00:04:00 John Daub: Unbelievable. I just arrived here in Yubari. This is a youth hostel where I'm spending the night. There aren't a lot of options out here to spend the night, but this is a really nice one. There's seven private rooms inside. Now, youth hostels, you think of bunk beds and things like that. It's not like that here. I'm going to show you some of the rooms. They're pretty nice, but I'm just looking at the view here, trying to take this all in. I can't believe I was in Tokyo looking at the cityscape about two hours ago. This is crazy. Wow. I'm so happy to be out of Tokyo. The air is fresh and sweet. I picked up the rental car about an hour ago. Drove here, took about 35 minutes. Wow. Now, this place is really cool. You're going to see one of the most beautiful youth hostels I think I've ever seen.

01:16:00 John Daub: Because youth hostels don't have a very good image. This is on the official international youth hostel guide or something like that, but you don't have to be part of that association. I'm going to put my mask on because there are people checked in here, but let's go inside, take a look at some of those rooms, and give you a feeling of what it's like to stay here. Hey, KT, love it. How you doing? There are some bikers here. This seems like a really nice place to stop off. I already checked in and got the key. Let's walk around the outside of this place. In the winter, there is a lot of snow around here, but now that it's the end of summer, here's the key. I'm in room Pumpkin. That's the name of my room, Pumpkin. That's pretty funny. Wow. This is real soft grass. Oh my gosh. I'm going to take off my shoes and put my toes in them. I'm so impressed too with the amazing signal that I have from out here.

02:20:00 John Daub: There is Wi-Fi, but the 4G LTE is actually stronger than the Wi-Fi. Dinner is at 6 p.m. Breakfast is at 7 a.m. There aren't a lot of restaurants in the area, so you probably want to make sure that you get all of the meals. Let's go inside. This is the bath here, so it's probably the water heater. Yubari Farm Rest Youth Hostel. The dining room. I can see myself editing out there in a couple of hours. Moving the mosquitoes will be pretty bad, but the restrooms are really clean. They're downstairs on the first floor. There is a bath here. I think that's the ladies toilet. There's a bath here. You want to make sure you take off your shoes. There's a shower that you can jump into before you take a bath, but the bath, anytime it's available, you can use it, I was told. Oh wow, it's really hot. I'm going to take a bath in a little bit.

04:23:00 John Daub: So some of the rooms are still empty. This is just a plain, empty tatami (woven straw matting) room, so I'm guessing a futon (Japanese bedding) will go here, but I'm on the second floor, so that's where we're going to go. I think each room might have a different price based on size. Let's go upstairs. It smells like wood. All right, let's look at some of the rooms that are available. I guess that's where we're going to be getting dinner tonight. This is room Tomato. And it's got kind of a lofty feel to it. I'd be pretty comfortable in here. I don't mind the fact that the ceiling comes down. It's a little dark though. There's my car. Oh, you can go outside. Oh, that's awesome.

06:01:00 John Daub: So this is, I guess this is a smoking area. You're not allowed to smoke in the rooms, of course, but wow, from the second floor. Oh, this is wonderful. I can't believe it. It's about 30 to $40 a night here, which is really affordable, right? It's a shared bathroom. I don't mind that. I mean, this is my home for the next three days. I film the next episode. It is much cooler than Tokyo. There's absolutely no humidity. It feels like spring. It really is spring here. Okay, let's get back inside. This is Yubari, Hokkaido. All right, what's this room here? So we're going to look at a carrot, carrot. This one is asparagus. After vegetables in English. This is a double room. Whoa. It is actually pretty warm in Hokkaido right now, but there's so much less humidity than if you compare it to Tokyo. So this just doesn't feel the same. Everything is wood and it's such, this is so beautifully redone. I believe it's new. I'll put a link in the description, but if you just Google search Yubari Farm, it comes up.

08:09:00 John Daub: Somebody's already checked into these other rooms here, but I will take you now into mine, which is called— whoa, it smells like wood. So I don't have a desk, but I can use this. See, because it's one person using a twin room, I guess they rolled it up, which is pretty smart. So they can just use that when I check out. I've got TV, remote control. You can open the windows. You really don't need an air conditioner or anything like that. I can just turn on the TV and watch the video. The view is amazing. There's a crow down there—Toby (crow)—looking for me. I'm in here. I guess that's where I'm going to be sitting as I edit tonight. Got a lot of video to edit. The mirror. So there's seven rooms here. Some of them are twins. Some of them are singles. Each one has, I think, slightly different price, but again, you probably want to get the meals when you come here.

09:38:00 John Daub: Let's open it up. Get some fresh air in here. Oh, that's wonderful. I'm going to be— oh, look at that screen. It's a nice screen. I'm going to sleep so well tonight. So what am I doing here? So I'm going to be filming about the melons here and Hokkaido has some of the best melons in the world. And I think everybody knows that if you go to a Japanese supermarket in the summer, you're going to see ridiculously priced fruit. There's nothing new there. I'm somebody who likes to dig out the stories and really look and see what makes this so pricey. What's the story behind it? I love to chase down stories and I've been chasing this one down for the last three months, believe it or not. And I came here last month to get them planting the melons. The seeds down until they get to be able to be harvested. This is the best season for them. And the auction is tomorrow. I'm part of the media that's going to be going there. So there's going to be a lot of TV people there. I've got some access in that nobody else really has because I've been trying to work with the city for a long time to get that kind of press access.

11:15:00 John Daub: And I'll be going to the auction, which is going to be on Japanese TV as well. I've got access to go down to the floor because of the COVID time. It's not easy to do that, but I had to take a PCR test yesterday after I filmed the live stream. There's free PCR tests all over Tokyo, by the way, and everything is A-OK, so I'm OK to go. I'll be bringing that. I don't think I'm going to be live streaming it. This is an episode for the edited channel. But yeah, and this is also where Melonkuma (melon bear mascot) is, one of my favorite mascots. And it appears that I'm not gonna be able to see him this time. He's out of town or something. I just got a message from the city. That's bizarre, but I guess Melonkuma (melon bear mascot) needs a break too, just like that crow. I was told that actually Melonkuma (melon bear mascot) lives in that house near Yubari's train station, and I'd be able to film like a day in the life and just catch him doing daily chores. Apparently whoever— oh, Melonkuma (melon bear mascot) is Melonkuma (melon bear mascot), okay? There's nobody inside of him. He's not actually, according to the founders, Melonkuma (melon bear mascot) is not actually a mascot. He's this bear with a melon on his head and he's got bloody teeth and he scares kids.

12:42:00 John Daub: But for some apparent reason, he's not available while I'm here for the next three days, which is kind of a blow to what I wanted to do with this episode, but it's okay. I mean, the point is to show the background, the history of these melons. But yeah, that kind of stinks. Melonkuma (melon bear mascot), maybe he's gone back into the woods because it is harvest season. I don't know. Mascotting is his part-time job and the rest of his days are spent in the melon patch, putting his head into melons apparently and eating little kids. He's got bloody teeth and the reason why he scares kids is to make sure that kids don't get the image that bears are friendly. Yeah. They're actually dangerous, wild animals. Make that point with the mascot with bloody teeth. I love it. All right. This is my room. I'm sure I'm going to, over the next few days, show you the dinner that they make here or the breakfast tomorrow morning. It is pretty amazing.

13:45:00 John Daub: If you take a look at the website, I highly encourage you just out of curiosity, take a look at the website. And if you're thinking about staying here, you probably already have. All of the food is farmed fresh from this area. Organic and all this other stuff. I mean, yeah, I kind of care about that a little bit more. But I think it is going to be really tasty. The vegetables should have this amazing robust Hokkaido taste compared to the stuff we get in the supermarket in Tokyo. So I'm looking forward to that. I'll put some pictures on Instagram and if I can get access, I'll ask them if I can maybe live stream the breakfast or something to give you an idea of what the food is like here. Because you eat very well. When you come to Hokkaido, the milk, the vegetables, the meat, poultry, pork, beef, it's all really fresh here. And that's what makes Hokkaido such an attractive destination. And the scenery is incredible. I don't think I'm going to be watching this TV. My MacBook Pro has a bigger screen than this TV. That's kind of funny.

14:54:00 John Daub: Let's go back outside. There's actually nothing in here. So I'm going to go back outside. I'm going to go out before I eat dinner and get some drone footage of the town. Can you picture yourself sitting at this table, chilling out, having a beer or two? All right, let's go outside. Good shot. All right, people are coming and probably taking those rooms that I showed you. They were open. So I thought this was a big chance to be able to show you around here. Let's just run into this grass. See, no area. I don't even know what a knoll is. I guess it's like a hilly area. It's not a knoll exactly. This grassy area. And we'll look at that. The place that table I showed you in the back there, a knoll is Dungeons and Dragons monster. No, I think it's K-N-O-L-L not G-N-O-L-L. I don't know what that is. Wasn't Kennedy shot from somebody hiding in the back of the house? I think it's from the grassy knoll. Isn't that— am I wrong?

17:13:00 John Daub: Are there snakes here by the way? I used to play Dungeons and Dragons. I don't remember a knoll. G and wow, that's really pretty, isn't it? I guess this would be nice in the winter. They got a fireplace in there. I can see myself just reading a book and chilling for a while. I'm just kind of worried that there might be snakes in there. This grass is kind of long. You know, you've got wild hamsters running around too. And this would be really fun for the hamsters. I think it could be burrowing underground and running around, come to greet me. How are you doing? There's a place. I'm kind of joking around and I'm kind of not. There's a place where Mongolian hamsters are the ones that a lot of people take as pets to, I don't know, like $8. And you can put them in the cage and they're friendly creatures. There's a place in China called Gansu and that's where they're from. Apparently there's an entire area where the Mongolian hamsters are running loose while wild hamsters. Different than the ones that we buy as pets but this would be a great place for them I think too. They'd really enjoy this freshly cut grass just saying. I always wanted to go. I wonder because I've had— I kept a lot of hamsters and I was really good to them so I wonder if word of mouth got to the motherland I'd be greeted as a friendly visitor and there'd be some four-year-olds that might not— might be eaten alive. I terrorizing them. Oh look at this. Is that cherry blossoms? Cherry blossoms. This looks like— so Hokkaido is one of the last places to get the cherry blossoms. Niseko which is the place I'm going to at the end of this is the last place in Japan to have the cherry blossoms. These aren't cherry blossoms but these are blossoms at least. I don't think they're sakura (cherry blossoms) but it's really beautiful. This is oh my gosh it smells so nice. Ryoko-san says it's an apple tree. What? That's awesome. Really? I believe you too. If that's an apple tree those are apple blossoms. Cherry blossoms. Thank you Ryoko-san.

19:56:00 John Daub: This place does get very popular in the summer um so you might want to book a month in advance but it's not that popular. It's not like Niseko in the winter or something like that. Niseko is the ski area. I'm gonna get my drone now and then fly around the hostel and see if I can get some footage of Yubari but I'm gonna take it. It's an apple blossom tree yeah there's cherry blossoms and there's apple blossoms. All right it's a big difference. Uh there are bears here too so maybe it wouldn't make sense for me to leave my scent around scare them away. I feel a little bit out of place here. Oh look at this place. Oh this is awesome. I'm glad that we came outside and walked around a little bit. There's these are steps that lead up to a bench. This what that could be you sitting there but it's not it's me. The wood on this bench does not feel very sturdy. I think it might be just for decoration. No this has to be for sitting right. It feels like either that or I've gained a lot of weight um it feels like like it might not last. I think it's for kids. I've gained a little bit of weight but I don't think I gained that much. The board shouldn't be sagging that much. There's no spider webs on it so I figured somebody has been sitting here sitting near the edge. No the edge if I do that then my butt's on one plane and I'll break it.

22:02:00 John Daub: Who wrote that? If they're snakes they need the hamsters to eat I think it would be the hamsters that would eat the snake. All the hamsters would gang up on them because they breed like crazy you know a litter of hamsters was like 20 in there. All right imagine there'd be thousands of them. A snake came here a snake might get one or two of them but those hamsters with those two teeth in the front will burrow into the snake and the snake will be dinner. I saw the junk you know BBC World had this documentary on the hamsters of Junggar in western China and they're well they're cute and they're also probably deadly. All right they're wild animals they probably got some venom or something in their fangs too. I don't know it's been a while since I saw that documentary but if my image is that you know you don't want to mess with those hamsters in Junggar they're wild venom it's like ants attacking right. You need dogs for that. Terror venomous hamsters I believe so if they're wild they're probably de-venomed or something. You've seen the same with the snakes if the snakes got the venom the hamsters might too. I don't know it's Junggar for crying out loud who goes there. I'm closer to it than a lot of you are um the exchange rate is 127 yen to the dollar it's still holding strong above 125 which is good for those that are visiting.

23:20:00 John Daub: This place that I'm staying at is approximately— I made actually my assistant Emmy made the reservation so I'm not exactly sure but I'll probably find out when I pay but I don't think it's a lot. I think it's about 40 dollars a night with meals which is so cheap um but there's only seven rooms so maybe about 10 to 14 people stay here a night. Uh Zach writes in here any update on the iPhone. Yeah I went to the police station yesterday and uh apparently uh after three months they will be able to get the serial number and start to track it but I'm still going to get an iPhone but my iPhone back Apple didn't use a reputable carrier they used some cheap carrier and it never showed up and I had to pay for it and they claim that um I don't deserve it or something. I don't know it's not right.

24:29:00 John Daub: All right I'm gonna film here get the drone up uh maybe the the thumbnail image is going to be of the drone shot from here because I think that would be a lot better than the shot took with my mug and then tomorrow I'm deep into it. I'm gonna be filming melons going to the melon patches harvesting the melons. I get a farmer who's gonna be giving me a melon he's gonna show me how to cut a Yubari melon a very expensive one and how to eat it properly because if you don't know how to do that you're probably gonna waste your money on it. We're gonna have the farmer do that and that's the best way to learn direct from the source right that's what this is the kind of content I think you guys are up for now. This is a live stream some of you have been complaining about the quality of it yeah I realize that but this has always been a live streaming channel and every now and then I might upload something but don't hey are you has a knife and a melon what that's true but I don't think I'm shocked about it. I'm not the one gonna be wielding the knife I'm gonna let them do that it's more dangerous than me more dangerous than if I did it not very.

25:38:00 John Daub: I'm gonna hurry up and edit that video and get that up within a week so that's gonna come right after that the one I'm working on now. If you're just on Discord Samurai member there I put the thumbnail of the next video that's coming out that I filmed in East Hokkaido last month and that's just about done so I'm pretty excited to release that either tonight it's gonna be close probably tomorrow. I did narration this morning I just have to polish it up a little bit. All right, very cool. I gotta get the stuff out of the rental car, and then I am back to work editing. Checked in that bag, carried on that bag. This one's got all my camera gear in there. It's a good bag. All right, everybody, if you have any questions about this place, let me know. Hey, Rainer's here. Should I video Melbourne for YouTube with my GoPro and gimbal? Yeah, do it, man. Send me the link, I'll check it out.

26:53:00 John Daub: Yeah, so I'll be here for the next three days, so you're gonna get a chance to see a rural area of Hokkaido, but I'll be in Sapporo the day after tomorrow, so maybe get a chance to show you the biggest city in Hokkaido the day after tomorrow, but it should be a pretty good week out here. I'll be calling Kanae and Leo every night, every morning to see what's going on back in Tokyo. Hope everything's going well with you. Again, leave me a question if you're interested in staying here. Or if you have some ideas, and I always love to hear from you. Take care, everybody. Getting hungry, too. Dreal Selects did not like my thumbnail. He said, why does John look so much bigger than the car in the thumbnail? Well, does that curiosity Dreal Selects make you wanna click on the video by seeing that? I don't know. Thumbnails is the hardest part of any YouTube video. Bye, everybody. Have a good day. I know I will. I'm gonna sleep so well. That's my window that's open. I'm gonna sleep so well tonight.