00:00:11 John Daub: Hey everybody, welcome to Soma in Fukushima. This is the beach and these are the riders for the Soma no Maoi (wild horse chase), a thousand-year-old festival that's been going on for over 33 generations. Peter von Gomm and I are filming this for a main channel episode and thought we'd bring you live just to share some of the view as the horses race up and down the beach. It's super cool. There's not a lot of people here. In fact, a lot of the horses are already starting to go back. We had this beautiful day on the beach. How you doing everybody? There's Peter right there. And this is about two weeks out. The festival is going to be starting on July 29th, 30th, and 31st. I'm going to be coming here to film. I have a media pass inside of the—I guess you'd call it like a horse stadium. They've been doing this festival for, as I said, a thousand years at the same time.

00:01:11 John Daub: It's a really cool spot as well. It's like almost holy ground, I guess you could say. And there are different clans from this region that will be battling on the circle. I was going to say octagon, but it's pretty intense. And this is the kind of festival where the riders—they're all descendants of samurai. They've been doing this as a way to honor their ancestors because of course the samurai period ended when the Meiji Restoration started around 1868 going onwards. There were no more samurai, but this festival continued on. And thank goodness for that because now even in the 20th, 21st century, we can still kind of feel what it was like. Because again, they've been doing capture the flag, horse racing, archery skills, battle. And that's really special.

00:02:05 John Daub: They might be done. If they're done, that's a shame, but you can see—okay, here's some horses coming out. It's neat. We had to get up—we woke up at 3:30 in the morning to come here. And when we got here at 4:10, there was nobody here yet. So the horses took a while before they could come out. I got a couple of really good drone shots with the sun coming. We weren't even sure if there was going to be sun because the weather was kind of weird. But when you have these clouds, it's just perfect. It wasn't pink or anything. Just enough light on the horizon to make it dance a little bit with the shadows, almost like a black stallion from the movie kind of a feel running up and down the beach. So this is going to be a really great episode about this festival.

00:03:03 Peter von Gomm: Bradshaw Studio is in the house. Nice to see you there.

00:03:06 John Daub: There's Peter. He's come with me to help film, of course, paid, but it's nice for us after we just yesterday released the last part of our Hokkaido motorcycle trip from last year, which is really good. I guess we're going to wait here for a couple more minutes, see if there's any more horses that do the trip out. But it looks like we're pretty much done. Should we go back? Yeah. I think so. We can see them putting the horses back into the horse trucks, I guess you would call that. Of course you have to pay Peter. But he's pretty good. Pretty good with the camera too. You guys saw the video. But it's really good to have somebody come and help you film because as I was getting the drone shots and setting up the other camera, Peter quickly got the other camera, the A7S3, and he was able to run out to the beach to get some shots as soon as it started. Because you really don't know what to expect with something like this because I'd never seen it on YouTube before. No one. You come out here to see them practice. So I thought that this was really special.

00:04:34 John Daub: Oh, okay. So we have the horses up by the truck here. I'll see if we can take you close to the truck and as the horsies go back in there. I guess it's like a way for them to prepare for the race, to be around people, to travel. Peter's on the move. Here's our car.

00:06:40 John Daub: Is this another horse coming? Wow, Peter, new one. Are you guys in for a treat here they come. These are the horses that will be competing in two weeks time at the Soma Nomaoi. Just for the record, this is where we are right now. So we left Tokyo yesterday around 3 p.m. and ended up on the coast. This is not too far away from where in Fukushima Prefecture—not too far away from where all the stuff went down as you know about 10 years ago. This beach was covered with water from the tsunami. Minami-Soma was one of the areas really hard hit. So for me it's really nice to be here and give some attention to this festival.

00:08:13 John Daub: So how this—it's kicking to get out. So women can participate here. I'm about five years old or so until 19. When they hit 20 they no longer can participate. It's kind of neat how the rules are always changing and I figure in the future—this is my gut feeling—that it won't matter anymore and that everybody will participate. So it's nice to see things changing. And again the population is declining in Japan so to find more participants is getting harder and harder—pick amongst your population now, which is really cool. Again, the clans have been doing this for a thousand years, which is amazing. It really started down in Chiba and then they moved up to here. I don't—it was like seven, eight hundred years ago and it's been going on ever since—even during World War Two. As the bomb sirens are coming to the Kiwis here—probably even a drone—of course still got the horses out and held the festival. It didn't matter. Even during the pandemic they still held the festival. A lot of festivals were stopped. This is one that they just didn't stop. And it was again—there's a ritual part of it where they go to the shrine. There are reasons behind it which I'm going to be covering in the main channel episode. But it's just one of these festivals—it has to go on. You can't break tradition.

00:10:14 John Daub: All right, here we go. New some horses coming out. I can't believe it's only like 6:00 a.m. Boy, this horse has got—this is how I feel in the morning too. I said it's only 5:22 a.m. What it feels like six to me, I don't know. That's a young one. And this one's going back into the truck now. Sheep? Good morning Jimmy. Hello Laura. And our neighbor is out of here. It's going to be fun to see them racing. You know, I'm getting a little—you can see his head popping out the window. That was so cool. I'm getting pretty excited because as—this is my second time here in the last month to film for this. And as you see the horses you get to know them and when you see them on the race course in the festival in a couple of weeks you'll kind of have an idea of the personality. This stallion here, I guess you could call it—I really don't know a lot about horses—has quite an attitude and that's pretty awesome. White hooves in the back. So we will see on the race course how he does against the other samurai.

00:12:47 John Daub: All right everybody, that's it. I just wanted to give you kind of an idea. Take a look here—the beach is absolutely beautiful here. We had an amazing sunrise again. The sun coming up—we started seeing light at 3:30 which is crazy but now it's 5:25 and it's really bright.

00:13:09 Peter von Gomm: Good.

00:13:09 John Daub: Anything you want to say to the people as we end this live stream? You got any remedies for bags under the eyes at 5:00 a.m.? You know that was the suggested thumbnail for the video that I uploaded yesterday. It was Peter going to the camera going "I didn't sleep too well" like this—like you're applying makeup. That was the suggestion YouTube had for the thumbnail.

00:13:32 Peter von Gomm: Right. Yeah, I've actually heard that. Preparation H—a friend of mine went to—his wife used Preparation H for the bags under her eyes.

00:13:52 John Daub: Anybody else heard of that? Well, don't tell your friend. Just keep on doing it. It's kind of funny.

00:14:02 John Daub: Alright everybody, have a great day wherever you are. This is kind of neat to see the horses going up and down the beach here. We filmed this for the main channel episode, so if you missed it, you're going to see it in glorious 4K, 60p maybe. I think I got that truck coming in with the drone as well. They're ready. We got a wave. During the festival, I've been told that some of the people—they take it extremely seriously, which they should. And if you try to ask them for photos or to turn around, they might be a little bit curt. They might lop your head off with a sword. Because that's what the samurais would do if an insolent person such as myself would ask for a photo. "Please turn this way, sir." I don't think so. Prepare for a headless John coming up very soon. Like two weeks away?

00:15:06 Peter von Gomm: Taira no Masakado, whose name I will never say in vain—

00:15:06 John Daub: his spirit haunts the Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station—is the founder of this festival.

00:15:15 Peter von Gomm: Oh, neat. And he has beheaded many people.

00:15:21 John Daub: Yeah, and he himself was beheaded in Kyoto where the head flew to Tokyo and is buried in the Marunouchi side. It's a true story. We were there. We covered it just before the Olympics were cancelled. It's his freaking fault. It's Taira no Masakado's fault. It's his fault.

00:15:42 Peter von Gomm: Did you tell them to watch the RV adventure?

00:15:44 John Daub: Yeah, watch the RV adventure. It's doing pretty good. This is the motorcycle adventure from before. If you didn't see that, go and check it out. But the RV adventure has as many views as the motorcycle adventure in one day.

00:15:56 Peter von Gomm: Oh, nice.

00:15:57 John Daub: So I don't know how YouTube works. It's just all on how the videos are suggested. It's prejudice against bikes.

00:16:01 Peter von Gomm: I think so. I think so. So you were here. When you see the main channel episode, you were here with us.

00:16:11 John Daub: Thanks for watching, everybody. See you again. Maybe a little later on if there's something interesting.