00:00:01 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Urasa Station. Check it out right there. This is the JR station on the Joetsu Shinkansen line. It's a stop after Yuzawa and right before Nagaoka, which is a major stop. How you doing? And in this episode, I'm just taking you around this station here in Niigata. It is, I don't want to say dead, it's just super quiet. I can't believe like a Shinkansen stop has almost no people here. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

00:00:33 John Daub: I'll take you inside the station and take a look. But also, you know, this area, there's a lot of attractions here, in particular in the winter. This is a place where you might come to ski. There's Shiozawa Station and Tokamachi, and then we're here, that red one right in the center of the screen. That's Urasa, and there is snow. There's a lot of snow. And yeah, it's edible too. It's really cold.

00:01:11 John Daub: Let's take you inside the station. I want to show you what it looks like inside this local Shinkansen station. And then I'm going to take you just down into the town. This is exactly where we are. Before we get started, let me show you. So you can see in relation to Tokyo, I'm kind of far out there. I drove, it's about three hours driving, about 80 minutes on the Shinkansen into the mountains, on the other side of the mountains. And let's go into here to Urasa Station. The Shinkansen station is quite large. You can see it taking up like half the town.

00:01:40 John Daub: But there's not a lot in this town that meets the eye right at the start. But there's a lot to it inside there. There's a lot of history as well, which I'm going to talk to you about. There's Bishamondo, which is a temple. And we're going to walk all the way to Bishamondo in this live stream. And they're going to be holding a festival on March 2nd. They do it on the first Saturday of every year. It's a naked man festival. And yes, yours truly will be participating in another naked man festival. Oh my lord, what am I doing here?

00:02:12 John Daub: Uonuma is famous for its rice in Niigata. There's so much good food in this area. You can see Bandai-san, Hakkaisan is also a famous sake maker, which is very close to this as well. This is the route for today. We're going to go from the station to Bishamondo. Just walk down the street and those two stars are the parking lots that I saved for later on. Let's go inside to know where to park the car when I come on the day of the festival, so that it's sort of my inside information. Alright, let's go inside the station. Sadly, or unfortunately, depending on how you felt about my last one. We'll be doing another one of those naked man festivals.

00:03:05 John Daub: Look at all this empty space. This is crazy, right? This will be my fifth naked man festival? And this one most definitely will be the coldest one. I'm actually looking for cameramen if you're interested. I would love to hear from you. I need as many camera people as possible. So if you're going to be in Japan on March 2nd, I don't know, send me something on Instagram. Maybe I could use some help because I can't film myself very well, but I definitely need some help filming the festival. All the camera people that I could hire here, they're all too old. So that's what I was told. There's not a lot of young people here.

00:04:12 John Daub: When is the next Shinkansen train? The next train to Nagaoka is in 20 minutes. There's not a lot, but the Shinkansen, I believe that's right there. Wow, it's like an hour from now going to Niigata. And let's look here, about 30 minutes. And the next Shinkansen to Tokyo is in 30 minutes. In 31 minutes. That's crazy. So it's not like a lot of trains that are coming through here. But if you're coming here to ski, there's a lot of people who do come to these area stations.

00:05:01 John Daub: As you can see on the map here, there's also a lot of onsen (hot springs). There's a lot of really neat places. You just have to investigate a little bit. Here's the station. This is a river. Eventually, it will take you to Tokyo apparently. And then we're going to be going right here now. So let's get on our way. You can always get omiyage (souvenirs) at the Shinkansen station. And this is no exception. You can also get bento (boxed meals). They had a couple of bento. Not a lot. That one looks really interesting. It's a nori-ben, like a bento all-in-one onigiri (rice ball). I thought about getting that one. I just had a massive lunch, so I'm going to have to pass.

00:05:44 John Daub: There's the waiting room. It's like nobody here. Darkst writes in here, remember when everyone was asking for 1080p streams? Yeah. We're there now. This is the Prism app, and I'm happy that they offer this for free, despite the fact that they put commercials in. Everybody knows what I'm using. They use the HEVC codec, which the YouTube app does not use, which is why I can get 1080p at half the bandwidth, which means I don't need the strongest signal to get a pretty good 1080p. I don't know why YouTube doesn't do it. They're banking on the AV1 codec, which is the next one, which is more efficient. And then the live streams will get to 4K, with the same amount of bandwidth, which is pretty cool. All right, let's get out of here.

00:06:33 John Daub: This is so crazy. You're going to see Hakkaisan, too. That's a little bit of snow on the right side. Shout out to Arthur Vandeley in the house, Brandania, nice to see you here. Bradshaw Studio again, thank you. It's great to share a little afternoon, a short afternoon with you. I like, do you see this? I didn't see this too much walking around the town, but you can see they kind of protect the trees from the snow. And they do that by making these teepee-looking pyramids over the trees, so the snow doesn't burden them so much. And it's easier to clean the snow off of the trees. I thought that was a pretty neat idea. And you see that because they get a lot of snow here.

00:07:27 John Daub: But not today. And that's the funny thing. Everybody's been telling me that this is kind of weird. There's almost no snow in this area. It's melting. And the Naked Man Festival, which I'll be in, it said that they usually have mounds and mounds of snow, and if they don't have enough snow, they've got to truck it in from the mountains, and then they put it into the banks of the temple, so it gives it the snow feeling, because without it, it's not as much fun. You need the snow in a Naked Man Festival, right? So there's not a lot of snow here. Here's the station front, and the Shinkansen will be going up on the platform on the top there. And I like these little things that you just find out on the street. We can make a little donation. Here, I'll make one. Let's see if I've got some coins. I can make a donation from the Only in Japan community right here. Let's leave 50 yen here. Thank you, Brandania.

00:08:42 John Daub: And here we are, countryside Japan. Everything kind of looks... Whoa. Kind of looks the same when you go out to the countryside. Although you can tell right away, this road is pretty wide, and this is the main road leading to the station. Here's the taxi company. Has a headquarters here. You can see their fleet ready to go as soon as somebody calls them. But I found that there's a lot of akiya (abandoned houses) here. And for me, I'm shocked.

00:09:12 John Daub: Like, I was talking to one of the people who's in charge of the festival, because I'll be filming it. I need to get a permit and everything, so I was able to get that, talking with people at the temple, as well as people, locals that'll be, that are really a big influence in the town. And I was telling him, like, are you kidding me? There's a Shinkansen station right there. You got an access straight to Tokyo and Niigata. You have skiing, beautiful countryside, like, delicious food. Look at this. And there's abandoned houses all over the freaking place. It's probably not a good idea that I'm announcing this to everybody, but nevertheless, it's like shocking. And he said he found an abandoned house, and it's about two minutes walk to the Shinkansen station. How is that even possible?

00:10:03 John Daub: Manhole! Hola! Look at that. What are they famous for? Mountains and watermelons. Another reason to come here in the summer, not just in ski season. Niigata is not where Ginzan Onsen is. Niigata is where, that's in Yamagata. So it's a prefecture just north of here. It's a pretty manhole. You see the Shinkansen line going in the distance there. There's the main post office. There's another one. Do we have to make a donation at each one?

00:10:46 John Daub: The reason why it's leading us to Bishamondo, which is not too far down the road. Again, like, for those that are just joining us, here's the map of where we're heading. We're walking up that main street where that circle is. You see the big one? Izumiya. I think we just passed it. And now we're going, we're going to be taking a right and going to Bishamondo. But first we're going to walk across through the main heart of the town. And you can see where this town is located on the map here.

00:11:19 John Daub: Tokamachi has a snow festival just like Sapporo. Everybody goes to Sapporo snow festival. Tokamachi has a really good snow festival too. And we're located right now in the middle there. And now you can see on the right side, that's where Hakkaisan is. And actually, I think you can see it now. I believe that's Hakkaisan, which is the sake maker is famous for the mountain. All that snow up there is going to be made into sake or a lot of it, Japanese sake. Beautiful view. Very Japan. Very Niigata, I should say. Very Niigata. The air is fresh. Why am I going back to Tokyo? Wow. It's, the air is sweet and cool. It's pretty warm today.

00:12:18 John Daub: Can anybody tell me what is this? Does anybody know what that is? Two points if you know. First one in the chat. Is it Kerry, Jason, Frank is here. Jason, you got that right. It's for sake, Japanese sake. They usually, when they're, when they're, start making it before it's done, it'll be green. And then as, as the, it gets brown, by the time it turns brown, they're usually done with the process. So that means they've got sake to sell. I forget what it's called. It's, it's been a while since I did a sake episode. But when you see that bush, it's actually a bush that's green. It turns brown like, like autumn. That means sake is sold there. It's a sake brewery.

00:13:22 John Daub: Look at that old house. Now there are a ton of abandoned businesses here, which is kind of sad, but this is something that is going on in all of the small towns around Japan. But the thing is like, if you take the time to explore into the old towns, you'll find that there's a lot of potential. You have to find it because even the locals don't see the beauty of their own towns. And, and I, I think, you know, one of the great things about what I do here on YouTube is that I can, I can do that. I find it. Look at this. You could just get like water from this pump here, right on the side. It's got a little roof on it, like water hose.

00:14:09 John Daub: Oh, look at that. Yeah, that was, that was the, this was an abandoned house that he, he bought. He was telling me about it. Across the street, an abandoned supermarket, which is crazy. Like even here, I would love to live here. Yeah, where do you live? I live in the supermarket. It used to be a supermarket. Look at that. Look at the big floor to, floor to ceiling windows. It's hard, it's hard to see inside. But there's not a lot of, there's not enough people here to justify, I think, setting up a business yet. But you need really nice stuff for young people to come in and to invest in it. And I think that that's something that this town eventually will get to. And I would love to be a part of it.

00:15:07 John Daub: I don't know why there's not enough interest in Urasa. There should be a lot more interest. There was a association. I forgot to take the flyer, but they're doing these amazing hikes in the spring, summer and fall with barbecues with a guide. And you can see the stations over there. And I was like, okay, how much is the guide? So they have a guide. It's only Japanese. I said, how much is the guide to go around? He goes, oh, it's 3,000 yen. I said, $20? How long is the guide tour for? Like an hour? He goes, no, it's a half day tour. I said, so 3,000 yen per person? She said, no. It means if there's four people, three people, everybody chips at 1,000 yen and you pay the guide 3,000 yen. I said, are you kidding me? Like, that's ridiculously low. And I said, well, if they spoke English, you could probably make a business out of this, right?

00:15:59 John Daub: This is the road line. This is leading to the temple. And we're going to go up in this direction here. Actually, I parked my car just over there. So we'll end the tour in front of the car, maybe. But I got to get the car back. It's a three-hour drive home. So I'm probably going to start making my way back as soon as this livestream is done. Not a lot of snow. This is supposed to all be snow and ice, all right? It's one of those years where there's not a lot of snow. So I'm guessing that Ginzan Onsen, which is a very famous place in Japan, does not have a lot of snow either. So a lot of the places that are famous in Japan for having snow, probably not so much right now. Because this would definitely be in the snow belt of Japan. And this should be over. This should have a ton of snow. And instead, we have just this.

00:17:05 John Daub: If HelloHi821 is here, he knows what a group of crows is called. It's not a word we want to repeat on this channel. All right. There's no red torii gate, which would make it a Shinto shrine. It's a Buddhist temple. If you remember Shinto Shrine SS, for Westerners, and Buddhist temple. Temples are Buddhist. Shrines are Shinto. And there's the oni looking down on you. Kind of. Can't get the focus on him. There's got to be some history behind this.

00:18:03 John Daub: Now, a lot of this came in. The temple itself, from what I understand, was built in the Heisei period, like in the 1980s. So it's not too new. Late 80s, or was it the late Showa period [?]? So we're going to walk. And I want to talk to you about the Naked Man Festival a little bit. Typically, there's snow all the way to the red roof. All right. And I had to go in there to get the permit. I went in and talked with the people here in that office earlier. They're going to have to, if they don't get enough snow, they have to truck it in from the mountains. And they're going to just put snow everywhere. And I hope there's a blizzard. Just so, so there's more snow. But I also hope it's this warm, because this is really warm. And if I have to wear a fundoshi (traditional loincloth), I want it to be this warm. I have a feeling it's going to be windy and freezing. That's usually the case.

00:19:08 John Daub: This is the main temple here. And there's no filming inside there. I was allowed to film though earlier. But I want to show you, this is where I'm going to be running after I go here. And this is the part that scares the crud out of me. All right. That's going to be me. Oh crud. Oh sugar. So this pond here, I'm glad you guys are joining me on this because you get an idea. They're purifying themselves and then they're going inside of here.

00:20:02 John Daub: So this is going to be a very active spot in about a month. Holy, oh my gosh. That is, that's really cold. I'm going to get in here naked. They think I'm going to be able to get in there in a fundoshi. All right. In the comments, tell me if this is a festival that you would be interested in participating in. Could you get in there? And how long could you stay? I mean, it's a blessing. And then after you're wet, if it's windy, it's going to be freezing. I'll be running, you know, with my wet thong. Hopefully with a bunch of other people to stay warm. And then we take a left and we go into the temple. Temple for blessing. And I'm hoping that our blessing is for all of us. And I'm going to be wishing everybody good health and a very successful 2024 and rest of the decade.

00:21:27 John Daub: And when you use an event this big, I think I can make wishes for the rest of the decade. That's what I'm going to do for all of us. Everybody in the OIJ community. I'll be doing it naked, which really means a lot, I think. So, well, with a thong, but I think if you're going to give something to the spirits, you got to give them everything. And I'll be doing that for you guys. So, you're going to get a blessing if you watch the episode. I think I can do it. Every five years or so, I have to do something like this. It's like reinvigorate your soul. And this is a reason to come to Urasa. Also, just to see this temple, it's pretty nice. But, yeah, I'll be in on March 2nd on Saturday. If you're in Japan, you can come and see me.

00:22:18 John Daub: They're also famous for these massive candles and the lanterns, which are all handmade. So, you can see they have these big, big candles that they hold. I went to the guy, one of the guys shops that makes them, but he'd already finished making them. So, I was a little bit upset. I said, I want to get a shot of you making it. But, anyways, I got to take his, get some of the ingredients that he uses, paraffin and things like that. Hey, Michael Sassano's here. Hey, brother, aloha. Soon, I'll be in similar cold weather while in Maryland. Yes, you will pick up something warm, my friend. Thank you. I will use it to get a cup of coffee for the drive back, Michael. It's a three-hour drive back to Tokyo. I might even stop off at Maebashi, get something at the Costco there. It's like right off of the highway.

00:23:08 John Daub: But, there you go. I think that it's going to be, it's going to be a lot of fun to do this. And, you know, challenging yourself. This is like a battle. When you have to, when you challenge your body, when you do something that's disruptive to your body, to your mind, I think it really has a huge impact on your psychology, on your health. It's a good thing. You don't want to be too comfortable in life. This is not going to be comfortable. But when you're done with it, you feel so good because you pushed yourself. And apparently no one has ever died because of it's been too cold. I think there's only 300 participants, which is a lot less than it's at the Naked Man Festival in Okayama. That I did 10 years ago and the other festivals. So everybody's really friendly. I'm glad that I made some friends by coming here today.

00:23:55 John Daub: I want to shout out to my Patreon supporters. Thank you. Because you guys are funding this. You're making this all possible to hire a cameraman and then to get the hotels and come out here and do something a little bit off of the wall. you know, it's going to be an event that we all remember. So those of you that are in the postcard club and supporting, I really do appreciate it. The samurai. I, I put it all to as much good use as I possibly can. And this is going to be something I'll try to hire a cameraman or maybe one or two. And if we can get some more, some volunteers who want to come and help to film as well, then that'd be really cool too. If anybody's visiting Japan, who wants to come and watch me do this, definitely come. And yeah, I'd love to. I'd love some help and support too, because I'm going to need it. And it's on the, you know, it's about 80 minutes from Tokyo, so it's not too far away.

00:24:47 John Daub: Look at this. Beautiful. Man, I could live here. I could see myself living in an akiya. It's just really convenient with the Shinkansen right there. That's the station. Unbelievable. You know, in your life, yeah, I don't think 99.9% of people are like, there's no way I'm going to be participating in something this crazy. But then again, if you don't do stuff like this, you don't really have a lot of memories in your life or stories to tell. And Leo, I am hoping that Leo can come because I want him to see his dad do stuff. Because I want him one day to participate in, in a festival like this and then say like, my dad did that too. He did something that was, my dad was pretty tough. He did this crazy thing, you know, and he did it for spiritual reasons. And he was, you know, he gave me a good story. And then Leo can say, I'm doing it because my dad, I do stuff like this. And I think maybe some of you might do it because I did it too.

00:25:57 John Daub: I know the population is decreasing. So the more people that can partake in something like this, the better. I think it's great. Shout out to my friend, Ramsey Silent. Grab some treats from, for the fam. Absolutely. I'm going to stop off and get something, some omiyage. They have something called sasa dango (bamboo leaf dumplings) in Niigata, which is this green mochi. And I'm going to get some of that with that Ramsey's, and you were never here, brother. I know it. Thank you. Ramsey's a good guy. I'm not sure what, I thought this was underwear at first. I was like, why do people put their underwear there? But it's just a cape to keep it, keep the wood warm. Sasa dango. Beautiful, beautiful area. I parked the car just over there. I think this is a pretty good, good place to end the live stream.

00:26:57 John Daub: Taking a look at the natural part of the winter. I already did some drone shots here. Oh my God. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, no. Ah, that's cold. It's all in my sock. I went down a long way. You do have to be careful. Look, that's a good like two foot drop down there. Oh man, my sock is all drenched. I'm going to have to get the heater on that in the car. Well, this is as far as I'm going to take you. Because of obvious reasons. But, it does invigorate the soul, Albert. Absolutely. Absolutely. I was shocked. It's a little, be careful right there. Don't step there. Watch your step.

00:28:00 John Daub: But yeah, thanks for joining me on this live stream of the summer. I'm going to take you to the station of, Urasa Station. It's, it's a beautiful area. I'll be back here in, ah, in just a couple of, in a month from now, for this festival. Looking for, ah, got to, got to book a hotel and a cameraman, but, or camera woman. And, I'll be back here. I'm really looking forward to it. But it's cool whenever I get a chance to take you, and take myself outside of Tokyo and off of the beaten path. Urasa is pretty off the beaten path. I'm not sure most of you have never heard of this place.

00:28:30 John Daub: But, I'm glad to be able to do this. And, I, I, the local people that I talked to today, when I was setting this up, were so excited that we were bringing, I was going to make an episode here, and bringing everybody who's going to watch this episode with me. Bishamondo is the name of the temple I'll be participating at. And, definitely, I'll do some live streams on the day of it. But if you're in Tokyo or Japan at the time, swing on by, and check it out. There's street food all up and down this street here. Like, they told me that it's, it's ridiculous. They're expecting 100,000 people, which is, yeah, Sean, camera person is the right word. Yeah, 100,000 people, and there's street food stands lining the entire main street that I walked down. It's completely empty today. But, yeah, if you are coming here, you're going to definitely fill your belly.

00:29:20 John Daub: It starts on, on, in the afternoon of March 1st, this year. And then, the first Saturday is the event. And, it's going to be a ton of street food on that Saturday. For sure. And, Leo, Kanae, and myself, on that day. I'm not sure you'll get a, you found me card. I'll try to stock some, but it'll be in my thong if you still want it. Yeah. But there you have it. Boom. Nice little, nice little friendly live stream. Check it out. Yeah, I'll, I'll see you tomorrow. Probably do another live stream. I'll be heading back to Tokyo now, and, have a good day or good night. Mahalo. Thank you, Michael. See you guys later. Matane. Watch your step. It's not a lot of snow, but it's enough.