00:01 John Daub: How you doing? Let me get that microphone in here. On the top of the world. Well, I'm on the top of Japan. We're above the clouds here. Sometimes I see an airplane going by. But I walked around the whole summit of Mount Fuji and I got a chance to see not much. Mount Fuji is—I don't know. It's not everybody's cup of tea. I think it's a challenge. I walked around the Yoshida Trail. You can see there's some dude going down. That's a low point, so I sat down there on that white rock. Let me see. This one right there. And I tried to relax for about 20 minutes, catch my breath. And then I walked up here. You can see in the distance, there's some futon that they're drying, I believe. So they can wash stuff. I don't know if they have water over there, but they can wash, at least put the futon in the sunshine and that airs it out for the next customer.

01:16 John Daub: I started from here at the summit. I went up here, which is crazy. And then I went down and I went back to my lodge right there, which is right in front of the post office. Then I hiked around. And then I got here, which is the Yoshida Trail. And then it said, do not enter. Well, I don't know. I met people who said, do not enter. People walking the other way. What's going on here? You can kind of see there's some people walking along the rim there. So you just kind of walk over it. I don't know. The trail's open. I'm staying at the Fujinomiya Trail, and that's not open yet either. And then we have a really beautiful above the clouds view. I actually like the afternoons better than the mornings. I don't know why people like to come for the sunrise. You're not guaranteed to see much of anything. But this is my—I came here on the 8th, the 9th. This is my second day.

02:22 John Daub: I did not sleep well last night. I think I'll sleep better tonight. I was cold. The futon room, it's really big. Carrie saw a picture of it. It's a very big futon room. I think it's usually heated because these futon rooms are so crowded. Let me see if I can get a picture of it. I don't know if I would recommend staying at the summit, but I think it's an easy option. Look at the beds back to back to back. That's hardcore. I slept in here and there was two other dudes in there. They slept on the other side. We shared the electrical outlet. There's only one for all these people. Bottom line is that a lodge or a mountain hut is not supposed to be a hotel.

03:27 John Daub: Audio is really low. How about now? You better. Should be better. Well, here I am above the clouds. You can see behind me. I walked around the entire crater today. It took a little bit longer than what Google Maps said. A couple of notes. Number one, getting up here, it's super steep. That is the actual summit. That's where the marker for 3776 is. Let me see if I got a picture here. Uh, okay. I don't. Not yet. It'll be in the edited video. So I went up there for about 20 minutes and then I came back down. I put my bag inside the lodge, the mountain hut, and I just took my 360 camera and this and walked around. My goal was to go from there to the Yoshida Trail, which is over there. You can see the futon that's being laid out from the lodge kind of air it out.

04:33 John Daub: I was told that there was going to be a Coca-Cola vending machine up there. It's not there yet. They said it's coming on the 15th and then some smart aleck said, come back for it. It's like, yeah. I think it's because I have a slight headache, which is getting better. I didn't share his humor and then I kept walking and walking. And you can see there's a trail that leads down into the lowest point right there. Actually, they're not supposed to go down there. There's two foreign people. This is a part of the shrine, I believe. Here's a piece of information that you probably didn't know. Mount Fuji is not property of Japan. Mount Fuji from the seventh station up is property of a shrine. Interesting, right? So all this that I'm showing you is property of somebody else. It's a private business. And it's across from where I'm staying. It's pretty crazy. They had a very long court case and the shrine won. Over there. So they don't open until the 10th as well. Nobody's here in the winter. Some idiots will try to climb it here. Only go if you're a professional.

06:00 John Daub: Having a drink of water because there's no vending machine. I was disappointed. I thought Coca-Cola had the vending machine here by now, but that was not the case. What do I recommend for Mt. Fuji? I really don't know. It's a challenge. It's Japan's highest point. There's a culture to it. I like some of the history of Mt. Fuji. It's really cool. If you study the history, women weren't allowed to come here until 1835 or something ridiculous. The post office has been operating there for like 106 years. Maybe more than that, but they've been operating on Fuji for 160 years. But at the summit for—I'm not quite sure. I'll pin them down later today. I'm going to film them putting up the sign for tomorrow's opening. But the post office, you can send your postcards. This is so cool. I got the postcard club. I already gave it to them for safekeeping. It's inside the post office. They're going to put two stamps on it, which is cool. So you can bring your postcards from Tokyo or whatever. Hike up with you and then put it in the mailbox here and you'll get special stamps. And if you go, that's the cheapest souvenir you're going to get because everything's expensive here.

07:26 John Daub: Then they take that postcard and they bring it down by bulldozer back to the fifth station and then eventually straight onto the Shinkansen and then the airport. It's pretty cool. Yeah, we talked about it. You're getting double stamps. We're like, where can you fit them? Don't worry about the message. Just stamp the message. No one really reads what I write on the postcards. And anyways, it's digital. So I can send a copy to everybody if they have a problem. But the stamp is cooler. There's the summit there. I got some images walking around here. This morning, I put it on an Instagram reel here. This is the sunrise. It's much better at the Yoshida Trail. But from the Fujinomiya Trail, you can see the sunrise. It does crack over the rock there. So I had to wait a little bit until about 4:45. Because we're sort of on the other—sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Right? So I think we're not in the best position, but it's pretty cool.

08:16 John Daub: And the thing is like tomorrow, this place is going to be a lot crowded. And the trail opens officially at 9 a.m. So people don't come up for the sunrise tomorrow. But on the 11th, it's going to be a madhouse. So I'm kind of looking forward to seeing how this changes. Because I'm kind of bored here. I have to be honest with you. I filmed the bulldozer. I found out that the doctor I was going to interview doesn't come until the 15th now. Well, what about all the people hiking? What if they get in trouble? There's no doctor on Mount Fuji. There's a doctor at the eighth station of the Fujinomiya Trail. And he checks for altitude sickness and stuff. And he's not there. So I can't add him in the episode. But I'm going to talk with the lodge and see if we can get some shots when I go down on the 11th or maybe tomorrow. Because I'm going to go to bed. I got to be at the post office at 1 p.m. to film them putting up the sign. And then they finish the day at 2. So the post office is open from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. And they will that day stamp it and take it down on the next bulldozer. Sometimes you got to wait an extra day. But the bulldozer will take it down. And it might take a couple days longer. But it's pretty cool.

09:36 John Daub: So do I recommend? No. That's a nice view. There's a slice for all of you guys for watching. You can see the mist coming up. Mount Fuji has its own weather. Post office said that there's a typhoon coming in. Like a storm influenced by a typhoon with thunder and lightning. And I said, good. It's too sunny. I want to see some lightning. I need drama for this episode. It is nice. I think it's one of those do it once. But this is my third time. I really love the post office. You guys know that. I send packages. I love interacting with them. They're kind of a pulse on Japan. They meet people every day. I like that interaction with people. So I like my postman. And these guys are cool. The ones at the post office here. We can't go drinking or anything. Because that would be—I'm not going to touch the sky. But I told you like a couple of days ago. I got a video of Mount Fuji when I was going to Nagasaki. And that was really cool. You can see where I am now. So you want to see that. You can sit on the left side going to Nagasaki, I believe, and the right side if you're going to Nagoya or something. Actually, JAL has a thing. But just depends on the schedule. Sometimes, I went to Yonago, the Gegege no Kitaro airport. And the freaking airplane went directly over Mount Fuji. And I got some amazing shots, like directly over, like satellite shots. I'm like, wow, that's so cool. Planes don't usually do that because the weather is impacted by Mount Fuji.

11:37 John Daub: It looks like Mars. At night, it looks like the moon. I've always done the bullet climbing. I think Kanae is watching this livestream too. Hey, Kanae. He's watching. Leo just went to bed. He got a notification. I'll walk a little bit. At night, it looks kind of like the moon. Because it's dark, except for headlights. You'll see people running. There's a lot of people wearing shorts and short sleeves and tank tops. It's warm out here, but it's dry. So I'm not sweating. And I think you really should protect yourself. The sun is hotter up here. Protect yourself. And make sure you keep drinking water because you can get dehydrated. I'm still not sure if the lodge is going to make me take my own PET bottles down. But I got a lot of—my PET bottle collection is growing because I drank my three liters of water pretty quick. And thank you, Carrie. Carrie's been looking out for me, making sure I don't forget. So I'll walk. You guys can get a first-person view. This is what it's like to hike Mount Fuji until the signal dies. The fact that I'm livestreaming on the summit of Mount Fuji, even if it's 720p, is in itself an extraordinary thing. Let's be honest here.

13:26 John Daub: You really do need the gaiters. Do you see these? They keep the stuff out of your shoes. You can get them for like 10 bucks on Amazon. But if you want to buy good ones, it's probably a good idea. I got Gore-Tex ones. Because when it rains suddenly, you absolutely want it. Konnichiwa. Sumimasen. There's a lot of foreigners doing the trail. So when I do hiking in Japan, typically I'll say konnichiwa. But there's so many foreigners here, people are confused on what to say. And that's funny. Because I'll just say konnichiwa to the foreigners. Konnichiwa. Just be safe on the mountain. Holy... That's like a freaking Lord of the Rings trail. There's no way I'm going to go that. What the heck. Do you see that? It's like going up to some freaking castle. I'm not prepared, I'm dead. And my blood sugar is real low. Look at that. That's a slag. That is a summit castle. It actually says 3776 on the summit there. I guess you just gotta go for it, you know.

15:11 John Daub: Alright, encourage me because I'm really, really tired. I don't know if it was a good idea to come by the bulldozer, but this post office guys are doing fine. But I definitely wanted to hike around today. I wanted to do something yesterday after I got up. I didn't really do a lot. This morning I filmed the sunrise and I ate breakfast, talked to people, got the lay of the land. It was interesting. But most people don't leave the Yoshida Trail area despite the fact that the Fujinomiya Trail is not open yet. All the tourists stay in this one area. I think I got a video of it. Let me see. Here. This is where the Yoshida—look, it looks like a tourist attraction. I think it's like the Yoshida-kan, Yamaguchi-kan. This is where the vending machine is supposed to be. And this is where the bus is supposed to be. You can drink your drinks. It's 500 yen for every drink. But if you want amazake (sweet fermented rice drink), it's 800 yen. And sometimes the filter coffee is 1000 yen. But I mean, this is probably worth it. It looks like a tourist attraction. That's on the other side. The toilets are 300 yen on the summit just about everywhere. Here's the other side. You can see... It looks like moon rocks. It's not really anything special. That's the other side, directly the other side of the summit going towards the Yoshida Trail. So if you want to go from Yoshida to Fujinomiya, you'd have to take this trail. I did not fall there. And there's some cool maps here. That's kind of neat to see in Japanese. The NTT data, that's maybe where the signal's coming from. I don't know. I gotta go to the post office on the other side. So I'm almost there, actually. But I gotta go now, conquer freakin' castle.

17:18 John Daub: Probably not a good idea to use the drone here. I think that's a bad idea. He's got a drone remote out. He said hello. Uh... I'm Japanese. I'm gonna report him. There he is, the guy in the t-shirt's got a drone. That's such a bad thing to do here. It's a national park. Everybody knows that. No more leniency. You gotta lean into it. Find him. 5,000 bucks. That's what I say. Is Gandalf at the top? You know, this would be a great place for a castle. You can shoot and throw in like hot oil and arrows. Catapults. Who wasn't a geek in high school or junior high playing Dungeons and Dragons? Victor Debs is here. This is a scene out of D&D, baby. Look at this. I need an elf to come out and fly me to the top. Maybe a ranger. Things I'd do for YouTube. It's a good story. No one's done this angle before. Feature instead of, hey guys, here's my experience. I'm gonna show you the oldest post office, or the summit post office, which is really freakin' good. Gandalf, smite me with your monolith. Is Gandalf the bad guy? It's been a while. Whew. Look at that rock. That looks like a chair. Holy crud. This one looks perfect to sit. Oh, goodness me. Oh, mama. Hoochie mama. It's a real battle. You gotta go up to go down. What's up with that? You gotta go up to go down.

20:30 John Daub: All right, let's see what came in here. Let's do it. This is not for the weak. My, you know what, I might eat lunch and take a little nap. Why not? I'm staying there, right? So I can eat lunch and take a nap. I don't want to be too much out in the sun. There's the post office over there. We've made some good ground. Focus. Gosh, I can't wait to get rid of this iPhone 14 Pro. Focus. The biggest problem with Apple, they want to do this stupid macro. Can't turn it off. It's all auto. You do turn it off, but default's on the 14. I miss Steve Jobs. Steve, come back. Fix the company. Ja. Look at that wall. I don't even think ninjas could climb that. Freaking pour that hot oil and light a match. I've seen a lot of those movies. Braveheart. It was my favorite movie for a very long time. Braveheart. It's got everything. Good soundtrack. That French princess was pretty hot. Mel Gibson was pretty good. Heroic. In the end, you really felt something for him as a character. And that's a great movie. Freedom!

22:45 John Daub: What am I doing this for? So, they're actually putting in a landslide fix. Fixing the rocks in case of landslides, because if there's an earthquake, which they're expecting, the big one, this would be pretty dangerous. I feel a little lightheaded. Just slightly. But just go slow and settle down when you get to the top. We're almost there. I can't believe we still got a signal. Hey there's the bulldozer! I can't focus. That's where I'm staying. It's all downhill once we get to the uphill. Almost Gandalf smites me. I like that word, to smite. Does anybody know what that means? People don't use that word very often. I say konnichiwa to everybody. I don't know where they're from. I don't particularly care either. Right now I'm on a mission. Good job. You're welcome. I have that Mont Bell shirt. We are Mont Bell shirt buddies. This guy's running. Oh my goodness. We really made some way here. You can see the snow down there. Some glacier. I had a hard time sleeping.

25:20 John Daub: Are you living here? You're not living here, right? That's good. This is hard. This is why it's so dangerous. And I came here earlier. So now I've gone a complete circle. But this is super steep going up to the summit. Please go slow. Looks like the bulldozer came here too. I asked him if he lives up here. He said no. Wow, what a view. You can zigzag. See the volcanic rock there. I'm almost there. No, no. You can walk slowly if you can. Yes. Yes. It does feel like you're at the top of the world from the summit here. I took some video at the summit for the main channel episode. Oh, okay. Come on. I don't want to go quickly. But the boulder is a little bit too high. Here comes the bulldozers. Here come two bulldozers. It's awesome! This is why you need gaiters. Keep the rocks out of your shoes. And make sure you have really good shoes. There's the bulldozer bringing up. Maybe they're bringing up the vending machines! Don't break a leg. I'm not gonna break a leg. I'm not being stupid. There's the crater.

28:06 John Daub: Hey, 5-toed sloth bear is here. Nice to see you again. Thanks for the great chat. Get those snacks. You got it lunch. It's three times the price as down on sea level so that's lunch there right there. Thank you and Alice 60 months cheering from New Jersey. Thanks guys. Ja. Look at this. You're in for a treat the bulldozers telling him it's dangerous. This is the Fujinomiya route for the bulldozer up here. Oh, that's our driver before. Good driver. They're like mini tanks, right? I was inside there, but they closed the door for good reason and now it's open. Here's a smaller one people mover. It's a little mini tank. I was really locked in there wow. There's the crater of Fujisan. Dead wide here. Really kicks up some dust give it a little leeway. Holy crud that Gandalf castle way up there. We really did a good hike today. Pretty good. We're over there. We started over there.

30:18 John Daub: Follow the itch. I wish I can go down on the bulldozer again, too, because I really don't want to go down. I just have no more energy. You can see here. They've arrived. That is how they get supplies to all the lodges that stops along the way. The bulldozer routes. There's a lot of switchbacks. So sometimes will be there's a bulldozer behind us and there's more than one bulldozer. There'll be one bulldozer coming up. He'd be behind us and then it just keeps going straight and we zig and it zags and go into another place. It's that day. I think they all take off at the Fujinomiya by the parking lot, but it's not—you have to know where it is. There were some not bright people that were hiking on the bulldozer trail. Well, the winds really picked up hiking on the bulldozer trail. That was pretty crazy. Because our bulldozer had to—oh, he's turning around. He's backing in. Oh, is this more supplies to the post office? Oh, no, it's for Chojo Fuji-kan, that's where I'm staying tonight. I'm staying in this one here and I'm filming this one here the post office and trying to show how Mount Fuji runs. It's so fascinating. It's just hard to be here.

32:09 John Daub: There's toilets use the toilets or else it really smells. I know foreigners. Yeah, I know Japanese aren't using it are peeing. It smells when people pee on the trail. And rainy season's over it hasn't rained. I don't know like I've been here back for two and a half weeks two weeks. I don't think it's rained much. The rainy season's over so I think it doesn't wash away, so it starts to smell like—I hate to say it the New York subway or Philly worse Philly wouldn't be worse right now because this the trash strike and the rain. Oh, there's a post office team over there they're going to be putting this in look we by bulldozer we brought in the post box this good this is going to go into that cement hole uh later today i know this is going tomorrow but we're going to put the post office sign up today so it's kind of like my job here and then people can send the letters.

33:29 John Daub: Here's a little bit of information here when you're doing these lodges bring ear plugs do it please the last thing you're going to be next to some dude who snores and people turn on the lights all the time do that okay get the eye thing and you sleep a little bit better. This is not my first rodeo but it might be yours and definitely dress warm i got a jacket on but you could easily wear shorts but the elements are a lot harder people underestimate climbing Mt. Fuji. All right there's the summit we just climbed we climbed around it Gandalf's castle the crater here and uh if you have any questions it's kind of fun you know walk around here some slate look at that i took a volcanic rock from here no no from up there near the summit and i was calling Kanae on FaceTime i said you like this one she goes yeah Leo wants this one and then when i was walking over there next to that lava rock right there do you see that i heard a voice very deep voice scared the crap out of me i looked around there's nobody it's got to be the spirits of Mount Fuji so i put that i took the rock out of my pocket and i apologized i believe you not don't mess don't try to be some idiot dude going around here that's how people um the spirits are strong respect the spirits but soothsayers and predictions yeah the spirits the higher power is the higher power all right guys yeah no stealing these rocks these rocks are sacred because Mount Fuji is not part of Japan.

35:17 John Daub: And uh tomorrow from nine nine a.m we're going to have people coming up but there's the weather says it might rain so we just never know so i'm looking forward to having people up here too quiet on this side all right guys take care i'll see you in another live stream probably tomorrow because uh there's not a lot of stuff to do i'm filming i'm living i'm eating and i'm live streaming bringing you up to the summit of Fuji my headache's getting better all right guys thanks uh in the uh question in the leave comments if you have any questions about Mount Fuji i'm happy to answer it because i got some time to look at it.