00:00:01 John Daub: Greetings! Welcome to my car. I've just pulled in to Kamisato service area. This is one of my favorite stops if you're on the way going to Niigata or Nagano. Kamisato is a pretty nice one. There's a Starbucks over there. But I'm going to take you to the vending machine area.

00:00:25 John Daub: Well, it's kind of gray, but there's a coffee vending machine over here. I think we're going to get one that's a drip coffee vending machine. It's drip coffee. It's not just a can coming out. And the vending machines here, you can get cans of coffee that come out hot. But this one is a drip coffee machine. So I'm guessing that the coffee is going to be just a little bit better, perhaps, than even the Starbucks over there. And you're going to pay a lot less. I do have a thermos that I bring with me on these long drives.

00:00:59 John Daub: Let me show you where I am exactly, so you have an idea of where I'm going and where I came from. This is where I am. It's in between the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean in the heart of Japan. So you, wherever you are in the world, are in Japan with me right now, which is kind of cool. You see Tokyo on the bottom right and not that far away from Takasaki, which is in Gunma. There's the border between Gunma and Saitama. That's where I am. I think I'm still in Saitama. And highway, which is Route 17. Kamisato, a beautiful service area surrounded by rice paddies and farms and even a solar panel farm over there. It's kind of cool.

00:01:44 John Daub: There's a lot of parking here for buses and cars and there's food inside. And Japanese rest areas are some of the best in the world, really. It's clean as it can be. These are restrooms that you could use. This is where I'm headed. I'm going towards this area. So I still got like two hours. I need a coffee. And that's what we're doing here. So let's get to it. And I'll take some questions afterwards.

00:02:09 John Daub: This is what we're aiming for. This is the coffee vending machine area. We're not going to bother anybody. We're just going to get a coffee. But inside here you can buy gifts and stuff, which is kind of cool. There's some restaurants on the other side. We're not going to get any food. I'm not hungry yet.

00:03:14 John Daub: I always get the Toyota Rent a Car because of the best maintained ones. Probably pay a little bit more for that. That's where we're headed in that direction, the Niigata. There's always a post box at the rest service areas. It's interesting. The food stands aren't open yet. Yaki imo mochi mochi (grilled sweet potato). Oh my goodness. That looks so darn good. There's uncle red bean paste mochi around there as well as a sweet potato, which is in season right now.

00:04:26 John Daub: Holy macaroni. That looks good. Michael Sassano, thank you, buddy. Coffee on Michael. This looks so good, cheese and butter. What is that? Mushrooms, right? So they have like local flair whenever you go to service areas. This is nashi (Asian pear) ice cream in a waffle cone, which looks really good. They have matcha from this area. They even put the powder on there. So you get the local specialties, but it's closed right now. Smells good. You see some steak and burgers here. Look at that sausage. It's a hot dog stand. Not too much.

00:05:33 John Daub: So you can see these are hot vending machines. The ones it says atatakai (hot). So you can't even get a Starbucks caramel macchiato now hot caramel macchiato out of a bottle, even though there's a Starbucks like right across the way there. Boss coffee has something pretty much in Boss Quest. Looks like a video game. That's interesting. So you can see the cold ones, sumetai (cold), and atatakai (hot). Make sure you get the hot one if you want a hot one. But we're not going to this one. We're going to go inside. Now I'm going to put the gimbal away and we're going to handheld.

00:06:34 John Daub: This is so cool. Look at this right here. Actually, the prices are pretty much the same as Starbucks. You can get big cup and small cup, mocha and normal sweet. And you can get a premium Blue Mountain blend. Michael, since you're paying, we're getting this. With cream or black. Let's get with cream here. So you can actually pick less sugar, more sugar, cream with sugar, less sugar, black. Which is interesting. So you can customize it. And there's a cartoon that allows you to see the actual process. I don't know if this is live or prerecorded. But you can see it's a drip coffee. This is drip.

00:07:43 John Daub: Oh, my gosh. You have jumbo size cups. I could smell the coffee coming out of the machine. The aroma. Oh, gosh. This is kind of more exciting than Starbucks. They pumped it down. So the powder went in there. It tells you the temperature and then a dickie. Like how much more time you have until it's done. So the video monitor has gone quiet. The door is going to open up in a second. As seen on TV, that's always a good sign. Here comes. How do they put the cap on there? So this is 500 yen or about three dollars and fifty cents. It's a good sign that this is a Japanese service area coffee, which is so cool.

00:09:06 John Daub: All right, let's take this outside and we're going to sip it and see is this really better than Starbucks? Did I make the wrong choice? Because for 500 yen, you could definitely get a drip coffee from the Starbucks over there. That's really good. That's really good. I think we made the right choice avoiding the Starbucks because Starbucks, they seem to burn the coffee a little bit. This one is so perfect. This is really well balanced. It's surprising from a vending machine. You can get this is better than the 7-Eleven coffee, too, by the way.

00:10:03 John Daub: UCC owns, I think, 70 percent of the Blue Mountain Coffee farms in Jamaica. Don't quote me on it, but it was like 70 percent. So you see Blue Mountain all over the place here. Probably a UCC vending machine. UCC is one of the biggest coffee companies in the world. Kamisato has a history. Let's take a look at this. Learn a little bit about the local areas. Kamisato Town, Saitama Prefecture, located in the far north of Saitama Prefecture. Kamisato Town faces Gunma Prefecture and is flanked by the Kanna and Karasu Rivers. The town is noted for its ancient history that stretches back to the early Jomon period. That's a long time ago when people started to settle in the area. 8000 B.C. to 200 B.C. Wow. I've had the cuisine of the Jomon era. It was very earthy. That'd make a good episode.

00:11:09 John Daub: Do you have any questions? We're going to do it nice and simple here. Japanese rest areas. This is another reason to rent a car. I'm hand holding this. How's the stabilization? It should be pretty good. Japanese rest areas are a reason to rent a car and come out here. Because there's so much culture inside of here.

00:11:41 John Daub: That's less than $10 for that stamina don. So you can see here, there's like a food court. And there's a gift area over there. And there's a bakery right here on the side. So you can pick up like croissants or melon pan (sweet bun with melon bread texture). And then there's service area information. And you can get free water and tea, like cold green tea. Auto doors. Don't have to touch anything. And then you can clean out your car by bringing your trash to one of these recycle bins. This is incredible how stable the phone is just hand held. So you have glass bottles, cans, plastic bottles, waste paper. And then this last one here which is plastic bags. So they kind of have separated it here. And they put this door here to keep the crows out. Hello, Toby (crow). You know what I'm talking about.

00:13:15 John Daub: Alright, so there you go. Thanks for joining me for this morning coffee run at a Japanese highway service area. This is one of my favorites, Kamisato. I passed, there's like two or three other service areas. I passed them all and I stopped here because it's just the best one. I'm headed to the Niigata-Nagano border to film drone shots. The koyo (autumn foliage) is perfect. Make sure you subscribe because the next episode, I promise you, I'm going to take you and show you some autumn foliage in Japan's countryside in about two, three hours from now. So stay tuned. I'll be there in two hours. I've got to get the drone out. I got permit to fly it in one area and I'll be filming at a place that I hiked a couple of weeks ago where I had the grocery truck. But this time I'm going to film it with the autumn foliage because I like to take things to the next level, the most colorful level.

00:14:11 John Daub: Berry Chopsticks is in the house. Berry Space Boat, drink some coffee. Thank you for that, Berry Space Boat. Yeah, we're far away from Tokyo now, brother. I got two hours to go. See you on the other side.

00:14:28 John Daub: Let me see if I can find the car. Sometimes I'm lost. There's a Starbucks there between the cars. There she is, folks. This is the only car available. A Corolla Cross. It is an SUV. Corolla SUV. I'm not joking. It's an SUV station wagon. It drives good. It's a little bit bigger than I wanted because when you're driving country roads, sometimes smaller is better. But it's been doing the highway really good. Sometimes smaller is better because these country roads, they're not really great for driving bigger cars. Like, you know, a Land Cruiser. And you pay a lot more for that. This was about $100 a day. A regular compact is about like $50 a day or less. The reason why? There was no other car. I had no choice. This was the only car available because I booked it two days in advance. If you book it a week or two weeks in advance, you can get the compact. But I had no choice.

00:16:32 John Daub: If you have any questions, you can leave them in the comments below. I really do appreciate the support, guys. Make sure you go and see that last video that I uploaded. It's a good one. It's about onigiri. It's a rice upgrade. I don't think it's going to be too popular. I don't know. I want it to be. I'm A/B testing the titles. So, you might see a different title. But it's the same thumbnail. I think the thumbnail is pretty good. It has an emotional connection when I see an onigiri like that right in your face. You can see the rice. But I really do appreciate the support, guys. And it allows me to come out and show you the autumn foliage. So, in about two to three hours' time, if you're subscribed to the channel, you'll see a notification. Oh, that's good coffee. And we're going to share with you some of the beauty of the Japanese countryside. I'm really excited.

00:17:30 John Daub: Here's the gimbal. I can't believe it was hand-holding that, and it turned out real well. It's an EV as well. So, the engine didn't turn on. It's just a battery. It's freaking me out. Because I'm not used to the EV life here. I really am not. Thanks, guys. I'll see you in about three hours. And they said that the foliage is at the peak right now. So it's gonna be amazing. I'll try to get some drone shots and then I can insert the drone shot. So then you can get an idea of what it looks like today from the air using the drone. I'll just download the footage onto the phone. So I might do two or three live streams depending on if I have some time but probably five minutes heads up and then I'm just gonna go live. So see you then if your Patreon supporter you get notifications there and Discord also helps if you want to get the notifications. Discord's free. Patreon is free actually to join too. But if you give a dollar you get the notifications for like a dollar or something. So, alright guys. See you. I'm heading the road. Mata ne (see you later). Thank you Barry. Thank you, Michael. Thank you Brendan for becoming a traveler. Come by.