00:02 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Nagasaki. This is Glover Slope, Glover Street. We're going to walk up here. There's tons of street food, lots of castella (カステラ, Portuguese sponge cake) cakes. This is a very famous confection of the city of Nagasaki. And we might try some of it. How you doing everybody?

00:19 John Daub: It was a sunny morning. The clouds have come in. Spring is a tough time to figure out the weather, but we're just going to make do with what we have. It's not too cold. Actually, it feels like spring. There's an expression called san kan shi on (三寒四温, three cold days four warm days). We're on the on, the warm side of it, and it will turn cold again. It's just what always happens right before springtime.

00:41 John Daub: All right, let's take a walk up to the top here. As you can already see, there are loads of castella, castella? I don't know how you would pronounce it. We say カステラ in Japanese. And you can see this first shop here. Don't worry, save it because there's a lot more that's coming. He's holding a massive one of them, a castella cake, which I believe is Portuguese in origin. They're really good. So when you're here, you got to get them. They have them like dipped in chocolate and they've made all these different concepts out of it.

01:23 John Daub: Let's keep on moving up here. I don't like to say where I'm staying to everybody. It's kind of weird to do. But I stayed here at this hotel. If you're an IHG member, one of the hotel chains, this is the ANA Crowne Plaza. So if you have an ANA card, you also get miles. So I was able to use some miles in here and get a discount, which is great. They actually upgraded my room to up here. So I got a chance to look out onto the street. Check out the view. It's such a pretty view from there. So there's some benefits to it. This is from my balcony. And I got to see this every night. But I wasn't really had a lot of free time. But when I did, I was able to take it out, check out the view. And if you look down the Glover Slope there, you can see Nagasaki, the harbor there. And there's Inasa, the mountain where you get beautiful views from the top there. And then that waterway, that's where the international cruise dock is.

02:28 John Daub: So all the cruise ships will be docked there. So I guess three ships had come in and left while during my time staying here. But what you really notice about this view, I think this is important, is that it doesn't look anything like typical Japan, does it? It's got a mix of Western and Eastern architecture. And we'll talk a little bit about this. But that's what makes Nagasaki really special and different than other places around the world. It's a fusion of cultures. It is such an international city. The Dutch came here. The Portuguese were here in the 17th century. It was one of the first places where internationals were able to come. And during the Edo period, during Sakoku, where they closed the country, the only place that was open was here, Nagasaki. It was only open to the Dutch, too. They kicked out the Portuguese because the Portuguese had a nasty habit of trying to convert everybody here. So the Tokugawa shogunate is like, no.

03:29 John Daub: And if you want to stay here, they take the crucifix, the cross, and they would put it on the ground and say, stomp on it. And if you could do that and prove that you could stomp on the cross, then you were not a religious person and therefore you could probably stay here. So it's some weird stuff in the history of Japan. But Nagasaki, though, is a very international city. And you're going to see that in the street food that we have here. Not just Western, but also, oh, look at this marker. This looks like a really old one. This place really started to boom in the Meiji period. And I guess this is where you might be saying this is Glover Street. So this is named after this guy here. So the history is all really important.

04:16 John Daub: He is one of the industrialists who came from, I believe, from China, from Shanghai. And Mr. Glover here has a very unique and distinctive mustache. Kind of remember that because there are some urban legends that have to do with it. Glover was a Scottish merchant who played a crucial role in Japan's industrial development. He really did and you'll see it in his, maybe we'll get a chance to see his house but the Western landmarks here are quite impressive. I'm gonna go a little ways and I'm gonna show you the Google Earth map of this area too because it's really nice to see that. Shout out to Mr. Glover thank you for all that you did. And one last thing I meant is to show it to you here really quickly but Mitsubishi Corporation of Japan negotiating the sale of William Copeland Spring Valley Brewery in Yokohama Glover also helped establish the Japan Brewery Company which later became the major Kirin Brewery Company. What an urban myth is that his mustache of the is that the mustache of that of the mythological look, mythical creature featured on Kirin beer labels is in fact a tribute to Glover, who sported a similar mustache. So that mustache is his mustache in the Kirin logo. That's an urban legend. We're not quite sure, but it sure could be.

05:53 John Daub: Looks like it's gonna rain soon. So I've been eating, I ate here two times, and I made friends with the people in there, so we may be able to get a kakuni (角煮まん, steamed pork belly bun). Kakuni is this, which is this. It's pork belly, I believe, that is so soft in this steamed dumpling roll. And maybe we'll get one. There's kind of a long line, so let's come back here. We're gonna have a chance. My car's parked at the ANA Crowne Plaza anyway, so we gotta make our way here. You'll find all these different kinds of food. Some of them have no relationship at all to Nagasaki. It just kinda stuff the tourists would like. The bee pollen ice cream looks pretty good. And we are gonna get some food here. Here's another castella shop. Here's some pastry shops. Again, there is a western influence in Japan, so the pastries do look pretty good.

07:05 John Daub: Wow, the wind is really picked up, so the rain might come out. This is, if anyone's taking a cruise, you can get a snack or a bite to eat here i like the fact that it's open there's no windows although they have gates that they pull down when it closes you get some gifts in here but i would say keep on going. All right check this out here in Nori no Oka Picture Book Museum look at this place it looks like something out of Ghibli right nagasaki has so many like mysterious buildings it's really beautiful you're gonna see something even more beautiful when we get up to where the churches are but these this street is just so i wish i had gotten more time to try this this is a i guess they call it nagasaki pudding salted caramel ice cream made with premium milk okay that can maybe compete with hokkaido but the line is just way too long i'd rather use my stomach space with for kakuni or some castella.

08:44 John Daub: Glass is something you'll find in Nagasaki i've seen a couple of glass stores here might have to do with a european or a catholic background i'm not sure why glasses is here but the stained glass i've seen it in a lot of places in particular the the uh urakami cathedral i went inside urakami cathedral which was destroyed in the atomic blast in 1945 august 9th and the stained glass inside of there is just so beautiful so i guess that's where the glass comes from stained glass is uh you'll see it in a lot of the cathedrals of course worldwide you can definitely see we're on a slope we're starting to go up so we'll probably get a view of the nagasaki harbor pretty soon.

09:45 John Daub: Look at that they're selling uh pongkan yesterday i interviewed another hibakusha (被爆者, atomic bomb survivor) survivor of the atomic bomb we really had a great time together i spent i could i could have spent a lot more time there with him here's a picture this is uji harasan he's nine he's gonna be 95 years old soon by the time this episode broadcasts he's gonna be 95 years old he was running his his walking speed is faster than me he was in such great shape i can't believe and his memory is razor sharp i cannot believe he is 95 years old and look at that head of hair i was jealous and that's his wife and his daughter right there i i can't say thank you i had to drive out about 45 minutes to get to this spot uh to his house but it was a wonderful stay i was there for i was only gonna do an hour interview i ended up staying for three hours just talking and enjoying myself with them great family um but the story was really it was hard uh very hard to hear but important.

11:04 John Daub: Horanda the dutch i guess they're the ones who brought the the cake i thought it was a portuguese what was the portuguese there's some oh that's the one i gotta get that for kanae you see if the nagasaki uh i have to read it through the screen i think that says like chocolate right chocolate chocolate and there's a different colors the green one i believe is matcha it could be asparagus for all we know this is the this is the um i guess you call it like a plaza that i really like it just doesn't look like japan it looks very fusion-esque it doesn't look like europe either never mind it's just really really unique.

12:19 John Daub: Are you guys getting japan vibes or european vibes or what i don't know western vibes i i don't know how to put it but it's certainly unique this is an incredible incredible area. Kanae's like i don't know what kakuni is like what are you japanese do you live here well it's a nagasaki thing so i'm going to get some at the airport they're frozen so you can microwave them i guess they're not it's not the but i'm going to bring some back for with that thank you ponkotsu ben i'm also planning to come back i'm going to get i'm working with um well for this episode i got a chance to meet nbc which is nagasaki broadcasting and we're i had a kind of a favor i asked them and they're helping me out with one scene and if i if we can get access to it um i i'm going to come back to nagasaki after the spring break right now all the kids have spring break so the i bet you tokyo disney land and disney sea is the worst place to be right now i would not be going there the lines are probably like 10 hours long i remember going there for that volcano ride at disney sea it was seven hours wait which is crazy.

13:41 John Daub: Up there is the garden i'm kind of not moving too fast because i have a feeling the signal is not going to be so great if i keep going but i'm going to take you up to the entrance of the garden and we can go take a look but i i think that this is just the vibe of the garden and the feel of what nagasaki has to offer before you decide to come out here because it's actually um kind of far to get here to nagasaki oh here's some of the western buildings some of the residences of the um the western industrialists that lived here well these are made made of uh stone so up here i did a google a google map to give you a better idea you can see tokyo no saka is on the e on the east side is more west it's like west southwest of tokyo and osaka it's a prefecture one of japan's 47 prefectures nagasaki right on the water it's so beautiful um i'm really digging the city.

14:56 John Daub: There's only one thing i'm going to tell you about it one thing that i don't like about nagasaki and it's not their fault this is where i am right now this part of the city closer to the to the sea it's beautiful that flat part on the on the on the coast there that's where the international ferries dock so if you're taking a cruise and stopping in nagasaki you're going to be stopping there and this is the street here that's the a a crown hotel that brown and green building right there that street to the right of it is the glover slope and it goes up and we just walk this all the way up to right there and that's where i am right now right next to the uh oura cathedral which is so beautiful look at that this does not look like japan and that's what makes it so awesome to give you a little bit of view you can keep going up and up and it's a nice stroll but you you might be huffing and puffing if you're not in great shape it is going up and up and up but these a lot of the residences were from the foreigners the expat community back in the 19th century during the meiji restoration after sakoku ended of course because japanese could not leave or enter japan and foreigners could not enter thus the samurai would smite you and that's not good.

16:23 John Daub: Panko ben i'm really hungry for a kakuni right now i want i'm gonna go back and check it out all right there's the international ferry terminal it's new i actually docked there from a cruise from china uh in 2018 and and there's live streams from that on this channel before the shinkansen was built here in nagasaki you got to go back into the archives it's one of the maybe the first 100 videos of only in japan go i i also went to mount inasa night let me see if i can pull up that video mount inasa is beautiful up there this is a if you're coming to uh this place this is like a guaranteed must visit let me see if i can pull up some video and a view from up here here bear with me for a second boom all right here's the view from the top it's really pretty uh nagasaki's very famous one of the top three night views i believe night views.

17:30 John Daub: All right i can see the sunset i can see the sun setting that that ball on the right side is the sun and there's one of the cruise ships that had just left one doesn't come in today apparently which is great news because they could film the nagasaki atomic bomb museum without a lot of people in there so you can see the cruise ship uh checking out there here's another one a lot of people come for the sunset it's not and what you notice it there's there are people here but it really isn't a lot of people it's it's kind of relaxed the sun comes it comes out a little freaky with the HDR on the iPhone though. 360 panorama view from the top of the building there. So it's, again, this is, and when you look at this, and I'm going to go back up there before I go to the airport one last time in the daytime. Oh, this might be adequate. It's a little dark, but one of the things that was, there's very little that's good with an atomic bomb, but one of the things that might've helped was the geography, the landscape of Nagasaki kept a lot of the stuff in rather than allowing it to go out and spreading. So that was a kind of a good point if there is anything, but going up here to the top, the longer I live in Japan, the less I think of what happened on 1945. And the more I think of like the food of Nagasaki and the people.

19:02 John Daub: Do you guys know? And I'm looking at this because I'm right in front of it. I want to show you now some of the, I'm going to show you some of the famous foods of Nagasaki here. So I showed you Kakuni, which is a neat little snack here, but Champon, they say Nagasaki Champon, but nobody says Nagasaki, just say Champon. Champon is, it's like ramen, but it's got all this treasure on it. All these seafood, you can get non-seafood versions at some places, but this was so good. I had this for lunch. I also had this for lunch yesterday. It's called the Turko rice. I think it means Turkish, Turkey, but it comes, it's like a weird mix. Do you see this? Of course you do. It's like spaghetti with sauce, some kind of fried rice, but it was very buttery. And then a breaded pork cutlet with like a curry demi-glace sauce. It like doesn't make any sense. And that's why it's so beautiful. Curry rice, but that's every restaurant seems to have that here. There's the Kakuni Don, the, um, there's pork, which is so good. The pork belly. Um, then there's Chuka Ramen, which is ramen. Then this one is really cool. This is Sara Udon, Sara Udon, Sara, I guess it's just plate, but it's hard to see, but the point is this it's basically the, it's basically on those fried noodles. Do you see that? You can't even see the fried noodles in this picture, but it's right here on the bottom. And so there's, there's a good crunch to it. I like this better than the, than the Champon actually. I'm not a big ramen. I haven't been eating a lot of ramen. So I kind of like this better. And then they have other stuff like Oyako Don at the, at the shop. Uh, uh, Kakuni, uh, there's a Manju right there.

20:51 John Daub: This, this looks more like a tourist restaurant, but let's get all the famous dishes. All right. I'm going to walk up just a little bit more and then we're going to come back and get some food. Okay. Boy, the slope is steep. I don't know if you can feel it. It's hard to tell, but I checked the signal here two days ago and it was not good. So I don't think we're going to be able to get, go too much higher. And the reason why I wanted to just to show you, uh, there's a beautiful garden at the top. So if you do come, it's worth checking out. And there's a couple of amazing alleys. If you keep going, there's some stairways that'll take you down some really beautiful alleys that are totally worth exploring. So if you're coming out here on a, from a cruise ship, this is a great area just to cross the street. It's literally across the street from the international cruise terminal. And comes in waves. There are sometimes this place is completely empty because I've been, I've been living here for four days, right? I've been, I've been here in Nagasaki for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and now Friday, my fourth day. So I've gotten a chance to get, get the feel of this area and it comes in waves. So there's some waves where there's tons of people. Like it's literally looks like, uh, you know, Tokyo is full of, of foreigners. And then there's nobody cause the cruise ship has left. So it's very much dependent on cruise ship tourism, I think, because it is so far away from the Shinkansen line and stuff. You do hear a, a, a great mix of the, there, I think it's like maybe 25% Westerners and 75%, um, from China, uh, Hong Kong and, and, uh, the neighboring countries.

23:04 John Daub: All right, let's go in and get some, uh, Castella cake. These are the chocolate ones here. These are really good. They need to be refrigerated though. This is one. Aigai shimasu. Aitouzaiimashita. They have, uh, sara udon that you can get here. Check it out. Bags of sara udon. I should get that. Maybe I'll get to take that back to, for Leo. He might like that. Sara udon. Check it out here. So this shop is called Izumiya, I guess. There's a couple of these Izumiya's, but we started off down there. Now you can see at elevation, we have a really beautiful view of, uh, Nagasaki and, uh, the look up is just. I'm going to go to the left. We can't quite see it from here. All right. We came here to eat. So let's do it. I picked this one here. It's a 53 yaki castella. I don't, I know very little about the culture of castella. So let's open it up here. Let's make this interesting. Shall we? I've got a tripod. I'm going to screw this on and then we'll, I'll be able to give you a bite and then give you a report on, on this castella cake. Let's do it.

25:52 John Daub: Look at this wall for a second. Enjoy the view of this wall as I. What YouTuber would show you this wall? Nobody. Just me. All right, let's try this here. Um, it's expires on, on April 15th. So it's a child proof. Okay. I got it. Oh, look, comes in a little tray here. That's nice. Oh, it's so soft. It really is soft. And uh, I don't know what to do with it. I'm just going to put it in here. Let's see if this works. Spongy and the bottom of it is very moist look at that it's got like a oh it looks like honey on there it's it's more like um sugar i'm sure it's just sugar i'm over here sugar like a moist bottom to it it's heavier than cake eggier maybe with the bite thicker than cake and i like cake you need a coffee or tea yes i do something like a pound cake spongy pound cake well put should not talk with your mouth full but when you have a little time you have little time you start doing that. Good a little sweet a little bit sweet all right let's go see if we can get a kakuni one for the road i'm hoping that the line is down but i'm not hopeful i'm hoping and i'm not hopeful like i'm sorry i'm not expecting it because the place is super popular i usually go right before closing and i the lady it was so nice to me it's like i kept i went back the next day i'm gonna miss this place i don't want to leave.

31:15 John Daub: Kakuni is absolutely, it's something you definitely have to get here. I have to pull it out though in order to get the full... Oh, the wind is starting to come here. I think I gotta just pull it out completely. So then you get an idea. Alright, there you go. Look at that mama. Look at that braised pork. It's so soft. It's so soft. Alright, enough of looking at it. Let's eat it. I'm a scientist when it comes to the food. I never get it when it's still hot. It's for science really. I mean, there's people watching. You wanna investigate your food. It's like a gravy. It's so much better than a nikuman. I could eat these all day. Literally. They should... I don't know. How do you package this and make it mass market stuff? This is the take off. I could see this taking off in the US. Oh my goodness. I believe it's like a pork belly. It's braised or... What is it? It's so soft. I don't know. It's certainly pork. Mmm. Yum. Kyushu. The pork in Kyushu, this island, is so good. I'm not a big pork eater. My mom didn't... My mom is from India so she didn't eat a lot of pork. India doesn't do pork or cows or chicken. Yeah. Goat. Yeah. But, boy is it... This is really good. It's really good. Mmm. They're steaming it right in the front. Look. And they're giving us... They're giving free samples out. What? Free samples.

34:04 John Daub: Oh, my friend's not there today. A lot of the stores are closed on Wednesday, I found. Yeah, the street food in China was so good. Ah, man. I haven't been back there. I traveled. I was in China back in the 1998, 1999, and 2000. And I didn't go back until I met with my friend Scotty. And I think it was Guangzhou in Shenzhen. Scotty is from a channel called Strange Parts. And I traveled to... And we hung out in Shenzhen because I was filming something in Hong Kong for a client. No, sorry. I was filming something in China for a client. A hotel tutorial. I wasn't just doing YouTube back then. This is before you made a lot of money with YouTube. And that was great. I got a chance to... Me and Scotty drinking and eating on the streets of Shenzhen was something for sure. It was a pretty good time. And then I went back to China in 2018. I can't tell you much about it because I think it was an NDA still. But I took a cruise ship and I gave a speech to a bunch of pretty incredible people highlighting Japan as Nagasaki was their stop. So I got on in Beijing. They put me up at the Ritz-Carlton. Flew me first class. It was great. You rarely get jobs like this. But I've done dozens of consulting jobs for companies. In recent years for people coming to Japan, if you've got like a company trip or something like this, I've been hired to give speeches, orientation speeches, things like this. So I have a deck of information that I use to give for like a one hour... I wouldn't say PowerPoint, but I can give a presentation. For an hour talking about Japan. That was really a cool experience. To do it from China, get on the cruise ship, spend two nights with everybody, and then do my presentation and get off here in Nagasaki. And then they flew me back to Tokyo from here. That was great. Huge success that was.

36:51 John Daub: I probably will end up having a pork belly. It's a happy belly right now. It would be 10 times the price Amazon wants $28 for orange KitKat. What? No, definitely don't pay that. It's not worth it. And I don't think it's really going to taste that much like orange. It has like a chemical orange taste. Some of the KitKats really aren't that good. No way I'd pay that much for the KitKats unless it was a gift for somebody. But you know, I really love the images of old Nagasaki. It looks sort of like Holland. And there's an amusement park called Huis Ten Bosch. If you do come to Nagasaki and you have a day, you're probably going to go out to Huis Ten Bosch. They've recreated Holland, the Dutch. It's basically Holland. I don't know. There's a little Amsterdam. There's like a little... Oh gosh, I'm starting to forget all the geography of Holland. How dare me? But there's some really great architecture inside there. It's kind of a fun trip, especially if you're Dutch. But if you're not and you've never been to Holland or you haven't been to Holland, after you go to Huis Ten Bosch, you kind of have been to Holland. So they should stamp your passport. They should make it... Holland should buy it and make it like Holland. Like officially.

37:45 John Daub: This is the Gunkanjima Digital Museum. I didn't go inside here, but it looks like it'd be pretty cool. It's a 360 VR experience going into that island. That's another one of Nagasaki's attractions. There's a deserted island where the village just got up and went. And it was in that James Bond movie. Which one was it? I can't remember which Bond movie. That's odd of me. I didn't watch the more modern Bonds. I'm walking just a little bit to the main road. I want to show you modern Nagasaki. That's the International Cruise Pier, the dock. And when the ships come, you can't even see the top of Mount Inasa. You can't see it because there's a 10-story cruise ship building looking ship here. So it blocks the view. But it's impressive. These cruise ships are so massive.

39:02 John Daub: There is an amazing walk along here. Another reason to stay at Glover Street. It's 30 minutes walk to get the Nagasaki's train station from here. Much better to take a taxi or a bus. But walking along the waterway here is so beautiful. So you can do a run. You have some running shoes. It's really nice. As soon as you get past that third traffic light over there, it starts to get really nice. So the city has been done. Look at the architecture here. The city has been renovated. It looks like it's going over another renovation, the city. After World War II, they just built shacks out of cement. Then after that, they tore those down and they built up the bubble era buildings. Those don't look so great. And now there's the third wave. Maybe the 2020s. The earthquake proofing. You know, Nagasaki doesn't get earthquakes. The guy told me, I had a guide today. He said, Nagasaki doesn't get earthquakes. And I said, what? Nagasaki doesn't get earthquakes.

40:10 John Daub: And now I'm going to tell you the one thing that I don't like about Nagasaki. You know I'm always trying to keep it positive, maybe to a fault. Maybe not that much recently. But one thing. You can't look at me for this one. One thing that I've noticed is I think there's a lot of pollution that comes over from China or from the West. I'm not sure where it's coming from. I would just assume because that's the closest biggest industrialized country because the wind comes from that way. And I noticed that you can't really get great views from the top of Inasa. It just everything kind of looks washed out. I think it's the pollution. And my throat can feel it a little bit. Do you guys see that? I mean, it's kind of it's not that far away. But it's kind of seems like there's a lot of stuff between me and that view. And there's the building at the top of it. Right. That's my only complaint of Nagasaki. But I think some days are better than other days. It just depends. The sky is always gray. Yeah, it's not it's not an ideal situation.

41:24 John Daub: But by all means, by no means, you should you get food at Family Mart unless everything is closed. Do not eat convenience store food when you travel around Japan unless you absolutely have to. And even if Shohei Otani is telling you to, don't do it. The food is so good. Get out of your comfort zone. See the Shohei Otani telling you to go get some of his onigiri. Don't do it. Don't follow Shohei Otani. Although he's earned it. But I don't even think he eats that. I don't even think he eats that. Go out and get some champon soup or Sara Udon or Kakuni. Go get some local foods. OK, some of it is just street food. It's really easy to do. And don't be afraid. I'm going to get my car, which is still parked here at the ANA Crowne Plaza. I got a bunch of miles. I love it. I like this chain. It's pretty good.

42:30 John Daub: All right, everybody. That's all I got for you. The history of this area is so impressive. I think that it's a great place. Look at that. I think it's a great, great place to check out when you're here in Nagasaki. This is the former site of the birthplace of the International Telegraph. Really? When the world's first underwater cable was laid in the Straits of Dover by the British Bret brothers in 1851, the world go on to develop a net of underwater cables. Underwater telegraphs were placed between Nagasaki and Shanghai, as well as Nagasaki and Vladivostok by the Danish Great Northern in 1871. Interesting history, right? Nagasaki was at the forefront because of that connection with the West. There was a reason for them to put the cables here. And then here's another one. The site of the former Minami Yamate settlement. There's a ton of history here. And there's a ton of tourists that come in waves. A bunch of buses just came. So it is a touristy place. But then again, there are moments when the waves are gone. People seem to travel in waves. And the bus goes ding, ding, ding. Everybody gets out of here. And then you have it all to yourself again. And that's one of the great things about staying at this hotel right here.

43:57 John Daub: All right, everybody. Thanks for watching. I'm making my way back to the airport. This has been some amazing time in Nagasaki. I wish I could have done more live streams here. But I was also filming a main channel episode. And there's a good chance I'll be back. Like 35% chance I'll be back here. In a month or two. To film an episode. And this episode will be out in July. So I got a lot of time. But there you go. Nagasaki's Glover Slope and street here. Street food. Cake. Good stuff. Take care, everybody. Matane.