00:00:01 John Daub: Alright, that's it. We are here. This is Olive Park at Shodoshima. How cool is this? I'm back. It's been a couple of months since the last time I was here in Shodoshima. I thought I would spend 20-30 minutes walking around this really beautiful part of the island. This is in the center of it. And take a look at what they call Olive Park.

00:00:30 John Daub: Now, I'm driving in this very small convertible that hurts my back once again. You might remember this from a previous episode about two months ago. I got the same car again. We're not going to be too long, so I'm guessing leaving my bags here is not a problem. There's almost nobody here. Shodoshima is a beautiful island in Kagawa Prefecture. So it's considered part of Shikoku.

00:01:00 John Daub: I'm here for the olive harvest because tomorrow I'll be filming it at one of the big olive oil companies in Japan. It's going to be a pretty interesting location shoot for the main channel. But I'm also here for olive wagyu beef. I just went to Ishii-san's farm. He's the originator of olive wagyu, and he gave me his story last time I was here. I went back to say hi again. It's nice because when I do these location shoots, I always like to make some sort of connection with the people I work with. Ishii-san is such a nice guy. I get to meet his family and hear the stories about his cattle at his farm. It's something he's really proud of and really special to him. It's more than just a job of raising beef, I think. There's something extra, and maybe you can sense that when I make this episode. It's going to be really fascinating.

00:02:06 John Daub: Then I followed the beef to Takamatsu. After it's raised here, it goes over to the mainland—well, Shikoku—to be processed into steaks that go around the world now because it's considered the rarest beef. But there's a story behind it. So that's why I came here. There's also a story behind that car. It was just a 500 yen upgrade per day, so I figured I might as well spend an extra $10 and get the convertible.

00:02:32 John Daub: This is Olive Park. You can see there are some olive trees. If you've never seen olive trees before, they look like that. They have this really striking gray-blue-green color. I don't know if they've been harvested or not, but we're going to find out really fast. There are some amazing buildings here as well. And that's a michi no eki (roadside station), I guess you would say a roadhouse. At the michi no eki, you can get an ice cream cone.

00:03:10 John Daub: Oh yeah, look at that. They're done. Last time I was here, they were all green. Now you can see that there are some that are dark. Can I just eat it off the tree? That's like shoplifting though, right? If you just pluck things off people's trees. I think that's the same as shoplifting. You have to be pretty responsible. But it is literally a park. I don't know if it's shoplifting if you eat them in the park.

00:03:50 John Daub: We're only going to be here for about 15-20 minutes, so let's go up to the michi no eki and explore this park. If you're coming to Shodoshima, this is one of the places you have to stop. It gives you a chance to appreciate the way that it's done. The locals have made their park here. Whoa, look at this. These are Japanese olives. I think you could eat them. Wow, they really have ripened over the last two months.

00:04:25 John Daub: This is the part of my job that I just love. I start a shoot two or three months before, take some background, and then come back at the right time to catch the story. Because without that background footage, it doesn't seem so special, but now it does. Look at that. Take a bite. You'll be amazed by the taste.

00:04:54 John Daub: When someone tells you to take a bite, I remember that scene from Pride of the Yankees where Babe Ruth has a brand new straw hat and Gary Cooper, who plays Lou Gehrig as a rookie, everybody takes a bite of Babe Ruth's new straw hat. They tell him to take a bite, take another bite until Babe Ruth hears Lou Gehrig eating his hat, and then he goes off.

00:05:39 John Daub: Let's see if they have some olive ice cream. The flight here was really nice. We had an event at the airport and worked it out with the nice guy. He was a little aggressive, but it's all good. In the end, I am here. Beautiful place.

00:06:20 John Daub: Oh, I think it's up here. There's some stairs. I'm not sure how good the video quality is. I know the signal was questionable. I was getting about 5-6 megabits per second, which is okay for 720p. But maybe if I go up higher, the quality will improve. This channel has always been an experiment, but I expect it to get better.

00:07:02 John Daub: When I first started live streaming, we were limited to 480p in 2017. I would think it was the only one doing it. I don't think there were any other YouTubers around. Wow, now we got a view. We have just a little bit of color, some shocks of red and orange up here. If you can't see well, you can hear well. Yeah, we've got a murder of crows—Toby (crow)s—swarming the olives. So far, the Osmo 6 is doing a pretty good job.

00:08:11 John Daub: As long as the video quality is good up here, I'm happy. It's a tough start, but I get to put my mask on to be polite. I think they have some ice cream here. This is where I wanted to do the video opening. Check out this mailbox. I think this is in some sort of Ghibli movie. It takes a postcard from the mailbox and send it from this mailbox. That's a good idea. That's cheesy enough that it would work for me up here on the hill. You get a beautiful view looking down onto the inlet sea here, very close to Hiroshima. Okayama is the closest Shinkansen stop, but Takamatsu is the main hub. You can get a ferry from Okayama, but it's probably a good idea to fly into Takamatsu and take the airport bus straight to the ferry and jump on a high-speed ferry to get here.

00:09:42 John Daub: Let's see if they got an ice cream cone. What do you think? All right, let's get an ice cream cone. We'll see what they got.

00:10:18 John Daub: So they have olive matcha, olive café latte, olive coffee float. All right, let's do that. Wait, Shodoshima olive oil ice cream. Oh, I'm doing that. Shodoshima olive oil ice cream. Got a thousand yen here. Thanks, guys. I bet you're sort of seeing my olive ice cream. Cool. This is awesome. Check this out. That is really cool. Olive oil ice cream. I didn't know that they made something like this. All right, let's enjoy it by the olive-colored, olive-covered mailbox. That mailbox is the same color as the ice cream. What makes me want to sing like a Ghibli song. Look, it's the same color. That's awesome.

00:12:34 John Daub: Olive oil ice cream. Here we go. This should be the thumbnail. This is just bizarre. Has anybody seen anything like this before? All right, let's try it. Have a seat here. This might take the cake. This is the new gimbal, so there's like a little selfie stick thing here. All right, if I hold it here real tight. Yeah, there you go. That should work. This is interesting.

00:13:49 John Daub: Here come the tourists on the Shodoshima bus. Is it oily? A little bit. I guess it's a little oily because it's olive oil ice cream, right? But sensitive teeth. This is a michi no eki, so people come in here. There's a store. It looks like a scene from Greece. After I finish this ice cream near the olive-colored mailbox, we're going to go inside for just a minute, take a look at some Greco art. Oh, look, the postman's here to collect the mail. That's awesome. The postman's here. He's taking the mail. That's cool. I think being a mailman is a pretty cool job. You get to travel a lot, mail coming from all around the world.

00:16:02 John Daub: That olive oil has a little bite to it. Interesting. Yeah, different varieties of olives have different flavors. I don't know how much you know about olives, but this is the Mission (M-I-S-S-I-O-N) variety right here. This seems to be the most prevalent all over the island. It's from America, and yeah, this island seems to have a bite to it.

00:16:40 John Daub: Let's go back to the car. If the signal's okay, are you guys okay with the signal here? I'll take you just a little bit over to the farm here, and then I want to go back to the car. I forget, what was the movie? Was it Kiki's Delivery Service that had a scene here? So I think one of the Ghibli movies was based on this island. There's the sign for the olive building. It does look like mini Greece. Olive wood, some olive trees. Just gonna go look over here. Look at that. The olive oil is really starting to mix up with the ice cream. Oh man, I wonder if it melts, I can just drink it. Wow, this is beautiful. You can't smell it either, but it's just such a fresh smell. Yeah, this has to be like Kiki's Delivery Service, I think. This has some sort of Ghibli feel to it, for sure. Look at that man made of old pots. It's a good idea to recycle the old clay pots. Wow, that's like 20 Tobys. We have a special word for that—a Tobylion, like a battalion.

00:20:08 John Daub: This looks like a Greek Orthodox church or something. Very interesting architecture. It is very peaceful here. I think it's the sea and the fact that you never forget that you're on an island here at Shodoshima. It's not a very big island, but all the roads, you always get this really beautiful view of the sea. Even when you go up into the center of the island, it's also a great place for riding motorcycles too. Here's a couple of riders coming. Ah, that smell of hot motor oil and exhaust brings back memories from a couple of months ago.

00:21:26 John Daub: Can we go off-road? Let's just go off-road here. Yeah, there aren't a lot of olives on these trees. They look like they've been picked. But that blue-green-gray color is so striking with the olive trees. Oh look, I thought this was deer poo, but it's olives. Wow, you go off-road, you get olives on your shoes. Interesting. They look sun-dried. Down there, there's a beach, and in the summertime, I went swimming for an hour and a half. I was so sunburned, but it was such a beautiful beach. You see that hut in the center of your screen? That triangle? That's one of the beach houses. The water was perfect temperature. It's like, because this is an inlet sea, it's nice and warm. But when September rolls around or the end of August, a lot of jellyfish start coming in, and that makes it not ideal anymore. Warm water is great until you get the jellyfish.

00:23:17 John Daub: Yeah, I think I'm going to do the video opening here, and then I'll go check into the hotel. This is a perfect location, and it's not too crowded. When I was here a couple months ago, it was packed. Now it's a lot more relaxed. Here, check it out. Oh, look at those olives. I think you can eat those, right? Can you pick those and eat them? I mean, is that shoplifting? Okay, maybe I can pick one. I picked one. All right, run away. Are they poisonous? I don't know. Do you think they'll find me in my convertible car? I feel like I did something wrong. Beautiful island. So it's just a little bit of a taste. And tomorrow I'm going to Toyo Olive Oil Company and film their olive harvest. I was supposed to get two full days of access, but ended up with just one. They didn't want me to be a burden on their staff. And I am very much a burden on anyone who grants me permission to film.

00:25:40 John Daub: I can take a seat in the car. Oh, the temperature is so much different compared to just a couple of hours ago. It was crazy hot. It's a Daihatsu. Small, very cozy car. I didn't know Daihatsu made convertibles like this, but they do. All right, let's try this olive. Is it, can olives be poisonous? I don't know anything about them. Ride with the wind in your hair. Let's try this olive here. Oh my God. That is spicy. That's spicy. But there's a lot of oil with that though. It is bitter. It's a little spicy too. There's like a spicy bitterness. You don't want to eat it. It's biting you. And that bite goes into the olive oil, which is actually not a bad thing. A pure fresh olive oil is spicy. You know, I think the processed stuff we get from Italy and Spain is not the same as what I've been eating here. Last time I fell in love with the olive oil. I took home a couple of bottles, and I'm going to take home a couple more. Maybe it's unfiltered, maybe it's raw. But tomorrow I'm going to do a live stream at Toyo's olive oil factory. It's not a sponsored video. I just asked for permission, and they said we could film.

00:28:57 John Daub: It was 500 yen more a day than a really boring car. So I figured, I'm the only one, might as well upgrade and get a convertible, especially when it's nice and sunny today. The weather's about 20-22 degrees Celsius. I'd say it's really nice in the sun. I don't think I ever want to be a boring old guy. You always want to be learning new things, expanding your horizons, and taking advantage of every single day because the days get shorter and shorter the older you get. So you want to enjoy it a little bit more and more.

00:30:26 John Daub: But if I put the top up here, I can do it—no skimping on my head. Put the olive back in nature. All right, here we go. Ready. I'm sitting normally. Bring it there. Wait for the beep. All right. Is this cooler? I'd rather have a midlife crisis. You have to open these latches. I think it's way better open. Three, two, one—there's the beep. It's way better, and I need to get a little bit of sunshine because I was looking a little sick. Do that 10 more times. Oh yeah, you know what? I don't think I want to pay for that when I return this car tomorrow night. And that was good—that olive oil was good.

00:32:11 John Daub: So you too can have fun at the Olive Park of Shodoshima. This is a great place. There's more to see actually, but let me put this into the iced coffee can so I don't get any olive oil inside the car. 7-Eleven is pretty smart. They have these iced coffee things. Now it's an olive oil ice cream—this blue one, which is cooler than the regular iced coffee. This is like 30 yen more expensive for the Colombian, and I upgraded. We're gonna end this live stream. I'm gonna take you to the beach.

00:33:00 John Daub: I can take you down to the beach, but we're gonna have to get 200 likes. You do it for me as I do it for you. Good vibrations. Come on. I know we don't have as many people—the timing is a little off—but do it because you want to see the beach. Likey-likey. All right, better do this. I'm gonna keep the good vibrations. What I'm gonna do is... yeah, it's a Marky Mark song, Good Vibrations. Did he rip that off? All right, yeah, it's gonna vibrate a little bit. This car is not ideal, but isn't a bad car.

00:35:01 John Daub: All right, let's get moving. We're just gonna go down to the beach here. I can show you what it looks like because you guys clicked the like button. I feel like I'm James Bond on a Greek island. The car size is the same one as For Your Eyes Only, where that little teeny yellow one rolled down the hill. Oh, I just missed the light. The sign says Olive Park East—that's pretty cool. Hey, Michael Cesaro is semi in the house. He says aloha, and I say mahalo. Oh man, that olive oil tastes so good. You don't find a lot of taxis here. I think you have to have the phone number and call them to pick you up. There aren't any Ubers here.

00:37:02 John Daub: I changed into my bikini right there, and now you can too. Welcome to the beach. That is a very long ride, huh? From here you can actually see the park that we were just at. All right, let me take you down to the beach on the gimbal. Hi, hello, Love Money Penny. Ready to go for a spin? Three, two, one. Oh there you go. You okay? What's wrong with you? Keep your head up, chin up. Last time I was here, this place was rocking. There were restaurants, cafes. This place had a mammoth burger, I think that's what it was called. There was another cafe. I wanted to stay longer but had to get back to work and was already burned. Here's the beach—check it out. Very nice, isn't it? Well, this is the inlet sea between Shikoku and Honshu island, but the water is so—at least it was—warm. It's off season apparently. In the distance you can see... I don't know if you can see it, but it's a nice view of the beach, and the beach is really nice. I believe Takamatsu across there. Yeah, Shodoshima—I want to come back here in the summer with Leo and Kanae and play on the beach. I think it's a beautiful beach. It's way better than the ones in Kanagawa. Zushi is where a lot of people from Tokyo go. Take a look—see how clear that water is? This sure beats the Jersey Shore.

00:40:01 John Daub: Yeah, peso—it's going to be more than 200 for that. 200 to jump in and destroy the rest of my day? I need a minimum of 500. Put that out there, and it can't be Brondania with 500 likes—has to be real ones. We're pretty much at the end of this live stream anyways. All right, look—if you can see up there on the hill, that's where the Olive Park is, that dome. And it's a pretty nice location, don't you think? Yeah, you can get 400 likes and I will jump into my car and drive away. Daihatsu—what is the brand here? It's an open car. What's the name of this car? I think it's only something they make in Japan. Oh, it's a Daihatsu Copen—interesting. I've never been in a Miata, so I can't say if it's bigger or smaller, but I can tell you this: it's a car, it gets me around, it's really convenient, it goes top down, and I can feel the sun on my face for the last time for the rest of the year because it's going to get really cold really fast.

00:43:07 John Daub: So yeah, I'm gonna go and check out the hotel and see what's going on. I'm gonna take the sunshine—it feels nice. Tomorrow everybody, I'm gonna be at the olive oil factory all day filming the harvest and then the pressing of the olives. If there's enough content, I'm gonna make a completely new episode on that. And in the evening, I'll see if I can find a place to take you out to dinner here. The next day, I'm going back to Takamatsu to film an auction and go to a really nice restaurant with a chef who's experienced preparing olive wagyu beef from the source. He's going to talk to me a little bit about what makes the beef special or different, some of the tastes that only an expert would know. I'm sort of an expert—I've had a lot of wagyu beef in my life, been to a lot of wagyu farms, and the wagyu at Ishii-san's farm gave me the biggest wettest kiss ever. It was nasty—that tongue went all the way out and swiped up at the camera and left some slobber behind, which is nasty but a very cute shot. I just have a different outlook on my food than other people do based on living here for 25 years. If the farmers here, the ranchers, are treating the cows really well and have a unique respect that's different than in the West, I think that's a good thing. People eat less beef as a result of it.

00:45:24 John Daub: Once you build trust, you build a kind of relationship. If you've been there for a while, you can see them in their eyes—they recognize you, and that's kind of neat. Got to give them these massages—they got big cheekbones. All right everybody, that's all I got for you. Thanks for joining me on this episode. It's nice to share this car with you. I don't know what I'm gonna be doing tomorrow exactly other than the olive oil episode—I'm there from 8:30 in the morning until whenever, probably like last train. I gotta return this car at 6:00 pm because the next morning they don't open until 8:30 and I'm leaving the island on a ferry right before they open. I'm going home to edit—I got that green tea episode which I had to confirm a little bit. I think it's pretty much done, so if I give it some love tonight I can upload it. Long time coming for sure. Thanks everybody. I'll see you tomorrow, maybe tonight—we'll see what the hotel is like. It was one of the only places on the island that didn't cost an arm and a leg or was available.

00:46:42 John Daub: You want to see what the horn is like? Here you go—that's a weenie horn. That's not cool. Shouldn't they give it a very robust, meaty one like cars in the 1980s? You don't give a small little car a weenie horn. See everybody.