00:00 John Daub: Welcome to Niigata Station on what is a very hot day. How you doing everybody? I don't have an external mic. We're going to do the best that we can, but I'm going to take you from here, Niigata Station, show you a little bit of the inside of the station.

00:30 John Daub: It is, as you can see, undergoing a lot of construction, so it's a little bit confusing getting around from this train to the taxi. It took me about 15 minutes to figure it out, but you got to go outside and go around the construction. Oh my gosh, I'm already starting to sweat it all out here.

01:00 John Daub: I got here by Shinkansen. It takes about an hour and a half to two hours, depending on which Shinkansen you jump on. Let me show you the map here and where we're going real quickly.

01:45 John Daub: So there's Niigata Port. You can see Tokyo on the bottom. I cut across the heart of Japan's Kanto region. I got over to, I guess, the southern Tohoku area, very close to it. You see Sado Island, my destination for today, but we're going to take you to the port.

02:30 John Daub: By taxi and hopefully get there without as much with little pain as possible. That's the station right there. This is Niigata Station. We're going to go around it real quickly as I'm walking over towards the taxi right now.

03:30 John Daub: The station is under construction and in very much need of it. It hasn't really had seen much action since the Shinkansen came here back in the 1980s, 1990s. I can't recall exactly when the Joetsu Shinkansen (上越新幹線) came up to this direction but there's the port where i'm going to be heading that's the um Sadokisen (佐渡汽船, Sado Steamship) is what it's called and we're going to be taking a taxi uh over there i think that's a taxi right right up in the corner there so that's our route for today i still kind of figuring this all out you can take a bus to get there but the reason why you would want to go to sado is because this weekend is the um earth celebration this is taking place on very cool this is taking place on on sado island it's gonna be a really hot one um all right

04:00 John Daub: the taxi look at they've really they've really done a good job of making this clean and new i this is not like this the last time i was here check out this this stained glass window very cool the entrance to the station is right here and it's a little bit of a mess but it's a little bit right here all right let's i i guess i walked past the taxi there's only one one sad looking taxi there so i'm gonna jump into that and then see how long it takes to get here oh quick note here i went to the atm check this out i got the new ten thousand yen note for the first time but i i took out twenty thousand yen and the atm gave me a new one and an old one so just so you know it's still good all right let's get a move on here

04:30 Taxi Driver: ah hello hello we're heading to the sado 2000 is it okay?

05:15 John Daub: it's really hot i can't really find a taxi driver i've been looking in the central line all day where was it i usually come in from the second floor but the bus is bad i found a bus but the taxi the weekend is a celebration tomorrow so I think it will be better.

06:00 Taxi Driver: Will the typhoon come here?

06:15 John Daub: No, the typhoon is a little more to the north. Oh, it's the seventh. I think it will have a little effect. I think it will rain.

06:30 Taxi Driver: Saturday? Tomorrow. Tomorrow? What is the temperature outside?

06:45 John Daub: It's 34 degrees now. It's 34 degrees. I'm from America, but I live in Tokyo. So I speak Japanese a little. I'm good at it.

07:00 Taxi Driver: Have you ever been to the third floor?

07:15 John Daub: No, not even once. Oh, really? It's close, but it's far. It seems that a lot of tourists are coming now. It's just a ferry because there's no airport.

07:30 Taxi Driver: Can you walk to the port?

07:45 John Daub: If you want to walk, you can walk. It takes about 40 minutes. It takes about 2 to 30 minutes. Oh. But it's a bit wet. Did you get there? There is a ticket office. Oh, 4th floor. If you go up there, you can get there.

08:00 John Daub: Thank you. What is this? Thank you.

08:30 John Daub: And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all there is to it. Isn't that too intimidating to take a taxi? You can take the bus if you can figure it out. So the damage was 1240 yen or about $7.50. That's not too bad. That's not too bad at all.

09:00 John Daub: All right, let me put this away and we're going to go. All receipts must be accounted for. The taxi was very clean. The driver was super polite. After I got off, he pointed me in the right direction to let me know exactly where to take the escalator. How does he know? He said he's never been to Sado. I guess he knows.

09:30 John Daub: All right, the bus from Niigata to Niigata station, you can see, seems like it's three, four times an hour. So it's a pretty frequent bus. Let me see. I guess it doesn't have a bus number. You just have to see it going to the Sado Kisen. Well, look at the blue skies. What a day it is.

10:00 John Daub: All right, it's pretty easy to see which bus it is. It's got the ferry marker on the top of it. So I could have taken that, but, heck, it's business. All right, let's go into the terminal and go check this out here. It's been a while since I've been here. Whoa, they're in a hurry. Am I late?

10:30 John Daub: Oh, look at this. It's got one of these go up, then go flat, then go up again escalators. You don't see those very often. The ferry, I think, is leaving at 1250. Is that a question? It's leaving at 1250-ish.

11:00 John Daub: All right, one of the things that's very famous about Niigata Station, and I can tell you about that, guys, tell you about that as we're going along here. This is a live stream. Thanks so much for the questions. Read it. But I find I can put it onto the screen now, and maybe that'll help me with answering some of your questions a little bit more often here.

11:30 John Daub: All right, so I guess we're still a little bit early here. But I just wanted to show you the ferry terminal. It's called Sado Kisen. It's not that far away. You can get there pretty easily. I'm meeting Ruth. Ruth has my tickets, my ticket. And we'll be going and staying on Sado for a few nights.

12:00 John Daub: So you guys are coming with me on this channel, the live streaming channel. I'm going to share with you the experience being not just at Earth Celebration, which is I wanted to go last year, but I couldn't, but also the whole Sado experience. I think it's pretty neat.

12:30 John Daub: There's a great view of the whole city. There's a gold mine that's going to be on the World Heritage List that they're talking about. Oh, hey, how's it going? And yeah, the ferry there, you can get the tickets. There's the price list right there. I think it's, how much is it? It seems, oh no, it's over here. I think it's, oh, Katamichi, is it 7,000 yen?

13:00 John Daub: No, no, that's not going to Sado. Oh, hey, how much is the ferry? Oh, we know you. I got your ticket. All right. How much is it? People asking. It's at one way, 7,050 yen. And this is the jet foil. Oh, the jet foil. So you can go on the ferry, but the jet foil's the fastest one. See, he was trying to speak English. That's good information. Good.

13:30 Ruth: All right, y'all. All right. Welcome to Sado. Yeah. Queen's recognition. Good. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

14:00 John Daub: All right, so the signal is kind of weak inside of there, but I just wanted to share with you the price. So Ruth, I don't even know if Ruth was on the stream. She just gave me the ticket here if it was cut off for some reason. It's 7,050 yen or about, what is that? $45 one way on the jet foil, which is pretty fast. I think typically it's maybe half the price. If you're not taking the jet foil, we'd be taking the jet foil. I have a seat, second floor, seat number 27, sorry, row 27. There you go.

15:00 John Daub: So here's the ticket. It's got a QR code, which you might be able to use. It's the second floor, row 27, seat A, suite. And yeah, there you go. So there's a smoking area if you need to get a smoke before you go. And here's the ferry, apparently.

16:00 John Daub: All right. So this is the main entrance. They've got an entrance at the end of the station. Look, I really enjoyed walking through and you got the station. I got lost in there, so that gave me a chance to take a look. And just to show you that I just to give you a idea, the inside of the station is really new. You can see it just looks so much cleaner and more spacious than it did before the renewal. Last time I was here was was a long time ago.

17:00 John Daub: I did find. I did find where they have the. sake vending machines here you just have to look for this guy if you are looking for the sake vending machines look for the drunk dude holding up a bottle of sake it's punch gun it's sort of separate from everywhere everywhere else and this this took me about five minutes i found it because i was lost but it took me about five minutes it's right next to the 7-eleven if that helps inside of Niigata station on the second floor you go in here you see all the wood you start to smell the sake inside of here which is pretty cool uh you pan around and can see it it's done quite well um at the back of all of this at the back of it was the sake place right here hold on and this is where it is there are some foreign tourists here as well you can see the sake vending machines in the back there i i did not have time and there seemed like there was a line here uh to get the booze but the here's a photo of what you need you get 500 yen you get five coins and a cup and you go to work just pick the sake that you want put the coin in the vending machine and you get it out uh yum yum give me some i don't know what that means

18:00 John Daub: and here's the the platform so i really am in Niigata it's a cool ride um again you could take the express it's two stops from tokyo it just stops one time i think Ichi-go Yuzawa and then it gets gets into or Niigata and it gets into Niigata it's super fast if you if you get the super express but i have the um i came on the um local one so it took two hours i was able to get a little bit of work done um research this try to get to the taxi which is good so the extra 30 minutes was uh was was not too bad but i'm gonna get over there i think it's time to get out of the ferry they might be calling that if you have any questions you can leave me a comment below i'd love to hear from you

19:00 John Daub: i like to to from from the train platform in tokyo i got a chance to call leo right before he went to his daycare and behind me you could see the Tokai Tohoku Shinkansen which is also the Tohoku Shinkansen which is also the Hokkaido Shinkansen in his mind and he was just mesmerized to see the Hokkaido Shinkansen that was kind of that was kind of fun to show him that uh but yeah stay tuned i'll be taking you uh but yeah stay tuned i'll be taking you to sado island now where we're going over to sado island now where we're going over And Ramsey Silent, 50 months buddy, thank you.