00:07 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to a very small town in extreme east Hokkaido. This is an area where I don't think a lot of people are going to go. You can see there's not a lot of people. This is morning rush hour. It's 7:30 in the morning. Welcome to Shibetsu. Now this is a little confusing because there's another Shibetsu up towards Wakkanai, which is Japan's northernmost point. This is on the side where it's Japan's easternmost point. And you can see Russia from here. There's a contested island, as a lot of you know, the Kuril Islands.

00:46 John Daub: During World War II, the U.S. and the Soviet Union kind of divided up Japan's northern islands. Japan won some of them during the Russo-Japanese War back in 1904-1905. And then after World War II, Russia got them back and more. You're going to be able to see Kunashiri (island), I believe. It just depends on the weather, this direction. I'll take you a little bit through the town because this is kind of an interesting look at a different Japanese town. This is what you would get if you came to a town with no train line either. The only way to get here is by car or bus.

01:38 John Daub: Hello, hello, Katsu. How you doing? Ryan is here. A little chilly up here in Hokkaido. If you compare the weather, it's about 70, 75 degrees in Tokyo, about 23 to 25 degrees Celsius. Here it's like 4 degrees. It's cold. You can still see snow in the corner there. And there's a chance that it could snow again. You saw that car, that's a politician going by here. They kind of make announcements. The houses are interesting here because you're going to get a little bit more snow up here in eastern Hokkaido. I'll put a map in the description, but if you search Shibetsu Hokkaido, look for the east side near Kunashiri.

02:30 John Daub: The manhole cover is slightly interesting. You can see seagulls here. And that's a sight you don't see except on the seaside. Apparently they're doing military operations in Kunashiri, so I don't want to linger too long. And I'm certainly not going to be flying my drone. Look at that, they're selling this plot of land, seaside. They put these here for garbage so crows and seagulls can't rip open the bags and have a feast. You'll see that at certain places. Camping areas usually have that too. This is a park where I can walk a little bit towards the seaside.

03:35 John Daub: Does anybody know what the sea is called on this side of Hokkaido? It's not the Pacific Ocean. Two points for anybody who can give me that answer. I see Sam is here. How you doing? I'm also kind of scouting this out because... Lance, I'm not going to fly my drone into Russia. From here it's 18 kilometers and if I can get a signal... It's really cold. If I can get a signal, I'm going to tomorrow morning go to the easternmost point of Japan and see if I can fly the drone at least around that area and see Russia. But I'm not going to fly my drone to Russia. From the easternmost point of Japan, Russia is only four and a half kilometers away. I want you to wrap your head around that. That's like two miles. It's crazy close.

04:42 John Daub: The Mavic Pro could go there, get some shots and come back. I have the Mavic 3, which is nice. I think we're going to be able to see Russia. Oh, this is cool. It's been clearing out a little bit. It's not the Sea of Japan and it's not the Okhotsk Sea. It's a different one here. You guys are close, but no cigar, no two points for you. Kunashiri used to be Japan. And of course, I'm on the Japan side of things. I don't think that they should have taken that island. But once Russia gets something, they're not giving it back unless it's by force. Japan took some islands during the Russo-Japanese War by force.

05:31 John Daub: A lot of people were talking about this. I was talking about it last night. We went to a local restaurant, and we were talking about that just a little bit. Like maybe Japan should somehow get these islands back. Just take them. There's not a lot of people anyways. Daniel wrote in East China Sea. Really? There it is. That's Russia over there. Crazy. That snow island in the distance, that's Kunashiri.

06:17 John Daub: I'm now driving. As soon as I go back, which is in about five minutes, this is going to be a short live stream. I'm going to drive to Nemuro and I'm meeting with the city hall on an episode about the Hanasaki Line, JR Hanasaki. It's a crowdfunded train line. The locals don't want to give up the Hanasaki Line. It's not a Kickstarter, but they're doing something like a Kickstarter to raise money to keep the line from going out of business or being closed down. In Hokkaido, a lot of lines have been closed down, which is sad. We don't want to lose the Hanasaki Line, especially because it's one of the most scenic rail lines in Japan. It goes through some beautiful country, but it's the Nemuro locals that are doing this. I thought I would go there and maybe ride the Hanasaki Line if I can. I'll live stream some of it, show you what it's like.

07:09 John Daub: You really can see Russia. My fingers are frozen. Hey, I see Alex Shoso is here. Guten Morgen. You can walk all the way there. I'm going to not do that. Well, at least you get to see Russia. I'm not going there. I bet you could take a boat. It's that close. That's creepy. Long way to Moscow. Here we go. Three, two, one. Boom. Wow. Gosh, I wish it was 4K, but it's live stream. It's good enough. The ocean is calm today because it was raining last night.

08:16 John Daub: I can't go to film the second part of what I wanted to do, so I got to come back. I made so many friends here. I want to come back. Look at the mountains in the distance there. That's Hokkaido. So this side is a tranquil place. There are some people on Kunashiri. They're all Russian. But it's a cultural home for Japanese. And it's a sensitive issue here because a lot of people used to have families like grandparents that live there, apparently. Super quiet here. I don't think the drone could make it. I'd need a boat to get at least halfway.

09:15 John Daub: Nemuro used to have a telegraph cable that went to the island here to Kunashiri. And there's another island, the other island that's about 4 kilometers away that nobody lives on. So there is one house on the very end. That's where they would receive the telegraphs. And they made that during World War II. But here's the thing. We were talking just very honestly with everybody. They said, look, if these islands return to Japan, most likely there's a chance the U.S. would just take them over and put stuff there. So that's maybe why Russia doesn't want to give them back. There's a lot of things you can't do here. You can camp here, apparently. There's a camping spot. Hokkaido is like that, a lot of places that you can camp.

10:14 John Daub: Okay, I got to head back. Got an appointment at 9:30 at the Nemuro city office. I don't want to be late. I brought them a box to share at the office. I always know how the bureaucrats work behind the desk. So I brought some Tokyo Banana. Whenever I do these location shoots, you can see Russia is better than looking at me. That changed my mind. I always bring gifts when I come to location shoots. Because even for Tokyo, I always bring gifts. I always bring gifts to the tourism offices and things like this. Because if they invite me or they say they want to meet me, you always bring something, a gift. And then usually it opens up a couple of doors. You might be able to stay a little longer or they'll show you something that they never showed anybody else. And that's pure gold. So I think an 18-pack of Tokyo Banana is a good reward for them.

11:19 John Daub: All right, there's the last look of Russia as we get going. This is Shibetsu for those that are joining us. Shibetsu is a small town on east Hokkaido. Actually, there's another town that I drove through called Nakashibetsu. And that one is bigger than this town. It's a fishing village. This is famous for sake—not Japanese sake in the sense that you would drink, but sake like salmon. And also crabs are quite famous. And we're about a month away, two months away from that season starting. So I'm like, I got to come back here. But I said that when I left Aogashima. And it's been like five years since I was in Aogashima. I was in tears crying on the helicopter because the entire village came to say goodbye to me. I got to go back.

12:16 John Daub: So it's a nice park. I could see myself putting a tent here and staying for a few days, getting a campfire and shooting bottle rockets towards Russia. I could do that. They're probably just laying in the sea. Let's get some fish. Maybe the fish will take the message to them. The camping spots always have sinks here for cleaning up or barbecues. Tokyo, you can't do that because there's a no-fishing, there's a fire law. But here, apparently that's not the case in Hokkaido. There's a couple of ships down there, fishing boats.

13:00 John Daub: All right, I know this isn't the best tour ever, but it's a tour. And I want to go over to that street, but I'm afraid to go off-road. I think that might be rude. So I got to go back the way I came. It's like these houses look like they have guys with shovels that will come out and shovel you. I see Ryan has found some of the new emoji. How cool is that? I even have a Hokkaido emoji in there. Probably some people don't know what the shape of Hokkaido is, so I put it in there. It's a small fishing village. The economy is not huge here. They make their money, they make fish.

14:23 John Daub: Most people have bulldozers. That's how they get around here. Speed limit's five. I noticed that the most popular car in this town is the RAV4. A lot of RAV4s. It's about an hour and a half drive. So from Kushiro up here to Nakashibetsu, took me like a little bit over an hour. But I drove in the middle of the night, and the fog was thick at night. I guess because it was so warm during the day and it got so cold at night. I could see my breath just a little bit. It got so cold during the night that it just started fogging everywhere. I was this close from hitting a deer. Ran right in front of me. I saw a deer's eyes on the side of the road. I slowed down to really slow. And that's when it darted right out, of course. And just missed it. I think I had about a meter.

16:31 John Daub: There's a salmon park. Again, sake is very famous here. So of course there's a salmon park. Good one, Becca. I did put Melonkuma in there. He's a friend of mine. We go way back. I might do a day in the life of Melonkuma for fun. Just hang out with them for a day. Bite people's heads. So I asked them, who's inside of Melonkuma? And they would say, I don't know. They wouldn't admit that Melonkuma was a mascot or yuru-chara (mascot character). Very unusually shaped houses. But apparently since the pandemic started... Is that house leaning? It looks like it's leaning.

18:05 John Daub: According to the CEO who I was working with yesterday that I was interviewing about something—it's top secret, I can't tell you—he told me that since the pandemic hit, a lot of the businesses have closed down. They just don't want... They've had five cases of coronavirus the whole time. So it has been here. But psychologically, it's just messed up. I'm going to go and pick them up. And I do want to come back when times are better to buy a bunch of stuff. So what do they got in the vending machines? Even the cigarette vending machine looks a little sparse. But they do have a special Georgia Hokkaido-only coffee. And then they have some of the usual offerings here. Hey, Paul, good morning. I'm going to go get a coffee at the 7-Eleven. Canned coffee is not the best thing for you. But thank you for that. You just got my coffee for my drive to Nemuro.

19:18 John Daub: It's not that exciting to see Russia. Hey, look at this. They got a lot of stuff going on there. Baseball field, gymnasium. People are asking me, go back and see Russia. It's not that exciting, actually. You can see a bunch of mountains with snow in the distance across the sea. I don't know. Is that noteworthy? I guess it is for some people. This is the post office right here. And you have a coffee. This is the hotel I stayed in. And there are a couple of Marines in the Army from the United States that I talked to that are staying here. Three of them, I guess, on leave. I don't know what brought them here. But maybe fishing. Some good fishing here. As you can see, the sign for the hotel has fish. And the breakfast is supposed to be incredible, but I had no time for that. Gotta go.

20:15 John Daub: So there you go. This is Shibetsu in Hokkaido. It's a really nice place. I do recommend this hotel, too. It was pretty good. And it was pretty clean, too. I'll put some pictures. I do Google reviews of all the places I stay, and you can see there the pictures. Apparently 100,000 people saw one of the pictures I posted, which is pretty amazing. Because we're on the sea, there's a bunch of signs for a tsunami, where to go. So you would go to the left here, and there's 800 meters. There's a hill that you can go to. There's my car in the distance. It's a RAV4, Toyota RAV4. But I'd say 20% of the cars seem to be RAV4s here. It's pretty sweet.

21:49 John Daub: All right, everybody. John is off. Nice and warm in here. If you have any questions about Shibetsu, leave me a comment below. Always happy to talk to you about a place that I visited. If you'd like to see Russia again, I'm going to the easternmost point of Japan, and it's about 4 kilometers. It's much, much closer. It's scary close. You know, you can shout across it. You can shout insults to one another across this 2-mile strait. It depends how big your voice is. I could fly my drone there, too. I'm not going to do it. I could. And Sam might do it. Would you do it, Sam? I don't know. It's like, you get on the news, probably. They might shoot it down. I don't even think there's anybody on that island. I'll put a map, a link in the description. And if you have any questions, let me know.

22:51 John Daub: If you want to see Nemuro, which is the easternmost city in Japan, and it is a fairly large city, let me know in the comments, and I'll do a live stream. I'll do a live stream walking around it tomorrow morning around the same time as right now, and that should be a lot of fun. See you guys. I'm on the road. Time to go. Got to get myself a coffee.