00:01 John Daub: Wow, look at that right there, the Akita Inu. That's the Akita doggy. I'm really interested in this. I'll explain that in a second. But the first thing you see when you enter Akita Station is this really cute Akita Inu, this variety that comes from this prefecture. Look how huge he is. To put it in perspective, you got to look at my mug. That's a big, big doggy. We're going to get a chance to walk him. I'm here with a dog.

00:32 John Daub: I'm here with Leo and Kanae. They're in a play area nearby. I thought I would show you around the station a little bit, give you an introduction to what we're doing here on this channel. I like to take you all around the country. You guys might recognize these Namahage (ogre-like demons from folklore), which are also very famous in Akita Prefecture. This is quite a ways away from Tokyo. It was four hours on the Shinkansen. And these are the Kanto (tall lantern poles), these big poles that they have in the beginning of August at a festival here. I'll show you a little bit about that. But the station is really cool. It not only...

01:02 John Daub: ...first of all, for those that have been in Tokyo, just look how empty the station is. There's like no tourists here. 99.9% of tourists don't come to Akita. Well, I'm talking about the Western foreign tourists in particular. In fact, all international tourists. This is one of these places that's just totally off the beaten path. And they do such a great job. It's a clean, beautiful station. Look at this. The Namahage come from Oga Peninsula. I'll show you a little bit about that too. These are pretty creepy. And they're very large.

01:32 John Daub: Let me show you where I am exactly. Give you some perspective. Akita Station, you can see is way up there in the north of Tohoku, that's where I am right now. Tokyo on the bottom of your screen. It's almost directly north. But the Tohoku Shinkansen, the green and the red one, it goes through Fukushima and Sendai. And when you get to Morioka there, the red train and the green train separate on the Shinkansen. And then the red trains go towards Akita and the green trains go up to Aomori and Hokkaido. Some of the trains to Hokkaido. But we were on the red one.

02:08 John Daub: And Akita is really... There's Oga Hanto (Oga Peninsula). That's an imploded volcano from 100,000 years ago, they say. But in Akita City where the station is right here, you're pretty much in the heart of a city. What's so great about Akita City is that there's the city center kind of built up right on the top. And then if you see on the right side that's pivoting around, that's like residential neighborhoods right in front of the terminus for the Shinkansen. So there's people living right near the station like that in houses. That's so cool. You don't get that in Tokyo. Nobody really lives around Tokyo Station. It's a lot of businesses. But that's Akita.

02:49 John Daub: We're going to walk around this area a little bit. I brought you here about three or four years ago when I was last here. There's kiritanpo nabe (grilled rice stick hot pot) restaurant down there I just showed you. But the city is pretty quaint. It's easy to navigate around there. Is that Senshu Park I think what it's called? I'll show you that in a second. A little bit more. The Asahi River, there's some bars and restaurants along the Asahi River there. It goes through the heart of the city.

03:17 John Daub: So Akita is a place where you don't get a lot of tourists. The city itself might not have a ton of attractions, but it's a nice place to call a base and to hole up for a little bit. Especially if you're going up more north to Oga Hanto which is great for bicycling. I remember bicycling or going to the onsens. Akita's got a lot of mountains around there for hiking, which is very cool. This up here, you can see the Kanto pole. Like, it's easy to miss. I think if you don't know about the festival, you won't even notice this thing here. See there's the end of the pole. And they show you how it does. The guys put this during the festival, balance it on the back of their small of their backs and have to balance it. It's not easy to do. They definitely need help.

04:11 John Daub: This is one of the festivals I have not been to yet. This is what you would get in August if you come to this festival. They're all over the place, these Kanto poles. I think their candles lit on fire. I would assume that some of them break out into fire, into flames, right? It is a traditional skill. These tiers go up to 9 levels high? What? That's crazy. 46 lanterns are hung on one Kanto. That is real power, man.

04:52 John Daub: Aloha. Thank you, Brandania's here in the house. Brandania, did you see this doggy? Oh my god, that's so cute. It's so cute. That just is like the summary of Akita right here. Everybody who's gotten off, even if you live in Akita, they've been stopping here to take selfie pictures in front of the doggy. That's really nice.

05:29 John Daub: If you come in February, this festival is amazing to go to. The Namahage are in the mountains. Apparently, they come from the mountains and they take the local kids and a lot of parents will bring their kids to these festivals and they've got like daggers and stuff. It's really scary. They call out... I did a live stream. This is on this channel. They call out from the mountains and usually it's snow and very cold. I went to this during the pandemic. I was invited to go to the festival. I want to go back and take Leo there, but you get a lot of scenes of crying kids and these monsters. Do you want to hear what it sounds like?

06:07 John Daub: Alright, we're going to go from this cute puppy to something that's terrifying. So over here they have speakers of what the Namahage sound like when they cry out. It's a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage thing. And by the way, Leo and I were just here, so we were just here. Just to put it in context, this is in front of the turnstiles to the Akita Shinkansen here. Alright, listen up. This is the speaker.

06:39 John Daub: [Namahage audio playback, approximate] The monster is a dog! It's a very beautiful dog! It has a lot of muscles, so it's very cute! They do it in English? What? Oh! There's a lot of blackers out there! Welcome to Oga! There's a lot of things to see here! You should see a lot! He speaks pretty good English.

07:58 John Daub: Did you hear that? Welcome to Oga. There's a lot of things to see here. The thing is, it seems real loud, and everyone was looking at me, and I was getting hot from people staring. There's not a lot of people here, but... Hey, Brandania is going to give us a super chat here. I'm going to go all out. I can show you this real quickly. So these are the bentos from Akita, the eki-ben (station bento). This one is from Oga Hanto, I think. This one looks pretty good. This is 1,300 yen. A lot of meat bentos, really. This one's chicken. So you can get these, eat them on the Shinkansen train. That one looks really good. That's this one here, the gyumeshi (beef rice). It's got the Namahage on it as well. They all look really good.

09:05 John Daub: Leo said when we came through here, is that dog meat? Because he saw the Akita, and he was like, no, we don't eat dog meat here. You're talking about Leo. So there you go. The bento situation here is pretty good. Alright, so we're going to say goodbye to the Kanto sticks, and look at the stained glass window up there. That's beautiful. It's of the festival.

09:56 John Daub: Personality of a brick wall is here! I want to go night walks looking for the supernatural. This might be the place to do it, walking around the city, but I have a secret I want to tell you guys here. You guys remember I did the Kickstarter in 2021? We did one to help to support the fireworks makers, because they weren't launching, all the fireworks festivals were cancelled then, so we raised quite a bit of money, and we launched them up at Omagari. So I'm back here at Omagari in Akita, and I'm going to be meeting Komatsu-san, who made the fireworks for us, and I'm going to be going back to that fireworks festival. This time, of course, it's not an Only in Japan fireworks festival. It's the normal one, but they actually do... I think it's three hanabi taikai (fireworks competitions), or this is where the national fireworks competitions are held in Akita, in Omagari, which is a one stop on the streetcar in Akita.

10:42 John Daub: So I'm going to be there tomorrow. And I'm filming a main channel episode. There's going to be street food there, there's going to be... Because I know the fireworks manufacturers from the pandemic phase, I'm going to get a chance to go to the launch site where they've set up the fireworks, the pyrotechnical stuff, and maybe I can do a livestream there around one or two tomorrow, we'll see. But if I can, I will. I'll take you there. We'll do a little livestream before, and then maybe I'll film and then I can upload it later. It's going to be pretty cool, and I like that, because in the fall, you're not really thinking about the fireworks, but the weather has cooled down. It's just so hot in the summer. Now it's really cool. You can get... The fireworks also start earlier, I think like 6 or 6:30 tomorrow. So it starts earlier. It's a lot cooler. I think the weather's better, and the sky is clearer because the humidity, I think, takes away from some of that sparkle. I think. So the winter and the fall, so much better. We'll share that tomorrow.

11:42 John Daub: So let me just walk through here. Just get a quick look-see of Akita Station. And then the station front. Leo is obsessed with the Namahage. This is how you keep kids good. I told him, if you're not good, they're going to take you away in the middle of the night, because we are in Akita. Mama and Dad don't want to go back to Tokyo alone. So you better be good. So far, he's been pretty good. There's an omiyage (souvenir) shop here. I guess we can take a quick look-see.

12:32 John Daub: As you can tell, Hachiko is from here. You can see the Akita Inu packaged up. Can they breathe? Someone's got to cut a hole in there so they can breathe. It's a lot of Akita Inu stuff. And the other mascot would be, as I said, the Namahage. It's really cute. They're very famous for the sake as well. Don't ask me what the brands are. This is kiritanpo (grilled rice sticks). You guys know this? It's like rice cake that's been grilled, boiled, and then wrapped around a stick and then grilled in front of a fire. It's really good.

13:38 John Daub: I love the station. You can see the Kanto lanterns up above here. And it's been renovated. I can't remember when, but I was here before they did it, and then I remember a few years ago when I came back, I'm like, wow, this station's great! Some lockers here. Most of those lockers are available. They just don't get enough tourists here. Everything is just so clean. They really don't get enough tourists here.

14:20 John Daub: I can take you back a little bit. Here's the view. This is another reason to take the Akita Shinkansen, get out of the city. Check it out. This is the view. Now, they've done most of the rice harvest already. It's finished, but I'd say 30% is remaining. There's some right there, unharvested rice. It's just like fields and fields of gold once you get through some of the mountain areas. It's really, really relaxing to see Akita roll by to get out of Tokyo. It's a much different view than if you are going down to Kyoto and Osaka. The Tokaido Shinkansen's nice, but there's just something great about Japan's north. Really, really great.

15:01 John Daub: You can get some omiyage in here. They have a lot of them. Now, I saw this poster, and I didn't know about it until now, which is a shame, because we arrived a couple hours ago. I think it's Senshu Park. Right? Here's the QR code. You guys can screenshot that if you're interested. But you can go into the park nearby, and they actually have from 11 to 3 p.m. Akita doggies that you can go and play with. I don't like the fact that they're in cages, but maybe it's for your own protection. But you can take pictures of them and hang out with them. That'd be fun. It's not too far away. It's about 700 meters. What is that, like, 8, 10 minutes away. And sometimes they have the Akita Inu here, so you can take pictures. Not today, not right now, but apparently he'll be in this area. And they're rescue dogs. Rescued dogs. Yeah.

16:23 John Daub: Really, I think if the 40 million tourists come to Japan, spread the wealth, and come out to Akita, they will be very much rewarded. We're here, just to show you a local map here. There's a lot of shops here. There's a H&M if you need to get clothes. There's a play area in this. So there's a bunch of stuff around here. Some good ramen. And tons and tons of kiritanpo nabe restaurants. And if you go down this main street here, all the way to the Asahi River, there's some pretty interesting restaurants on the side here. Some old bars. There's the Kanto Festival Center. There's a lot of spirit here. Here's Senshu Park. Not that far away from the station, right? This is where you can go and play with the Akita Inu, the Akita dogs over there. And that's about it. The city's pretty small, but there's a lot of attractions within Akita Prefecture, including Oga Hanto, the peninsula there. Which I really like.

17:21 John Daub: Alright, let's walk across the other side. All there is is an NHK studio, and that's it. There's not a lot else on the other side. Apparently, down here, they're doing some sort of beer festival. Look at all that open space, right? I guess that's going to be starting in a little bit. There's an I Love Akita. Look at the doggies! That's a nice bit. A.K. Heartmark T.A. I like that. You get a photo. Get a photo on the other side. So on this side, the Hotel Metropolitan is a JR hotel. I've stayed there before. There's a Starbucks and a bunch of shops in there. This is the buses. I've never taken any buses around. When I was hitchhiking in 2017, I camped in a park about a kilometer away from here. I don't recommend it, but it is what it is.

18:36 John Daub: These Akita strawberries look really good. I'm drooling. You can see the local ads. Rice is a big deal here. The Komachi rice. Very good. A lot of open space. There's one of the nabe restaurants right there. There's a Kiritanpo-ya. Traditional Akita nabe. Pretty neat. We'll walk a little bit down the main avenue here. I'm sure some of you watching either live in Akita or you've been here before, you might be remarking at some of the changes that have happened over the years. How new it is. It really is nice.

19:41 John Daub: Akita gets a lot of snow, so that's another reason why they have a lot of these tunnels. Places up in Tohoku and Hokkaido have a lot of underground and above ground walkways that are covered because of the snow and the cold. The winters are a little bit longer. Well, they're longer here. They have a 100 yen shop, a Seria, a Loft, a supermarket, I believe, a Baskin Robbins, a Tully's coffee. Kanae prefers the Tully's. In fact, Kanae wanted to get this, but Leo made her go to Starbucks. I don't know why. This is a Tsukimi coffee drink, and they put mochi. Tully's put mochi in these hot drinks here, which looks really good. But Leo made her go to Starbucks, and we had to go there.

20:50 John Daub: Boy, if we didn't live in Tokyo, I might have an Akita Inu. It's really hot, though, I think. The weather, you want to be in a cold. They've got a lot of fur. On the wall there, really cool, you see the decorations for the Akita Kanto Festival, which is in the beginning of August. It competes with the Nebuta Festival, I guess, for tourists. But both of them are really good. Illuminads is here. I'm putting my next trip together with places I want to visit for a week trip. Akita looks like a nice place to stop. You know, that Oga Hanto, the Oga Peninsula, is really nice. When I was hitchhiking, I stopped there and rented a bicycle. I biked a little bit around there, and they have all these ogres all over the island, which is kind of creepy, and there's some onsen that you can go to. I enjoyed riding a bicycle around there. Rent a bike from the station. That's something you could do.

21:50 John Daub: The thing is, when I come out to places like Akita, you really get to know the countryside. You really get to know Japan, because it's more approachable. When you go to the tourist centers, there's some kind of a boundary between you and the local everyday life. But when you come out to places like Akita or wherever, anywhere in Tohoku, Sendai, even Aomori, even Shikoku, the islands down there, I think that wall between everyday life and tourists is gone.

22:48 John Daub: Right? This is in front of the station. It's just so quiet. Check it out. It's the Namahage-chan. So now you learn a little bit of Japanese. Namahage. The name of those ogres. Whenever I hear ogre, I always think of Revenge of the Nerds, 1984. The most political and politically incorrect movie of all time. Well, there's a lot of them. I love it. Ogre. Alpha, beta, ooh, ah, alpha, beta. He could drink out of the trophy, right? He would drink out of his football trophy. He was competing against Booger. You guys remember Booger? Wasn't he in a TV show? That was one of my favorite movies growing up. I don't even know if I had access to it. I think we had Cinemax back before we had remote controls that were wireless. Maybe I saw it on Cinemax. Much too young to be watching Eddie Murphy's Delirious and Revenge of the Nerds. 1984. So I would have been like 10 or 11.

24:28 John Daub: Alright, everybody. Ogre was the football jock who could drink and eat a lot. Booger was the nerd that could burp. He burped, I think it was like 45 seconds or something and broke the school record. One of the guys was in ER, one of the main guys at ER, right? That's a great movie. A lot of talented stars came out of Revenge of the Nerds.

25:01 John Daub: Alright, guys. That's all I got you. This is the station front of Alamode Walking Adventure. I gotta prepare. I'm gonna be shooting at a restaurant. Tomorrow morning, I've gotta rent a car. I'm gonna be taking the family to Omagari for the fireworks festival. Gonna be filming a main channel episode. Gonna be really busy. But it's gonna be worth it, I think, for an incredible episode bringing you to another area of Japan. Look at this. These restaurants. There's like no foot traffic here. Look at those really cool facades of the restaurants over there across the street. Wow. The food here is so good. There's the rice, the pickles that they have here. The daikon pickles. What are they called again? There's smoked daikon pickles. I gotta get... They're so good here. But here in Akita, the culture in the mountains, you get these pickles. The onsen towns are wonderful here, and you can even see the advertisements are all sake. So you're getting... With the great rice comes the great sake water. Unfortunately, I don't drink much at all. I'll take a sip every now and then. But if you're up here, you might wanna take a gulp. Because it's really good. Tenju is the name of that company. And Kodama Jozo. Because it's written right there, the website. Interesting sake brands here.

26:42 John Daub: Alright, there you go. There's the tunnel above ground. I think that'll take you when it snows. But we got nice weather here in the fall. No humidity. Really comfortable. And, oh, by the way, I'm also gonna be riding the Resort Shirakami train, which will take us from Akita to Aomori. I don't know why the tourists aren't taking these kinds of trains. You guys gotta come up here and just ride the trains up in Tohoku. I remember taking a diesel train, a local train on the... [inaudible] from Iwate to Odate. Odate also has the second Hachiko statue. There were two made in the 1930s. One is in front of Shibuya station. The other one is in front of Odate station. I got some footage that I'll be inserting into this episode when I was there in 2017. But you can go to Odate station, make like little goals to, you know, give Hachiko a high five in Shibuya and go to the one in Odate and give him a high five there. They're almost like, I think they're made by the same maker. And get photos between the two. It's an interesting little goal to do. Stamp rally.

27:51 John Daub: But yeah, I highly encourage you to come over to the Sea of Japan side of Tohoku, Aomori, Akita, and Yamagata as well. I love this area. The food is so good. And because there aren't a lot of tourists, you have, I think people are a lot friendlier. Prices are much, much cheaper. And you get a more authentic experience in my experience traveling around. Because these days, Kyoto was never, I never really felt like, what's authentic Kyoto these days? I don't even know. But if you're looking for Japanese culture, I think you come into these prefectural capital cities. Staying for a night or two, you really do get a different kind of experience. Because you can feel the everyday life of Japan combined with some of the attractions. The food, the local regional cuisines. You get that when you come out to these places. I'm kind of glad that we came a night early before the fireworks to reset. It's a four hour train trip.

28:54 John Daub: Let me see if I can pull up a video. This is one thing I didn't expect either. Okay, here we go. So, it's 2-2 seating. So I had to sit away from the family. It's 2-2 seating. The Tokaido Shinkansen that takes you down to Osaka, it's 2-3. So these Shinkansen are a little bit narrower. So I had to sit next to some lady. She was nice. She didn't say much. But, yeah, it was a little weird. But, it's 2-2 seating. Just keep that in mind. They got bentos as well. Leo got a katsu sando and Kanae got the Aki, the fall bento that had the matsutake mushrooms on there. So it's a four hour ride. So you gotta make sure you get some food and make sure you get a drink. By the way, they did have the cart for coffee. So I was able to get a coffee on board. We came like 10 minutes before the Shinkansen because Leo, you gotta, everybody moves a lot slower when you got a 4 year old. So you gotta move at his pace a little bit more. But it's gonna be a great trip.

30:27 John Daub: I'll try to go live maybe 3, 4, 5, 6 times. As much as I can. On Monday I'll be up in Aomori. So Aomori City. So you get a chance to see Aomori's station area in a couple of days. At the end of the weekend. If Monday's still kind of the weekend in the US. We arrive in Aomori at around 1pm on Monday. So that's Sunday night. So it's gonna be pretty eventful few days here. And then we're back to Tokyo. Four hours to get here though. It's a long Shinkansen ride. Two, two seating. Yeah. I think your bag is also in your two seating. We don't bring big suitcases but we put the bags that we can do above. I've got a lot, I've got a big tripod. I came in with a ton of suitcases. I'm gonna sleep like a champion tonight because it was heavy. It was heavy. But we could take a taxi from our house into the Tokyo station. It's not a big problem.

31:26 John Daub: Alright guys. Leave me any questions that you have about Akita. I'll try to answer them below. There's a couple of main channel episodes coming soon on Only in Japan. I've been working hard on the Mount Fuji edit. But I'm kind of glad to be able to get away from the computer and get into nature. Maybe not in the city but tomorrow we'll be driving through some of the rice terraces which is gonna be beautiful. Matane.