i'm hiking along
a river right now that's just about
sorry an hour and a half
north
of tokyo
you see just happen to stumble across
this spot
on google maps well working on a
previous project
about abandoned villages
and
kind of
just want to come out here and
do some hiking there's
like really
really big planes flying overhead
there's no way i'm going to be able to
like that is a huge plane
[Music]
i've actually been hiking through this
area for about the last two to three
hour i'm just trying so hard not to slip
right now this place is called
chichibu and it's just north of tokyo in
an area called saitama and when most
people think saitama they think that the
bedtown that people live in and commute
into tokyo for work but chichibu itself
is an area
full of mountains and rivers hiking
trails and everything in between and
it's close enough to tokyo that you can
get out here pretty easily a couple
years back i think i did an entire like
ice waterfall out here in chichibu that
was just spectacular
but i am going to be setting up
camp here
in this area
for the night
what in the
uh
have you ever seen totoro there's just
little acorns rolling down the hill
it was a really cloudy day when i
started today's hike but
the sun came out about 20 30 minutes ago
and has
really
really added to the the temperature of
things
which is my way of saying
i'm incredibly hot i've secured myself a
bit of a space over here
it's already
honestly a bit more
crowded than i'm used to usually i go
camping out in nagano which has like the
highest density of campsites in all of
japan and so it's really easy to get an
empty campsite on a weekday because
there's just so many campsites there but
probably gonna use this area here and
set myself up a little hammock in the
trees
and yes i am aware that this is not the
perfect setup for a hammock but you work
with the space that you have this is
actually a really really big hammock by
the way like you can feel like two or
three you can't even can't see it can
you you know what there's no way to it's
a big hammock that's that's basically
what i'm trying to get it's
a big heavy
fire pit
and the tent
grabbed this tent last year online for
like 50 bucks not expecting a lot just
like that it came in a small package and
it
has served me well
this tarp is great for holding the space
but that's really
really tough
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every time i've gone camping lately i've
had the camper van with me so
it's kind of nice it's nice just to have
the tent this time and to be able to
relax out here for a night but it's a
lot less camping and a lot more
a little bit of food early bed
and then waking up to get out to the
areas to do some hiking tomorrow i gotta
gotta build up the coals here
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supermarket had this little
single serving
sauce for yakiniku or i guess grilled
meat
listen to the hiss from that grill okay
[Music]
all right food is done
tent is all set up and
i thought this was totoro at first
got a little cat buddy
[Music]
good night kitty cat all right once this
fire dies down
i'm gonna
call it a night
get a get a reasonable start tomorrow
[Music]
i was gonna make some coffee here but
erie got real crowded real fast
[Music]
cleaned up feeling fresh the drive out
here blue skies the entire time the
second i arrived in the mountains
nothing
but gray but i left off at
this very spot a few months back and i'm
forever going to be curious about this
pathway here maybe someday i'll come
back
and i have no idea what is down this
path i don't know if it goes on for two
minutes if it goes on for two hours but
i always told myself that i would come
back and check out
this spot
right here starting with this incredibly
sketchy broken
brit that's that's the first challenge
are we gonna are we gonna die
going across the bridge
all right and
this right here
is the pathway
i gotta make sure
i don't fall off the side
over here oh wow i don't even know how
far i'm gonna be able to go on this to
be honest
look at this
right up here
at some point there's clearly been a bit
of a landslide
this is going to be a fun little trek
and trying so hard not to slip here
and
i don't know how well it's going to show
up on the camera but there are segments
some of the abandoned villages out here
but let's
go this way and try not to die
this area has actually
grown over
quite a bit i
i don't know how far
i'm gonna be able to make it
on this trail you know what i might just
go up there
it looks difficult but you know what
let's do it
that
it was not the right direction
i'm gonna go this way
the difficulty here being is that if i
slip there's a bit of a fall you really
can't see how steep things are
on video
that brings us
up to
here
and finally
the sun is coming out a little
so much nicer with the sun
whenever i do these hiking adventures
aside from the bear spray and the
satellite tracker and all the other
precautions not productions precautions
that i take is you'll notice i often
wear some form of clothing that
contrasts with the environment and the
nature that i'm in
solely
in the hopes that if something does go
terribly wrong like like me falling down
into this precipice that hopefully
hopefully people will be able to find me
a little bit easier simply based off of
the
color of the clothing that i'm wearing
so
this
i'm loving this path by the way like
every little bit of this
oh
little river down there too
[Music]
so while on the surface this may just
look like mountains you'll notice that
there's actually kind of
a pathway
built along here in
some sections
and that's because originally these
pathways were used to connect different
mountain villages like you can actually
see the remnants
of
a village
down there and the merchants and traders
would go from village to village
to share their products or sell their
products or
sell charcoal and stuff like that
and that's how they conducted business
and kept
the area alive so i'm just trying to
find the path
that connects down to the next village
without falling down the mountain and
dying despite being out here in the
middle of forest
that pole
is for the electrical wires
that run down to
the next village
okay i
i think
i think we can get down this way
rolled my ankle
oh and this is why you want to come out
to places like this in hiking boots oh
wow
okay i'm hoping hoping so much that this
path actually goes down
into this area and doesn't just i'm
what's it going to do dump me out onto
the roof of this house
it is isn't it it's going to dump me out
right into the oh boy all right
just feels
it just feels so
ridiculous to be
just
pushing through
all of this
you know what
i think
this
is exactly
where i want it to be
honestly it feels ever so slightly
anti-climactic
for that path just to lead back to a
village that i i've wanted to walk that
path
for months now and
just just led back here back to a
village i've already been to like if
you're a fairly regular viewer you may
recognize
some of these items
i stayed out in this area for two days
to hunt down locals who once lived in
these abandoned villages and tell their
stories made an entire documentary about
it and behind the scenes but
that behind the scenes ended
at that pathway where i just was and
i've been wondering
ever since
where it leads to
while i absolutely love doing these
videos out in forests and in nature
there's just something that is really
really missed
on camera
you you can't really capture
the beauty of the area everything kind
of blends together you don't have that
depth perception that you have
in real life
like this space here this in real life
has so much depth and contrast and sharp
angles and the camera it doesn't pick it
up in the least it's just hard to really
truly capture and show what it looks
like through a camera which is one of
the reasons why i really hope that
people will come out here and explore
these areas because these mountains for
the most part
around the udayama dam area have just
gone pretty much completely event even
hikers don't come up here it's not just
like the the buildings and structures
and whatnot that have been abandoned i
met a hiker here last time who said that
she'd been hiking forever and didn't see
anybody but 10 years ago she used to see
people hiking around here and it's
become a much more rare sight this is
becoming like a forgotten
area
and it's so close again to tokyo it's
just north and to the west a bit it's
it's chi chi boo it's
it blows my mind that a place like this
can
slowly become
lost and forgotten when there's just so
much beauty to be seen
you know i'm gonna get set up i think
i'm gonna walk up this way get set up
and
finally have some coffee
[Music]
so
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[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
on a previous trip i didn't bring a
proper cup with me so
a viewer was kind enough to send me an
actual titanium
mug and i love that
thank you thank you for that
that should be about good and
got my favorite little drip coffee bags
and this particular one is actually
from the abandoned school out in the
mountains
of shikoku
where my buddy yochan lives he invited
me out recently and he gave me a bunch
of coffee
how are go
i um
i have what japanese people call it
naked
which is they call it cat tongue and
basically a cat tongue is when you can't
handle really hot foods and drinks and
that that 100
that that just describes my life right
there actually in one of the nearby
villages there's a super
super sad story that i never got the
chance to tell last time
about a gentleman who lived in the area
and had something like 10 dogs but a few
months ago he passed away all of his
dogs his property all of it's still
there so people from the local community
center and around the area have been
going
every few times a week to take care of
the dogs i think a lot of them are old
and they don't want to take them from
the place that they know is home and
they're getting fed and everything
anyway but they're still locked up but
it was this whole sad side story that
didn't make the final cut of the
documentary but
this area is just filled
filled with stories
[Music]
all right so i was driving along and
there's just like this big old family of
monkeys just hanging out on the road
the very first time that i ever actually
found the abandoned village i ended up
leaving because there was a very curious
monkey that just kept getting closer and
closer and i was like nope we're not i'm
not i'm i'm in an abandoned village all
alone
i am not having my camera stolen by a
monkey
so i wrap up for the day and now now we
have beautiful blue skies and the sun is
fully out and shining
this place to me the fact that i had to
come back here and do this this was the
equivalent this was like the the
location equivalent to an ear worm for
me i could not get this out of my head
slightly anti-climactic honestly
very very worth coming out here and
doing so i hope that you enjoyed this
little
outdoor
excursion adventure experience which
served zero purpose outside of
just just getting that
out of my head you'd be surprised
genuinely surprised at how often i was
thinking about where does that i also
found this spot that i quite love
it's not even really part of the trail
it's just a log
beside a wall
so it's a log beside a wall
you