00:00:00 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Higashi Ginza. We're just a stone's throw away from one of the most expensive real estate areas. There's Kabukiza Theater where they hold the Kabuki performances in Tokyo. I'm here on a beautiful sunny day in Ginza this afternoon. I'm going to be taking you today into the prefectural store, which is also a supermarket. A lot of you know that I love to travel around Japan. When I can't get out there, to the prefectural store, I'm going to be taking you to the prefectural store.

00:00:30 John Daub: In the countryside, I go to places like this because you can get local food brought in from the countryside to Tokyo. This supermarket is quite large and has some really good stuff that I'm going to introduce you to. Every time I do a live stream, I try to teach you a little bit more about Japan. This time we're going to be learning about a really wonderful prefecture called Iwate, which is in Tohoku. So let's go inside, get some good stuff. This place is called the Iwate Ginga Plaza.

00:01:05 John Daub: Oh, there's a mascot right there. Do you see him? That's called Wanko-chan. Wanko is the type of soba that they serve in Iwate. It opens at 10:30. If you're staying in a hotel, especially nearby, this place has got some good stuff because you can't find it in normal supermarkets in Tokyo. Recently, I went to the Akita store and I've also done the Nagano store and a couple of other stores, but these prefectural stores are super awesome.

00:01:40 John Daub: Welcome. I'm going to pan around right here. It is much larger than I thought it would be. This is actually my second or third time here. Right off the bat, you can see they have some confections from the local area. You're not sure what it is? It's okay to ask the store manager. But I know that these are quite famous up in Iwate. These senbei here. Nambu senbei (southern rice crackers). You can see they have peanuts in here. And I like to dip this in like Nutella or peanut butter or even as it is. But they're really, really good. They're pretty inexpensive and quite filling. $3.50. They got so many different brands here because it's so famous in Iwate. If you go to normal supermarkets in Tokyo, might be able to find one or two brands sometimes. But what is this? This looks evil. Nambu snack. It looks spicy. Habanero. That is not indigenous to Japan. So I'm going to step away from that.

00:02:46 John Daub: Pan around here. Oh, check this out. Iwate Prefecture is up there in Tohoku, just south of Aomori, north of Miyagi, which is Sendai. And they also have some amazing produce. It looks like they have here like a suika jelly. Suika is watermelon in Japanese. And they made it to look like a watermelon. That's pretty cool. Presentation is always important in Japan. Oh, I know this brand. If you've ever been up to Tohoku, you've seen this Sava brand here. They make mackerel kind of fish in a can. But they have all these other confections made from that. And that looks like a pokey stick with fish taste. I don't know how good this is going to be. This is like the canned fish with lemon basil chips. So you can savor that taste from a can.

00:03:55 John Daub: Wow, I love these regional Japanese supermarkets. It's like a museum. Whenever you travel, jumping into another country's supermarket is a great way to see the culture. All right, more senbei back here. But these are senbei I've never seen before. The presentation is also very unique. Check that out. The bag looks like a mountain. These would be great for our daimyo supporters. I have a Patreon group where I send packages to them. And I'm already seeing a bunch of stuff I can put in that to share a little bit of Japan. There's some more food in a can. What do they have in a can here? This is iwashi (sardines). Oh, this is saba (mackerel). Danny's here. Good morning, Danny. I've already bought some stuff, Danny. I'm going to taste test some of this stuff. Because how could I not come here and not try some of the goodies.

00:05:09 John Daub: Local soy sauce is also very important to try. Here you can see they've got some of the local stuff everywhere that you go. This is lemon ponzu. More ponzu. I don't know if that's lemon, but could be. But you find a lot of stuff that you wouldn't see elsewhere. This is why the prefectural stores. It's good to stop in here just to see what they have when you go up there. Garlic in a jar. Also, lots of miso. Oh, this is interesting. So you can get like the seafood here, frozen all from Iwate. And you just open it up. And I guess you have a platter to share with your family. Check it out. Getting up to Iwate on the Tohoku Shinkansen takes about three hours. So it's not a short trip to get up there. You can fly up there, but you got to make the trip to the airport, which also takes quite a lot of time. I put a link to the map in the description below.

00:06:25 John Daub: So if you're staying in a hotel nearby, it's very convenient to stop in here and check it out. I'm getting deeper into the store. Morioka is very famous for ramen, which is a cold noodle that they serve up there. This is a kimchi soup ramen that they have here. Again, Morioka's got a really vibrant Korean community there. Amazing community that has some of the best Korean food in Japan up there in Morioka. So that culture is quite strong and they have an amazing ramen, which is the most famous noodle probably in Morioka. Here's some tofu now. I bought this one. We're gonna try this in about five minutes. This is smoked tofu. You see this? Let me put it in the light. This is smoked tofu. I guess you would have this with beer or wine or something. But you have all sorts of like aged tofu here. This is smokehouse. So there's you can do a lot of amazing things with tofu that some of you might not be aware of. It's not a nasty food that's all slimy. Tofu is not this tasteless food. It takes the taste of whatever you put in contact with it.

00:08:01 John Daub: Oh my gosh, look at this fresh smoked bacon. Kanai's gonna love this. Kanai loves bacon. Oh wow, right off of the farm. Here's a smoked pepper bacon. Whoa gosh, I don't think the pepper would be good to eat that with waffles but I could see these sausage links going down pretty good. Different kinds of juices are up there. Iwate is very famous for its grapes. In fact, for grape production Yamanashi is quite large but Iwate has amazing wild mountain grapes up there near Aomori. And oh there's some right there. They make some amazing wine. So this one is called Shizuku and it's made from wild mountain grapes. You can get a bottle of this. If you're staying nearby I would pick one up and drink it in the room. There's no tasting here which is a shame but I did a little bit of research as the manager about the taste. It's a little bit tarter, less sweet, has a drier taste to it than other wines. So you can pick that up here in the store as well as a bunch of other Iwate wines. Look at this, it's got a really dark purple color to it.

00:09:50 John Daub: I'm also impressed with their cider. They make their own cider up there. Iwate, Aomori very famous for its apples and there's some small business men and women who have created a cider company. Whenever there's a market people come in here and they fill it. As well as a lot of beer. You have a bunch of local beer companies using the really good water and hops. Iwate grows a lot of the hops and ingredients for Japanese beers. And there's Wanko-chan the mascot. Hipster beer right here. Nothing wrong with that. It's a lot of good taste. It's nice to try something unique and different. This is interesting. Whenever you come to Japan and you walk through the supermarkets you're gonna find a bunch of curries and other things that are really good. And you can get a lot of good stuff here. I found this one here. It's a little bit different. These are samples of some stuff that I've never seen before. These are in packs that you just can boil. You see right there on the back of the box and you get this dish, throw it on rice, you're done. They put all the sauce and they did all the effort in there. This is seven dollars and fifty cents. Some spicy chicken. Wow, there's some kima curry right there. Some different kinds of curry all from Iwate. These are local brands of packaged curry rice. You gotta make the rice but you get all the good stuff there.

00:11:47 John Daub: Let's just open up the door here, get some uni in there. Oh it's not that. This is the most vile and disgusting food although they say it's better if it's fresh. This is called hoya (sea squirt). Oh my gosh this is salty spicy hoya. Probably my least liked food in Japan and they have it in a jar. I'm just gonna put that down and pretend like I never saw it. There's some uni (sea urchin) right there frozen. Just pretend like I didn't see it and keep walking. Of course Iwate is in Tohoku and it's very famous for its sake. And we have a bunch of that. There is that nigori sake down here. Oh this is doburoku (unrefined sake). Doburoku is usually it's alive, it's like a hole in the bottle so some of the gases can escape but it is a lot cheaper and has pretty similar alcohol content. I believe it's pretty harsh but has good characteristics to it. And then here's some more sake here from the Nanbu region. Again there's so many different in Iwate it's hard to pick one. They do come in boxes here which is nice if you're going to be giving it as a gift. If you're not sure what it is it's okay, sometimes they have tasting here and you can ask to try some of it. If not you can buy one or two, just try it in your hotel room and give it a go. They have smaller bottles here to sample if you want to do that. You don't have to buy but if you're ever going to take it home always get the 720 milliliter bottles and just remember they can keep for up to a year on the shelf without opening it but once you open it it needs to be refrigerated and please drink it within at least a month.

00:13:54 John Daub: Oh yeah that's right, I remember last time I was up in Iwate they were telling me about the iron works that they have up there. It's a very famous place where they make tea kettles. Look at this, this is really well made. Almost 400 dollars, 39,000 yen. Look at this, so much character, so much personality to it in the iron work. Oh that's a pretty looking one. This is 44,000 yen which is roughly 400 for this but I think when you buy one of these you're going to keep it for the rest of your life so you never have to buy another teapot. It's quite heavy. And down here if you look you have some nabe pots. These are the traditional ones that you'll find in the restaurant. Not a lot of families have these because they are quite expensive and very well made. This one's 8,000 yen which is pretty reasonable, comes with the wood top here which is perfect if you want to make a nabe (hot pot) at home. Quite heavy though I believe they're made of iron but I could be wrong. I know they have iron works up there. It's beautiful craftsmanship. It'd be really cool to do an episode, a main channel episode on how they make these teapots from the iron source in Iwate.

00:15:32 John Daub: And here's some lacquerware. Check out this, this is about three thousand dollars but look at the work that they put into it. Wow wow that's iron on the sides here. This is stuff you find in like a sunken pirate ship or something except it's new. It's nice furniture up here. Like there's a lot of things I don't know about Japan. Every single prefecture, there are 47 in Japan, has something very unique. Food is the one thing that comes out on the front because everybody has to eat but other things like iron works and things like this you don't know where the best place is. Look at that on the inside that's interesting. I guess you can turn it over and make it into a yakiniku (grilled meat) grill I'm not sure. There's got to be a purpose behind everything.

00:16:43 John Daub: Does everybody know what wanko soba is? Because I was there about a year and a half ago with my friend Cody and we had the wanko soba challenge and I had over a hundred bowls. Can't remember, I just know that I ate a lot. Oh I know these, these are so good. These are like white azuki beans surrounded in like sugar icing. They're so good. And this one looked good, this is a sweet potato. I was thinking of sending these to the daimyo supporters on my Patreon. The page here they look pretty good too. Check it out there's a cake and then some sweet icing around it so good. All right let's go and try some of the food that we've gotten a chance to take a look at. Again I noticed that I haven't seen this before but the mascot for Iwate is called Wanko-chan and you can see Wanko's got different toppings on there on top. It's like a donburi (rice bowl) but it's supposed to be soba in there. Apparently there's different kinds of toppings. Gotta love that.

00:18:24 John Daub: I wanted to see if there's a map. Okay here's Iwate, a map of it. It looks pretty big on this map but it's on the east side of north Japan, Honshu island in a region called Tohoku. So Tokyo would be here and this would be Fukushima and then Miyagi and then Iwate and Aomori up here and this is Hokkaido. This is Iwate right here on the side. And this is the cherry blossom schedule and it's saying that in Morioka, the capital city of Iwate, the cherry blossoms are going to be blooming on April 12th. It's good to know. And the current temperature in Iwate is minus, it's cold, it's very cold.

00:19:36 John Daub: Yeah that's nice so they have a little area where you can try some of the food here. There's a place where you get some soft ice cream and if I'm feeling the urge I might just do that. Yesterday we walked the outskirts of Akihabara towards Ueno and showed you a new different area. But I'm noticing that the more I've been walking around Tokyo, which I haven't done a lot of the last two years, different areas of it, I've noticed that a lot of new old shops have gone out of business and new shops have already come in and taken their place and they're filling in the needs of the people in those local areas instead of more tourists which is interesting.

00:20:41 John Daub: This time I purchased in advance all the goods so this one is one I got from the refrigerator. It's an organic ginger ale. I just like the label so I thought I would try this and ginger ale is one of my favorite soft drinks. You gotta shake it up just like stuff on the inside here. Wow the color changed, that looks like a cider. I also got the Nambu senbei which is very famous from Iwate. We're gonna be trying one of these and this smoked tofu which I thought I had, I couldn't say no to. I'm gonna make everything to Kanai whatever I don't eat but I'm gonna buy some new ones too so don't worry she's getting some new stuff in there. All right let's try this Nambu senbei. I haven't had this in about a year since the last time I was up there. Now you probably want to eat this with some peanut butter or something but they come in looking like this but actually there's two of them here. And it's just a senbei, just a cracker. So there's some space inside here. You can make a sandwich. And it's really good. But as it is. Oh, this one doesn't have the peanuts. I got the wrong one. There's some husks in there. But there's ones where you can get full peanuts inside of them. They're so good. All right, itadakimasu. Oh yeah. It's still got that very strong peanut taste. And very fresh. Do you know the fresh peanuts that have the husks still on it? It's got some of that taste to it. The brown skin on the peanuts. I like that. That's the freshness of the peanuts right there. You don't take that off. Get a little bit of that on there. Because that's what's inside the senbei here. Again, I like to dip this in Nutella. Whipped cream would be good. Ice cream. Break it up. Add something crunchy in a sundae. And it's just slightly sweet. It's not, I don't think there's any sugar in it. It's got a natural sweetness to it. Table salt, flour. There's a little bit of sugar in here. It's not one of the main ingredients. But it's listed at the end. So, very, very, very light sweetness. But it could be combined with almost any dish. You could put a piece of chicken on here and eat it like this. Something only I would do. Probably just me.

00:24:19 John Daub: I can drink that. I can eat that. Let's try this ginger ale and wash it down. Wow, look at the color of this. That's got, I think it's got some cinnamon in there. No. It's got yuzu (citrus fruit). Carbonated water, a little bit of sugar, and some spice. I guess you could say kanpai. I love it. It's got, it doesn't say that there's cinnamon in there, but there's some sort of spice that gives it some fire. I think that could be cinnamon. This is good. This actually comes from fruits from Iwate. But I guess it's a, I was actually in the Sanriku area. And Sanriku was an area on the coast that was really impacted by the tsunami of 2011, March 11th. We're coming up on the anniversary. Guys, I actually wanted to take you up to Iwate Prefecture, up onto the coast, to a town called Kamaishi. Kamaishi was also featured in the Rugby World Cup as one of the venues for it. But I wasn't able to take you up there because of the Omicron and the pandemic. They just said, please hold off on it. So I wasn't able to make a commemorative episode that I wanted to for the 311 tsunami and earthquake up there at Tohoku. I kind of want to feature that area. Just keep doing it because I would love to see them have more tourism when things return. But I was really sad that I had to cancel my trip up to Kamaishi to tell their story and just go up there.

00:26:30 John Daub: Only in Japan. I would have to use my teeth if not for this right here. Do you see this? All Japanese products, almost all, have this easy to open thick cut in it. So then you can just open it like this. Look at that. So what do you guys think? Is this ginger ale up your alley? It's pretty intense. This is tofu. It is so heavy. It's got a really good body to it. You can see there's some spring to this tofu too. It's smoked tofu. Of course, you can see that from the color. Smoked tofu. Can this replace cheese, which would be healthier? That is so good. Oh my God. This could replace cheese. I'm not kidding. They've added some salt in there. So there's a salty, smoky taste to it. But they've made the tofu hard enough where it has enough pull in the mouth. It doesn't melt like cheese. Not the same. Slightly different. But there's some tension. And there is a little bit of melting. I could see that replacing it. Because the salty and the smoky with the glass of wine or some beer or some soda. Cider. I can see that. Wow, that's outstanding. If it tasted really bad, I would have told you. You would have seen it in my face. Tofu platter with pinot. I think that would actually be not bad.

00:29:12 John Daub: I don't know if you can find smoked tofu in your country. I don't know if it's a thing. I've spent quite a bit of time. In fact, I was in a restaurant. I was up there in a town called Iwate-machi. Hanging out with Cabbage Man. The town's mascot is a guy who looks like a pro wrestler. And he has a green mask. And he loves cabbage. They call him Cabbage Man. I raced him and I ate cabbage with him. It was a pretty interesting episode. But I spent a lot of time in Iwate eating their food and drinking with them. They can drink, man. They know how to drink up there. And with drinking and a culture like this you need to have the right foods for it. So I can see how this smoked tofu fits really nicely in there. Oh man, this is so good. I can't believe this is only like $3, $4 for this. Cheese would be triple the price. I had a lot of fun with that episode. I hung out with people after the Autumn Festival as well. Really great cultural episode. I think it was five years ago. It smells like smoked cheese. It almost smells like, it smells smoked. And it doesn't smell like tofu at all. It doesn't. I don't know if it smells like cheese. It smells a little salty. It tastes salty. And that smoky taste. Of course it hits you on the bitter sides of your palate. It's not the same flavor. The measure is cheese but it has a very pleasing taste. A good break in the mouth. Just different. It crumbles a little bit and then melts. There's some mochi-mochi (chewy) sponge to it. It breaks a little bit and then melts. Which is similar to cheese but it's not the same. But it's satisfying as cheese.

00:31:27 John Daub: I wanted to take you to all six prefectures in a series of Tohoku. And a few weeks ago, I showed you Akita. And on this channel, I took you into a very special restaurant that David Beckham had went to. I only say that because I was shocked. I saw a picture of David Beckham with a monster, a namahage (demonic ogre). I was like, what? So David Beckham came here too? It kind of just made it a little bit cooler. I don't know why. I've only seen maybe three matches with David Beckham. I don't watch a lot of football, soccer. But he was there. So I featured this restaurant in Ginza, which had amazing cuisine. And tonight, I'm taking my friend Ruth again because Peter's not around and some of my other friends are staying at home. But Ruth is actually in town. It's perfect. So I invited her for tonight. We're going to be eating at a restaurant that's very famous. It's a restaurant that has some of the most unique rural food from Japan. So I'm not going to do it live. I'm going to record it and then upload it tomorrow. Tomorrow or on the weekend. So you can get a chance to come with us and take a look at the food. I believe they have some wagyu (Japanese beef). It's going to be very special. Again, Iwate. Man, the north of Tohoku, it's cold up there, but they do a lot of good. All the ingredients up there, it's like world class. And a lot of chefs, top-end chefs, they source their materials from Iwate, from the Tohoku region. Yamagata, which is nearby, Akita, Aomori. Aomori is very famous for the black garlic, which you can eat raw. It's got this amazing, strong but not overpowering garlic taste. It's strong, but has more of an acidic taste. And it doesn't sit on your breath like garlic. It is incredible. Also, they have some of that growing in Iwate as well, up in the north.

00:33:37 John Daub: I'm going to get some more of the smoked tofu, actually. Because I can see Kanai and I eating this tonight. And Kanai and I being on a diet because we've been eating a lot of birthday cake. Kanai's birthday is in January. Mine is in February. And next month is Leo's birthday. So we're sort of taking it easy before that. So there you go. So it's kind of neat to try some of the food. Again, we have permission to film in here. So don't worry about that. I wouldn't be filming if I didn't ask in advance. Famous for the old ladies, too. They got a lot of them. That's one of the greatest assets. So if you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. I'm so happy that you guys could join me for this. It looks like Japan is opening up little by little.

00:34:31 John Daub: Those barbecue places where you grill your own meat look amazing. I know. That's probably going to be at one of those places tonight. Pretty excited about that. And there you go. I'm not going home empty-handed. Thanks, everybody, for joining me on this mini adventure. Again, I can't get up to Iwate to film. So I'm kind of bringing you to what we can visit here in Tokyo, which is Iwate-esque, which is still pretty cool. I'll see you in the next livestream. I will film tonight's dinner and upload it probably tomorrow so you get a chance to look at that. And main channel episode coming tonight as well. There's a lot of work going on behind the scenes here. See you, everybody. Have a good day. Have a good night. Later from Iwate's prefectural store, the Iwate Ginga Plaza. See you.