Japanese street gutters are NOT this clean 

I never thought I would enjoy watching a 10 minute documentary of Japanese city street gutters. Well done!

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.

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.

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.

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. ⛈

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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....

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🥲☺️

Always a pleasure to watch your videos, Greg. A topic that I never thought would be this interesting.

I didn’t know how calming a video about koi in street gutters could be until I watched it. Thanks Greg xx

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?

Wow, this was extremely thorough and well researched. Thank you for working so hard on it 👍

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Yea, the "dirtiest" street gutters in Japan are like still 100x cleaner and better than most cities in the world

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

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.

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.)

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.

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...

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.

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^^

Greetings from Naples, Florida. A very interesting video. Thank you so much for sharing this part of the world with us. 👍👍

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

Amazing! I appreciate this! I love hearing from locals and older generations!

Thank You For Making Such Beautiful Documentaries

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

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!

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 🤠

Being an Alaskan, my street gutters are frozen 🥶

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.

You provide such a huge wealth of content to satisfy my Japanese curiosity.

Our gutters are like this too. I live in a smaller suburb of yokohama. The kids love feeding the koi!

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.

In Okayama i always see fishes and turtle in normal irrigation and canals. Kois are rare only in protected areas

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).

Next video Fish swimming in Japanese toilet seats

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!

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.

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.

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!

There's kois in the gutter in Chiran, Kyushu as well! It's quite a whiles away from this town, but thought I mentioned, since it's not the only town that does this.

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. 😂😂

My drainage have swimming plastic

Moving to this town at the end of the summer. Very excited to see it for real! Natural beauty

That "not so clean" is 1000000 times cleaner than gutters in my country

You are providing a unique service here, which is convincing a certain demographic of people to dip their iphones in water. Thank you!

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.

No disrespect, but Japan is way more clean than anywhere else I have stayed. Its a mindset of Japanese people.. I used to live next to a local train station near Yokohama and have often observed office workers picking up cigarette butts from the street and throwing them in the dustbin before continuing their way home.🙏

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 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 didn't expect that I will ever get to watch a Video about Street Gutters

All of those canals are way better than anything I've ever seen, even if they're not crystal clear.

Cleanliness of the surroundings speaks in its exceptional and pictureque view. 2022 onwards. BANSAI JAPAN.

That brief bit at the end about the Mizunashi (sp?) river filled in by earth and sand dredging left me with so many questions. Questions like "What?" and "Why?".

These gutters look cleaner than our well maintained ponds/lakes in India 😂😂😂

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.

I have seen someone commenting on quora that if the japanese gutters are clean then how does Nobita gets dirty after falling in the gutter? prettymuch right

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. :)

Greg, somehow you made gutter water fascinating and calming.

Thanks for the video. I as far as I know, a koi is a colorful carp. They can live in really murky muddy water. They can sometime revert back to silver color after a few generation. Some carp are good too eat, but those in murky water their flesh smell like rotten grass.

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

Beautiful, and kid friendly. What a grand place to raise a family.

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 😝..

I lived in yokohama in kanagawa ken but moved to ibaraki-ken and lived there for 10yrs theres so many rice fields there that its awesome to look at on harvest season I always find wild ferrets near those fields and yeah some gutters do have some kois but dont have that clear of a water in them.. now I live in tochigi-ken and we have a flood control/ river or something I dont know in english and fishes lives there too

lovely photos, info and your voice is pleasant to hear

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.

Japan is beautiful

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...

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.

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.

Senang lihat ikan koi dikali..airnya sangat jernih mantap 👍🏻

this guy broke his phone speaker just for the shot underwater, for us. such a dedication.

Greg’s video quality is something I love about this channel

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.

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.

Haha great video Greg. But I was very surprised to see huge black koi in Yokohama, right next to the JR west exit! Miss Japan a lot. Stay safe and keep the great videos coming!

Nice documentary, i really enjoy it so much. Thanks for the video!! 💕

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 🙂

Inadvertently, we see how beautiful some parts of Japan really are.

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.

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.

Yes, they're street gutters but the source of water is clean. It's not the waste water coming out of houses.

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. 🤷

Dude that was so smart just sticking your one phone into somewhere where you might never get it back based on a whim

I used to catch crayfish in the gutters of Japan long time ago

Greg can make the most mundane things interesting

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.

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

their cities look look like a country side and i it s like from a fairy tale,so beautiful.

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