00:00:09 John Daub: That's some good iced coffee from 7-Eleven. How you doing everybody? This is Shodoshima. Check it out. I woke up to this. I love living right on the side of the beach here, right on the coast. In this live stream, I'm going to be taking you from here, where I'm staying—this is Hotel Irifune—to the other side. And that is the Angel Road. Do you see those people walking on water? How cool is that? They're walking on water! Or are they?

00:00:59 John Daub: We're going to go over there right now and find out what the heck are those people doing. We don't kid around on these live streams. We're going straight to the beach, straight over there to figure out the deal. There's a lot of action going on here in Shodoshima. Last night, I ate at that ramen place. We're going to be passing it on the way. This is a wonderful area to stay for a few days, but I'm here on a mission, and my mission starts at 10 a.m., where I'll be filming a main channel episode on a topic to be released fairly soon.

00:01:35 John Daub: Angel Road is this magical road that appears when the tide goes out. There are some islands here on this side of Shodoshima, near Tonosho, not too far away, maybe four or five minutes drive on the south side of the island. When the tide goes out, you can actually walk across from this beach resort to these islands over here. It's kind of a neat thing called Angel Road. Let's see if we can cross. This is where I ate dinner last night. It was so good. They used some sort of fish stock in the ramen soup, and the noodles were kind of different too.

00:02:44 John Daub: I sat here watching the sunset with a beer, some gyoza, and a bowl of ramen. I ordered it with a topping—you can get ramen with toppings. It's like you can make ramen into like a pizza in Japan. You can add an ajitama, more chashu. You can add here a special seaweed that's found and cultivated, and it was so good. The tide is up. You can smell it. To get around, you have to go through the hotel or walk into a special place. I'm not a hotel guest, so I should probably go around, but being me, I'll just walk in the hotel.

00:04:20 John Daub: Really amazed at how much the island does have here. A lot of motorcyclists—I guess it's because it's summer. There's a 7-Eleven down there, loads of restaurants beyond just that sushi place, this seafood place, and the ramen place I showed you. This is the Shodoshima International Hotel, right in front of the Angel Road. Let's go inside and take the shortcut. They do have a cafe, other sets of services. They got a gift shop here. This looks really good—looks like there's some kind of really special kuro-mitsu (black sugar syrup) or something inside there. There's an onsen on the right.

00:06:29 John Daub: Alright, Angel Road—open! Oh, I got the power! Last night, this was all decked out in these neon purple lights, which is pretty awesome. And they had an inflatable flamingo, which I guess did not make it. Seems like a pretty nice hotel. The view that they have is way better than mine, though it does look like a 1980s hotel. A lot of these places are actually renovated on the inside, so they look a lot nicer than they do on the exterior, which is just a cement block—kind of like a bubble era looking hotel.

00:08:06 John Daub: Oh gosh, look, the tide is in. So we can't cross without getting wet. But that's not a problem since as a human being I was built to get wet. So this is the Angel Road and probably the new thumbnail for this video. When the tide is out, you can walk across. And when the tide is in, you have to swim across? I can't get this gimbal wet. Now the tide is in. The water is nice and these Birkenstocks are waterproof. It is actually getting a little deep. I'm not an angel because you would float—you would fly over this.

00:11:22 John Daub: Well, if you're watching this in the future, this is from the future. This is what the world looked like in 2022—still clean. Look at how clean that water is. Last night I was looking at the sunset with my beer over yonder. I was thinking, boy, we live on a really beautiful planet, don't we? I'm a scuba diver, dive master since 2004. I've done a lot of dives and there's a lot of coral reefs and whatnot underneath the ocean. Unless you're a diver, you don't know—it's kind of messed up down there sometimes.

00:12:32 John Daub: Like big cities in Tokyo, Takamatsu, Okayama, the Kansai region. And there's a lot of stuff on the island, but it still has this "we're an island" kind of feel to it, which I like. That's what we crossed just now, you and I. At the end here, you can go all the way around the island. You can see there's some ema (votive plaques) or like message boards, and you can leave a message behind on one of the trees or something. It's a very Japanese Shinto thing to do. But the island is very holy and you don't want to climb into the trees.

00:13:49 John Daub: We have another sunny one today and tomorrow too. I'll try to film this episode's opening and closing scenes on a sunny day tomorrow. I only have access for today when I'm about to film—just one day. So I got to go. They're coming at 10 a.m. I have to set up the DJI Ronin gimbal I bought, get some good shots. I have the Sony A1 with a 16-35mm f4 power zoom on there. Get some good shots of the secret topic I'm covering here: olives. Natural sandbar. But it's going to be a hot one—I think it's going to be 35 today. My car's top opens.

00:15:20 John Daub: I lost one [sandal] in the muck when I was... Peter von Gomm and I were riding around Hokkaido. There is a bell—I guess an angel did get his wings. The tide's coming in fast. It's deeper than it was before, just in a couple minutes. Gotta just do it. The more you think, the deeper it gets. This island is famous for its wagyu. But it's an island in Japan, so you'd think they'd have really good fish, and they do. But it's hard because it's so overshadowed by the beef that they have here.

00:17:18 John Daub: You think you buy the ema and the things either inside the hotel or somewhere here. There must be some person selling them. If you come to Japan, you can visit a shrine—it's like 500 yen, within $4 at the exchange. You can get a chance to write a wish or something. It helps out the shrine, and a bit of you remains behind in Japan when you fill out one of these ema boards at the shrine and leave them behind. This is the Angel Road. A lot of the attractions here on Shodoshima are natural places.

00:18:12 John Daub: I was at a rice terrace the other day driving over it with my convertible car. I noticed I was taking an Insta360 video over my head—I taped it to the back of the convertible so you can get this 360 really wide view as you can see me driving on the bottom and the scenery all around. Then I got back and I can't find it. The file is there on the 360 camera, but when I go to import it, I can't do it so I have to re-film this again. It's weird—it's on when I look at it on the camera, but when I import it from the SD card into my computer, it's not there. The owner's been really friendly—very local, a family run place.

00:19:05 John Daub: You gotta know when the tide is in and out. Guess what? It's in. Leo and Kanae are probably gonna come with me in October when I come back here to film the olive harvest. I'm just here mostly for scouting to build the relationship. When I come to islands and film, it takes time to get to know people. You can do that by email and stuff, but I always found the best way is to get out there and do it. You just go and you meet people. You show them the cards, you show them the menu. Media doesn't have a good image anywhere.

00:20:09 John Daub: But if you're somebody who goes there, you spend time there, you spend money there, you talk with them—you actually care about their island, this is their home. Usually you'll get more stories and it takes... It doesn't make a lot of sense monetarily. It makes sense for the story to get to know people. That's been my experience. So today I'm really happy to get a chance to meet with locals today to film the episode I want to do in October. Angel Road—not a lot of angels flying across today. Thanks, everybody. Have a good day. Have a good night. I'll be back. Maybe another live stream today. I'll be in Okayama tomorrow night. Take care, everybody. Angel Road—no angels. Very few angels. It's a place for lovers. See you guys.