00:00:02 John Daub: What a picture-perfect day. That right there is the port. This is where the ferry terminal is coming into Sado Island. Ryōtsu is the name of this port. The ferries also go to Ogi. I'll show you that on a map a little bit later. But I'm going to walk through this town, which is actually at the busy time. You wouldn't guess from the images right now. But central Ryōtsu is a happening place.

00:00:29 John Daub: Well, we're going to see how happening it is in this live stream. Right there is a Michi no Eki (roadside station). I wanted to take you there first. These are these roadhouses where you get a chance to take a look at local culture. Which, it just feels like it's empty, doesn't it? Like there's nobody here. What's going on? How you doing, everybody? I'm on the bridge here in Ryōtsu. This is Sado Gaishima, Niigata Prefecture. The mainland is over in that direction, about an hour or an hour and a half away. Two hours on the slow ferry.

00:00:59 John Daub: Actually, Leo and Kanae are coming in on the ferry. They're going to be coming here in about 45 minutes. This live stream won't be that long because I got to go get the car to pick them up. But nevertheless, I'm going to take you and give you an idea of what this island looks like. So here's a map. Let's lay this out for you. Where exactly am I in Japan? I'm right here. You see Tokyo on the right side and that's Niigata Prefecture. There's a city of Niigata, the capital of Niigata Prefecture. And the ferries depart from there. They come to this butterfly-looking island called Sado. And right there is Ogi.

00:01:32 John Daub: This is where some ferries live. I think two a day will come here. And that's where the Earth Celebration is, where Kodo has their annual Taiko Drum Festival, which is incredible. There's also camping on the island if you can't find accommodations. But I'm actually here in the main port city of Ryōtsu. And you can see there's a lake behind there. It's a kind of a narrow port town. So you can walk across to the lake area. And there's the Michi no Eki and the ferry terminal. It's sleepy here. A lot of businesses didn't seem to be doing so well. The population is declining. A lot of akiya (abandoned houses). But nevertheless, it's interesting to take a look because this is a slice of Japan. And that's what we do on this channel.

00:02:16 John Daub: So let's go take a look at the Michi no Eki. And I'm going to take you to the shotengai (covered shopping arcade), which is a shopping street. And then you're going to want to stay for this one. I'm going to take you inside of the Airbnb. It is a kind of luxury Airbnb. I think it's luxury because it's got a sauna inside. It's not what you would expect. It kind of blew my mind when we walked into there. I'm like, really? This is Ruth's find. So she's gotten a place with four rooms. So I have my own room inside of this Airbnb with five other people, which is kind of cool. So we're going to go take a look at that as well. All right, let's get on the move here.

00:02:58 John Daub: So there are places to rent bicycles and other kinds of shops. But I would highly recommend that you guys get a rental car if you come here for any period of stay. The island is just too big not to have a car. I haven't actually been inside of Michi no Eki. It's just too big for a bicycle, but it takes 40 to 50 minutes to drive to Ogi from here. Actually, it's closer to an hour. Let's go inside. Just going to have a quick peek. These are not the droids.

00:04:15 John Daub: Look at this. This is where I am right now. So today I'm going to have to get out. I'm going to take this road and drive all the way to the other side of the island to get to Ogi, which is here. It's kind of far. So I think this gives you an idea. It's actually really big. Now, if you go up to the top, resort hotels and then the gold mines are right here. Oh, there it is. So this is going to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I'm going there at 1:30. So maybe I'm going to do a live stream. Just depends on the signal. Let's get a quick look. See here. So there's some clean, clean bathrooms. This is high season and it's so quiet. So it's interesting.

00:05:09 John Daub: Sado Proud. It's a nice view out the window. The winters are not warm. It's pretty chilly up in Niigata. It's very windy in the winter. This is the Toki bird. I don't know if you guys have heard about them. They went extinct in the 1980s and they brought them back with a variety in China. And they're starting to repopulate. I think that you can already find them in the wild. And the Toki bird is one of the symbols of the island. They're cute little birds that make this kind of growling noise. You ever see them in person? All right. Let's go outside and see there's a Taiko drum right there from Kodo.

00:06:01 John Daub: I'll probably be live streaming the encore part of tonight's festival. So you make sure you subscribe and I'm going to take you to the Earth Celebration for about five, ten minutes to give you an idea of what it's like live stream. And I did it on Instagram yesterday. But tonight is going to be the night. One of the nights. It's a big one. All right. Let's go to the shotengai real quick and I'll take you into the Airbnb. Up we go. Back into the heat. But again, like if you're looking for a place that is wide open and no stress, I think you might have found it. This place is in this area. There's like no tourists. In fact, there's no people.

00:07:08 John Daub: I wanted to bring you this town because I don't think anyone's ever live streamed from this town or in fact made a video at all about this town. I don't know. Maybe getting onto the ferry. The ferries are quite frequent from Niigata City. But in the summer, you're going to want sunscreen. You're going to want a hat. You're going to want to have long sleeves and long shirt for the evening because of the mosquitoes that's everywhere. You're going to want to have even a sun umbrella if you want because it's just any shade is really good to have on islands and definitely lots of water and like you really do need a car. If you don't have one and they're not very expensive, especially off season. I got one. I think I got one for four days for 30,000 yen from Nico Nico rent a car. That's kind of expensive, but it is super high season and I was lucky to get anything. But if you're not coming for the Earth Celebration, the car rentals are very affordable. I mean, you can probably get one for about 5000 yen a day with insurance. Maybe they're pretty affordable. You get the micro compact kei cars, which is all you need to get around. And the thing is, there's not a lot of traffic here, so it's very easy to drive. The signs have English on them. So you know where you're going.

00:08:46 John Daub: Here's the Nippon rent a car. So the car rental places are usually right by the ferry port. There's a post office there. And here's where the shotengai picks up. Shotengai are these covered shopping arcades. Usually they came in the 1950s. Up on the top here, you can see the taiko drums, which are kind of cool. So there's accents of Kodo just about everywhere in Sado. But Kodo does not define Sado. Kodo is like an extension of Sado. It's hard to pin this down. And now we're looking across the entire Ryōtsu port. You can see there's the lake on the other side. We're going to walk. As you can see, not a lot of businesses, not a lot of places that you probably want to go into. Like this clothing shop. It seems like lost in time. Family run business. They just kind of keep it open. Locals will go in there, but there's not a lot of stuff that a tourist would want, except maybe the booze here. You got cold drinks, cold beers, some pet bottles, mostly booze.

00:10:21 John Daub: The banks here don't take foreign ATMs. The post office does and 7-Eleven does. But the convenience stores are, I think there's a 7-Eleven maybe near the port. Oh, this looks nice. This is O sagaya. It's a pastry shop. They've got some good confections. Actually, I'm kind of glad to hear this. I might get some cake for the guys. Here's the map. This is where we started on the bridge. And we're walking onto the left side here. So it's not a lot. But I like these kinds of live streams because it really does give you an image of what the Japanese countryside is like and whether or not it's for you. It's quiet, but you can feel like that manga, old Japan feeling to it, right? Like the old Japan. The old post boxes, the rusted steel grates that close shops. You can hear that rattling at 5pm when they all close. The chōchin lanterns hanging. The old exterior, the shotengai, the signs in katakana, the traffic signals. This one going vertically. Usually they're horizontal. I wonder why Sado has it vertically. Everybody does it a little differently. A lot of rust here.

00:12:16 John Daub: Our Discord server just hit 18,000, which is pretty cool. Thank you so much. We got a lot of people sharing photos and information about Japan over there as well as questions about traveling. You don't have to ask me. You can ask our moderators and our community, which is so friendly in the Discord server. Discord.gg slash only in Japan is the invitation that you can join the server. It's free. This hotel looks like it's not. Is it a hotel? No, it's not a hotel. It's a bar. Otokonoko. Maybe it is. All right, here's the bank and that means our Airbnb is right here. There's a convenience store over there. You know what? Let me take you really quickly to the end of the street. I want to show you the end of the street and we're going to come back and I'm going to take you inside the Airbnb.

00:13:16 John Daub: This looks like some sort of adventure shop here. So they're doing go adventure tours. There's a lot of small businesses that are starting to pop up that I think is really good for the island. But they definitely need more people to come in. They need to come here and invest. I know I made a video, Leave Tokyo, Save the Japanese Countryside for the main channel. Edited video, really interesting look at how some prefectures are incentivizing foreigners to come and move there, start businesses in the akiya and revitalize some of the old towns. And it's working in some places. But it's not a Japan thing. You have to understand it's a regional thing. Every town is different. That's a convenience store right there. This is bottles, pet bottles and some beer, snacks. Nothing big over there. You can see it's like really quiet. This is the middle of the day. Getting a welcome right there. I don't know what that is for. Alright, let's go take a look inside this Airbnb. I've got the key right here.

00:14:42 John Daub: There's an interesting thing, a workaround here. So we're all Japanese residents. And we don't have to give our passports when we go to hotels. Because we're not on a tourist visa. We're residents. Or permanent residents. Or, you know, lived here longer than most people have been alive. You know, like I've been here for like 30 some years. So you can actually just sign up as Japanese and then bypass that because we don't have passport numbers. Alright, check it out. Welcome to the Airbnb. Look at this very designer doors. Right? It's pretty nice. Let's open the doors. It is a big TV. I was watching the live stream that I did yesterday on it. First of all, the live stream looked really good. And second, that's a big TV. The kitchen was so nice. So the girls are staying up here. They're sharing a room up here. I don't think I could show you their room. Alright, I'm just going to just peek in there. They're not, nobody's here. I'm going to give you a full tour. Girls got to turn off the lights. Say pow. Oh, if you do that, you can't see. It's pretty spacious. Nice light. It's pretty nice here. I thought so. Let's go back down here.

00:16:25 John Daub: Now let me show you the bathrooms and I'll take you into my room real quick. I think Ruth said she paid something like 300,000 yen because it was peak season for four nights. Something like that. Got a refrigerator. Microwave. Rice cooker. Coffee maker. Sink. Magnetically sealed trash cans to keep vermin out. Which we don't have a problem. Here's the bathroom. The bathroom, right. Where we take a bath. There's a freaking sauna. We turned it on yesterday and it was so hot. Of course, because it's a sauna. But it's kind of neat to have something like this. And then I think it's made more for families. There's two shower heads here and a jacuzzi, which none of us use because we just don't have time. We come back completely exhausted. But it's nice to have something like that. Here's the toilet. It's dark. I'll take you to the one upstairs. Kind of a little lounge area outside. Nice and cool in here. Ruth's master bedroom. We should be back again. There's a work area back there. So I'm going to take you upstairs now. This is my bedroom on the other side. It's like a townhouse. A machiya. It's a very long sink here. Toilet that opens automatically. Watch this. How you doing? Ramsey Silent's in the house. How you doing, Ramsey Silent? Absolutely. Here's my room. It's fairly spacious.

00:18:26 John Daub: Bedroom's a little hard. I compared it to maybe the beds at the Paris Olympics. But other than that, it was a little hard. But no problem at all. Got hangers for my clothes. Dry the towel. Very nice. I think it's worth it for having a bunch of people. It's more comfortable than a hotel. Because we can kind of hang out. This is another room. I guess it's a little bit smaller. But probably good for kids. I'm on the Wi-Fi inside of here. So it might have a better signal. Comfortable experience in this Airbnb. I think it was like Euphoria or something like that. I can't remember what it was called. We had a problem with the air conditioner. It was leaking a little bit. But they've come in to fix that while we're out. So that's really nice of them. Again, we've had an amazing 48 hours here. I can't believe we've been here for 48 hours. And I'll be here till Monday. And we're taking the ferry back Monday morning. So I'll be back in Tokyo Monday to work. Hopefully upload a video ASAP. It seems like everything is so busy right now.

00:19:46 John Daub: If you have some time, check out this story on Kodo. The life of a Japanese drummer. This will give you insight for the livestream tonight. About this amazing Taiko group on the island of Sado. They do world tours that are sold out. Like stadium. I think they're like stadium tours. They're so good. And what's great about them is it's not just the drumming. It's the entertainment of it. They use all these kinds of drumming stuff. They use all these different styles throughout the histories of Japan. And they incorporate that into their performance art. And the sound of the Taiko drums. It really sticks with you. I love it. And I think if you see it today, you will as well.

00:20:22 John Daub: Alright everybody. I gotta go pick up Leo and Kanae. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. I'm so happy you guys are here joining me on this adventure. The postcards went out a few days ago. So they should be on the way. I see that the Amazing Star 123 has been a member for 23 months. Thank you so much for being a member on YouTube here. I appreciate it. We got a really nice community of YouTube members as well as Patreon members. So thanks so much guys for the support. I'm gonna get packed. Get to the car. Go pick up my family. And I'll be back maybe this afternoon at the gold mine. If there's a signal. Or definitely tonight at the encore. You're gonna wanna see this one. It's gonna be a lot of fun. You're gonna hear the Taiko playing live. And if the signal's really bad, I'll upload a HD version of it. It'll be great. Maybe a little bit later on. And Saya got the Daimyo packages. Thank you, Saya. Thank you for that. I'm happy to hear that it finally arrived. Alright guys. See ya. Take care. I'll see you in the next live stream from Sado Island. Matane.