@@user-no2mz9hl4f I would grab the koi fish out of the gutters, and cook them. Koi fried rice, fried koi fillets, everything. Im gonna eat them all up. Amen
In the Philippines, I can tell you straight away that street gutter water in major cities will never be clean and could probably kill the Hulk. However, I heard from the generations of my grandparents that water in Malabon City (a city in northern metro manila where my grandparents come from) was clean back then that they actually saw saltwater fish swimming in the canals. Another beautiful place in Japan that always amazes me are the "Satoyama" areas in the country where I've seen documentaries of houses keeping carp inside their houses, where the water is fed through a canal. Nice video Greg, I'd love to see more great content.
When dugyot Gangs Invade the Cities and Polluted it and some People there become worst than Stupid who don't know how to Clean even in their Front Door/Backyard
in some provinces actually, canals(irrigation) still have fishes and fresh water shells in them, not really impressive as koi but hey there's still life
@@ashenone3050 Not true at all lol. Houses had wells that had fish like carp and they purify the water by eating whatever’s swimming the water, they’re kept like pets so that people can use the wells to wash vegetable or drinking. You can see this NHK documentary about a town with canals that have this system ua-cam.com/video/_rwxsjzjDhs/v-deo.html.
In rural Japan (at least where I live) the “mizo”, or irrigation-runoff canals are a central part of life for a lot of people. Well, the rice farmers most of all - they clean them out a couple of times a year, constantly adjust water levels, etc - but the surrounding community as well. We feel a kind of responsibility to keep them clean and sometimes report and even remove invasive species that can harm the rice crop. And on hot days kids play in them, and even catch fish and crayfish for fun. (The Cray fish are an invasive specie too, but they don’t hurt the rice so we let them be.😆) In spite of the small amount of upkeep we have to do, I love having the mizo canal next to our house. Except that every time we have heavy rain and it threatens to overflow into our yard & house. That part’s kind of scary. ⛈
From my knowledge as a Japanese, those colourful Koi (Nishikigoi) were created by selective breeding for decorative purposes. Natural Koi are single-coloured. And as far as I know, Koi actually prefer to live in dirty water (idk about Nishikigoi tho), they grow up to a meter and there is no enemy against them in Japanese nature. I recently read news about Koi destroying the ecosystem because people released them into the water where Koi never existed before.
"And as far as I know, Koi actually prefer to live in dirty water" My info from the US - what are called "koi" in Japanese are what we call "carp" in English (as Greg said). Just here to second what you said - I, too, have always known of carp as fish that can thrive in dirty waterways (quite opposed to the claim online that Greg said he found). In fact, I just looked it up, and it appears that carp do have an omnivorous diet, but are also detritivores - that is, they eat detritus 😳 I have vivid memories of slightly aggressive carp in a lake nibbling at my toes as a kid. That lake water was clean enough to swim in (... supposedly), but it was not water I would attempt to legitimately drink... Fun side note, in case you weren't aware - where I'm from in the midwest US, we use the word "koi" when referring to "nishikigoi!" I think some of us separate them mentally from carp (at least, I do) because carp are so ingrained as almost a "dirty" fish that the beauty of nishikigoi might spare them from the image of being dirty.
Most carp are very much capable, and are sometimes even introduced into rice paddies, muddy ponds and streams specifically to help clean out muck. They're the goats of freshwater and are hardy as hell. Nishikigoi are no different other than their bred colours.
When I lived in Tokyo in the early 90's many of the large cement drainage ditches/creeks had very large koi living in them, I could only think they had been released by someone that didn't want them anymore (just flushed them down the toilet when I was a kid in the states). As some were rather large and very colorful, I wondered how they compared to the multi million yen koi for sale on the roof tops of the big department stores
@@gravel9270 the toxic material on cement will gone overtime especially if it's running water since the toxic material will washed away by water currents in my place we have cement pond for koi We have to fill the pond let it for a day and remove the water Repeat it 5 times or more It's may not be efficient but hey it's work out
@@Asterite they do bro. they are just treated poorly, many teens are homeless in japan and camp out in redlight districts to make money from older men.
I rememeber being blow away by the water infrastructure when I visited. The "normal" gutters may not seem as impressive, but it's still much more pedestrian friendly, and often have flowing water. Coming from a drought prone area, in my mind, that's pretty beautiful.
Just information for everyone, make sure you understand the difference between waterproof and water resistance. A good majority of phones have water resistance, Samsungs, iPhones, Pixels etc. Phones like that are not waterproof. The water resistance most phones have is a rating ip68 which means the device can be under water 1.5m deep for around 30 min before you have issues. There are only a very few amount of phones that i know of that are waterproof in which they can deal with water for a very long period of time.They can stay in water for a really long time but not forever. Water resistance will still keep water and dust out of your phone but you still void your warranty if you dip your phone in water
This. And also as a watch collector I know of water resistance ratings being based on new condition. Those seals will weaken with time, especially as your phone flexes in your pocket or the glue expands or contracts with heat and cold. I'd always take resistance ratings with a grain of salt.
In Alberta, Canada we have man-made storm water ponds that function to hold overflow from intense storms. They are designed to naturalize and eventually function as urban wetlands. Unfortunately, people have decided they are great places to dispose of unwanted aquarium fish, such as gold fish. These things are invasive, aggressive reproducers and have become a threat to native species of fish and amphibians. It has become a monstrous task to get them out of the ponds before they destroy the intended biodiversity. One city resorted to poisoning an entire pond and starting all over again. Another had city workers use an enormous net to scoop up the fish. They got something like 5,000 gold fish out of one medium sized pond. Now there is a campaign to teach people not to dump their pet fish in local ponds.
Gold fish are closely related to invasive Asian carp. No surprise they breed like rats and eat anything they can. It's also why they can survive in abysmal conditions in a kids bedroom.
I'm in a desert climate in the US, the street gutters have dead weeds and a mix of dirt and sand that runs off from yards when sprinklers turn on. Surprisingly, there's little to no trash but that's probably because most people stay indoors due to the heat. When I lived in Santa Clara, CA (1980's) I had a Japanese-American friend and her Dad had a 2-level pond in the back with koi in the upper pond and goldfish in the lower.
Also a US desert climate: our arroyos are dry, if they have water in them it's stagnant runoff full of parasites and pollutants (the water is black, has trash in it, and it stinks to be near. Parasites are mosquito larva, horsehair worms, and who knows what else). If anything lives in it it's hardy desert grasses that are happy with any type of moisture, but usually its just sand and filth.
There’s little wee springs bubbling up where I live in Minnesota too-you can see the water coming up from the ground, disturbing the sand into little poufs, then flowing down the river bank through the forest into the mighty Mississippi…there’s also a place that has tapped a spring-and like you saw there in Japan-people come to fill up water bottles with the delicious, refreshing, and most importantly FREE spring water! 💙
I worked on declogging gutters here in the Philippines and I found out through my cousin living in Japan that the gutters there was almost crystal clear I didn't believe it till I saw this And after working for about a year the gutters on the areas I'm working are all full of trash and can't remember how many dead rats I have found in it, there was even a time where there was a dead dog stuck in the gutters causing it to flood during heavy rain. But theres also a lot of the times where we get a ton of coins in it that could actually buy you a meal if your lucky enough One us was lucky to get a whole 100 pesos bill.
@@arrietty1619 The Ganges River in India, and the Citarum River in Indonesia are one of the most polluted rivers in the world, not the Pasig River. In fact, the Pasig River Rehabilitatiom has been greatly successful, where the PRRC, the government commisiom that was responsible for the continued efforts received the Asiam Riverprize Award IN 2018. Not only your depricatimg the country for some shallow reasons, you have false information as well.
Your videos are not only very insightful, but also very calming and peaceful. I always look forward to watching your videos and they are the most enjoyable videos to watch whilst I’m working on one of my embroidery projects🥲☺️
Greg, I was truly shocked when you talked about the park (near the end) where people were keaving trash and they had to shut the water off because of it. That runs so counter to what we hear about how clean and responsible Japanese people are. What a great little quirky topic to cover! Now, if you can just discover why Japanese maps are all over the place with their orientations....
Been to Japan many times and even stayed there for a month, and I can tell you, Japan's streets are really not as clean as they are portrayed to be, especially after the "happy hours" and Japanese people do litter and even spit. 😆😆
Japan is clean and tidy when people are being watched. After dark people dump stuff everywhere but the street cleaners are on it pretty quickly. I clear litter from my local beach early in the mornings. Worst of all, I think, are the fireworks left everywhere and the barbecues as well as all the fishing line, hooks and weights.
@@LC-zi8jw Yeah I think it depends on the area and the mood of the crowd, like you said in the "happy hours" people are less responsible but most people won't notice because they employ so many street cleaners to fix it up nice for the next morning.
News articles: In the city of Shimabara on Japan's Kyushu Island, the street gutters are so clean they are home to hundreds of koi carp! LWIF: *Amazing, every word of what you just said...was wrong* The NYC water drainage system isn't like Japan, but at least it's home to a group of turtles turned ninjas trained by a rat who both protect the city and further promote the city by spreading their love of NY-style pizza. Can't say the same about Japan
Our gutters are better than they were 20 years ago. I.e. reasonably free of trash (like small paper, nicknacks) very few cans (if any), some plastic. The seal on the iPhone is pretty good. But bets are off once someone who is not professional replaces the battery w/o a pressure test. Thanks, Greg!
The spectacular thing is not that Japanese street gutters are so beautiful, but that no where else in the world could you place a decorative pool in this spot and have no one interfere with it with litter ect.
OMG Greg, I had no ideas this was something people were talking about online but I love how it caused you to create this video. Thank you for the smiles today. I needed it.
Before covid hit during Nov 2019 on a tour to Japan with my family Our tour itinerary had us going to one of the more rural areas in Japan. I think it was called Shirakawa in the Gifu Prefecture. I remember seeing houses that uses straw as it's roof and then I noticed that there were a bunch of Koi fishes swimming in the canals. There were probably in the almost over 100 of them I guess?
at the most, iphones are water resistant. IP68 for some common models. They're good for up to 2 meters for up to 30 minutes. This depends on the quality of the seal and such
in NZ we have wild koi living in rivers we wouldn't let kids swim in because they'd get sick from Ecoli or get gastro from all the cow poo that gets in there 😂 I don't know who on earth thought *wild* koi are sensitive, as far as I was aware they're hardy and survive nearly anywhere.
Ow I'm so envy with the clean and clear water in their canals... seeing kois around the canals made feel like they are in a huge aquarium because of how discipline the people are
Where I live in Chiba, there are long man made canals from the sea which go far inland and meet up with rivers and storm drains. I live about 3/4 mile from the sea and the canal rises and falls with the tide but also carries in jellyfish, crabs, eel and loads of fish of all sizes. I also see lots of cormorants sitting on the overhead electric cables waiting for an easy meal. Sometimes, I see people on the bridge fishing for sea fish and they are a mile away from the beach or more.
I was in Utsunomiya Japan in 2005 for business. Right outside the train station there was a gravel parking lot where the bus picked us up to take us to the factory we were working in and there was a gutter just like the ones shown in this video and there were some really nice Koi in there. It was not a tourist city or area so I was surprised. I took some photos of the area, gutter, and fish.
How beautiful & charming shimabara is! Being a Japanese, mixture of emotion is undeniable. In a part, we could be very proud of scenes created by nature & history, in the other, we're well aware of they're exceptional & very limited, often found way away from big cities. Anyway, personally greatly appreciated to the author for this elaborate video. Quality would be a subtitle. Thank you very much for a precious introduction of a uniqueness of Japan to the world wide web!
Great documentary! I live in this town, and it’s beautiful with all the springs everywhere. Having drinkable water flowing everywhere is super convenient as well^^
NYC has disgusting street gutters unfortunately because many lack respect for the place they live. Too many people throw trash into the streets, and many people throw or push trash straight into gutters which causes many of the issues with flooding. There's a little sidewalk island or triangle between streets around the corner from my house where on a daily basis, people will drive by in the middle of the night and dump many bags of trash and broken furniture so someone else can deal with it. Its mind blowing to me how disrespectful and lazy people are. (my rant on how frustrating New Yorkers are and I'm born and raised in Queens).
It aint just new york... america as a whole is like this even in suburbs and rural areas. Its just a part of American culture to not care about the environment
Here in India, the street gutters mostly are so horrible that the water turns dark black during non-rainy seasons. Any habitat is almost impossible here.
@@harshitrautela6585 I was just about to comment this, yes The Cleanest Village of Asia is in Meghalaya India , so it depend upon people not govt. Garbage trucks, sweepers are there too in india but they won't clean 24hrs , it's our responsibility!
Have you heard of indore??? We don't have black smelly gutter, they are clean and we have gardens and trees on the side of gutters also now we are the only city with 7 star ratings in inda.
@Six Pains isnt this my city only mindset the main problem of India? If your city/area is the only clean area in India, that doesnt mean that India is clean.
This town is beautiful, I lost "the point" of the video a while ago. Living in such a beautiful and natural place would make a person more reverent. Thank you for sharing this beauty.
I work in Hot Springs, Arkansas. It's named for it's natural hot springs. There are places where you can relax in the hot springs water and there are fountains where you can fill up bottles for free like in this video. I work at Levi Hospital and we have a lot of patients that come to the physical therapy department to swim in the pool. The pool is one of the only ones specifically for physical therapy and it uses natural hot springs. It helps the patients because aquatic therapy reduces the amount of pressure put on joints and there are people who believe that they can absorb the natural minerals during their therapy. There is a misunderstanding with our pool because people think they can just get in it but its specifically for physical therapy. There's peddle bikes and hand rails. Theres a slopped area for wheel chairs and a lift as well to help patients get in. It's great because the pool is set at about 92 degrees farenheit and the heat helps with inflammation and joint pain. Greatly recommend aquatic therapy for anyone wherever you're at.
Is Arkansas famous not only for its hot springs, but also for its volcanoes? Areas with volcanoes benefit from hot springs and clean spring water, but suffer from the terror of earthquakes and tsunamis...
It’s good to hear the gutters in Japan have changed. When I was in Okinawa and mainland Japan in the 1970s the Binjo ditches (drains along the street sides) were literally sewage drains and STANK. Raw sewage flowed in those ditches constantly and there were definitely NO Koi in them!
I've seen Koi and Trout in a gutter beside the road in Shirakawa-go. I didn't trace the water to see if there were grills to prevent them from escaping. I also saw very clear water in the street drains in Kurama. Walking upstream, I found where the water was drawn off the adjacent stream. So I take your point, but the video title is a bit misleading.
The French cities of Thonon-les-Bains and it’s more famous neighbour Evian(-les-Bains) also have spring outlets where locals come with bottles and larger containers to collect the very same spring water we buy at outrageous prices elsewhere.
In my city, Belo Horizonte, there is a HUGE manmade lake, it's kinda like Japan, but with capybaras and alligators. Look it up, it's called "lagoa da Pampulha"
I was intrigued by the title but did not expect to watch the whole thing. 🥃 However, you made a great video 📸. I want to learn more about rural Nagoya. 🦋 Happy Trails 🤠
Seriously, people need to think about what the kind of trash they're putting in these street gutters. Every time, we take a step forward, we make two steps back because of actions like not taking care of such a resource like water. Water is life, and clean water means health. And it's something everyone deserves to have
@@GentlemanGaming1122 It is him. He is the only one that has internet in NK. What a piece of s*** pretending to be nice. While doing the wrong thing in his country to his people.
I can’t tell if the comments are a joke or not…if they aren’t then I can’t believe I actually found someone who believes the UA-cam profile of commentators. Wow.
Somewhere in Sagay, Negros Occidental, the same happened in the gutters of Paraiso, a small town. 25 years ago (not sure when this happened exactly, I was still small back then) a big flood rose from the river near our house, our neighbors would take care of kois, carpas, mollys, and other kinds of fish. All these fishes ended up living in the gutters when the flood subsided. These fishes lived for many years in the gutters of Paraiso
The street gutters where I'm from have a life of their own. Where in Japan, people like to peek into them, people generally try to stay 5 metres away from them at the very least. And so, they have to make their presence known. Usually through their unbearable stench or by overflowing in the slightest of rainfall. They may not be serene and clear, but they make themselves known in other ways. 😂😂
I’ve traveled to Japan dozens of times, and on my days off, I would take bread to the canals and drop tiny pieces in the water, and in a short time dozens of carp and some koi will show up.
I remember when I stay in Ota City in Tokyo there also was a little section on the side of the walkway with Koi in them! Very nice & interesting video!
In Gokarna, Karnataka, India, Street gutters are as clean as those streams. I've visited that place last year and I was very surprised to see fishes in roadside drains.
5:10 in Hungary there are several public spring water stations throughout the country. Some people even travel quite far to bottle water from specific springs, because they have a higher content of certain minerals. Like there is one around Lake Balaton that has a pretty high iron content, which makes the water taste like blood.
Funnily though it used to be like this for my mom's old town. The street gutters would have fish in them. Apparently this was because the town was built around a natural freshwater spring, and the people thought it was a good idea to dump fish in there. She remembers how the water used to be free and clean and teaming with all kinds of fish. Then industrialization happened. A water company came, bought the land around the spring. The clean gutters stagnated because the water source was blocked off. The surrounding farm lands were bought up for apartment blocks and high rises. Instead of fish, you'd see ascaris worms from the brand new livestock factories swimming in the gutters instead. Mostly though, she says everyone complained because what used to be a free source of fresh water you now had to pay to get access to.
Japan is indeed so clean... We just got there last May 2022... Those canals truly has crystal clear waters and wild Koi fish... Salute to the people of Japan...
Fun fact, Koi are one of the most recently domesticated animals. The domestication of koi only goes back about 150 years when China first domesticated goldfish for sale as pets about 1000 years ago by breeding small Chinese carp for their gold and silver colors. Japan decided that China doesn't get to be the only one with cool colorful fish and decided to breed the Japanese carp into Koi.
Nah, Koi exists in Japan since pre-historic ages. Nobody knows when it came to that islands. Records from every time period are telling they had Koi but mainly as a protein source. Even fossils are present. I don't know what you are talking about but you are probably referring "Nishikigoi" which happened 200 years ago. You need to double check your information sources. You got this so wrong it's not funny when you have strong China-centric propaganda in your head.
Well, it's still cool to have koi swimming around some streets. And I dunno about all breeds, but some carp can be invasive and darn near unkillable, so they can probably put up with more than some think, I presume, but given the expense why not treat em nice. :)
That's so beautiful. I pray one day I can visit these beautiful places in Japan. And Manitou springs we have carbonated fresh water springs you can drink from different fountains in town. So strange drinking carbonated water from the ground
Awesome Video as always! Recording underwater with phones .. that's a certification, not a brand thing 😁. Even if your phone survives you may void your warranty (if it still has) so ppl, check it before .. OnePlus used to tell ppl that their phone can handle rain and splashes, then went on and put it in the Terms that any damage caused by water voids their warranty 😝..
Those koi fishes are so stunning to look at. Maybe someday I'd get to have my own koi fish pond. Japan is pretty spotless, based on what I remember from my last trip there in 2019. You can't find even pieces of candy wrappers being littered all over the ground. Japan's waterway system seems very efficient. However I do get the fact that not all regions in Japan have crystal clear waters flowing down those gutters. Maybe we tend to generalize, so that's why it kinda ended up like that.
We definitely don't have the best street gutter in Indonesia. But in the city usually if the gutter has lots of water in it then there's a high chance that you could find some small fish (we call it guppy but it's not the same as those beautiful colorful guppies), small crabs, and even eels. Some kids would try to catch them with just a plastic cup (for fish) and a hook that has been tied to a short fishing line (for eel). But because the water is very murky and dirty you obviously can't eat them. Those kids usually just catch them for fun. For the much more rural area such as a village in a mountain you could find a lot more of different species of animals in the gutter. There are frogs, fish, eels, crabs, snails and clams. What's great is that since the water in those villages is from the nearest mountain, meaning that they're very clean (if there isn't trash around the gutter), you can get those animals and cook them
Very interesting. Most of the open water I see in Japan I think is polluted. However, I mostly visit large cities, so I think that is to be expected. My kids and I have played in a hydrophilic park. It was very fun and very clean.
Nah man there is nothing like most open water in Japan is polluted bcs Japan is the most clean country in Asia.If you want to see polluted open waters or canals or gutters or whatever just go to another Asian countries and you will find it immediately.Even the most polluted waters in Japan can be the most clean waters in other Asian countries by the standard.
I remember seeing a video of a third world nation where the local stream was always filled with trash, so they started designating sections of the stream to local families, they would raise fish in their own sections and as a result keep the stream clean and produce fish to sell to other local towns boosting their economy. This reminded me of that, but instead of fish for food its for tourism
I've seen this on NHK "Through the Kitchen Window - Harie, Shiga." They also features the household spring water kitchen, the "kabata" ? They made it clear that it's just a few towns. The main point is that a lot of Japan's gutters & canals are incredibly clean compared to almost any other modern country. It's very disappointing when tourists disrespect Japan by leaving trash in public places.
@@metricstormtrooper You've never been to Japan have you ? LoL Locals RESPECT their environment, especially in this town. The park is a gathering place for tourists.
I saw that one too and was thinking about that the entire time I watched this and wondered if it was the same. NatGeo also did a feature on the same location of Harie, Takashima, Shiga Japan. I doubted that it was a tourist gimmick. It's very charming way to live in harmony with the environment.
The country name word "NIPPON”(Japan) means "the land under the sun" , but another name is "YAMATO(WA)” , meaning “Peacefully Harmony among People and Nature”. So Japan's name means “the Land under the Sun” and” the Land of "Great Harmony of People and Nature,” Surrounded by the sea on all four sides, geographically isolated from Eurasia in the Pacific Ocean this island nation has a warm and humid climate and is blessed with abundant clear water resources, a variety of plants, and fishery resources. Since ancient times, people have lived peacefully with nature. They have respected harmony, lived peacefully in groups, and overcome many severe natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and typhoons, with each other in groups based on their wisdom and have enjoyed the blessings of nature by cooperating. The name of the ancient Japanese nation of "YAMATO" or "WA" reflects the wishes and realities of the people to live and to survive in this natural environment of the island nation that differs from that of the Eurasia continent. The history of Japan is very old, about 2,000 years since the Emperor's reign, but humans began to live in villages and communities in this island nation about 14,000 years ago, during “the JOMON pottery” culture. (That's 30,000 years ago, if you count the Neolithic period.)
What amazes me, irrespective or source of water and the location of street gutter/irrigation canal near rice farm you showed in the video, there is no trash in these waterways. Not a single polybag/empty water/colddrink bottles, beer bottles or any regular house trash. It shows that the people out there generally do not litter in public places.. 👏👏 for the culture...
When I was in Kamakura I saw "gutters" with koi in them, but they were far below where the street was, on a steep upward incline. In some of the other areas I lived in we cleaned the streams and rivers as part of our service days (I was there as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and we did service once every week), but I can't remember seeing anything where you could drink directly from it. 🤷
First time I saw these were in Wadayama-chō Takeda back in 2015. I was intrigued, and guilty of telling my friends jokingly that these were gutters in Japan, but quickly explained that these were practically ponds, not gutters
Funny enough, I actually have seen gutters like this. It's up near Tado Town in Kuwana, Mie Prefecture. There is a river that runs down from the mountains, and the runoff they use to irrigate the crops there. There aren't any fish in the gutters, but there are gutters and raised gutters (aqueducts?) coming down from the mountain. The water is stunning and beautiful... but Tado is literally the only place I have seen this. So it cannot be common.
My father who was born in1909 lived in a little town called Niagra in Wisconsin along the Menominee river, kids and adults would gather along the river to swim, fish etc, there was a pipe sticking out of the bank where clear cold water ran out, and everyone drank from that pipe, one day as my dad waited his turn to drink, out of the pipe came ...... a turd 🙂
Florida often known as the gutter of the USA also has such springs. We are a state on limestone and if you dig nearly anywhere with in 12 feet you will hit water. We have manatee springs that attract tourists but the manatees are free to go where they wish but return yearly to have their young. There are some areas with fresh springs you could even argue one could drink out of and it would be fine though we also have brain eating amoebas as well so do os at your own peril. We also have beautiful tropical fish in our drainage ditches and retainer ponds even if they are cloudy...they are invasive species turned loose by unscrupulous owners and stores as well as hurricane hit warehouses that broke apart during storms and released them. The statement that a water would be considered so clean koi spawned is odd in itself as koi are in fact carp and are known to be able to survive pretty bad conditions though it would impact their numbers and spawn. They are hardy fish. Anyhow its all very beautiful and I am glad the town was able to build up itself in that way. I can not tell you how many times people will come upon a old unfiltered abandoned nearly stagnant pond or place and koi will be there. They are carp and while they need oxygen like any other fish and they are temperature sensitive (though not nearly as sensitive as many other species) they come from Amur carp which are known for their hardiness. They arent as hardy as catfish but arent as delicate as many erroneous articles claim.
If some people decided to do the same thing in India - keeping a bunch of fish trapped inside a s mall area as a tourist attraction - I am sure those fishes will be gone by the next day since some people will inevitably steal those fishes Edit - oh! great vid. btw, your vids are always so insightful. Thanks for making them.
It's very different from what we have in Texas! Usually, our storm drains are pretty dry. I've dropped my phone in one and the city services got it out, perfectly dry and unharmed from the leaf litter cushion. There's only really running water in them when it storms. Instead of fish, cats like to hide in the drains here! It's warm and out of the wind in the winter, cool and shady in the summer.
"I hear iPhones are waterproof, so I said F it, and dunked that piece of electronics deep into the cool depths of the spring water!" 😅 As someone else mentioned, surprisingly enjoyable and interesting topic. It all makes me want to return to Japan.
Off topic opinion. I would like to say that japan' city & rural home structures & nature perfectly going along with it makes such a beautiful place to live I love anime but the cities look so peaceful & idk what words to use but super cozy.
You should do a video on Yanagawa's Canals, down in Kyushu. There is a very fascinating documentary by Isao Takahata of Studio Ghibli fame covering the subject. It would be cool to see how the town looks nowadays.
We call them ditches when they are smaller, canals if larger size. Both used for irrigation and depending on the state, some have various species of fish in them like carp, suckers, trout, perch etc. Most of the irrigation canals and ditches I saw in the States were sourced from either reservoirs or rivers.
I've been to Nagasaki, Fukuoka and Beppu, all in the same island of Kyushu. They have these and not just in gutters, they have these huge floodways that has koi, turtles and all sorts of river life. Japan really is sometimes is like another reality.
I never thought I would enjoy watching a 10 minute documentary of Japanese city street gutters. Well done!
Greg has a way!
same here!
@@user-no2mz9hl4f I would grab the koi fish out of the gutters, and cook them. Koi fried rice, fried koi fillets, everything. Im gonna eat them all up. Amen
Please subscribe to OkinaWanderer channel. He needs to get another 186 subscriber's to Live stream. Thanks Greg and supporters.
Fuji be real quite since this dropped
In the Philippines, I can tell you straight away that street gutter water in major cities will never be clean and could probably kill the Hulk. However, I heard from the generations of my grandparents that water in Malabon City (a city in northern metro manila where my grandparents come from) was clean back then that they actually saw saltwater fish swimming in the canals. Another beautiful place in Japan that always amazes me are the "Satoyama" areas in the country where I've seen documentaries of houses keeping carp inside their houses, where the water is fed through a canal. Nice video Greg, I'd love to see more great content.
When dugyot Gangs Invade the Cities and Polluted it and some People there become worst than Stupid who don't know how to Clean even in their Front Door/Backyard
in some provinces actually, canals(irrigation) still have fishes and fresh water shells in them, not really impressive as koi but hey there's still life
Filipinos will sit and eat at a sidewalk cantina while sewage water is flowing right pass them. I guess they're just used to it.
yep , in the past some japanese houses had those so they could eat fresh fish
@@ashenone3050 Not true at all lol. Houses had wells that had fish like carp and they purify the water by eating whatever’s swimming the water, they’re kept like pets so that people can use the wells to wash vegetable or drinking. You can see this NHK documentary about a town with canals that have this system ua-cam.com/video/_rwxsjzjDhs/v-deo.html.
In rural Japan (at least where I live) the “mizo”, or irrigation-runoff canals are a central part of life for a lot of people. Well, the rice farmers most of all - they clean them out a couple of times a year, constantly adjust water levels, etc - but the surrounding community as well. We feel a kind of responsibility to keep them clean and sometimes report and even remove invasive species that can harm the rice crop. And on hot days kids play in them, and even catch fish and crayfish for fun. (The Cray fish are an invasive specie too, but they don’t hurt the rice so we let them be.😆)
In spite of the small amount of upkeep we have to do, I love having the mizo canal next to our house. Except that every time we have heavy rain and it threatens to overflow into our yard & house. That part’s kind of scary. ⛈
@@Automedon2 I’ve never seen anything like that where I live, but it sounds really cool.
@@Automedon2 Yes, NHK has a doc about it. I think Harie, Shiga?
'Mizo' is the name of our tribe help🤣🤣
@@xueyang5967 Not trying to be disrespectful… 😂
@@xueyang5967 yup😂
From my knowledge as a Japanese, those colourful Koi (Nishikigoi) were created by selective breeding for decorative purposes. Natural Koi are single-coloured.
And as far as I know, Koi actually prefer to live in dirty water (idk about Nishikigoi tho), they grow up to a meter and there is no enemy against them in Japanese nature. I recently read news about Koi destroying the ecosystem because people released them into the water where Koi never existed before.
Goldfish flushed down in toilets end up in lakes, rivers, etc and end up destroying eco systems as a result.
"And as far as I know, Koi actually prefer to live in dirty water"
My info from the US - what are called "koi" in Japanese are what we call "carp" in English (as Greg said).
Just here to second what you said - I, too, have always known of carp as fish that can thrive in dirty waterways (quite opposed to the claim online that Greg said he found). In fact, I just looked it up, and it appears that carp do have an omnivorous diet, but are also detritivores - that is, they eat detritus 😳
I have vivid memories of slightly aggressive carp in a lake nibbling at my toes as a kid. That lake water was clean enough to swim in (... supposedly), but it was not water I would attempt to legitimately drink...
Fun side note, in case you weren't aware - where I'm from in the midwest US, we use the word "koi" when referring to "nishikigoi!"
I think some of us separate them mentally from carp (at least, I do) because carp are so ingrained as almost a "dirty" fish that the beauty of nishikigoi might spare them from the image of being dirty.
Most carp are very much capable, and are sometimes even introduced into rice paddies, muddy ponds and streams specifically to help clean out muck. They're the goats of freshwater and are hardy as hell. Nishikigoi are no different other than their bred colours.
We had several Koi for some time and the only thing I came away with from that is that Koi are assholes.
@@MelGibsonFan lmfao
Niw you need to explain why.
When I lived in Tokyo in the early 90's many of the large cement drainage ditches/creeks had very large koi living in them, I could only think they had been released by someone that didn't want them anymore (just flushed them down the toilet when I was a kid in the states). As some were rather large and very colorful, I wondered how they compared to the multi million yen koi for sale on the roof tops of the big department stores
Yes, that makes sense since cement is not a good material to use in making fish ponds because it can make the water toxic for fishes.
@@gravel9270 the toxic material on cement will gone overtime especially if it's running water since the toxic material will washed away by water currents
in my place we have cement pond for koi
We have to fill the pond let it for a day and remove the water
Repeat it 5 times or more
It's may not be efficient but hey it's work out
Imagine if the homeless scooped them up and sold them lol
@@CivilizedWasteland Japan doesn't have homeless people as far as I know
@@Asterite they do bro. they are just treated poorly, many teens are homeless in japan and camp out in redlight districts to make money from older men.
I rememeber being blow away by the water infrastructure when I visited. The "normal" gutters may not seem as impressive, but it's still much more pedestrian friendly, and often have flowing water. Coming from a drought prone area, in my mind, that's pretty beautiful.
Just information for everyone, make sure you understand the difference between waterproof and water resistance. A good majority of phones have water resistance, Samsungs, iPhones, Pixels etc. Phones like that are not waterproof. The water resistance most phones have is a rating ip68 which means the device can be under water 1.5m deep for around 30 min before you have issues. There are only a very few amount of phones that i know of that are waterproof in which they can deal with water for a very long period of time.They can stay in water for a really long time but not forever. Water resistance will still keep water and dust out of your phone but you still void your warranty if you dip your phone in water
This.
And also as a watch collector I know of water resistance ratings being based on new condition. Those seals will weaken with time, especially as your phone flexes in your pocket or the glue expands or contracts with heat and cold. I'd always take resistance ratings with a grain of salt.
Also avoid using a hair dryer to dry your phone, just let it naturally evaporate or use absorbing materials such as silica gel or rice.
Yep, that's a good tip
In Alberta, Canada we have man-made storm water ponds that function to hold overflow from intense storms. They are designed to naturalize and eventually function as urban wetlands. Unfortunately, people have decided they are great places to dispose of unwanted aquarium fish, such as gold fish. These things are invasive, aggressive reproducers and have become a threat to native species of fish and amphibians. It has become a monstrous task to get them out of the ponds before they destroy the intended biodiversity. One city resorted to poisoning an entire pond and starting all over again. Another had city workers use an enormous net to scoop up the fish. They got something like 5,000 gold fish out of one medium sized pond. Now there is a campaign to teach people not to dump their pet fish in local ponds.
i’m from alberta too! where is this happening??
Interesting.
Gold fish are closely related to invasive Asian carp. No surprise they breed like rats and eat anything they can. It's also why they can survive in abysmal conditions in a kids bedroom.
This makes me think I'm cruel because I'm thinking to suggest pet fish owners to give their unwanted fish to owners with pets that eat fish.
I would suggest a bounty system. $2 per goldfish turned in or something.
I'm in a desert climate in the US, the street gutters have dead weeds and a mix of dirt and sand that runs off from yards when sprinklers turn on. Surprisingly, there's little to no trash but that's probably because most people stay indoors due to the heat. When I lived in Santa Clara, CA (1980's) I had a Japanese-American friend and her Dad had a 2-level pond in the back with koi in the upper pond and goldfish in the lower.
Also a US desert climate: our arroyos are dry, if they have water in them it's stagnant runoff full of parasites and pollutants (the water is black, has trash in it, and it stinks to be near. Parasites are mosquito larva, horsehair worms, and who knows what else).
If anything lives in it it's hardy desert grasses that are happy with any type of moisture, but usually its just sand and filth.
There’s little wee springs bubbling up where I live in Minnesota too-you can see the water coming up from the ground, disturbing the sand into little poufs, then flowing down the river bank through the forest into the mighty Mississippi…there’s also a place that has tapped a spring-and like you saw there in Japan-people come to fill up water bottles with the delicious, refreshing, and most importantly FREE spring water! 💙
Always a pleasure to watch your videos, Greg. A topic that I never thought would be this interesting.
I worked on declogging gutters here in the Philippines and I found out through my cousin living in Japan that the gutters there was almost crystal clear I didn't believe it till I saw this
And after working for about a year the gutters on the areas I'm working are all full of trash and can't remember how many dead rats I have found in it, there was even a time where there was a dead dog stuck in the gutters causing it to flood during heavy rain.
But theres also a lot of the times where we get a ton of coins in it that could actually buy you a meal if your lucky enough
One us was lucky to get a whole 100 pesos bill.
Did you find anything alive down there ?
@@smit17xp sometimes live rats would jump out
Jump scared me multiple times
@@smit17xp mostly cockroaches tho
The philippines' pasig river is the world's top dumper of plastic in the ocean. Its the most polluting river
@@arrietty1619 The Ganges River in India, and the Citarum River in Indonesia are one of the most polluted rivers in the world, not the Pasig River. In fact, the Pasig River Rehabilitatiom has been greatly successful, where the PRRC, the government commisiom that was responsible for the continued efforts received the Asiam Riverprize Award IN 2018.
Not only your depricatimg the country for some shallow reasons, you have false information as well.
Your videos are not only very insightful, but also very calming and peaceful. I always look forward to watching your videos and they are the most enjoyable videos to watch whilst I’m working on one of my embroidery projects🥲☺️
@Fanged bro is a hater 💀
I didn’t know how calming a video about koi in street gutters could be until I watched it. Thanks Greg xx
Greg, I was truly shocked when you talked about the park (near the end) where people were keaving trash and they had to shut the water off because of it. That runs so counter to what we hear about how clean and responsible Japanese people are. What a great little quirky topic to cover! Now, if you can just discover why Japanese maps are all over the place with their orientations....
Been to Japan many times and even stayed there for a month, and I can tell you, Japan's streets are really not as clean as they are portrayed to be, especially after the "happy hours" and Japanese people do litter and even spit. 😆😆
それは日本人ではなく完全に外国人ですね🤣
Japan is clean and tidy when people are being watched. After dark people dump stuff everywhere but the street cleaners are on it pretty quickly. I clear litter from my local beach early in the mornings. Worst of all, I think, are the fireworks left everywhere and the barbecues as well as all the fishing line, hooks and weights.
外国人って決めつけて申し訳ありません
たしかに最近の日本人は汚いね
特に祭りがあった日なんかゴミだらけ
特に東京の渋谷とか都会らへんね
@@LC-zi8jw Yeah I think it depends on the area and the mood of the crowd, like you said in the "happy hours" people are less responsible but most people won't notice because they employ so many street cleaners to fix it up nice for the next morning.
Amazing! I appreciate this! I love hearing from locals and older generations!
Wow, this was extremely thorough and well researched. Thank you for working so hard on it 👍
News articles: In the city of Shimabara on Japan's Kyushu Island, the street gutters are so clean they are home to hundreds of koi carp!
LWIF: *Amazing, every word of what you just said...was wrong*
The NYC water drainage system isn't like Japan, but at least it's home to a group of turtles turned ninjas trained by a rat who both protect the city and further promote the city by spreading their love of NY-style pizza. Can't say the same about Japan
Our gutters are better than they were 20 years ago. I.e. reasonably free of trash (like small paper, nicknacks) very few cans (if any), some plastic. The seal on the iPhone is pretty good. But bets are off once someone who is not professional replaces the battery w/o a pressure test. Thanks, Greg!
I was happily relieved when the speakers started working again!
The spectacular thing is not that Japanese street gutters are so beautiful, but that no where else in the world could you place a decorative pool in this spot and have no one interfere with it with litter ect.
OMG Greg, I had no ideas this was something people were talking about online but I love how it caused you to create this video.
Thank you for the smiles today. I needed it.
Before covid hit during Nov 2019 on a tour to Japan with my family
Our tour itinerary had us going to one of the more rural areas in Japan. I think it was called Shirakawa in the Gifu Prefecture.
I remember seeing houses that uses straw as it's roof and then I noticed that there were a bunch of Koi fishes swimming in the canals.
There were probably in the almost over 100 of them I guess?
Depending on where you are in my state in the US the street gutters are actually just dirt ditches and some can get around 12 ft deep.
at the most, iphones are water resistant. IP68 for some common models. They're good for up to 2 meters for up to 30 minutes. This depends on the quality of the seal and such
in NZ we have wild koi living in rivers we wouldn't let kids swim in because they'd get sick from Ecoli or get gastro from all the cow poo that gets in there 😂
I don't know who on earth thought *wild* koi are sensitive, as far as I was aware they're hardy and survive nearly anywhere.
feral koi
Koi are extremely hardy, but organic waste dumped/ running off into river is no laughing matter.
Still clear water? Which place and river to see them?
Ow I'm so envy with the clean and clear water in their canals... seeing kois around the canals made feel like they are in a huge aquarium because of how discipline the people are
Thank You For Making Such Beautiful Documentaries
Where I live in Chiba, there are long man made canals from the sea which go far inland and meet up with rivers and storm drains. I live about 3/4 mile from the sea and the canal rises and falls with the tide but also carries in jellyfish, crabs, eel and loads of fish of all sizes. I also see lots of cormorants sitting on the overhead electric cables waiting for an easy meal. Sometimes, I see people on the bridge fishing for sea fish and they are a mile away from the beach or more.
I was in Utsunomiya Japan in 2005 for business. Right outside the train station there was a gravel parking lot where the bus picked us up to take us to the factory we were working in and there was a gutter just like the ones shown in this video and there were some really nice Koi in there.
It was not a tourist city or area so I was surprised. I took some photos of the area, gutter, and fish.
You provide such a huge wealth of content to satisfy my Japanese curiosity.
How beautiful & charming shimabara is! Being a Japanese, mixture of emotion is undeniable. In a part, we could be very proud of scenes created by nature & history, in the other, we're well aware of they're exceptional & very limited, often found way away from big cities. Anyway, personally greatly appreciated to the author for this elaborate video. Quality would be a subtitle. Thank you very much for a precious introduction of a uniqueness of Japan to the world wide web!
Great documentary! I live in this town, and it’s beautiful with all the springs everywhere. Having drinkable water flowing everywhere is super convenient as well^^
I like how these things are clarified. I was really under the impression that this one town in Japan had Kois living in canals naturally.
NYC has disgusting street gutters unfortunately because many lack respect for the place they live. Too many people throw trash into the streets, and many people throw or push trash straight into gutters which causes many of the issues with flooding. There's a little sidewalk island or triangle between streets around the corner from my house where on a daily basis, people will drive by in the middle of the night and dump many bags of trash and broken furniture so someone else can deal with it. Its mind blowing to me how disrespectful and lazy people are. (my rant on how frustrating New Yorkers are and I'm born and raised in Queens).
Comparing a metropolis to a rural area is kinda unfair don't you think? Then again tokyo is one of the cleanest city I've seen so far.
It aint just new york... america as a whole is like this even in suburbs and rural areas. Its just a part of American culture to not care about the environment
New York is truly disgusting, whole city smells like urine (and now an inescapable weed smell too) and is filthy from top to bottom.
@@owarida6241 Tokyo is the dirtiest city in japan because foreigners live in Tokyo
@@hereniho actually it’s not part of USA culture but USA is a diverse country also japan is not a diverse country
Here in India, the street gutters mostly are so horrible that the water turns dark black during non-rainy seasons. Any habitat is almost impossible here.
@Six Pains even in least populated cities of India , we never find sanitation ... Population density can't be a pretext for hiding our disadvantages
@Six Pains yeah I have heard that thr cleanest village in whole asia is in north east.
@@harshitrautela6585 I was just about to comment this, yes The Cleanest Village of Asia is in Meghalaya India , so it depend upon people not govt.
Garbage trucks, sweepers are there too in india but they won't clean 24hrs , it's our responsibility!
Have you heard of indore???
We don't have black smelly gutter, they are clean and we have gardens and trees on the side of gutters also now we are the only city with 7 star ratings in inda.
@Six Pains isnt this my city only mindset the main problem of India? If your city/area is the only clean area in India, that doesnt mean that India is clean.
Greetings from Naples, Florida. A very interesting video. Thank you so much for sharing this part of the world with us. 👍👍
This town is beautiful, I lost "the point" of the video a while ago. Living in such a beautiful and natural place would make a person more reverent.
Thank you for sharing this beauty.
I work in Hot Springs, Arkansas. It's named for it's natural hot springs. There are places where you can relax in the hot springs water and there are fountains where you can fill up bottles for free like in this video. I work at Levi Hospital and we have a lot of patients that come to the physical therapy department to swim in the pool. The pool is one of the only ones specifically for physical therapy and it uses natural hot springs. It helps the patients because aquatic therapy reduces the amount of pressure put on joints and there are people who believe that they can absorb the natural minerals during their therapy. There is a misunderstanding with our pool because people think they can just get in it but its specifically for physical therapy. There's peddle bikes and hand rails. Theres a slopped area for wheel chairs and a lift as well to help patients get in. It's great because the pool is set at about 92 degrees farenheit and the heat helps with inflammation and joint pain. Greatly recommend aquatic therapy for anyone wherever you're at.
Is Arkansas famous not only for its hot springs, but also for its volcanoes? Areas with volcanoes benefit from hot springs and clean spring water, but suffer from the terror of earthquakes and tsunamis...
@@nippononna no it's not. There is a diamond mine in Murfreesboro and a festival surrounding toads called Toad Suck in Conway
It’s good to hear the gutters in Japan have changed. When I was in Okinawa and mainland Japan in the 1970s the Binjo ditches (drains along the street sides) were literally sewage drains and STANK. Raw sewage flowed in those ditches constantly and there were definitely NO Koi in them!
That's because US occupation of Okinawa continued till the 1970s.
I've seen Koi and Trout in a gutter beside the road in Shirakawa-go. I didn't trace the water to see if there were grills to prevent them from escaping. I also saw very clear water in the street drains in Kurama. Walking upstream, I found where the water was drawn off the adjacent stream. So I take your point, but the video title is a bit misleading.
The French cities of Thonon-les-Bains and it’s more famous neighbour Evian(-les-Bains) also have spring outlets where locals come with bottles and larger containers to collect the very same spring water we buy at outrageous prices elsewhere.
You are providing a unique service here, which is convincing a certain demographic of people to dip their iphones in water. Thank you!
Our gutters are like this too. I live in a smaller suburb of yokohama. The kids love feeding the koi!
if you pause at 1:01 , the fish in the top left looks really angry
😂
This something that fascinated me for a long while. Thanks for clarifying.
In my city, Belo Horizonte, there is a HUGE manmade lake, it's kinda like Japan, but with capybaras and alligators. Look it up, it's called "lagoa da Pampulha"
I was intrigued by the title but did not expect to watch the whole thing. 🥃 However, you made a great video 📸. I want to learn more about rural Nagoya. 🦋 Happy Trails 🤠
Seriously, people need to think about what the kind of trash they're putting in these street gutters. Every time, we take a step forward, we make two steps back because of actions like not taking care of such a resource like water. Water is life, and clean water means health. And it's something everyone deserves to have
Maybe stop making nukes and treat your citizen better first before complaining about people throwing trash. 🙄
@@Hero4fun77 It is not really him.
@@GentlemanGaming1122 It is him. He is the only one that has internet in NK. What a piece of s*** pretending to be nice. While doing the wrong thing in his country to his people.
@@GentlemanGaming1122 🤦♀️
I can’t tell if the comments are a joke or not…if they aren’t then I can’t believe I actually found someone who believes the UA-cam profile of commentators. Wow.
Somewhere in Sagay, Negros Occidental, the same happened in the gutters of Paraiso, a small town. 25 years ago (not sure when this happened exactly, I was still small back then) a big flood rose from the river near our house, our neighbors would take care of kois, carpas, mollys, and other kinds of fish. All these fishes ended up living in the gutters when the flood subsided. These fishes lived for many years in the gutters of Paraiso
In Okayama i always see fishes and turtle in normal irrigation and canals. Kois are rare only in protected areas
lovely photos, info and your voice is pleasant to hear
The street gutters where I'm from have a life of their own. Where in Japan, people like to peek into them, people generally try to stay 5 metres away from them at the very least. And so, they have to make their presence known. Usually through their unbearable stench or by overflowing in the slightest of rainfall. They may not be serene and clear, but they make themselves known in other ways. 😂😂
In the Philippines you try to memorize where they are so you don't fall & drown in them when the streets flood every rainy season.
@@j134679 😂😂
@@j134679 no cap
Cleanliness of the surroundings speaks in its exceptional and pictureque view. 2022 onwards. BANSAI JAPAN.
I’ve traveled to Japan dozens of times, and on my days off, I would take bread to the canals and drop tiny pieces in the water, and in a short time dozens of carp and some koi will show up.
This video is so pleasing and so does your voice wow I'm soooo subscribing lol
I remember when I stay in Ota City in Tokyo there also was a little section on the side of the walkway with Koi in them! Very nice & interesting video!
Bro, you just earned a new follower. Loving your vids.
Greg, somehow you made gutter water fascinating and calming.
Nice documentary, i really enjoy it so much. Thanks for the video!! 💕
In Gokarna, Karnataka, India, Street gutters are as clean as those streams. I've visited that place last year and I was very surprised to see fishes in roadside drains.
5:10 in Hungary there are several public spring water stations throughout the country. Some people even travel quite far to bottle water from specific springs, because they have a higher content of certain minerals. Like there is one around Lake Balaton that has a pretty high iron content, which makes the water taste like blood.
Beautiful, and kid friendly. What a grand place to raise a family.
Funnily though it used to be like this for my mom's old town. The street gutters would have fish in them. Apparently this was because the town was built around a natural freshwater spring, and the people thought it was a good idea to dump fish in there. She remembers how the water used to be free and clean and teaming with all kinds of fish.
Then industrialization happened. A water company came, bought the land around the spring. The clean gutters stagnated because the water source was blocked off. The surrounding farm lands were bought up for apartment blocks and high rises. Instead of fish, you'd see ascaris worms from the brand new livestock factories swimming in the gutters instead. Mostly though, she says everyone complained because what used to be a free source of fresh water you now had to pay to get access to.
Japan is indeed so clean... We just got there last May 2022... Those canals truly has crystal clear waters and wild Koi fish... Salute to the people of Japan...
Its pumped in water. Its basically an aquarium.
Try watching a video about what Japan is really like. This guy is a phony.
@@forestcityfishing4749 for an aquarium that is not cover and public
it is pretty or i would say very clean
@@forestcityfishing4749 what country are you from then? Lets see your people keep an open air "aquarium" like in the video. Lol
Greg’s video quality is something I love about this channel
Fun fact, Koi are one of the most recently domesticated animals. The domestication of koi only goes back about 150 years when China first domesticated goldfish for sale as pets about 1000 years ago by breeding small Chinese carp for their gold and silver colors. Japan decided that China doesn't get to be the only one with cool colorful fish and decided to breed the Japanese carp into Koi.
Nah, Koi exists in Japan since pre-historic ages. Nobody knows when it came to that islands. Records from every time period are telling they had Koi but mainly as a protein source. Even fossils are present. I don't know what you are talking about but you are probably referring "Nishikigoi" which happened 200 years ago.
You need to double check your information sources. You got this so wrong it's not funny when you have strong China-centric propaganda in your head.
Moving to this town at the end of the summer. Very excited to see it for real! Natural beauty
Well, it's still cool to have koi swimming around some streets. And I dunno about all breeds, but some carp can be invasive and darn near unkillable, so they can probably put up with more than some think, I presume, but given the expense why not treat em nice. :)
Is only intreseso why can't JD create a quality vid like this? he is only interest in milking super chat and kickstarter scam.
carp are native to Japan so being invasive isn't that big of a problem
@@gaeboi8182 Oh, but some are invasive *here,* the point is they're hard to get rid of that way.
Thank you soo much for showing us the world.Appreciated💯
That's so beautiful. I pray one day I can visit these beautiful places in Japan. And Manitou springs we have carbonated fresh water springs you can drink from different fountains in town. So strange drinking carbonated water from the ground
I think the freshest water is somewhere in Europe or in Alaska
@@abimaellopezmaylord27lopez7 Alaska for sure! The water is crystal clear and untainted
Great video as always! Thanks so much for sharing!
Awesome Video as always!
Recording underwater with phones .. that's a certification, not a brand thing 😁. Even if your phone survives you may void your warranty (if it still has) so ppl, check it before .. OnePlus used to tell ppl that their phone can handle rain and splashes, then went on and put it in the Terms that any damage caused by water voids their warranty 😝..
Those koi fishes are so stunning to look at. Maybe someday I'd get to have my own koi fish pond. Japan is pretty spotless, based on what I remember from my last trip there in 2019. You can't find even pieces of candy wrappers being littered all over the ground. Japan's waterway system seems very efficient. However I do get the fact that not all regions in Japan have crystal clear waters flowing down those gutters. Maybe we tend to generalize, so that's why it kinda ended up like that.
That "not so clean" is 1000000 times cleaner than gutters in my country
We definitely don't have the best street gutter in Indonesia. But in the city usually if the gutter has lots of water in it then there's a high chance that you could find some small fish (we call it guppy but it's not the same as those beautiful colorful guppies), small crabs, and even eels. Some kids would try to catch them with just a plastic cup (for fish) and a hook that has been tied to a short fishing line (for eel). But because the water is very murky and dirty you obviously can't eat them. Those kids usually just catch them for fun. For the much more rural area such as a village in a mountain you could find a lot more of different species of animals in the gutter. There are frogs, fish, eels, crabs, snails and clams. What's great is that since the water in those villages is from the nearest mountain, meaning that they're very clean (if there isn't trash around the gutter), you can get those animals and cook them
Very interesting. Most of the open water I see in Japan I think is polluted. However, I mostly visit large cities, so I think that is to be expected. My kids and I have played in a hydrophilic park. It was very fun and very clean.
Nah man there is nothing like most open water in Japan is polluted bcs Japan is the most clean country in Asia.If you want to see polluted open waters or canals or gutters or whatever just go to another Asian countries and you will find it immediately.Even the most polluted waters in Japan can be the most clean waters in other Asian countries by the standard.
I remember seeing a video of a third world nation where the local stream was always filled with trash, so they started designating sections of the stream to local families, they would raise fish in their own sections and as a result keep the stream clean and produce fish to sell to other local towns boosting their economy. This reminded me of that, but instead of fish for food its for tourism
I've seen this on NHK "Through the Kitchen Window - Harie, Shiga." They also features the household spring water kitchen, the "kabata" ?
They made it clear that it's just a few towns.
The main point is that a lot of Japan's gutters & canals are incredibly clean compared to almost any other modern country.
It's very disappointing when tourists disrespect Japan by leaving trash in public places.
Who said it was tourists disrespecting the canals and waterways? It could just as easily have been locals who just don't care.
@@metricstormtrooper You've never been to Japan have you ? LoL
Locals RESPECT their environment, especially in this town. The park is a gathering place for tourists.
I saw that one too and was thinking about that the entire time I watched this and wondered if it was the same. NatGeo also did a feature on the same location of Harie, Takashima, Shiga Japan. I doubted that it was a tourist gimmick. It's very charming way to live in harmony with the environment.
@@Filamentiferous It's beautiful, Greg obviously didn't know about the carp in the kabatas that live on the food scraps.
@@edwardfletcher7790 It's good to share knowledge so that others can learn how some cultures are so vastly different from our own.
The country name word "NIPPON”(Japan) means "the land under the sun" , but another name is "YAMATO(WA)” , meaning “Peacefully Harmony among People and Nature”.
So Japan's name means “the Land under the Sun” and” the Land of "Great Harmony of People and Nature,”
Surrounded by the sea on all four sides, geographically isolated from Eurasia in the Pacific Ocean this island nation has a warm and humid climate and is blessed with abundant clear water resources, a variety of plants, and fishery resources.
Since ancient times, people have lived peacefully with nature. They have respected harmony, lived peacefully in groups, and overcome many severe natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and typhoons, with each other in groups based on their wisdom and have enjoyed the blessings of nature by cooperating.
The name of the ancient Japanese nation of "YAMATO" or "WA" reflects the wishes and realities of the people to live and to survive in this natural environment of the island nation that differs from that of the Eurasia continent.
The history of Japan is very old, about 2,000 years since the Emperor's reign, but humans began to live in villages and communities in this island nation about 14,000 years ago, during “the JOMON pottery” culture.
(That's 30,000 years ago, if you count the Neolithic period.)
Inadvertently, we see how beautiful some parts of Japan really are.
What amazes me, irrespective or source of water and the location of street gutter/irrigation canal near rice farm you showed in the video, there is no trash in these waterways. Not a single polybag/empty water/colddrink bottles, beer bottles or any regular house trash. It shows that the people out there generally do not litter in public places.. 👏👏 for the culture...
When I was in Kamakura I saw "gutters" with koi in them, but they were far below where the street was, on a steep upward incline. In some of the other areas I lived in we cleaned the streams and rivers as part of our service days (I was there as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and we did service once every week), but I can't remember seeing anything where you could drink directly from it. 🤷
Can't wait for another video!
Trust me, these gutters still look way better than most country's gutters in Asia like India, Indonesia, Philippines or any SEA countries.
Wow, the canal is so clean. Beautiful. Well done, 🇯🇵 😍❤
First time I saw these were in Wadayama-chō Takeda back in 2015. I was intrigued, and guilty of telling my friends jokingly that these were gutters in Japan, but quickly explained that these were practically ponds, not gutters
Funny enough, I actually have seen gutters like this. It's up near Tado Town in Kuwana, Mie Prefecture. There is a river that runs down from the mountains, and the runoff they use to irrigate the crops there. There aren't any fish in the gutters, but there are gutters and raised gutters (aqueducts?) coming down from the mountain. The water is stunning and beautiful... but Tado is literally the only place I have seen this. So it cannot be common.
My father who was born in1909 lived in a little town called Niagra in Wisconsin along the Menominee river, kids and adults would gather along the river to swim, fish etc, there was a pipe sticking out of the bank where clear cold water ran out, and everyone drank from that pipe, one day as my dad waited his turn to drink, out of the pipe came ...... a turd 🙂
Florida often known as the gutter of the USA also has such springs. We are a state on limestone and if you dig nearly anywhere with in 12 feet you will hit water. We have manatee springs that attract tourists but the manatees are free to go where they wish but return yearly to have their young. There are some areas with fresh springs you could even argue one could drink out of and it would be fine though we also have brain eating amoebas as well so do os at your own peril. We also have beautiful tropical fish in our drainage ditches and retainer ponds even if they are cloudy...they are invasive species turned loose by unscrupulous owners and stores as well as hurricane hit warehouses that broke apart during storms and released them.
The statement that a water would be considered so clean koi spawned is odd in itself as koi are in fact carp and are known to be able to survive pretty bad conditions though it would impact their numbers and spawn. They are hardy fish. Anyhow its all very beautiful and I am glad the town was able to build up itself in that way.
I can not tell you how many times people will come upon a old unfiltered abandoned nearly stagnant pond or place and koi will be there. They are carp and while they need oxygen like any other fish and they are temperature sensitive (though not nearly as sensitive as many other species) they come from Amur carp which are known for their hardiness. They arent as hardy as catfish but arent as delicate as many erroneous articles claim.
If some people decided to do the same thing in India - keeping a bunch of fish trapped inside a s mall area as a tourist attraction - I am sure those fishes will be gone by the next day since some people will inevitably steal those fishes
Edit - oh! great vid. btw, your vids are always so insightful. Thanks for making them.
It's very different from what we have in Texas! Usually, our storm drains are pretty dry. I've dropped my phone in one and the city services got it out, perfectly dry and unharmed from the leaf litter cushion. There's only really running water in them when it storms. Instead of fish, cats like to hide in the drains here! It's warm and out of the wind in the winter, cool and shady in the summer.
"I hear iPhones are waterproof, so I said F it, and dunked that piece of electronics deep into the cool depths of the spring water!" 😅 As someone else mentioned, surprisingly enjoyable and interesting topic. It all makes me want to return to Japan.
Off topic opinion.
I would like to say that japan' city & rural home structures & nature perfectly going along with it makes such a beautiful place to live
I love anime but the cities look so peaceful & idk what words to use but super cozy.
Hands down, Japan is one of the cleanest country in the world.
But most Japanese live in third world countries
@@abimaellopezmaylord27lopez7 95% of Japanese live in Japan
Love this. Informative! 😊
You should do a video on Yanagawa's Canals, down in Kyushu. There is a very fascinating documentary by Isao Takahata of Studio Ghibli fame covering the subject. It would be cool to see how the town looks nowadays.
this guy broke his phone speaker just for the shot underwater, for us. such a dedication.
Yea, the "dirtiest" street gutters in Japan are like still 100x cleaner and better than most cities in the world
We call them ditches when they are smaller, canals if larger size. Both used for irrigation and depending on the state, some have various species of fish in them like carp, suckers, trout, perch etc. Most of the irrigation canals and ditches I saw in the States were sourced from either reservoirs or rivers.
I've been to Nagasaki, Fukuoka and Beppu, all in the same island of Kyushu. They have these and not just in gutters, they have these huge floodways that has koi, turtles and all sorts of river life. Japan really is sometimes is like another reality.