00:00:04 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Kiyosumi Teien (Kiyosumi Garden). This is an old garden in the center of Tokyo, kind of outside of the central area. And I'm here with Joey, who just said hello to me. He's from the Netherlands. So Joey, you just went into this garden. What did you think about it?

00:00:25 Joey: I found it very beautiful. It was very cool. All the trees and the big lake inside. It was very nice to see.

00:00:35 John Daub: Alright, I'm looking forward to this. I heard there's also a Japanese tea house in there. Which is really nice to see. So how long are you visiting Japan for?

00:00:45 Joey: To the end of June.

00:00:46 John Daub: Wow, okay. It's a long one. Yeah. I stay for a week here in Tokyo to December 17th. Have you seen anything interesting? Anything interesting during your trip?

00:00:59 Joey: Yeah, lots of things.

00:01:01 John Daub: I bet, yeah. I was to the robot cafe. Okay. Yesterday. In Shinjuku. Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy time. That's a crazy time. This is a complete opposite experience. This is a garden. So we're going to go inside and take a look. Thank you, Joey. It was great to meet you.

00:01:18 Joey: Thank you very much.

00:01:20 John Daub: You're welcome. And I'm a big fan. Oh, thank you. Keep in touch on the YouTube channel. Bye. Bye, Joey. That was awesome. I was just setting up the live stream and there he was. And he said, are you Only in Japan? I said, yeah. You want to be in the show a little bit? He said, okay.

00:01:37 John Daub: All right, let's go in here. The admission to this is 150 yen, which is a steal, a bargain. And right now I've come here to take a break because I've been editing all like the last couple of days. So I need to get outside. And this is the perfect place to come. Kiyosumi Teien is in Tokyo. It's not really an ancient garden by any means. I guess it was reconstructed by, I think it was Yataro Iwasaki, who is the founder of Mitsubishi in 1878. And I believe it was finished in 1880.

00:02:12 John Daub: And this is the layout of the garden. There is a big pond in the center of it. Lots of little islands. It's a strolling garden. Lots of stepping stones, which we're going to have a lot of fun on today. And over here, I think this is where the tea house is right here. And we're here at the entrance. So we're going to get a really good panoramic view right from the beginning, I believe. Next to it above here is Kiyosumi Park, which is a really nice place. If you have kids and you want them to run around, you probably don't want them running around in Kiyosumi Teien. It's kind of a tranquil place.

00:02:42 John Daub: Here's a little bit about the history. Kiyosumi Teien in the Edo era, the mansion of Kuzei Yamato no Kami, one of the feudal lords, was built here and later Yataro Iwasaki, who I told you about, he was the founder of the Mitsubishi Group, was pleased with the charming scenery, purchased the property. The Iwasaki family renovated the garden, digging a pond and filling it with water. Unfortunately, the greater part of the view was reduced to ashes during the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, which we've talked about in this show before. This was also a refuge during the earthquake. A lot of people had come here to get away from the fires. Some of the horrific stuff. The entire city of Tokyo was just flattened in the 1923 earthquake. And then it was reconstructed in 1932 again. And that's sort of what you see here today.

00:03:36 John Daub: The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has designated this as a place of beauty. It has to have a government designation in order to be official. And for only 150 yen or like a dollar, less than a dollar fifty, you can come in here and stroll. So let's do that right now. Let's get a ticket. Thank you. Thank you. It's a beautiful ticket. Let's go in and take a look at the Kiyosumi Teien.

00:04:30 John Daub: Already from the beginning, it's such a beautiful contrast to the city of Tokyo. Like the actual city city. It's the little teeny details of Japanese gardens that really impact me. I really love the sounds, the birds, the chirping, the wind rustling through the leaves of the gardens. The water. The dripping of the water and the running of the streams into the pond. Little things like this. You have to kind of close. Now these stepping stones, we're going to see them a lot more. They were important. The signals going in and out here. Let's try to get into some open area. Follow the stepping stones around. Sorry, folks. The wife. I was auto connecting. Sometimes it happens. We should have a really clean signal from now on.

00:05:46 John Daub: This park is also famous for the turtles and the koi. This one is looking for something. Sorry, buddy. I only got a brochure. Guess there's little teeny bugs on the surface of the water. And this koi is getting a mouthful of lunch from each. Wow. Oh, here comes a turtle. Hey, Turtle. Hey, Turtle. Hey, Turtle. Look, you stopped. How you doing? Say hello to the world. You're on live. Hey, where are you going? We went deep. Come back. Hang out for a little bit. All right. Okay, we'll be back. We got to keep moving. We'll be back. Turtle, you bring your friend. Hey, that's your mother. Wow. You look like an adult. This one is the biggest of them all.

00:06:57 John Daub: Some of these turtles, I think, live for a century. Were you here during the Great Kanto Earthquake? I wonder makes you wonder, you know, all the history these turtles have seen. If only they could speak to us, they talk about the delicious bugs that they've eaten over the last couple of centuries. I had this really delicious water bug in 1967. Really huge. All right. Now the park has opened up and this is where you start to see some of that feeling. You get chills sometimes from looking when you've been in the city too long. You come to a place like this, this little sanctuary in the center of the city. And it's just so peaceful and relaxing here. You can see the tea house.

00:07:51 John Daub: Now coming into the center of your screen down here is one of the symbols of Japan. This bird and he's in the thumbnail as well. Do you see him? He looks like a velociraptor. It's got one of these hawks on him. Leopold, you can't eat these. They're protected by the park like that mohawk, though. It's pretty cool. Hope he doesn't come at you. What kind of animal do you think this is? These are little teeny birds. But he's chilling out and I bet you he's on the move. Nature's on the move. All right. Towards us. This could be a heron. He's eyeing us. Do something interesting. Do it. Flap your wings. Come on. Do it. I know you want to flap your wings. Show us. Impress us with your wingspan. Come on. We'll be back. We have an entire garden to explore.

00:09:17 John Daub: For those of you joining us, we are at Kiyosumi Teien, which is one of the Oh, there comes his buddy. Oh, how did you know you were going to be on TV? Welcome. Did you see that? Nature. Wow. And then he's gone. That was awesome. Really special. Fun moving. Good job. Oh, look at this carp. That koi is huge. How are you doing? I think he can see me. As soon as I walked up to the edge of the path, he started coming towards me. He's behind the rock. This is how Jaws moves. Show yourself. There he is. Oh, man. Beautiful. Very graceful moving. That's how Kanae moves. Very graceful like this. It's very nice.

00:10:51 John Daub: This park is famous for the stepping stones, which you'll find all over the garden and you also find carp koi, Japanese carp. And you also find a lot of turtles. This park is famous for its turtles. You cannot eat them. I see the Internet live stream going by here. Do not even insinuate it. The park ranger is probably reading this as we speak. Behave yourselves. Don't know who's watching. It's also famous for these stone lanterns, which are it's a charming thing to see. It's one of these things you'll see all over East Asia. But Japan has its own style. And at night, if you're lucky, especially at really expensive hotels, they'll light these up for you. And it gives you more of a feeling that you're in Asia, in East Asia. Let's get a move on. All right. More koi. A big mouth. Oh, we just took one down. He ate whatever was on the surface. It's hard to know what he just ate. I don't know if they even know what they just ate. I don't have anything for you, buddy.

00:12:15 John Daub: Somebody said if you spit in it, they will eat that and that's kind of nasty. So don't do that. Somebody said that. I think it was Jennifer, actually. NHK. The live shoot that we did. I probably might have actually done it. Don't tell anyone. I might have actually done it. Here are some of the stepping stones. See, look at that lady. Take this obstacle course down. She is the next ninja warrior. Look at this. It's very well done. It really is like an obstacle course. And you could fall in. I bet you little kids have fallen in before. Shall we try to take this down? No, I'm not going to feed you. That was. Not what I was just talking about. Anyways, not. It is nice to see that the pond is alive and you can see the movement of the koi here as well as the turtles. You'll see them. They just sneak up on you. These turtles.

00:13:28 John Daub: Everyone says that turtles are slow, could be on land, but in the water they move pretty quickly, they could if they put effort into it. All right, let's do this. Do this the stepping stones so you can tell the colors of the rocks are different. So that means they've all come from different areas of Japan. So it makes me wonder if Iwasaki-san got a pickup truck a hundred years ago and he drove it himself all the way here from Yamaguchi Prefecture, from Kyushu, from Hokkaido. All these rocks are from all over the country. Yeah, this is a kind of garden parkour. Look at the green color of this rock. Hey, Mike. Mike Ivy, thank you very much. Appreciate that. We'll put it to good use as I look for a vending machine.

00:14:54 John Daub: Back here you can see the garden behind me. On this side, though, they do have like exhibitions. I believe this is a place where you can take a look at some of the art, see some things, cultural things, or you can just go inside and chillax like that. Dude on the right side is taking it easy on a day like this. Beautiful day. Some of the rules of the park. Keep off the grass. I know you want to lay in it. Only wildlife could do that. We're not considered wildlife. We're customers. We had to pay to get in here. Beautiful bonsai looking deciduous tree. I could be completely wrong. Just naming names of trees. Sounds like a coniferous tree. Coniferous. Should have paid attention in school. Kids, pay attention in school.

00:16:00 John Daub: In case you work up a thirst walking around. Thank you, Queen of Tacos. I'm a hydrangea. I actually showed a hydrangea sushi from the micro sushi shop at the end of that video on the main channel a couple of weeks ago. You can see something in the middle of the pond. There's a turtle that's making his way in a circle. It's nice. And it's ah, there's a bug on me. Ah, we're safe. Where'd that bug come from? In the center is an island. And you can see on there some of those herons, those birds. They relax over there. They get away from the people. This would be perfect if you had a little canoe. I could go island hopping, but there's no such luck. Only the gardeners, I think, can make their way to the center there to groom the little islands. I love that little tea house. Let's make our way to the other side.

00:17:13 John Daub: There's two places of interest that I see that we're going to go to next. On the left side, there's a hill with some trees jutting out of the top of it. And then on the right side of your screen is a tea house. So let's make our way over there and see what we can see. Before the ants eat us, pick up the pace a little bit. Nice, nice path. So you don't have to go all the way to Kyoto to see culture people. That's what I want. I want to get this through to you. Rent a bicycle for the day and get away from Shibuya and Shinjuku and Harajuku and all these areas that you think is what Tokyo is. And come to the places where real Tokyo exists. I mean, it's modern Tokyo. This is more a different side of the city.

00:18:19 John Daub: I think that is important for you to realize that, you know, most of this, most of the people living here avoid those places. They go there because they have to go there for work. I think I had one episode last year called Why I Avoid Harajuku's Takeshita Street. It's true. I try hard to avoid Shibuya. Shibuya is Hachiko Scramble. Takeshita Street and certain places at certain times. It's just, you know, you don't want to go into traffic. Even the restrooms here are really pretty. This is the benjo (toilet). Otterai. Oh, there's a turtle sunning himself. Do you see the turtle? Kids, do you see the turtle? Turtles love the sun just hanging out. So we're walking around now. This is once again, Kiyosumi Teien. You can see lots of turtles. There's wildlife teeming all over this park. Turtle just dove down. He'll be back. He needs air. Some people painting the scenes. That's really pretty. Konnichiwa.

00:20:06 John Daub: Let's see why the people have chosen this spot to paint. I think it's they've picked a perfect spot. This is what they're painting. And left and right, you can see just the amazing green with the buildings just peeking over at some of them. So the tea house is the focus of a lot of the people's paintings. The watercolors that they're doing. And I think a lot of people, when they retire and they live in the area, they'll come out in groups like this and just paint together. And then at the end of it, they probably all go out and get some hardcore alcohol, tequila shots together. Let's just hang out here for a second. Kind of just keep it quiet and take in the nature and see what they see. So they've got the paints down there on the ground. I can see in the center on one of the islands. Do you see it? There's a turtle. Turtle enjoying his time with a friend. Buddy, buddy on a rock. Let's go over there. Oh, it was like a picnic table over there. Do you see that?

00:23:13 John Daub: Another one of the rules of many of Tokyo's parks is that they don't allow alcohol in there, and that's not a bad idea because I guess they don't want you just sitting here and drinking booze. I don't know. I guess nothing good can come of that if you let the people come here and booze, hang out with the ladies for the tequila shots later. Got to leave the park. You can't bring your tequila bottle in here. Look at that. Do you see the bridge has vegetation on the left and right of it? I love that. Looks like it was made out of sticks and then they've put some soil or earth on it and then on the left and the right of it where people don't walk. It's starting to grow over. That's a really beautiful little touch to this. And again, it's the little details, not just the panorama of it is beautiful, but it's the little details that you'll find when you walk around the park that just strike you a weed grows here. So let's go across this bridge. Yeah, it is made of earth and earth bridge.

00:25:11 John Daub: Oh, there's the mountain that we saw about five, ten minutes ago from the other side. We'll go over there next. And then we'll make our way eventually to the tea house over yonder, over yonder. Window breaks. We will go over there. Guys, I don't want to disturb your afternoon nap. I hope you're doing well. You know, I really love you duck people. I told them that this looks like a very relaxing place and I would join you if I was allowed on the grass, but people aren't allowed on the grass. That's what I told them. I asked them what he's doing later. It could be a different dialect. They do look very relaxed in the grass. Wish I was a duck. I guess they're females. I don't know. I'm not a duckologist. Queen of Tacos has found the emoji for ducks. Very cool. Oh, hey, look at that little guy. Look at him. How do turtles talk? What sounds do they make? No, I don't. That doesn't seem right. I can't. No, that's how some of the older people will talk like that. Turtles don't make sounds. Maybe they communicate through body language.

00:27:15 John Daub: I guess the turtle sounds are bizarre, according to Sudaro. So, I believe you. I can't imagine. I've never heard it. They only make sounds in extraordinary circumstances. OK, there's the rock buddies. I like that, you know, just hanging out with your bros on the rock. And he's looking. Do you see him? He's looking over at the people across and he's wondering, do they have anything to give me? I wonder that's like Heron Island because there's a ton of them over there. OK, let's go over there. Let's join them. Oh, I didn't even see the monster. Did you see that from the deep? Do you guys seeing this? You are a big mama. And I mean that in the nice way he sees us. He sees you guys through the camera. He's looking at you across the worlds. Look at a little mouth. Sea turtles deserve a lot of respect because they come from the era of the dinosaurs. I think turtles have shells. They look like little stegosaurus. It's very cool.

00:29:13 John Daub: They look like one of those kingfishers from India. Yeah, I really love this park. It's a tranquil place where people live at peace. The turtles population, the families live in peace and harmony with the koi. I wonder what they do at night. The nightlife here probably isn't as exciting as the rest of the city. But the day life is pretty good. All right. We're going over here to this Mount Fuji looking mountain in the middle of Kiyosumi Teien. That lady has beaten us to it. The skirt lady can see you on the right side of the screen. We were ahead of her, but now we're behind to catch up. Turtle community. All right. For those adventurous people. You could hang a Louie and go as far as that pole, which will keep out drifters. So we're going to go this way because we don't want to meet the pole.

00:30:58 John Daub: Hey, Lali, I got the Johnson. I've been living in China many years and visited Japan two times. Also, I fell in love with Japan. Beautiful. One of the friendliest people. They are very, very much so. And can I and I will be in Beijing? I don't know if you're in Beijing, but we'll be in Beijing in August 9th to 12th. I'm helping out my friends for the Asia Spelling Cup again to be really nice. I'm looking forward to that. They're flying me and Kanae down there. Kanae has never been to China. So looking forward to showing her a different side of East Asia. Look at that. There's tons of them there. This is the island I was talking about. I want to build a little bunker underneath here and edit my videos under the island. I bet you there's treasure, some secrets buried on that island. Founder of Mitsubishi, Iwasaki, probably buried company treasure on that island. If I was him, I would do the same. There's no bridge or there's no way to get there. You can only get there by swimming or boat. And if you swim, the ranger is going to come and get you. So probably boat. Even then you have to do it by stealth, probably at night. Good parachute in here. You have to be really good. Hit the mark. You end up in the lake. Very peaceful.

00:32:31 John Daub: Final target of the day is over there. That is the tea house. And it looks like we can't actually go in, but it would be nice just to see if we can get a little shot inside of it. A lot of the traditional Japanese gardens do have tea houses in them. And the purpose of it, yes, is to drink tea. A lot of them are functioning like in Hama-rikyu Gardens, which is near Hamamatsucho Station on the JR Yamanote line. But another important thing of the tea houses, which you saw with the artists that were creating watercolor paintings, it's sort of just add on to the landscape of the garden. And sometimes you'll have more than one tea house because the gardens are so big. Each one of them has its own unique characteristic. And it just kind of moves with the land the way that the gardens are all laid out. They put a lot of thought into it.

00:33:30 John Daub: This turtle could jump in at any moment. Let's see if we can get a splash. Belly flop. I think turtles can only belly flop. They can either glide in smoothly or belly flop. Hey, bro, what are you going to do? What are you going to do when they come for you? He's got like fungus on his shell. I need some of that fungicide. Is that good fungus? Is there good fungus? I mean, bad fungus. I don't know. I got a lot of fungal questions. So something like Lotrimin could help with. Rub it on the shell in the back there. It's algae, Jin says. Could be. Hey, Sudaru, protection from crane attack. Once I was attacked by one of those in Shillong, they are raptors. OK, I'm going to stay away from the cranes. Thanks for that. How are you doing? How old are you? You got a little green streak on your head. It's pretty cool. Handsome guy for turtles. Are you a woman? How can I tell? Is that a male or a female? Akamigame. Looks like the introduced species akamigame. Thank you, Ken. So that kame means turtle. So game would also mean turtle here. Migame. Thank you for that.

00:35:20 John Daub: Turtles like live me be human. I'm on a lunch break. I'm reading some of the comments here, but he's a pretty looking turtle. Thank you for spending some time with us. I think he just did a duty. Let's get out of here. That's why he's not moving. It's one of his other bros. He's going to make a landing. Permission to come aboard, sir. Permission denied. Look at that. He's going to go find his bro on the other side. Maybe you think they're going to have a battle. Are turtles territorial? We're going to see very quickly because these two are going to meet. When a turtle fight would be pretty slow. This could take a while. This time on Turtle Nation, two turtles battle it out to the death. Slowly extended edition. I don't think I think they're friends. Is he going to snap? All right. He's coming in for the stealth attack. Look, he's got a stealth attack. Do it. Turtles can't, you know, turtles to Toby move. Give us hope.

00:37:17 John Daub: Just some more rules. Please do not climb the hills. There are some kids I've seen, kids who read neither Japanese nor English, but climb the hills. And then the park ranger would come out and the park ranger can't climb the hills. So he would just wait patiently at one side or the other. All right. We're now making our way to our final destination in the park, which is the tea house over there. But what we are discovering before we go back towards the pond is that on the left side here, we have a Basho monument and Basho was a poet. And boy, did he know it because he wrote volumes of work, usually thousands of pages if translated into English. So there's more to this park. And I bet you in the morning, tons of people are here over the age of sixty five. Beautiful, beautiful flowers here in this little teeny lagoon. Love the colors. Just a little accent of something other than green and brown really makes it stick out. Look at those two on a date.

00:39:32 John Daub: All right, let's get over to that tea house in the city of Tokyo. There aren't too many gardens that have ponds like this. How many Q has one? And I believe near Tokyo Dome, there's a park that's I might have featured before that has a long history to it. Tokyo Dome is pretty much the center. That's Heron Island again. Yeah, thank you, Ken. I didn't go to the Basho monument over there, but there is a famous expression written about the jumping turtles and the ponds and the stepping stones. But this park is not too, too old, meaning it's not ancient, but it does go back to the Meiji era. And again, it was Iwasaki, the founder of Mitsubishi, the company that we all know. Mitsubishi, a huge Japanese corporation. The founder of that is who bought the land and made this park. And that really makes me happy because, you know, I'm sure he would be the equivalent to a billionaire by standards and instead of having statues of him built, I'm not sure if there are exists. He built a park for everybody to enjoy. And I love that.

00:41:16 John Daub: If I ever become a billionaire, I will build parks and little green places inside of urban areas. Buy up the property. I'm not going to build a skyscraper and try to make money. I'm going to build a park and add some nature to the center of the city. I think that's the biggest testament to what you do with your wealth, help people and build parks. And you can see if you are in the Skytree today, we are looking up at you. That's the Tokyo Skytree, which is not too, too far away. You can get here on the Hanzomon Line, which is the purple metro line in the city of Tokyo. This is Kiyosumi-Shirakawa Station. This is the tea house. So it's about a three minute walk from Kiyosumi-Shirakawa Station. You could take the Oedo Line, which is kind of a purplish red color. It's the other circle line that goes around the city of Tokyo. Second, the Hanzomon Line, which is purple. Or you could take the Oedo Line, which is kind of a red color. But that one is very famous because it goes around the city of Tokyo. Both of those will stop here in Kiyosumi-Shirakawa, which is one of the most peaceful places.

00:42:38 John Daub: And this area, this town is famous for a lot more than this park. It's famous for having a ton of coffee shops. This is not this park, but this town is where Japan's coffee house culture really blossomed of independent coffee makers. We have a lot of chain coffee shops all around Tokyo now. But it was in this area, this town, Kiyosumi, that little teeny coffee houses started to blossom all around the town, and it doesn't even seem to fit. But those coffee houses and those cafes make this kind of a hip place to live. And a lot of people, especially international people looking for a place to live. They always look at Kiyosumi area, but not many of them live here because they don't get it. They don't get how cool this town really is because you have to look on the inside of Kiyosumi, and when you do that, start to find loads and loads of little cool cafes and trendy little restaurants. That sets it apart from places like Shinjuku and Shibuya. That's why I kind of live on this side of the city. I live in a really tranquil, residential, quiet place that's within striking distance of Tokyo Station and Nihonbashi. But it's also a place that you could call home. And it's really comfortable area, I think.

00:44:03 John Daub: Mr. Das, I will get a tea. And Zato71, thank you very much. I appreciate that. I'm going to look for the tea. There's a tea house, but it's closed. The door was not open. What is open is the restroom. And I could take you in there, but I think it's just kind of weird. You can see that they do have really nice, clean toilets. The door is open just enough. But I know, Mr. Das, it's kind of stinks that it's not open. But I will try to do some more gardens because in the spring, in the summer, this time of year before, especially when it's not raining, this is the time of year that you want to go and relax in a Japanese garden like this. And I try to come here to take breaks from editing or take breaks from working. If you're having a long day and you look outside your window and the sun is shining or just rained and then finished and you want to go outside, I come to places like this, I'll ride my bike ten, fifteen minutes and just enjoy the sounds and the smells. If you close your eyes, you can hear the rustling of the leaves. And it's those little things that can be like therapy for people that are sitting in front of a monitor and working too hard. You have to find a way to balance all of that. And that's maybe one of the purposes of places like this. It's a place where you could just take a step away from everything and just walk around, absorb in nature. For a moment, sit and have a tea over there, which is closed and then recharge and come back stronger.

00:45:59 John Daub: That's why I think when you do have a city, you need to have a lot of parks in there just for the citizens to be able to break away. Japan, Tokyo, one of the places that people would. And this is also one of the hot spots because you could see people are painting. Hello, this is a good place. It's cool. Isn't it? Here's what they're painting here. I'm from United States, but I live near here in Tokyo for 13 years in Tokyo. 13. Yeah, 13 years. Well, let's talk a little Japanese. Are you a teacher? Are you teaching? No? It's so beautiful. Very nice. Very nice. So she was the teacher. You can go down here, too. So here's some more stepping stones that you can go down towards the water towards the pond. Yeah, that was nice. She could speak some English. That was pretty cool. People are more relaxed here in the park. Good vibes. You can just kind of relax a little bit. And I think when you're inside of the city of Tokyo, which is such a busy, bustling place coming to here and when you do meet people, locals, they're a little bit friendlier because it's so nice. It's just really a pleasant place.

00:48:31 John Daub: I'm going to walk you to the exit now. Hey, Sean Tron. Hi, John. Quick shout out to Tiffany, please. Hey, Tiffany. Welcome to Japan. Hope you're enjoying the trip. We have some more stepping stones. Hey, Mike, my super chat message didn't show earlier. I left John a Patreon direct message with it. Got it. I like that each rock is different. It's from a different area. Oh, this is one of the original bridges where we started. And you can see the koi are back. Hello, sir. How do you do? Thank you for welcoming me and thank you for coming again to say goodbye as you leave your park, your garden, sir. And you too, Turtle-san, Kame-san. Thank you very much for welcoming us. You do live in a beautiful area and we all of us, all 456 of us, be back here again to say hello to you, sir. And good luck with that algae problem. Yeah, let's always be polite to the local population. Never know when you can come back. Probably be a little bit bigger next time I come back. You see him? He was looking up at us. He was looking up at us and welcoming us and saying goodbye. I like that. And this is the entrance. This is the bridge where you come across to start. And it's nice to have him welcome and say goodbye.

00:51:00 John Daub: All right. I'm going to take you now to a vending machine. And that's I will take some questions once again. For those of you who haven't signed up for our Discord server, you can do that. We have about 2000 people now in our Discord server. We're closing in on that number and it's a really vibrant community. We usually have about 200 people online all the time. I like that. The balanced circles. I like that each drop of water make. All right. There's a beautiful vending machine just outside of the gate here. If you do come by bicycle, there is a nice parking lot here. You can park your bike almost always available. Tons of parking. There's my beautiful. There's my ride right there. My Bridgestone. Before I get my bike, let's go out here and get a drink. This is where you viewing this can participate and help me. Buy a really delicious. Hey, there's a Denny's. All right. This is a massive vending corner. Check it out. We have a lot. We can get just about anything here. So we're going to see what do you guys vote on what I should get?

00:52:35 John Daub: This here is an Itoen, which has my favorite green tea right there. The Itoen tea is my favorite. I usually get that. There's some canned coffee. This one is an Asahi soft drinks machine. And you have some tea. They have the Wilkinson's brand, which is the carbonated water. Demon Prince. Thank you very much. I don't know if there's any beer vending machines. That actually would be pretty nice to grab one here. This is a Katon drink. This one has the fire coffee. It's the famous brand of coffee from Katon soft drinks. And then they have a lot of sports drinks. Amino Suplis apple juice. They have their Cola called Mets. And it's a charcoal Cola. What a strong carbonated Cola. That might be something in the works. This is a Sapporo drink vending machine. And they have different drinks. I don't see too many of these. One of the things that they do have is this. This is the melon, the melon soda with ice cream drink. That's insane, right? So we might actually go for that because it's just crazy. And then these are some Tori. No, I'm not getting a monster. That's the choice of Gretchen. What do you guys think? Anything strike your fancy? Here's some cider. That looks interesting. Natural mineral water cider. How do they do that? It's interesting. What is this Sting with a scorpion on it? What? I've never seen the new energy drink. I guess it's not from around here. I think it looks it a tie or something. I'm not sure. Mountain Dew Violet. Have you seen this before? Is that outside of Japan? Never seen Mountain Dew Violet before. That's really weird. Oh, this Gokuri has been around for ages and it's so good. I really do like this Gokuri. It has a sweet grapefruit taste to it. And if you've never tried this before, when you come to Japan, Gokuri is probably the most refreshing drink. You can get because I think they do have a really good amount of fruit juice, but it's a refreshing, slightly lightly sweet drink to it.

00:55:43 John Daub: All right. What do you guys think? The adventurous people will be talking about this melon soda with ice cream taste. And then there's that Mountain Dew Violet, which is bizarre. All right, Jed says melon. I like Jed. Melon or Mountain Dew, Danny says. All right, let's do this. We're going to try this melon. I already know that I'm not going to like it. This is going to be gross. That's the things that I do for you guys. This also looks good. This is Nashi and this is a jelly drink, a grape jelly drink. That's what do you guys think about that? Grape jelly. What? That's kind of weird. I just think you better stick with the original message. What trash says no. Do you have your glass with you? No, I'm a wasteful person. We can look at the color from pouring it in a drain. All right. Here we go, everybody. Three, two, one. Melon cream soda. This is the real deal. It's green, like a nuclear green cherry and ice cream in a soda. How could this not be the ideal drink for half of the people who are watching? Maybe I don't know. I'm not going to chug it. There's no way it's going to get chugged. What I will do is I have to find a way to show you the color, but I don't want to be rude and drip it here. I'm not going to open up my mouth and show you what it looks like. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this to the park.

00:57:38 John Daub: So we're going to move away from the vending machine area. This is the entrance to Kiyosumi Park, by the way. So that's what it looks like. If you really want to know more information, you can go on to Google Street View on the Google Maps and you'll be able to see it there. Next to Kiyosumi Teien is this really beautiful. Sorry, Kiyosumi Teien is Kiyosumi Park. They're different. And here you can kind of have more of a urban park feel. There are tons of rental bicycles. This is the one I was telling you about in a live stream a little while ago. These rental bicycles, I believe they're made by Docomo. Yeah, this is here's the information. Koto is the ward. There are only three wards. Each ward is kind of sponsoring these bikes in collaboration with Docomo. And inside here, I believe, is some kind of cell phone signal, which is how they confirm payment and such. But these bicycles are pretty neat and they've got a battery on them. So the battery powered and they can go pretty fast. All right, let's go do this. I have to find kind of a drain. All right. I'm just going to show it to you in the bush here. All right, let's do it. My word. Do you see the color? Do you see? Are you seeing this? This is kind of like a nuclear green color. Just put a little bit here. Just taking a look here at the color. It's hard to see. Galaxy Anon writes, it's beautiful in all capitals. Really? All right. Cheers to everybody. Oh, oh. Oh, you know, when I was a kid, whenever you got ice cream. All right. I think my dad would give us a bowl of ice cream. I would mix it until it went into like slush because I could drink it and absorb the sugars faster, like my body knew if it melted, I could absorb it better into my system and become super hyper. That's what this is. This is melted ice cream in soda pop, all just mushed up in there. And you just drink it. And that sugar just hits your soul like instantly. It's like a boost of sugar and bubbles. Oh, man, I haven't felt like this in decades. Since the last time I drank one of these super sugar drinks. Oh, man. Do I recommend this? I guess so. I mean, we should try it once, right? It hits your soul. That's one way to say hit your soul.

01:01:16 John Daub: This is the clock tower of Kiyosumi Park. It's neat. It's a clock. I guess barbed wire on the top to keep the crows off it. It's the crow problem. All right, folks, that's about it. I just wanted to drink this one thing. Let's just say I'm going to have enough turbo boost to ride my bike back home and get back to editing for the next couple of hours. Excuse me. We should have another main channel video coming very shortly. And I have about five or six videos that are queued up. And my goal for the main channel is to try to bring between four and six episodes a month for the rest of the year. I'm working on the new opening with the new animated opening with the art studio. We went in a few days ago and saw some of the progress that they made. So everything's working a little bit. But for the last couple of months, I've kind of taken a step back so that I could take a big leap forward. I have somebody who's going to be helping me with the editing. Thanks to the support on Patreon. I'm planning longer trips and be able to make instead of shooting one episode, I want to try to shoot three or four episodes, which will increase the frequency. But I have to tell you something. I need to focus in on stories as well and bring you something that no one else is doing, which is longer, more detailed informational stories, too. So I'm going to find a balance between them. But in order to survive YouTube, you must be a competitor and you need to get the content out there. And in order to do that, you have to have an infrastructure. If you want quality stuff, you have to have a team and a process to it. And that's what I've been doing for the last couple of months. And it looks like it's all coming to fruition. And we should have a pretty cool show coming up real soon. Three episodes from Kochi Prefecture coming up, I think, this weekend and next week. So should be boom, boom, boom. Thanks, everybody. I hope you enjoyed this live stream. And if you have any questions, leave a comment in the comments section below. Join us on the Discord server and I'll see you in the next live.