00:00:00 John Daub: So this is right next to Hamamatsucho Station, JR station, and Daimon, which is a subway station. You can see the Yamanote line going by and there's the monorail that's making its way towards Haneda Airport. And just over the railroad tracks you can see Tokyo Tower. Very beautiful area, everybody. And today I'm going to be taking you to a Japanese garden, one of the parks here in the center of the city. This one is called Kyu-Shiba-rikyu Garden and it's right next to Shiodome's Hama-rikyu Gardens, which is much bigger, but this one's smaller and it's also got a really inexpensive price, just 150 yen to get in, $1.50. You can also get a one-year passport for 600 yen, which is crazy. But I wanted to bring you here because Japanese gardens in the summer are so loud. And we're going to find out why.

01:05:00 John Daub: Why? What is it that's making these places so loud? Out in the city you have a different kind of noise. You have cars, people, lots of vehicles going by. There goes the Shinkansen. That's more of a quiet train, but that's also one of the noises that you hear in the city of Tokyo. But here inside the park, it is a lot louder in a way, just a different kind of loud. Alright, let's get on with it.

01:34:00 John Daub: I'm also joined by my friend here, who I'm going to introduce you to. He knows a lot more about this than I do. It's 150 yen to get in, or a yearly passport for 600 yen, and that's just a bargain. Or you can get into nine of Tokyo's major parks for a year pass for just like $40. I put a link in the description if you're interested in finding where this place is. I'm going to show you, here's the entrance, and I'm going to show you a map of what this place looks like before we go in, so it gives you a lay of the land. It's not a very big park. In the middle of it is a lake. And like all traditional Japanese gardens, there's a nice bridge that goes across it. I've never been here before. It's right next to Hamamatsucho Station, as you can see right here on the Yamanote line.

02:27:00 John Daub: A little bit of the history. This garden originates all the way back to 1678 when it was built by Tadatomo Okubo, who received the land from Tokugawa, the fourth Shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty. Okubo called the garden Rakujuen, or Garden of Comfort and Long Life. This is a typical strolling type of garden with a tidal pond in the center. And it's designed so the scenery would change with the ebb and flow of the tides. So in 1979, the garden was designated as a National Place of Scenic Beauty, according to the Act on Protection of Cultural Properties. It is 43,175 square meters. So it's not small, but it's not exactly one of the bigger parks in the city of Tokyo. So let's go in. Here's the entrance. And waiting for me is my friend, and your friend now, Mr. Roger.

03:35:00 Roger: Hey, everyone.

03:35:00 John Daub: Hey, the cool sounds of summer. You found it. How are you, Roger?

03:35:00 Roger: Pretty good.

03:38:00 John Daub: This is Roger. Roger knows a lot about many things. So we're going to take you around this park. Let's go inside. Let's get some of the tickets. Oh, did you get it already? So we're getting two tickets. Oh, so they got all the information in English, French, Korean, Chinese. Interesting. And here we are.

04:26:00 John Daub: Well, it's pretty neat because all around this park, you can see the city of Tokyo, right? You have buildings, apartment buildings, office buildings, and that makes this park kind of an oasis in the city.

04:51:00 John Daub: Have you been here before?

04:53:00 Roger: No, I haven't.

04:55:00 John Daub: Wait, I'm talking to somebody else. I thought you were talking to the trees. Have you been here?

05:01:00 Roger: No. I've seen it.

05:02:00 John Daub: You see it like every time you go on the train. You can see it from the train station all the time. It's like you want to go there, but like you don't really get off the Hamamatsucho Station. Well, that's the thing, right? It's so close to Hama-rikyu Gardens, which is more of a major draw. I usually go there, and I miss this one out. It's kind of neat to come to this park. And you go to the monorail. You get right on the monorail, or to Haneda or to Odaiba. And you don't get off. Unless you get off, you don't get to enjoy like the scenery like this. It's cool. You can see the monorail going by right up there. I think you just missed it, but the tracks to the monorail are right there. And the monorail goes between the buildings, which is pretty cool.

05:41:00 John Daub: So, we're here. You know, Tokyo's parks are pretty loud, and it's because of these insects that seem to like fly at me. And when I'm running along the riverside and stuff, they actually attack. I feel like they're attacking me. But I think maybe they're just looking for a tree to climb onto. Like passengers on the train. And I'm the only tall thing if I'm running on the riverbank. What are these things, Roger, that are so darn loud?

06:14:00 Roger: Cicadas. Cicadas are Japanese semi (cicadas). They're different types of semi. There's like about four indigenous types that live in Japan, and then other ones that came from different Asian countries. And then the biggest one is like abura-zemi (brown cicada), which is the most common one. It has the brown wings and stuff. And then they have the other ones. They have the smaller ones, and they have clear-winged ones, and they have the green-tinted ones. And they have the woody ones. They blend straight in with the wood. You can't even find them.

06:51:00 John Daub: I've literally had them attached to me when I'm walking around the parks. The best is when it attaches to your screen on your apartment building, and then they start going inside your house at 6 AM. Then they start singing? But they don't get in. They're sitting on the screen. But it's worse than an alarm clock. So you have to flick the screen until they can get out. Oh, you got one. Yeah, this is the shell. It takes a couple years in the ground. They're born in the wood, in the trees. The eggs are laid in, and then they go into the ground. And they're in a pupal state under the ground, sucking on the roots of the trees. And then when it's time to come out, they climb at night.

07:17:00 Roger: It's not alive, right? That's just a shell? This is—it got out. It made its way out. At nighttime, they crawl up, they attach. They have these hooks on their legs and stuff, and then they crawl, and they stick onto the tree. And then they, you can see this part, they separate it. The membrane separates. And then they come out, they're kind of white. And then they let the air expose them. They get, their wings get harder, they grow out. And then they become, in the morning, they're ready to fly and look for a mate.

08:07:00 John Daub: PMX is calling this an alien baby, I think. But these are cicadas. They're, as Roger said, there are four major kinds, four varieties here in Japan, right? This one, this is the most common one, though. It's kind of small, though. And we're grossing out about 300 people right now. Sorry about that. Can you eat it? Are you going to eat it for us? But they, in Korea and different countries, they fill it with filling, like pork filling and stuff, and then they fry it again. You can hit a crunchy sound. Grossing out more people. Sorry for those people who just were grossed out. If you like this kind of content, hit the like button, support the show. I really appreciate it.

08:58:00 John Daub: We're now going to take you around the park, show you what this place is like. So if you do come to Tokyo, you can decide for yourself if this is worth taking a stroll. A lot of people stay in hotels around this area, so it's kind of a neat place to chill out. And the price is so nice. It's like, why not? I'm guessing that a lot of people have one-year passes, so you can come from the office building with a one-year pass and eat your lunch in here. They do have a no alcohol policy. You can drink alcohol out on streets in Tokyo responsibly. You have to be 20 years old, of course, but inside the park, you're not allowed to drink alcohol.

09:42:00 John Daub: They have an archery field, too. Archery field? Whoa. They have a couple of people leaving the gate that archery, clothes and equipment with them. What's that building on the other side? Is that the tea house in the middle? Oh, in the center, yeah. There's like a gazebo with tea. These aren't bonsai trees, right? A lot of people will think that they might be bonsai trees. They're not. They are just regular deciduous trees or like needle trees. Pine trees. Yeah. They're just regular pine trees. Most of the people that help to maintain the park are volunteers. This is the place to sit. The pond used to actually be salt water because the inlet of the sea was here. This used to all be underwater, right? This is reclaimed land. But now it's fresh water. The two inlets, the Nakajima and the Kyuhama are arranged in the pond to create the image of the sea and the lake.

11:01:00 John Daub: A conifer tree, right? We've got bababababe writing in to tell us if these are conifer trees. Although I don't see any cones. I guess they'd be. It's easy because in Japan they look like bonsai trees but they're really not. They're just regular pine trees. The garden is so beautifully groomed. If anything were to fall from the trees, they clean it up pretty quickly. There are a few people in here. There's one guy up on the mountain on the top there. But other than that, aren't a lot of people who come to this park because once again like the main draw is to go to Hama-rikyu which has it also has a tea house it has a lot of different kind of areas of the park so you feel while you stroll through a Japanese park you're supposed to get a sense but like you're going through different areas in such a small location actually we I feel like that right now because we're right on the pond's edge if you want to get technical and it's kind of neat we got a little walkway that goes around it in the distance you can hear an ambulance or a police car going by so there are other sounds I guess it's just being in Tokyo that makes this kind of loud so you got the cicadas and you have the police the cicada police all right cool we got some people crossing the bridge that's what we're gonna do next it's kind of neat Wow there's so many train lines including the monorail going around here I can hear them yeah the Shinkansen back there I can hear them on the rails you can't row on the lake there's no activities it's not really that that big of a lake but there are some animals some ducks there's a bird right there you can see it right in the center of your screen right now oh there are some carp here where's the turtle don't feed the turtle yeah there's a carp I can see it it's kind of all right some water striders whatever you call them in your country we used to call these water bugs minamo (water striders) right minamo sit on the Nagoya City manhole covers yet they have minamo yeah these are dark the the pond isn't exactly crystal clear so you can't it's hard to see the carp but they're there all of Tokyo's parks are maintained by volunteers and the money that you pay for the tickets goes back into the maintenance of it it's not a lot they pretty much take what they need and I guess any surplus is what returned to the people I don't know but I'm pretty sure they don't make much of a profit if anything alright let's follow Roger Roger also goes on nature hikes around Kanagawa Kamakura area right myself trying I'm gonna promote your stuff you do you have a youtube channel as well right.

14:04:00 Roger: Yes Tokyo Comedy Network captain Utica Tokyo.

14:13:00 John Daub: Oh so you're friends with Bob and Masa Masa was in the first capsule film video yeah only seven million views on that one but you have a second one yeah second capsule hotel video oh you get dragonfly so pirates of tokyo bay are you are you part of the pirates of the tokyo bay yeah all right um yeah bob was in the ufo catcher that's a i think that passed a million views as well it's all because of bob and masa they're so they're so funny funny haha you know what i mean there you go there's a dragonfly oh we just missed it we said dragonfly tombo (dragonfly) right tombo in japanese all right we got a little bit of history here Seiko no Tsutsumi the west lake and back embankment um it's a lake of the chinese city hangzhou in the zhejiang province famed for the scenic beauty so this kind of so all of these parks seem to have some sort of influence from china it seems like yeah the names are chinese but you can really hear the cicadas even out here and there's no trees around here what's that oh wow check it out it's gonna totally it's gonna move before look at that a red dragonfly let's see how you know about making circles to try to make him busy you want to try oh no it did totally move he'll come back why like you're the dragonfly whisperer no there he is he's on the stone now oh he's on the stone now can you make him land on your finger yeah because japanese kids usually like because it looks directly then they have the floor i typically just to make them busy oh they'll become more of a bugger you know japanese kids collect bugs yeah do you collect bugs i used to when i was a kid when i came to japan like there's so many bugs there's beetles and cicadas and praying mantises yeah they have bug trading cards yeah praying mantises is that kamakiri (praying mantis) i don't know they're pretty cool this way or this way you have to choose wisely oh we got to choose our way what do you guys think should we take go left or go right roger what do you which way or go back roger we're not going back we just started this thing go left to right oh that's an island over there all right we got some people chiming in go right go left go left all right the fifth person decides we say go right left left we got two more two more it's up to you guys left left okay.

17:07:00 John Daub: Okay, everybody said left. Like everybody's saying left now. All right, we go this way. Oh, well, oh yeah, it's coming towards us. Oh, I see it. Why is it coming towards us?

17:27:00 Roger: The owners usually clap before they feed them. Oh, they can hear that.

17:33:00 John Daub: Oh, check it out. Hey turtle. Over the cicada. Hey turtle. Is it a teenager? Is it mutant? Mutant. Yeah. You speak turtle. It's definitely, oh, look at that. He's eating, he tried to eat the flower. Didn't like it. Very cool. I like to see this, you know, in Japanese gardens. Oh, he's going deep down there now. We can't see him anymore. He's down in the murk of it. Look at those claws, says Zane. No crocs here, mate. Oh, there he is. Whoa. They'll look up, cause they think there's food. They'll open their mouth and they try. Here's the turtle. Oh, the turtle's back. The battle is on. Who will get the food we don't have? Oh, the turtle totally is taking them out. Look at that. Come on. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. It's a very slow battle. The turtle won the first round.

18:41:00 John Daub: All right, so now we got Sakata behind us and we have Sakeda behind us and we have construction in front of us now. Life preserver. Just in case you fall off. Just in case somebody would have fallen. Don't worry, you're safe. We got, the park has you covered with the life preserver on the right side. So this is an island we're on. Ahoy! Welcome to Kamabojo Island, sir. Don't get on this mound. This mound is protected, so. Cool. So we're gonna loop around once around this park. We're gonna try to find a semi, a cicada, and then we're gonna end this live stream. I did go to Hama-rikyu with Peter von Gomm. If you wanna check out that video, I might put a link up here or at the end of this video. Oh no, look, we can't go across. We're blocked. Roger, did you know about this? I'm not gonna go around. It's all right. It's not really like that much of a hassle. If we were at Hama-rikyu, probably would have walked half a mile or like 500 meters. So like, ah, we gotta go all the way back. This is just a couple of steps. It's pretty interesting. It's risen. Yeah. The Chinese mythology. It was the land of the youth, it says here too. Nakajima. The formation of the stones follows the image of Rishen. It's probably in China. The legendary mountain of eternal youth and immortality. Wow. Where youth used to go to live forever. Immortals. So those who live here are immortal. But it's so small. What would you eat? You would eat the rock. Rock soup? Have you ever had rock soup?

20:54:00 Roger: No, I've never had rock soup.

20:57:00 John Daub: I think my teeth would like that very much. Rocky Road ice cream I've had. Same thing. So this is like Mount Olympus for all the immortals. Oh, right. Mount Olympus. It says it has the best view of the park. Oh, from up there. But we're not allowed to go up there. You can't go up there. You can't mount the mountain. The dragonflies can. I can see a lot of them there. Oh, check it out. I thought that was a rock for a second. You know what that is? You see it? Yeah, there it is. The turtle is totally chilling on. There's two of them chilling on that rock. They're getting warm. They're getting warm, are they? They're cold blooded? Cold blooded killers. That's all I can think about. Cold blooded turtles. It doesn't have quite the same ring. Uh oh. Oh, traffic jam. He said, Konnichiwa. You know, every time you go hiking and stuff, like when you go up and down the hills, you have to say Konnichiwa or bow to them. Well, I used to do that, but you know what happens? People start changing and Konnichiwa turns into Nichiwa. Nichiwa. It turns into its own language. But like 30 people going down. So it's like, trot, trot, trot, trot. People can't say hello fully like, cha, cha. That's what you get at the end when everyone's tired. All right. So this is kind of a, this is also kind of an elevated area. This is nice. I guess we can find a, uh, semi or a cicada. I keep, I always pronounce it wrong in English. This is Stonehenge. Stonehenge where the demons dwell and the banshee live and they do live well. Spinal tap reference for those interested. Um, yeah, this does look like it. It could have been something one day.

23:14:00 Roger: It used to be the tea house here.

23:17:00 John Daub: Oh, this was... where'd it go? Stone pillar. Let's just call it what it is. This stone pillar is the gate post that was transported from the former residence of a warlord who served the Odawara Hojo clan during the Warring States period. This area is said to have been the site of a tea room when it was the main Tokyo mansion of the Odawara domain. Oh wow. So Odawara, which they have a castle down in Odawara. This is part of the domain of Odawara. Wow. This is going way back in the history of Edo before it was called Tokyo. It's kind of the stuff that I like. I'm really interested in the history and the background of things, as you can see in the main channel. But when you come here and you see in the parks, they have these little sign markers and I try to read them. Most of the time I'm not really interested, but sometimes you learn something really new about the place that has an effect on the entire history of the city. And so there's little details that I guess they all add up and give you the same kind of knowledge that Roger here has inside that noggin of his.

24:20:00 John Daub: You know what's really interesting, when you come to Japan, every Japanese park, there's a lot of trees, but the trees usually have name tags. They'll say what the name is. Like Japanese, sometimes English, sometimes Latin. It's like really interesting. Like when you're walking by a tree, you know, what kind of tree is this? And then you look and there's like a name tag on it. The cherry blossoms have that, so you know what variety of the cherry blossom it is. It's kind of like a Japanese business park. We don't do that in the United States. I can't remember walking around the park and seeing names, but I'm sure there's a couple of parks that probably do something similar to that. This is a very beautiful garden. Very beautiful place. Now that we're in amongst the trees, we're looking for the semi, cicada. I always say it wrong. I don't know if you're getting the same audio now, but being in the middle of the trees here, it's really loud. I know that the YouTube app has some noise canceling on there and it might be canceling the noise, but if it was, oh, you got, wow, you got a lot of them. You can see from the roots of the trees, the holes, they climb out of the holes and then they climb up to anything that's really high. So they climb up here at nighttime and they climb different heights sometimes. There's one right there. Different heights. And then they break out of their shell. They secure themselves with their claws. They stick there and then they break out of their shell. Whoa. That one is pretty graphic.

26:04:00 Roger: How do you do? I used to be in here, but now I discovered freedom. It was a lot better. And now I'm a much bigger specimen.

26:13:00 John Daub: I wonder where they go. Can you find any that are alive? Is it alive? Dude. So it's on the tree.

26:21:00 Roger: This is a abura-zemi. So it looks like, it looks like the wood pattern on his neck. They're probably white and they come out, then they start turning black here and they have four different wings here. Oh, it's flapping its wings. Then it has a large abdomen. Then when it squeezes air out of here, this makes the chirping noise. And this is a male. And then they have the, you can see it looks kind of, it looks probably creeping more people out. But the triangular part of the bottom, there's, there's a straw. That's where they suck the syrup. Very interesting. Kind of creepy. Do they bite? No, but the claws, they stick. They have, that's what they climb up with. They pull up like this. They don't like actually looking straight on. It's kind of cool. He's not making a noise. Usually when you grab them, they make a little noise. So maybe you should let him go. Maybe he's at peace in your hands, dude. Nice. And this is what it looks like.

27:23:00 John Daub: Ah, don't get it near me. You want to see what it looks like? Just do it gently. He'll probably fly away. He's going to climb up and bite my hand. He's going to get my eyes out or something. Ah, he's activated. Oh, he's on your, he's on your, on your. You don't want to know where he landed. That's my trunk. When you get weird bugs that look like aliens, I don't have a, I'm not going to react well. Don't write that eat it, Zane, I'm not going to eat it for protein. I can eat other stuff. But yeah, two otakus, right? The wings are very pretty and I think, you know.

27:56:00 Roger: They are edible.

27:57:00 John Daub: Yeah, well prove it, right?

28:03:00 Roger: They went into a valley or something, couldn't get out and the Indians kind of trapped them there and then they were like praying for like food or rain. So they, they did a rain dance and they got rain. When they got rain, they also asked the, I guess the gods or something for food. And when the rain came, then the ground became saturated and loose. So then cicada, the seven-year cicada. And they go like, thank you for the rain, thank you for the food. And then there's a festival. That's where they eat them. It's a festival where they thank the gods for like giving them food.

28:39:00 John Daub: So I know where not to go. I forgot. It's like, it was like, it was an old Indian story. I think it's on the West Coast. Probably in Tacoma, Washington. Wow. It's so loud. Can you guys hear this? The, the, on the other side? Can you hear? The smaller one. Put it in front of the camera because the mic is here. Oh wow. It's the smaller one. These are the ones that look like pieces of wood when they grow up. Their wings look like pieces of wood. Dirty fingers. Sorry. Sorry about the dirty fingers. That's a nice shot. Look at that. So that's a totally different variety. It's a smaller one. Do the varieties battle one another? Cause that's what I would do if I was one of these insects. I would battle. They look like they climb anywhere. Anywhere they can get out. Oh yeah. Look at that. He's on top of the leaf. You know, if I honestly like you, it's like having armor, right? It's not a battle. It's hard to see it with the back lit. But he attached himself to the leaf there. Can't see any other ones, but the sound is incredible. It's like a symphony of bugs. Oh, there's one really close going at it. See if we can find one making a noise.

30:30:00 John Daub: And so when they make the noises, are they like putting their legs together? Like like crickets do?

30:36:00 Roger: Oh, this one is, is that alive? Yeah. He's not making noise either. This one's not making any noise. The mating, the mating, it's a mating noise. So they're trying to mate with you. Hey baby. He's not making any noise. So maybe he's finished or something. They don't live that long. So after they mate, their purpose is done? Yeah. I think it may be a week. Hey little guy. You want to hold him? Not really. Feel the claw. Feel the claw. Don't freak out, but feel the claw. Oh wow. Dude, that totally. It doesn't hurt. It's just, it's, that's how he holds onto the tree.

31:10:00 John Daub: Well, that's how it would suck the blood out of your finger by stabbing it with my fangs and gnawing it. I'm gnawing on it, but I have images of instant death by doing it. Oh, and there he goes. You're like a nature man. I've been in the city too long. Sounds really natural. I get whenever you do, when you do the tough nature guy, having an Australian accent is always good. There's tree sap here too. Sometimes. That's right. Folks, now it's the, it's the sap time where you can, this is where we take an intermission for you to get your drinks while we do zoom shots on sap. Refreshments that open now. So if a mosquito goes in there, it will be preserved for all time. And in 10,000 years they will extract the DNA and create Jurassic park. Or should we say the 21st century park? Wow. So that's pretty much all I wanted to show you guys to give you a kind of a inside look since Roger is a nature man, you can pick these things up. These vampire bugs of death, um, which might be the name. New title of this episode or man picks up vampire bug turns into one himself at night. We'll have to keep this live stream going for another 12 hours to see what you turn into. But it's pretty neat to be out and about in the summertime and to go into the parks. You know, in the fall and in the winter, I miss this sound. When you hear the sound of the cicada just going crazy in the trees, it's the sound of summer to me. It's a really nice sound because I know that the days are longer. I can take off my shirt and go to the beach. I can enjoy myself a little bit more drink beer on the top of roof gardens, really relaxed in the park. That's the feeling I get when I hear this and yet I'm here right now in this moment and I'm getting bit by mosquitoes and I'm really sweating it out. So it's not exactly, I guess the grass is greener on the other side, especially in summer, except when it burns because of the heat. Okay. So we should get out of the shade. Well you're lucky you got your long pants and shirt. You came prepared, right?

33:46:00 John Daub: I do like the contrast of these parks on the seaside because when you, you have all of this nature in the center of it and then the office buildings as a backdrop. So Tokyo, Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden is also kind of the same way. Hey, thanks Zane. Guess you can attach yourself to a rock. I call that one rocky trying to climb the boulders to the top. Karetaki ishigumi. And then we're back where the bridge is going towards immortal Island. It's pretty neat that all these little locations, every single place that you go to, it's only like a couple of steps from one place to the next because this garden is so small, but it's pretty cool because this, just every, every single part of the park, it seems like a new area, like a new country, almost like you're in a different place completely. And yet here I am staring out at the city and it really is quite an amazing experience. So, you know, what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna turn the zoom lens around to the wide-angle lens to the other side and now you get a wide view of what I'm looking at. This is a little bit wider than it was before. That's what the park is like. It really is a beautiful place. I'm over here. But yeah, just to spend 30 minutes just walking around this park is it's pretty nice and it's a lot smaller than Hama-rikyu. I guess if you got kids that scream and have very little patience this is an easy one to get out of too because if you get to the other end of Hama-rikyu you got to walk all the way back. If you got screaming kids here, you could just like shuffle them out right. Don't get on there. This mound don't do it Roger. Yeah, to see the sign you have to look at the one up there. I know wait wait in order to see the sign you have to climb the mound to go and see it, right? But then and then they have other signs up there telling you not to do it. So I probably just turn around. Yeah, turn around. How dare you? That's the way I would do it. There there were signs at Kinkaku-ji and the sign said the usual route and then there's a path going the other way. That's the that's the way I would go and then it would say turn around, you know the other way. It's up. You wouldn't know that until you see the signs and then it's too late. Very cool. I'm going to put that put the wide angle lens back on now. Yeah, it's cool. I've had this lens now for about a month and it works really well. This is the Ola lens. There you go. The Ola lens and it's a pretty good perspective. I can get me and Roger and at the same time which is important. I'm the weather in Tokyo for those of you who have been asking, it has cooled down a little bit. But if cool is still hot and muggy and makes you sweat, then it's not cool at all. It's still kind of...

37:39:00 John Daub: Oh, wait, we can climb up here. This is the big mountain. Oyama. Oyama. All right, let's do it. Oyama. Which means big mountain. Which makes me wonder why Mount Fuji wasn't called Oyama Mount Fuji, right? O-fuji. O means big in Japanese. It's also a sign of respect. It's a sign of big respect. Okashi or osusume. All right, so now we got a little bird's eye view. Oh, this is even better. This is beautiful up here. I'm going to pan around for you. Give you an idea of what this place is like. That's what the sign says. Don't walk down. They really love to signage the park, don't they? Oh, wow. Look. Oh, check it out. I'm sorry to drag you around fast. You can see the monorail going by and then Tokyo Tower up there. This is a really scenic park. You can see a lot from here. There's another train going by. I guess that's the Yamanote line making its way through Hamamatsucho Station. This is also pretty funny here, right? Roger just showed me this sign. It says here, don't walk down from here, please. It's written so small it's hard to see until you get down there. You're basically like halfway down by the time you can see it. I've zoomed in on the lens. Zoomed in on it. You can see me? I think if you made it halfway down, it might be okay to just make your way all the way down. But I have to tell you though, this is a very beautiful and scenic little park. You can see it in about 30, 35 minutes. The entrance is right there. That's also the exit. It's between the ferry terminal where I would take the ferry to go to Ogasawara or to Hachijojima, some of Tokyo's islands, and Hamamatsucho Station. So definitely give this a big thumbs up. Highly recommend it. This is the place where Roger comes for his lunch to eat the bugs with chocolate.

39:55:00 Roger: Yeah, fry it because it tastes like bacon.

39:57:00 John Daub: You never eat it, have you?

39:59:00 Roger: No, I have not. I've eaten other stuff. Other stuff. Ants and other various... Grasshoppers. Grasshoppers are good. I've eaten a lot. I've eaten tarantulas in Cambodia.

40:18:00 John Daub: Oh, that's another story. Yeah, that's another story.

40:21:00 Roger: I traveled in Cambodia back in like 1999, 2000. It wasn't really a touristy place. The only way to get around was by pickup truck with the locals. So there would be 15 to 20 of us in the back of these little Toyota pickup trucks. And we'd sit on the side. It was like dirt cheap. It was a couple dollars to go across the country. And whenever they stopped, people would run up with coconuts. And then one lady came up with a platter and all around it in the form of a pyramid were these tarantulas. And they were just like, oh, that's a good idea. And I'm like, get that away from me. And you know what happened? We're really close next to each other inside of the truck. So of course, everybody on the truck got a bag of them. They're holding it up and they're licking their fingers and they're eating the tarantula, ripping open its abdomen to suck the eggs out of it. I've never seen anything like it. And of course, I got offered some and I had to eat it. It tastes like chicken.

41:09:00 John Daub: Eight finger licking good. Eight finger licking... Where did the other two go? But yeah, I guess if... I was the only one in the truck not to eat it. I got a coconut instead. I went kind of weak. Oh my God, you had a coconut? Oh, yeah. I was the only one that had a coconut. I guess that's why they charged that outrageous price for it. Tarantulas are cheaper than coconuts on that truck trip. But weird food. Japan grasshoppers, bee larvae. So we do have some weird food. Turtles I've seen as well. Didn't that guy look munchy? I've had friends eat turtle soup in the U.S. too. So it's not really outrageous. There's a carp here too, but they don't... Carp is not a good fish. It doesn't sushi well. If you make a show, can it sushi? No. We're going to leave the carp out of that episode. How big is an island? Here do you mean? This is from Fernando. The island's not very big. If you're talking about this island, you can walk around it in about less than a minute. 15, 20 seconds. The Tokyo Islands are pretty darn big. If you're talking about the tarantulas, they were like this big. And what was creepy was... Why are we going back to this? They would put them in a plastic bag and then you would see the legs stick to the side of it. And it was just one of the creepiest sights to see. Because the light would go through the bags because they're not very thick. And you'd see like all these... The poison's taken out of them. I don't know. I guess so. And I asked the guy eventually to get around to it. How do they catch the tarantula? Do they just like pounce on them? He goes, no, there's a guy. He puts his hand in the hole and goes like this until the tarantulas come out. When they come out, they trap it. And I said, well, this is the guy who goes like this, get his hand bit. He goes, oh yeah. Oh yeah. Like who wants to do tarantula? Oh, me. Yeah, tarantula hunters, I guess. I don't know. But that's what we ate on a truck in Cambodia. So I got more stories than you care to hear. Not that you guys on the other side have a choice. You could turn this off. Like at any time. But yeah, we have a good 300 and something people watching right now. So I appreciate you guys tuning in and watching live. So we're going to make our way back to the exit. There's still another a couple of corners of the park that we didn't go to visit. But if you do make your way to Tokyo and you find your way south at Hamamatsucho Station, there's another thing that I'm going to show you later on. Another attraction to this place. There's lots of them, but this park is one of them. Do enjoy the parks of Tokyo. They're like little paradises. Places that you can escape the city and just for a little bit feel like you're in a completely different world.

44:07:00 Roger: They have the seasonal flowers too. Like in April, this is all supposed to be irises. There's iris bulbs. And back there, there's wisteria or fuji. And then these are all, in the back, those are all peach blossoms. But in the summer, they're like all dead because we've had a heat wave probably.

44:26:00 John Daub: It's going to be hard. It's going to be hard to get a hold of. I'm going to get that butterfly. Oh, he's coming right at me. I've had them land on my finger. They're very, yeah, they tickle. Cicadas have claws of evil death. Suck your blood, at least in my mind, warped way of thinking. They're just little bugs that are kind of cool. They're harmless. You can make the call if you want to grab onto one of them and make them your friend. I'll leave them to Roger. So where can we see more of you, Roger? Where can we see more of you?

45:05:00 Roger: On the Comedy Network. Tokyo Comedy Network. We do different shows, comedian interviews and different comedy shows and we do skits and stuff. I'm also like with other YouTube creator channels, Tokyo Create and Tokyo Comedy Store. And Pirates of Tokyo Bay.

45:20:00 John Daub: Pirates of Tokyo Bay. I've actually never been to a show. You're running. You're running. I know. You're running for years. Every time I want to go, work comes up. But Mike, Mike who is... In charge of the comedy group invites me every time and every time. Every Sunday we have. I'm like, yeah. I'm going to try to go and then something comes up and I don't make it. I go to a park. Well, they should do the comedy shows in the afternoon. Do they have any?

45:51:00 Roger: We do. We've done them at temples. In Koenji Temple. We've performed there.

45:58:00 John Daub: I guess the monks have a sense of humor. All monks have a big sense of humor. And now that there's a kind of the accommodation crunch and with the shrinking population in Japan a lot of the temples are turning into kind of makeshift hotels for tourists. Did you hear about this? So now they're opening up a lot of that not a lot of them but some of the temples are opening up so tourists can stay there to generate some money because the temples aren't making enough money. They have to pay for themselves for things like renovation and upkeep and also for food and water and living costs. I don't think they make a huge amount of money. It just depends on the temple. I think Shinto shrines might make more money because they can bless stuff and they have I think they do it on that like at Kinkaku-ji and the Shinto usually do it with one price or you can pay more. Say like like there's a cup of coffee you can buy for 500 yen or 5,000 yen. It depends how much you want to pay for it. Oh, so it's up to you how much you want to pay. Yeah, I'd like to say I've stayed I've stayed at and Miyajima on the floating temple that they have there on the deck on a couple of nights in the summertime. They open it up where people can spend the night. They're kind of you just sleeping there. It's not really an accommodation kind of a place to crash. But I've slept on the floor in the temple before and yeah, it was okay. It was comfortable and I got to see the place in the morning that there are some other temples that have places where you can stay and just just just just know that it's opening up more and more and that's kind of gonna be a cool experience because I'd love to stay in the temple as well. The stream is getting pixelated. Sorry about that guys. It goes in and out. Oh, yeah, okay. It goes left to right that could be the other thing goes right left right to left. This one goes left to right and in the spring. This is absolutely beautiful. But right now it's just kind of a covered place with this very little Sun. Oh, that's what it looks like. Can you see this? Do you see the purple flower? Wow. Okay, you can yeah, you can put a fire. It's really good if you put if you put cheese on anything you can eat it I think. That's edible to point out the stuff that's poisonous. That's what I care about the most. Beautiful park. That's all I want to show you. We've been we've been going at it for about 50 minutes now. Thanks everybody for watching. I'm gonna turn this and give the last 20 seconds unlike yesterday because that ice cream dripping down my arm. It's 20 seconds to turn the camera around. I'm gonna turn it around and you can take a look at the park and decide if this is a place that you'd want to come and visit leave a comment below. Tell me what you think if you've been to another Japanese garden before. Love to hear from you and give us a thumbs up if you like this kind of content. Thank you everybody.