00:00:01 John Daub: Hello again from Hirosaki. The sun has now gone down, the lights have gone on, and the cherry blossoms are absolutely spectacular. That's why we're here, for the cherry blossoms. There's lightning about 10 minutes away, so at any moment this could start downpouring very heavy. It seems really dark over there, and it's bright over here, so I don't know what's going to happen in this live feed. We could be totally swamped in rain, but I'm going to show you this beautiful tree. During the daytime it's pretty nice, but at nighttime it's just spectacular.

00:00:49 John Daub: I'm going to walk around it a little bit. People like to take their photos in front of it. Beautiful, beautiful tree. This is different than the one in Fukui that I featured, the 370-year-old tree, which was a weeping cherry variety. This one is just the normal variety, and it's pretty big and really, really beautiful. So that's the crown jewel. Over there is Hirosaki Castle, and you can see down the street just how nice it is here. This is why a million visitors come to see the cherry blossoms in this area.

00:02:00 John Daub: Oh, you said the lightning? That's not fireworks, that's lightning. You can hear the thunder in a second. It's so beautiful. I wish you were here with me, because it's one thing to see it in a live stream, it's another thing to be here and experience the cherry blossoms at a festival like this. And it is going to rain for sure. But until it does, let's just have some fun. You can smell the rain coming. See, there's the thunder. This is going to be fun. I have rain gear in my bag, but I don't want to take it out.

00:03:05 John Daub: So the food stands are about 300 meters this way. Hirosaki attracts over a million visitors every year, and every year it gets bigger because its reputation grows, especially amongst foreign tourists. Most of the foreign tourists here, though, are from China. I know that because this afternoon when I did the live stream on the main Only in Japan channel, I could hear a lot of Chinese. Alright, so up ahead are the food stands. I just wanted to show you a little bit of the cherry blossoms in this area of the park. This is by the entrance where you come in. Once I get down to the food, you're going to see less cherry blossoms at night, but you're going to see a heck of a lot of food.

00:04:12 John Daub: And I'm just getting over a karaage (fried chicken) and deep-fried bacon stick that I ate a couple hours ago. Check it. Just look at that. Check out some cherry blossoms before we move on. This, at night, is so beautiful. It looks like snow, doesn't it?

00:05:09 John Daub: Alright. Anthony, thank you for the beer. I'm going to go get a beer. I have one in my pocket. Oh, you can hear the festival music. I got to hurry up. I hear the festival music over that way. This is awesome. I'm back. This is where I live streamed about two hours ago. I'm back where the apple store is. The real apple store, the fruit and vegetable apple store. And now I'm back here at the food stands. This is totally different at night. It's so vibrant at night.

00:06:18 John Daub: That's where I ate the black konnyaku (konjac) stick in the beginning. Thank you, Raj. I will get something really good to eat. And you guys are going to help me find it. Last time I didn't hit the sakura dango (cherry blossom dumplings). So maybe I'll get a sakura dango over there. It's right over there. I remember it. Oh, lightning. This is fun. I don't know what's going to happen. It's already raining. People are leaving and I'm going the wrong direction. Nobody's really going this way. Everyone's going the other way. The thunder is getting closer. This is going to be awful. Oh, there it is. There's a dango. Raj, your money. This is where your money is going to be spent, buddy.

00:07:25 John Daub: Announcing that the storm is getting closer. Yes, I am lined up. So there's a line for the yakidango (grilled dumplings) now. Which is fine by me. The rain is starting to come down now. But we have an umbrella, folks. So I've got you covered. So the livestream, it's going to rain but the livestream goes on. Look at how good these things look. These things look so good, don't they? What flavor should I get? You have kuromitsu (black sugar syrup) hinako dango. The green one is zunda dango (edamame paste). Sakura dango. Yomogi dango (mugwort). Mitarashi dango (soy sauce glaze). Goma dango (sesame). Kabocha dango (pumpkin). Yakiimo dango (sweet potato). Murasaki imo dango (purple sweet potato). There's a lot of them. I'm in trouble.

00:09:33 John Daub: The purple one. All right. Superchat like 20 bucks and I'll get them all. Oh my. Are you crazy? I still want to get one of those bacon sticks. This is just to warm up. So I'm gonna get the purple one. You guys are crazy nice. The festival music is coming over there. It's not that much fun when it's raining because everyone has their umbrellas out and with the umbrellas you can't see quite as good. That's why I got this umbrella to see through so I figured if it rained we could still see above and below a little bit. Feel bad for them.

00:11:00 John Daub: There's nobody eating that one maybe I should get out of line and go and eat one of those. I showed her in the last feed two hours ago, and she was really nice about it. So maybe I'm gonna go eat one of those as well. There's nobody in line. I feel bad. The dango people have a roaring business. Seen in Japan if there's a line people think it's good. But there's nothing special about dango. It's just dango. I'm gonna get a custard I think. It's because it's starting to rain and they're putting them away.

00:12:06 John Daub: Okay, so I got some information on the sakura dango right here. This is the sakura dango. It says Hirosaki Sakura Matsuri (cherry blossom festival). Sakura dango so it's 400 yen. That's, for a dango this better be a pretty darn good dango. This is why lines make a business successful. When people are waiting in line and there's a long line a lot of other people will come and there's a lot of momentum towards a certain shop just based on the line. You can see though that it's pretty interesting. I love the colors. You see the colors. I'm like a firefly to colors, attracted to colors. All right Raj buddy. You convinced me my friend. I'm going to the other shop. I'm doing both.

00:14:14 John Daub: It's so warm here. I want that one. That one looks pretty good too. Look at it, it's so cool, look at all the sticks. It's like dango paradise. Have you ever seen so many colored sticks? This is like paradise for kids. Love it. Oh, sakura dango, arigatou gozaimasu (thank you very much). There it is. What do you think? It's heavy. It's got some volume to it. Some weight. Now it's time. I'm going to try this. Here we go. I'm going to move out of the way. I can't eat this in front of another store. A little rain never hurt anybody.

00:15:41 John Daub: Whoa! That was bigger than I thought. Sakura taste. So that's why it's popular. I'm going to go to that other shop because I want to support them. Right behind me. This is made with real sakura. I can taste the blossoms. I've tasted the blossom before, smelled it. You can smell and taste the cherry blossoms. These are real cherry blossoms in the mochi (rice cake). This is amazing. You can see it's pink. It's pink because they have real pieces of cherry blossom in it. You can see the stem. Hello! You can see the stem of the cherry blossoms. You see the green pieces? That's real cherry blossoms in there. I'm glad I got this. This is freaking good. It's not that sweet. It's mochi. It's springy, just like mochi, right? It's very, very good. And the side with the anko (red bean paste) on it, it's been burned a little bit, charcoaled over. So it's got a little crunchy texture to it. Very, very good. I don't know if I can eat this whole thing. So this sakura dango, highly recommend. From this shop.

00:17:28 John Daub: Now I'm gonna go here because I wanna give them some business. I'm gonna get a custard. Whoa! Oh, the rain's coming down now. Oh look, they got some business. So what do you think? I got custard cream, kabocha cream (pumpkin cream). Umbrella's out again. Custard cream, kabocha cream. Kabocha is pumpkin. Oh, it all looks good. I would never dream of ending this livestream because of rain. And who ends livestreams because of rain? Losers. What am I talking about? I'm an idiot. I'm just gonna go custard. Could you get me a custard please? Look at the rain coming down. It's hard. Is it raining all the time? Thank you. Ah, this looks good. This looks so good. Focus, focus iPhone. Oh my gosh. It's still warm. Look, it's steaming. Ah, this is awesome. Look at the custard popping through. Thank you, Mr. Custard Man. I'm so glad I'm getting this too. Dessert before the bacon stick again.

00:19:50 John Daub: Ah! You ever had warm custard with nice, hard, like, kind of crispy on the outside and then soft on the inside? Oh, this is so good. It really is like a festival. Oh, the kids are now jumping in that balloon thing. So I'm gonna put this custard away. You know, in my stomach. And we're gonna go see some stuff. Oh, hey. There's a lot of people now at the obake (ghost) ride.

00:21:04 John Daub: I hear the motorcycles from before. Oh, I see.

00:23:08 John Daub: That was so worth it. My life has been changed forever inside this really old tent. This dude, he rode inside of a barrel. Rode inside this barrel. I don't know, I guess they built it just for him or it's an old sake barrel. I'm so proud. Thank you very much. I left my umbrella there too and they had it for me so. That was so awesome. Oh my gosh. I even said bad words. Thank you very much. That was amazing. I'm so excited. I want to do this. That was amazing. Are we doing this again? Wow. Oh my gosh. I was so pumped up from that. He could have came up with that lip and flew into the crowd but he didn't. It's safe! Enough! Are you not like stoked from that? What's next? How do you beat that?

00:34:34 John Daub: Osmo's getting tired. Most of them are like high school kids. Alright, let's do it. Simon, thank you. You know what? I gotta do it. I'm putting Osmo into short mode. And we're just gonna do it. You know why? Life is short, my friends. Live it now. Who knows? I'm digging into my wallet. Who knows when I'm gonna come back? Who knows if there's ever gonna be another chance to do this, right? You gotta live it. Okay. Are you scared? Thank you. Can I get a ticket? Oh, I'll give you a ticket. Ticket. Thank you. I'm gonna leave my umbrella behind here.

00:36:11 John Daub: Alright, guys. I won! I didn't know that was gonna come at me. Is that part of the...? Oh, hello. I was scared! Did you do it? Why didn't you do it? This is not scary at all. Alright. You know what? I'm gonna walk through his head. Look at this. Watch this. See? I walked straight through his head. Alright. Is that the best you can do? Actually, my heart is still beating from that first one. I don't have any friends with me in here. This is just crap. I'm really freaked out from that. Oh, sh... I don't wanna do this. Save me. I came here for cherry blossoms. It popped out of nowhere. That sucked. Thank you. That's really... That sucked. You laughing? Yeah, you think that's funny? Huh? That was scary. Thank you. That was scary. You don't laugh at somebody's misfortunes. You know, when the devil pops out, you're not supposed to laugh. You're supposed to act like throw holy water on him or something. One day, someone's gonna come and they're gonna kick their rear. Okay? Some American... There's a U.S. military base nearby. Those Navy SEALs are gonna come and kick their nuts. I wanna go in there with somebody from the base and see if something happens to those devils. That was really scary. That was really, really scary.

00:41:58 John Daub: That's where I went in. Ghosts don't have any nuts. Thanks for sharing this experience. Simon, thanks for the go-ahead for that. Appreciate it, my friend. Oh, Lord. Oh, my. This has been one of the best nights ever. I'm so happy. Alright. I started this livestream with lightning. I started this livestream with a massive beautiful old cherry blossom tree. I ate some awesome food. I found a motorcycle stunt driver who took 10 bucks from me and then rode almost crashed, but he didn't because he's a professional. Then I just went through the scariest freakin' house like ever. You know what? Japanese horror movies are the scariest of them all. The thing with horror movies these days, they show too much guts and too much blood and too much cutting. When you use your imagination, any young director right now, when you can get the viewer to use their imagination, their imagination is worse than what you would ever show them with all the special effects. There's no way. I have no more words because my heart's still beating. That was creepy. From the beginning, I didn't expect, like, the hand of death to jump out at me. Man! Wow! Alright, wait. Okay. I have to end with cherry blossoms and I'm gonna go over there right now. This was a fun night. Didn't we have fun tonight? It was pretty good. Haha. Ohhhh. Hi, Hirosaki! I'm very, very, very happy that I came here.

00:44:17 John Daub: Oh, look at this little kid. He's trying to win a prize. This is a Japanese game. He gets to keep what he catches, I think. It's called Treasure Island. Hello. Maybe some more food? Despite the rain, there's still people here and that's really cool because right now, the cherry blossoms are still fresh off on the tree. In fact, some of them haven't bloomed. I'd say it's like my stomach is still in my throat right now. Some of the blossoms haven't blossomed yet. So they're on there pretty good. A little bit of the rain you can see is starting to knock them off. Yeah, tomorrow they're still going to be here despite the rain. I can't tell you how beautiful these cherry blossoms are. The first time that I saw these when I came to Japan in 1998, I just lived next to one of Japan's beautiful parks in Aichi-ken (Aichi prefecture), a city called Okazaki. I walked outside. It was only 20 meters away from my house. And it just stunned me at the beauty of the cherry blossoms at night, lit up like this. Oh, there's some traditional music over there. You can see, it looks like snow. These two are up to no good. Takoyaki (octopus balls). Buta jaga (buttered potatoes). He's eating potatoes with butter. Simple food, but yet so good. I'm going towards the music. It is stunning.

00:46:58 John Daub: And I love the activity. It would be a lot better if there were more people here, but you know what? I think this is just fine. And despite the people, you can see that the trash is all put in one area and recycled. Burnable, non-burnable plastics, aluminum cans and PET bottles and glass. It's all separated. I'm walking towards the music. Let's get over there. No more ghosts, okay? Let's chillax a little bit. We're gonna enjoy some traditional music. I keep finding something new. That's beautiful over there.

00:47:53 John Daub: Tsugaru shamisen (Tsugaru shamisen, a style of Japanese three-stringed folk music). This is the shamisen. It has a good, very traditional Japanese sound. Depending on the applause, the sound of the kachaka is played 10 to 20 times. Fukui-san might play it about 30 times. Tsugaru shamisen has no background. The ad-lib and the song is the last song. Tsugaru Jonkara-bushi. Okay, this is the last song. Let's have some fun with the last song. Maybe some dancing involved. Nice.

00:54:12 John Daub: This is really bad. It's cool, but you know what I mean. Come on.

01:00:33 John Daub: Tsugaru shamisen. I've been practicing it for over 10 years. It has only three strings. When I first learned that I was shocked. I paid for it and did a lot of things to make it sound like this. But the more I do it, the deeper it gets. I've been doing this for a while. Thank you very much. It's good to listen to and laugh at things. I want to take it home as a souvenir. That was pretty darn awesome. Thank you. I want to clap. I'm holding the Osmo with my hands. What a night. We did a lot today. It's been an hour. There's a lot of high school kids out. Not a lot of people. It's been a really awesome night.

01:01:42 John Daub: I'm going to take some night shots for the DVD. For the Kickstarter DVD. And give my impressions of the night sakura (cherry blossoms). And then I'm going back to the capsule hotel. Tonight I'm staying in a capsule hotel. The capsule hotel is creepy. It's creepy in the sense that it looks like a microwave oven. When you see it, go to Instagram in about an hour and I'm going to show you what my capsule looks like. It looks like a microwave oven. Literally. The door closes and you can turn on the button and whoever's inside gets cooked. I've never seen a capsule hotel like this. And I've seen a lot of capsule hotels. This one's new. It's about a 10-15 minute walk from here. I still got a beer in my pocket. You know what? We're going to end this livestream with a drink. And I'm toasting all of you. You know what? I'm going to give a toast to you for making this night so awesome.

01:03:18 John Daub: Alright. So I got a beer. Asahi Super Dry from Japan. That's where I live right now. We're going to share this umbrella. Here we go. One handed. Open. Kanpai (cheers) to you everybody. Wherever you are in the world, thank you very much for joining this amazing livestream from Hirosaki's Night Cherry Blossom Festival. This happens once a week every year. And it's very, very short. And we are right now at the peak. And shared this moment together. And I loved every single minute of it. So thanks for tuning in. I'll be in Hakodate the day after tomorrow. I'll be making landfall in Hokkaido. Because the Kickstarter project did so well, I'm going to do a stretch goal and go all the way up to Wakkanai. If you're a Kickstarter supporter of that trip, you're going to see some perks for doing the stretch goal. And we all win. This trip was funded through Kickstarter and Patreon and from fans giving so I can make this all possible. So you made this all possible. I'm just here for the ride, I guess. You're here joining me on this ride too. So I'm going back to the capsule hotel after I take a couple of shots. This rain did not hurt us one bit. Thank you so much. See you on the road. What a night.