00:00:00 John Daub: Greetings everybody! Hello from the riverside. This is the Arakawa River here in Tokyo. I think it's the biggest river in Tokyo. The Sumida-gawa might be the main river, but this one is really wide. You can see right over here. Let me turn the camera around. It's big! And the river is pretty wide. And when the rainy season is here, these banks will flood a little bit. They'll come up closer. There in the distance is one of the highways that goes around the city. And in the distance, you can see they're building another overpass over the overpass, which is pretty cool. It's kind of a massive construction project that they've been doing for quite a while.

00:00:38 John Daub: This is something that if you're a tourist visiting Tokyo, you're not going to see because I'm really far out in the suburbs. Yeah, this is the way I came in here. And these are all sakura trees (cherry trees), by the way. This is why I'm doing the live stream. All of these along the river are sakura trees. And this is the Komatsugawa Undo-koen (Komatsugawa Riverside Park). I'm going to give you a status of the sakura blossoms.

00:01:01 John Daub: Now, a lot of people ask me when the sakura blossoms, the cherry blossoms, are going to be blooming here in Japan. The answer is, only Mother Nature really knows. They bloom every year differently. Last year when I was hitchhiking, I was down in Kyushu, which is further south than Tokyo. And believe it or not, the cherry blossoms bloomed earlier in Tokyo than they did in Kagoshima, which is typically warmer than Tokyo. It's just the way Mother Nature works. You can't predict the way nature is going to go. So without further ado, here's what we have right now in Tokyo.

00:01:38 John Daub: Hello. Thanks, everybody, for joining me. I wanted to give everybody a minute to tune in before I start showing you the blossoms. So this is a cherry blossom tree. And you can see it is budding. And the sun is hitting it. And hopefully they're happy and they're going to be out soon. This is actually big news because the country goes crazy for these cherry blossoms. Yet they're not on the tree, but it's just really not that far away. I bet you we're going to start seeing some blossoms in about two and a half weeks from now. It's kind of exciting. At least I'm excited. I don't know about you guys, whoever you are in the world. You might be in the desert. You might be still in Canada where there's lots of snow. But here in Tokyo, we have a really beautiful, cool day. There's a wind coming off of the river.

00:02:34 John Daub: I've rented a bicycle, so this is what I'm doing out here. I rented this from one of the stations near my house. It's 200 yen or about $1.75 to rent. And I came here to do my taxes. And this might be interesting. Remember Ruth from the... This is Ruth's TV show. And she gave me this folder for NHK. This is Kiso Eigo (Basic English for Work). And Ruth was in the Enoshima video with me. And it just ended its run, I believe. Shigoto no Kiso Eigo. And I have my tax forms in there. I can't show you that. But I just did my taxes, and that's the reason why I'm here. I ride out myself and do my own taxes. This is tax season in Japan. From the middle of February to the middle of March, we're all out here doing our taxes. And when tax season is done, boom! The cherry blossoms bloom. And we have a wonderful holiday out of it. This is what I was telling you about at the Edo-jo ruins, the Edo Castle ruins.

00:03:42 John Daub: Usually on the cherry blossom trees, they'll put a sign explaining what the variety is. And this one is Oshima-zakura (Oshima cherry). Which is pretty cool. It's from Izu. So it's native from this area of Japan, from Shizuoka. I believe Izu is in Shizuoka. And this is what the blossoms will look like. They put it on the trees so you know the variety because there are so many varieties of cherry blossom trees in Japan, it's hard to really pinpoint what you're looking at unless you're a tree expert. These are really beautiful. There's tons of them along the river. Let me walk out here.

00:04:26 John Daub: Now on the other side of this bridge, there's lots of baseball fields where little leaguers will practice. And if you just follow the riverside down, these actually go for quite a ways. I'm going to hop on the bicycle in a second and give you a tour around this area. There's some more bridges down there. You can see a lot of cars on the highway right now. So for everybody tuning in right now, cherry blossom status: I'm walking around the trees right now. I'm serious. Japanese news media every year will go around to the parks and check out the cherry blossom tree status. It's like why don't I do this for you right now? Because if you're thinking about coming to Japan for the cherry blossom season, you're going to want to know what the progress is. So then you either catch it or you try to make sure you're here at the peak. So that's what it looks like right now. These are the blossoms on the tree. The iPhone 7 Plus is doing a pretty good job of getting it in focus for you.

00:05:31 John Daub: You can eat the cherry blossoms. They're in a lot of cuisines. Starbucks has a cherry blossom latte, I believe, or some kind of cherry blossom drink. Yeah, they have cherry blossom cake, cherry blossom ice cream, cherry blossom liqueur, lots of cherry blossom snacks. And I believe that they will preserve the cherry blossoms and use it in baked items. So lots of people live in this area. You can see here, there's tons of apartment buildings. These are massive apartment buildings. And this is the, I like to call it, the Oshima area on the Arakawa River. Personally, I wouldn't want to live here because I don't want to live where everyone else is living. I want to live in a special place. And I believe I do. This area, it's just a lot of high-rise apartments. And they've done a good job of building parks around it and making it very natural. And of course, you have the river right here. But this is not exactly the best place for me personally to live.

00:06:41 John Daub: Although if you're a marathon runner, you like to run like I do, the river has a path that'll take you down without a traffic light for, I think, about 30 or 40 kilometers. It's like 30 miles of just pure straight run. Along the riverside, there's a path. You see a lot of people are out here exercising. People in Japan, they ride their bicycles and stay in shape, even in the city. So let me hop on the bicycle. I'm going to take you around. The Skytree is over here. Let's get on here. I'm going to take you out, show you around.

00:07:25 John Daub: So where's a good place to see the cherry blossoms, asks somebody. You know, Tokyo, for me, I try to avoid... I'll go to the crowded places once or twice, but I try to avoid those places and just go to local parks. Local parks are always going to be the best place because they're more relaxed. The thing with being in the cherry blossoms is that you want to feel a little bit of nature. And you can't really do that when you are in Ueno because there's so many people, mostly drunk off their rockers. They're really wasted. And you can't really feel that sense of nature when you're so wasted like that. Let me bring the bicycle around here. There's a little guard so motorcycles don't ride on here. I can take you over the Arakawa River.

00:08:31 John Daub: So here we are. There's the Skytree in the distance and this is Route 14 or Keiyo Doro (Keiyo Road) that takes you between Chiba and Tokyo, this highway. And I'm going to ride to the other side. I live in Edogawa Ward (Edogawa-ku), so I live this way. And we're going to go over the Arakawa River and I will show you a little bit of this really big river. It's not really the best idea to be riding a bicycle and filming but this is the kind of excitement I think we need on this channel. Anything can happen on the Only in Japan Go channel including an accident of a bicycle rider riding off of the bridge into the river.

00:09:54 John Daub: It's a chilly day but with the sun out it's warm. It's going to be cold tonight. That's another reason why the blossoms aren't out because we have something called sankanshoto (three days cold, three days warm) we say in Japanese. Before spring breaks and it gets warm every day we have like three days hot, three days cold, three days hot, three days cold. And we're in the period where it's going like this right now. There's a lot of traffic on the bridge. Alright there's that highway over past the building right now. And this is the Ring Road. If you go that tower is Funabori Station on the Toei Shinjuku Line. And if you were to continue going this way straight you would hit Kasai Rinkai Koen and Tokyo Disneyland. So we're not that far from Tokyo Disneyland. I think if I got on my bicycle and went straight I could be there in about 30 minutes. Yeah there's a path. You can see the bicycle rider there. There's a path along this middle island and you can ride straight to Tokyo Disneyland if you go straight which would be pretty cool.

00:11:12 John Daub: Yeah this is Juyong Bridge. This is Route 14 or the Keiyo Doro (Keiyo Road). It will take you to Chiba if you keep on going straight. It might take you a little while because traffic is pretty rough. But I wanted to give you an update. Oh wow you can see the flights on the way up. That's pretty cool. Such a clear day here. This is coming in from Narita Airport. So it is a really nice day today. I wanted to give you an update on the cherry blossoms for who are coming to Japan. There's so many people who have been writing to me telling me that they want to come to Japan for the cherry blossoms. This is not the time, but it's getting close.

00:11:56 John Daub: No helmet. Nobody wears a helmet when you're on a one-speed bicycle. I'm telling you right now, this is the usual deal. I want you to count all the people wearing a helmet. Is he wearing a helmet? No. Are any of these people wearing helmets? No. Nobody wears a helmet when they're riding a bicycle because nobody's riding at warp speed and we have dedicated lanes for riding bicycles. Look at this kid coming. No helmet. So they probably should have a helmet but it's not a law to ride with a helmet. When I rented this bicycle, it didn't come with a helmet. What is a helmet? Yeah it's a no helmet life, okay? These kids don't have helmets. That grandma doesn't have a helmet. No helmet. That's a hat. That's not a helmet. She has really big hair but that doesn't count as a helmet. So yeah, living on the edge.

00:13:18 John Daub: So before everybody on the internet starts to chastise me and tell me how bad I am, I am bad. I'm bad to the core. I'm riding without a helmet. Ah yeah. I'm gonna stop underneath the overpass and then end this live stream but I thought I would show you a little bit. That's the Skytree in the distance. It's pretty nice, you know, to ride your bike. I think riding your bicycle is not a bad way to see Tokyo. Inside the city center there's not a lot of places for you to ride safely I think. But nobody has helmets there either. That guy's not wearing a helmet. It just goes so far. It's so slow. Don't go too fast. Watch where you're going. Don't live stream when you ride a bicycle. That's dangerous. You know, I'm somewhat experienced with handling it. I can use my nose to turn the camera around. I'm pretty good with that.

00:14:21 John Daub: So there's the construction. It's a pretty amazing project. I've been watching this over the last few months. And adding a lane to an established highway is never easy because you can't stop the traffic and yet they're finding a pretty good way to build this. Very, very good. I'm going to stop underneath here. Thank you Buggy the Clown. I never thought I'd say those words in my life. But thank you Buggy the Clown. The last thing I wanted to show you is right here. There's the end of the highway where they're building it. And then I guess we're going to bring that down into this lane. So the two highways will connect.

00:15:21 John Daub: Now here, where this boat is, they do boat racing just a little bit further down. This is near the Nakagawa (Nakagawa River). But they do boat racing down here. And you'll see the boats just flying down. And there's a little stand where you can watch them. It's pretty cool. They're not racing today. It's a weekday. But instead, I think they're dredging stuff, which isn't exactly exciting. But pretty cool. There's lots of stuff like that happening here in the city of Tokyo. Boat racing. This is the Komatsugawa right now, this area of Tokyo, Komatsugawa between Edogawa Ward (Edogawa-ku) and... What ward is this? Gosh, there's 23 wards in Tokyo, so it's hard to remember them all. But nice day. Cherry blossoms not quite there yet.

00:17:04 John Daub: Buggy, yes! Babymetal. And I'm hoping that they do play during the 2020 Olympics. I love being asked questions from Buggy, not just because he's throwing a super chat, but because his name is Buggy the Clown. It's pretty cool. So I showed you everything I wanted to. But this area of Tokyo, you can see, is very flat. There's no mountains underneath it. It's pretty much suburbs. Not exactly exciting. You live out here. This apartment building's got an awesome view of Route 14. That's about it. And if you look back, you'll see the Tokyo Skytree on the right, and nobody wearing helmets on the left.

00:18:42 John Daub: People just are very safe drivers. They wear seatbelts though in the cars. I can see that. That's good. Okay everybody, just wanted to say hi. Cherry blossoms not quite there yet. Have a great day. Good night everybody. I'll be back with another livestream. I'm gonna do a midnight snack run. And I'm editing the video which should be up by tomorrow night on living a long life here in Japan. It's a really important episode because I've been kind of wondering why Japanese people live such a long life. Is it DNA? Is it the environment? Is it the food? Is it the diet? Is it exercise? What are the important things that play in people's lives that make them live as long as they do? And maybe I got the answers in this episode coming up. So see you again soon. Bye from the highway. No boats. Lots of cars. And helmetless riders. See ya everybody. Oh and I am doing a Sakura meetup but check it on Facebook and Instagram. See ya. Bye bye.