00:00 John Daub: Welcome to Hakuba in Nagano. We are camping for the last couple of nights. We've been here at a place called Toa Noa. I just picked a place that was on Google Maps and we found what seems to be a fairly quiet place down by the river, well near the river. And Leo and Kanae are with me, my family, and we thought we would share with you this experience. I drove here. So I always use, you guys know I use Toyota Rent-A-Car. And this is the, you can use any, this is Toyota Rent-A-Car, maybe a little bit more expensive, but the cars always are like almost brand new and in really good shape. So I kind of tend to pick these. This is like what's called a micro or mini SUV. It's called a Raize, R-A-I-Z-E. And yeah, it was a pretty good drive here from Tokyo.

00:56 John Daub: So here's the camp spot. We're the only ones here. There's this one other camper I saw last night. He's like deep in the woods. These are all empty because this is a weekday. Usually on a weekend, there'll be a lot more people. And I'll show you some of the mountains around there. There's some dude over here. And apparently, there's some sort of, oh, there he is. There he is. There's a not friendly goat, they said. Please stay away from the goat. So we have a friend, sort of, a watch goat.

01:52 John Daub: Alright, I want to take you inside of the tent here. Leo is actually, and Kanae right now, are looking for bugs. They have a book. And he can study, he can study the caterpillars and some of the, kabutomushi (rhinoceros beetle), which is a beetle that looks like it can destroy humanity. If you take a look at the kabutomushi, like helmet bug or rhino bug, beetle, I'm not sure what it is, but we'll show you in the book. It's kind of creepy.

02:48 John Daub: Alright, let me show you this tent. Now, this tent was really comfortable. Like, I thought it was a Canadian company, right? It says here Logos. It has a maple flag on there. But it's actually a Japanese company that makes camping stuff. I got all the stuff at the store because we go to the shopping mall and they have a, like a little store there. And we said, oh my god, these chairs are so comfortable. This tent looks pretty easy to set up. And Kanae said, I'm not going camping with you, my wife, unless you get a tent that you can stand in. And I said, well, I can stand up inside of this tent. But it rained last night and this is going to be awful to put away. We got to check out of here in about 90 minutes. And it takes about an hour to put this, at least it took an hour to set it up.

03:44 John Daub: Inside the tent, very spacious. It's basically a tent inside of a tent. There's a shell and you can put up the sleeping tent in the back, which is kind of, it's not touching the other tent. So it's quite nice if it does rain. And a lot of ventilation. The ventilation does come into the tent, which is always a problem. I thought that was nice. We have a 10 centimeter air mattress, which takes up a lot of space in the car, but certainly worth it. We had to put the mattress this way so that we could all three of us sleep in it okay. And I kind of wish we had a little bit more space. So I'm going to have to buy another mattress, air mattress for Leo next time. And then we can kind of make it work out.

04:40 John Daub: We have this table here. It's hard to find a round bamboo table. Bamboo is a lot. It's lighter and more portable than the wood ones. And it doesn't take up a lot of space in the car, believe it or not. And it's a very nice table. The chairs are heavier and bigger, to be honest with you. But these chairs are really nice. And we had a good time just like sipping coffee and looking out there.

05:36 John Daub: But I learned something very valuable. And that is that Leo is still too young to camp. It's not that easy to camp with a three-year-old. He's almost four. That makes it even harder. And he can't stand still. And he wants to destroy everything around him. So that was something of a challenge. But then again, it was a really good experience for everybody. So to see if he's ready or not. So maybe give him a little bit more time before we do that.

06:32 John Daub: Let's go interview them. He found a cricket. This one? So they found a cricket apparently. Where is he? He's over there. Oh, he's over there? Yeah. Leo, point. He's gone. Oh, there he is. I see a spider too. Whoa! It's a jumping. There's jumping spiders in Japan. They're pretty hardcore. Grasshopper. So he's learning about grasshoppers and stuff.

07:28 John Daub: Oh, I couldn't see him. Basically in Tokyo, there's very little nature except for crows and other spiders sometimes. But the jumping spiders are all over Tokyo. And there's not a lot that kids could really learn about. So they bring it into the schools like bugs so that they can see these kind of things. And you really do have to get out to nature and see it for yourself. A lot of dragonflies here. Did you see the dragonfly? There's not really a lot of mosquitoes here, right? We didn't really see a lot of mosquitoes.

08:24 John Daub: But there's the one downside to this camping spot. You see those trucks? There's like a cement factory. And every like five minutes, there's a lot of people. And every five minutes, a cement truck goes by. And it kind of breaks the sound of the rushing river which you might not be able to hear down here.

09:20 John Daub: Let me show you on the map exactly where we are. I can talk about this trip as well in that light here. It's about a four-hour drive from Tokyo to get to Hakuba. Hakuba is the most famous area around here. But don't just focus on Hakuba. There's a bunch of other towns that are certainly if you're looking for hotels more affordable than Hakuba. But Hakuba is quite famous for skiing especially for Westerners who are coming here. You can see the... Big mountains around. And yesterday's live stream, I took you to the top of the mountain where there's a bakery and there's a place where you could sit. And you have this panoramic view of it.

10:16 John Daub: So this is the camping spot that we're at right now. I thought it was nice because it was close to the river. But we're not actually on the river. Probably a good thing if it does rain or there's flash flooding. You never know. We're a little bit away from there. But I should have been more mindful of the cement factory nearby. It sort of takes away from it. But it seems like an adventure sports area that had some land. And they made a camping spot out of it. So it's nice to support the local business here. We are going to camp next time here I think.

11:12 John Daub: This is Lake Aoki. Which is you know, Kanae's maiden name. Aoki. Blue tree. So I think we're going to go down to the area. And there was this cafe. I'm going to show you a video of this brand new cafe that they opened up here. They have the fluffy pancakes. They have like these blueberry desserts that I've never had ever before in my entire life. They were incredible yesterday. So we just drove out there and we had an amazing time. And there's some camping spots along the coast here. So I think being on a lake is better than a river. There's the Aoki-ko. Ko means lake in Japanese. Aoki-ko camping spot. So maybe we're going to have our camping there. I don't know.

12:08 John Daub: They said they got the fluffy pancakes. But this is for me a dream come true. For those that have been watching the channel for a long time. This was in the year 2000. This is four years ago. Can you believe this? Hold on a second. I'm going to bring it up. Just so you guys can remember this. It's in 720p because we didn't have live streams in HD then. But you can see I was indoor camping. It was really not the same. I think it's something about the sounds and the fact that the TV is off. I don't know. It just was a lot better to real camp.

13:04 John Daub: So this was a long time coming for a lot of people that are watching this channel for a long time. You guys know that I've been trying to do this for a long time. I'm still using that gas. I'm kind of fast forwarding here. We had a campfire yesterday. We had everything that you're seeing that we probably should have done when we had the indoor camp. We were able to do it. So indoor camping is not erased for good. Thank goodness. And we're back to normal camping. Which is, you know, indoor camping. If you got to do it, you got to do it.

14:00 John Daub: Alright, let me show you a map here. And then I'll show you this cafe at Aoki. At Lake Aoki. My goodness. And the dinner yesterday was incredible. This map here. So this is the camping spots here. It's interesting. It's all online now. So you put in your credit card. They allow you to cancel three days in advance. If it's like two days, then you got to pay 50%. If it's one day, I think you got to pay 100%. The risk to that is that if there's a typhoon. I don't know if you get your money back. I mean, you can't go anyways. Maybe they do give you your money back. We're on Camp Spot A1. But you can pick the size of the camp spot and all of this by the number on the website. So it was pretty easy to do it. It's just unless you get a chance to see the camp spot. It's hard to pick because you don't know exactly what it's like, right? You don't know what it's like.

14:56 John Daub: The signal is not very good here. So that's why we got a 720p live stream. Let me show you really quickly this place here. Check it out. So this is the cafe on Lake Aoki yesterday. Look how beautiful that is, right? So I think we might go back there. We might go back there for visit for breakfast. Perhaps. I don't know. It's very tempting. And the camp spots are across the lake over there. And you can do kayaking and stuff. So this seems like the more ideal spot. Although the bathrooms here were extremely clean. Maybe I can go take you over and give you a quick look. So I would recommend this place as well. But I'm a little bit close there. But you could sit outside on the deck here. And you can have coffee, which is what we did. We had a coffee and some kind of blueberry thing from a barber, which is nice. But seems like they just opened this up. And they open up at 8 a.m. So I don't know. We might go back there for some pancakes. I don't know. Like I kind of wanted to do my own barbecuing the whole time. But because it rained last night, we had to...

15:52 John Daub: This is not... No, this is... No, that's not good. It's the camera. Sometimes it doesn't work out. But we got a four-hour drive. It's a time lapse here. We got a four-hour drive to go back. And the drive here after you get outside of Tokyo is really nice. Especially when you get to the mountain areas of Nagano and Gunma. It's a pretty relaxing drive. Not a lot of traffic. At least we didn't have it. So I'm looking forward to breaking this up every hour and a half or so. Stopping at a service area. And they have really nice restaurants and facilities in Japan off of the highways. So I'm looking forward to buying some gifts. I'm going to send out the daimyo packages in a couple of days. And then maybe I can find some new stuff to pack into those boxes for the Patreon supporters. I got stuff from North Hokkaido in the box this morning. So it's going to be nice to see everyone.

16:48 John Daub: They're called Northman. You know like nikuman (steamed bun)? It's called Northman. North being kita. Like in the very north of Japan. So it's got some kind of Hokkaido flavoring and stuff. So it's going to be kind of a good snack to have. But yeah. I think all in all we had a pretty good camping experience here. Yeah. Yesterday we went to... I think I showed you this video yesterday. You can see in the other livestream to Iwatake. To the top of the mountain here in Hakuba. They turn the ski... There's a park on the top there. Where you can really see some amazing... Some amazing sight views looking down onto the city.

17:44 John Daub: Let me see if I can have that available. Basically you can do the sound of music scene there. Which I did yesterday. I can just show you the pictures. So there's our family picture on the top. It was really sunny. As you can see with this here. It's nice. So the... Anybody can sit out there. See they have these chairs. Free. I think it's made by Snow Peak. Which is a company. I think it's based in here in Hakuba in Nagano. I think. I think it was Toyama. I can't remember. But the... That's the view down to the village. And you get the... The cable car takes you up here. And in the winter it's snowed over. And you can just ski down to the bottom. So that's the experience that we had here. It's nice. You know.

18:40 John Daub: And I think for those that are looking in the summer. Camping is good because look. The city of Tokyo is ridiculously hot in the summer. But if you get out to the countryside. Rent a car. The temperature can drop as much as 10 degrees Celsius. Which is like what? 18 degrees Fahrenheit or something. So up in the mountains. That's where you really want to go in the summertime. In August the beaches have jellyfish. So it's not... A lot of people aren't swimming. Because of the... Getting stung by Portuguese man o' wars. And stuff. But yeah. It's been a pretty good experience camping.

19:36 John Daub: Leo. Do you like camping? Leo. Daddy asking. Yeah. He likes it. Yeah. Is the caterpillar there? Yeah. Leo. It's okay. He doesn't have to. Yeah. Caterpillar is still there. I hear the caterpillar. He's going to make a butterfly in like 6 to 8 weeks. I don't know. How long does it take to make a butterfly? Leo. Look. The caterpillar is still there. He's got him. Hey, can I do the picture of the kabutomushi? Yeah. This one. These beetles are massive in size. And they're all over the place. We can't find. But we couldn't find them yet. Yeah. We had them climbing on our tent back in Hachioji, right? Yeah. In the Tokyo area. We had a kabutomushi. It's like... What is that beetle? It has like jaws of life, right? That's what it's called. It's like if you get into a car accident, they have these things that open up the cars. Jaws of life. And it is able to rip open the car to get people out. The kabutomushi has these jaws of life. But for them, it would be death because I wouldn't want to be like a spider or something messing around with that.

20:32 John Daub: No crocodiles, Carrie. No crocodiles. Ranjit, if you're here, I do appreciate the postcard updates. He always lets me know when his postcard arrives in the UK. I do like it. And to Anthony in Australia, I'm going to go pick up your package. He left something for me at his hotel, which is not too far away from where I live, Nihonbashi. So I'll go and pick that up this weekend if I can. I appreciate it. I'm sorry I couldn't see you. I'm sorry I couldn't see you on the trip. We're out here.

21:28 John Daub: The sun's coming out, which is hallelujah. It's going to be able to dry the tent. The sun just came out after raining all night. Let me see if I can show you just a little bit. The restaurant that we ate at last night, it was really amazing. Kanae, what was the name of that restaurant we ate at? Gravity Works? Let me see if I can pull that up here. The lady's maybe a little bit too talkative, but all the ingredients, it's like a little log cabin. It's right next to Hakuba Station, but all the ingredients are made in-house, right? And inside, it looks like this. It looks like this. It's a family log cabin inside. And they had a pizza, again, tomatoes that they grew, gnocchi from potatoes locally made. Everything was really local. And you can see they're like fermenting stuff in jars and making their own everything.

22:34 John Daub: And there's just a little inside story. When I was hitchhiking in 2007, one of the people who picked me up right here, she lives here in Hakuba, her and her husband. And we called them up. And they came out and just came out to say hi. So we're going to get a chance to see them when we come back to Hakuba, which is really great. You know, we had a good dinner. They didn't join us for that, but I'm taking a picture sometimes. You know what? Pro tip, if you've got kids, never mind taking the picture, use video, and then you'll always get them with their eyes open and just take a screenshot. It's much better. And then you can use AI software to enlarge it if you need to. 4K is 4 megapixels, so that's more than enough for a print. Anyways, we got a pretty long trip home. I hope this is informational. I have a Iwatani gas and a Primus gas heater. And we also had wood burning last night, which is really great. We had this amazing fire, campfire last night. I think that there's, you know, you really want to have, because you can't do barbecuing in Tokyo. You really need to have like a campfire. And we had this wagyu burning last night and it was, well, it cooked real fast, I'll tell you that. Should have waited a little bit, but I was just, we were all hungry. But we had some wagyu grilling last night from a local wagyu. It was on sale, 30% off. So how could you pass that up? And some local sausages. This is two nights ago. And that fan there has been amazing, actually. They have this 20,000 mAh battery. Fan thing with a light. And it's been really good to have that because it was, it made the fire burn faster because you just put some oxygen on there and the fire starts to burn real fast. But yeah, good time. Good time. And Michael Sassano, we put your super chats to work as well as everybody else's. And we had some pretty good lunch and dinners at that, at that place. And we're going to go back to Aokiko, Lake Aoki maybe, and get a coffee there before we get back out. Stop off at a michi no eki (roadside station), get some local vegetables from the farmers. And then we'll go back to Aokiko. And take all that good stuff back to Tokyo, which is the best way to live. Iwatani gas. No, Iwatani gas. Not Otani, Carrie. Iwatani. That'd be funny if Otani had his own gas. That's where the tongs are. He was using that to pick up rocks. What are you doing? What are you doing? I bet you there's a lot of spiders in the camp spots over here. I'm not sure I can handle it. Been living in Tokyo too long. All right. What's that? Anyone know the passcode? Or is that just for sheep? Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye, ram. Bye, ram. You. With your trust, your just name you. Bye. Ram. You. Now, you can speak in English to me. So the movie Babe? Anybody know? No, I guess it only works for in Australia perhaps. I guess there's not a lot of Babe fans. I was actually rooting for Babe, but I think and Braveheart. It was a tough one that year. No. I thought Babe was the better movie. Baa ram ewe. Leo, you haven't seen Babe yet. All right, say bye bye. Matane. Matane. Oh, and if you're wondering, we got the tent on sale for 72,000 yen. 72 or 75,000 yen, which is about $500 with the exchange rate on Amazon. It was on a deal and it was on clearance because now they have green color at the Logos Store. So we got the last, one of the last ones of this color. But normally it's about 100,000 yen or what feels like $1,000 for this tent, but was on sale. So if you could find these tents on sale, they're amazing because they stand up to the wind real good and the rain as well. So highly recommended, but try to get them on sale, which like we did, and we can use this every summer and every spring now and maybe every fall. And one day it might be our home. We get evicted and then we got someplace to live. All right, everybody, see you next time. Matane.