48 Hours Exploring Japan's Hidden Countryside | With a Catch...

[Music] good morning we're in the mountains of shiga japan right now i'm doing a little bit of pre-scouting for a mini hike that i want to take today that out there is naga hama city i was hoping to catch some of those beautiful autumn colors because we've gotten a cold snap lately and that brings on the really vibrant fall leaves but it looks like i was just just a little bit too early i drove out here again by campervan but this camper van is just a little bit bigger than the one that we borrowed last time [Music] so that's gonna be the hiking path and this is where we are it's called the ibuki on my driveway before i actually climb up there there's something really important that i need from the campervan this here this is what i've got for my camper van this time and it is gorgeous inside it is borderline luxurious inside of here look at all this space excuse the mess i'm just charging up some stuff right now but this turns into a bed there's like additional bedding space here i've got my battery but it's got a battery built in and whatnot and there's an extra sleep are you dude dude what are you sleeping again you were gone for so long this is my buddy mitch uh if you watch any of the kagoshima documentary like the sakurajima documentary mitch was my big supporter in camera help and everything for that get changed we gotta go look at that hey dude you good yes i think i found our hiking path um norm knowing you is it safe there's a fence there's a fence there's a fence there's a fence gotta pay first and then located does that say bears yeah are there bears here probably not we should be out right so did you pay to come in here both times yeah it's technically optional but you know they help protect us from bears [Laughter] the terrain so uh our 300 yen pays our stuff like this right dude do we even need to open it we should go under it right we're just tokyo lensing it [Music] you know i'm starting to get an understanding why it costs so much to come up here when uh so this road that we use to come up here costs about 3 000 ish yen and it is it's a it's a beautiful road it's gorgeous and mitch was like why do we have to pay 3 000 yen just to drive up the side of a mountain yeah i didn't get it but then norm was like you'll see and yeah this is i don't even know i honestly don't even know how high we're gonna go but i wanted to come out right now because this road is actually closed from november until like the end of april in spring snow or something yeah a lot of the like mountain roads in japan just close in the colder seasons because they can't be properly maintained so i kind of feel like we're in the sky [Music] dude what is that it feels almost like post-apocalyptic it looks like it's a fence for giant cows what is it shiga prefecture home to japan's largest cows let's go this way and check out the giant cow fence all these doors make it feel so like uninviting but like look at this and dude listen to that silence [Music] is this the only hiking path no there's actually i think three or four hiking paths split through the area the one that we're on right now is like a 40 minute hiking path i think i think it goes up even higher up here and you can actually see some of the other like hiking trails down there there's a few people down there even dude you can also see some paragliding parasailing what is that paris i don't know if the camera's gonna be able to even pick it up it's gonna be so tiny out there but look at these views though ah i never tire of this there's actually like a mountain hut up there that we can hike to but there's there's people there and i'm not in a people mood we're in a nature mood i'm in a standing on the mountain mood but we've actually got to get to our next destination you can see the shinkansen out there oh my god you can [Music] so when we drove up the mountain this morning there were these crazy photographers sitting on the edge of cliff literally on the edge of death and for the life of me i wouldn't stay there i wouldn't shoot there and secondly what are they taking pictures of i have no mountains it's just mountains i don't i don't like it's literally just a mountain range out there i have not the first clue [Music] there they are they're they're literally still there what are they doing i have no i've got to find out what these guys are shooting i just okay that's it all right give me a second i'm gonna find out what these guys are shooting right back they're shooting birds over here as well there's just an entire group of them and they just gather right on the that's not that bad but the guys over here like they are right on the edge of that oh like i've been known to put my camera in some pretty iffy spas but i don't i don't even think i would do that it makes me wonder if one of them's ever lost a camera off the edge so what were they doing birds they're taking pictures of birds birds birds in retrospect it almost seems kind of obvious probably should have guessed that but yeah i should have guessed that either way it was a fun conversation [Music] how are you this comfortable going down this windy road with this large of a vehicle it is pretty steep and you can feel the weight of the vehicle but it's it's not that bad i drive a lot in japan so i i actually enjoy this you live in kagoshima you have a car do you do much i i really haven't seen you do much driving so i drive a lot but i don't drive big cars i drive i drive like coupes and stuff like that so like a little road like this i just like tear up and it'd be fun but not in it [Music] [Music] so admittedly that was a bit longer of a drive every single announcement that they could do they did it right then we gotta find food of some sort do you think there's a supermarket around here somewhere what are you thinking i'm thinking abby sounds good [Music] how long did we spend in that supermarket it's like a night time now oh we got all our nabe stuff i wanted to do some exploring of the area while it's still light out but it seems like that's no longer an option so we'll probably have to do that first thing tomorrow there we go we even grabbed ourselves a bit of a knobby how do we here's a gift give this a quick wash all right and uh we don't have a knife scissors i think scissors will work on the nikki but i'm not sure how we're going to do this the cabbage you don't cut much damage is this uh is this the tokyo lens way of doing things this is absolutely the tokyo lens where you're doing things just gotta cut them on an angle yeah it makes it look better i don't know if it does anything but i feel like this is actually better than a knife oh my god can i take a photo of this i gotta take a photo of this that's how you prep your nave scissors work okay it's uh it's not bad make it pretty i'm gonna get it pretty people i know are watching [Laughter] dude how much beer do you all right there we go yeah that's my beer can i point out this is the one time the scissors would have been appropriate to open this package and you didn't use the scissors what are you doing we're gonna sink right there just wash our hands okay oh my god what are you doing get it over here look at this is that this is not how navi works well you have chopsticks right we just put some back okay yeah can we put some back do the one go like that and then one two there and this is a screen that is so cool it goes from look look look look it goes it goes shade screen how cool is that i've never seen somebody have so much fun with a camping car in my entire life mitch i think you were honestly the perfect person to bring along on this trip i've been pressing all the buttons i don't know what they do but there's a lot of them i've been pressing them we have been eating like on the go from dave dude guys if you guys at home listen norm moves he's like this is like tokyo lens schedule this is not mitch scheduled this is tokyo lens cuddle he moves and there's no time to eat like go go go go this is like i think the first time that me and norm are actually gonna sit down and have like an actual meal together here we go we gotta stir it once or twice all the meat is just like clumped together that's why we don't do that i got a perfect break that's got to be lucky for something right that's good that's right that's i know what you need [Laughter] [Music] still really want to explore this area in the morning because the whole purpose of coming out here we got here so late i'm so exhausted we should get this all cleaned up oh i forgot i had cheetos that was your bless your name i'm so happy you guys are gonna have cheetos and go to bed i will binge on cheetos tomorrow get cleaned up [Music] beautiful spot with that castle in the sky oh my god i didn't see the castle oh look at this castle in the sky [Music] good morning mitch looking all fancy in his glasses there we are finally exploring the area of gujarat and there's something up here that i want to show you guys it's actually this narrow little street right here actually all the streets of this place are beautiful but look at this so at first look it almost feels like you shouldn't come down this alley but this here is the igawa creek and it's actually one of the most beautiful spaces i say that this is one of the most beautiful spaces in the area but the entire area is just cha it's just filled with beautiful spaces like even mitch out here in the distance just looking at the fish in the creek look at this [Music] areas like this are used for example this is a fire bucket so they'd be able to gather water to put out fires and whatnot but the real gem of this place is down here as i navigate the danger stairs let's head down to the water mitch and i actually did a tokyo lens explorer like live stream walk through the area this morning and it just i will link it up above but it has made me fall in love with the gujo hachiman area look at this [Music] [Music] so [Music] i love this place can i just say norma's really taken to this place i have never seen him this excited about any place before [Music] come on dude you know this place reminds me of the water temple from zelda exactly that exactly that [Music] [Music] so we have been walking through here for some time now and mitch can't stop talking about zelda it looks like a zelda video game it really does i've never seen a more zelda looking place in japan before like everything about it look at these along the river there's all these walking paths like what we're on right now and they keep connecting up to the city at different places but even the back streets of the city are just absolutely phenomenal i honestly don't know how it's taking me this long to come out to this place i kind of feel the same way like i didn't even know this place existed and now i'm in love with it in a day i even just look at the buildings built up along the river here you got a little oh jesus statue up here we need to find another stairway to go up so we can check out so i think this stairway here should lead us back up into the town so we can explore some of the back streets ah yep okay i know this street i know this street this is that tiny little alleyway street that we found this morning which means actually back streets would be we'll be back oh this way i absolutely adore these little back street areas and the city of gujo has actually gone through great efforts to preserve the area and its culture it was originally a city divided into different towns like blacksmith town and the craftsman town all of these other towns and it's been really well preserved and taken care of but unfortunately this doesn't get the same attention that places like kyoto do and it's got that same like temple and shrine density beauty density because that's one of the things that makes kyoto great right how much stuff is in a single place but this place is like that but without all the people right like you can actually do this in a day and yeah it's like authentic you know what i mean yeah speaking of people i would actually just love to come back here and do like a thing on like the lifestyle of the people who live here dude that would be awesome that reminds me mitch is actually working on a channel with alex who i did the live streams with when we were out in kagoshima and they're making like a people of kagoshima documentary channel i'll i'm going to link that i'm going to link that so thank you very much i like it it is a nice chat okay we're going to go down this way i think there's some like really [Music] honestly look at this place it's just shrines and back alleys shrines and back alleys it is an honest plethora of options i don't get to use that word enough plethora i don't know where to usually [Music] dude everyone here is like so friendly it's like they gave an announcement that said hey everybody be nice as tourists it's like walking into an apple store except nobody's trying to sell you anything but i like i feel like i almost feel like i'm gushing like i don't want to feel like like i'm trying to like sell this place but it's real but it's yeah like if you don't believe it like look at another another backstreet like watch watch the live stream that we did today as i said it'll be linked you can just watch my excitement increase throughout the entire thing 100 unedited as well like everybody's like greeting us and saying hello it was so fun [Music] funny part is though we've been in a castle town all day and haven't really done anything with the castle yeah but you know japanese castles in general look best from a distance yeah they're really like part of the landscape yeah yeah if you've ever gotten up close to a japanese castle they're nice inside it's like a museum inside yeah you have to keep going keep going yeah they're like part of the picture of the landscape yeah yeah i like them but i like the view of them more than like being does that make sense am i making sense you make perfect i think that makes sense [Music] this right here is actually japan's number one spring water spot i had no idea and look at this it has it has really clouded over like how long were we in those back streets uh i i walked through this and the net just stole my trifle we've been up here enjoying these beautiful views and mitch will not let it go about the fences okay it's either giant cows it's just not cows or it's for the wind so it doesn't erode the mountain well it it eroded the enjoyment of this i'm gonna go with giant cows okay giant cows it is if you know leave it in the comments it's probably win [Laughter] it's just swinging there it's just have you ever in your life seen an empty vending machine in japan no what is this it's not even turned on no wow what time is it mitch it's 5 30 norm why are we here at 5 30. have you when's the last time you saw mount fuji up close like four years ago congratulations i don't even think i've ever taken a photo with mount fuji actually oh should we should take a photo okay mitch photo [Music] oh [Music] you

Channel: Tokyo Lens

Views: 105,955

Keywords: Japan, Tokyo, Vlog, Tokyo Lens, Tokyo Vlog, Japan Vlog, Norm Nakamura, Norm Tokyo Lens, Japanese, traveling japan, exploring japan, explore japan, tokyo lens japan, japan countryside, countryside japan, japanese countryside, where to go in japan, what to do in japan, what to see in japan, gujo hachiman, gujo, 48 hours in japan, japan travel vlog, things to do in japan, where should I go in japan, best spots in japan, japans countryside

Id: SXp-LBqHENw

Length: 24min 17sec (1457 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 07 2021