00:00:00 John Daub: So I'm in Murakami, Niigata. If you don't know where that is, it's on the Sea of Japan side from Niigata City, up about an hour. Niigata is a pretty large prefecture, and I went today to a little town that's about an hour north of that, closer to the Yamagata border. It's still in Murakami, Niigata, and in that town they had the most amazing school that had been converted from a school to a hotel. I was just walking around here. There was no signal to do a live stream, so I went there and actually filmed it and created a little bit of video for you. But to put things into context before we go into the abandoned school, let me show you exactly on the map in Japan where this place is. This is a Google map that I created just a little bit earlier.

00:00:46 John Daub: Yeah, so we're coming down. Here, I guess Japan is upside down. That was Hokkaido on the bottom of the screen. This is Niigata Prefecture on the Sea of Japan side and we're spiraling into Murakami. Good evening, Kelvin. Nice to see you. Joy is here as well. There it is. You can see there's not a lot around this place. There's a lot of hills. There's a train line. Do you see that? That's a road and a train line that cuts through the mountain there. So it is accessible by train and it's a very scenic train. Jōetsu Line (Uetsu Line) follows the coast of the Sea of Japan. So it's a really beautiful trip here. Right in the center of your screen where those buildings are, that's the abandoned school. There's a hospital and an abandoned school, and we're going to be going in to that.

00:01:54 John Daub: Welcome back. Now, a little bit of background story. I might have said this when I was doing the video. The school closed down in 1996, two years before I got to Japan. So that's 27 years ago. And for five years, there was nothing going on in that school. I think they said they might have been doing community sumo lessons, which is an interesting backstory. But for the most part, it was abandoned. They weren't doing anything. And then in 2001, the community came together and created—I'm still a little unclear if it's a private or a public business. Public meaning funded by the local government. But they turned that abandoned school into a community center and a hotel. See, the population of that area had completely, like over the last 50 years, gone down. It was much, much less. So there wasn't a need for two physical schools. They built another school in a neighboring town, and everybody going to middle school had to travel now to another area. Irvin is also here in Japan. He is across in Nagano, which isn't very far away. Irvin, nice to see you. Thank you, buddy.

00:03:08 John Daub: Let's go inside the school. This is a little movie. It's about three minutes long with music. I don't know how loud the music is. So just be forewarned. Here we go into the abandoned school. It's three minutes long here. This is a really rural part of Murakami City in Niigata Prefecture. And that behind me right there is an abandoned junior high school. It closed in 1996. And in 2001, it was repurposed as a community center and a place to stay with the local hospitality. It's really cheap. It's 4,000 yen a night. That doesn't include meals. But the rooms are pretty basic, and they've repurposed the classrooms to become guest rooms. Let's go inside and take a look around.

00:04:04 John Daub: It had just so much space. But I can imagine. It used to be a cafeteria. They would prepare the food in here. It's fascinating that they were able to repurpose this building. And inside, it looks really nice. They've been using it now for about 22 years for this fashion. And again, with the train access, it's pretty convenient to come up the coast. The Uetsu Line is a really scenic one that hugs the coast of the Sea of Japan. So just for that, it might be worth it. I'm not that far away from Murakami City, which in itself has a ton of attractions that I showed you in other live streams on this channel. But yeah, let's go to the other hotel where I'll be staying tonight.

00:06:27 John Daub: Welcome back to the hotel I'm staying at tonight. You know, when I saw that today, I was really inspired because everybody knows that Japan's population is decreasing in every rural area. I don't think that's increasing the population. Tokyo now has 30% of Japan's population lives in the Tokyo metropolitan area there. That might include Yokohama, but that's still a ridiculous amount of people concentrated in one place. And there's a massive country comparatively of the size of those 30% that's crammed in there. A lot of it is decaying. A lot of it has open spaces where people used to be, and they're not. And that presents a lot of opportunities where entrepreneurs can come in there and do something like that.

00:07:31 John Daub: One of the reasons why it might be complicated is because when you do that, you might get a discount or a very cheap property, sometimes free, but there's a catch. You have to pay for the renovations and the safety of the building. The larger it is, the more expensive the costs are. So a free school that you might have an idea for business might have a starting cost of $200,000 or more to earthquake-proof it for the current code. Something to think about when you take an akiya (abandoned house) or an abandoned school. There are hundreds of abandoned schools from what I've been told across the country. Most of them have the same problem. The population is declining. The kids that are school age have to move to another town. And that property, they can't tear it down either. So it becomes abandoned. And some entrepreneurs are making use of that.

00:08:30 John Daub: I have a friend up in Akita who started a school called the Akita Inaka School to study Japanese. If you're a foreign tourist or you're coming to Japan to study, you can go up there. That was a repurposed school to a new school. Another kind of school. And it's now become like the heart of the renovation, the change of that city, which is really exciting up there in Akita. So we have some viewers that are gonna be going up there this year since the tourism opened up. So I think I'm falling in love with this side of Japan, the Sea of Japan side over the last couple of years, especially during the pandemic. I've made several trips, sometimes with Kanae. We've been charmed by the people, by the food. Oh my gosh. The food, the people, and the prices of living. It's maybe half of what it is in Tokyo. And you can really focus on your work because there's not a lot of other stuff to do. I like that part of it. I see Peter is here. You look like you're in a hospital gown. This is a Japanese yukata (light kimono). You wanna see?

00:10:04 John Daub: It makes a lot of sense to do that because if you're gonna be going to the public bath, usually every one of these traditional Japanese inns has a bath that you can go to. You probably wanna have this because you can get naked faster. There's nothing underneath here, which is the same as if you wore a t-shirt. So don't get excited about that comment. But there's nothing underneath here except for me. And when you go to the bath, you don't wanna take off shirts and pants and stuff. You just throw it in the basket. You can get into the bath. Irvin knows. He's in a ryokan (traditional inn) as well. Irvin, one of our viewers here that has been to Japan more times than I have because I never really leave. But Irvin probably is the champion of visiting Japan. There's a couple of you out there watching that have been back and forth.

00:11:00 John Daub: Speaking of food, this afternoon I had unagi (freshwater eel), which was so delicious. It comes from the local river here. Unagi is freshwater eel, and anago is saltwater eel coming from the ocean. So lunch was super amazing today. And I can't even explain to you all the foods I had today. I ate so much already. What makes this town so unique to me is the food and the landscape. We're on the sea. It's the coastal region of Niigata. We're far away from city centers. But the rice in Niigata is famous. The vegetables and fruits here are amazing. The seafood, no question. You have the Sea of Japan. I saw some crabs today. We ate some at dinner that were just out of sight. You have maguro (tuna). You have every kind of fish probably that you can find and be happy with in the Sea of Japan.

00:12:05 John Daub: There is a place here just above the hotel. Check this out. This is right outside the hotel. There's a tower. Did you see the steam coming from that tower? That tower is onsen (hot spring) water. Yeah. We got an onsen in this ryokan, which is a hot spring. That onsen water, it spouts out of there where that tower is. And there's a place that, like a cabinet. I didn't know what this was. I opened it up. And there was a bunch of eggs in there. So residents of the city of Murakami can come here and you can put your eggs in this wooden cabinet filled with hot water that comes naturally geothermally heated from the ground. You can put your eggs in there and create your own onsen tamago (hot spring eggs), which I guess gives a lot of vitamins into the eggs and boils it for free. It's crazy good. And it's just 100 meters away. So in the morning, I'm going to see if I can find some eggs at the convenience store and take a basket of onsen tamago to Kanae as a present. Maybe not the most romantic present, but you don't know Kanae. She really loves that kind of stuff. Peter knows. She likes the onsen tamago. That's a great present.

00:13:36 John Daub: They also famous here for Murakami gyu (beef), which is the Wagyu beef. It's so close to Yonezawa. And I have a video on the main channel, the edited channel, showing you how they raise and make the beef up there. The A5 ranked Yonezawa beef. It's like this is the next town over. And I gotta say, I can't really taste too much of a difference. Yonezawa, just because it's a brand, it has the reputation behind it. So it tastes just a little bit better because you're like, well, it's Yonezawa beef. But Murakami beef holds its own. I was really impressed. Tomorrow I'm going to be having Murakami curry rice. So I don't know how Wagyu does in curry, but we're going to find out for breakfast. That's what they told me the breakfast was here. It's going to be Murakami beef curry. So I'm kind of excited and then also kind of confused because that's a little heavy for breakfast for me. I like sweets, not salt.

00:14:50 John Daub: I have this passport here and this allows me to go to the hotel by the seaside. This hotel I'm staying at isn't right on the sea, but I can walk across the street in this, which is kind of weird maybe, but I can go straight into the bath over there with this passport, which allows me to go to the seaside. It is official. Do you see that stamped with the date? I have to return it at the front desk. They told me don't walk away with it. I do think that what they're doing here in Murakami is really exciting. Across from here is the Skateboard Park. They created an auditorium-like building, like an arena for skateboarding. I did a live stream on this last month. It is incredible. It's because I think the Olympic gold skateboarder was Japanese from this town. And one of the reasons why this town produces some of the best skateboarders is because of an acceptance of skateboard culture in this town.

00:16:00 John Daub: I'm not a skateboarder. I know very little about it. I once, when I was 11 years old, saw a kid do a 720. He did a 360 two times. And that's how I knew two full spins was a 720. Not by math, but because of skateboarding. So I learned basically like geometry from skateboarding, watching other people do it. I didn't—I only fractured my arm twice as a kid. I never broke it, which is probably because I was skateboarding. But we did play a sport in elementary school called Kill the Man with the Ball. Don't ask. I didn't start the game, but the name of the game was Kill the Man with the Ball. And we would throw the ball at people—not me, but other people. Cause I was usually the one who was the recipient and you would have to catch the ball and run away. And everybody would tackle you. Oh my gosh. This was a game. Kill the Man with the Ball. That was pretty brutal.

00:17:10 John Daub: And if you didn't catch the ball and you ran away from the ball, there's a certain group of kids that would just go and tackle you. So you'd want to catch the ball. At least if you catch the ball and ran, you have a fighting chance. If somebody threw the ball at you, you didn't catch it and you ran away, they would just chase you. And then you have no chance. You would eventually get tackled. I did pretty good with that because I would take the ball and then I would run away. Or I would throw the ball away and then run away. Either way, I didn't get tackled that much. I was pretty fast. There are reasons why. I was bullied quite a bit for my speed and agility. Anyways, that's besides the point. I'm here to talk about abandoned schools. Do you guys have any questions before we end this live stream? I've talked too much already.

00:18:37 John Daub: This is my—do you want to see this? Click the like button and I will show this to you. This is a video that's queued up of my bento on the train. For the last two years, and I came here on the Joetsu Shinkansen to Niigata City. And then from there we took a bus to Murakami this time. But last time I took a connecting train. And on the train from Tokyo, I picked up an ekiben (station bento). This is my favorite ekiben. It's back after about a two-year hiatus. I didn't see this ekiben for two years. I think maybe it was just a reduction in passengers, but they brought back the Tokyo bento. Oh, the best thing about the Tokyo bento might be the box, but there are some good things inside. Did you click the like button? I hope so because I can't even see it cause I'm using a third-party software here.

00:20:35 John Daub: That's the video there. See that you get rewarded by clicking like by seeing a new video like that. That's kind of neat, huh? You can hear the Shinkansen zooming there. You're not supposed to talk loudly on the Shinkansen still, and they ask you to wear a mask and all that. The box, probably the best thing about the Tokyo bento, the price is 1,850 yen, which is a little bit steep, about $15 for that. But again, that box is something you would take home. It's really nice, but I don't need any boxes at home. So I threw it away. But that salmon and the egg in there out of sight, it's really good. Even for breakfast, that works pretty good. The choices of ekiben are amazing out of Tokyo Station. You gotta get one if you ever ride the Shinkansen.

00:21:22 John Daub: Irvin is in a rental car. So unfortunately our buddy in Nagano will not be eating a bento on the Shinkansen, unless you took a Shinkansen to get to Nagano. Let's ask Irvin if there's any snow in Nagano right now. I'll tell you right now, there is no snow in Murakami, although I believe it might snow tomorrow and there's going to be an accumulation of snow over this next week. The weather is going to start to dip, and the next week it's supposed to be really cold with a lot of snow falling. So right now, a lot of the snow that happened in December has melted away throughout Japan. Japan is pretty warm right now and a cold spell will be coming again. It happens like this all the time. This is so far a really light year for snow. Even Echigo-Yuzawa, I heard a lot of it had melted away. Irvin's writing in here, no snow predicted for tomorrow, which is good. If you're going to the monkey park, the Jigokudani, but you did that today, there's nothing more beautiful than the snow falling with the monkeys in the hot onsen. But even when I went, you can't time it where that happens. So you take what you can get.

00:22:37 John Daub: I'll be back in Tokyo tomorrow. Thanks for the questions, everybody. And if you have some more, you can go to the Discord server. We have a community of 16,000 people there. And if you're thinking about traveling Japan, or if you are in Japan and you want to talk with people to get some ideas, go there. We're looking for people. If you are a regular Discord user, we would appreciate the boost. It's free. So anybody can join us there, which is really nice. Really friendly. You took the Hokuriku Shinkansen, right? Irvin. Okay. Yeah. That's what makes you on the other side. There's like a dozen or so different Shinkansen lines in Japan. And the newest one in Nagasaki. But it's not just one Shinkansen going up and down between Tokyo and Osaka. The network has been expanding over the last 20 years, and it's going to continue to expand in 2030. I believe there'll be opening up, or maybe it was pushed back and delayed, a new Shinkansen line connecting Nagoya in like 45 minutes. It's ridiculously fast. So getting around Japan has never been easier by train.

00:24:02 John Daub: And then the last live stream we talked about, if maybe some places are better to fly to than it is to take a train. So they do have plane passes to get around, which could be something that might be more beneficial because time is money. If you only have one week in Japan, sometimes flying is better than taking the train. Yeah. And I have an episode on that coming as well. Thank you everybody for watching. I will be back tomorrow. I probably will do another live stream in Murakami if I can. We're supposed to be eating a monster kaisendon (seafood rice bowl) tomorrow, which I'm looking forward to, but I kind of feel like I need to do some exercise after today. Like I ate that unagi bento and ekiben. We had a massive kaiseki dinner as well. Just like Irvin's. Yours was better than mine, man. My dinner does not compare with what you—I wish you could share photos here, Irvin, because the food you ate and the pictures you took, that depth of field, what lens were you using? It was just beautiful, beautiful food photos.

00:25:00 John Daub: So I'll see you tomorrow in Murakami and I'll see what I can show you because this channel, Only in Japan Go, as you can tell, I'm focusing more on the countryside, places that you probably have never heard of, but if you see it, you might want to go there, right? So this year in particular, I will do some in Tokyo and city places, but I really want to focus in on rural Japan, chiho (countryside), localities, because they're the places that offer things that you're looking for and you just don't know about it because nobody talks about it. A lot of the other YouTubers focus basically on Tokyo because you actually get a lot of views. When I did Hiruzen in Okayama, an area probably not a lot of people have ever focused on, we didn't get so many views, like maybe 30% of what normally we would have gotten if we did Tokyo views. So I can see why YouTubers would focus on Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka. But I think for this channel, this has always been an experimental channel. Its mission is to go places and show you an experience that's different, live.

00:26:14 John Daub: Aichi Prefecture, I haven't been there in a while. So possibly I'll go through there. Aichi is like a crossroads between Kyoto, Osaka, and Tokyo. It's right in the middle. And a lot of people—there was talk in the 1990s when I came to Japan and again in 2000 to move the capital. I'm serious about this. There was a lot of talk to move the capital of Japan from Tokyo to Nagoya. So then Nagoya would increase in size because it's the third or fourth largest city. It's the industrial hub of Japan. A lot of manufacturing happens in Nagoya. Toyota, the big car company is based near Nagoya in Aichi, in a city called Toyota City. But if they'd moved the capital to Nagoya, I think that would have been a good thing because then Tokyo, which is already too crowded, would have a lot more mobility because VIPs come here, politicians close down roads because there's so many embassies here is a pain in the neck. To get around Tokyo in certain areas, like trying to move around the embassies is sometimes an incredible headache. The police presence is ridiculous too in those areas.

00:27:36 John Daub: So Tokyo, I think over the next 10 years, I'm hoping that the population doesn't increase like the curves say they do. I'm hoping that they said by 2050, like 50% of Japan is going to be living in Tokyo. All the jobs are going to be here. I hope that's not the case. So I'm really excited when I see an abandoned school turned into a hotel. If you'd like to see that go to the beginning of this video in the playback. Thanks everybody. I'll see you tomorrow. Maybe from Murakami, but probably definitely from the Shinkansen. Probably definitely if I can manage to get the time because I'll be heading back to Tokyo around 3:30 PM, which is a little late for the US. So I'll try to do something in the morning because this isn't fair. Anyone in the US is watching this. What are you doing up? It's like the middle of the night. All right, everybody. Irvin, good night. And to the rest of you. Good day. Well, maybe to our Singaporean and Australian friends here, but everybody too in the UK. Good afternoon. And in America, good morning. And you missed it. And to Joy in the Philippines. Who's still up. Thank you, Joy. All right, everybody. See you tomorrow.