Japanese Rickshaw View around Samurai Houses | Kakunodate, Akita

beautiful place the autumn colors have turned the trees have turned we have some beautiful foliage and i'm in akita prefecture how you doing everybody this is kakunodate in akita and i'm gonna be i will as you can see i'm in a kimono and i'm going to be riding around in a generic show pulled by this young man right here and i'm going to show you some of the foliage around this town it's going to be pretty unique experience welcome to akita here we go oh wow i feel like royalty [Applause] hey and we are now going at a normal pace eugene hobart's here welcome sakura ah like the uh whisping willow kind of sakura trees yeah not so pretty now because they're all the leaves are gone [Music] during the bushido age it wasn't so big but now since the edo period it's gotten much much bigger look at this town is so pretty i think this is a really cool experience apparently this is gonna be about like 30 minutes or so we're going to be going around kakunodate in akita prefecture i'll put a map in the description here so you can check it out this is the gate to the aoyagi-kay yeah so this gate was very significant back in the day foreign wow so this is a samurai residence way back during the bushido era now what's the difference between a bushido and a samurai bushido aren't aligned to a government official so they're they're kind of the same but they're kind of different i learned that in kanazawa when i was there this is the oldest sakura tree here it's quite large whoa yeah this sakura tree was alive during the samurai age so the samurai would have been passing underneath the sakura tree during the edo period which is amazing and now we are right now all right so they make these cans here with the yamazakura you see that there so from the trunks of them wow oh right so the poor samurai would make this uh these uh things from this some of the yamazakura trees to earn some extra income interesting everybody has to have a a second job or moonlighting so we're gonna be coming back here later this is a one of the samurai residences and it's very beautiful is very famous for for maintaining the original uh look from back in the edo period you can see these old houses it's beautiful here so this tree is about 300 years old you can see it going all the way up here why is that significant because again like this tree would have been like this height way back in the samurai era a lot of people passing it and it's still here one thing i've learned about traditional japanese places to protect the trees i like that samurai love these kinds of trees here same christmas tree that's a big christmas tree oh christmas tree oh christmas tree you're 300 years old and you're really really tall the samurai planted you and now you're soaping but we're going this way and that's the end of the song oh christmas tree that's a big christmas tree he said it i didn't say it he said it oh in the olden days up there on top of the hill there was a night 16 20. yeah 1620 there was a like a a tower up there you can still see something i don't know there's a viewpoint up there now this is old castle mountain yes castle yes nice [Music] so 1620 was when the castle was here and it's because of the castle that this hound behind me was made you cannot hide you've been exposed [Laughter] yeah this is the the road so all of these houses and all of the samurai houses the purpose was to protect the castle up here awesome tour toro porco thanks john for bringing us here on such a beautiful day it is a really nice day isn't it all right you can see the sakura trees so there are 400 sakura trees you can see some of them are lined on the streets here so it gives you an idea of where they are located um so if you do come to the town during the sakura season you can find the trees on this map pretty cool oh i see where where the red spot is right here they just started with three they only had three and then they ended up with four hundred a long time ago just three of them and now there are 400 that cover the street it took one month from kyoto to bring those trees so they're very special yeah they're not going back to parents oh nice it was a gift of a wedding gift back then from kyoto it took one month to bring it here and now there's 400 very very cool i gotta come back here during the springtime um i do love coming up to tohoku actually hirosaki is such a beautiful site if you're going up there stop by kakurotate as well take a look at the samurai residents here just walking the street is really special look that's a modern day samurai right there [Laughter] cobra bebop thank you vic vic welcome nice to see eugene holbert here jennifer santos thanks for sending up to the travelers really appreciate it guys so those joining us um we're in a generic show a human-powered rickshaw going around this beautiful city called kakunodate in akita prefecture in semboku city and this is closer to the samurai residence here wow yeah in the in the past the gate was always closed to protect from the enemies because uh this is a nozoki model oh so they could they could uh throw knives at you oh you can just say hello here through this window oh this is the they confirm here so now we nowadays we have cameras and speakers but this is uh where they would check through this door yeah you have to do isatsu which is a self-introduction or else they wouldn't let you in and if you failed probably they took a knife and threw it at you or something i don't know samurai days are pretty violent oh it splits here so this is the this is the split where the uh two samurai houses uh there's no night this is a long somewhere around oh i see eats whoa so the higher the wall the higher the rank of the samurai so the samurai to the left was a higher rank do you see this because the wall this way is just a little bit higher this isn't it so this is a lower samurai yeah even the whoa even the ground was higher what wow they really put a lot of respect was pretty important back then so you can see how the gate has turned that's really an interesting story samurai rank is important so is youtuber rank not as much as he used to be ah this is like a warehouse or storage unit where they put some valuable things rice this is where they would store the rice and sort of inside of this thing and it looks pretty heavy duty in there here's the gate to the to the other samurai house here look at the autumn foliage that had fallen on top of it beautiful so you would tie the horse right there on that stone all right big stone is the step okay off the horse samurai is very short wow use step light horse samurai was very short whoa 155 155 centimeters like five foot six short but powerful they had a horse so that was the step where they would get off of the horse and it hasn't moved since the days of the samurai it's interesting information right so this one's even shorter this gate here but oh so the old road is underneath here this has been raised now you can see inside because the road has been raised you can look inside of the samurai house [Music] if there was a samurai he wouldn't be upset you just can't show your face so you have to crawl down underneath there not look inside or also come out with his katana but now that this is you can see that the road has been elevated it's been lifted up to be level it used to be a slope and that means now we can see over the samurai gates which is dangerous for non-samurai you don't want to look inside of a samurai's house they just come running at you you better run faster and if there were shinkan waiting for me i can sure run fast to catch that thing so oh hey adrian yeah mike mike has been in a few videos i might film that like way back in february i think mike chen you're talking about hopefully he can come back to japan soon i think he's in in korea or i don't know where he is actually oh the center of the town right here 350 meters is the street to the end of it and this represents the center of town from the castle yeah in the past you'd be able to see the end of the street because you'd be able to see the flags interesting uh this one here we saw the oldest this one is the biggest now so during the sakura season this one is massive whoa 280 years old that's i cut a tree incredible and you can see there's some street food here very cool i can smell it as we we go by on this gin dig man powered richa it's very cool and we're taking a look at the beautiful foliage here in kakunodate and akita prefecture thanks so much yeah middle-class samurai house because you can tell from the size of the gate the samurai house yeah it was okay middle rank oh yeah so the roof is made out of wood here you can see that so the roof you can see is made with a special um akita which is a cedar wood it's really really well done just inside it's very that's that's right because of the wood that they used it's a very very thin roof you can see compared to the other japanese homes which have really thicker roofs that one is quite thin interesting very interesting if you think it's interesting too that says a lot about the person who used to live here the samurai used to live here the signal may go in and out a little bit just stick with us and refresh the screen if the quality goes down a little bit we're in the middle of um akita prefecture in sembok city called kakunodate which is an old samurai town you're seeing those the residences as we go by in ajin i'm announcing this every couple of minutes because uh we have it's already illinois all right we're back okay all right let's do it enemies right over in this area there are no no high trees or no higher walls so the enemy could get in over here but not into this area this is more [Music] oh protected it's a three meter high wall there firewall firewall you mean they had like fire no hogan the firewall is not for protecting you from viruses and things like that for your computer it's a different kind of firewall it's firewall that actually protected you from fire it was three meters high right there there so if this is kakunodate so if you were behind me and you so behind me is the end of the end of the um the road 350 meters and then right there there was a three meter high wall to protect this area from any fire that happened over there real firewall again not made by some software company so pointing that out right so there were no high trees over there because if there were a fire it would catch fire so they they had the trees grow a little bit further in to protect these houses from fires from the you know peasants they're always creating fires these peasants keep them in line yeah you can see uh underneath the roof there's kind of a nami a wave oh yeah fish scales in the center yeah i can see that yeah so 24 hours a day those eyes are watching you so the design of these houses also are quite significant in many ways that i will never understand as a non-samurai you don't need fireplace oh yeah over there oh i see yeah so over the fireplace there would be some sort of fish object because the fish are always watching you 24 hours a day always watching you still here interesting little teeny details i think in the architecture in in the residence hall if you know these details before you go in there it makes it a little bit more interesting to when you see it face to face and i'll be going inside of a samurai house right after this in a tea house lots of houses in kakunodate akita prefecture very cool good morning arnold how you doing tasty jeff ang's in the house glad you're loving the tour and jennifer french loving these beautiful trees they are really nice it looks like a dead end right there but it's not right it's not it's a trap hey troy nothing much bro just kind of hanging out being taken for a ride [Music] oh the autumn colors are stunning and you can see them some of them are starting to fall off now but i guess the peak is right now so you're at this kind of at this time you want to be hello how you doing you want to make your reservations at least three months in advance probably more in special areas in the countryside like or even kyoto is like six months in advance for the autumn season middle of november it is super super popular and uh very hard to get a reservation as well as in the in this cherry blossoms of course but autumn with the colors it is again very very hard for to get a reservation in popular places like even kanotate here very popular very hard so we just come from this street if you want to take a look at that go back in the playback about uh 15 minutes ago we're going this way now it's really really good thank you no thank you awesome [Music] okay uh okay he put it down and i can't oh all right oh i showed my legs all the ladies where my geisha they are not here all right that was a lot of fun amina nami nandeska [Music] very knowledgeable man speaks good english no no but he'll take you around this wonderful place look for kikuchi-san thank you so much yeah that was a lot of fun so uh all right let's do it whoa it's a big spider and not many youtubers will show you the spiders do they it's pretty nasty i gotta show you the stuff that the other people won't show you might be a reason though they're gonna show you too all right tasty's in the house hi john there's a little something to buy some of the local snacks i will absolutely be on the prowl right now because i didn't eat breakfast because i was taking a bath and i thought that was a priority over eating i'm hungry and i'm on the prowl here no i you know how much i eat tasty on these trips i eat so much it's okay if i miss a meal or two or three plus this obie on my kimono is really really tight i can hardly breathe that's what i look like in a kimono hiding a dagger in my hair it's under my hat back in the taisho era you could wear and in the showa era people wore their hats with their kimonos so in fact they still do today that's pretty interesting now that he pointed out all these things and i'm on solid ground again oh beer beer i'll be back fungus united states marine corps you can hide your beer in your kimono that's good yeah that doggy wants a beer he looked at me they should only allow horses to come in you know no cars just horses have the original smell of the edo period too would be nice all right let's go inside of here yeah that's a lower samurai we want to go to the top top but in the past here what what he was telling us is that this is a uh the original road from the edo period you can see down here but since then they've raised the road up so that means that this wall which is the samurai wall is much higher now and we can see over the wall but back in the uh edo period we could not see over the wall this is actually would get you maybe killed if you were to look into the samurai's house if you were a plebe like me a peasant gotta show your respect i'm ninja walking right now gotta get some beer to hide in my kimono i actually have a couple of bottles the the signal was so bad last night that i couldn't live stream anything from the from the onsen so i had to upload it as a a special secret stream for travelers and insiders so if you're a traveler you can see that secret stream coco oh let's go inside this yeah thanks for telling me that because i would have totally tripped that's how you say please be careful killed skate they couldn't say they could have i'll be careful this is kakunodate akita prefecture check this out thank you hello my name is ishiguro this is ishiguro he's going to be giving us a tour around here to live in this house this house is my house wow this is ishiguro's house oh gotta go in backwards all right nice to meet you my answer says i'm sorry i'm not samurai we won't fight this guy tries about five to ten minutes okay thank you have you know these houses she grows i still live in this house with my parents wow even today you live here yes yes wow my father is current owner oh my father is 12th generation director descendant family yes my ancestor came to this town about 350 years ago wow so you're 13th generation yes next generation wow however this house was built about 210 years ago wow it is oldest main building in some regions of kakunodate town in this town ah the ishii ichigo okay okay it's oldest oldest in kakunodate this town there are six summer residents in this town still now even now wow it's all days a lot of summer and houses about 200 summer and houses fascinating yeah so ishigurosan the other samurai houses do they have the original owner too yes original same six families i mean yeah are you friends with them too most of the friends are good friends not the different rankings no this is thank you my ancestors samurai okay financial director maybe you know japanese samurai is not really a fighter but also transverse oh so yeah yeah oh good accountant is senior christian right so this has its bigger house then that's to do my living and dining room eating drinking tea talking family room cooking space is behind different space in this room there's a japanese style fireplace we call it yeah to put the chocolate charcoal fries no smoke during the winter we continue using this hazard for warming for coming visitors excellent charcoal fries no smoke however in this room different fireplace to put a fire with firewood fire that window was used to open smoke to the roof like the two chimney yeah then this bar is removable laundry foam rolling forward easy to move oh for tucker yes laundry pole ah so you could dry your laundry here awesome this area very cold i've studied a lot of snow yeah every one meter and youthful living too wonderful [Music] this is the center yeah i was a child my grandfather used this room oh for writing letters ladybooks and stripping an important meeting seven in here then that is a household shinto elder family shrine religion friend for safety and healthy and maybe you know japanese religion is mixed religion not only one healthy lucky friend of shindo but the ancestor died praying buddhism most of japanese religion buddhism and shinto together both spring right recently we enjoyed christmas party and the very biggest region i think very interesting very very interesting indeed so how old are you about the same as me maybe uh maybe uh i'm about to 15 to 48. ah 46. about the same yeah this month is my birthday month oh happy birthday thank you about birthday okay yeah 49 49 then 50. next about the entrance there are several entrants in this house yeah is that yeah social position is very important in order in japan that entrance is second entrance which is a master or a general summary use only entrance [Music] very special another person not summarize the image charge the servant and machan defending sideways it's at the entrance in the second factory oh this is the main entrance tonight special entrance to use a high cross visitor for a ceremonial occasion within ceremony or funeral ceremony special one special occasion only using this entrance we does not exist still now respect tradition yeah that's true so even this hou this is a house that's used today and you can see it this entrance is closed only for special occasions wow this room is a waiting room it's just one big room though right now wow so you can close the doors threading the shoji does that make this is the waiting room we're in now but when the doors are open it looks like one big room however these are all different rooms there's a the study here which is the center of the house and there you would have the idiot the fireplace and laundry over here interesting we look here on the board on this cavead wooden panel decoration transom window we call the lama lamba window the title of openworks is decorated tattoo animals symbolizing happily and lucky animal in japan too because tattoo is long life longevity happily and lucky in japan too right then this kind of tree's name is zerkover their covert is grain wood pattern is very beautiful similar looks like waterway when a turtle's thumb it is coming imagine tattle is swimming in water yeah and this designs open works carving through design on both sides all right from the light you can see the shadow by erica now means all there is no electrical load so fire lamp on the floor maybe at the ceiling wow interesting and beautiful i guess i came showa jidai came the [Music] decoration press not stripping not sitting yeah this place shooting scroll or a display flower arrangement or a desperate dog all right so no don't sit here yes yes don't sit there yeah this decorations sometimes changing by the seasons uh yeah then this room is reception official formal room how to spread the tatama of this this room only straight pattern parallel pattern unlike another pattern different right because japanese traditional culture means engineering likely to boundary of social positions separately one or two people sat down on one side only this way to talk another person to here go face to face that is fascinating so the lines in the tatami mats and the way that they're lined up has a significance in the in the rank of the person with whom you're speaking to that's how deep so when you go into a tatami room you should also look down and see how the lines are here you can see that the lines there's almost like a wall here to cross between the guest room and the waiting room so it doesn't cross the lines that's interesting information and i didn't know that it's our that's in japan called lanking position it's very important yeah then this corner handles oh green water from the world so back then people were very very clean always washing hands and even today we're pretty clean here i was just in a bath i'm pretty clean beautiful finally in this garden this garden is dry landscape japanese traditional garden wonder which green water green was lagged to liver bee crop mountain mountain and the river imagine natural landscape there are a big crop and a tall tree high tree can interest to them this is summer and brenda high tree in hope of success in life we spread a high end higher a very high tree of that light corner behind the clock is a fair tree all right this is the biggest tree in about 300. 300 years old older than the house this house was built about 200 all dozen wow exactly truck second friend about five meters and tourists of saatify meadow it is the biggest in the neighborhood wow this area is very lucky area not to destroy big fire big wool and big natural disaster long time and nothing yeah then this front road with sizes about 11 meters meta is not narrow very wide distance in japan it have not changed when it was made about 400 years ago wow because in order end of this road there was a load of the mansion resident yeah i think this road is main street or break the fire firewall in my opinion so that's why there's 11 meter distance because of fire yes yes wow so did she so fire not earthquake but fire was the scariest thing yes yes japanese architecture it's called woodland paper yeah all the houses just wooden paper you don't want a fire that's the scariest thing for any house that's for the guy that sets up yeah you can take pictures anywhere and there is an engineer inside under yeah only today is the video is done so typically there's not allowed to have any videoing in here yeah raj welcome and chicken nuggets they're welcome george lopez thank you stimulus funds for a dirtbag samurai like me yes sashira04 welcome it's fascinating isn't it so as i was saying like when you know the history when you know some of the the meanings behind it it gives me more incentive makes me makes me want to study a little bit more about japanese history it's just like a spark happens like in that's what i hope with these live streams just a little bit of an interest starts in japan and then you start to study more and more of the history and then when you do come to visit here you're way ahead of everybody else i love the story that his grandfather used to sit here and write letters and i can i can see that today even even now we're inside of his study and the shrine and i love the original colors of the walls the green which matches my kimono very significant green like a matcha looking green there and then they have an exhibition over here and i'm gonna put on my shoes and we can maybe take a look around the house a little bit more but it's really fascinating and and uh ishii good okay it was a higher rank samurai so you can see he was saying that he has so much space not just because of the garden but also to keep away from the main road where fires could take place [Music] my shoes are the ones that look like sandals [Laughter] [Music] okay [Music] i'll take you around this way a little bit so as we said before yeah we have permission but don't film inside of here so don't copy me just for today just for today you are all with me as guests so you're special herself gave us a tour i'm so impressed 13th generation uh still living here in the house so you can see here what the guide was telling us this was the mountain where the castle was here and this is where we are right now the ishiguro k the house here which is right in the center right so it's a pretty significant location and this morning today we started from here we went down the street and came back down this way and then he took us down to the end of the street here to the wall and this is where the peasants live where i probably where i would be living and there was a three meter wall here that was a firewall so the fire wouldn't get into the samurai residences and then lower samurai were in the front and the more significant samurai were up closer towards the end of the castle and that's how this kakunodate samurai town was built fascinating and there's a little exhibition inside of here so i love the fact that they they've taken the house and they i love the fact that they still live here right it's fascinating amazing 13 centuries uh 13 generations have lived in this house built for um his great great great great great great great great great great great great grandfather amazing oh and this looks like a storehouse here check this out this looks very significant these doors look at that the outside of it had so many different layers of it and you can see when they close the door the layers connect up there with the inside including the facets here and then you can see some of the art in here um i don't think i got a signal but i'll take a step inside just just for a second show you some whoa that's really awesome armor looks like darth vader and then there's a sword over here i don't know why i'm whispering whoa that looks like excalibur it's actually a spear spearhead so this is the ishiguroke ishiguro meaning uh like a stone black and he was a a higher ranked samurai back in uh back in the edo period now there are no samurais so he's still owner of the house though hey it is already beautiful house and i always enjoy your streams thank you thanks for joining us you can see um kakunodate is doing a really good job of promoting him itself um it's something you should put on your radar here there's the kanji for kako no date and autumn season and the spring seasons are so beautiful here it has that naturalness to it especially the samurai residents is because they planted these trees back in the samurai era these trees were planted um for a purpose everything had a purpose back then you know whoa look at these gata look at that gata that's like i don't know that'd be really hard to walk in but look at the fur to keep you warm that's kind of a significant thing beautiful and if you look up at the ceilings you know i'm always looking down at for manhole covers and stuff but if you do look up you're gonna see um everything has some sort of uh purpose or significance to it there's another one of these uh protective doors i'm not sure what's inside there but again every everybody was always worried about what about fire right so they always wanted to protect their valuables from fire and this one is very interesting it's made of made of wood so the wood kept out the wood the fire i think it's been specially coated or something so it does look uh it does look very interesting you have to look at these details look at the the lock on this door whoa it's getting medieval there look at that hey tojiro welcome thank you even better than visiting an open air museum because of the explanation and history lessons straight from the descendant indeed indeed it's really really special when the resident of the house for 13 generations is explaining it to you hey master senpai gg welcome all right let's take let's get out of here what an amazing what an amazing experience i'm humbled that ishiguro-san himself was giving us the tour sticky i don't know what's inside the lock door i don't have a credit card big enough to pick it need something bigger than a visa or mastercard you need both maybe [Laughter] that's what i'm talking about before about the roofs look at the roof on this on this house it is very significantly thick look at that wow that is very thick roof compared to the one soy yeah very very nice this roof wow so you have to change it changes every five to ten years the roofs are handmade so it's slightly pricey to to have to fix it yeah you can't do it by machine it's it's gonna be a little pricey whoa how do you get those same ones thank you for coming today thank you so much for the guided tour i really appreciate it bye-bye yeah wow all right let's keep on moving all right let's go this way and so he was telling us this is where they would confirm who you are so this would be like the video and radio between before they would open the gates they would check your credentials here and if you weren't who you said you were they'd probably like throw a sword at you or something as i said samurai era was very it's kind of violent uh hey all right let's go check out this store over here some people were commenting on it when we started the live stream i mean if you want me to keep going click the like button let's see if we can get to 800 likes that is our threshold and maybe i'll get something to eat over there it's up to you audience participation interesting so he said here the lesser samurai would would have a part-time job making things out of the yamazakura different items look at the hair pins that they they made here all out of this uh really special wood and you can see once it's polished it does look very beautiful but i don't think they chop down um sakura trees you can see the goods right here yeah very nice yeah can we go in i don't know i'm scared to go inside you have to ask permission to film for everything and we've done that so far well look at the end of the street i love this the shocks of orange and yellow and red hey mad skills gamers how you doing everybody out there jennifer santos how you doing very beautiful hey heard my name ah just some snacks here all right we're well below our threshold we're supposed to have 800 for me to start to eat but i'm a benevolent man [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] can you see that there there you go it's sweet but it's not too it's sweet but it's not too sweet and it um it's moist but it breaks apart in your mouth very well oh three second rule if you drop it it's still good but maybe not on the ground here [Music] so i'm not sure what it is so get out of here so it's not kinako wow that's really good i'm going to come back and get some i have nothing i don't have my wallet in here but you know in the sleeves of kimonos you can you can carry things so i can put you know things in in the sleeves of my kimono which is kind of kind of neat yeah all right so we're going to cut one time and maybe i'm going to go back live and when we get to the uh location for eating that guy's got a handful snack money from my daughter and i hey guys thanks i'm gonna get down the shinkansen when i go back to tokyo then [Music] awesome monty b verges so beautiful i'd be lucky to be watching mr simp i wrote in again here hey john do you know what clan is this neighborhood during the samurai era okay i can ask i know samurai no group and the name of the clan was tokugawa we're not checking the history indolent auto deduct for beer and a snack i'm looking right at a place where i can get that satake clan we believe and i see chestnut ice cream so we're gonna go to lunch and i'll see if i can live stream and just see how the signal was there i wanted to share with you this really beautiful street here and then um see oh that is hokkaido azuki ice cream right there whoa i like the fact that they have so many different kinds of flavors of ice cream there's matcha i'm but i'm not hungry for like ice cream i want like real food all right everybody i want to say thank you so much check out this last this scene right here thanks so much to everybody for everybody for watching this live stream i'm so happy that you could join us in caco no date um go back and take a look at the auto the gin rickshaw the human-powered rickshaw that we went up and down the streets and took a look at the castle uh were used to be up on the hill but what is most interesting about this is that history going back all the way to the samurai period where the bushido had these houses here and you can go into them and take check them out you really really do feel like you're going back into time and knowing some of the history of the areas outside of tokyo like here in akita really does enhance your experience here in japan so i hope you do make it up here especially during autumn and spring look at these beautiful trees here have a great day i'll try to be back for lunch in an hour so see you later from kakunodate akita prefecture stay warm everybody i love japan when when is the best time to see the full colors right now this is early early november for tohoku and late november for kyoto and early december for kyushu that should be helpful huh thanks for asking matanee

Channel: ONLY in JAPAN * GO

Views: 25,376

Rating: 4.962882 out of 5

Keywords: Only in Japan, Japan, John Daub, Japanese, Tokyo, samurai, House, Kakunodate, Autumn, November, Jinrikshaw, Tohoku, Spot, Ishiguro, castle

Id: JokdnaajjeA

Length: 66min 45sec (4005 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 02 2020