00:00:01 John Daub: Greetings everybody. Welcome to Aoyama Cemetery. This is a place that I like to come to once a year. I usually ride my bicycle through the tunnel. You can drive cars as well. I came here Sunday morning. There's not a lot of traffic and we're gonna do that on the bicycle. I'm just gonna hold on to the steering wheel with both hands. You don't want to ride with a smartphone. This is one of the most famous cherry blossom tunnels.

00:00:26 John Daub: Now there's a lot of them where one side of the road will meet the other side and as the cherry trees, the Somei Yoshino, mature, they start to go over and connect. And then what that leaves you with is this amazing tunnel that looks like it's snowed. But yet, it's like really warm, about 70 degrees Fahrenheit, maybe 20, 21, 22 degrees Celsius. It's really nice day. I'm gonna take you on the bicycle. We're gonna go to the other street and I'm gonna walk back and show you.

00:00:54 John Daub: Cherry blossoms in Japan give hope that we've turned the corner on some stuff. I know right now a lot of people are at home, they can't go outside. There's not a lot of hope in Japan. We don't know what the situation is gonna be like in two weeks from now, let alone right now. So we do know one thing for sure: we got cherry blossoms and that means a lot. I'm gonna wait for the car to go by here and then we're gonna roll. I'm just gonna let you enjoy the cherry blossoms at a slow pace. Here we go guys. We do have a bike path here. That's what the blue arrows are for.

00:02:01 John Daub: It gets really nice around here. Here you go. We don't have any traffic at all. Let's go right down the middle of the street. This is one of the more famous cherry blossom tunnels in all of Japan. Now the blossoms are about 40% bloomed so it's gonna get even better over the next five or six days. Stay in the side of the road here. Not a lot of traffic here. The smell of incense is in the air. Oh there's even some blossoms blowing off of the trees. This is Aoyama Cemetery, one of the most famous areas to see the cherry blossoms in the city of Tokyo. I'd say top ten spot.

00:03:36 John Daub: If you've never been here before, now you have. If you cross the street there's more cherry blossoms but the main part of it is right here that we just went through. So let's park the bike and go walk back here and take a quick look around. Beautiful afternoon here in Japan. Oh I could have done it wider. I should have done a little wider. That's alright. We're gonna go over this direction here. Let me get left the bike. We're gonna be too long.

00:04:14 John Daub: I came out here on Sunday morning for a few reasons. One of them is that so many people are home right now watching streaming services and Netflix and Hulu and YouTube that it's hard to get a really good 4G LTE signal to make a clear live stream. I'm hoping that by coming here in the morning on a Sunday that will be possible. And now a little bit wider. It's different when you're walking. You know there's something great about that rolling shot going through the tunnel. So we're gonna look up at this tree, this beautiful tree right here. The trees are all tagged too. Do you see that? Trees have like an address. It says this is red 14-47.

00:05:14 John Daub: They're still blossoming so we still got a ways to go before they all open up. And this is a cemetery but that doesn't mean as long as you're respectful, you're not shouting, this is also a road. This is a main road. Brendan thanks for taking us along for the ride. You're very welcome. I wish we had more cherry blossoms but we're about, I'd say two days away from it really opening it up. I'm gonna pan over here to the left. You can see at the end of the cemetery here is a beautiful tree that just arcs over the walkway.

00:06:17 John Daub: So this is a very prestigious cemetery as well. If you're here you get probably afforded. There's a massive crowd of people coming. We're supposed to be practicing social distancing so I'm just gonna wait from the past a little bit, talk to you. There are a couple of really important spots that you would say are like top 10 in Japan. Yesterday I took you and if you haven't seen it go in there. It's called a strovie. It's a streamed movie that I like to do. I do some very light editing, add a little bit of music in there, cut out some of the boring parts but we also do a picture in picture so you can see both sides.

00:07:00 John Daub: Inside of the strovie you can get a chance to look and see it at Chidorigafuchi (Chidorigafuchi). Which is one of the most popular spots. I'd say that's top three in Tokyo. That's the reason why I'm letting them go by, let the traffic go by. Tony P's in the house. Hey Tony how you doing? Danny how you doing, Danny from cool Canada. All right we're good. Let the traffic go by. Let's make our way cross.

00:07:31 John Daub: That's what we just did riding the bike through here. Now these blue lines represent bike paths so these are sort of new in the city. If you see those you shouldn't be riding on the sidewalks. It's actually against the law. What you should be doing is riding on the road with the cars and the cars will give you right away. Wow look at that cluster there. They never stand still. It's like a two-year-old. Hey stand still, be respectful. Thank you. Beautiful. They just dance in the wind.

00:08:24 John Daub: When the blossoms get heavy like this they catch every breeze so that means the first time it rains when they get the full bloom or the first time there's really strong winds all these petals start flying everywhere and we have a cherry blossom flurry meaning it looks like it's snowing. It really does where tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of white petals start falling onto the streets of Tokyo. And that's sort of the meaning of life. At least they see a lot of beauty in Japan like that. Through there we're still so early in the cherry blossom season. Hey Bonnie O'Shea thank you. There's a pair right there. Yeah right there. That part's about just 15 bloomed now.

00:09:33 John Daub: How cool is that? I love the trunks on the cherry blossom trees. There's so much personality to them. Do you see dark bark to it and every now and then you'll see a blossom popping out of the trunk bringing life to a place you didn't expect would pop out of. Where a gust of wind blows the sakura (cherry blossoms) all over and it's beautiful. When does that happen? Well that'll happen probably next week, hopefully. I'll try to come back. This is the place to be. If the cherry blossoms petals are falling, this is the place to be because when you're going through a tunnel like this we're getting into the really pretty part.

00:10:26 John Daub: When you go through a tunnel like this it is absolutely amazing. And if you could just stand here like this I can't use my other hand but just imagine like this and going like this. It's like that paradise scene that you always think of fantasy. It is a fantasy. It's as simple as that. It really is. All right we have to be a little bit more respectful. I could do it there because it's sort of an opening but you know this is a cemetery. Better to come during the day.

00:11:09 John Daub: All right do not do what she's doing. You're not allowed to ride. You're on the sidewalk but they're not from around here. They're visitors. That's what the blue line is for. Lisa oh there are some birds. They were more chirpy about an hour ago. I rode across town. It took a while to get here. A lot of hills in Tokyo. You might not know but from the Imperial Palace going up towards Shibuya in order to get to Shibuya you have to go over a couple of really kind of mighty hills. Say kind of because I'm just weak. Wow look at this tree here. This is 100%. This tree here is about 100% bloomed. This is a different variety. This isn't the same as the other ones that are out there.

00:12:27 John Daub: Just everybody be respectful. Be on your best behavior. It looks like it snowed last night. And this is to me such an amazing thing. It's not going to snow again for the rest of the day or the rest of the year. At least I hope not. But if it does this is very much what it looks like. And this is why you come to Japan at this time of year. It's not just one tree. There's so many of them. Let's see if we can get a little bit closer to some of the blossoms. You can just lay on a blue sheet right? You lay down underneath the tree and you look up. Right now I'm looking straight up at the cherry blossom tree.

00:13:05 John Daub: There's a light breeze going through them which makes the blossoms dance. It animates them. Youth right? When you're kids you can't stand still. Kids never stand still. They're always running around causing trouble spilling stuff. Hey kid stop running around. But then at the same time you don't want them to stop running around because they bring such an amazing energy. Don't they? Look at the way the sun is just backlighting the flowers and giving it a special glow to it.

00:13:53 John Daub: I'm going to pan around here. Here's a nice cluster of them. Again they won't stand still. Showboating. Look at me. Hey Dad look at me. I can jump all up and down the screen. Look at that. John I'm learning Japanese because I love Japan and I've learned Sanskrit and Hindi because I love India. You have the best of two worlds. But I don't know any Hindi. My mom never told me. She said you live in America. You don't need it. Now I kind of wish I did.

00:14:51 John Daub: Hey Jay Burden's here. Too pretty. Thank you John for showing the beautiful cherry blossoms. I will return someday. And they will be here. Suede Hightower. Love the channel. Thank you Suede. This is what I'm talking about. Look at this. Do you see this? Never touch the cherry blossoms. They're very very gentle. It's just popped out of the bark of the tree probably over the last year. And you can see cherry blossoms just coming out of it. Life finds a way. Let's quote the doctor from Jurassic Park. Chaos theory. You cannot control life. Life will find a way.

00:15:32 John Daub: It just pops out at you in all directions. Look at that. If I was a bee I would stick my head in there so deep. Never come out. Shaking at the thought. This isn't Yanaka. This is Aoyama Cemetery. It's a very respectful bee here. In the distance you see a beautiful red tree. Do you see that? These are different varieties of blossoms. Not all of them are cherry blossoms. Sakura. But I'm going to move a little bit further away.

00:16:17 John Daub: That one is a different variety to these here which are the Somei Yoshino trees and they're just not ready. A little bit shy. They're right now soaking in every bit of sun rays. And they're going to bust open bring some life to the cemetery. And I think that is the most beautiful thing of all. In a place that you would think is a very grim place it's also a very beautiful place too and filled with life around it. That's the tree that we were just at. Over the years the limbs have been cut to spur more growth in different directions or just to protect people.

00:17:13 John Daub: People come here to say hello to their family members and to remember them. And when they do they always walk around and it brings hope doesn't it? Cherry blossoms. Just for a moment you forget about all the other stuff that's happening and you just focus on flowers. And you know I'm a dude but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't appreciate the beauty of nature. Get out. Focus.

00:18:02 John Daub: JC writes in I'm a dude too. We're all dudes. A lot of dudes here. Like moments where you just want to stop time and stand in that moment and soak it all up. Because you know it's not going to last forever. If you stand there and look at the cherry blossoms it's not going to change that much. It'll shake. It looks like it's going to stay there forever. But inevitably the cherry blossoms don't last forever. They will blow off of the trees. And what you have left is this. I didn't do it. It was the wind. Such a beautiful thing. And I want to put it back on the tree but you can't do that. Let's put it here. Leave it for...

00:19:12 John Daub: It's interesting. Let's take a look at this marker and we'll go back to the cherry blossoms. This was put in place in 2007 by the governor of Tokyo Ishihara-san who was very much one of the Olympics back in the early 2000s and fought for that in memoriam. Laid to rest here in the foreign section of the Aoyama Cemetery are men and women who came to Japan in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of them played leading roles and contributed greatly to the modernization of Tokyo, of Japan. We have erected this monument to commemorate their achievements and ensure their memory is passed on to posterity. That's very nice.

00:19:49 John Daub: Yeah Aoyama is a place there's a lot of embassies a lot of foreign influence here in this town. And it's nice to see Japan. There's a name right there. That's not Japanese. Cracker. And you'll see mixed in here Westerners Western graves mixed in with Japanese family spots. And that's kind of neat. There's a cross over there. Alice Louisa. George Brathwaite. And this one's harder to see. Anna Whitney I believe it says. There's Maggie McLaren. And then on the other side you have Japanese family plots here.

00:21:10 John Daub: It seems odd to go to the cemetery to celebrate or go cherry blossom viewing but it's a peaceful place. It's interesting. He's stopping the traffic. I wonder why. It's a beautiful family plot as well. This is a very prestigious part of Tokyo and Japan. Aoyama. University's not too far away. It's about you could probably walk to Shibuya in about 10 minutes from here through Omotesando maybe 15. And again a lot of foreign residents here. Usually the land prices the properties are pretty high so companies will pay for visiting foreign workers.

00:22:23 John Daub: Clint Barnes. Thank you so much Clint. Welcome and thanks for joining us on this beautiful walk through Aoyama Cemetery. Tokyo is a very navigable city by bicycle. The more and more that you ride through it the more you find everything takes about 30 minutes to get from one side to the other. You just follow along the road. Don't go on the sidewalks but follow along the road. Let's go down the middle here. And you can go pretty fast if you really chug. You can go pretty fast with the speed of traffic.

00:23:13 John Daub: And we're just warming up. This is one of the spots. I wanted to take you to the top 10 cherry blossom spots. This is one of them. There's the tree that we just went by. That's a beautiful tree. Over there is Midtown. That's Roppongi Midtown I believe. Looks like it. And then that's Roppongi Hills on the other side. So we're in between Roppongi and Shibuya right now. It's another reason to come by bicycle. It's just so easy to get around. Just be careful if you're not used to riding bicycles. You might want to get travel insurance. Double up on that. And just go really slow. When you get used to the streets you can go faster.

00:24:06 John Daub: But Kanae and I have been riding bicycle for the last three weeks now. And we're avoiding public transportation just to be safe. And it's been pretty good because the weather's been nice. And we can stay in shape. And you learn more about the city when you get off of the subway and you get onto the roads just walking around. I once walked from Kanagawa across Tokyo to Chiba. I saw some cherry blossoms. This is through Aoyama Cemetery. I thought I saw some cherry blossoms on the other side. Oh there's a beautiful tree over there. Let's go scout that out. Just be respectful.

00:25:04 John Daub: Yeah there's a lot of parks here in Japan and in Tokyo that I think I could show you. But the thing is like the Meguro River I probably should have went to this morning because you don't want to go... We'll go in the morning. I'll probably leave my house at like 6 a.m. get there at 7. There won't be a lot of people around. I think that's the best way to do it. Right now you really don't want to go. You want to practice social distancing and stay away from people. It's just even though the situation looks good in Japan there's nothing good about it. You still want to keep these habits up because we don't know how long we're going to be living like this. Just make it a habit.

00:25:48 John Daub: But the Nakameguro and the Meguro River area I'll take you there in about 48 to 72 hours when it's really really really busting out because we can feel that right now. The blossoms are just on the verge of popping. Like look at the one over here. Let's go take a look at this beautiful old-looking tree. Just be respectful and don't make any loud noises especially disturbing people that are visiting the cemetery to show respect to the ones that they've lost. But my feeling always is that the people that are resting here probably feel happy to have visitors and bring some life to a place that's often too quiet.

00:26:48 John Daub: Toby (crow) this one's at the end. Look this one's at the end. The leaves are busting out. The blossoms are done. Ueno is really crowded. That's a reason why I went early. Ueno is one of the top spots I would say. Ueno is a pretty popular place but it's not one of my favorites. It's a good one if you have friends to go drinking with to hang out and spend a few hours after work there. But it's not a place where you go there just to see the flowers. There's some good parts to it I guess. But it's a place like this. Places like this and Shinjuku Gyoen as well it's pretty nice where you really can just soak it up.

00:27:35 John Daub: This is beautiful. I love just... Right now we're right underneath the tree looking up into the sky. Beautiful blue skies today in Tokyo. And you see what are just puffs of clouds little popcorn attached to the tree like it snowed last night. The sun coming from behind it making the petals slightly translucent. They glow in the sun. There's a breeze coming through here. Shortcut's here. Thanks shortcut. Meifu. Shinjuku-ju kanada. Can you say hi to Krista? Our hanami (cherry blossom viewing) tickets will be canceled soon so probably... Yeah. Hey Krista. Welcome to the cemetery. It's not as bad as you think. It's really peaceful here.

00:28:38 John Daub: And you know I just wanted to say cherry blossoms they bring hope. To a place like this and you have life around it it brings hope. And it's a nice time of year to be in Japan. But so many people have had to cancel over the last six weeks. They've had to make that tough decision. People who had saved money for years some of them to make it here 2020 for the spring and then they can't make it. I kind of feel like I have to take you around. I want to take you around to the spots that you would have gone to if you had been here. Oh look at that beautiful cherry blossom. All right let's go take a look here. This is another variety. Not all of them are white. Some are Yoshino trees.

00:29:25 John Daub: One day I will study and become a botanist of a sort of cherry blossoms. Until then we have an amateur man with a camera walking around. You can see how the blossoms have fallen on the ground here and just made it colorful. Just green and pink spread all along the walkway. And somebody's definitely swept up here but it's hard to keep them from sticking to the water. Look at that. They just stick and stay there until somebody cleans it. All right let's look up into this tree. This is so beautiful. This is 100% bloomed. This one is at 100% and you're starting to see the petals fly off. They'll fly right into the camera from here. Wow.

00:30:25 John Daub: And the sun is hitting them from behind from this angle. They really pop from here. Yeah this is beautiful. They won't stand still for you. Pink snow. That's one way to look at it. Pink snow. Yeah this is the emoji that you're seeing right now. The yellow in the middle with the pink petals. There's an emoji for cherry blossoms. This would be it. I think this looks like what it was modeled after. Japan makes the emojis so a lot of them are Japan-centric and I'm pretty curious into how that happened and why. There's a story behind everything. Beautiful. There it is. Bicolored.

00:31:25 John Daub: Let's pull away a little bit and we can see it from a distance here. A lot of the petals have flown the coop. Do you see that? Just leaving the... And very soon these are going to fall off and already the leaf is popping out of the branch there. The tree will turn green for the rest of the year. So if you come back here in about two weeks it's going to be green. But for now it's beautiful pink. Look at this. Let's look up from underneath there. Hey Marty. Marty is stunned with love. If we look up pan up into the blue sky we're obstructed with pink blossoms. Look at this. Hanafubuki (flower blizzard). A flurry of hana (flower) petals blowing at you.

00:32:19 John Daub: It's the stuff that makes Ghibli movies so beautiful too right? The scene of everyday life. A little girl playing in the countryside and a petal flurry hits her. Knocking her down. I don't think she gets knocked down in a Ghibli movie. Yeah I did send out to our Daimyo supporters on Patreon KitKats. Sakura Mochi KitKats. They're pretty good. It's pretty. That's the whole deal right? Just spending the day forgetting work spending a day outside with the cherry blossoms. Get some food and picnic. Try to eat healthier foods because the oily stuff sticks with you the rest of the day I found.

00:33:32 John Daub: Let's walk back out here. I think we can go out this way. Thanks guys. You've been very respectful. Hey David Kimura's here. John I missed the road trip with Kanae. What? I think we're going to be renting a car like once a week or so. Kanae's pretty busy next week so maybe I'll go out with somebody else but another friend that you might know. But just renting a car and driving up the countryside really makes relaxes us. And Tasty Chronicles how you doing? Tasty just got the DVD. Hitchhiking. I was following the cherry blossoms from Kagoshima up back in 2017. That was beautiful.

00:34:17 John Daub: Yeah here's the end of the street. Now you can keep going. I wonder if maybe we'll do that. We're 34 35 minutes in. Let's follow this runner. My bike's doing okay. So let's cross the street. Cross the way. You can look back one more time at the cherry blossoms here. I'm standing in the center of the street but if I do this in about 48 hours it's just going to fill in with more white and be one of those spectacular photos. Come in the morning. The sun rises around 6:15 6 o'clock. If you come in the morning you'll really be presented with this wonderful view. People running in the morning. A lot of runners going through here. There's my bike.

00:35:24 John Daub: We're going to cross over. And you can see on the other side there just a little bit we're going to walk down here. You can see there's some cherry blossoms. It looks pretty impressive over there too to be honest with you. Maybe I missed something. The cemetery does go on pretty much all the way to Roppongi. Here come some birds swooping down right now. Pigeons. These pigeons are hams. They really love to get in the middle of the photos. Middle of the episodes. Oh yeah. Swoop on down and run away guys. Yeah. I know how you operate.

00:36:16 John Daub: All right here's a map here. Let's just take a quick look and see so we don't get lost. It's hard to get lost. So we've come down here. This main part is the tunnel. The road. This is all the cemetery. See right here the map of Tokyo Aoyama Cemetery. It has 140 years of history. And right now we're at this intersection. And there's a little bit more to it. And we'll just take you to that final part. So you could say you've seen pretty much all the cemetery at cherry blossom season. The parts that you wouldn't want to miss. And that's what makes live streaming pretty cool. We just do it. Just do it. Get out there. Stream it.

00:37:10 John Daub: I'm so jealous. They got a convertible. It's hard to find convertibles in Japan. All right after this white car that's backing out we have a pretty nice view of the cherry blossom tunnel which is the end of the cemetery. I'm looking left and right. Okay. We'll take and we'll that looks like a really nice spot to walk. Wow. A lot of people parked here. There might be a funeral in progress. And there's the end of the street right there. There's a runner coming this way. Some walkers. They do get trimmed a lot. The cherry blossoms they will get trimmed down a little bit.

00:38:50 John Daub: All right let's go back here. It's a lot of cars. They're trying to park in a place where there's almost no more parking. Here's a young tree. They do grow pretty quickly the cherry blossoms. But once again there's more than one variety of cherry blossom. This one is still budding. Now I'm going to I can take it to the right but we need to get the 500 likes. That's up to you. By watching you have a community responsibility like this kid to click the like button. I'll do it later. You can do it now. See if we get the 500 likes. Community members it's up to you. Be respectful. If you like cherry blossoms click like. Never mind me. Do it for the blossoms.

00:40:03 John Daub: There was a delayed sound effect here. Let's walk down this peaceful alleyway. I think this is our bonus time here to go down here. We're very close to 500 likes. Would you prefer seeing this scene or this one? Turn around. There's like 900 people going turn it around turn it around. Okay okay okay. I know it is a little windy. I do love the statue here from one of the cemeteries. Stones. Very peaceful. Very respectful. We're at the bonus stage. We're 50 likes away. I trust you guys. We'll get there. Just take a quick walk through here. It's beautiful. Looks like a college campus. My with the minus the tombstones.

00:40:56 John Daub: So many of the college campuses have such beautiful the longer the history is the more beautiful the trees are on campuses. Many of them historical. I went to Ohio State University. We had a spot called the Oval. And it was pretty nice. A lot of historical things. We had a lot of historical trees there. But we also had Mirror Lake which is this lake where we would all jump in before Michigan sorry I can't even say that state's name before that game for the team up north. Beautiful. And now when I go back there which isn't as often as I wish I hope that I would you see the trees grow just a little bit bigger and bigger each time.

00:41:40 John Daub: Wow that's Roppongi in the distance. Pretty much in the middle of the cemetery now. There's some chapels over to the right side. So let's meander in that direction. There's a cluster right here. Look at this. This is beautiful. So heavy with the cherry blossoms right in front of you. Hey Chris thanks for the coffee. I will be stopping off on the way home. It's a long ride. Took me about 40 minutes to get here because of the hills. It won't stand still. See what your brothers and sisters look like up here.

00:42:36 John Daub: Judas Bites right in here. Hi from Arizona. Go Bucs. Buckeyes are all over the country. You'll find them everywhere. They're here in Japan too. Not in such great numbers but Big Ten's represented everywhere. I've learned to love our friends from the Pac-10 and the ACC and the SEC as well. So after you graduate you're like yeah everybody it's all good. Except when we play your team. It's a nice view here. Hey Lenny's here. Long time no see. How you doing Lenny? Ronald writes in his allegiance. I hear you Ronald.

00:44:08 John Daub: It's beautiful on this side. A lot of slopes here. A lot of hills. Inclines. Makes you work. But when you arrive at the top you get a nice view and that is worth it. It's worth the hike. The trunks of the Somei Yoshino are really dark. And that's what makes the blossoms stick out. It really does. When you see them against the dark bark of them the white flowers. Peter Barrett is here from Australia. How you doing Peter? Thank you. Chris Wan is here from Canada. Thank you Chris. You're here in Japan right now watching this. JC writes oi oi oi. I see that too.

00:45:00 John Daub: Yeah I'll be going to the Meguro River in two or three days. I'm just waiting for the... Oh look at that. It's beautiful. These are the kind of scenes I think that make it so worth it. And the cherry blossoms are so short-lived. In less than a week they're gone. This one is at 100% it looks like. The variety of trees is different than the other ones. It's very beautiful. And so quickly the blossoms are just going to fly away. This is where the cars are. I don't know what the deal is. I guess they have some sort of event going on. Or it's a cemetery.

00:46:02 John Daub: This one up here is just budding. This one's 72 hours from busting out. It's going to be so beautiful. Tony P's with us walking the dog. That's where we just walked from. It's beautiful. Just this quiet little path with almost nobody around. Let's go back this way. We're not too far away from having 5G in Tokyo. I think with the city really pushing the Olympics it seems like it's not going to happen but we're not sure. Nevertheless there's some runners going by. Nevertheless what it is doing is really updating the city keeping people busy. And I think that's not a bad thing either.

00:47:03 John Daub: They're setting up 5G signal places in the traffic lights. And the phones are starting to come out. And I think that's going to really change live streaming. Where we have 720p video which isn't always 720p 5G will be able to keep up deliver content faster. Maybe we'll have 4K live streams crystal clear. That's my hope. But until then we're stuck with 720p. But when I started this two years ago we had 480p. We didn't even have 720 live streams. And they looked okay. But the problem is if it starts off as a 720p live stream and the signal goes down it goes Minecraft meaning it gets really pixelated. You have to keep the bandwidth the signal up there.

00:47:48 John Daub: Let's take a right this way and take a look at this tree. But 5G is a game changer. That's going to be really nice. And that's this year. So whether the Olympics are held or not we will get 5G. Oh that's really nice. These have a slight scent. Not really not really scented. Yeah that's the reason why I'm doing the strovies the streamed videos I call them. Streamed video strovie. I made that up. It's not going to catch on. Nobody says that. Let's see that cherry blossom is bigger than the Roppongi Midtown. It is really pretty. Here's one just capturing all the sun and living in the moment.

00:49:15 John Daub: I did one last night. The reason why is that Chidorigafuchi I've live streamed before. This really beautiful park across the street from Yasukuni. It's Kitanomaru Park near KKR. It's an amazing place to walk around and spend a few hours. Just ride your bicycle out there and then go to the next spot. Not too far away from there is another spot I want to go to by Tokyo Dome. You got to duck underneath here by Tokyo Dome. And they have another park with some beautiful cherry blossoms as well. Some parks are very famous for cherry blossoms and some are famous for ume (plum) blossoms.

00:50:04 John Daub: There's a tunnel that we went through about 20 minutes ago. That's about 40% bloomed. It's going to be so much more beautiful in 48 hours. So if you are here against doctor's orders because I'm not supposed to be traveling anywhere as of a few days ago according to the US State Department's level 4 warning. But if you are here this is a good place to come. There's the tunnel that goes through there. Sasa dango! Stop it JC! I'm getting hungry. Kanae and I are probably going to be riding either back to Fujiyoshida. Maybe that's in two weeks. We're thinking about riding back to Niigata or something and the food out there just to eat. And see what happens.

00:51:05 John Daub: Cherry blossoms and get some fresh vegetables. So we might have a couple more driving livestream days coming. We just did one not too long ago. We rented a car. We went to Ibaraki. Go check up on the progress of my friend's house. He has an abandoned house that he's been renovating. A channel called Tokyo Lama. Really really nice beautiful house. And you can see it coming together now. Every time I go over to his place and see what's changed you really can tell this is going to be a place that I want to live in as well. I'm jealous. Nothing against Tokyo but Ibaraki has a lot more space.

00:52:00 John Daub: Alright so for those of you joining us it seems like we picked up some people. I'm going to take you one last time and get closer to the cherry blossom here so you can get a look. Hey Photo Look Hawaii. Yay we were just there. There's more blossoms now. Thanks for showing it. Oh you're home. Okay. Photo Look Hawaii. Austin and Cheryl I couldn't see you guys this time because it's just a tough time. But next time you come I will be here. I'll be here the next time after that too by the way. I'm not going anywhere. Thanks guys. And Caitlin's here. Caitlin thank you so much. Welcome to Japan Caitlin.

00:52:38 John Daub: Alright let's look at these blossoms here. I just soaked this up for a while. This is the first one that we started with 20 50 minutes ago. And you can see they don't like to stand still. Yeah I do have some You Found Me cards right now but I'm trying not to find I'm trying to ask people not to find me. So then that's my favorite view looking up at a tree. Shinjuku Gyoen is really pretty for that. You look up and just look up. If you stop for 20 minutes until your neck hurts then Kanae gives you a massage. Kanae my neck hurts. She gives you a massage. You got to give her one. It's part of the deal. No free rides. Yeah you might get something. You got to return it. It's part of the deal.

00:54:02 John Daub: Alright it's a good day huh? This is the start of a good day. I'm glad I woke up early for this. I got up at 7:30 8 o'clock. Yeah the signal might be going down too as people are waking up in the area using the 4G LTE. Over the last few days because everybody's at home nobody's working the signal strength is going down because there's not enough bandwidth for these live streams. So I'm probably doing on and off live streams and some strovies which are streamed movies. So I'll take you in there. I'll edit them a little bit add a little bit of music throw some music in there. Just very basic. Some picture in picture where you can get a it's kind of neat.

00:54:39 John Daub: In fact go back and watch the one I uploaded. I uploaded about 10 hours ago. It doesn't get the same amount of views as the live streams because it's a live streaming channel. YouTube's algorithm doesn't prioritize that so much but it's in there. The midnight snack runs Kanae's not too happy about me going out at midnight and stuff you know but I probably will do one sometime soon. I want to go to Akihabara. She said you're going to Akihabara. I said yeah you're right. I'm not going to Akihabara. So I didn't go. But I probably will do some night stuff too.

00:55:10 John Daub: Because I know that you guys are all in different parts of the world different time zones and it's nice to try to do a live stream at a time that you can catch it. So I'll try to do more of that and try to vary it up a little bit. Leslie's right. Happy wife happy life. That's right. You don't want to make that's a big dog. You have to have a big house to have a big dog. That's pretty rare in Aoyama. Look at that fancy walk. Is that a collie? Lassie. It's a big one. Very big one.

00:56:03 John Daub: There's almost nobody here but it's going to start to pick up. This is such a popular place. People start walking down here in about an hour. But I wanted to come here earlier in the morning not just for the bandwidth but because there's not a lot of people. And yeah I'll take you to the Meguro River in two or three days when it fills in a little bit. It should be spectacular. I also would love to see that at night. I bring a big light a massive torch with me and you just move it around and you can illuminate it. And it looks like snow. At night the cherry blossoms are even more beautiful. It's so striking because the black sky is such a contrast with the white petals on the trees.

00:56:46 John Daub: It's nice with the blue skies and the natural light but it is something so amazing with night and light on the blossoms. It's if we get a chance then you know I'm only taking bicycles. If we get a chance I'm going to go and do that here. It goes to the cemetery for the bandwidth. That's right. Go where there's no people with cell phones. I go where there's not a lot of people. Thanks guys for watching this for an hour. I do appreciate it. Hit the like button. Encourage me to do more of these live streams. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any of them.

00:57:19 John Daub: I put notifications on Patreon and a Discord server. If you're interested in traveling about Japan you have to go to the live stream. If you have questions about it go to Discord. We have about 7500 users there. There's always a thousand people online talking about stuff including the cherry blossoms. We have a dedicated cherry blossom 2020 page where you can share your photos from the past and see photos from this year as well. If you can't get to Japan this year this is a place to go to kind of sort of be there and talk with people who are planning the trips or in the same situation as you. Thanks everybody. See you in the next live stream which could be later today. It is Sunday. And if it's Sunday it's Sunday. Bye.