I Spent 48 Hours in Japan's WORST Rated Place | Feat. @sharlainjapan

so this astonishing statue towering above us is not only the tallest statue in Japan but the tallest bronze Buddha statue on the planet the ushku daibutsu here in ibaraki 120 meters tall and it is an incredible sight to see a few minutes ago I was lost in the car trying to find it and I spotted it five kilometers in the distance like the North Star so you can never miss it when you're in ibaraki ibaraki is one hour north of Tokyo and unfortunately in 2021 it was ranked in a poll as the least attractive prefecture in all of Japan now that's not very fair I've been to Iraqi I know it's nice and so I've been invited here by bracky to take a look around and see what actually makes this premature a nice place to visit because having been lucky to visit all 47 prefixes in Japan each and every prefecture has something unique about it and we're going to find out what is an ibracking and we're not going to be doing it alone either we're going to be joined by a very special friend indeed a nurse not ryota thank God this thing is insane you guys know the daibutsu in NADA right the really famous one when you're there and NADA looking up at it it feels massive apparently you can fit that statue in the palm of the hand of this Buddha that tells you just how big that thing is you can fit the Whole World in His Hands the whole world but also you look taller than that statue so it can't be that big can it camera tricks coming up on our ibaraki adventure we try out one hell of a bathing experience and a spectacular abandoned school I unleash my critically acclaimed cooking talents in the kitchen preparing local sober noodles and we make our getaway down river by kayak [Music] with an abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables ibaraki is ranked third in the country for its agricultural output and what better place to enjoy the local produce than what might be Japan's most glamorous campsite armed with a barbecue at our Hidden Mountain accommodation it's the perfect backdrop to eat at all including ibraki's mouth-watering brand of wagyu beef attaching you but first things first let's check out our surroundings so guys behind the mountains of ibaraki and we are at our glamping station Terrace and it's really beautiful at the moment the colors are in full bloom it's late Autumn uh I haven't been inside yet Sharla is going to give us the grand tour I'm most excited about this thing here it looks like some sort of futuristic transportation system but I believe it's a sauna [Music] experience Chris hates camping but I feel like you can't call this camping basically just a really nice hotel in a forest it doesn't even look like glamping or I think glamping I think of like a tent yeah I'm over there somewhere but we got the the fancy one Mega glamping let me show you guys the kitchen first this is where we're gonna be cooking dinner later there's a there's a barbecue inside here it's really warm and cozy they've turned the aircon on for us neither of us really drink beer unfortunately but we have this fancy barbecue to make dinner and Chef Chris in the house oh God and they brought us our basket of vegetables they had a selection of Veggie sensors and I could pick and choose what I wanted to eat and a bunch of condiments and stuff to cook them on the proper washer yeah feature Japanese toilet for the win shower yes oh my God I love glamping so much isn't glamping amazing you haven't seen the bedroom yet but shouldn't we show them the sauna yeah okay so this is a sauna I haven't started it up yet so it's not hot yet but bird really hates you Birds dying in the background but wow it smells really nice so what's this out of water the water for making Steam on the rocks on the bathroom maybe that's what smells nice and oh they put scent in the water oh my God it smells really good it smells like candy a nice view of the coyote the fall leaves of the window beautiful it's pretty cool I want one and this is the bedroom it's like a fancy cabin this is really nice really nice yeah separate beds perfect perfect it's the way I like it this is really nice honestly the viewing deck the chauffeur the bed this is the most incredible camping experience I think I've ever had and they even have yogurt in the forest wow we're not going to be doing that we're going to be eating a barbecue and sitting in the sauna yoga in the foreign thank you [Music] beautiful juicy steak we made it Gordon Ramsay there's a new Chef in town and it's stuck to the barbecue a little bit oh my goodness pull the fire brigade look at that beautiful steak and we've got pork over here that's going to take about a year to cook because it's the biggest card for anyone's ever seen but anyway yeah nice place I'm really liking this camping business doesn't look as bad as I thought it would well with my cooking skills anything can happen how's the stick it's really good I made butter do you like my baked potato I made that in the microwave wow it was really easy I've never tried that before such a great chef do you like my baked potato the secret recipe is microwave I want Ratatouille here as well yeah made that from scratch oh and I baked the bread didn't make the bread they gave this was really nice um I think it might be sourdough sourdough baguette it's quite a little baguette it's like they brought half of France to us today we are we asked for extras because we thought if we messed up the barbecue we could just eat the bread I mean this is really good I do feel like a bit of a douchebag because this is not this is not camping it's not even glamping at this point this is just a nice time in a forest and I'm not going to argue with that I'm not gonna argue with that yeah oh no but it's nice to be out here in the mountains what I will say yeah whether it's camping glamping being in a shed it's beautiful and it's nice being in the forest so we're surrounded by trees in all size we've got a valley out the window and it's just a really nice location I like how the walls are just all glass so you can enjoy that yeah there's really good sort of you kind of feel like you're absolutely immersed yeah in the forest so yeah finish this up and then uh in the summer [Music] you know I don't think I've ever been in a sauna in the morning and yeah this might be my new favorite thing not only because I get to you know relax unwind to start the day in a very nice manner but also because I get to wear this robe doesn't look like I'm a cult leader join us join the cult buy my book don't actually do a book coming out I like book learn the secrets to happiness in in seven ways what the [ __ ] this [ __ ] English it's in my way counterproductive now [Music] just an hour away from Tokyo many people come to ibaraki to escape to the countryside whether it's biking around Lake kasumigora Japan's second largest lake or throwing yourself off of one of the largest bungee jumps in the country seeing as I don't feel like plummeting off a bridge with some elastic strapped to my leg though we've opted for kayaking instead thank God we're about to go kayaking and I haven't done kayaking since like 1926. this year I've done hiking cycling climbing eating and now kayaking the only problem is this check this out I look like I'm a reject out of a 90s boy band but I'm going to be wearing this to cover this atrocity up so don't worry you won't have to look at this again at any other point in this video yeah they made us wear this wetsuit and I'm not really sure why we were just gonna wear normal clothes they get wet and then they were like no you're definitely gonna get wet but we thought we would only get wet if we fell over in the kayak which we won't do right but he's like no you'll definitely get soaked it's a nice River it should be fun I'm not overly looking forward to swimming in it which they've made it sound like we're gonna do but uh yeah let's go kayak thank God Charlotte's in a different kayak [Music] all abroad he's off oh look at the speed [Music] yes oh yeah get ready for some serious kayaking action already going the wrong way Downstream yeah it's pretty fun very therapeutic come on question is who's gonna be the first one to flip over and sink place your bets now sorry if you keep crashing into me it's definitely going to be Charlotte at my behest I think this is the closest I'm ever going to get to uh my dreams of being a pirate probably for the best very nice though I've I've stopped paddling the current is now taking me Downstream away from the others oh crap oh um I think yamasan summed it up well you know when you kayak you can go to places that you can't normally reach or see you know like hear the cliffs little Cliffs and these little inlets there's no other way you can see it because there's a big mountain in the way what are you looking from that perspective you know it's more than just a furious water spot it's a way to relax unwind and explore um although if you go with the Amazon he said he took some customers 50 kilometers eight hours of kayaking Upstream to the Sea and uh yeah I'm pretty pretty glad we're not doing that today very very glad indeed horrible person no Christmas presents for him kayaking is hungry business and so out of the river we head to a former school to try our hand in making buckwheat soba noodles with my award-winning Chef skills what could possibly go wrong so the Japanese Countryside is littered with empty schools given the depopulation of the rural areas and this one is no exception it closed its doors 18 years ago sadly you can still hear the sounds of the children playing to this very day that sounds like a crepe but now they do something far better than teach children they teach people how to make noodles and that is what we're gonna do right now follow me into this room let's go so we're using both silver flour and regular flour today and the different types of silver in Japan use different amounts of silver and flour so that's how they they differ but today it's seven Parts silver flower three parts regular flour you get that yeah oh special way of opening the bags the end of the Japanese thing like that yeah beautiful so we're using our hands now oh I was going like that he's going like that it's purple yeah no hold it with your other hand and push why do you suck so much God finished no he said keep going until it's soft and smooth or the man holding it um yeah so this flange it out into hello oh very bad shut up it's not bad actually it looks kind of good today was Josie he's alive can't wait to see you do this look at this knife it's like Thor's [ __ ] knife so much overkill for noodles seriously [Music] so the teacher just said that our noodles are way too thick so it's gonna take them a long time to boil them because somebody cut them too thick who Could That Be high quality [Music] okay they're all big never mind what's your ones with Vic too no no good but then they got all mixed up in the pot oh dude so we're all screwed more than I thought though look at that give a man of noodles relief for the day teach man how to make noodles and he'll [ __ ] it right up and make something that looks like this to be fair I have had soba noodles that look quite thick in curly do not believe that but this is called hitachiyaki soba and it is the sort of local dish of this neck of the woods nibiraki I don't know if we've done it justice today exactly but the ingredients are the same one and I love soy noodles they are pretty damn healthy um buckwheat sober noodles full of uh your vitamin vitamin A vitamin B riboflavin niacinas cyanide it's good stuff though cranky crunchy they taste really nice they're just really thick I think if they were half the width they would be very nice I think we should have got the teacher to cut them yeah such an interesting man literally every step of the way I like so much just touch the table like but it was a lot of fun if you want to learn how to make noodles and hope you do a better job than this come on down fall to the brim with my expertly crafted soba noodles we head to another school which closed its doors and then reopened them taking on a new lease of Life as a guest house it's here that I plan to take a much needed bath after our kayaking antics God and everybody was that good on chalkboards but now look at that if you can read that you know what to do check this room out though this is so cool so this is kanasa elementary school and uh it's actually closed down like the one we saw earlier on this video this has been shot for 10 years and yet somehow it's so well renovated and so well maintained it's actually better than an open school that I used to work at seven years ago they've got a music room upstairs they've got an incredible library and they've got a bespoke experience that I'm sorely in need of and you'll see what that is in just a moment but it's something to do with getting clean but there's one more thing you can do in this school it's pretty damn cool you can actually stay here overnight come check this out worst less ever [Music] so this used to be a classroom and now they've turned it into a dorm with lots of cool to tell me about some beds you can fit one two three four five six seven maybe more people in here because there's double bunk beds but they've got the chalkboard in here which is really cool so kept aspects of the classroom in here so you can have the sort of classroom accommodation experience it's pretty cool I don't think I've ever slept in a Japanese school before and here's the good bit cost just 3500 Yen so about 30 bucks to stay here so if we had more time we would but now onto the main event the traditional bespoke wonderful drum bath that's right drum bath so this rather sinister-looking Barrel is going to be my bath it's called a drum bath and it kind of became popular in the post-war era when people didn't have easy access to bus you could get a metal drum fill it with water and heat it with a fire and it's kind of popular these days in campsites where there's no electricity so you know some of the easier Solutions are the lowest Tech and this is just that and I'm gonna be getting in it but not until Sharla has heated it up with fire thank God because right now it looks very very cold indeed I've been tasked with making Chris's bath for him after he soaked me in the kayak I feel like I should just do a crap job and then he can heat my bath um so I'm taking some kindling first and putting these underneath unfortunately for you I'm not very good at making a fire so you bloody will be getting this in this drum [Music] Pyromania I feel like this is cheating I thought I was gonna use uh matches or something but smells nice mmm smells like burning it's like Charizard this is the real Charmeleon experience isn't it setting fire to things that's calmer that's karma for making my bathroom a bad way so it's Peril it says a frozen pineapple juice concentrate 268 grams fantastic and that's going to be me soon Fire's been going 10 minutes it's still very bloody cold so we're gonna slap on this lovely lid I mean we went we went and playing camping whatever last night it was like a premium experience I should have had this tree fair this would have been right at home it feels very out of place just in front of an old school very odd indeed that's the moment of Reckoning oh warm it's very cold fantastic maybe the bottoms put your hand deep in it oh I can't get in that not for another it's like four hours we'll be doing it in the dark in a minute no choice oh you go in it then come on come on heat that drum all right moment of truth into the drum assesses this is this is not normal uh it's oh it's actually kind of warm look at that yeah and I can't but I can't get in it it's supposed to get on this thing for the floor separate in the middle of it right in the middle yeah oh is it warm yeah it's pretty warm oh it's not so warm this isn't steam this is smoke I'm in an actual Hot Pot on fire you know what it's a bath it's a bath in a barrel but a bath nonetheless yeah the water is kind of warm it's not I don't like how it's cloudy it wasn't cloudy a minute ago is that me let's warm you idiot oh yeah it's oxygen look at the bubbles cheeky bit of science there is that mean family fan of the smoke away would you like some grapes we might like some grapes I'm not a Roman Emperor I'm surrounded by smoke I'm trying to get the smoke away honestly um I think if it wasn't for the smoke this would be quite Pleasant it's a little bit tough to get in there my knees are like pushed against the bowel pretty like I can't really go D for tonight oh I can there's a bath in Japan called The goemon Boro and it's a bath I can't pronounce but it's a bath that looks like this but it's a bit more rustic and natsuki actually winning it on a trip to yakushima he loved it that's so nice yeah this is a sort of more rudimentary version of that a little bit cheaper at home you see the can Barrel yeah and some bricks get a barrel stick a fire underneath it job done but honestly this is the the least good bit of the school the best bit of the school is staying here the night I would actually come back here and stay here there's something cool about a Japanese school right and all to yourself all to yourself and you know people often ask me what is there kind of like an hour outside of Tokyo and ibracking it's been pretty damn good from the tallest statue in Japan that's really cool to come the abandoned school like you can actually stay in for 30 bucks My Views are really nice driving through the mountains to each other it was really pretty but you can find all the places we visited on this trip in the description box below and uh some things I recommend more than others but uh you could work out which one was the best and worse I think the Buddha was my favorite thing what was yours I like the kayaking it's perfect um in the fall it was it was a great time to do it really relaxing awesome but for now guys as always many thanks for watching the crystal Broad Channel we'll see you right back here to do it again next time all right now help me out get me out this bloody bath what you do what are you doing kayak Japan I have a YouTube channel we've done this before uh really I'm just naturally good more water oh [Music] my God thank you

Channel: Chris Abroad

Views: 745,499

Keywords: japan travel, japan food, japan hotels, abroad in japan, sharla, sharmeleon, ibaraki, chris abroad, trash taste

Id: 98p3ChrjkGk

Length: 23min 10sec (1390 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 14 2023