#95 An accidental journey to Dobuita, Japan

Transcript

All right, guess what the weather is like today. Here's an audio clue. That was the sound of an umbrella opening. So it's only raining just to touch just a little smidge. I don't know is this worse than yesterday? Maybe. I mean it's this misty rain. It's approximately the same. So I don't really know what I'm gonna do with myself because I was saying it's nice to take a nice rainy day walk from Oji to Itabashi. But some people are pounding something in a big wooden... I don't know it's like a recessed stump and they're pounding it with a wooden mallet. I don't know what that is. Anyway, I thought it would be nice to take a rainy day walk from Oji to Itabashi, but then I was reminded that my shoes are like perfectly worn down so that they're just they're just fine for everything but wetness. I can mountain climb but I can't walk in the rain. So yeah, I figured maybe that's not a great idea. To get myself all the way up to Northern Tokyo and start walking around all day in the rain in case it gets all slippy and horrifying. So the weather's supposed to clear up tomorrow. Let's just give that a rest for one more day. Oh yeah now I'm just going up the little steps. I love this so much. I love going up stairs when you're outside. Just the little little steps by my Airbnb by the re-stairs used in vintage store and now that I'm up a floor, you know, I'm on the second floor of being outside. I can see that the sky is yeah just sleet gray everywhere. I think this is worse than yesterday. Weather-wise. Yeah, I'm going to walk up to the Yamate Italian Garden because they noticed yesterday from the station. I could look up through the gap in the roof of the station and see one of the buildings from that cool Italian Rose Garden. So I'm going to go up to the Rose Garden which what would that be? I guess I'm on like the third floor. It's like the equivalent of being on like the 15th floor. It's so fucking cool. That is just in the neighborhood. Do I want to sell the coffee? No, I still got I got half a bottle of strawberry coffee for me yesterday. I got plenty of coffee. Yeah, I'm just going to go see if I can see down into the station from there. There might be hedges in the way. I might only be able to do it from the second floor of that house. But that's just do that. Let's just do that for something to do. You know, I was kind of thinking because this rhythm of going to the coast, it's really kind of fun to just sort of be doing the same thing every day. I'm getting better at it because this station near me I still need to look up the name. I still don't know the name. Ishi Kowacho station. So I would go on that station and take that train to Afuna and then from there I could just switch off and go down the coast further. But then I would just get on whatever random train to come back and take it back to Yokohama station. Seemed like the easiest thing to do. But then from Yokohama, I'd always get back in the early evening when it's like rush hour and it's kind of busy and I would have to transfer to get back to Ishi Kowacho. So I realized I could just do the same thing in reverse as I did to get there. Like I just make sure I get back to Afuna and transfer to Afuna and I can go straight to it's always like a very quiet train because it goes way up north. So at the point I'm on it nobody's using it yet because they all want to go straight to Yokohama of course. So it's a real quiet train straight to the station that is around the corner from AirBnB. It's like proud of myself like oh yeah I'm even figuring out how to get home like how to beat the traffic in both ways how to avoid rush hours and it was actually really fun last night to walk along the beach in the pitch black darkness. It was kind of cool and my shoes were kind of a fright I didn't realize. I made I I tracked a lot of sand back and got sand in the Genkhan of the AirBnB that I just cleaned up this morning because I'm like oh geez I don't want to embarrassingly be the guy who tracked a bunch of sand back I didn't realize. But the nice thing about that is on a rainy day I ain't gonna slip on 5:00 the sand you know this is a bad day to go walk across the city perhaps but it wouldn't be the worst day to just go back to the coast just go back to a random part of the coast and walk and yet now that I've even realized like hey if it gets dark I don't fucking care I'll walk in the dark it's fucking cool and fun it's bracing it's kind of exciting okay I'm up at the garden there's the Blue Dome House which in hindsight now that I found that house and I know it's also like up in the sky it's also the equivalent of the third floor of course it is how else would I be able to see it from here I feel like I'm slowly starting to learn how perspective works there's nobody here today this place is empty as fuck a little bit of rain man yeah you know I mean it's been nice that I've had such clear weather this time but that's another weird pseudo bonus if you do come visit Japan during a rainy or season there will certainly be less people yeah jeez the Yokohama Bay Bridge really misty just kind of disappears into nowhere so anyway yeah this is not the direction of the station this building behind me is not the building that I saw from the station so let's try to orient here myself was that it that looks like it okay so it's this big building in the center of the property that has kind of like a the third floor looks like a spire here's the little miniature there's like a miniature village in here a little miniature town okay there's overpasses hedges okay okay I think I'm in the right spot so if I look down from here no wonder I never noticed it from this view because yeah I got a walk on a grating way up to these hedges oh yeah this is like it's very hard to see down from here I can barely see so yeah there's like a row of of hedges in the way maybe this is not to be but that's the station all right so I guess I did see it I just didn't clock that that's what it was man it's just so fascinating to me how all this stuff works together because from each individual perspective these places seem so different it's hard to conceptualize of how a city this complicated especially here I mean everything in Japan is complicated oh there's some people with a doggy of course you know Guamma but the way everything interlocks and interconnects and the ups and downs of it it's like a portal level it's fucking crazy all right so there we go I found a spot where I can't quite get there's like a little fence because they don't want people obviously to get too close to this side of this bluff because bluff number 18 will take your life but yeah I'm looking down onto the tracks I don't see anyone waiting it is a Sunday afternoon on a rainy day maybe no one's going anywhere but that's kind of cool so that's but that's a good example like I was standing there yesterday looking up to here but now that I'm up here staring back down it's hard to connect the two things in my brain from this perspective it just looks so different that place doesn't look like where I was standing there's a person okay there's one person waiting for a train I guess it's just you know it's probably just simple stuff like when you're actually in this station you can see posters and drink machines and all kinds of stuff from here I can just see tracks and the edge of the platform it just doesn't look like the same this is probably like deconstructing how my brain interprets objects you know it just doesn't seem like the same you know like how four legs a seat in the back equal the chair like I'm just not seeing stuff that equals a train station from here I can really only see the tracks and little bits of the rest what am I yammering about I don't know fucking rain rainy day who cares whatever this is fine all right there's I'm gonna go to walk through this nice little rose garden I'm gonna go to a family mart that's near the station and get some breakfast and then I'm just gonna get on I don't know I'm gonna get on the train I'm just gonna go to Ophuna to start with and then I'll sort it out from 10:00 there do I go back to where I've already been to try to find a new part of the coast I've definitely kind of learned like you can't really just well you can't and you can't if you just pick a random point on the coast it might work out and it might not but I guess workout is relative like if you want to just pick a point on the coast and walk down the coast that's unlikely to work it's tough to get any further than one station down the route if even sometimes oh jeez did I cause that the fountains just turned on in the rose garden but the splash of it my brain was like is that a fucking did a fish just leap behind you but it's a little shallow long shallow pool it's just there to look cool with fountains there's no fucking fish in there today's the adventure of me and my brain trying to sort out basic information what time is it anyway I don't think these would be motion activated but I mean maybe okay no it's 1202 these these turn on at noon it wasn't me man I don't know who would ever take the time but it would be funny to do a super cut of this podcast of all the times either something like that happened you know just a sudden shock of a thing or more often when I just go what the hell is that because that's definitely happened a bunch of times but anyway talking about a nice way to start the day just walk upstairs to the fucking local beautiful rose garden what the shit I'm not particularly planning to come back to Japan in the summer because the heat is so miserable but it might be cool to see to see what these flowers and stuff these rose gardens I mean this whole neighborhood is so great right now when everything's in bloom it must just fucking blow your dick off your fucking body like what the heck right and there's this little cafe up here I just saw one of the workers looking at the window nobody's in there sorry sorry person I'm not going in either today I'm afraid heading to the coast but yeah I don't know that's another cool thing about Japan if I was in more work mode than exploration mode that would be an interesting thing to experiment with too is trying to find places like this like where's the place I could go and hunker down with the laptop for an hour this seems like a pretty good place but maybe just because it's raining maybe not normally I don't know though I am in the opposite mode of let's just travel to the detriment of all else let's just go go places and not get anything useful done but again hey whatever that's what this trip was for it's almost over I am curious to see because my plan in South Korea is to downshift severely to just not constantly go explore coastlines and mountains and yada yada but who the fuck now is man I guess we'll see yeah this really is kind of nice I do not hate this rainy weather like if it was rainy the whole time I'm sure I'd be tired of it if this was you know this again was what I thought was gonna happen on this trip so it was a great magical bonus that I just got a bonus summertime instead but to little touch a rain here and there I mean it's like with the day and the night how Japan is different in the day and then it's a whole different place in the night it's not quite that way in the rain it's not like a radical transformation but it is different just a different vibe it's kind of nice

Man, this is so odd. There's this machine between, there's this one family Mart I especially like in my neighborhood because it has the garbage cans on the outside, which is just nice because they used to always do that and now it's pretty rare. So you just don't have to go back in to throw out your garbage. It's nice. And between there and the train station is one of these do-tour. Are they all been do-tour? I don't know. But these machines where you get the coffee and it comes out in the little cup. And I love these, you know, every fucking time I find one. It's like, oh, go, go, go, go, drink from that. It's mostly just in airports, but there was one in the major, one of the major train stations in Fukuoka. 15:00 And I guess I was going to say this is weird because it's an outdoor one, but I guess there was one in the park in Chiba, in the central park, but it was still part of a whole little building that had ice cream and stuff. This one is just outside some apartment. So unusual. But I've walked by it like two or three times because there's no garbage. What am I supposed to do with the cup? I mean, actually, I guess I just explained it though, right? I could just walk back. I guess I could just walk back to the family mart. Go the wrong way. I guess I'll have to because the subway stations, unfortunately, in Yokohama is quite rare, sadly, to find garbage cans in them. So I guess I'm going to do this. Yeah, I'm just going to get this here. And I'm going to go back. I'll drink it as I stroll back to the family mart and throw this thing out. Well, let's see if I can figure out how the buttons work. Oh, wait, 120. No, wait, which one did I want? Here we go. Mocha. Two buttons. I don't know why. I don't know what the difference is. Oh, I didn't. Okay. I don't know what's going to happen because there's this other setting for milk level, coffee level. Was I supposed to press those first? Anyway, it's counting down. I've never done this like properly. It's never happened. Oh, no, I know what that is. That's hot and cold. Don't get me cold, baby. I do not want cold. Sweet. Oh, nice. Nice.

I was afraid this was going to dump the big pile of ice in at the end. So I got the Nescafe Gold Blend Cafe Mocha. So hot. If there's any coffee in that, I'll be shocked. It's really just hot chocolate, I think, maybe a little coffee. But anyway, anyway, fucking delightful. Except, yeah, it would be nice if they had a garbage, but they sure don't. It's just funny that that's such it to do. In North America, hey, you know, garbage is everywhere. If you're in New York, garbage optional. Just fucking cram your garbage and someone's, wait a second. No, okay. It's just a can container. Yeah, I don't know. I just think it's funny that it really is a serious problem around here. Like the ice cream machines always have a dedicated little bit where you can put the wrappers for your ice cream. Because otherwise, what are you going to do? Just walk around with it for the rest of your life. Like I was planning it forward in my head. I'm like, jeez, go to the station, get on this train. Like, when I'm going to go all the way to the coast and not have any way to get rid of this cup. So yeah, I think it'll be worth it to just walk backward, backtrack to the family. Just to get rid of this, this bad boy. But yeah, I don't know. I just love these. I love the little, the little cardboard cup. It's so nice. Oh, JB, Japan beverage company. That's anyone. All right, since it's Sunday, there's some, well, basically, there's less direct stuff on the train. So instead of all the way to Ophuna, I went to Isago station, but there was really nowhere to go from Isago except to transfer on to another train to continue on to Ophuna, but it was a little extra step. And then from there, I was looking just looking at the boards. Where do these different trains go to? Let's look at where that end point is on my phone. That's originally how I saw the one to Atami and started going westrally down the coast. And I saw one heading toward Yokozuka, which is just the city to the south of Yokohama, where Dobuita Street is, which I never did make it to and probably won't get around to.

So I hopped on that train and again, because it's Sunday, it didn't go all the way. It only went to Zushi, but I remember I was gonna try to go to Zushi once because I thought my local train went to Zushi, but that was just some unusual train I was only on once. So I was like, all right, well let's just do that. I saw some spots a little bit near the coast. I was like, maybe I could try these out, but it's just like tough to determine. It's a little hard to tell how do you get to the coast from there? Is that even? Is that gonna work? I suppose if I really want some coast in my day, if I really want to do a weird night coast walk, I could just go back to Tsujito like yesterday. You know, it's all really close. It's all really easy to get to. And Zushi, it just feels cool, probably more 20:00 so just to be in a new place. Because the place itself, it's like a big train yard, big apartment building, department store stuff. Then as I walked a little further, you get into really tiny little shops, little fruit stand. And now this is weird. I'm just by this arena with these very similar looking row houses that are different colors way more uniform than is normal in Japan. And just this this tiny little road I'm on that rarely has cars and is by these row houses. It just suddenly feels like of all fucking places. Outthorn Netherlands, where I stayed once, where one of my Airbnb's was. I'm just walking along and I'm like, that's so fucking weird. It has never felt anything like the Netherlands for even a second in Japan. I guess also because I walked past an arena, which reminds me of the Bilmer arena, which is nowhere near there. It's an Amsterdam. But maybe those things together combined. I don't know, but it's just that's weird. It's certainly does still like I'm going to these random neighborhoods and they just feel different. Each one has this different feeling. But yeah, that was an unexpected one.

And I guess it's also still overcast, not raining right now though.

But being overcast I think contributes as well because the first time in particular that I went to the Netherlands that really got emblazoned on my mind because that's one of my failed travel trips where culture shock hit me and I just couldn't get comfortable. And I remember sitting in the library near Central Station and looking out the window at these gray overcast guys because it was late fall at that time and just giving up. It's like not only am I not going to stay in the Netherlands, I'm not going to go to France, I'm not going to go to England. I'm just going to go home. This is saying work and I'm just feeling stressed out every day. So that got stuck in my imprinted on my brain. And then I went back to the Netherlands later and I had a much better time. The second time when I was more comfortable with being overseas. But I guess all that stuff together. The quiet street, the arena, the colored row houses, the slate blue gray sky. All adds up to like bam, I'm in the Netherlands. These little hedges too. There's little curated hedges. It's just fucking weird. It feels so much like because out there and it's just it's just a suburb. There's nothing there. But this quietness, it just all feels like that. It's fucking dead. That's really weird feeling. The beauty of just going to random places. It's just weirdly fun to kind of hang out in the subway stations and on the trains and make your way across the map. And you just get to a place and it's just cool. It just feels cool.

So I'm heading towards something on the map that seems to be maybe some kind of park. I'm really not sure. But whether it works out or not doesn't really matter. Yeah, kind of like these little half day adventures. It's a little nice change from those wacky west Tokyo. Go out onto a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Super adventures. There's like an old train car here surrounded by a fence with a sign. Let's see if Google Trans like can tell me what this is because it sort of seems like it's an exhibit or something like an old-style train car or something.

But it's also not like fancy. It's just kind of got a fence around it and it's just like here's the thing. The Deja 601 maximum length 18 meters maximum width 2.7 meters maximum height 4 meters 36 tons capacity 120 people manufactured in 1966. This vehicle was originally called the 700 series changed to the 600 series 1966 and was born as a high-performance lightweight vehicle that adopted a new axis such as the first Khen Kyoko train which was made of all metal car body. It was nicknamed Lamel and Minaboso and after the air conditioning renewal work in 1971 it was active as a rapid limited express but due to aging it was scrapped in May 1984 due to the appearance of the 2000 series. Yeah so I guess this is just in the 60s this is what a train car looked like.

It's just a head just a red train car doesn't look that different from now and it is weird how those things they just change and you just get used to them. Like when I first moved to Toronto in 2010 they still had these red street cars and then they changed them to these like weird futuristic robo cop looking fucking shits and it's like I don't like those new ones at all but you just get used to them that's just what it looks like now and then you see stuff like the Scott Pilgrim animated show that was on Netflix or whatever and it's like oh there's the old street cars look at that shit like you just forget you kind of forget that those were how things looked and now they are they're the old one it's just like oh yeah that seems wrong now that's the old one the march of progress so one thing that's a little weird is there has been nobody at my Airbnb all week which has been just delightful it's just all to me only last night only Saturday night people showed up and it appears they're already gone which is like awesome thank you see you later but it's amazing how weird that feels because that happened to me in 2019 in Nakaite de Bashi but that place was also big so even when someone else showed up there's multiple bathrooms and all kinds of showers and stuff so I still didn't really feel their presence where at this place it really felt like like why are you in my house get out of my house and it's not just my sense of entitlement it's like I never did see the person or people I guess I didn't even hear them talk I don't know if they are foreigners or Japanese or what but I heard everything else about the men I think people don't know how loud they are just these people stomping around I mean I don't know I always used to people would comment on on me being quiet when I was a kid which I don't know why anybody gave a fuck I guess just because it's like I was sneaking up on them but I always have been like light footed you know I try not just to clomp around and I just think it's kind of interesting when there's people that is like man you've gone your whole life and you never thought about that once did you it never even occurred to you that maybe the way you're walking is very loud and stompy because they're just clumping all around clomp clomp clomp and making noise and banging doors and and that'd be one thing but it's very weird to go just to go take a pee in your in your bathroom you've been using all week I'll buy yourself that you've sold bonded with during a horrible bout of stomach problems and like they didn't even flush the toilet it's like you're you are like a monster you are an ogre person and it was weird because it was pee and tons of toilet paper but there didn't appear to be anything but pee they weren't that uncouth I mean there's that argument I guess to conserve water don't flush when you only pee which is a dubious fucking philosophy but I mean I can kind of get behind that a little but to save it for your house in communal spaces that no longer applies and it just doesn't even make sense like if all it was was pee then what was all the toilet paper for? I have no guesses even and I don't want to be guessing I don't even want to be put in the position of having to detective work out what is going on in your weird ogre life you know just get out get out of my fucking house so anyway it seems like they're gone today so that's nice I get to finish out things in silence in blissful aloneness and there's a I mean I don't know where the US Air Force bases I know it's around here somewhere but I already passed a Caucasian couple where the lady was jogging and the guy was riding his bicycle along with her and then I just passed a an Asian girl chatting to a black girl like smaller girls you know like junior high or whatever so I mean I must be I must be in the vicinity this feels like a surprising mix of different ethnicities that I've seen in this fairly quiet not much going on random little neighborhood no there's a tower not as big as the other tower but now I know it's not special I don't have to get excited about the tower it's just a just a radio tower and here's another one so this is the third of these machines I've found these seem to be pretty common in this area of whatever this brand is it sells cookies so yeah that's the latte cookie that I got the other day although I'm sure it had English writing when I got it because that's how I knew it was a cappuccino cappuccino cookie what else have we got here little gingerbread type looking people some kind of sugar cookie a long board just 30:00 like a biscotti but in a surfer guys some kind of coconut square cookie cracker thing that could be good I hope I have some coins or this is going to be a disappointing look oh good I do I do have coins yes is all no English I don't know what this company's called they had so weird the random like local stuff like this cookie brand here but like root beer I've still never seen root beer anywhere but Hachioji why would you why would you need to go there to get root beer it's so weird all right coconut avenue let's try you One cookie dispensed, on the excesses of Japanese packaging. Inside this package are three individual packages, so each little coconut cookie has its own package. Of course, why not?

I mean, technically it's handy, so I can dispense these cookies to myself throughout the day, but I mean, come on, I'm America adjacent, I'm Canada gin, I'm eating all these fucking things right now.

Mmm, that's very nice. That's one of those things that like, it just never crossed my mind. Like, I don't know, is coconut common around here? Is coconut rare? I don't know, I just haven't had my mind on it.

But I haven't had coconut the whole time I've been here. So it's just very nice. Aha, so this place I'm trying to get to, you can go for a natural park, I'm not quite sure how to get there from here. We'll see, we'll see how this goes. But it looks like what I spied with my little eye was correct. Commander, U.S. Fleet Activities, Yokosuka, Ekego Detachment, Ekego Heights Family Housing.

So this appears to be where the military folk live. Ekego-based gym, I see. It's kind of like a big Ekego housing unit. Ekego Elementary. Yeah, it's kind of like a big blank spot on the map, but in this case, it's not a big, weird mountain. In this case, it's U.S. military stuff, I guess. Interesting. There's a little walkway, I guess we'll see if this takes me to this park. If it doesn't, then I don't know what the fuck to do, so we'll see.

Alright, well, that park was just a random target, just an excuse to walk somewhere, and it definitely wasn't clear how to get there through with the housing unit stuff all right there. I don't know if there even is like a public available path, if there was, it wasn't clear. But then I realized, well, what else is around here? And as I got right, I'm actually pretty close to the next station. And then from the next station, it's only a couple of stops to Yokosuka station proper. And that's probably a good place to go, just because it'll be easier to get back, you know, from there, connecting from Yokosuka to Yokohama will obviously be a lot easier than winding back through Zushi and Ofuna and all the stuff I did to get here. And then I realized, if I'm going to be there, it's a very short walk to Doboy to Street, so I mean, fuck it. I guess I'll just go after all, you know. I kind of thought, like, yeah, you know, maybe I wasn't going to make it down there. Because it's most famous to my generation for being in the game Shenmue, which even though my brother had a Dreamcast, and we had a fairly decent little stack of Dreamcast games, we never had that one. And it's one of those games that it was like a pioneer of open world gaming and of, you know, it kind of, it seemed kind of cool, like very ultra realistic, where you could like walk through your house and open every drawer and all this stuff. It seemed really cool at the time. But nowadays, we've moved on to the, you know, Grand Theft Auto style open world where there's always stuff happening, action, action, action. It seems like Shenmue would be a very hard thing to go back to at this point, so I don't know if I ever will play it. But yeah, I only know Doboy to Street through the reflection of what I've seen of other people, you know, let's players and stuff playing Shenmue. 35:00 I don't know that that's going to be the same. It's definitely not going to be the same as when I went to Kabuki-cho, and I recognized everything from the Yakuza games.

People definitely do have that experience with Shenmue. You can find people on YouTube that are doing their, you know, their Shenmue journey going to all the places from Shenmue and comparing the real-life place to the place from the video game. I just won't be able to do that. But, hey, you know, whatever. Other people have already done that, so that's fine. That's all out there.

I'll just go as a guy who doesn't know what the heck's going on, and just, you know, whatever, wander around for a bit and see what it's like.

So if you're a Shenmue fan who found this by searching for Dobuita, apologies in advance that I'll have nothing useful to say. And double apologies for all of this stuff you've had to listen to up to this point.

Welcome to my podcast. This is where I walk around to random places and talk about nothing. So I hope you enjoy it in some capacity. And yeah, I think maybe the naval base is right there because there's also just the big, the big blank spot on Google Maps that is mysteriously lacking in information. It's occurring to me that maybe it's not a coincidence that Shenmue takes place near Dobuita Street because I know the basic plot is you're trying to track down the mystery of your father's murder. And then eventually the hero gets on a ship and sails to Hong Kong. So I mean, I guess being by the naval yard and being by, I don't know, I don't fucking know. It's the point, I guess. I don't know what I'm talking about. But anyway, yeah, I'm going to go there.

Man, right up to the end of this trip, there's still odd bathroom stuff happening here where there's this button on a lot of the, not a lot, but some of the toilets that you can make a flushing sound. You know, I guess it's just to cover up whatever noise is you're making so you don't lose, lose space for your terrible time in the bathroom. But I've never used the artificial flush button before, but this is the first time at the washroom in your Coast Coast station where I've ever seen this happen. And it did that automatically. It's just an automatic thing. And I was like, well, you shut up. It was like really loud. And it just kept going just this flush sound. And it's like, dude, I didn't ask for that. Please, please be quiet, you.

But the terrain here, there is a big naval yard here, tons of ships out in the distance, but to the other side, it's so cool that the terrain is still that crazy Yokohama style bluff swear. There's tunnels right away that the train disappears through and houses cascading up the side of the hill and then just a few houses way up, way up in the sky. It's like, man, I love that. I just love that terrain so much.

But your Coast Coast station is a lot smaller than I expected. I thought it was a more major thing. But I wonder if all of this is just Shenmue stuff. Does this only seem like it's a famous place because of Shenmue? Like maybe it just really isn't. Now I'm on like a little boardwalk. There's some kind of a little shopping center ahead of me. Coast God, base-eyed stores. It's not like tiny, but it's not like a big urban center. Even Zushi felt bigger.

But yeah, I guess I should say beyond just Shenmue in general as a general concept. One reason why Shenmue in particular is so ingrained in my mind, despite the fact that I never played it, is I've mentioned him before, but there was one of the old school OG Japan vloggers from America. This guy named Roger Swan from Battle Creek, Michigan, who sadly got an unexpected illness and died while he was teaching English in Northern Japan. But his first trip to Japan with the jet program and then his second visit up north, he did these vlogs about them. And he was just the nicest guy in the world. It was like really, that's actually how I heard about him, unfortunately, was because he had passed away. And I went back and watched all his videos. And then I compiled, if you search for the story of Roger Swan, or he was also his channel was called Tokyo Swan, the story of Tokyo Swan, 40:00 Roger with a D-R-O-D-G-E-R. I made like a 90 minute compilation of clips from his different vlogs to sort of make his trip to Japan into sort of a documentary type of movie sort of. And it took me years to put that together. I just worked away at it here and there. But through the course of that, you know, I watched all of his stuff. So every time I go somewhere that he had been, it's like, oh yeah, I mean, it doesn't happen a lot. I haven't crossed over with a ton of his stuff. But every once in a while, there's something. And I'm like, oh yeah, there's that. One that maybe next time I'm in Japan, I saw it on a map the other day is Oshima Island. You know, I think it would have to take me out of my comfort zone, where I usually just go wherever is easy to go to. I think for Oshima, I would need to get on a boat. But that was one place that he went, that I saw that on the map. And I'm like, oh yeah, I don't know. Times running out this time. But next time I should try to go there. Anyway, Roger was in love with Genmo. He loved it. It was one of the big reasons why he wanted to come to Japan. And I'm pretty sure his final vlog, might have more views now, but I don't know. It might still be his Shenmue one. His Shenmue one was the one that people who didn't know his channel would find.

And I just remember that one in particular, because it was the same type of thing I talk about all the time, of feeling like you're in a video game. You know, for me, there was the one specific example of Kabukicho.

But it does feel that way in abstract ways, just growing up with Japanese video games, you don't realize how much of it is just based on the landscape and on the way the cities are laid out. And just the way the natural world is. I mean, all the way back to the classic story of the original Zelda, the first screen of the first Zelda is just a cave. Because when Miyamoto was a kid, there was a cave when he was exploring that he was scared to go in. So that particular episode of Tokyo Swan stood out a lot because that was what he was expressing as like, man, back in the day, played this game. And I played the shit out of it and I loved it. He didn't say shit. He was the nicest guy he never swore ever. He played it like crazy. He loved that game. And he wanted to go there. It's like, I want to go see that place. I want to see that place from the game. And then for him to actually be there. He's like, you know, but you want to do it, but you don't really think it's going to happen. And then it happens. And here, here I am. I'm inside the game. So I guess because of sifting through all his videos to put together the compilation, like, you know, it's all the stuff he did sort of got internalized in my mind. But that's where it's a little weird with this stuff, with Yokosuka and with Shenmue, because it meant so much to him.

But this is where I was kind of putting it off. And I wasn't even sure if I was going to come in and just sort of ended up happening back today because it just can't mean that to me, you know. I don't even know what there is that I could possibly say about it. It seems like a waste, I guess, in a way. It's like, what am I going to say? How am I going to appreciate this? I don't know, maybe it'll work in reverse, though. I mean, maybe I'll just wander around Dobu Ita for a bit.

And then maybe someday in the future, I will play Shenmue. I mean, who knows? I don't know. It's possible. I don't actually play a lot of video games these days, so probably not. But if I ever do, you know, this could work in reverse instead of playing the game and then going to the place. I'll go to the place so that someday, if I play the game, I can be like, holy moly.

There's this and there's that. But yeah, I mean, I feel like I'm putting pressure on myself. This is kind of why I don't like going to tourist stuff and I don't like going to big museums or going to exhibits and displays.

I don't like putting that pressure on myself of, I don't know how else to say it besides being expected to care, you know. Because it's just not how I parse things. Again, still speaking about my brain. If you ask me to care about some one specific thing, we're off to a bad start, because I probably won't and I don't.

The world is kind of like a big flat plane to me, where the totality of it is interesting. I take a whole series of events or a whole area or a whole scenario and that's interesting. But if you point out any one little particular thing and you really get hung up about it, I cannot follow you there. It's probably not that cool. It's probably not that important. It's probably not that. It's just another thing, you know. I don't know.

So yeah, in this case, it's like I preemptively feel a little bad because this is just going to be another thing.

And in some weird way, you know, for the sake of Roger Swan, I feel like it should mean more and it is not going to. So I just got to put all that stuff out of my head. I'm just psyching myself out for no reason. I'm just overthinking all of this. Just go walk around, soak it in, have a little day. That's all. That's all I got to do.

Better figure out how to get there, of course. I don't actually know how to get there.

Well, you're definitely the, uh, the whole neighborhood gets big fast. So even though the station didn't seem that large, this is actually a pretty large area. And Dobuita Street is real close to the station, easy to get to and right out of the gate. I mean, like if you can see the episode image for this episode, I mean, if you've played Shenmue, you know that store, right? And right next to it is the Tom and Jack Store with the American flag. I mean, I feel like, I feel like such a pose or take in the pictures because it's like, yeah, these are the pictures everyone takes on their Shenmue fucking journey. But I mean, those are the places. And I was surprised. I mean, I did know a little bit more than I expected to know. There's this one really steep street. And I was like, you know what, I'm pretty sure up here is like a little shrine thing. And it was. I'm like, holy crap, how did I know that? I guess, so I did know a little bit more than I, but I realized I knew. But I guess another reason why I was kind of putting this off is, is yeah, like that Roger Swan guy. He really was just, just the nicest guy, just ludicrously nice. And even though I worked on the little compilation video I made, I mean, I worked on it for years, but it was just like put a lump in my throat every time for years.