00:00:00 John Daub: Greetings everybody! This is a summer festival here in Tokyo, the Sumiyoshi Shrine Festival. Every neighborhood in Tokyo and Japan has some sort of festival. This is a big one that happens every three years, but today they're throwing water on the people because it's so hot. You can see it in the distance. They've got buckets of water. I'm gonna take a shortcut and take you around. There's lots of portable shrines called omikoshi (portable shrines) being carried today. It is one of the hottest days of the year as well. You can see down the street another omikoshi making its way, and they're also spraying it with water.

00:01:16 John Daub: Alright, I'm gonna go around the corner and we can catch some more. Over the 20 years living in Japan, I've been woken up many a time by a festival. I think it's crickets from the way they blow on the whistle. Lots of them, but it's not. Yeah, it's a festival. So now they're making their way back towards the shrine. You can see up there on the top is a torii (Shinto shrine gate). They've just finished. Oh, it's a little kids one. The kids are carrying this one. You can hear the whistling. It's just really incredible. Now they're taking it over. There's so much energy here.

00:02:53 John Daub: This neighborhood is called Tsukuda. This is in central Tokyo on an island about 15 minutes away from Tokyo Station. Right now there's a festival here, but actually there are festivals all over Japan, all over Tokyo between right now this weekend and for the next couple of weekends. It's really getting loud with the whistles blowing. You can kind of feel the energy wherever you are. This festival is famous for them spraying water on the participants. It's cool. Oh here we go. We got some kakigori (shaved ice) on the left side there to cool people down as well. They have 12 different flavors. It's pretty crazy.

00:04:09 John Daub: Alright, look at the little kids. They're saying washōi, washōi (traditional chant). I said it also when I was in the naked man festival back in 2013. It doesn't really have any meaning. It's just something that you say to kind of conjure the spirit up inside of you. Alright, so they're taking a break. I guess there's a traffic jam. Alright, it's kind of hard to wait to make your way along the side here. I'll see if I can take you up to the bridge. Some dazzling footwork. I'm making my way up to the front and see if we can get you into a better view. Here we go.

00:05:35 John Daub: I love this time of year not because it's hot—that part is tough. It's because there's just so much energy in the city. Alright, I made it to the bridge here. Hey everybody for joining me. If you're watching this, this is a live stream from Tokyo. I didn't have any announcements for this, so I just kind of went because I could hear these outside of my house. Just all of the buzzing and decided to come out. Just buzzing all over the city, and I remembered that this is the biggest festival of the area, so definitely came out here as fast as I could. You can see from here going towards Sumiyoshi Shrine. Just tons and tons of omikoshi decked out in gold. Very beautiful. They glitter in the sun. A lot of wet people. The people coming this way are wet because they spray water on them. This is kind of like a water festival as well. Nobody is dry. It's like sweat and rain—water. And everybody's staying super hydrated. Water bottles cool a lot of the people off. It is super hot today.

00:07:23 John Daub: So let me see if I can make my way to the park. I can't see any of your comments—the screen is darkened. I'm trying to keep the phone cool so we don't overheat. But you can see there's a ton of people from all over. I don't wanna get in front of the photo there. It's pretty exciting to see all these people out here. Normally this neighborhood is so quiet, but today it's just alive on a Saturday morning. I opened this up, you can hear all of the whistles and you can hear all the people going and chanting in the streets. And it has woken me up many times in the past. That's how you know it's August 4th. It's a Saturday. Alright, I'm making my way to the park now. Alright, I made it. We're sort of out of the crowd.

00:08:45 John Daub: So if you go this way, you can see over there—there's kind of a stage. And from this point you get a really nice view of this bridge. This red bridge is very famous here in the Tsukuda neighborhood. It has history going back a few hundred years. And this festival, I believe, goes back about 400 years, which is older than the United States. It's old. Apparently you see the banners up here—this is the banners for the festival and for the shrine. And they look like they're about five meters high. This festival takes place once every three years. But I guess carrying the omikoshi around the neighborhoods is something they do every year. But once every three years, they have a main festival. And the main course or the big part of this festival happens on Monday, on the 6th of August. And I'll try to come back to that.

00:09:59 John Daub: Hey, Cassie. Yeah, I'm definitely going to hit a vending machine or try to find some water. Tokyo is so hot. You see tons of bottles of water all over the place. People are staying hydrated. And they're pumping water and just spraying it on all of the people who are participating and carrying the omikoshi to this point. So it's very important. I've been inside. I can last for a couple more minutes before I myself have to go to a vending machine or convenience store to get a drink just to stay hydrated. I was in Shimbashi a couple of days ago, everybody. And I showed you a cool day in Tokyo that it was still like 38, and then it was like 46 with the adjusted temperature. It's like in the 50s with the adjusted temperature today with the humidity. Although the humidity is not as high, now the sun is just baking and it's so much hotter than it was just last week. And as we get deeper into August until about August 20th, it's going to be super hot. You're going to want to go to the beach. But here's the thing with the beach—when August hits and the waters get so warm, the jellyfish come in and it's hard to go into the water and not get stung because they're all really close to the sea. That's why Japanese beaches around Tokyo are not so popular. We got a jellyfish infestation usually.

00:11:32 John Daub: I know of a secret entrance, so we're going to see if we can go back up over the bridge. I came here this way when people were asking me about my wedding. I did a Q&A down here. Oh, you can hear the chanting. Whoa. Just look like dragon heads. All right. I'm kind of in a secret area behind everything. Let me bring you forward. Wow. We're really close to this omikoshi. Check it out—like the gold plating on it. It's beautiful. Tiger's head. Thank you TKY Fuji for telling us the tiger's head. It's hard for me to see clearly. There it goes again. A lot of people are going, when they're carrying it, they'll say, wa shōi, wa shōi—w-a-s-h-o-i, I guess you'd spell it in romaji. It doesn't have any real meaning. It's just something that you chant to try to get the spirits up to get the energy to carry really heavy portable shrines for quite a long way. These things can go on for several kilometers. I think the one in Iwate I did was like 10 kilometers long, which is insane. It's like over six miles they can carry some of these at some festival. I don't think they do that here. I think it's just like a couple of kilometers, if that. But it's super heavy.

00:14:26 John Daub: Let me take you up a little bit on the end of the bridge here. Oh, that lady just toppled over. She took that cone out. All right. Let's go check out this band. I love this music. Hey, Gokuu. Thank you. I'm getting only 720p. Why? 720p is actually an improvement. Sometimes you get less than 720p on a live stream. But I'll just deploy it. Oh, hey, the flute. Shishimai (lion dance). Oh, we got a nice closeup of the shishi (lion).

00:16:32 John Daub: So the phone overheated. I was trying my best to keep it cool, but it was just impossible. Anyways, we're at the end of this festival. It starts at 10 am. Once again, this is the Sumiyoshi Shrine Festival that happens every Saturday every year, but this is one of the big three-year ones—every three years it's even bigger, and this is the big year. So it's kind of exciting. You can see from the roadways it's just completely wet, and this is also one of the reasons why this festival is famous—they throw a lot of water everywhere. So you can see this is the line where the whole water starts. Expect to get a little wet here—either you're gonna sweat it out or you're gonna get sprayed. One or the other—you're leaving here wet. And I'm leaving here mostly from the sweat, but it's a pretty cool festival. You can see the kids out there—they're staying hydrated and staying cool by just splashing water on each other. That's the way I would do it. We do have a community pool in this area down there. Oh that's cool—it's so much fun.

00:17:49 John Daub: As the coach comes down the street you can see the left and right these blue bins—they're just full of water. Yeah, you just take it and throw it like you drench somebody. This is very similar to the Nebuta Festival in Aomori (Nebuta festival in Aomori)—behind all of the processions they have water trucks. So if somebody does get dehydrated or fall down or just the heat's too much for them, they have somebody here to help. And they also keep all the participants hydrated with these little water trolleys. And this has historically always been like this where in these hot days during the procession, they will follow with a water truck. So let me take you into the action before we end the live stream. Apparently this is a shishimai. So thank you for one of the viewers telling us a little bit more about this history. It's hard to find in English. The smaller festivals are all in Japanese. So if you're looking for English information on this, it's going to be harder to find. I also bumped into two viewers of the show when the phone was cooling off and that was pretty interesting. They said that they found in this area is also a very famous melon pan shop. Oi, oi, oi, oi, oi. Alright, here we go. We got some water spraying on people. I guess you don't want to spray it onto the shishimai.

00:20:01 John Daub: Alright, I'm taking you into the front. That's a shishimai or kind of a lion. These heads are really heavy. It does take this many people to carry them. But to carry them for an extended period of time, it's not easy to do. You can see people are taking a right turn here going back towards Tsukishima Station. That's where this festival is taking place. The closest station is Tsukishima—Moon Island if you translate it. There you go. Looking back at the street now. I say make the turn towards the station. The kids got the best seat in the house. Do you see that? Alright, so that's about it. I'm going to go back home now and work on the videos.

00:21:41 John Daub: So just a little bit of updates on the channel while I close this livestream out. My friends at What's Inside, which is a YouTube channel that cuts things up, they were here just a few days ago. They spent one day in Tokyo and during that one day, we cut open a square watermelon and it's pretty funny. I like doing collaborations with my friends. Not so much with YouTubers but my friends and they're my friends and that was a lot of fun. Check that out on the What's Inside channel. Their stuff always goes really big because they've been doing YouTube for a while and their concept is so interesting. They show what's inside stuff. So check that out. I'll put a link up here and I think you can just search What's Inside. It'll come up on top because it's the last episode that they just put up. And I have two new episodes coming this week. I'm going to be doing a little bit of a video again in the next week. So it's going to be bing bing. I want to thank everybody who's been waiting patiently for the new episodes to come out. Hey Matt, thanks for the super chat. I'll say hi to Peter and Barney his cat. I might see Peter later on this week so it'll be nice to say hi.

00:23:12 John Daub: It's the police that are blowing the whistle. That's interesting. So they still got to get the traffic to go through and he salutes the driver after finishing. It's very interesting. And you can see the traffic. You can see they've got the water out to spray, keep people cool. Oh, this is a nice shaded place. Look at the sweat. This is what's happened in the last 20 minutes. Just your body starts to cool you down because of the heat here. It's super hot. I'm going to stay here in the shade in the live stream, but I'm going to do another live stream today. I think if I could find something of interest either at one of the fireworks festivals or something that kind of brings you closer. I know a lot of people that are watching this live stream might not have the ability to come to Tokyo and every time I do these, I think it's a way to bring everybody with me. So it's nice to share what's going on here in the city in a really hot summer day as kids spray the street down, which they're having fun with that. I, gosh, if I was a kid, I'd be spraying everybody until I got in big trouble. I wonder how many of those kids got in big trouble. Probably none of them. There's a lot of them. They look like good kids.

00:24:55 John Daub: So let's say goodbye to the shishimai and this festival here in Tsukuda. This festival continues tomorrow and the day after tomorrow on Monday where the big celebration takes place. This one happens once every three years for the big festival. And I'm kind of looking forward to that. I'll see if I can come back either tomorrow or the day after tomorrow to kind of follow up on this to see how it's bigger. Hey, those kids try to spray water on me. They see me holding the camera and they try to spray water on me. Oh, now that I'm focused on them, they're not doing it. You think you guys can hit me, huh? Let's—should I antagonize them? I should antagonize them. I'm making faces. I saw me. So did grandma up there. She saw me too. All right, the kids, their mom's there. They can't be bad. It's hard to be bad with the mom there. I heard in Japanese families, the fathers are usually kind of scary because they're not home often. They're working and the moms are pretty. Oh, that father's not scary at all. He's taking part. Oh, he totally dunked her. He totally dunked her. Look at the girls just drenched. Oh man, that's part of the festivals. That's awesome.

00:26:32 John Daub: All right. Thanks everybody. I'm going to cut out right here. The phone looks like it's going to get hot again too. So yeah, today I'm going to try to do two live streams and I'll take you somewhere else with me. Uh, somewhere in the city. That's not my home. It's not as hot as here—if that's even possible. Uh, literally it feels like it's over 50 degrees Celsius. So uh, stay cool wherever you are, everybody. If you're watching this at night, check again in the morning, there might be another live stream for you either to watch or enjoy. I swear he's trying to hit me. It's the water's getting closer and closer. If he hit me, I would not complain. I'm not a victim. I would love it. All right, everybody. See you next time. Don't forget to say goodbye. The last 20 seconds to a procession on its way out back towards Tsukishima station and then back to the shrine as it makes a circuit around the neighborhood. Tokyo's neighborhoods really come alive in August and it's a great time to be here. Definitely catch one. If not this one. Bye everybody.