You’ll never Guess where we are.. Japan Road Trip Update “LIVE”

You’ll never Guess where we are.. Japan Road Trip Update “LIVE”

It’s literally gone to crud. I’ll check on my No, you don’t need to. I can do it all here. There’s no hurry. Just go nice and slow because we have a problem, I think. Oh, no. We’re live. 11 seconds of me in a panic. So, this is We hit the live button twice. Good day and welcome. I think we are live. Michelle, you can just check and see if I can see we are. Oh yeah, we got it over there. I Hello. Hello. What a few days we’ve had. Crazy tsunamis and heat waves and sleeping in the back of a tiny car. It’s been fun. It’s been great fun. It’s been good fun. So, we just wait for a few people. Michelle’s just made a beautiful drip coffee. Japanese drip coffee. Yeah. Oh, it smells good. It’s a bit late for coffee, Michelle, but we’ll do it. So, let’s see if anyone comes in. Helen, look like we’ve fallen out. Um, I’m just trying to find us on my phone, so it’ be easier for me to look at comments. Okay. So, is anybody there? I might do much the same and just start the live stream with us looking at our phones. There we go. I found it. That’s a start. Beautiful. Let’s wait for someone to come in. But I don’t know what time of day it is, but at least um now if I move that that that way. Okay, that big brings me more a little more central. Okay, that’s cool. So, what a few days. What a few days. Chilling now. Chilling. Relaxed. It’s been good. It’s been very interesting. And we’re editing like crazy to get some videos up. Just put the one up yesterday. Um, and we’ve got some more really great content. I hope it’s great content. Anyway, we like it. But I’m not sure how this live stream’s going because I had a mare of a time. Is there some people in? Say hello if you’re in. Just give me a heads up just to say the thing is actually live. Even if you’re a lone lurer. Mhm. Because we had the usual YouTube. Um I think I won’t sit on there, Michelle, because it feels like I’ll s down as tall as you. So you should watch on your laptop. Don’t you get better comments? And you’re also not just looking down. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Never normally do a phone. You’re just you’re just going to be sat looking down. Hello, John. Hello, John. Sound and vision. Very good. Thank you. So, we can start the live stream. Right. Live stream starts now. [Music] Okay. So, we’ve had a Hello, Chris. Hello, Chris. Can’t stop today. We’ll watch back. That’s okay. Chris, what a what a few days we’ve had. Few days. It’s almost been a week, hasn’t it? has has sleeping in the back of a car, chasing tsunamis. Yeah. Um tsunamis chasing us. Chasing us. Uh we’ve avoiding the heat. Avoiding the the hottest. It is been the hottest just our life, isn’t it? It’s been the hottest weather recorded in summer recorded in Japan since records began in the 1800s. Had the hottest day ever. No, the hottest summer. I know. But that was particularly And also the hottest day as well. Yeah. And all the Japanese are melting. Everyone’s going out buying all the all the fans. And what are we doing? We’re sleeping in the back of a car. Madness. Madness. But then we do enjoy madness. And we’ve had some great food. I mean, we’ve been cooking a lot in the car. Yes. Or just outside the car. Um, we’ve we’ve got a a little stove. I’ll show you that later on actually because it’s like a super thin. If you’re interested, would like to see the gas. I mean, you’ve all seen gastros before, but this one’s particularly nice and it’s got some little features I’ve never seen in in the West. Um, what else have we discovered, Michelle? We’ve got our little sauce buns. We’ve making lots and lots of coffees in the um out on out in the wilderness. Yeah, coffee’s been good, hasn’t it? Coffee’s been great. Uh, I went to the supermarket yesterday and I bought some milk. Um, and I believe and I did a sort of Google translate. I’ve just had this open. It’s virtually full, but it’s uh raw milk and it’s only about $2 Australian, so about dollar, what is that about a dollar 30 for a liter of local? So, it’s all from the local uh supplied raw milk. Um that’s good value, isn’t it? It is good value. John wants to know, was it easy to rent the car? Any problems with driving license or insurance? Um it was easy enough, John. you know, when you’re giving your your life savings. No, it was fairly simple, actually. Almost too simple. Um, yeah, more simple than most other countries. Very little documentation, very little. You need international driving permit. You do need an international driver’s permit. You You can’t drive in Japan without one. Uh, but I have that. Um, insurance. You need to have insurance. Um well you don’t you can just take their insurance but it’s good to have some sort of security uh insurance. So uh it gets quite expensive. We’ve taken the car for 60 days. So 2 months starting about so we had it for a few days before we set off. So we’re about 10 days into the journey now. So we’ve got about five weeks say just just under five weeks left. see how far. Um, and we’re really hoping to tour my my my wish would be to do the whole of the island of Japan. Whether that’s doable, whether that’ll just cost a fortune in fuel, I’m not sure. I always remember many years ago, my father saying to me when I did a big toy, said, “You’ll be surprised how much the fuel costs.” And I really was. You know, it can be as expensive as hotels. So, um, yeah, you think, “Oh, it’s good. you know, you’re on the road, it’s going to be easier and and cheaper than sort of getting public transport or trying to get trains and things, but the fuel adds up, doesn’t it? The fuel adds up because you you you’re driving a lot of kilometers, although we’re able to stop. We’re not doing massive journeys and we’re always stopping to explore things. We went to a fountain. I’ve just fountain. I’m thinking fountain. Waterfall. Waterfall. Beautiful. The the the highest waterfall in Japan. and we slept just there. I’ve just been editing the video uh a couple of days ago. Uh it was beautiful. A little hot. Uh was it hot that night? We’ve we’ve done some adaptations. We We’re turning our little car into sort of like a camping car, like a Japanese style camping car. Um and I really wanted to rent a Japanese camping car, but I went to see one and it was it was like about Yeah. maybe about seven or $8,000 for for for just for renting a little camping car. And when I was looking at it, I thought, well, it’s just a car with basically a a mattress in the back because they’re kind they’re designed in such a way, these little cars, they’re pretty flat, the back, and they’ve got lots of headroom. So I thought, well, I can get a better deal on a just a standard brand new car and then we can adapt it without, you know, doing any sort of major changes to the car, of course, um to be our own sort of little camping car. It’s working well, apart from the heat. Apart from the heat. I’m just trying to think. It wasn’t as hot at the water. No, it was cooler. But it was still hot cuz we were still getting things sorted, weren’t we? First night we stopped, we had the air conditioning running all night. It was just boiling. It was it never went I don’t think it went much below 40. I think maybe 38 uh in the middle of the night and that was pretty horrendous. Um and and I just couldn’t I couldn’t sleep. So I run I kept running the engine eventually run it almost the whole night half a tank of fuel later and air condition air conditioned and we slept. Yeah. Um the next night you’ll see the video that’s coming up. Um the next video I hope you enjoy the series. Please give me some feedback on it. Um, we’re trying to share with you our experience. Now, it isn’t Tokyo and Shabua Crossing or whatever they call that crossing and it isn’t um Kyoto and Asaka and places like this. We are going to smaller towns out of the way. Um, we went to a wonderful fish market the the morning before last and and that’s all all we’re filming. And I think you’re going to see you’re going to see Japan for how it is. Forgive the the heat. It’s not normally this hot. So, and we are hoping over the two months that we travel that the weather might cool. Although, they say they’re going into the hottest weather. So, we we’ll deal with it. We’ll deal with it. We we’ve adapted the car so that it’s got some some fly nets because the first second night we opened the doors and got a a room full of mosquitoes. Mosquitoes. Um yeah, it’s it was so strange. We set off um oblivious to what was going on in our little journey. We we’d worked the map out to go all along the east coast of Japan and halfway down we’re getting all these messages and and these warnings flipping up that that there’s a tsunami. So that video’s just gone up yesterday. Please go back and watch that video if you haven’t seen it. it, you know, it’ll help the algorithm for us if you can watch it. Give it a thumbs up. Give a comment. I want to try and get the Japan series rolling a little bit. So, please share it with friends, family, comment, thumbs up for this series. Let’s try and see if we can get some views out of this because I think, you know, I don’t expect to recoup the cost of the the journey, but it would be nice if we make at least sort of five or six dollars out of the out of the video. I mean, we’re enjoying it, but it’d be nice to share it with just Yeah, it’s more to do with that. It’s more to do with getting the the viewers that we’ve had in the past to come and watch it. So, um, John wants to know, was it easy to get used to the Japanese road signs? Um, very easy. I I I find, yeah, they’re very similar. I mean, I’ve driven all over the world, John, so I don’t they don’t really there’s nothing that complicated. Obviously, the written towns and things impossible for me to to really understand. quite a fair amount of English underneath the um but your normal sort of you know triangular stop signs. The only thing we I would say the only thing we’ve looked up was we didn’t know what the solid orange line meant. That’s the only bit we’ve actually looked up to find out. And that was a they paint their roads, don’t they, Michelle? If you want to see where the if there’s ever a paint shortage in the world, it’s all been used on Japanese roads. They never put chevrons. They put like chevrons and arrows and trees. usually on the tarmac. Yes. There’s no there’s there’s about 30% tarmac viewing and it’s so on bends. Yes. Yes. So that’s the only thing is you you do wonder but they really do work well because the roads are quite narrow because almost everybody drives these these little uh K cars almost everybody. But there are more and more of these big vehicles. But you got to wonder somehow if you can if you have a big vehicle, I think it’s going to be a pain in the backside to drive in Japan because there are so many places, supermarkets, um businesses where you just can’t park because the the parking spaces are so small and the roads also are quite narrow. So, um I think they’re painted particularly around bends so that you stay in your line because if you cross over a little bit and it does kind of work. It’s like a scale electric track. Yeah, I can that’s how I would explain like sort of like scale electrics. But the road signs have been fine. Road signs are fine. I mean, you know, uh no entry signs are I think are much the same. Uh stop signs, four-way stops, they’re all they’re all very uh for me, I find them quite intuitive, generic, aren’t they? Sort of generic. Um so, good questions here. John, another one from you. It says, “Can you park anywhere for the night or only in designated RV car parks?” Uh you parks, etc. If you’re in the city, there’s nowhere to park. I mean, when we were when we picked the car up in a sacka, you had to pay to park anywhere. Even if you just wanted to stop for 30 seconds to get a point of milk, everywhere was paid parking. So, that was the first thing we had to really find because we needed to park overnight because we were staying in a hotel with with no parking. So, and and many hotels have no parking. Very many in cities. No. So, um yeah, but uh you can park. They’re pretty tolerant of there are these places as you drive along called um Michinoi. Michinoi are like a sort of roadside service station and there are lots of them. Lots of them and they’re great. The facilities I mean the one of the reasons camping cars are so small in Japan is they rarely rarely you’ll find a a camping car with a toilet or a shower. Yeah. No bathroom gym, no camping cars. and and they don’t seem to mind. But and I it really was a bit off-putting initially. You’re thinking, ah, you know, you need a bathroom, right? But the bathrooms at the Minois and pretty much at every service stop or even a convenience store on supermarkets, they are spotlessly clean. They’re like even when you walk into them, they’re like a your own hotel toilet. They’re spotlessly clean. And they’ve got the Japanese style toilets in a lot of them with the sort of like the bday and the heated seats and they play music when you sit on them. Um, hello Jan. She just want to say hello. It’s 4:00 a.m. Back to sleep. Morning Jan. No, you stay up. You stay up Jan. You watch this and you watch it twice and you then you can go to sleep. You go to sleep. So, um, so no, it’s it’s a it’s a different world in that respect. You can actually tour around Japan and even if you need the bathrooms regularly, you’re you’re going to get crooked, are you? Am I crooked? In the picture, you look like you’re sat slightly sideways. Still sat sideways. My stripes not going right. Stripes are crooked. I’ve got a new t-shirt. We’re getting We’re trying to get some um We’re trying to get some I got to get new new shirt. Yeah, I’m tired sick and tired of my pink and yellow shirt. I get I put the pictures up on Instagram and he’s always in a yellow shirt. He doesn’t wear it all the time, but he’s always in the yellow shirt. It’s the only shirt I’ve got that buttons up and and you know, we travel really light, so we only have I have two t-shirts and one button-up shirt and that’s it. And and I always wear these very distinct color shirts, so they you know, it’s like if I just wore a white or black shirt, people would just think I got dozens of shirts because distinctive ones. John said, “It’s 9:00 a.m. here near Norwich in England.” Good morning. Good morning. So, um so yes, you can park you can park in the country uh most places. Um now, did you work out where we are? We got free parking here. Free parking. So, I said in the the I think in the video title, you’ll never guess where we are, but you probably can. Um, so we’ve had pretty hard um few nights, you know, we’ve had a we we’ve very limited sleep. Uh, each day is getting slightly better. We’re getting extra little bits, extra padding, extra, you know, got a little fan now. Little fan that moves some air around. Uh, but it was it’s really it’s really slow. No, we’re not in Kansas anymore. No, we’re not in Kansas. And uh last night was just like we’re in a bed and um look have a look just up above here. Look at look at the ceiling. That might give you a clue. Any clues? Any clue? Look beautiful. Look at that. Hello, Candace. It says, “Hi, 6 p.m. in Australia.” 6 p.m. Good day, Candace. And John says, “Most world travel bloggers I watch use trains or buses, so it’s a nice change to see you using a car.” Yeah. But we thought we’d do it a bit different. We didn’t want to do all the tour touristicly places and we did consider the trains, didn’t we? We were going to do trains and buses and and the the usual thing, but we’ve found in the past that we just can’t get to places, you know, you want to just go and see a little place um and you can’t get there. So we thought, well, let’s we’ve gone. It probably would have been cheaper to just get the car itself. To give you an idea, John, it’s close to in Australian dollars. It’s close to I think two 2,000 nearly $3,000 um for the car 60 days. So relatively inexpensive, but but when you think about it, it’s a big investment. And um yeah, and if you get on the trains, I was just going to say, you know, you’ve got to get on a train at a point and get off at a point and then when you get to the point, then how do you get to your next destination? And Japan is not like Southeast Asia where you just get a grab. No, there’s no a taxi cost you sort of $70 just to go from the station to your hotel. Um and we really wanted to see parts of Japan. When we were in Fukuoka, we we we really love Fukuoka. I love I thought it was one of my favorite cities, but there were loads of little places around Fukqua we never got to see because the public transport didn’t go there or it was just a little bit tricky to get to. So, yeah, the car is going to make a massive difference to what you’ll be able to see and what we’ll be able to see. And we like to see rural places, don’t we? Yeah. You know, it’s nice to see a big city, but once you see one big city in a country, they tend to be a little bit same same anywhere you go, don’t they? you know, sort of all the big cities in Australia are the same. Yeah. Um, and we just Yeah, we just like discovering quirky little places and we are discovering in more interesting places and we I I want to see the parts of Japan that no one no tourist sees. I want to see what it’s like to live in Japan where where mo I know a lot of people live in cities but even when you’re in the city you tend to stay in the the the people always go to the center and you’re going to see all the food streets and all the same old same old stuff. Um and we went for a walk last night and the lady was walking wasn’t she and she’s she was asking us in in Japanese because we understood her um you know are you living here and I thought think she thought we were new neighbors but no we were said we were just touring. Look this way. Yes. Not this way. Okay. It’s hard to Michelle’s not done a lot of videoing. I’m talking to you, but I know, but I’m there and I’m talking to you as well. But if if we just sit going like this, that is going to make really dull, non-engaging video. I’ll try and remember. Sorry. Anyway, you were saying where we were. You showed the ceiling. So, yeah, we Okay. When we stopped in Osaka, we we we tell you I am going to tell them there’s a story. Okay. When we stopped in Osaka, um we we got a a normal sort of Japanese hotel. It was about I don’t know how to call it 150 bucks a night and it’s the size of a shoe box. And um I said to Michelle, “We need to get in a love hotel, you know, to not not because we’re feeling amorous at all, but because the space.” So this is a love hotel. The staff here are lovely. Amazing. The room is lovely. The parking is free and lovely. The air conditioning, giant bath. I’m not going to show you around because I’m going to make a video before we leave. I’m going to go around and video the whole place to show you what it’s like. And I’ll make a little episode, you know, about why we choose the love hotels. The prices are much more reasonable. The sizes feel you feel. Look at this sofa. I mean, we could get another six people on the sofa. It’s it’s it’s it’s a long have a party sofa. You could have a party and not one of those sort of parties there, Michelle. No. No. So, yeah, we’re in a we’re in a a love hotel. um which we were sort of hesitant to book because you never know what you what you’re going to turn up to and yet we’re never disappointed when we come to these places. They’re so clean, they’re so wellappointed, they’re I mean they’re clearly when you arrive outside they’re gy and they’ve got like you know two hours, three hours, how long do you want to stay for? But you can actually book them online on a go and booking and trip.com. You can you can book these places as a regular hotel. So, hit the love hit the heart button. Give me some hearts. Give me some hearts. I love hotel because but because we book it with the normal hotel booking platforms, you do then have to sort of try and find somebody to let you in, don’t you? Yeah. Yeah. Because ordinarily you sort of flash your card and um a locals have a an app called couples.com. Uh I think it’s called couples and it’s they can do it all on their phone. Actually they don’t do it on their phones. These people don’t have phones. They got like a card. Yeah. And they can come in. It’s a membership. Membership card. And they come in for their two or three hours or however long they come in for. And of course, it’s always a little bit funny because, you know, there’s a little refrigerator over there with some strange there’s a vending machine. There’s a weird chair over there. That’s no no massage chair. I was a bit disappointed. Normally, there’s a nice You can sit and have a really good massage, but not in this one in the room. But loads of nice silk flowers, super clean. The towels are really, you know, this is just one of the little hand towel, but you know, really good quality towels. Super clean. Plenty of towels. Um, I mean, just a little glance. Look, a little glance. Look at this place. Got a little kitchen area over there. Our own little uh entrance. It’s as big It’s as big as an apartment. Yeah. And that’s the other. Yeah. Yeah. So, super happy with that. Now, I did say I got this milk and it’s I haven’t taste it. I’ve got it in my coffee, but this is What’s the 3.6 on it? Did you know what? I don’t know. Can anyone scan and see what 3.6 is? It says raw milk. Okay. And there were quite a few different raw milks, so maybe it’s common here in Japan. So, it’s a good price. Very good. Yeah. I think it was about $2 Australian, so about a dollar 50. Cheaper than Australia. So, um Oh, that’s nice. Is it good? Can I have a Yeah, that’s that’s just like creamy, rich, full milk. Oh, that’s good. Pop of milk. Oh, very nice. Yes. Oh, yes. That’s got that real milk taste from when I was a child. It it is like like we used to get in France from the uh the local dairy. Jan Jan says, “Looks and sounds nice.” So, um it’s really creamy. It’s good. Yeah. John says, “One vlogger I watch has been using the wonderful trains in China.” They are wonderful trains. We can vouch for that. But he and his mother have an enormous amount of luggage and that’s made things very difficult. Yeah. Not to travel light. You have to travel light. particularly um uh Ben was commenting about you know the the my comment about traveling light and the problem is if you travel heavy particularly in China and here in Japan you get on with those bags there’s nowhere for them. No, no, there’s nowhere to put the bags. So, you you end up um Yeah. You know, you might Yeah, cuz a lot of the the flights into Southeast Asia as well are you’ll get two big bags. Two. So, people are often come with two these huge old style bags. Then you get onto the train, there’s no space for them. No. So, if uh Yeah, it’s I can imagine. Yeah. So, Afi says it just says 3.6 milk. 3.6 milk. That’s fat now is maybe the fat content that be about yeah full cream milk’s about 4% I think four% butter cream so maybe it’s um the percentage so Tracy Barrow says hi Stephen Michelle hi Tracy um I would love to go to Japan are you going back to South Korea enjoy your stay in Japan I would like to Tracy yeah maybe after Japan we got 60 days and and plus some now I also I don’t know if this is everything’s got really it’s been in the fridge and And he’s got it out. I’ve just got it out the fridge and it’s it’s uh very humid in Japan. So while I was there, Michelle, at the supermarket, I got strawberry milk. Strawberry olay. Strawberry milk. Like And this was this was only about a This is strawberry olay. Again, fresh milk a liter. This was only about $150. So about a dollar or US. It’s cheaper than a Coke, isn’t it? Yeah. I think it was um I can’t remember the the price, but it was Yeah. Do you want to try some of that? I’ll try some of that. I got something to put it in. Uh, no. We’ll just put it in the same glass. Oh, you want it in No, no, no. I’m happy with it in that glass cuz I’m still drinking my coffee. Mix it with I know. I know. I I just I’m excited to try it cuz I I bought it. Oh, that smells like Is that good? Nestle. You know the one? Oh, Nesqu. Nesqu. Oh, it’s all icy. Oh, good. I like it cold. No, I mean it’s there’s it’s full of ice. That remind me when when I was a child used to get milk at school and it and it it froze. Used to get free milk and then it and they used to bring it out inside from the winter and it’s frozen. And the little birds used to peck the Yes. Little peck. That makes us sound really old. Mich, you know we’re only in our 20ies. 23. Oh yes. That is like Nesquick. Is that Let me try. Is that also I don’t know if that’s also um raw milk. I don’t think so. No, because this is processed. Oh, sweet. Nice. Yeah, that is just Nesquick. Nesquick milkshake. So, I’ve got lots I’ve got rather a lot of milk. Yes. And they’re in those cartons. They’re in the giant cartons. So, we’ve got a couple of days here at the hotel while we get the videos edited for you. Um, so in that time we got to drink all this milk. That is delicious. My my favorite is that that I mean I feel like a bowl of corn flakes would go down quite well, but I don’t think I’ve seen corn flakes got corn flakes with that milk is one of the nicest milks. Yes, it’s a real milky flavor. Yeah, actually it’s it’s The last time I had milk like that was when we were in France and it was fresh milk from the cow. That’s what I just said. Oh, sorry. I forgot. I went back further than that to my childhood. Well, the last time we had raw milk was from when we lived in France. So So if we if we seem a bit tired and a little lackluster, we just had we just had five nights sat and slept in the back of a car, which was fine. It was it was fine. It was hot, but it was we we could have gone another few nights, but we we really needed to get these videos edited. Um that what we’re going to do is we’re going to do four or five days. I’m going to call it roughing it. It’s not four and a half days. Adventurous outdoor living road tripping in 41° C and soup like uh humidity at night. We’re going to do visiting and we’re going to try and we’re not going to be looking for hotels because that takes up all your day when you start looking for hotels. And when we’ve had enough, we’re going to take a few two or three days in a hotel. Probably always going to be maybe it’s always going to be like a date night where we can sit here and bicker because we’re both feeling irritable. Um, so well, we can work on the videos. we can get the videos edited and get them up as quickly as possible so you can watch the series. Um, we are right now in um uh Takasaki Takasaki Takasaki. So you can you can look we’ve dri we’ve we’ve driven we’ve driven from Osaka to um all along the tsunami coastline went from Wakyama toyama where you had the soy soya sauce ice cream I don’t that’s been no yeah it’s up already though is it I don’t think so it is it Have a look who’s going to be right because the question on the video is what’s this? So now you Oh, we’re going to have a fight today. Michelle and I fine. There you go. You’re holding it. She’s right. She’s always bloody right. So Jan A said, “Let’s get back to the questions. I tried rice milk once. I didn’t like it at all. I don’t like rice milk either.” It’s not milk, Jan. It’s just It’s like oat milk. Oat milk. It’s just basically oat milk that’s been sort of blended up in some water. I like coconut milk and I like almond milk. Coconut milk is milk. Yeah. Almond milk is Well, that’s grown up nuts. Just granut nuts. That’s all right. But most of them are otherwise. Yeah. Oat milk sounds it tastes oat milk to me tastes a little bit like uh you you soak water in damp cardboard. Yeah, it’s not. So Tracy said rice milk is nice. Very sweet. Yeah, but that’s just the sugar that’s that’s because they’re adding adding things to it because rice isn’t sweet. No, no, she’s saying if it’s sweet it’s very sweet it’s nice. So Afi says did a bit of research online. Steve is right. The 3.6 signifies that 100 grams of milk contains at least 3.6 grams of fat. Yeah. So, it’s the Thank you, Ephie. So, yeah, it’s it’s whole milk is generally around around that. Three and a half, three and a half to four depending on. So, and that one tastes really creamy. Um, I can hold it there again if you want to get any more information off the carton. But I’m pretty sure my um I mean, you would have scanned that when you I scanned that and it said I sent him shopping on his own. I went on my own. I really had a uh I was in for about 2 hours just wandering around. Not a good idea. So it it definitely said um raw milk and uh which is unusual. And although it’s 3.6% it’s got a feeling of quite a buttery. Yeah. I thought because nowadays they when they make the homogenized milk, pasteurized milk, what you want, they um take all the fat out of the milk and then they spin back in. Yeah. They quite often they spin the milk, add um you know, they reduce the fat content to the exact percentage. Uh so you never know that you’re going to get the actual milk fats back in from the from the cow that But this tastes pure. This tastes pure. I’m going to try that again. And you said it was you thought it was local. It’s funny. It’s got a hint of strawberry this time. I don’t know how that happened. Yeah, it’s a local milk. Um Dane Vince says, “Hi, it’s nice to see you having a great time despite the tsunami scare. It’s typhoon season there at the moment. Take care.” Oh god. Is it probably? Probably. Um, I always think of typhoon sort of a little bit later, August, September, but they’re probably here in Hong Kong. They were always They were Yeah. Yeah. Kids used to go back to school and there was always a typhoon. Yeah. So, the tsunami was strange because there were like flashing red lights all along the road. There was warnings. And then we we’ve got a like a TV in the car. Japan is one of these strange places where they have televisions in the car. And luckily it turns off when you drive and but the audio still comes out. So we had um NHK World uh news on that was sort of warning everyone to run to the hills. But around us there was this sort of calmness. Everyone was just going about their day. So we thought okay we’re okay you know case you’d hear a siren going off and um and I thought that everywhere I looked was flat. You’ll you’ll see in the video if you just check it out, you can see Ed’s flat and we’re looking for for altitude and then we thought, oh well, you know, we’ll just do as the Japanese do. We go shopping, go and have a bit of ice cream and just chill and relax. But we did um make a conscious effort to get up a hill to sleep because I didn’t I couldn’t have slept in a in a car park or a minoi on on the coast. We actually had sort of pinpointed that’s how far we get and there was one there had stunning views of the beach and the and the Pacific Ocean and we said no that one’s not not for tonight because you know the tsunami waves they come in sort of like um you know smaller and bigger so like a ripples on a pond they start kind of small and get quite big um so I don’t think they they came to to that much but we slept up in the mountains um very high up in the mountains as as you’ll see from the the video. I’m not sure if that’s that’s the next one. I think that’s the next one. So, we’ll pop that up on Friday, tomorrow. Um, and then there’s a few other kind of cool things that we’ve done over the last few days. So, there will be quite a lot of videos. I did say say to Michelle, we do less videos on this journey, but I’m already finding there’s too much content. But, we’re seeing such cool things, aren’t we? We are. We are. So, um, AI says, “Don’t forget to find omnu rice while you were there.” Omu rice. I don’t know what that is. I had to have a look up. It’s a popular Japanese dish consisting of fried rice wrapped in thin omelette often topped with ketchup. Okay. So, oh, is that the Okay. Oh, we’ll try it. Yeah. Omelets are not my favorite and ketchup’s not my favorite, so I’m not going to be rushing for that one. But the generally the eggs here are Good. We had um we had breakfast bought to us this morning. I got a little video you’ll see of that. Um comes through a little hatch. So, it’s like a prison cell. You get this little hatch. The guy delivers breakfast which is really And it was really well cooked. Yes. Very good. Very simple but most delicious. Nice. All included. So, that was good. Y. Any other questions? I have to check cuz I’m missing. Do you want any more of this milk? I’m all right at the minute. I’m still trying to drink my coffee. No, I think I’ve caught up with my question. So, if you got a question, you can throw it in there now. Yes. So, the weather isn’t letting up. We’re going to spend uh another couple of days here just editing, um getting as much sleep as we can because this the sleep we’ve been having is pretty pretty simple. Um, and then we’ll hit the road again. And we’re going north. North. We’re going north because it’ll be much cooler up north. Although we’ve been googling the weather and it’s just as hot. It says, “Oh, yes. It’s much cooler up north.” And then you say, “What’s the temperature?” It’s the same as here. But we’ve come into the center of Japan now. We’re going up through the center to stay in the Alps for the the higher regions to get a little bit cooler weather. It is a little bit cooler higher up you go, isn’t it? In altitude. And we are going to head towards um Amore Amorei. Amorei. Yeah, Amori. Amorei. We get a love hotel. That’s right at the top before you hit the uh um Hkaido. Hkaido Island. Yes. So, we’re going to we’re going to head to the furthest northern point. Uh I don’t know if there’s somewhere I can share. Now, I’ve been working on um a little musical video to put on the ends of our YouTube videos. Should I show people? Yes, if you want to show people. So, I’d like to know your opinion. I’ve actually had I won’t go into the I won’t go into the complications I’ve had. It’s made it a little more difficult to do, but I’ve been working on this um this video. And make sure you play the right one. Yeah. And I’d like your opinion on it. It’s got to see. Might need my glasses just to see. So, um, so Jan says, “Going back to sleep, safe travels, and be well.” Before you go, Jan, just quickly, Jan, this is a little video that I’ve been, this is, uh, obviously Mount Fuji. Um, I’ll turn the sound up and I’m going to put little, what do you call them? Uh what is it when you have a hidden thing in a video? A little Easter egg in each one. So it be slightly different. So have a little look. So all we need is a place to be and a few. If you’d like to stay, you don’t have to leave. Leave the lights on and the door unlocked. If you drop by, you don’t have to knock. We’re happy to share whatever we’ve got. There’s the [Music] So they will be a little bit like that. So I’d like Oh, turn it off. Don’t play again. Probably get copyright now. Yeah, probably. So, I’ve been working on this little animation and um it it’s got the little car. Benjamin says, “Wow, that car is all terrain just like our car.” It is all terrain. And Dane Vince gives you a thumbs up. Thank you. So, you’ll John said, “That’s great fun.” So, you’ll see um in the pictures there’ll always be slightly different um panoramic scenes, backgrounds, or or there’ll be mostly they’ll be the same, but there’ll be one the odd one in there or the odd one where it’s slightly different. So, try to watch them. Uh I’ll put them in where they’re not too offensive and uh you know, they won’t um won’t bug you too much. But I’ve had a lot of fun playing. But I did have something go wrong which caused it to be a lot more difficult. But Dane Vince says, “Could you please do a video on the many interesting rest stops you’ll find along the way during your road trip?” I’m sure we will. The the the rest stops will be featuring um pretty regularly. Uh we were just yesterday uh no day before yesterday, we were cooking. Um, I had my very first piece of um, Wu beef. Wu beef. Uh, which was quite interesting. I’ve never had Wu beef before. I was quite surprised even thinking myself. I’d never really when I see it in in Hong Kong or Australia or overseas. It’s always been prohibitively expensive. And food doesn’t excite me that much to be crazy expensive. You know, I don’t I don’t want to pay $500 for a piece of beef. it just uh but but there’s no way in Japan we’re not going to have um as much Wu beef as possible. So I had my first bit of Wu beef and that was quite interesting. That was cooked in a uh Mitchino Ekki on a on a roadside station. That video will probably be um in the next four or five days. I’ll try and get that edited and up for you. um because in a couple of days from now we’ll be back on the road again and new stuff will be coming up and it’s it’s hard for us even mentally to keep up with all the stuff that’s going on. So, if I don’t get this stuff edited as quickly as possible, by the time um you know, 3 or 4 days comes along, we’ll be I don’t know. I can’t think of the things that happened. I never expected to happen anyway, so I can’t even think, you know, maybe we juggling sea lions on the coast of Sometimes we just got to say, “Okay, not going to film. We’re not going to film. We don’t pick up actually take the camera with us if we’re just going to sort of what we think are normal things, do we? Because we’ve got so many cool things.” So Dane Vince said there are there are musical highways in Japan. I don’t know what you mean by that. You’ll have to explain. No, I believe I do. There’s there’s highways where the I think the sound the the the the you eating coffee flavored biscuits. Look at the look. What is What good is that? Who’s going to It’s hardly worth dunking, is it? No, it’s not. spoil it to dunk it. So, yeah. No, they have um vibrations in the road that play a tune. Okay. If you go at a certain speed, it’s a little bit like a musical box. Okay, that would be interesting. But if we go along it, if we happen to pass it, I know in Tokyo, we’re not going to probably go to Tokyo. We’re not going to go to the big cities. I’m sorry if you want to go to the big cities. And bummer, uh spoiler alert, we’re not looking to do the big driving and things as well. We don’t know. I mean, well, I mean, as in as in, you know, it’s you get stuck in traffic lights and Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. I mean, when we got to the city, stop, start, stop, start. It’s no fun. Um, but, uh, I know in some of the cities they have these toilets with glass walls, so you can see into them. When you go in, you have to press when you lock the door, they go opaque. Okay. Would you trust that? No. No. Can you imagine sat in the middle of the sort of high street sat down on on the L? Crazy. John says, “Does Japan have any ice cream and iced tea chains like the Mixu in China?” Um, I don’t know. Oh, absolutely. I mean, there is one thing you’ll notice in Japan. um is there’s so many independent stores selling food and produce. Um we had a very unusual ice cream yesterday, but it’s not a it’s not a a chain. So So you’ll have to wait and see that video. Oh, that’s the one that’s Yeah. No, today. No, yesterday. Yesterday. So that was unusual. So no, there are there there are obviously all uh the usual junk food chains, but there are many many more independent stores. So quite often when you’re in Australia, for example, you’ll go to from one town to the next and it’ be the same sort of Gloria Jeans, all the same rubbish um from one town to the next. But here you’ll see a lot more independent small um producers uh everywhere. I I think almost the Japanese must eat out all all the time it seems and they clearly don’t because supermarkets are so well stocked. I will do a supermarket tour. Got a bit I’ve got a cough coming guys. Excuse me. Let’s drink some water. I think the milk. Yes, probably. Yeah, I’ve probably got an allergy to sort of seven pints of milk that I bought. for drink it slowly. Tracy said, “Oh, sorry. So, I I would like to do a supermarket tour. At least one or two. The supermarket here are cool. The fish, the meat, the produce. Phenomenal.” Yeah, it’s great, isn’t it? Fun. Tracy says, “Are you going to visit any Buddha temples?” Um, temples? Yes. I don’t know if Buddha will be there. Um, we’ve visited a few temples already. We’ve we have visited uh for sure but I don’t know whether there be Buddha temples or towist or uh I don’t know are the temples here traditionally Buddhist I don’t know no I don’t know there’s some there’s thousands of little um shrines temple shrines with Tory gates uh one of the videos that I’ve just been working on for you has shows I think a We stop in a a little temple. Yeah. Tiny tiny. Yes. Tiny little places. You’ll be driving along the road. You’ll be on a sort of mo not a motorway, but a fairly busy road and there’d be a little alleyway going up with a Tory gate and you can pull off and just go and and just shake the bell and do a few little bowels to the gods of traveling. So, yeah, it’s inevitable. We’re going to be seeing a lot of religious, cultural stuff here. It’s inevitable. Food stuff is going to be abundant. We are cooking. I will show you. Actually, I’ll go and get that because I I did mention. Okay, I’ll just read out Fig’s um question because we have covered it. It says, “Do you have to get international driving permanent licenses to drive in Japan?” Yes, absolutely. Because that’s all they ask for. They don’t actually Well, our guys didn’t actually want to see your driving license. They just want to see the international permit. Yeah. Yeah. So, you do need that. So, yes. Um, I have a international driver’s license which I got prepared for this year because we were hoping to do a bit of car driving. Um, so this is a a tiny thin stove and obviously the the bottle. Now, if Rick ever watches this, Rick got one from Japan as well, but this one’s kind of cool. Rick, if you’re if you’re watching, which you won’t be. So, so it’s it’s called a slim and it’s got the usual gas bottle, but I do like the fact that the the gas bottles are just magnetic. So, they they just go in and just click into place with a magnet. No twisting or anything. No twisting, no sort of levers, no pressure. They don’t fall out. Look. Yeah, it’s cool. It’s a lovely little stove and uh you know super easy to turn on on off. Yeah, we’ve cooked I want to say maybe three four meals on this and endless coffees and bits and pieces. Yeah. So, I’m using it. I’m getting a lot of cooking and filming most of it. Not all the time cuz sometimes we’re just good and I can’t be bothered. But if I can trying to film. Um, so that’s cool. It’s nice. Really thin. I like that. It’s got It’s well made as well. Beautiful. Only in Japan could could they come up with such cool little stove tops. So AI says they have lots of flavored Kit Kat. They do, but you’d be surprised how little They’re not all in this. They’re not all together, are they? We talked about we talked about this in a another video of was it a feik? Yes. So you you Japan is synonymous with like hundreds of different flavored Kit Kats. And sure if you’re in the big cities, you can go to shops that will have several, but generally what happens is each part of Japan has its own Kit Kat. So you might see a Sakura Kit Kat at um cherry blossom time. You might see one that’s particular to a town that’s doing orange production or peach production, but you rarely see them. You don’t can’t just go in the shop and buy loads of different flavored Kit Kats. Most the shops will have one flavor or two, you know, one or two flavors. And um consequently, you know, it’s we probably got more flavors of Kit Kat in Australia than they have, you know, there are places in in Tokyo for Kuwoko and that where you can get all the different flavors or or many different flavors, but I think we get more flavors. We’ve actually got a Kit Kat store in Melbourne that sells all the flavors. Yeah. All the flavors. And I see in the UK as well, there are loads of flavors. So, it’s quite disappointing if you come here just to have loads of different Kit Kats. You’re going to you’ll struggle to find them. You’d have to do what we’re doing, which is travel all around the country. We should start looking out for Kit Kat. Yeah, it’s too hot. They just melt. They just melt. This is the problem, isn’t it? So, I’ve got a I’ve got these little pans as well. It’s all backed up from this. So, this is our little uh K for boiling water. And I got this brilliant um clip-on handle. I love this thing. This features in an upcoming video. It does. So, it just it just goes on and you pull the lever over and now you’ve got a nice solid sauce pan. And we’ve got a a little set. Well, we’ve got two sauce pans. One for doing sort of like meats and bits. And this one we’re going to keep for for basically as a kettle for doing boiling or boiling boiling water, but it’s very strong. Very strong. And then when you take it off, um, you just press this little you you pull the lever down like well you pull the lever over and that reveals a button underneath and then it pops open. And then you can stack your And this will go on all sorts of pans. It will it’s really well made. You walked around the store. I I bought this. Will you This reminds me when I was a kid, Michelle, tell a story, right? This is a story a little story when I was a kid. I don’t know if you remember um $6 million man. Yes, Steve Austin. Steve Austin. $6 million man. Well, one Christmas, one Christmas I I asked for this the I was going to get Steve Austin and he had like an arm. I don’t know if any of you remember, but Steve Austin’s arm had like um like a rubber thing. Then it peeled back and you could see all his bionics under there. Anyway, I I was going to get Steve Austin, but I decided he was too too expensive and I’d asked for the rocket. So, I got the Steve Austin rocket. And uh turns out I never got I never got Steve Austin. So, there’s a bloody rocket. Put in it. So, so I never got Steve Austin. I know you didn’t. I know you didn’t. All right. Cuz I think I got Stretch Armstrong instead and he didn’t fit in the rocket. So, I went to the store and I I love this. I I said to Michelle, “Ah, this is too good.” And it was only It’s so well made and it was about I’m going to say it’s about $10 US. Okay. So, really well made and I said to Michelle, “I’m buying that.” So, I bought it and I’m walking around and I’ve got this bloody handle. No pot. No pot, no nothing. And I said and I said, “Well, I I just I’ll take it back to Australia because I just want it because I’m going to be, you know, flashing it to Oh, let me pick up your pan.” M and then we decided we needed to get some pots and pans and things for the for the journey. So we had to go back then and get the specific the pots that we quite nicely but it fits on and I noticed in the shop it goes on almost all the it does. Are you excited for me? Cuz I could this could have been another Steve Austin experience. I could have like gone around the whole of Japan with a handle that fitted nothing. Would have been pretty stupid, wouldn’t it? into. Yeah. So, um Tracy says, “I think the temples are amazing. The build buildings are beautiful.” They are. Absolutely. All the temples all around the world. We see some amazing temples, aren’t they? Yeah. But Japanese temples are are are a whole new level. I think they’re they’re a whole new level because they’re often so pretty with the bonsai and the way the tr all all the trees are perfectly manicured around them. Not all of them. Some of the one we stopped in the other day was was a little bit run down, but um No, they have an an an ambiance. There’s little ones and big ones and middle ones and they always quite often got the Tory gates. Yeah, they got a ring a lovely photograph. You Is there any questions? I’m working my way down. Go through the questions and I’ll see if I can. So Dame Vince says, “Are you planning to cross to Hokkaido from Amorei?” Um, I would like to. We’ll see how long it takes us to get up there. We’re looking at it. And yes, 100% I would like to. Um, and then somebody else is that the same person? Um, Dame Vince says, “I imagine it’s nice and cool over in Hokkaido right now.” No, no, it’s not. It’s boiling. Because we thought that we’ve just got to get north. Got to get north. Let me see your camera. It might be on but um on your one. But no, because when you sort of researched on Google, it said yes, it’s generally cooler. When you said, “What’s the actual temperature now?” It was the same as where we were. So, it’s pretty hot, isn’t it? Yeah. So, there look a nice little picture of Michelle with the Tory gates where we stopped at a temple. Yeah. A couple of days ago. That was cool. The Benjamin Penny says, “Australia has Kit Kat Chunky.” It does have Kit Kat Chunky. Doesn’t everyone else have Kit Kat Chunky? Doesn’t everyone? We always We’ve always had Kit Kat chunky. Always had Kit Kat chunky. Chunky caramel, chunky mint, chunky lemonade, chunky uh dog carrot. Very famous Australian flavor. Uh Tracy says, “Japan have a lot of vending machines that sell just about everything.” They don’t. They don’t. We’ve had this discussion amongst ourselves. They do. But um people always see you see videos, right? People make a video and they say, “Oh, you can buy like shoes and underpants and sex toys and models model action men figure and all sorts in vending machines in Japan. And it’s almost a legend that that that’s got its own legs because it it literally doesn’t really exist. There are some tiny again if you’re in Tokyo and you’re in the city in a really heavily touristed city center they’re going to be there those machines selling all sorts of weird stuff you know uh because there are enough tourists around imagine though there are sorry let me finish my sentences there are enough tourists around to buy all this nonsense and keep those vending machines in business but if you’re out in whoop whoop if you’re in a sub a a suburb even of Osaka And actually even really in the center of Osaka because we were staying right in the heart of Osaka, almost all the vending machines are owned by the people whose business they’re outside of or homes are outside of. And if you’re wanting to make a little bit of money out of vending machines because you you you you stock them. What happens is you if you put one outside your house, you stock it, you look after, you keep the profits. They’re all 99.9% are just selling drinks, CocaCola, coffee, and drinks. Because if you’re if you’ve got a little vending machine and you go and put sort of like boxer shorts in it, nobody’s going to buy it, you’re never going to restock it and there’s no profit in it. So if you’re the family that just put the quirky action figure vending machine outside and people say, “Well, what have you sold this week?” And they say, “Nothing.” You know, so so consequently, as I I’ve worked out, I understand why why this happens is they just they just don’t they’re there loads of that do food probably about 5% do food ice creams. Yeah. Another maybe 3% do not many ice creams. N the rest of them the rest of them are are drinks and they are everywhere tight and everywhere. I mean like anywhere you can be you can be driving along the remotest road and there’ll be a house with a vending machine outside doing hot coffees and and um lemonades. They’re everywhere. Uh and there are an abundance. But there there just are not those crazy vending machines. Although my good friend actually Eric Surf, Eric Surf, who’s a wonderful channel. If you haven’t checked out Eric, go and check out his channel. He’s he’s lived in Japan for years. Most of what he does is buying food in vending machines. So, but he goes to very specific places to find those things. And he’s in Tokyo, I think, so he can he can he can find them. So, yeah. So, um morning, Sally. Morning, Sally. Um Dame Vince says, “Where did you purchase your camping cooking equipment in Japan?” Uh they’re sold all over the place. Uh the cooking equipment is fairly we got most of it in Ntori. Ntori um which is like a um someone described it as like an IKEA. Yeah, a bit like an IKEA. So Ntori, but but um pots and pans aren’t particularly camping pots and pans. No, they’re actually domestic. And actually the camping thing we just picked up in a supermarket um because it had a special We’d looked at that one. seen it in several places and just a random supermarket had it at about a thousand cheaper than other places. So, we just picked it up. Been to a couple of camping stores and they were a little bit more expensive than generally camping stores are a lot more expensive for the name camping on it. It they label it camping. If that handle if that handle had been sold in a camping store, I guarantee you that would be and not twice, four times the price. Four times the price 100%. We saw those chairs, didn’t we? And then we saw we saw them in a um in a hardware store and they were a lot lot cheaper. Yeah. So everything generally the word you you you take a regular old bomber jacket and put camping on it, you know, and maybe a tiny little camouflage collar and suddenly you’re asking 80 $80 $90 for it. But the same thing into a into a ntori and it’s sort of like $5.99. So, uh, my advice if you were doing here and you were looking for camping stuff is is you could really if you if if you need a lot of stuff and we have needed quite a bit of stuff. We had to get all bedding and pillows, uh, do not get it from camping stores. It’s too expensive. So, I’m just laughing because John said nano nano to Tracy who’s just sent it back to John because Tracy said, um, can you remember more and Mindy? I’ve got a Mo doll that actually looks like Robin Williams. Yeah. Nano Nanu Mo Earth calling. Yeah, I don’t know. M calling. No, Mo. Mindy. Yeah. Earth calling Mindy. No, M calling Mindy. Come in. I don’t know. Can’t remember. Somebody will tell you. John said, “Not a Steve Austin fan, but that pole behind you makes it look like the couch on Tracy Island used to board Thunderbird 3.” Ah, there you go. Well, that’s the poll Michelle dances around later on this evening when she’s entertaining me in my love hotel. John’s helped you out. Awesome. More calling awesome. Awesome. Is the guy on on the back in got him off that subject, didn’t I? Ason coming. Lord, this goes back a long time, doesn’t it? Morindi. I vaguely I do remember Morindi, but only vaguely. I’m obviously too young. I don’t know the tune. No, it’s not more comedian, but I’m just throwing that one in because it’s the same sort of period and somebody might remember the tune or you’re not here very well. Um, so I bet I bet somebody racking their brains is getting focused. Um, they’re getting their eye out music. No, I’ve done them all. Oh, we’ll ask some more questions. There was a little spurt there while you were rambling on about something. I’ve got through them all now. I just want if there’s anything else. I I don’t want to talk to too many details about the trip because uh the videos are being edited and you’re going to see them. Please watch the videos if you can. Share them. Thumb them up. Let’s try and get them. Yeah, watch them twice. Share them with a few people. Um, let’s try and get YouTube to at least recommend me to five more of my subscribers. Um, I think this is going to be a great series. I think Japan is is one of my favorite countries in the world and um, it’s going to be a lot of fun. Um, we’ve already seen some great stuff. I’m always up for um criticism or constructive ideas if you think you know you’d like to see more of this or more of that. We we really are happy to try and accommodate you. I’m trying to include a bit more food and do a bit more cooking on the road. Um it’s a bit hard because it’s so hot. It’s really, you know, just either you’re you’re at nighttime getting bitten by mosquitoes or you’re in the daytime getting fried like an egg on in in the heat. So, let’s hope that weather breaks a little bit and we get out a bit more. We’re staying up in the mountains. What is a city we’re in? Um, Takasaki. Takasaki. Yes. And we are staying in a love hotel. Takasaki. Yes. Who said romance is dead? Um, John says, “A suggestion. The occasional map might be useful. Just an idea.” Yeah, it’s it’s I will definitely try to do something to show where we are. That that would be good. It’s just it’s tricky because it extra things like that always take that little bit much extra effort. But I like No, this is the comments I want. And you like to do these sort of things. I love doing that sort of stuff, but I get so it’s we’re up against You know, if I He’s got his head thinking now. Yeah, I I can animate, you know. I can animate. Uh, what are you laughing at, Dince? You just said LOL. Uh, don’t show that one. That’s another Easter egg, is it? No, I can’t show you that. I can’t show you. You can because it’s just the Yeah, you can. And you can freeze the picture and see see what that’s all about. What you looking at? We talked about that one. Sh. Stop laughing at my um his pictures, my efforts. You won’t share them all. Um what are you doing? I was looking to see [Music] today. The Oh, that’s the Easter egg. But that’s actually got the wrong picture in it. Sorry. I hope I haven’t used that. Oh, now I can’t stop it. Just going to keep playing. All right. Is there any more questions? Any more questions? What else have we struggled with? Nothing too much. No, done all right. It’s been fun. Got a nice view. You know, we we we tried. We got that ceiling that sort of gives amorous lighting at night. And we got this um they said they had no view in the hotel. Said no view, but we got two we have two arch windows. And when I went went for a walk yesterday and we came back and it was get starting to get dark, they were the only ones with lights on. We We’re the only idiots in the hotel that are just trying to treat it like a normal hotel. But John says, “Can’t stop it.” Shazba. What? Shazba. I don’t know. [Music] Anyway, that I don’t know if it was to do with that, but it definitely was not Shazba or whatever. Shazbat. my glasses. Dane Vin says, “You have quite an amazing talent with the animation.” Thank you. I do I do like animating and graphics and things. Shaz Mors exploitive. Was that what I haven’t watched more and Tracy said more mind. I haven’t watched Mora Mindy. We’ve got two Mora Mindy fans in. Yeah. for golly since it was on probably. I’m not one of these people I loved. I was a big fan of Moram Mindy. I was a big fan of all sorts of programs, but I’m not one to revisit things, you know? I don’t tend to sort of too long ago it said John. Yeah, I just don’t want to go back and watch them. But so Benjamin says, “How is the language barrier? Are people friendly?” People are Japanese people and ch China where we were just before, but the Japanese people are super friendly. There’s a sometimes there’s a little them and us sort of feeling you you get where generally when you’re walking around you get a feeling that people don’t want you to interact with them. Mainly because there’s very little English spoken in Japan. Very little and you really got to try. But because I’m quite um gregarious and I like talking, I I usually get people going straight away. I mean, I I went to the shops yesterday to get, you know, to buy basically milk. Um, just milk. Just milk. Not really. You didn’t go for milk. So, I stopped to get a coffee while I was there. I thought I’ll have a coffee. It It’s straight. There’s these wonderful little areas. You can see it. You can get a coffee for about a 80 cents a buck. Um, and it’s good coffee. And the girl came out to You have to pay for it before at the delicateess counter. And the girl came out and I was chatting with her basically with hands and knowledge. And I’m sure normally she would just come out and take the money and a cup and go and walk away, but she came round to the machine with me and helped me do the coffee and then she went off to get me the Wi-Fi password. Yeah, they’re very friendly. You know, we go to the supermarket and we don’t can’t find something and you always ask somebody and we have to get the whole stuff. Lovely people. lovely people in Japan as a rule. We find people and in even more so in the country where we are where we’re because we’re getting away from the city, we’re probably um a little more of an anomaly, you know, we’re not um there not lots of tourists going around doing what we’re doing and friendly drivers. Yeah. And you you the the the speed that you drive it’ll take us a long time to get around Japan because the speed limits because of the little cars are very slow. No one ever comes up your backside trying to push you. Never. No one ever gets angry. If you just if you just p if you poodle, if you decide, oh, I want to look for a place to stop, so I’m slow the car down and we’re looking up every sort of alleyway, you know, to see if there’s a little parking space like that. We p the car behind will generally drop back to be polite. They don’t want to be too close to you. So they they drop back and they’ll stay behind you for 10 15 minutes, you know, without any aggression whatsoever. Uh it’s really nice and you feel that that same mode gets into your way of of driving as well. Yeah. Never get annoyed with people. Although occasionally I might say, “Oh, that’s that naughty doing.” Okay. So, but that’s my western values. It is. So, John says, “A lot of Western vloggers in China have had strangers say hello or offer to help in various ways.” Yeah. Chi China is is is super friendly. Again, they’ll come up to you. There’s I think more so in in that they’ll come up to foreigners or to actually speak to more than Japanese. Much more Japanese more reserved and and you’ve got to sort of you’ve got to engage with Japanese to get them to engage very friendly with you. in China, they’ll just come up and start, you know, just you can be minding your own business and and they’ll give you a 45 minute long sentence and you’ll s going and all you can say is because I speak a little Cantonese. I speak a little Cantonese but and I can understand quite a bit of words but I I can’t understand at all uh really. So you might just sort of say um bang and everything give you about four hours of of of information about where you are and what you can order at the restaurant and yeah they’re very friendly. So John says one English family got strangers in China to roll a dice to decide their next destination. I’ve seen a lot of people in the past have done the dice traveling sort of thing. But I I it’s not our thing. It’s not our thing. And and I know somebody who did that quite convincingly and I know damn well that he rolled the dice sort of 40 times to make sure he got the right you know if it’s six I’m going to London and sort of roll it. Oh three two seven. Is there a seven? No seven can be can be to your Dungeons and Dragons. Benjamin says are you generally able to find English speakers in Japan or is it a case of relying on your phones with Google Translate? a lot of Google Translate and very simple talking and we we’ve been practicing really hard to learn as much Japanese as we can. But um no, a lot of Google Translate to be to be honest to to get things done. Um yeah, but you can sometimes find but it’s quite rare. Yeah. Yeah. I haven’t found maybe the younger younger people a little bit more so. Yes. I mean Yeah. at the waterfall. There was with a couple of ladies there and one spoke English and one didn’t speak any. No. So, it’s, you know, um then Vince said, “That’s true. The Japanese are quite reserved with interacting when interacting with foreigners. They’re friendly when they warm up to you.” Yeah. No, they’re they are friendly always. They’re so very friendly, but they just don’t really want to. They know. If you if I spoke really good Japanese, I’m sure that would really warm their hearts, but unfortunately we we don’t. And we we know little bits of many languages. That’s that’s life. Then Vince says, “Is the Google map reliable?” Very. And Ben says, “Hi.” Hi, Ben. Which Ben? Oh, Ben. Oh, hello Ben. We were talking about you earlier on. You’d have to go back and watch. I can’t remember what it was about now. I can. So, no, Google Maps is is is really good. Yeah, it works well, doesn’t it? Um, Google Translate is phenomenal. Yo, you can scan it. Yeah, that’s all good because you use that in the supermarket all the time cuz when you get milk like that, you don’t know what it is. I was scanning something in the supermarket and there was a lady, Japanese lady, and she saw me scan it and it turned into English and she was absolutely besotted. She thought that was some like wizardry, you know, and I guess if you don’t travel, you don’t use these sort of apps. Um, they’re great for us. I can show you uh on that. Um those of you that don’t travel much, and I know a lot of you do, but for instance, the milk when I said the milk was um Yeah. Make sure you’ve got it in your hand. Yeah. Do it that way. So, when I said the milk was um Oh, it’s left to right, isn’t it? So, look, I hold the phone there. See, it says milk. See? Oh, got to go left to right. There you go. And it all comes up in English. Yeah. Very cool. Now I’m showing you and most of you know this already and I do understand that. And we’ve been using it for oh long time. So many years. But some people won’t have seen that. And when I was doing it in a supermarket the other day, the woman that was next to me sort of was Oh. It was like like wizardry. Yeah. that Ben said, “You’ll have to repeat everything you said now that I’m here.” Ben, we are in a love hotel. We have just spent five days. Look at that. Look at that romantic Michelle’s pole there. Should be dancing around later on. A little view out the window. This is a sort of summary. We have a view. We have a view. It’s a beautiful place. I’m making a video of the hotel while we’re here. So, I’ll show the whole hotel and go into a little details about why we use these places because it’s like a big lounge area and we got this big sofa, plenty of places to put things down. We’ve just had Ben says are good. We’ve just had a a a long period of roughing it in the back of the car. You’ll have to go back and watch it. You can’t Yeah, you have to go back and watch it. Din says chat GT GPT can be used as an AI tour guide. Yes, it can. We use it even in a couple of videos. Someone commented the other day that they liked the um the segment you did when we were in um Geocaster. Yes. So, we do use it. Um but it can be inaccurate. So, it’s no good if you sort of say, “Hey, Jack GPT, where am I?” or “You are in sort of Madagascar.” No, I’m not in Madagascar. you know, so it it it but it is getting increasingly now I’ve used um uh AI to actually make the thumbnail for the video that I’ve just put up and I want to know do people like that sort of cartoony style thumbnails? because I I’ve um I’ve got some ideas to use some some animated some very simple what I want is very simple sort of a bit like I’ve used in my video actually a lot of this I’ve drawn myself so um you know oops you don’t have to leave the lights on and the door unlocked if you drop by knock now. Very proud of what I’ve been doing there. So, a lot of those animates, those things I’ve drawn drawn myself. Um, but I can use actually uh Chachi GPT or even better still um automatic 1111 stable diffusion to make some graphics uh for the thumbnails in some of the places that we visit. So I might be doing that. So Benjamin Penny said it’s a cool style but it makes you look a bit like Tintin. Yeah. Yeah. Kyo says not really. No. Oh, well, can’t win them all. So, it’s hard because there’s so many things to do when you’re sort of sat in a car all day long filming whenever you stop. So, any little extra help we can get to create some thumbnails. Um, would is, you know, is it useful? We’re probably going to use the tools anyway to to to do them to a limited degree. Dane Vince says, “I love it.” So, Ben says, “I know you both love love hotels.” We do, Ben. We love a good love hotel. Tracy said, “The hotel room looks nice.” And Ben said, “I’m in a Premier Inn at the moment. They’re not too bad.” LOL. Premier are pretty good. When we were walking in a premier in um is it Who was that? Ben. Ben. Oh, Ben. Uh when we were walking John Roach to L’s End, we we often preferred a a Premier Room because they had baths um and they were very comfortable. Now we were paying around about 29 Yeah. to 39 max for a premier in pounds and I believe they’ve all gone up a lot now. So yeah, we could always get one. Oh, and we’re paying a lot less for this. a fraction of that for this and we’re getting a beautiful uh breakfast included. That’s one of the main reasons that we use these love hotels. Free parking and all good parking. Yeah, nice. I think there’s a nice cream van just make hay while the sun shines. So, um, we’ll go on a little bit longer since Ben’s just dropped in as well and know how many people are in at the moment, but uh, uh, Ben says the new ones don’t though. Then removing them in the new rooms. I think they call them new evolution style. Oh, that’s not so good. No bathrooms in the newer style rooms. That’s I mean, I don’t particularly like a bath in a hotel anyway, but No, but it was good when we were doing the trouble. But here, these ones are good because they’re huge and they sort of like got they fill up in. Do you remember the one that we stayed in um Osaka the first time? Yeah. And it was like had a great big jacuzzi bath like two people could get in it comfortably. But when you went to turn the water on, it filled up in about 3 minutes. It was like a almost like a storm of water, like a storm drain, you know? It just filled up with hot water so quickly. And luckily it had an automatic switch off. So as soon as it got to a certain level it just stopped. Otherwise you just walked and you know you’d have flooded it. You’d have flooded the Ben says he means no bath. Not no bathroom. Yeah. Yeah. I I I gathered that. So Dane Vince says, “How do you look for a hotel? Is it a local app?” Uh we use all we use so many apps. We It’s one of the things that keep us, you know, within our budget to travel for god over 10 years now. um is that we’re very good at finding good deals on hotels and we use every app. I mean, and sometimes when you find a hotel, you think, “Oh, that looks all right. That looks might be within our budget or something, you check it on Google or check it with the all the apps to see because sometimes it’s a huge difference between one app and another.” Sure. I mean particularly even hotels like this if you if you find a a good love hotel in Osaka for example use Google or any other search engine to search for the name of that hotel and see what other uh platforms are are and sometimes yeah you can book it one night on one platform and it’s really cheap and you go the next night and it’s not on there but it’s on a different platform and it’s cheaper isn’t it for here in in Japan And we’re finding a goa tends to be we sometimes we won’t use a god for a year and but a god is becoming quite good. Uh trip.com booking.com google gen generically for searching tvarago has even come back to into life which I haven’t used for for many years. You’ve got all the usual um Google usually throws them all up there. You say oh but you rarely book through Google. you rarely get the best price through Google. So, lots of apps, lots of different apps. We have dozens of apps and we also get all the local Japanese apps. Um, in China you can Yeah. And the ones in China. So, like there’s sep in China which is a version of trip.com but it’s Chinese.com and that one gave you better better value rates. Uh, if you’re in India it’s go and make my trip. my trip.com which work. Tracy said, “I would love to stay in a traditional Japanese house.” Tracy, we we we went into a few days ago, we went into a a traditional Japanese house, beautiful traditional Japanese, and I filmed it. Now, I’m not sure where to put it in the videos because it was a random town that we went to. And I might just have to sort of if it doesn’t fit into the story because it was just before we set off on on this journey. So maybe we’ll do a roundup video at the end and just throw words in that we didn’t. We we’ll probably just drop it in somewhere. Look out for it. It was really I I think I said two or three times in the video, I wish I I I was so I could so live in this house. Just so pretty. So beautiful. Yeah, it was very nice. all um Tatami floors. Um beautiful. Tracy said she would love to see it. Please. We will. We will put it up. I will put it up. And just have to keep watching. It was pretty. Everything about it was pretty. The little sort of um um there was a little room upstairs. We went up into the loft area and I had to go into this little room and the doorway, I kid you not, was not much bigger than the laptop screen that I’m on here to sort of like crawl through and it was a room. It was It was kind of cool. Benjamin said you could clip it into a short. We could, but it’s too good to be a short. It’s shorts are okay after the video’s gone up. We probably will make a short. We’ll put a short of it, but it’s uh yeah, I don’t I think shorts are they have a purpose, but you’re not learning anything from shorts. They go up after the the main video. So, Ben’s back on the premier in bathrooms. He says they also make the taps in the bathroom really slow like they do at Heathrow airport now. It’s so stupid. So, the older style rooms are better for different reasons along. Yes. Yes. But eventually there will be new ones, won’t they? Because we revamp them all. Now, this this place has got a big bath. It’s not as nice as the We’re not probably going to use this one. It’s a little old. Little bit old. And but the last place I mean, I generally quite have a shower, but say the last place we stayed in had a which was another love hotel had a really nice bath and uh we did use it. Yes. Yeah. I don’t think that hotel we filmed we were just getting our Yeah. We were just we had a lot lot of things to sort out and trying to catch up and Yeah. So, um, the plan is to go from, uh, Takasaki up through the center of the country now. So, trying to stay in the a little bit of altitude so we can keep the temperatures down below 6,000° C. You know, it it’s been so hot on the coast, so we thought, well, if we come up into the the hills, we’re about um uh 9 8 or 900 meters, I think. Yeah, it cooled down a little. Not a lot, but it was bearable. So, we’re going to spend in a couple of days we’re going to get back onto the road and we’re going to spend at least four days sort of wild camping and then we’ll we might four or five days and then we might take another break, get the videos edited and get them up, do another live stream if we can. Um, and um, the idea you said about the map, uh, who who said that? It’s either John or um, anyway, I’ll try and put some map. We got to kind of we should try and publish where we are so people can follow us because we come all the way from Osaka all the way down round the peninsula which in itself is, you know, several hundred kilometers and then we’ve come up and then we’ve gone inland a little bit. So, we’ve done um I don’t know 8 must be that 800 kilometers or so, maybe more. Maybe more and about five days of driving. Five or six. So, Ben says, “Are you going to do a hotel room review walkthrough before you leave the hotel?” This one I am. Yeah. I’m going to film this, Ben, and explain why we pick this sort of place because I think it’s it’ll be quite interesting. I’ll make that a little standalone video. It might be a shorter one. I’ll just put it up. Um, but definitely and if we if we get any more that I’m interested, I might share those again. Um, and he says, “I forgot just how cold it is in the UK. Even during the summer, I’m in the on-site restaurant with the jumper on. Um, it’s been very cold. I’m not used to this. 15 to 18.” Oh, that’s not good. But I tell you what, I’d give 15 to 18 now. It’d be so much easier to to do this tour in cooler weather where you can just put some clothes on. It’s so difficult to keep cool. Yeah. Um the the Japanese I think generally people are struggling with this heat. The shopping malls are quite busy. Shopping mall. We spent an hour or two in one, didn’t we? Yeah. There’s some nice armchairs, weren’t there? A lot of And the bathrooms, like I said earlier, they’re like hotel bathrooms. Even though they’re public bathrooms, they are so I mean to say you could eat your meal off the floor or eat your food off the floor is is almost gross in one way, but it’s almost true. It’s uh yeah, very clean. Ruby Slipper says, “Hi, strangers.” Ruby, how are you? D said, “There’s one musical road highway near Tagasaki. The road sings.” We might have to have a look see if we can find it. Well, we’ll see if if we’re going. We’re trying to get all the way. Look, it’s expensive enough renting the car, you know, the car’s expensive. So, we’re and and and then all the other bits and pieces. So, what why I’m saying that, sorry, is we’re I don’t like the highways in any country. I hate the pages. I don’t like they’re so dull. There’s nothing to see when you get on these paid um highway roads. Um and we’ve noted this as we’re driving up, haven’t we, Michelle? kind of said, you know, we wouldn’t have seen this if we’d been on the highway. Wouldn’t have seen this if we’ been on the highway. So, we’re trying to do the whole of Japan without going on any paid roads. Um, two reasons for that. One is is it’s always the best way to travel, but secondly, they’re very expensive. I mean, I think I calculated or there’s an app you can calculate from north to south. I think it’s about $400 worth of toll roads just to go from the north to the south. And I thought, well, that’s just $400 to sit on usually quite a barricaded awful road that’s got no particular great I mean, the scenery can be okay, but there’s no when you’re going through the towns, you’re always going to see cool things. Yeah. You s, “Oh, let’s go there.” Or Yeah. Yeah. So, Ben says he’ll swap temperatures. Somebody um uh when I was talking about getting a car, a Japanese uh person I met said, “Oh, you can’t you can’t get around the country, not on not on the toll roads.” And um I think there’s an attitude that because they don’t travel quite often between cities that they just jump on the the toll roads and and and do it because they don’t want to see what’s in between. But you can you can 100%. So far, we’ve been able to come all this way without going on one toll road. And I haven’t felt that we’re going any slower or um missing anything. No, we’re seeing we’re seeing lots more. Actually, we were sat somewhere the other day and at where we had where we were cooking by that little shrine when I was cooking the food and there was a a road above us and I said, “Gosh, those people up there are seeing nothing.” You know, they were like on one of these sort of fly over roads. So I missed a question of John’s. He said, “Has the hotel got a washing machine?” No. No. Do um they don’t generally have them in these hotels. If if you want a washing machine, you generally will get them in in in most hotels in the smaller hotels. The tiny rooms where you can touch the walls often have washing machines. They have everything. Yeah, they do. Um but the love hotels, people aren’t coming here to do their washing. No, not coming here for washing. But uh so um Ben says, “How much is the car rental?” It’s expensive, Ben. For me, I I find it uh hard. I I don’t like spending money at the best of times. That’s the uh He wants to compare the prices to far north Queensland. Um it 60 days is about uh 3,000 dollars, I think, is approximately. I don’t even like thinking about it, Ben, because on top of that, you you got your insurance which is on top of that and then obviously it’ll cost, you know, we’re we’re putting sort of 50 bucks worth of petrol in every every sort of other day or so. Um, so it’s expensive, but we it we’re we’re paying for the experience. This is we could we could do Thailand, Vietnam, and China for that much money. we can probably spend all in, you know, in just two or three months. Um, so it’s a lot more expensive, but not compared. I mean, Australia would be a lot more expensive, I would think, for renting a vehicle, although I I never said I think I paid 3,000 Australian in far north Queensland for 2 months. So, so similar. And that is and Australia is expensive. I mean, that’s you can buy a car for $3,000, you know, if you if you really want, you can buy a vehicle. And people say, “No, you can’t.” You can 100% you can buy vehicles for $3,000. You can drive that thing then and sell it all the time. We’ve done it. We’ve done it and and drive it and sell it 6 months later for $2,000 200 $2,300 and get almost all your money back. I mean, we could do that here, but you can’t buy a car. Yeah. The regulations here are crazy. We wanted we wanted to buy um a little Japanese car. That’s what what we wanted to do. But you have to firstly you have to h prove you have a parking space. There’s actually a parking there’s a parking z that comes out and checks that you own that you have a parking space before you can purchase a car. We sat down with the guy in his garage no we said anyway and he said no. So, so that money that I’ve put into renting a vehicle could have gone a good way because cars in Japan are very uh inexpensive. Uh you can buy um and generally low mileage compared to Australia. Yeah. I mean, you can buy the brand new version of what we’re driving for uh 20,000 Australian dollars uh off, you know, straight from the garage forcourt, which so you know, that’s a uh a good chunk. definitely would have done that if we could. And if you bought one like a year old, you probably get something for around 15,000, which and and sell it for it would be easy to do, but Japan is really tricky. Uh the regulations here are really tricky for all sorts of things. I decided or at the moment I’ve I’ve sort of put on hold getting a SIM card because I I just my head can’t get around the idea of paying $180 for a SIM card. Um so and I know and I said to Michelle if we if we feel as we’re going around it really is impacting our ability to create content then we will get one. But at the moment it hasn’t. I don’t think there’s been any real use for a SIM card. Um, we can upload from almost anywhere. Yeah. Uh, and we can do lives when we stop and and that’ll be fine. So, Ruby says, “Have you guys ever been to Japan before?” Yes. We had a little series before. Ruby also, you know, um, we get less views now on the channel since we’ve been doing traveling and and and not doing the cooking. So, you may have missed it, but we did a a series where we were here during the Sakura time, the springtime, and it’s a good series actually. You could put a little link up, Michelle. It’s worth watching because there’s some really nice stuff in Fukuoka. Um, yeah, if if you get chance, Ruby, uh, uh, visit and watch the the previous Japan series. So yes, Fukuoka, Osaka, um Kyoto. Um we’ve never been to uh Tokyo and we may not go again. Yeah, we’ve got a few friends in Tokyo and I I just I’m not a big city person. I’m not a big fan. Is there a question there, Michelle? Just possibly. I’m just uh I know you’re looking for that playlist while I sit here. You can read. So Ben says the prices of cars are expensive in Barbados. Um yeah, I remember you saying before Ben about that and then he answered the question yesterday went to Japan during Sakura and Ruby says I’ll be checking on it. Yeah. So let me see if I can just find it if Michelle can find a playlist from the last Japanese tour. Otherwise I’ll put it down in the description if I can’t find it. Um yeah, so don’t worry, we can do it do it after. Um what else? What else? Looks beautiful out there now. The blue sky and clouds moving over. Yeah. Is it getting it? Let’s see. 20 six. Hey Google, what’s the weather like? Currently in Takasaki, it’s 29° and cloudy. Tonight is 27° and clear. See, Takasaki today is 29°. Much cooler. much cooler up here in the hills. Um, and yet we’re sleeping in a hotel. So, that was good. Actually, the night before we arrived in the hotel, we had a decent night’s sleep cuz the we were up high enough for the temperature to drop. It was. Yes. Yeah. You put in that. So, I’ve put the Japanese playlist in there. That’s the old series. And then there’s the new series which is going to be added to Yes. which has only got one episode at the moment. It has. Please go back and watch it. Watch it twice. Watch it three times. Share with your friend. Let’s see if we can get this series rolling. The more people we can watch, the more suggestions we’ll get, the more um interactions we can have. Um the regulars, most of you are still coming in to watch the videos, but there’s a whole group of people that say to me constantly, I never I never see your videos come in my feed. Um it’s just the way don’t think we can do much about it. So Benjamin said, “Another hot August night.” Ben says, “I want hot weather.” Well, you have to put a jump on. There’s a balance, though. Ben, there’s a balance. Yeah, this I mean, we like hot weather, but at night, you need to have it a little bit cooler or be in have some sort of air flow because you cannot sleep. If you are sleeping outside and it’s 38° and humid, it’s like humidity. Reminds me of Taiwan in the tent. Yeah. The first night, everything we do, it seems the wrong time of year, doesn’t it? Um, it does. The whole of last year, cycling around Europe in the rain, in the height of summer. We went in the summer in the best time of year, and we believed that Japan was going to be a little cooler, but I think um this is the hottest Yeah, we knew it was going to be warm, but it’s the hottest since records the hottest summer since records began in the 1800s. So yeah, there every if you turn the news on that’s all it’s just everybody sort of like passing out on the pavements and thermometers sort of bursting out the mercury on the top. That’s all that all they’re talking about. So Dane Vince says you should try the public bath onens. We are going to try onzens. Yes, we we will look out for an onzen. Um we were desperate for one. I mean, you’re not getting you don’t get washed that easily when you’re traveling, so you do get a bit pongy, but you can you can freshen up cuz the bathrooms are so so cool and clean. So, we were looking for an onzen the other day, but there wasn’t one near to us. Yeah, because we are quite rural at times, aren’t we? When we’re when we’ve got opportunity, we want to stop then. Definitely on feature in the in the future. I can’t imagine that we won’t do one or two or three on over the next what have we got about 50 days left of touring. Yeah. Um, will we get into Hkaido? I’d like to. Um, I think it’s about $800 to take the car across. Uh, so that’s another sort of So, we we need to know that we can we can get over there. I would love to be able to drive down to Fukuoka. Um, I’m not convinced. Are we running out of battery, Michelle? There you go. I’m not You’re almost like bye. See you. Um, it’s a big country, you know, it’s a it’s it’s not the USA, but it’s a big country. And my first ambition was really just to at least um do the whole sort of coastal drive on on this island, but it would be nice if we can get to Hokkaido also and get down to Fukuoko and Beu and Yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see. It probably get the only prohibitive thing would be that we’ll be filling up with petrol every sort of couple of days or so and that can that can add up. We’ll see. So Benjamin says, “Have you run into any squat toilets in Japan or have they all style?” No. No. Lots of squats. There’s a there’s a good mixture, but as a rule, um uh it’s more common to see uh heated seat, musical playing, wash your backside, um blow dry your backside. But if there’s numerous stools, then there will always be some people still in some of the older places, I don’t think they’re really building new places with squat toilets. Um uh but you see them frequently. Yeah. But there’s almost always if there is a squat toilet, there is also um a magical mystery tour toilet. And it’s usually got a little picture on the door so you know which one to go into. Yeah. Yeah. But no, they’re great. Yeah. Yeah. Very impressed. So, any other questions before we wrap up? 100 minutes we’ve been on. 100 minutes. 100 minutes. And the internet’s good here. Yeah. though we did die last night, didn’t it? We was just saying we was just saying we said let’s watch a few videos, catch up with some things and it just went just let’s just relax and it went now I have a fairly I have a a techy background also as long as as well as food and all sorts of other backgrounds. But anyway, one of my backgrounds is techie. So I managed to hack into their server, change all the language over to English and uh reset the modem from our we got internet our room. So we got internet but I think I might have changed all the passwords. So probably nobody else has got internet now. You didn’t change the password. I didn’t change the passwords. So John says that or one line road down the west coast of Hokkaido looks great. Yeah. and it plays uh God Save the Queen as you drive down it apparently. Ben says, “Are you stay are you staying in Japan for only two months?” Uh we’ll be here for three months, but we’ve we had a we had to have a little bit to get ourselves organized. Took us 10 days or so Ben just to find our feet and we’ve got 60 days now of um of the car and then we’ve got a few days at the end of and then we’ll have a few days. So it’ be two and a half months, three months max. Yeah. And then we are hoping that we might be able to go to um South Korea afterwards to Jju, but that might not happen. It’s a long way away. Yeah. You know how we’d like to plan. Yeah, we haven’t planned anything. Tracy says, “Are you doing any any cycling around Japan?” Uh no, and not in this heat. No, nobody’s cycling in Japan at the moment as we’ve been driving the hills. I don’t I wouldn’t get the hills. Hills is Yeah. It’s a very It might But it’s Helious Hilly Hillas country. Yes. So, um I would like to do a bit of cycling in Japan. Michelle and I always We did talk about that, didn’t we? You talked about getting a couple of mammacheris which are like the little Japanese cool bikes that they all ride over here. Very similar to the Dutch bikes and you know with a little basket on the front and sort of and just sort of cycle around Japan but in truth getting from A to B the hills just I mean people cycle like crazy in Japan and cycle everywhere but nobody’s cycling town to town and to be honest now even we’ve seen a lot more electric bikes haven’t we? Yeah. Everybody’s on electric. Almost everybody now, you know, this is going to be a whole generational change. There’s going to be like everyone in Japan was like super slim and cycling and now everyone’s just like and I think people are just going to balloon out because they’re just not although the the food the food’s healthy. Yes. The Ben says, “Yes, go cycling and go camping in the heat. You’ll love it.” Yeah, I know. I get a ridiculously small tent. Let’s get a tent that’s in infuriatingly tiny. But you said that in the first video. You said, “At least we’re not camping or or hiking.” I mean, cycling or hiking. We’re in the car cuz I wasn’t sure with the tsunami quite what we were doing. No. Um Ben also says, “Why does the Premier charge for decent Wi-Fi?” They charge for Wi-Fi, don’t they? Yeah, we could go over that either. There’s something wrong with England. I’m sorry, guys. So, there’s something really Let’s not go down that street. We’ll talk this another time, but there’s something wrong where they charge you to park on every inch of coastline around the country and they charge you for Wi-Fi in a hotel. It’s just the it’s I’m surprised that there isn’t sort of like a meter on the tap, you know, glass water. Oh, you know, keep feeding the slop like the old you remember the old days. I’ve never had one, but 50 50p in in the meter. Some people’s houses and some people’s houses used to have a meter and they be watching the telly. Anybody got any 50ps? I remember some people had that. Yeah, I know somebody who had that. Yeah. Anyway, John says we have water meters. Yes. Yeah. Not a good thing. No, water is a fundamental water’s free right for everybody. Japan, by the way, water is drinking water pretty much anywhere. You can drink the drink the tap water anywhere. We’ve only had to buy bottled water for our camping purposes. Yes. Now it’s starting. You can see the sun. Oh, can that focus? Benjamin says, “Watching the telly. You better have paid your license fee for that, too.” You should never pay a license fee. Even if you watch the BBC, you should never pay a license fee. We should all we they should put everybody in prison license fee. It’s like I was saying the other day when we were just on this last video actually. Um when you’re driving through tunnels that taxpayers paid to build and then they governments think they can start charging you to go through the tunnels. It’s like we gave you the money to build the damn thing and start charging us. just now charging you for going over bridges that you paid to build. Anyway, there you go. We finishing on that note. No, we’re not finishing on that note. We’re finishing on this note. Couple of days rest for Michelle and I. We got some editing to do. Um we’re we’re really doing quite well on the editing. Definitely. You’re going to be seeing stuff really up to date. Um, so you can give us advice about the videos and I can, you know, try to accommodate things a little bit if it’s possible. Um, anything else, Michelle, that I’ve missed? Um, no. No. Everyone’s ringing about the water. Yeah, I’m not I’m not doing those comments. Now, here’s a little shameless plug. If I haven’t got any Patreons, I don’t think anymore, but if anyone wants to come over to Patreon or super chat us or help towards run, you know, want to buy us a coffee or or anything to uh offset the bloody ridiculous cost of traveling around Japan. Much appreciated. Uh not necessary at all. and we never put up a pay wall for what we do anyway and would never do that. I’m white. You’ve thought about it, but we never I thought about doing like a members thing on YouTube because there’s sometimes I want to talk about like do lives that are that I don’t want to be seen by everybody, but just people that we kind of know because sometimes we want to talk about, you know, personal things about what’s going on and we don’t want to just we want to know that it’s people who who’s watching it and it’s not just people sort of laughing us anyway. So, but yes, just watch the videos, like the videos, comment on the videos, share the videos, and we would appreciate if enough people went over to to Patreon and was support on Patreon or or that sort of thing, then we might start doing some content for those platforms, but yeah, I think it’s unlikely. Anyway, love to you all. Any questions before we go? No, no. Tracy says, “Say stay safe.” Oh, what’s this one? Forgot about that. Yeah, I forgot about that one. I can’t do it. There’s no hearts going. Hang on. Hang on. Maybe that doesn’t work. There it is. I put Oh, you do it. I’ll do it on the side there. Look. What do you put with your one thumb? One thumb. Hearts. Hearts. Thumbs. I’ve forgotten what they all were now. And what’s the other one? Balloons. How did you get balloons? What was balloons? Oh, I think it was Oh, that was that. Yeah. Yeah. Betty. Oh, one balloon. How do we get balloons? I got balloons. They’re coming up from behind. Yeah, they’re coming in front now. So, that’s a V day sort of thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, then Ben says, “Yes, you need to do the love part, thumbs up, and the fireworks before you go. It’s the law.” I forgot all about it, Ben. I just did that. And this is where they spend 30 minutes figuring out where what the Mac does. Bloody Max. We learn something new every time. No, we don’t. We learn the same thing every time and pretend it’s had confetti before. That’s a new one, maybe. All right. Love you all. Take care. And if you’re watching this later on, we’ll be monitoring the comments for the next sort of hour or so. Thank you, Benjamin. Always great to catch up with everybody. Always great to catch up. Thank you for joining us. And um I got to do a bit of cooking. He has. He’s got to cook my dinner. What am I having tonight? Don’t know what we’re having. Take care. Love you all. Um, check out the videos. Please watch them. Please share them. Let’s try and get some views on these things. Tomorrow, I think. Another one coming tomorrow. Cool one tomorrow. Yeah, cool one tomorrow. And um, and another one. Let us know what you think. Take care now. Bye bye.

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