00:19 John Daub: I just saw this and said let's just go live and bring you some shows. Show you this amazing... Oh check it out! What is that? Nebuta? Oh, so this is like the Nebuta festival. This is a recreation of the Nebuta festival here in Tokyo. It's happening right now in Asakusa. So I thought we would just push the button and go live. This is pretty cool.

00:50 John Daub: It's a smaller version of what the Nebuta festival is but once again we're in Asakusa in central Tokyo and this is taking place here. Check it out. It just started to rain too and it's starting to... Arigato gozaimasu. Wow look at the detail on this Nebuta. These are smaller and I believe these are like Hirosaki-type Nebuta. A little bit smaller. Whoa look at the detail on this. How bright it is. Just gonna follow it for a little bit. We're getting closer look at it. Check out the picture of the geisha on the back. It's really beautiful.

02:12 John Daub: A completely unplanned festival here in Asakusa. I didn't know that this existed. The street looks like... What festival is this? The Hirosaki Nebuta which is very similar to the Aomori Nebuta. This is taking place here in Tokyo of all places. So if you're in Shinjuku maybe you can make it here in time. I don't know. This is pretty cool. Wow look at the patterns on this one. Really beautiful. Oh those taiko drums!

02:52 John Daub: Flip for a little bit right? I guess this is where the end is. Oh they're going down the shotengai (covered shopping arcade). Alright let's run. Let's run. Some people running this way. Alright let's do it. Follow them. Follow these guys. They look like they know where they're going. You never know on the Only in Japan Go channel things just sort of happen. These are completely unplanned. Alright follow them. They know exactly. Oh how cool is that?

03:57 John Daub: Kanai. What do we do? This way? This way? Oh that's awesome. Just kind of like coming between the alley here. Alright let's keep going. Let's keep going. We're gonna catch the Nebuta float. We're running between the alleys here in Asakusa. Alright do it. Do it. We got in front again. Did we? Oh no they beat us. This is still pretty cool. Alright check it out. It's coming down the shotengai.

04:53 John Daub: This is awesome. Look at it. Just like clearing the route. Check it out. There's a dude on the top of it. Oh my god there's a dude on the top of it. What's he doing on the top? Awesome. You hear the taiko drums echoing inside this shotengai. It's awesome. That was pretty cool. This is a small piece of Hirosaki which is from Aomori in the north part of Japan in Tohoku.

06:23 John Daub: It's just a short one. Hold on. Let's see this. Alright oh oh they got it in English. Okay what is Hirosaki Nebuta. The Nebuta festival is a huge parade of gigantic samurai lantern floats. Nebuta floats in Hirosaki are fan-shaped floats with paintings of Chinese and Japanese historic figures, brave warriors on the front side and beautiful lady on the, I did say the geisha, the beautiful geisha lady. More than 80 of the floats are lit up at night and paraded through the streets with music of flutes and drums chanting of yayado! Yayado!

07:10 John Daub: Hirosaki is up there and we're down here so this is kind of special that they came down here. Sometimes a lot of these festivals will come down to Tokyo to try to spread their influence and try to spread their feelings. A lot of people don't know about it or they do but they've never heard it or experienced it. This is the Asakusa area. I guess we should just go show them. Just quickly, this is Sensoji, right? Yeah, this is Sensoji. Alright, let's go show them Sensoji.

07:41 John Daub: So we're gonna make this a little special treat for those of you who caught this live because there's absolutely zero notification. Just literally, we went to go visit Mr. Seiichi, Kanai's grandfather, my Japanese neighbor, as you know from the show. Wow, it came back! No, run it! Run, run, run! What? I didn't know, it's coming this way again! What total, total, total coincidence! I had no idea, here it comes again. This is awesome! We get like three times, this is the front of it. Yayado, right? Yayato. Yayado! That says Hirosaki on the sign. Hirosaki Nebuta. Awesome! So cool.

08:27 John Daub: This is the best position though. Yeah, this is the best position. Oh, check out those signs! I think I should go wide lens, what do you think? I'm going wide lens. Alright, I went wide lens on this baby. Supposed to have pretty ladies on the back. Pretty ladies on the back. Yes! Pretty lady on the back! Nice! There's more coming where that came from. Here's Hirosaki Castle. That's Hirosaki Castle. And we were there in a livestream way back, like a year and a half ago I was there. We hit, we livestreamed through there. This is so cool.

09:46 John Daub: Oh, this is even cooler, check it out. Coming through the gates here at Sensoji is a Nebuta. Hey, there's that dude again, he waved at me. Let's see if he can remember me on the other side. You can see they're made of paper just like the Aomori Nebuta. Aomori Nebuta. Yay! Let's walk with them. Let's walk with them a little ways. Meeting here in Tokyo. Jiggle wires for them, that's so cool. Wires so they don't hit them. Let's walk, let's walk along.

12:03 John Daub: Thanks, we'll go get something special here in Asakusa with that. Thank you so much. For those of you joining in, this is the Hirosaki Nebuta which is taking place here in Tokyo. Hirosaki is up in Aomori Prefecture in the very north of Honshu Island. Special treat to have this taking place. You can see them holding up the electrical wires. Part of the procession. Like walking along here. This is pretty cool.

13:27 John Daub: It's not a very big, and you can see here there's a restaurant. I'm wiping off the lens for you so you get a clear view of it. Look at that, pachinko and slot machine. Looks like Disneyland. Alright, let's look back here now. Oh, there's Kanai. I found Kanai was just two steps behind. Here they come through here. That's pretty cool with them taking the electrical wires up like that for this. I don't know much about the Hirosaki Nebuta Festival.

15:57 John Daub: But I've been to the Aomori Nebuta Festival about four times. And I like the fact in that festival they have the name of the festival. And they, the dancers. I don't know, I could probably dance to this. Can you dance to this? You can dance to anything. She can dance to anything. Alright, this is the butt end of it. It's kind of cool. I did not expect that to run back into this festival. But the streets of Asakusa are so narrow. So small and they don't go in any logical pattern. Sometimes they'll just like curve around. So we've been accidentally following this for a while.

16:44 John Daub: You can see it, you can hear the music fading. The parade goes on, it'll leave us behind. Once again, as advertised there's a beautiful girl in the back. She's kind of losing her. There it is, okay. The rain's starting to come down now. We're gonna make this livestream short. We're walking through Asakusa right now. We're just trying to give you as steady video as possible here. Despite the rain there seems to be people who just are still clinging to the fact that, you know, we did have a nice day up until about now. But the rain, you can see the ground is wet. You can see that the tourists are wearing their kimonos. None of these people are locals. They're all tourists. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But it's pretty fun too. It's pretty fun to follow a parade.

17:56 John Daub: It's a Sunday here in Tokyo. So it might be Sunday morning if you're watching this in New York. Really early Sunday morning. Or Saturday night for those of you who are watching this. That's the way it is on the West Coast. I think, eh, it was round. Round. Round? There's the 360. We did like a complete circle, I think. It's going back for more! It's taking a left! What? This is crazy. Crazy. Alright. This livestream has just been extended. Thank you very much.

18:48 John Daub: Urzee, I do appreciate this. Kanai likes this shop by the way, just pointing it out. Risubon. There's a big pig on there. Wonder why. So Urzee writes in, thanks John. This brings back many good memories from my trip. Hope to return next year. Hope you do too. It's getting really exciting around here. Oh yeah, it's getting really exciting in Tokyo. Now it's starting to go through the new Nakamise Dori. It says here Shin Nakamise Dori, which means new. The new shotengai. We're kind of following down here just a little bit because this is actually on the way home. So might as well. I hope they don't follow us all the way to the subway station.

19:40 John Daub: Let's see if I can get you in a little bit. There's some shop owners enjoying the sight. Audio is just so beautiful. Just so nice. Let me see if I can get you in a better position. Boy the acoustics inside this shotengai, this covered shopping arcade is awesome. Walk through here. Yeah baby. She's looking right at us. That's awesome. That kid's got the best seat in the house. Hey, thanks BS Fatboy. Alright, we're trying to get through here. You can see we're walking right past it. Let him go by. That was a big one.

23:09 John Daub: Following the castle now. We're almost out of the woods. It's really beautiful, isn't it? This is Hirosaki Castle for those of us who are joining us right now. Hirosaki is up in Aomori, the north of Honshu Island. It's a very beautiful castle. We did a live stream in this area last year. It's very beautiful. And now the festival takes a turn to the left and we'll be saying goodbye. We're saying goodbye to the Nebuta Festival. Thanks for joining us everybody. This will be the last we see of them. They're going down Orange Road.

24:44 John Daub: I'm going to pan around this corner here and you can take a look at this very small sample of the Hirosaki Nebuta making its way through Asakusa. Oh, that's awesome. Looks like a little R2D2 in the front with the Hirosaki Castle and wheels. We're in central Tokyo in Asakusa. That's what they were screaming. Alright, I'm going to say goodbye now. Thanks everybody for watching. Think about live streams. Get editing involved. We were right there. So thanks for joining us here at Asakusa. We're going to go get someplace dry because it's been raining now for the last 30, 35 minutes. See you guys everybody. Bye from Asakusa. Bye bye. Bye bye.