00:03 John Daub: Oh, he's already started. You can see right now the start of two okonomiyaki (savory cabbage pancakes) which are going to be my lunch. The seasoning on top of the flour pancake. This is a hot teppan (iron griddle) which we have in Japan. Okonomiyaki restaurants typically... Oh, I can smell the katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes), deshita ne. This is the moyashi (bean sprouts). Oh, you have no idea of the smell that is happening right now in this restaurant. A load of cabbage on top of that flour, but it looks like a tortilla. And now adding a little bit of tempura crunch.

00:47 John Daub: Oh, and he's making yakisoba (fried noodles) over there. How you doing everybody? Welcome. I am at Ureshima Okonomiyaki which is about a 10 minute taxi ride from the Peace Park. And today I'm having lunch and you're joining me. This is the experience that you would get if you're eating okonomiyaki which is pretty incredible. Oh, there's some more seasoning coming up here. I wanted to show you the entire package. Let's get into the process. Let's zoom in for this. You can see the yakisoba over here on the left. We've got two things, many things going on at the same time. Add a little bit of sauce on there. We've got some grilled squid. I'm going to be frying that up on top of the teppan. A little bit of sauce on there. Give it some savory taste.

01:33 John Daub: Oh, over here, let's get back to the okonomiyaki. We have the pork strips. Now you can have this as an option. You don't need to have the pork strips on there. A little bit of oil on there. Make sure it doesn't stick. And flipped. We got a thank you out of that. There are so many layers when it comes to okonomiyaki that it's something that's really hard to cook at your own house. The Osaka version of okonomiyaki is a lot easier, but I say this is more tasty. Kevin Riley, my friend over there in Osaka might disagree. Over there, they're also boiling the noodles and that's going to become another part of this experience. Oh my gosh, the smell is extraordinary coming from here.

02:24 John Daub: Not to mention the fact that, oh my gosh, okay. And this is interesting. They heat up these grills to be able to bring it to the table. WRX Turbo has just bought this lunch. Thank you. In the house. I see Brondani is here and Jason, Carrie Larson. How you guys doing? Dining with Derek is here as well. How you doing, Derek? This kitchen is on fire, literally. And we're going to get some fire because I believe they're going to bring out the flamethrower to cook the top part of my order, which is super awesome. I believe this is Hiroshima. It's on the back of the t-shirt there. That's the name of the shop. And it's closer to the seaside from the center of Hiroshima. There's a link in the description if you're interested. I love this when they have an open kitchen.

03:34 John Daub: There's two okonomiyaki that are close to being done. The next stage happens. The toppings. If you've never had okonomiyaki, when you come to Hiroshima, and more and more people are, it's part of the golden route, which is Kyoto, Osaka, Himeji Castle, Nara, these places that are very high on people's lists when they come to visit for the first time. Hiroshima is more and more on there. And I think that okonomiyaki is one of those things you have to try it. There's many places, but I'm really happy to be here because they let me film. So, boom. Michael Susano is here. Michael, you have no idea how much my mouth is watering. I'm like, I need a diaper for my mouth. Keep it all in. I need that for the eating part.

04:35 John Daub: All right, you smash it all down. You saw how big that was when they started. Now it's really flattened down as the katsuobushi is coming out. It's really, really, really good. The cabbage loses some of that moisture. And when you grill the cabbage, it is so good. It's got a little bit of that char taste to it. All right, we're moving into the next stage, which is the eggs. You can see that the amount of layers on here is just incredible. You know, people say, oh, here we go. You can't miss this one here. This is the noodles. And unlike the okonomiyaki in Kansai, in Osaka, the one in Hiroshima has noodles. And this is why I love the Hiroshima version better. Okay, maybe not carb-friendly, but you're here to eat.

05:27 John Daub: Look at that steam right in our faces. Blast. All right, they'll grill these up with a little bit of oil. Feel the heat. Lucy's putting it into a circle because this is going to become another layer. Oh, they put the sauce on there. Oh, this is like yakisoba. Here you go. Flatten it down. Get it ready because here comes another flip. I'm so ready for this. Bring it. Boom. I could not have done that better myself because I've done it myself and it's really hard. Oh, you're getting a sneak peek of the final product. Oh, look at that.

06:47 John Daub: Because of the customers, this place is quite popular. It's just constantly being used, this teppan grill. These are ours. The other ones are in different stages. And that one is complete. I love what they do here. They put that on a really hot metal so it keeps it hot. You want to eat it. Now, I used to live in Hiroshima, so I am a Hiroshimite. Is that a word? We eat it right off of the grill with a spatula. We don't use it with chopsticks. We want it hot. And now comes the egg. Here comes the egg. And when you eat it hot like this, this simulates having a grill at your table. This is my table right here.

07:44 John Daub: I'm going to be eating it. I've got a light grill. I'm going to be trying to get all the shift lights lit and all the lights on my table, and you can see all the light. So that we can see all the glorious colors, because when you have food, you need to see the colors. And the great thing about the okonomiyaki is the colors. Oh, look at that. There it goes. And the taste. But the colors are pretty startling with the green negi (green onions) on top. This one's got onions on it.

08:16 John Daub: See, I always jump ahead because my stomach is talking. I wanna sink my teeth in this. I can't, because they're still in the process of making it. Some might say this is like watching paint dry, but you don't eat paint. So this is way more fun. All right, you move it over because here comes the eggs. This is the next level. There's so many of them. Perfect landing. I don't think they could land on the moon any better. That was so accurate. This one little piece right here on the outside. Oh my. The flip, very little splatter. Very little got out. When I flip it, there's like cabbage all over the place.

09:41 John Daub: Hey Derek, thank you. You're very welcome. I visited and stayed overnight in Miyajima in June. Due to your recommendation, I had to leave the station and really enjoyed my visit. Of course, I had okonomiyaki Hiroshima as well. Whoa. This is the best place to have it. Oh, look at it. He's just dumped the sauce on there. Oh, look at it. It just drizzled in, little drizzle in a dump. Oh, man. Oh, that's not enough. You have to put more. Yes. Ooh. We're not done with the layers, guys. There's more.

10:27 John Daub: This one has cheese. Yes, please. And it's gonna melt. Melt right on top. And this is more like a Japanese pizza. Oh yeah, you put that in there to get the heat to melt the cheese. It's like a furnace inside of there, just like it is outside of this restaurant, because Japanese summer is so hot. A little bit of water to add some humidity in there, that'll get the cheese melt in a little bit more. Over here on the right side, we're gonna do something crazy with this one. It's gonna be different. I wanted you to see two varieties. A little bit of nori (seaweed) on there. It's a green, add a little color, a little flavor. Now this is negi, this is Japanese leeks. Yeah, put more, yeah, one more, one more, yes.

11:29 John Daub: One more, yeah, there you go, there's four. All right, five. Let's keep it, lucky number. They have some udon going on over at the other grill right next door. A little bit of seasoning, and now the mayonnaise. Put it right on top there, drown it. Japanese mayonnaise is so good, but there's a reason why I wanted to do this one, for impact. Look at the cheese melting on the side. That's the best part, where it's all melted and gets hard and burned. A little bit of ginger on the top there. The coloring of it is awesome. And there it is, finished.

12:29 John Daub: All right, now it's time. All right, fire. Wow. Wow. That's the way I like it. Whenever my food can be blow torched, you know it's good if it's been blow torched. Yes. Oh yeah, you gotta burn it. Don't do this at home. It's smoking. All right, a little bit of ginger here. We got the kitchen. We got some yakisoba going on here. Oh, that's so perfect. These are two different variations. You can customize an okonomiyaki. Now the stores, if you're not sure what to get, just get the store's specialties. But if you do know about the toppings and maybe your second time, you can experiment a little bit. It really does enhance or change the experience. As someone who lived in Hiroshima and had maybe hundreds or thousands, I didn't keep count.

14:11 John Daub: Thank you. It's hot, isn't it? It's hot, it's hot, it's hot. Thank you. Thank you. Look at the cheese melting. All right, this is too hot. Thank you. So before we eat, I want to show you a little bit. It's too hot, I know from experience. So give me a couple of minutes. I want to show you a little bit about Hiroshima. I come here to do a shoot about the city, and I went on this tour, which is really cool. It's something like, I think you might be interested in this as well. They've been doing this thing with virtual reality, and blew my mind because, you know, when you go to a museum, the museums are just pictures and stuff, but they found a way to take goggles and simulate, for example, you're outside near the hypocenter, and you can look up in the sky and you see the bomb coming.

15:10 John Daub: And, well, here's the experience. And I'll kind of talk about it to you as this cools down a little bit. So that's the flyer inside of the train. This is the original hibakusha (A-bomb survivor) streetcar. This was in the bombing. Yeah. And there were several of them that are still in use today, which blew my mind. These were damaged but could be repaired, and you can get on a streetcar that was in the bombing of World War II. Here I am riding it, and the inside looks very much the same as it did in 1945 with very little changes. And I'm making a main channel episode on this. You're going to want to hear this because I got a chance to interview the 92-year-old conductor of the streetcar who's still with us.

15:56 John Daub: Here's the tour afterwards. And that's the Genbaku Dome (Atomic Bomb Dome) or the A-Bomb Dome, which now looks like this today. Having a tour around the Peace Park I found being an incredibly worthwhile experience because there's a lot of little stories that they don't tell you about in the guidebooks. This is the hypocenter. It was 400 meters above here that the atomic bomb detonated. It didn't detonate on the ground but a quarter of a mile into the sky. And this is the hypocenter. Yeah. So it was 400 meters above this where the bomb was and that's what was left over of it. And when you're here actually with your own two eyes and you look up and you cannot imagine what those seconds are like.

16:43 John Daub: Now this is the basement area where there was one survivor just a couple hundred meters away from the hypocenter. And he was down here in the basement. And this is Nomura, I think Eizo Nomura. Nomura-san was down here. And he was the only survivor of all the people in this building. This is available for you to go down into the basement for free. And the line to get into the Peace Museum can be up to two, two and a half hours. If you don't have that kind of time, there's a bunch of free places that you can go into to experience like this. And you can see they try to leave it as they did in 1945. So it's a pretty authentic experience. Arigato gozaimasu.

17:19 John Daub: Here she is. This is the VR tour, the virtual reality tour. And you can see the Peace Park was not a park but a town. They had a lot of old buildings around. Restaurants, cafes. It looked almost like what would be a theme park today. I almost wish that it wasn't a park but actually they brought those old buildings back. But here I am looking at it. And they simulated being outside near the hypocenter on the day before the bomb dropped. Now I'm going to look up in the virtual reality goggles and I'm going to be able to see the bomb dropped by the Enola Gay that day. You see I'm now looking up at around Hiroshima. Look at that. It looks different right now. It looks like it did in 1945 before the bomb.

18:04 John Daub: Which is really cool because, you know, in VR this technology is useful when you can't actually build the buildings but you can kind of recreate it in this digital world. It's sort of the same. I'm trying to touch something and there's like an old lady who was telling me the story. Normally I would not try to touch her but I was there. All right. Here we go. This is, now the bomb is being dropped. So I'm looking up into the sky and I heard a plane, a B-29, and now I can see the bomb coming down. Yeah, now everything just exploded and the entire city of Hiroshima has been destroyed just in a flash. And I'm looking around at the wreckage and there's a man on the bridge and he was twitching on fire and it was really graphic.

18:59 John Daub: I think, like, it's different than the museum because this happened right in front of me. At least it almost felt like it. Yeah. And here's the guy at the, I think that's the Aioi Bridge. And that's the Genbaku Dome or the Atomic Bomb Dome. Here's the bridge that was the target. The aiming was actually quite accurate. All right. So this is the Okuribi Mura [?]. This is a place where you can eat okonomiyaki which is very, maybe, I don't know, 800 meters away. And this is what I ate last night and of course this is my meal again today. That's my experience. Yeah. I thought it was pretty cool.

19:48 John Daub: Let me put this down here. All right. The okonomiyaki has cooled off a little bit. We're going to now sink our teeth into it. But I want to tell you, if you are in Hiroshima, you're thinking about coming here, this is the flyer. That tour was like, I think it was really good for the price. It was 8,500 yen. And you get to ride in the hibakusha streetcar. There were five other people on it with me. I had my own half of the train to film the main channel episode. So I wasn't listening to the train. I wasn't listening too much of the tour. But what they did was a guide would, as you were driving in this streetcar, would describe all of the things around the roadsides that was impacted while you're inside of one of the original streetcars that wasn't destroyed by the bomb that was there that day.

20:37 John Daub: They were all repaired. And it's just mind blowing to me. 8,500 yen is like $60, which is so cheap. For what you get. And for the guide to tour. And it's like, I think it was like two and a half hours or something. I started at 10. And I think it finished around near one. So almost three hours. But this streetcar, the thing is, it's really limited. And you can ride this as public transportation. You don't actually have to take the tour to ride on one of the hibakusha streetcars. But if you take the tour, the thing that's interesting is that they give you that information. And you have more of a chance to look around and see the wood on the floor, the metal, all the little details that have unchanged since 1945.

21:27 John Daub: For me as someone who's like an amateur historian, it's just fascinating to see that. You can see the little Mitsubishi sign from the company that made the streetcar. And then get a chance to walk around it. I think we focus a lot on the museum and the Genbaku Dome, the A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima. And then people go to Miyajima. I think this is another way to experience Hiroshima and the World War II bombing in this different way. So for me, I mean, I'd lived in Hiroshima and I knew about these streetcars. But this was the first time that I'd experienced it. I didn't know which streetcars they were either. So there you go. That's the route that I took. I thought it was a really cool experience here.

22:13 John Daub: Alright, let's get to it. Now, it's cooled off enough where I can eat this thing. Oh my gosh. You can't see this. Hold on. Here we go. Oh, holy smokes. All right, I'm going to try this one here. This is the one with the mayonnaise. And you can see in the background, the team hard at work. Kimchi. They said it's one of the specialties, so of course you're going to have to do it. So here's the okonomiyaki right here. Look at that. Oh my gosh. When you get a chance, it's cooled down a lot, which is good. When you get a chance to have something, regional food like this, it really is special.

23:12 John Daub: All right, let's cut right into it. Let's cut to the chase. So you can use chopsticks and get them on the table here. All right, I actually don't use chopsticks, so I'm just going to put that away. I use this. This is the spatula. And what I do is you can cut this in half, but I usually just start eating it like this. Everybody's different. But the way I learned it was, let's go and dig in deeper. Just grab it. I'm nervous because there's people watching. All right, itadakimasu. I still burned my mouth, though. Oh my gosh. That's so good.

24:20 John Daub: I don't know if I can taste the blowtorched parts of it, but the mayonnaise, it just gives it kind of a rich, creamier taste to it with the mayonnaise on it. But I don't think you need to get mayonnaise. You get it because you're like, I just wanted to see the blowtorch, to be honest with you. I'm not actually going to eat the other one. Emi is on the other side of this wall. She doesn't want to be filmed. So that's hers. And I know it's too hot for her, but I'm going to eat a piece of hers. And, you know, it's all good. All right. We'll order another one if we're still hungry. Up on the wall, you can see the menu. They have mentaiko (spicy pollack roe). I thought that this was going to be, this might have been one that I ordered. It's got a little spice to it, but I don't know. It's really good, I think.

25:33 John Daub: And they also have like kaki fry, or this is oysters. And this is a specialty of Hiroshima. So oysters, they're so big here. I don't know why. I think it's just because the Seto Inland Sea is so, it's a happy place for the oysters. So they're massive. And if you don't know what to get, all you got to do is what's your specialty and get that. And if it's good, come back and then try the rest of the menu. Because when I lived in Hiroshima, that's what I did.

26:14 John Daub: Let me show you a little bit of Hiroshima here for those that have never been here. The city looks like this. There's lots of rivers going through it. And this is where the Atomic Bomb Dome is. And you can see the Aioi Bridge. That's where there was the original target. And you can see that pink building right there on the left side of the bridge. We just passed it. That was, that's where the hypocenter was. So good department store. I might have, you know, frequented that 25 years ago when I lived here. That's the largest, tallest building in Hiroshima, about 105 meters high. That blank space is where the baseball stadium for the Hiroshima Carp used to be. Definitely go to a game. They moved a little bit out of the way.

27:01 John Daub: And we're going around the Peace Park, which is on the right side of your screen. And in the center, you can see the Atomic Bomb Dome, which is the remainder of the building there that they preserved. Now the symbol of Hiroshima. But all this was wasteland. It was just devastation. There's the streetcar track on the road there. You can see it clearly. This was just nothingness. And now you can see the massive city around it. And I thought this was really important to show you because the city has rebounded amazingly just 80 years ago. Not very few buildings, maybe, I don't know, a couple dozen remaining. And many of those had to be knocked down. Now, look at this city. It is one of the top places, I think, for people that are visiting here in Japan.

27:55 John Daub: Any questions? Yeah, it was a private clinic. Thank you, Kelvin. A private clinic just under the... I just got a message from Kevin Riley. He said, no... A word that I can't repeat here, way. So he disagrees that Hiroshima okonomiyaki is better. The price of this was, yeah, about 1,300 yen or about $9 for this. Kevin Riley's in the house virtually. Yeah.

28:30 John Daub: All right, guys, I hope this is fun for you. I'm going to... Oh, let me try the cheese. Just one. Just one. I'm going to... Just one bite, okay? The congealed cheese. Whoa! No, this way. That one's better. Always get cheese. A-G-C. Trademark. Always get cheese. It's so good. Oh, my God. I mean, mayonnaise is good, but the cheese is just so much better. And let's try this kimchi here. That's good. That's really good. They make it here in the shop. Wherever in Hiroshima, there's a lot of places around Japan, they make really good kimchi here. And if they make sure you ask if they make it in shop, if they do, I would always get some on the side. Never mind a salad. This is like a salad. It's just as good. Maybe healthier.

30:07 John Daub: All right, everybody. I hope that this was interesting for you. Thank you very much. Today, okonomiyaki... It's Ureshima, right? Ureshima. I put the link in the description. You guys check it out here. And there's a link also for the virtual reality and the streetcar tour. And if you're coming to Hiroshima, you might want to try it because it's a new way to see the city and a good way to spend an afternoon. It's starting to rain. We have a typhoon starting to pick up a little bit. So the Shinkansen are still running everybody, but tomorrow they're going to be suspended around Osaka. So just to let you know that. All right. I got more to eat here, but thanks for joining me for lunch. I'll see you in the next live stream back in Tokyo. Matane.