00:08 John Daub: Alright, wow! This is beautiful! How you doing everybody? I am in the car and I'm driving around Shodoshima Island. If you don't know where Shodoshima is on the map, I guess I could show you right here. Check it out. This island is right between Okayama, which is over here, and Takamatsu, which is Kagawa Prefecture. This is Shikoku Island, and this is Osaka up here. Kobe, Akashi. So we're on this island right there, which is pretty amazing. Look at this. And all of the ferry and all of the population is over here on this side. We're up here on the very far side of the island. And I thought I would show you what Shodoshima looks like on this side because it is vastly different than the other side. In fact, a ferry has just docked over there. You see that? So there are people that are coming to this side of the island, which is pretty amazing.

01:13 John Daub: I've been driving around all day. It is so relaxing. This car cost me, I think it was 8,000 yen per day, which is roughly like $59 or $60 a day, which is not too bad. It's a Daihatsu Copen. So let's go outside. Let's check out this beach. This is Tōda-hama Beach, I believe it's called. Wow. Truly a beautiful sight. Let's go down the side here and we can take a look around the area.

01:52 John Daub: We're going to drive into the port as soon as the ferry kind of leaves. We'll drive into there and take a closer look. But I'm just really happy. The weather could not be better for the beginning of November. It's like 22, 23 degrees Celsius, which is what, like 60s, 65 degrees Fahrenheit, maybe? Sunny. I'm sure I got a little bit of a suntan over the last couple of days of driving around here. It is beautiful. I got shorts on. Oh, man. You can smell the sea.

02:32 John Daub: Here the seagulls are diving right in here. You know, the water is not very warm anymore, OK? It would take a lot of likes. I got to be honest with you. Or a very large contribution to my dry cleaning fund, which, you know, I don't need to dry clean this, but I might. So it's about, you know, you could drive around this entire island in about 70, 75 minutes. It's not too big. It's very manageable.

03:19 John Daub: The main pier, the main dock is a city called Tōno. And that's most accessible through Takamatsu. But they have a ferry from Okayama that'll take you almost straight to the Shinkansen. As soon as you arrive at the ferry terminal in Okayama Prefecture, there's a bus that will take you to Okayama Station. You can jump right onto the Shinkansen. So that kind of access is really useful. But I still think that coming here by a flight to Takamatsu from Tokyo is the fastest, most efficient way to get here.

03:56 John Daub: Yeah, it's docking here. Check it out. That's a big, pretty big ferry. You can fit a lot of people on there. That's the one that goes to Okayama, I believe. You know, this one might even go to Kobe or Osaka. And there's the open sea. Gosh, the seafood is amazing. Just on the other side of this lip of the mountain here, there is a restaurant that I went to, this roadside restaurant.

04:27 John Daub: And this is one of the things that I love about this island. If you just rent a car and you drive around for the entire day, there are so many little road stop restaurants that you could just, you know, you park, you eat. It's family run, usually fresh seafood, something that they caught from the area. They deep fry it, put it on a bed of rice with the savory sauce on it. There's nothing better than seeing Japan from this point of view. I know, like, you all might like Yoshinoya and Ippudo ramen and all these other places, chain shops. They're pretty good. But I'm just telling you, when you come out here to the countryside, you have a lot of these shops that are, I don't know, it's just so much better. It just tastes so much better.

05:09 John Daub: Here's Tatehama Beach. Tōda-hama? I'm not sure. It's my first time here. I guess it's a beach. We got it all to ourselves. Rodania's in the house, cheering from Hawaii. Aloha. How much to jump in a boat and ride away to go to Hawaii? Gonna have to stock up. There's a vending machine over there. There's the car. It's the same one I believe I had a couple of months ago when I was here. I did a bunch of live streams from this area.

05:59 John Daub: Yeah, that was pretty darn good. Anago. I got an ōmori large size. Ōmori means big bowl, like a size upgrade. I got an ōmori anagodon, which cost 1,600 yen. Worth every single yen. All right, let's get in the car and we can drive over to this area. I mean, maybe we can walk it. I think we should. See if we can find a place to park.

06:48 John Daub: There's not a lot of people on this side of the island either. The people that I did see were like, it seemed like everybody's over the age of 60 or 65. There's nothing wrong with that, but it was just a little bit, a little funny. Such a beautiful day. How lucky could I get? We're gonna make it. All right, let's take it to the town here. Wow. There's like nobody here. It's very small. Look at this. All these really low, small buildings, old looking. This is so relaxing on this side of the island. Such a different, such a contrast.

08:07 John Daub: All the boats are disembarking. So let's see if we can get a parking spot and I can show you. How about right here? Yeah, I think I can park in here. Then we can walk into the town a little bit. Can I park here? I think I can. Oh, yeah, this is the ferry. Okay, yeah, this is for the ferry. We're only gonna be here for a short time. So says the live streamer. This is nice. There's the ferry. Let's walk around to the other side. I better get my mask because I'm an outsider. This is pretty nice.

09:10 John Daub: All right, don't touch anything. Is there like a resident cat who will keep watch if I give him some fish? Oh, there's a cat. I'll be back. I'm going to Takamatsu tomorrow morning to film the rest of this episode. And then tomorrow evening, I go straight back home. Look at this art. This is art, baby. Peter, can I bring this back for you? Put this in your little garden. What is it? All right, moving along. The things you find in small towns. Just have to, if you use your imagination, it might look like something that it is.

10:20 John Daub: Who'd have thunk it? Look at the view. Should I go through this? These pipes here and you can see. Look at that. Beautiful. Now, here's the funny thing. It is sunny here, but the weather is different on this side of the mountains. It's kind of cooler. And there's a mist that comes through here. It almost looks like it's going to rain. But the other side is very, very warm. It's just a really different contrast, this one side of Shodoshima and the other side.

11:06 John Daub: Now, the summer is the high season. Tons of tourists come here, especially motorcyclists and bicyclists. The roads are not too big. You can see there's a bunch of motorcyclists. Peter, let's consider doing this one. They're getting on the ferry to go back to the mainland. So I think this is definitely a doable trip. Do they have ice cream here? I'd love to get something from the shop.

11:38 John Daub: There is a bus that I believe it meets with the ferry. Oh, man. Oh, they don't have anything on sale. Maybe it's inside the shop. You can get something. Maybe we'll go inside. I didn't actually ask for permission, but I think they might be okay. I'm not sure too many live streamers come this way. Anything interesting in the vending machine? Usual suspects. This is the Fukutake House. Not sure what that is. But we're going to dig in. Oh, this is okay. I'm glad that we kind of came here.

12:23 John Daub: This is the ferry that goes from Himeji. And a lot of you know Himeji Castle. This is another reason to stay perhaps in Himeji. You can get on the ferry, come here and explore a little bit. Maybe even rent a car in Himeji. Drive around for a day and then drive the car back onto the ferry back to go back to Himeji. How fun would that be? Interesting. Mental note. This is from Himeji. Let's see really quickly if I can get a price of the tickets. There's a list and an estimate of the time that's required. How long does it take you to get to Himeji? 1 hour and 40 minutes. Interesting. So it takes 1 hour and 40 minutes to get to the other side to Himeji. That's actually, it takes 30 minutes by jet boat from Takamatsu from Tōno. But the ticket price, what was it? Did I say 1,700 yen? It's like 4,500 yen. $15. That's pretty cheap.

13:44 John Daub: Let's see. What is this? Fukutake House. Looks like an art exhibition or something. Not sure. Ferry to Hawaii would be pretty sweet. But you got to go around the Seto Inland Sea. There's a bunch of islands here. Alright, let's take a look at the map. That'll give you a better idea where we are.

14:23 John Daub: So I guess from this side of the island, you can get a ferry that goes all the way to Kobe. And up here on the top, that's where we are. This ferry takes you to Himeji. This is Fukuda Port, Fukuda Minato. There's one on the top here that takes you to Hinase. And the main port is right here on the opposite end of the island. That'll take you to Okayama and Takamatsu. That is Tōno. And next to Tōno is the art museum, Teshima. It's a lot of art installations on this island. It's really beautiful. And there's a bunch of other islands here. But most of the ferries, because this is Kagawa Prefecture, this is considered Shikoku, this island. You can catch the ferry to Takamatsu. And there's tons of them. They're like two times an hour, including high speed ferries, which take 30 minutes, which is what I take. So, yeah. I already did a live stream of Angel Road. And I stayed here last time. It's really interesting. It's just that this side of the island has a very, very sparse population. It's just, it's a really different experience than on the other side of the island. So maybe coming from Himeji might not be a bad idea.

15:44 John Daub: All right, let's walk down a little bit more because there's something special about... What is this for free? Electric charger. Wow, that's free. Free electricity. Beautiful. Right now, from the top of the island, you can see the autumn leaves are just starting to change here. Next week will be a lot better. So we're about a week away from the autumn foliage changing.

16:19 John Daub: This is freaky. Is that a real woman? Hold on. I thought that was a real woman standing. Excuse me. Oh, that freaked me out. I thought they were people. Akutake House. Oh, this is on Google Maps. They're like gods. I guess they're the local gods. They're the local residents here. This lady made of apples? Whoa. That is seriously real lipstick looking. That's creepy. All right. You know what? I got to keep moving. I don't want to. This isn't a place to mess around. You upset some spirits. Apple lady rolling towards you. You don't want that.

17:28 John Daub: These signs are all over the countryside in Japan. It's to tell kids not to jump out in front of traffic. Tobidashi chūi shite kudasai. Tobidashi, jump and rush. A lot of electric vehicles. It's increasing here in Japan. John going to have apple lady's nightmares tonight. I am going to have that. I totally going to have apple nightmares. I'm having them in real time right now.

18:12 John Daub: This is such a beautiful little town. Look at this. So we have a temple, which is 400 meter hike up this direction. And there's some construction going on here so the population is half construction workers so there are that okay well look well you know walk around a little bit. This is the DJI Osmo 6, a new one. it's a nice little gimbal extension stick works better than my 5. this one doesn't deserve a name yet we on this program if the gimbal is giving us trouble and that's what makes these like a buttery smooth viewing experience if the gimbal gives us trouble we name the gimbal only when they're bad so far there's no name name for this one.

19:16 John Daub: What a scenic little town look at that. Joy's right joy rates in here new gimbal let's name it how about name it joy. she's just Kimball's name I dub the joy the joy is doing well joy wanted me to name the gimbal so we just named it after joy. it was down there joy now says no not my name too late joy Carrie says joy is joyful I can get on board with that Scotty writes in here joy is a smooth operator true story both in real life and the gimbal so it kind of works.

20:19 John Daub: You can hear an airplane somewhere in the distance but it's just so quiet oh there's an alley. I'm not gonna scream out loud but I will meow and let's see if we can get some kitties out that's the kitties after all I have to come out that's me well that was me as well the hunting rabbits and cats be a different dialect name it joy when it works then name it grief when I can that's hilarious it's a good idea the opposite of joy grief.

21:30 John Daub: I wanted to be a barber just so I could get a barber pole but then I found in Japan there's places they don't have one barber pole they got like 20 of them cuz they just went crazy and that you know guess that's just my thing. also had a childhood dream of having a barber pole then they just kept on collecting them i saw a place in Ibaraki driving there must have been 150 barber poles and it just would drive you crazy and it would make you want to stop and marvel at it then it would drive you crazy.

22:06 John Daub: oh look at this alley is this a real road okay let's go down the rabbit hole you see this these are Seto lemons whoa so this area of japan is very famous for lemons of course we've got olives on this island but these seto lemons are um they're really good and they're kind of expensive i'm not gonna you know never take something from somebody's uh garden you know it's okay to look at them even if it falls on the ground they're not yours so that's that's important okay somebody has uh that's a lot of lemons though maybe they don't need all of them don't never steal and stealing is also borrowing okay you don't borrow fruit so i know that there's somebody's thinking that because i was too you can't borrow fruit just watch seinfeld there's an episode on a whole episode on that you can't borrow a can of cola either once you open it it's stolen something like that.

23:48 John Daub: all right i couldn't go any further so that's as far as i can take you there no soup for you that's right when life gives you lemons you eat it well i guess if they give it to you but i was not given it oh wow look at the sun streaming through the clouds that is just i've been on so many islands in japan japan in itself is an island but within those four main islands there are so many little ones and each one gosh it's so scenic look at this alley and in between each in on each island there's almost like a very unique culture they have something there that's just different and uh and there's a lot of things that are the post office like what the post office is on every island on in every place it's pretty amazing i'm not on every island on every habited island i think.

25:12 John Daub: oh do you see this i know we're not gonna go all the way over there well we'll see what happens that's a con there's no convenience store here so that truck there is a convenience store truck and they have drinks and bread and sugar and all the things you need for daily life on that truck that's funny they got music playing that's how i know it's a convenience truck you can hear the music strange foreigner coming in your direction close and go away oh they are closing up are you just finished oh that's a shame a mutternut guys what it's called yeah they're like classic rock that's it's so funny.

27:02 John Daub: oh look how beautiful these are look at this it's probably copyright music as well i bet you gosh okay you know what blah blah blah no i don't think they copyrighted the song copyright strike look at this little kiddie playground all right we gotta go in here let's go into the little this is the sound of the japanese countryside jingles birds fresh air and all and all of you want to go to tokyo and kyoto and you're missing this kind of stuff this is so off the beaten path man um you're missing this kind of stuff this is so off the beaten path man that's beautiful look at this jonathan i find out if it's copyrighted by if they give me a strike there's no way to find out until then that's the thing and then i have to cut it i think it'll be all right.

28:32 John Daub: look at this this is for kids if you go through these these uh 20 gates you go into another world a dimension now i'm not it's bad luck to go underneath the ladder but it's a slide so it's okay so we're going to go through these here feel different it's fun just to explore walk around no kids i haven't seen anybody under the age well it is probably school hours i haven't seen anybody under the age of 65 yet except for me it's nice to go to a place where people still call you young man hey young man i think i'll move here which is like every single japanese small town now you're always the youngest person unless you're and even if you're not young you're still probably the youngest person because the average lifespan in japan is way.

30:16 John Daub: look at how clean this canal is what this is so this is clean living folks when the water that comes through your town in the canal is this clean this is clean living and it's quite deep it's about two two and a half meters deep which is you know for translating for the american audience like what eight feet you can see the fish ah there goes the truck a food or not it's called furu-naka furu-naka is gone you see him i think you could swim here but you'd be that'd be weird be weird in november it's sort of you know done swimming season you could you can do anything you want it's free country it's pretty well it's pretty free country it's almost free country yeah.

31:36 John Daub: the red thingies are called tori-i which we don't really write it in english in japan but they have chinese characters is called kanji it's all good look at the solar panels are they self-sufficient here the whole town would be self-sufficient that'd be pretty freaking awesome hey everybody michael's here michael sasano never seen this part of japan before loving it thank you for sharing with us you're welcome kind of a sleepy fishing village uh between okayama and takamatsu look at the walls on that is that made of straw or mud that is like a taisho era building like a hundred year old building maybe it's hard to say it wasn't me.

33:23 John Daub: yeah if you're just joining us we named the gimbal joy and what else happened we saw some art which i'll show you again we saw this i took you we saw a convenience store truck which was here before when i first came it's no longer here i'm we saw the ferry coming in from the beginning just recapping what we what we saw here we went to the ferry terminal and found out that this ferry came from himeji to shodoshima which is pretty awesome and it takes an hour and 40 minutes to get here um and uh i'm probably the youngest person here in this town and we're going to give this to peter to put in his garden we don't know what it is yet but it's something no it's hard to i really don't know what that is i don't know.

34:19 John Daub: living on i'm hearing echoes of brandania she's running in and out of her off to catch the live stream we love you brandania thanks michael this is like a museum right here and there's a gate to keep us out a rope fishing boat various things look at that old forklift from the 1900s i don't know i'm really digging this town look at the old anchor days and that's it that's the town this is it this has been pretty cool um i just wanted to give you a taste of what it's like on the other side of shodoshima because i've given you a couple of live streams i really recommend i i really recommend that you kind of give this island a little bit of a little look over on your trip here um i'm not sponsored by shodoshima island or kagawa prefecture i'm just really curious about it and this is i i've been here once at many many years ago but the last couple of months i've been coming here more frequently to film and it's just there's some interesting stories here let's just put it like that and i'm always hunting for interesting stories.

36:17 John Daub: like who made this stain here story deep theirs is like this emerald blue color to the water uh the seto inland sea it is really one of the most beautiful water in japan i think in the world i don't know but it's it's such a beautiful color to the sea it is hard to tell from a from a distance but when you look at it like from here you can see very nice isn't it it's like a green blue like emerald color really clean see the sea.

37:09 John Daub: see see the sea see see question mark maybe keep going see she see the sea some more sh just really relaxing here i'm heading back now to the olive park i'm gonna go get i'm gonna film the uh olive oil ice cream for the uh episode and get a handful of olives and film that but was really interesting um yesterday to go see the uh um the original wagyu fed cattle so i i don't know if you've ever seen this with was it david spader i forget who the who the actor is um there was a scene in there where there was a truck full of of cattle carcasses beef and they said this and he said this is the most expensive wagyu beef i think he said wagyu i think they pronounced it wrong the script they don't know how to wagyu beef from shodo island in japan the olive wagyu beef it's like whoa it made it into hollywood now so olive wagyu beef is pretty big.

38:24 John Daub: but i was curious about it and i i actually i'm not i'm not kidding okay i picked olives this morning i was so busy i couldn't film it live stream it all right just just listen to this all right and then i went i went to the processing factory and i saw how they make the olive uh the olives that the they don't eat raw olives the wagyu here there's a special food and i ate the food that the wagyu beef eat like the cattle so i ate cattle food and it was interesting it was a it was it was pretty of course it had like the pits in it so was a little bit crunchy but was good so i ate olive the same food that the olive beef eats it's like a powder and uh was quite good so now i don't think anyone in the world outside of japan has ever eaten this food so it's you know it's an original.

39:22 John Daub: how many other youtubers have tried to make wagyu beef uh olive wagyu beef episodes but i think i just took the cake i ate the olive feed that the wagyu eats. But it wasn't it wasn't bad and wasn't good but i could see there's a lot of nutrients there's an essence of olive in there but was the it was kind of bitter all right um a natural natural sweetness on the side when it was kind of bitter on the uh like a deep bitterness but you could tell that there's a ton of vitamins in there and this is i think what gives the olive wagyu not the taste of olives in the meat they don't eat raw olives but it's the it's the minerals and that bitterness the sweet bitterness that that resonates with through the meat and i'm very interested because tomorrow i'm going to the uh auction for the wagyu beef olive wagyu beef auction and then we're going to a restaurant that's going to prepare me a bunch of dishes with olive wagyu beef and i'm going to try them of course get scenes of them cutting it and everything but i really want to get the essence of what makes this brand so special and you know is beef just beef but it's not but it is is it can you really taste the difference.

40:52 John Daub: so over the last couple of years i've been making these wagyu beef episodes and it's fascinating to come to come to the farms and and talk with the farmers and understand what what they're doing to make their brand unique i thought that was pretty cool all right everybody um what should i do now don't don't forget to hit the click button i think i'm gonna i'm gonna fly the drone here and get a couple of shots back at that point here and then go go back to the olive farm and uh i'll be on the shinkansen tomorrow night and in takamatsu tomorrow so i'll try to bring you to takamatsu maybe even on the ferry tomorrow and give you another perspective uh and then um yeah tomorrow night i'm right jumping onto the um onto the shinkansen and heading back home to tokyo i don't think i'm gonna spend the night in takamatsu so i might do another shinkansen episode or something from okayama or something um before i get on the shinkansen if possible and then we'll uh um yeah i'll be back in tokyo the day after tomorrow i believe i'm not sure yet i still might spend the night in takamatsu it's hard to say who knows i you know i have a nose for a story and when the story is still there i kind of we'll stick around and then try to get more of the story.

42:07 John Daub: Don't forget to join our Discord server. We're about almost 16,000 strong over there. A lot of people are sharing their photos from Japan. So if you're thinking of coming to Japan, you're asking questions about it, I would go onto the Discord server. There are people that are in Japan right now that will answer your questions on the server. It's kind of fun right now to hear and talk to people that are traveling inside of Japan. It's almost like the thorn trees, something that Lonely Planet had done like 20 years ago. You can go online and get up-to-date information from people right now on the ground. And that's what the only Japan Discord server is. And it's free. It's a cool place to talk and share. A lot of the photos coming in are cool to look at too.

42:46 John Daub: All right, everybody. I'm back at it. Time to get on the move. The ETC card. I'll see you in the next episode. I think it's perfect here. This way. There's another car blocking me. All right. I'll see you in an episode. Probably tomorrow. Maybe tonight. I don't know. And we'll talk again. Thanks for joining me on this adventure. Aiken. Aiken, also, thank you for the super thanks. Aiken, I saw that. You gave me a super thanks. And I think I responded to it. But that's really cool. I get notifications with the super thanks. I appreciate that. And I'll send you a message because I'm very interested in the gimbal holder. I appreciate you thinking of me for that, buddy. All right. See you, everybody.

43:39 John Daub: Whoa. What is that? What is that? It's like army helicopter. What? It's a double rotor. Whoa. You don't see that every day. It's a UFO. It's aliens. Or the U.S. Army. Probably U.S. Army.