00:09:00 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Onogawa Onsen. I'm just going to pan around here. It is a bright, sunny morning. It's about 9:15 in the morning here. I thought I would take you around this really beautiful onsen town. An onsen (hot spring) is geothermal water that pumps out of the ground because Japan's got a lot of geothermal activity. We've got volcanoes, all sorts of earthquakes and geothermal activity under the ground that heats things up. And that water has loads of minerals.

00:46:00 John Daub: You're going to see steam as I walk around this neighborhood, melting the ice. That's pretty cool. It's also a sign, with the smell of rotten eggs, that this is an onsen town. I like to come here. There are thousands of onsen towns—maybe not thousands, but almost a thousand. There's lots of them. Each prefecture, especially up in Tohoku, down in Kyushu, Shikoku, there's got to be four or five in each prefecture, which would probably make hundreds. It just seems like thousands.

01:15:00 John Daub: It snowed a lot yesterday. It's starting to melt a little bit. The weather's warmer than it was yesterday. That's for sure. I stayed in this ryokan (traditional Japanese inn). You can see it on the right side. Let me take you around this way. You can see the steam coming out right there. That's one of the public onsens that anybody can go in. So if you're just coming on a day trip, you don't have to stay at one of the ryokan. You can just go to the public bath right here. Let's have a look around for the next 30 minutes or so, and tell me what you think.

01:51:00 John Daub: You see this right here? This is geothermal water heated, just pumping out of the ground. Now you can drink it with the cups. In the age of the pandemic, I probably won't be doing that. But you could. You can see on the left and the right of that pipe, there's residue. There's buildup. That's sulfur, mostly sulfur. There's a bunch of other minerals in there that builds up around the taps of all of the baths and water spigots that put out this water. So there's a lot of minerals. If I try to touch it, ah, that's really hot. That's like maybe about 80 degrees Celsius, or 20 degrees below boiling.

02:41:00 John Daub: Here from the ground, you can see the steam pumping out of holes there. This is the bath water coming out into the drain, into the sewage system. Again, you can see there's some more geothermal water. It's just a little bit of water pumping out here. It does melt the ice, which is a good thing. The water is safe to drink in moderation. Some places, if it's not safe to drink, they'll tell you. This is a public bath, and it's based on the honor system. So there's nobody in here to take the money. Nobody, no salary to pay. So they can keep this in operation by maintaining it.

03:21:00 John Daub: This is men. You can tell by the kanji right there—otoko (男). And this is women, onna (女), right there. So you might want to learn those. If you stay in a ryokan, you might surprise somebody. Oh my gosh, I have a funny story. It's not that funny, actually, for the person that was there. But every couple of days, the traditional Japanese onsens will change the men and women's bath. Meaning, they'll switch it so people get a chance to try both of the baths. And one day, they'd switched it, and I went into the men's bath. It says men's—blue, otoko, with a man on there. And I walked in, and changing was a woman. She was completely naked. And I just froze like a deer in headlights. Just because I was like, what? I thought I was in the wrong place! And then I left, and then I found out that I'm not in the wrong place. I'm in the right place. She's in the wrong place. So I waited outside for a couple of minutes, and then I realized, maybe don't wait here because she's gonna feel pretty uncomfortable. So I just went back to my room. I waited for about five minutes, and I went back and she was gone. And then I saw her at breakfast. I didn't say anything. Just kind of let it be. But you have to be careful with that. It was a shocker.

04:39:00 John Daub: This is the onsen that I stayed in. You can see the first kanji in it. And by the way, there's a link in the description if you want to check this out. Kameya—you can see, are the first two kanji right there. Kame, the first kanji, means turtle. And they have turtles in the bath—little sculptures of turtles. So I guess you should respect the turtle because they live in the water. And you're bathing in their water. It's a beautiful ryokan. I don't know how much it costs per night. This is part of where I stayed for my job here. But the breakfast is really good, and the service is family run. So it's very good. You can see the icicles hanging off of here. I love the shape of the roofs too. Very Spirited Away, right? Sen to Chihiro. You get kind of that feeling.

05:34:00 John Daub: Let me walk down through the center of the town here and give you an idea. There's not a lot to do here. Yamagata Prefecture is in Tohoku. The closest station is Yonezawa. And Yonezawa is two hours on the Tsubasa Shinkansen from Tokyo. And then you have to take either a taxi or rent a car. And it's about a 15-minute drive here. It's pretty convenient comparatively because Ginzans Onsen from the Shinkansen station is like a 45-minute ride in a bus. This is much better.

06:11:00 John Daub: Oh, there's a lady trying to get all the ice off of the road so the customers don't slip. It's a really hard job. Many of the owners that I walked by through here yesterday, many of the owners are in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. I don't know how they do it. They have so much energy and they just keep going. Hey, Irvin's here. Gosh, it would be great if you guys could be here with me, like really in life, in person, because it's so much more fun in the bath just to hang out with people talking than it is sitting alone. I was alone in my bath at the ryokan. It's completely empty except for me. You know, we do like to support local businesses and this is certainly one of them. I'm pretty happy about that.

07:02:00 John Daub: Alright, here is another thermal spigot that comes out. I didn't see this last night. Hey Bob Joe. Get something hot to drink. How about some thermal water? Michael Susano loving the overall feel of this town, especially all of the snow. Is anything open for you to get a snack? We're going to see right here. Oh, boom! Radium tamago (radium eggs). Radium tamago. Radium is a naturally occurring radiation, not a man-made one. And it's in the water and you can put eggs in there. It's so hot and you can boil your eggs here. The water coming out here is so freaking hot. That's boiling, if not just a few degrees under it. Oh, so you could boil eggs here. Now, if you don't boil them for very long, you get onsen eggs, which means they're still kind of half-boiled and they're so good on rice. But a little bit of those minerals get into the egg and give you some extra boost. So you can drink it. It is drinkable. This is a drinking spigot, I think. And this water is being pumped from the ground into here. I think it does mix with some tap water, which, by the way, tastes really good from the tap. It's like bottled water from the tap. It's so fresh.

08:53:00 John Daub: Well, I'm not gonna be drinking any radium. I don't think there's a really high level of it. And if anything's in moderation, who knows? All I know is it says radium tamago. People who are living here in this town, they live to the ripe age of over a hundred—a good deal more than probably in a lot of the countries that you live in. So I'm gonna say that they're doing a pretty good job of living very healthy, balanced lives here. Right? Is that sweet, sweet radium? That's right. It could be sweet. I'm not gonna be putting my lips around that spigot though.

09:36:00 John Daub: Here's another beautiful looking ryokan. Look at the icicles hanging off of the top of it. I don't think you can really go wrong with finding a place to stay, but you just find recommendations. TripAdvisor does a fairly good job of it, but I always think that it's best if you take a look at the pictures and read the other reviews and get an idea of what's best. It's not up to me to recommend. I like the place that I'm staying in. Whoa! Got snow falling. The snow is melting and falling off of the telephone wires. Gotta be careful. Falling snow off of buildings. That's a thing.

10:20:00 John Daub: Look what they've done with this parking lot. Do you see? In places in northern Tohoku and Hokkaido, they have these pumps in the middle of the road that they pump out hot onsen water, which is already hot, right? And that keeps the parking lots ice-free. You can see here, going onto the parking lot here. And there's just a constant flow of hot water onto the parking lot, so anybody can drive in here. It melts the ice off of your car. And there you go, Onogawa Onsen Spa. Ice-free parking! Boom! Naturally occurring. Well, except for the pumps. Ice-free parking.

11:09:00 John Daub: So we've got central Yonezawa. It takes me normally about 15 minutes to drive there, but with the snow, it takes more like 25 minutes. Kanai and Leo are coming on the Shinkansen. They're on the Shinkansen right now, so I gotta go pick them up in about an hour. Cats! This onsen also has a lot of cats! I saw them last night. Let's go say hi. Because you know how cats love me. Hey, Sean808. Let's see what we can find.

12:56:00 John Daub: It's hard to build a rapport with these onsen cats. Oh, here's the bus stop. I guess they're famous for their cats. Check it out. Nothing's really open yet. So, maybe they're just hungry. Here's the bus stop. I love these old bus stop signs. It says Onogawa Onsen. Basu no jikoku-hyō (bus schedule). Oh my gosh, schedule! There's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 buses the whole day. And then on Saturdays, there's only 6. So now you know the times at least. And there's 6 buses on holidays and Sunday. But there you go. There's the bus schedule. Not a lot.

13:51:00 John Daub: Ah, there he is on the move! You always put your finger out there because they like to snuggle with random fingers. Okay, let's get down to their level. He doesn't like what he hears. You are not dressed for winter. Whoa! Did you see that? That whole snow just fell from that sign. You have to really watch your head. That's a lot of snow. Alright, watch your head. I'm serious. It's something that you have to... Karma maybe. I might have said something bad to the cats.

14:54:00 John Daub: Look at the roof here. As the sun, which is now out, starts melting it, it's going to start to fall off of that roof onto somebody's head. And people die from this. Look at the icicles too. People will die from the falling. Do you see that? So you have to be careful where you walk. Today is a lot warmer day than the last few days. I'm kind of sad about that because we are going to Ginzans Onsen and I wanted it to look good with snow. Did you see that? It just fell off of the light over there on the right. Ginzans Onsen looks so much better with snow. So I'm hoping that it doesn't melt too much, especially at night. I want a lot of snow. I want it fresh looking, freshly falling snow.

15:47:00 John Daub: Now if you stick with me for the next 5 or 10 minutes, I'm going to take you inside and show you my room. Which is a treat. I want to give you an idea of what a ryokan looks like here. Now there's loads of ryokan, traditional Japanese inns, so not all of them look the same. But they're all pretty nice. There's a bigger one right here, straight ahead. And the road kind of turns to the left. Nothing is open right now, guys. Everything is pretty closed. You can see through the grates here, there's just steam everywhere. And you can't smell what I smell, but it smells like sulfur. Nice fresh sulfur smell. Hey, Karen Wolf is here. How you doing, Karen? Garrett, it does not smell like ramen. It smells like egg.

16:53:00 John Daub: Oh, this is interesting. Do you see what this says here? It's coin laundry. Wow. I wonder if you get like an onsen hot wash—is it onsen water? Just make your clothes smell like egg. That's great. Yeah, onsen wash. That's right. There's a map of the town. I put a link in the description again. You can see the ryokan that I'm staying in. It's basically just this street. It's part of Yonezawa. That's a good choice of vending machine drinks there. And they're all, half of them are hot. So you got the hot drinks down there.

17:46:00 John Daub: All right, let's go into the ryokan. I do think that if you are coming to Yonezawa, this is a great place to stay. But you really do need a car. And the rental cars, I think it's cheaper than getting a taxi. And you saw the bus situation, so it's not ideal. Look at the way that the steam from the hot water has melted the snow above the grates. That's crazy. So the streets here are usually pretty good. The hot water pumps out here and then it stays fairly melted. I bet you in the city of Yonezawa, it's not going to be the same situation. And I bet had some scary driving last night. If you take a look at Instagram, you'll see what I mean. We had a blizzard last night. Go to my Instagram, onlyinjapantv is the Instagram, instagram.com/onlyinjapantv. And you can see some amazing stories. I have blizzard-like conditions. That's going to fall on somebody's head. Just be careful, including the icicles. My car's on the corner there. All right, let's go in.

19:03:00 John Daub: They will have complimentary boots, but they didn't have my size because I have very big feet for Japan. Normal for America. There's also a temperature checker, which is good here. Oh, I'm a little bit hotter than normal. But 37.5 means you got a fever. So I got out of the onsen bath right before I started this.

20:03:00 John Daub: That's my room. It's called Supaki. Yeah, my socks have toes on there. These socks are nice. All right, here's my room. I've been working last night. So you can see the computers out. There's an air purifier up there. Just kind of go around here. This is very typical of a Japanese ryokan. It is fairly big. Good balance of natural looking colors. I love it. Just a shock of red from the cushion covers. And my futon is still out. It's a single futon. I'm just here by myself. In there is the closet where you'll get your yukata, which you can wear down to the bath. And basically a little closet area. And that's a refrigerator down there with some glasses. Yeah, there are my cameras and my gear.

21:35:00 John Daub: A couple of really important things for you to realize. When you do come to a ryokan, it's very hard or rare to find coffee. And if you're a coffee drinker, you're going to want to bring your own. They have these—Starbucks sells these origami, these kind of paper packets, which has ground coffee in it. You can just pour hot water. There's always hot water at a Japanese hotel. So you can just make your own coffee. But if you're a coffee drinker, you're going to often have trouble finding it unless you go to get a can from a vending machine. So you might want to bring that with you as well as some snacks and stuff. But usually there's a vending machine not too far away.

22:20:00 John Daub: Here's the bathroom. Again, there's some amenities there. I bring my own toothbrush and stuff. And of course, the toilet is a Japanese toilet and it's a very nice toilet. I can say that for sure because I might have used it. It's my room. There's a safe down there and a TV and charger for one of my lights. It is heated. It's warm. It's very warm in here compared to where I just was.

22:57:00 John Daub: So this is Onogawa. This is an onsen town. I love it here. I'll probably be back. I think I was here once before too, but it's just a short distance from Yonezawa City. And on the Shinkansen, it's only two hours from Tokyo. And I came here on the JR East Tohoku Area Pass, which is 20,000 yen for five days of Shinkansen travel. So makes a lot of sense to take full advantage of it and stay at an onsen if you are there.

23:29:00 John Daub: Now I have to take, before I leave, one of my tests to make sure that I'm okay to go to the next place. I've been taking these a lot. These are antigen rapid tests and I have to make sure that I'm doing everything I can to keep the people around me safe and still keeping the job going.

23:51:00 John Daub: All right, everybody. I hope this was a useful video to give you an idea of what Onogawa Onsen is like. There's not a lot to do here. The whole purpose of it, I think, is to just rest, relax, take baths, stay in the room, read a book, write, just recharge yourself. That's part of the process. Put your smartphone away. Don't livestream. And enjoy and recuperate and get back your energy to go back and fight for another month or two before you come back to the onsen to recharge again. It's a pretty good one-two punch.

24:23:00 John Daub: And the typical price, I guess, is around 14,000 yen a night with two meals. It goes up and down depending on the quality of the accommodation and the size. But typically, it's about 14,000 to 16,000 yen. It includes breakfast and dinner. So the meals, you don't want to opt out. There's not a lot of other places to go unless you have a car. So make sure you get the breakfast and the dinner because they're very traditional Japanese meals that are incredibly done. Usually, there's a chef in the ryokan that prepares this. It's seasonal as well. So it's part of the experience that you're going to want to have when you're in Japan.

24:56:00 John Daub: Take care, everybody. I'll see you on the road. Kanae and Leo are going to meet up at Yonezawa Station in about an hour and a half and I got to go pick them up. So goodbye from Onogawa Onsen. Don't forget to click that thumbs up button. Chan, how much do these rapid antigen tests cost in Japan? I think these are about $20. I had four of them. Now I have... That's the last one.