00:02 John Daub: Wow! It is snowing! Check this out! It is snowing really hard here in Murakami, Niigata. And we are going to be taking you inside this Murakami City Skateboard Park. I'm kind of excited about this because I didn't know that this place even existed until like a couple of weeks ago. This is a city built—I mean how many cities have built an actual skate park? When I take you inside, it's going to blow you away, especially if you're a skateboarder. Or maybe it won't, I don't know. You're going to have to tell me in the comments. But I was pretty shocked at the size and the state of this amazing arena. Let me take you inside now.

00:54 John Daub: I don't know a lot about skateboarding, but Ayumu Hirano, who won the gold medal I believe at the Olympics in Tokyo just last year, is from this area. And it created a lot of people who also wanted to train and become skateboarders themselves. And that resulted in the building of this amazing skateboard park. Let's go inside. Awesome! So you're seeing here Japanese skateboarders doing their thing. Whoa. Skate or die. This is pretty cool.

01:51 John Daub: We have permission and access to film in here to kind of get an idea about this amazing place. I'm so happy about that. Skateboarding was a new sport in the most recent Olympics. And we had a skateboarding arena at the Tokyo Games. And it's kind of neat to be here and then see the progression of the sport. And sports survive when people partake in it and actually start skateboarding and do it. And skateboarding is one of these sports that is growing here in Japan. And if places like this keep getting built, then the sport of skateboarding is just going to keep growing here in Japan. Of course because this just looks so much fun. This is a future Olympian right here that you're watching.

02:47 John Daub: What is amazing about this skate park is just the sheer size of it. Whoa. Look at this. It's like this brand new warehouse. I think that's like hinoki (Japanese cedar) wood. It smells really nice in here like a new car. I guess it's a brand new park. The internet said that it cost $15 million. I don't know about the cost of it. But I'll tell you it's super interesting to see the city getting behind this and creating a place like this for people to skateboard. The skateboarding world already knows about this place. Alright. It's not anything new. It's new to me because I'm not in the world.

03:31 John Daub: Lee Richards I'd be happy if you took up skateboarding. That's kind of fun. You got to have nerves of steel. I don't think I could do that. Wow. I need sports mode on this. Oh my gosh. That was so exciting. Hey, Edo. Edo's here. Finally catching a live from the Netherlands. The opponents against the US football team coming up soon. It's hard to have a football match with the Netherlands because we love the Netherlands. It's like how do you be competitive? I'm going to take you a little bit around here. Let's walk a little bit.

04:43 John Daub: Again, if anybody in the skating world knows Ayumu Hirano. Man, the fact that he's just down the street, I guess he lives here and trains here. And of course, has influenced so many young kids to be skateboarders, too. I'm pretty excited about this sport.

05:19 John Daub: So actually, I want to take you upstairs into the stands and get a look down on the skateboard park. But I've been here all day and I took some video of Murakami City. So why don't you check this out as I make my way up this hill? I'm going to take you up the steps and then I'll try to talk about it as we walk up to the top here. This is my ride in on the Shinkansen through Murakami. This is going up into here's the station, the sign that says Murakami Niigata. And it's famous for sake, which is salmon. And I ate lunch inside this restaurant. It's famous for fish.

05:59 John Daub: Check out this. They're drying the salmon and actually they're swimming upriver right now. I'm going to get a chance tomorrow to go and see where they are. I'm going to get this salmon go up and film. But this is how they dried the fish here and they still do it in this manner. And this is the streets of Murakami. This is the kind of city I guess that everybody is really wanting to know about. But it's not on anybody's radar. And so when they asked me to come over here, I was pretty excited because I've gone through Murakami many times. But I've never actually stopped here.

06:35 John Daub: This is a wagashi store that's hundreds of years old. And that's me pretending like I'm just walking around casually. But I'm filming myself. Look at the old houses. There's a place called Komachi, which is just filled with these old warehouses. There's unique businesses all over the town. This is called Fujimien. And they do... There's a tea cafe inside here. Let me take you in. It's pretty cool.

07:07 John Daub: I mean, we all know about like coffee shops and cafes. But I like the fact that some of these towns are starting to put in like green tea cafes. And in the back of it, like I was shocked. They had this really beautiful, from the old Taisho period, like renovated tea cafe. And I got a couple of cups of tea. The great thing about tea is they just have to give you hot water. And it was all you could drink hot water. And you just keep refilling the leaves until it runs out of tea. Here's the back here. Like the secret cafe. I got to drink some good stuff.

07:52 John Daub: Check it out. There's the owner. He's an instructor. And he was telling me about the differences of green tea. The Murakami one, I guess it's a little bit different weather. So the tea tastes different. And I had a cup of chumushi (medium-steamed green tea), which is just normal sencha. Which is so good. Look at that hot water. 70 degrees Celsius. There's the sencha right there. And then they put that in and steam it. And out comes this beautiful colored, lightly colored. I like it about chumushi too. Because you can really taste the natural flavors of the green tea. The tea here in Murakami was so good. And they let me pick one of the four desserts. I wanted all four of them. But I picked the one on the top left there. This is me pretending to know I'm some sort of green tea professional. I'm tasting the natural flavors of the tea in there.

08:46 John Daub: Oh, this was a sake brewery here. Not a brewery. But you could go in there and drink the sake. And they have kind of like a little museum in there of all the labels. And then a vending machine. Check this out. So I like the fact that this vending machine, you can see the bottles in there. One coin was 100 yen. So you can get three coins for 200 yen. And I thought that that was really cool.

09:10 John Daub: And I'm back. Hold on. I'm back. How do I end this video? I'm back. Is that me? Oh, here we are. Ah. Here we are. That was fun, right? So I'm really happy to be here in Murakami. I'm going to be spending the night at a ryokan nearby with an onsen. Take it easy. And then tomorrow I go to see the salmon swimming upstream. But right now, I'm so into this. The skate park. So I made it up the steps. I didn't realize that the video I took was three minutes long.

09:53 John Daub: From this point of view, you get a pretty good view of the skate park. I like going up here from the elevation. Check this out. Man. I'm so excited. I'm going to take the thumbnail again from up here. I'm so scared to do this. How do they not get hurt? Maybe not getting hurt when you say that makes you want to do it more. So I can see why kids would be into skateboarding. This is just freaking awesome, dude.

10:30 John Daub: Michael Sassano racing here. Hi, John. Didn't know there was an indoor skate park in Niigata. Cool to know. I used to skateboard back in the day looking at the snowboard in Nagoya one day. You know what? I think that this is a really cool... So this skate park is really cool because it's really close to Yuzawa, which is where there's some skiing in Niigata. Ichigo Yuzawa [?] is a very famous station that has a lot of ski around that area. This isn't that far away. So to make that jump from skiing and then coming up here to try the skateboarding would be pretty kind of fun to combine skating and skiing together. What do you think?

11:11 John Daub: If you think that's kind of a good idea, leave me the comments below because I'm kind of thinking... I didn't know about Murakami until I came here. I mean, I've driven through here, but I've never stopped. I'm kind of interested to think about what different ways that this town could promote itself. There's so many attractions. They even have their own kind of Wagyu beef here called Murakami beef. So it's like there's so many amazing things here, but I've never heard of it really as a tourist attraction until recently. And now that I'm learning that they have a skate park and stuff. And look at that. They put me on the board here. That's embarrassing. Stop. No, don't do that. Did they just do that? Oh my gosh. They just did that. This is so embarrassing.

12:09 John Daub: All right. I'm just going to film here and shut up because now I know that the live stream is working. Well, this is pretty sweet. Actually, we can walk around the side here. Let's go up. I laugh like Shaggy from Scooby Doo. That's true. I grew up with Scooby Doo. Actually, we can walk around the side here. Let's go up. So I'm learning there's about a 15 second delay because I'm hearing myself 15 seconds behind. This is so cool.

14:25 John Daub: What do you guys think of this skateboard park? Is it a skate park or a skateboard park? I'm not sure what you would call it actually. I think it's just really cool. I love it. Why are you on the monitor instead of them? I'm filming them. I'm not supposed to be on the monitor. Okay. I'm filming them. You're so right. Is this built by the city? Yes, it's built by the city. This is not a private facility.

14:57 John Daub: Let me tell you a little bit about this. So if you wanted to come and actually skateboard here, you have about 10 minutes that you could do that. They allow you to freely skateboard here for 10 minutes and then after that you have to go through an orientation but they ask that you rent the facility out. I'm guessing that it's not going to be too expensive to rent the facility out but I'm just not sure of those prices yet. I'll put a link in the description. I put a Google map to this location I believe in the description of this video and in there there's a website.

15:34 John Daub: I really think that if more cities built mega skate parks like this, more people would skateboard. And today is a really cold snowy day like I showed you outside. It's really chilly. The snow is coming down hard now and this is a great reason to be inside and stay active. I'd love to... Doing a meet-up up here would be pretty freaking cool. They should set up like a bar here and I would sit there and watch people... just training because it's pretty sick some of the moves that they can do here. I've been watching for a while before I started the live stream and was really amazed.

16:27 John Daub: Let's see what they do here. With the zoom lens on this phone is pretty cool. Wipe out from the corner here. From this angle you can see the entire skate park. This is pretty amazing, right? The temperature here it feels like uh minus one, it's pretty cold. Let's walk around the complex and we'll make our way back to the front. Whoa dude that's an awesome... Do it again. Wow awesome.

17:42 John Daub: Yeah they asked me if I wanted to do this. I asked them where the closest hospital was. They laughed and never brought it up again so I'm guessing the answer is no. I'm guessing I'm not gonna try it out. There's certain things in life I'm not good at. My younger brother used to be good at skateboarding. He used to be able to do a 720. That's a 360 times two.

18:25 John Daub: All right so if you do want to rent out this skate park I think you can do that to practice and that might be a really good idea. You just have to get in touch with the management of the website and I think you can do that there. On the big screen the orientation if you're interested after the 10 minutes of the free trial they'll give you an orientation video which you can see right there. Which is my video that's me. I just took that. Chan wants me to try this out. I think I'll stay with you. Whoa. Did you just do that? Whoa wipe out.

19:10 John Daub: Does anybody tell me in their country do they have a place by the city that has been made that looks like this? Can anybody tell me? I'm just like right now blown away that a city created this amazing place. They invested money to make something like this and I think it has been a huge success. It certainly got people's attention. Like I've seen roller skating rinks a lot of them went out of business so you have to find a sport that people really want to do and skateboarding is one of those sports. I can see the challenge of it, the fun of it. There's lots of different moves, there's lots of different ways to enjoy it.

20:31 John Daub: You can, instead of ruining the town, you can come in here and do your curbing. I don't know any of the moves. You could do some curbing, some rimming. What are the other moves? You can do 360s and 720s. One of those board flicks. Just stop now, John. Okay. Whoa. Yeah, the ceiling grinding. Yeah, look how high the ceiling is, too. That's pretty sweet. I love it, too.

21:20 John Daub: This is made out of, like, I'm guessing this is like a hinoki cedar wood, which is a traditional kind of wood that you find in the Japanese countryside. It's great in onsen. Here are the bathrooms up here. Curbing equals grinding. Okay, thank you for that. I don't know. I'm going to get myself in trouble if I keep this up, so it's better just to not say, not to try to pretend that I know what I'm talking about, which is a lot of stuff here. I don't know anything about skateboarding. That's okay.

21:56 John Daub: I'm just happy that we were able to take a look at this place, and I hope that this video helps you, too. So if you're searching for a skate park and you found it, I'll put a link in the description for more information. But this should give you a pretty good update on what this place is like in 1080p. And a 360 video would be pretty sweet to do that. Whoa. I'll be doing another live stream tomorrow from here in Murakami. And hopefully we can find some interesting stuff and get in trouble with some sake soon. Hello, Hi821. I owe you some Tsurukame. But they got a bunch of other brands I never heard of here.

23:07 John Daub: If you just hear, right in here, there's a similar place in Dubai. That's pretty sweet. I think I would expect that from Dubai, though. If there wasn't a similar place like this in Dubai, I'd be disappointed, though. Well, the fact that it's here in Japan. What makes this really unique? Alright. I just want to sit for a second. I want you to think about this. Alright. The country of Japan has the oldest population in the world. So you wouldn't expect them to build something like this that's a sport for young people. Right? You'd expect them to be building, like, you know, places for old people, I guess. But that's not the case.

23:48 John Daub: And what makes this town, Murakami, gives it kind of a youthful vibe. Is it's embracing the old. It's embracing the sport of skateboarding. And I think that that's really unique. You have to look at it from the point of view of Japan, okay? The oldest country in the world has a place like this. That's massive. Funded by the city government. That's freaking awesome. And this is a great direction. And it's something that I totally want to encourage. More of this! We want more of this.

24:21 John Daub: Alright, let me take you back downstairs and we'll end this livestream. This is a lot of fun. So there's a training center here! This is great! Check this out, so you have training here and you also have a place where I guess you can practice some moves, maybe? Or, you know, learn about skateboarding without getting hurt too much. There's a lot of stuff here. This is the direction I came up when I was showing you the video. Yeah, I want to hear from you in the comments below, what do you think of the skate park? Is this something that you think your town or city might invest in? Do you think the benefits of having a skate park in your town might be really big and encouraging people not just to stay active but to get really excited about skateboarding or another sport? Just let me know because I really want to hear from you guys.

25:35 John Daub: We can try to interview. Hi oh hello there it's hard to interview a moving target. It's hard to interview a moving target they move quickly. Oh. So just quickly she's seven years old she got interested a while ago which is probably not that long ago for us and she wants to compete in the Olympics. That's pretty cool. But how does she skate? Yeah she skates good. Whoa you're seeing the future of Japan skating right here. Holy smoke she's only seven. She's from this town and she's not afraid because she's already done this many many times. Experience is the best. Ah listen. Wow! Is your little sister good? Better than you? Yeah. That's your younger sister. So I said, is your younger sister good? And she goes, yes, but not better than me. That's awesome. She's good. Wow, how'd she get up there? She went out of nowhere.

30:18 John Daub: This looks like a lot of fun. I'm gonna have to do some stretching before and after if I ever take this. There's no way. Oh, there she goes again. Oh, it's some air time. I can't even get her in the camera. I'm getting sick trying to... Alright everybody, this was a lot of fun. I hope that this was enjoyable.

30:51 John Daub: I kinda like learning about new things, and this is certainly new for me, but for some of you that are into skateboarding, definitely, this could serve as an example for what cities can do to encourage more people by doing the sports that they're interested in and building a place like this, because this is just awesomeness. I feel younger watching people skateboard. I feel like I could do this too. How hard can it be? They look well coached though. I think they actually are coached, so I'm not gonna find out.

31:43 John Daub: Thanks so much for watching everybody. I hope this was interesting for you, and again, leave me a comment below and let me know what your thoughts are of this skate park. Is this something that you would like in your town? Are you a little bit more curious in Murakami City and Niigata? Can you see yourself coming here for a visit? And maybe I can help you out with that, because I'm always looking for the next best place to go. You can't just go to Kyoto and Tokyo all the time, right? They don't have skate parks as cool as this. See you everybody. Have a good day. Have a good night. Yeah, Claudio, I'm near in 52. Man, totally. I could if a little bit of practice, I might be able to do this. Maybe. Maybe not.