00:00:01 John Daub: Wow, welcome to Aichi Prefecture. This is where Nagoya is located. This isn't Nagoya, but this is where I started in Japan 26 years ago. This is Higashi Okazaki Station, which is under construction. It was a grand old station back in the day. Not so much right now. They're undergoing renovations, but I found a sign of what it used to look like.

00:00:27 John Daub: There it is. That's Okazaki Station. I kind of remember. I don't think it's changed that much, but construction here won't finish until 2030. It's an old-looking station on the Meitetsu Line.

00:00:43 John Daub: I'm here to do a job tomorrow, filming in a neighboring town, so I took it upon myself to stay here, walk around this area. It's aged. And so have I. You're going to hear some interesting stories in this 20-minute or so stream as we walk down what is a really typical Japanese town. A lot of station fronts called ekimai look kind of the same. They have the same kind of stuff.

00:01:14 John Daub: Okazaki is really famous for two things: the castle, Okazaki-jo, where Tokugawa Ieyasu, who started the Edo period, was born, and fireworks. The city doesn't get a lot of attention, but it has that castle and a lot of other attractions. I'll show you tomorrow morning. I'm gonna take you to Okazaki Park and Okazaki Castle at the crack of dawn, so look forward to that. The station has undergone a lot of renovations. There's the castle right there, Okazaki-jo, really beautiful place. I've never been inside. I lived next to it for 14 months when I lived in Okazaki, but never went in. It's like one of those things where you live across the street from an amazing attraction, you just never find the time. I lived right there, that's how close I was to the castle. That ugly-looking pink building wasn't pink when I lived there, it was gray or white if I remember correctly. If you're gonna take an aged building and make it cool, I guess pink works. It's always about a 15-minute walk from Okazaki Station to get to my house back in the day. It was a really small one-room apartment, a 1R, the smallest of the small.

00:03:25 John Daub: You can see there's a lot of bars in this ekimai area, famous for bars, entertainment, manga cafes if you need a place to crash, capsule hotels, things like that. Here's a karaoke place. All this is gone. Here's that sign I was telling you about, this is where the station used to be. Some back door entrances into there. I'll show you what my room looks like as well. That's a brand new hotel that didn't exist when I was here. This building on the left side is interesting. This is where I believe the Eon Okazaki was, Eon for adults. I used to teach at the children's school called Amity, and all my friends were either students or teachers that worked in that ugly white building there. It looks abandoned, like it's going to be torn down. It was a roach-infested place back in the day, so they need to tear down. I believe there's a Nova right there. I thought they went out of business, I guess not. A lot of teachers started at Nova, it was like the McDonald's of English schools. There's an ECC across the street. ECC is another eikaiwa chain, so there's Nova, ECC, and Eon. I worked at Eon. I couldn't get into JET. I got an interview, but Washington DC is not the best place to do that.

00:05:24 John Daub: This is a kaya. They were asking me to go in when I walked by a little bit ago, beers are 300 yen, but she took that sign away, so happy hour is over. I don't remember any of these restaurants. There used to be a Murasaki. You guys know the chain called Murasaki? It means purple in Japanese, but I think the chain has gone out of business. Across the street, around here, maybe in this building that was abandoned, there used to be a Shirokiya. Shirokiya was like a Denny's but an izakaya open until 6 a.m. the next day. If you wanted a drink or couldn't sleep, you'd find a lot of people at Shirokiya waiting for the first train or drinking the night away. They went out of business. The building looks like it went out of business. That's no longer there, and the Murasaki probably in one of these buildings here. That was the first izakaya I ever went into.

00:06:39 John Daub: A lot of people in karaoke. Let's go across the street. Don't want to film the hostess girls, their handler was looking at me. Whoa, look at this, they got a pretty pump here. Oh my god, I would have wasted so much money if this had existed. This was another kind of restaurant because I once had a date inside this establishment, but it was something else back then. Typical brew pub stuff. Never get the pizza because it's never satisfying, but this looks actually really good. Pizza in Japanese izakayas is never good, basically a tortilla with sauce and cheese. The menu has everything. Looks good, fish and chips, probably what you get at a British pub. Bunch of beer. I taught in about 16 different locations, moved so often back in the day. There's a ramen place. I don't think any of these places existed. Here comes the Meitetsu train. They have a super express that goes to Nagoya really fast, about 45 minutes from here. Fish and chips smells good, though that's not Japanese fare. Wonder how good or bad it is. It's kind of quiet, this is the end of the bar scene. The station front is the brightest area in any town.

00:09:07 John Daub: There you go, Higashi Okazaki Station with the station under construction. That place looks pretty good, says they got good animal parts grilled with nice sauce. I think that dentist was here before. Aichi Prefecture kind of gets forgotten because it's Nagoya, the third or fourth largest city. It's got Toyota, a lot of industrial stuff. Toyota is a town, and the city subsidized local taxes back in the day. If you moved to the city of Toyota, you didn't have to pay local taxes, thousands of dollars in Japan for services. The company of Toyota would pay for all of that, which is incredible.

00:10:28 John Daub: I came here in July of 1998, freaking hot, never felt this kind of island heat before. I got off the airplane, jet lagged out of my mind because my flight was delayed in Detroit. I was hot as heck, picked up like a zombie. Did some training in Okayama, then came here really quickly because the teacher had been fired or left, so they expedited all the paperwork to get me here. The week I came, I was on this bridge in awe and shock of Japan. This is probably the place to be when the fireworks come. Okazaki has one of the best fireworks festivals in this area of Japan. It was on this bridge, they shut it down, everyone in yukata. There was a dude holding a python roman candle fireworks spraying out gunpowder, insane, must have been drunk, right there on the side 30 years ago. What is this country, what is this madness? From that point on, I was fascinated and wanted to figure out how all this worked.

00:12:04 John Daub: Let's walk up to the bridge, take a look at the river. This night might not be so interesting to you, but it's fascinating to me to see where I came from. While we're walking, this is what Mount Fuji looks like this afternoon, about three hours ago, nice white cap on it. It'll get a lot better in the next three to four weeks. Some days in January the whole thing is covered in snow, but looks real nice right now. This bridge is a little bit more of a roller coaster. Look over there, they have the lights on at Okazaki Castle, not very powerful, kind of dim. They could upgrade their lights, probably still using incandescent bulbs. One of the best hotels in the city used to be that one right there, Okazaki New Grand Hotel. I stayed there my last night before moving to Hiroshima to another school. They put me up in the nicest hotel, only about 100 meters from where I was living. It's so quiet out here, stark contrast to Tokyo filled with tourists right now. The school I worked at was at the end of the bridge down here. My first bowl of ramen was eaten at that light, take a left, there's a karamiso negi ramen shop. I've always liked karamiso negi ramen, pretty amazing. Down there, Okazaki Castle, the riverfront. I used to do picnics here.

00:14:35 John Daub: You could do barbecues and picnics in Aichi, lots of event spaces. In any major city this would be dangerous, but in Japan it's so darn clean under the bridge. Look at that, you could camp here. That would make you homeless, I guess, but you could. Might not want to during typhoon season because of flash floods or riverbanks overflowing, but just a beautiful place. During the fireworks here, this is where they set up a lot of them. There's another fireworks festival about three or four kilometers down the river, and you saw three or four layers of fireworks as other towns did their shows. One real close, another nearby, another in the distance. It was amazing, sky on fire.

00:15:27 John Daub: If you get put into a place for the JET program or English teacher job, everybody wants to live in the city, Osaka, Nagoya, Tokyo. But probably better off living in the countryside, especially the first time, because you really get to know the country more, makes your experience richer, you'll learn the language more. You're probably going to make a lot more friends here than in the cities, because there's so many expats. I met a lot of Japanese friends here, gave me an introduction into Japan even though I didn't know Japanese very well. You guys have any questions about Okazaki? This is really crazy to be back here. Here's a shot going over the bridge on the Shinkansen. If you do slow motion, it's kind of impactful. What was really pretty, I put this on an Instagram story, the reflection of Mount Fuji in the water there. You have to do it in slow motion to really see it, but there's a beautiful reflection of Mount Fuji. Is that the Fuji River or the Naka River? I can't remember. You have to sit on the right side of the Shinkansen to get the view, about five minutes going by.

00:17:13 John Daub: You probably want to see the room I'm staying in. Boom, welcome to my room. Looks like a typical business hotel, narrow, small, 9,000 yen a night, a little expensive but comfortable. Bathroom typical, clean. I was really surprised because everything you just saw, I walked through the town, it looks really dated. This place looked really new and clean, staff was nice. Nice view, station on the left, river on the right. Quite happy with this corner room. I'll sleep pretty good and wake up early. I'm going to take you to the castle and Okazaki Park because there's something in there I want to show you. They gave me a little yukata. Never wear them unless it's an onsen, but yeah, pretty good hotel. Here it is from the outside, the Grand Inn. I thought it was 300 yen for parking, they gave me a 1,000 yen discount. Check this out, manhole with weird anime manga robot kawaii character. Got to ask my friend Matt Alt if he recognizes this.

00:18:47 John Daub: Higashi Okazaki Station is kind of unique. If you're watching because you might be moving to this area, a lot of foreigners move into Okazaki or Higashi Okazaki. This is a very livable town, very affordable. Nagoya is where you're going to do a lot of shopping. It is a little bit older, but they're doing amazing renovations. The Meitetsu Line is very convenient. You'll have a pretty good start here. For JET, you can't pick where you live, but they ask if you have requests. My answer is always leave it up to fate, say you'll go anywhere. That might get you into the program easier, it's pretty competitive.

00:20:34 John Daub: I'm here to film the city of Nishio, right next to here, a sponsored video. They asked me to come down, had a little budget, perfect for me. Got a chance to come on their dime to film this episode. I'll be staying at a guest house with a really unique story. There's a guy who wants to get tourists to his town, fantastic story. Tied it up with a partner who wants to tell this story, really intrigued me. One of my missions is to take you to places outside the norm. This is new, has a story behind it. That was the stairway to get up to the old Eon, roach-infested school, and Shirokiya on the bottom floor, out of business now.

00:24:41 John Daub: It's just a trip down memory lane, but I think Higashi Okazaki, when the station is finished, it's gonna be really pretty. Tomorrow morning, gonna take you to look at the castle and maybe my first apartment. They have a tourist office here. There's the statue of Tokugawa and the castle where he was born, his first bath taken from a well here. I'll show you all of that. Been a long time since I've been back in my old first hometown. Kanae and Leo are back home waiting for me on Friday. Meitetsu Toyohashi Station is under construction too. Change does not happen often here, but good to see them modernizing. Okazaki's got cool attractions. There's a lot of places in the Aichi region, Mikawa region, famous for fireworks, stonework, really good food and specialties like cochin chicken, Nagoya chicken some of the best in Japan. Have a good night, guys. I'll see you tomorrow morning. Thanks so much. If you have questions about Higashi Okazaki Station or living here, let me know. Good night. Oyasuminasai. Mata ne.