamagata and it's really good, you can get it here at the michi no eki. It's just milk with coffee in there. Itadakimasu. Mmm it's got a good coffee taste to it. Now we can see how it tastes like with the coffee, the question was does it melt? The answer is yes but I think I'll have to leave it there for a long time, it doesn't melt but it dissolves gradually. Andy that is a good combination.

33:23 John Daub: All right everybody, I hope that you enjoyed the michi no eki adventure. It's pretty neat to stop, and whenever you travel around Japan the michi no eki are really interesting to stop in and get a dose of local culture. But here in Yonezawa they got a lot of good stuff. I can see myself doing all of my shopping here because it's a one-stop shop for everything from the local area. You got sake, you got food, you get local ice cream, rice in it, you got all the Yonezawa beef that you can eat. Kanai is coming tomorrow and we're driving to Ginzan Onsen, Ryo as well. So I'm going to make a stop here to get some sake to take over there so that at night I can drink a little bit. I've been driving here so I haven't had a chance to drink much at all but I'll try the sake tonight or tomorrow night. All right everybody have a good day, have a good night. See you from snow country, stay warm and stay away from copyright music and have an hoshigaki. I have to buy some of that too, they're so good. Great day everyone.