00:00:07 John Daub: How you doing everybody? Greetings from the Meguro River. This is one of the most famous spots in all of Tokyo to watch the cherry blossoms. Check it out. This is where we're going to start from and in the next 30 minutes or so we're going to walk around this area and you're really going to experience it. I know a lot of people aren't able to make it due to the worldwide troubles that are going on. You all know what I'm talking about. But I'm living here so I got the opportunity to take you. So thanks for joining me.

00:00:42 John Daub: On this side, this is where the sun hits in the morning. The blossoms are quite open. In fact, they're getting about 80%. On the other side, they're like about 30%. The TV news said that it was about 80% to 100% in the city. I don't think they were right. But it looks pretty obvious which side gets the most sun, doesn't it? But this view is quite famous. It's just a canal. But what makes this the number one most amazing spot in Tokyo is at night and we're here during the day. So it's not quite as good. But nevertheless, we're going to brave the wind. It is very windy today. I have an external microphone on that sometimes is hit or miss. All right, let's take a look. Welcome to the Meguro River, Nakameguro area. There really aren't a lot of people here. I came in the morning because I wanted to get a fresh view of this. I got lost riding my bicycle. I'm not taking public transportation. And I got here kind of late. I wanted to get here an hour or two earlier, but it looks really good.

00:02:08 John Daub: This is a promenade where everybody is walking. And at night, they usually have vendors selling drinks and stuff. And this year, they've canceled all of that. Let's look across into the river area just over the fence. It's very, very beautiful cherry blossoms leaning into the Meguro River. Now the Meguro River is interesting. It's not I wouldn't even call it a river. I call it more like a stream. I guess it's about five miles long in length, 7.8 kilometers. It's not very long. It originates up in Setagaya, another ward of Tokyo and dumps out about a kilometer or two further on from here. So it's nothing like the Tamagawa or the Edogawa or the Arakawa, which are the Sumidagawa River, which are the main arteries of Tokyo. This one's just sort of a, I don't know, tributary or a canal.

00:03:16 John Daub: Steve E. writes in. How are the allergies? Allergies are awful. The air is almost like spicy with pollen. And the last three weeks has been really hard, especially for Kanae Daub, who has really bad allergy problems. Nose is running. There's a lot of sneezing. In this time, when we hear a cough, we kind of freak out and turn around and start moving away from that person. But it's more times than not, it is just hay fever. But you can't take that chance. There's a model posing in front of a cherry blossom tree that's close to 100 percent. Let's look back on that. That's pretty good. Look at the way that the sun is hitting the cherry blossoms now coming down. This is a beautiful point.

00:04:12 John Daub: People are stopping for me. I guess we're going to get a picture together or you can get a picture that you're going to keep for your profile photo on Facebook or something. You don't want to do it here. Just want to say hi, John, and see how you see your smile. Hey, Mahalo. Michael Sassano is here. Thanks for showing us the beautiful sakura trees (cherry blossoms). You're very welcome. I know a lot of people just couldn't make it this year. A lot of people had to cancel it, which is completely understandable and the responsible thing to do. There are some people here that are actually trapped. They can't get home because the flights have been canceled. They got here fine, but then the leaving was a tough part. And we kind of knew that this was going to happen.

00:05:16 John Daub: Well, this is an awesome area. We're going to be here for a second or twenty five. This is say we're going to be here for a while. This is a beautiful tree. Hey, Tony P. How you doing? I'm going to pan up. Jim Defensor. How you doing? Nice to see you. Hi, John. Can I time to relax with your stream in the midst of what's going on around us? Thank you for keeping us informed to entertain. It is my pleasure. Thank you for writing it from the Philippines. This tree is beautiful. Beautiful. And look at the skies that we have despite the wind, which is always going to be a problem trying to film. When you get blue skies, the contrast between the white cherry blossoms is just stunning. I love the bark. I said this in the live stream a couple of days ago. I love the bark of the sakura trees. The dark and they contrast well with the white blossoms, the pink that let's pan down towards the Meguro River now.

00:06:22 John Daub: You can see. It's not quite bloomed in this area here. Dancing in the wind here. I'd say about 80% on this side and on the other side it's more like 40%. Let's go up here into the sunshine. This limb is really beautiful. It's been here probably for decades. These trees do grow pretty quick. I'm sure the last time I was here was about five, six years ago, but I'm sure I was here underneath this tree for a while. So the great thing about cherry blossoms is you come back to the points in your neighborhood, when the tree is at its most beautiful, and you stand there again year after year after year and the time goes by, you change, the trees change, everything changes, but the spot's the same. I like that. As long as the tree's here, you can go back to that day. Maybe I came here, maybe somebody came here on a date with somebody or they had their first kiss underneath this tree.

00:07:37 John Daub: Beautiful. There's still some blossoms here that have a little ways to go. I don't know how the resolution is on the other side. I'm seeing it in like 20K full super HD because I have eyesight on this, like natural eyesight on this. But if you're having problems with it, try refreshing your browser and making sure you're on a strong Wi-Fi signal. Sometimes it's on your side. On my side, I can't control. I always do a speed check. It came out to more than enough for HD video streaming. But sometimes it'll get, it'll drop every now and then. The beauty, the beauty of live streaming is that you just don't know. Everything is so spontaneous.

00:08:53 John Daub: Oh, check this out. So some of the petals are going. You can see the petals flying. Oh, one just flew right at the camera. It's awesome. And there they go. The petal streaming across the Meguro River. In the lead, petal number 1621. It's defeating petal number 5206. Oh, my God. It's probably in about a week. This entire river is going to be white. White with millions of cherry blossoms. Not just here from this part of the river, but upstream in Setagaya with all the trees dumping in the petals in there. You can see there's already hundreds of them. It's hard to see them. Let me, I'll zoom in. The Sakura race is on. Who's going to float to the Pacific the fastest? Who's going to get eaten by a fish?

00:09:48 John Daub: I'm broadcasting at 480p. I've had so many problems with the YouTube app. YouTube, got to get on it. See if we can move around. I can catch the cherry blossoms at different, maybe the signal will improve. This is why I tend at the cherry blossoms, prefer to want to do edited streams or just stream with picture-in-picture or something. But we'll see how this goes. If I do do that, I'll probably come back at night. I don't know if I'm going to come back at night this year because at night it gets really crowded. And I saw during the weekend, the weekend was ridiculously crowded all over the city of Tokyo. People just didn't really heed any warnings to stay home. They just were attracted to spring. We've had this event going on, I guess we could call it that, for a few months now since January. January, the middle to end of January. So people were very anxious to get outside, to stretch their legs, and they did that last weekend. But I don't know what's going to be the end result of that. We all know what's going on.

00:11:10 John Daub: Now, I want to jump this and go over towards the fence of the river. This tree is beautiful right here. My favorite sakura, though, are the bonsai sakura. When I made the bonsai episode, people were saying how cruel it is to the tree. And yet, it is. It's just so beautiful, too. I can't not like bonsai trees. It's an art, for sure. The bon meaning, I believe, the pot and the saucer of the tree. It's beautiful. I'm just going to pan across here. I do hope this is in better quality than 480. We're going to be walking up and down this canal, so if there's a Starbucks in the area, we will find it. Yeah, this is one of the most romantic places to go. Here's a little teeny sakura tree. Do you see this one? Look at this. So, the matter of the size, they will still bloom. Even if they're this small, it looks like a shrub. It's only, it's about the same height as me, but it's blooming right there. It is a romantic place at night, and a lot of people do come here on dates. Maybe the entire city finds one night over the five days that it's close to full bloom to bring somebody with them and really enjoy it.

00:13:32 John Daub: One of my favorite spots. Get near the trunk and look up at the white blossoms and just stay there for a moment. It looks like it snowed. Two years ago, it used to be 480. 480p. They moved it to 720. But it starts off, if it has a good, strong signal at start, stays at that. And if the signal dies out or goes down, you still have 720. But it gets real pixelated because the bandwidth can't support 720. But I kind of did a check, and I didn't see any problems with it. So you should have it in clear 720 or close to it. More than enough. This is what I'm talking about. When the cherry blossoms bust out of the trunk and show themselves popping out just like this. It's beautiful. How does it look at that? It's just kind of sprouting out of there. Hey, Christopher. Being a cop in New York hasn't been easy lately. But being able to relax and enjoy your videos really helps. Thank you. You're very welcome. We've been following everything going on in New York City here in Japan as well. And we know that that's the hardest hit area. And gosh, I know you guys are doing the best that you can. Everybody pulls together when something like this happens in the city.

00:15:04 John Daub: There's no cherry blossoms here, so we've got to keep on going down the river. So let's go to the end of the bridge here and look back. Surprisingly chilly today. Yesterday the temperature dropped from 23 degrees, which is like, what, like 70, down into 50. And it's a 20-degree drop. It's got a little chilly. But as long as you're in the sun, it's not too bad. Where's that Starbucks? I think I'm in the wrong area for that. Let's look back here from this angle. Again, the left side's about 40 percent bloom. But if you have a zoom lens, you go like this. And a lot of, I think Wikipedia has this picture. It's pretty nice. Beautiful sunny day. Just a little windy and a little nippy. Is that a word? I think it's a word. Forgot to say thank you. Oh, it's Hawaiian. Here's some coffee money. Thanks. Maybe I'll stop in. Check it out. You can see on the side there's some white. Those are cherry blossom petals and a little bit of glare. That pigeon's having a hard time flying in the wind.

00:16:32 John Daub: Let's go see if I can find that Starbucks. Instead of snow, there are blossoms. Lots of them. This looks like Nakameguro Station over here. I came by bicycle, so I'm disoriented. I tried to look at the map real quickly. This isn't my hood. I'm more in the center of Tokyo, Nakameguro. This area is more in the, I guess you would say the southwest. Sorry. The wind is awful. You can see people holding hands and coming here on dates. Oh, my gosh. I'm putting on my mask. I'm going back first now. The wind is hideous. Whew. It's about a, what, 12-kilometer bike ride to get out here. It's not too bad. What are these guys doing down here? Fishing? I guess they're surveying or something.

00:18:13 John Daub: We're getting reports now coming in that the Olympics has been postponed. Writing was on the wall with that. I'll probably go live a little bit later today and talk about it. After I do some research on the topic because I've been following this for a very long time. It's sad to see. It's sad because Japan is really kind of needing this and has invested a lot in this. But just the situation, it makes it impossible. The Canadian athletes bowed out yesterday and the Australians. And it's just inevitable. I think it's a pretty good idea. And they'll work it out. Terry, it absolutely is. I hope the audio is good. On the other side, I did a sound check. Sometimes the live streams will start a few minutes later than normal. And the reason why is I'm doing sound checks. There's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes. One of the things with the Meguro River here is you can see the cherry blossoms. You see that? Just floating by. And this is just a start. It's going to get whiter and whiter and whiter with blossom petals. Petal River. That's right, Ronald. Petal River.

00:20:08 John Daub: If you have been here before, you know exactly where I am. Beautiful. These trees here really haven't bloomed much at all. This one hasn't even started. Well, there's a few blossoms on this one. It's weird. And most of them look like some Yoshino trees. You know what? I think some of the trees are smarter than the other ones. They knew that it was going to get cold again. And they just didn't blossom. And the other ones are kind of dumb. And they blossom too early. But seems the most staggered cherry blossom event that I've ever been at. Half of them were 40 percent and half of them were fully bloomed. Over here, you can see these are about 28.7 percent bloomed. Just spitballing here. These are what the buds look like on the cherry blossom trees. They'll bust out probably this weekend. This tree will be beautiful. Well, that's the good thing about it. You know, cherry blossoms, people ask me when is the best time to come. The answer is like nobody even knows. You just come, I guess, from the 20th of March every year. You're probably going to see some.

00:22:00 John Daub: Hey, Rich. Rich Masters, how you doing? And we all met Rich because we walked around the Olympic Stadium. So, Rich, this is like we've come full circle from Olympics to no Olympics. I hope you're staying warm in Colorado. Long time no see. Hopefully, everyone is doing well with what's going on in the world. Absolutely. I'm doing just fine. But we're taking precautions. At least I am. I'm staying away from people like all people. Like a paranoid maniac. Where is that Starbucks? It's got to be around here. Starbucks Reserve Roastery is the other way. Jake, is it this way? That's funny. I've gone to the live stream to ask for directions. You mean this way, Jake? Meguro Station. I don't want a Starbucks coffee. But the reason why people are bringing it up because is the Starbucks there? The Starbucks is supposed to be the biggest, air quotes, the biggest Starbucks in Japan and maybe the world. And I don't know. Everybody wants to go there. There's also a very peaceful one on the river that everyone has been talking about. It has a bookstore. Tsutaya probably partners up with them and they put the, just like Borders and Barnes & Noble's had them in there years ago.

00:23:32 John Daub: So you can see we're here at the star. It's metallic. Metallic map. We'll just walk back this way then, right? And there's Meguro Station. So then we're just going to walk towards Meguro Station. Let's do this. Let's make this a reality. Stay warm. When there's no wind, it's pretty warm. So right now, for those of you who are joining us, the 888 people, that's a pretty cool number. This is the Meguro River here. It's about a five mile, eight kilometer long river that originates in Setagaya. It doesn't go very far. It's more like a canal between the two. It's a canal between buildings. And we're now going into the cherry blossom area. In fact, in the center of your screen, that white streak is sakura trees. And you can see some people standing on the end of the bridge there. Do you see that? Behind them is beautiful. Some Yoshino cherry blossom trees, sakura trees. And it seems like even though some trees are opened early, a lot of them said, I'm not coming out until later.

00:25:02 John Daub: There's Nakameguro Station. And then this goes to Meguro. Let's go towards the sway. They are very important. Stop touching the map. I know I got alcohol. I'm not going to touch my face. I think the UV light probably killed whatever was on there. I'm a man of science and superstition. Up here is a park. It's a beautiful park. Kids are playing. Kids are still out of school till April. But as the U.S. seems to not, doesn't seem to be opening schools until next, until the fall, Japan is opening schools back up next week. April. The new school year starts and that's their intention. Tokyo Disneyland is not open. There are a few parks. Usually I think small to mid-sized parks. But I think the parks are open. They opened up on the 16th. They're doing temperature checks and making people wash their hands in alcohol and such. But it really isn't a lot of stuff. It's still semi-closed. But the feeling is right here there's not too many cherry blossoms are open. We're going to walk across the street again. Here we go. Here's a small, small tree. Some of them have just replanted. Very beautiful.

00:27:00 John Daub: It's sad though. I want some food stands because I could use some like karaage (fried chicken) or okonomiyaki (savory pancake) or takoyaki (octopus balls). I need some yakitori (grilled chicken skewers). And we don't have that this year because of all the festivities and have been canceled to discourage people from coming together, which is a smart thing. We have a basket of kids coming here. This is the way this is. I don't know if I want to show this to you. This is one of the most the cutest things imaginable in the country of Japan. A basket of kids. Instead of holding hands and stuff, they throw them in baskets and push them through here. And this is sometimes the kids are there's eight or nine kids in a basket. They're just going, yay. The teacher's pushing them in. Hold on to that basket, teacher. It's pretty funny. And there's always one serious kid with this look like he's already 80 years old. They're staring at you. You know those kids? There's always one. The mature one. And they're like two. It's weird. What was two? I was uncontrollable. But there's always one that's super controlled. The mastermind.

00:28:33 John Daub: That'll be my kid now. The river. Keep going. I got to keep going, I guess. I don't know how to get to this Starbucks. Everybody's telling me to go to Starbucks roastery. My friend Jim in Washington said that the schools will probably be closed. They're doing, I don't know, what's it called, exercises. They're not really teaching but giving students things to do through online. And the teachers there are doing their best to try to stay on to the job. But there's just so much uncertainty it feels like everywhere. Here, life is getting back to normal. But I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Are we getting to the end here? We're just going to keep walking along the river. David Kimura for food and drinks. For you, Kanae Daub. Kanae was asleep when I left. And she's probably just waking up now. But I'm intending to do another live stream on the way back to stop in another park. Kind of give you an idea of different areas of the city of Tokyo. I rode across the city. I might as well stop somewhere else.

00:30:01 John Daub: Sometimes the cherry blossoms aren't even on the river. This one's a pretty one here. Every single cherry blossom tree deserves its time when Only in Japan Go. Time to cross the river. Look, they barricaded it. They've got these yellow ropes. Like, that's going to keep me out. It actually is going to keep me out. There's no easy way across. I thought this was more festive. Google Maps said that this is the spot. This is not, you know, cement mixing truck. That's not what I thought I would be live streaming to you. Okay, oh, that's a green light. Okay, let's do this. Oh, it turned red. Ah! I'm going to head back to the river as soon as this turns. Is there a button I can push to make it go faster? It's like elevator buttons. You realize that? The more you push it, the faster it goes. It really startles the people inside the elevators. So every 20 times the button's pushed, it goes one time faster. But some of the elevators, I learned this. If you push the button and you make a mistake, if you double tap it, it deletes, it turns the button back, turns the button off. So if you've got some nasty kid who goes like this and pushes 20 buttons on the elevator, if it has 20 floors, you can double tap each of those floors and it'll turn it off. Newer elevators have off functions. The double tap.

00:32:28 John Daub: We're going to go across here in search of Starbucks Roastery. Please pick up some Sakura hand lotion. Yeah, I totally need it. My hands are in bad shape. They've been alcoholed. And I had some hand cream in the house, but it disappeared. I think it ended up in Kanae Daub's bag. So I got to go get some new one. I'll stop off on the way home. Everybody's going back to work. This scene is pretty nice here. The Sakura trees just leaning in towards the river to grab some of that moisture. These trees were enjoying 70 degree weather, 23, 24 degree weather two days ago, and now they're freezing with me. I'm just going to follow the river. I think on the other side, they're doing some construction work. I thought there was some old buildings and such. Really gave it character. But once they started the construction for the 2020 Olympics, a lot of areas, they started tearing down the older buildings, which is a shame. But at the same time, it makes sense because they're not really earthquake proof. So the building that I'm in was built maybe 15 years ago. And of course, it survived the 2011 earthquake. But the buildings from 40 years ago, they can't if a strong earthquake does hit, they wouldn't be able to survive it. So Tokyo is always renewing itself. The problem is that it also takes away the character of some of the areas. New buildings are nice, but sometimes I like that old wooden building has characters.

00:35:00 John Daub: You can see this tree is far off from blooming this weekend. Will be the big day, I think. But already there are some petals falling flying off of this tree. So it's very confusing. I think the trees are as confused as I am. So for those joining us, we are on the Meguro River between Nakameguro and Meguro Station. So beautiful five mile river. This is just a part of it. About a mile of it. It's not very big. It's more like a canal, but it does offer some really beautiful scenery and we're about to see some more of it. Now the sun is hitting these at such an amazing angle. There used to be street stands here. There was food all gone because the festivities have been postponed or canceled. Look at this tree. Speaking of character, that tree has a lot of it. It's all kind of gnarled. Seen some action. It looks like lightning struck it or something.

00:37:47 John Daub: If you do want to see more on the Sakura, the cherry blossoms, we have a discord server. Only in Japan dot dg slash only in Japan. Do you see him in the center of your screen. I think it's a blue heron (aosagi). He's just standing there. How you doing? They hang out along the Sumida River when I go running. She has sharp eyes, that lady. She's the one who told me about the Aosagi. We have got an Aosagi infestation, meaning a good infestation. There's a ton of Aosagi herons that are just hanging out on the Sumida River. They stand here at night. They're really big birds. I'll run by them. You can see them following me with their eyes as their head turns. They follow me. It's pretty funny. Every time I pass them, I go, how you doing? How you doing? Just keep going. I'm saying that a lot these days because there's so many herons. I'm going to go under this bridge here. You can see on the other side the white blossoms on the trees. It's beautiful. Blue sky. Again, this is the Meguro River for those joining us. This is probably the number one attraction for cherry blossoms in the city of Tokyo. Ueno Park might be another one. I took you to the Chidorigafuchi (moat) near Kitanomaru and Yasukuni Shrine a few days ago.

00:40:15 John Daub: The nature is so beautiful. It's nice to get outside, take it slow. I love how the trees have naturally kind of curved like that. They've curved over the walkway and gone over the railing and towards the river to collect moisture. That's what you would call a tunnel. Naturally shaped. I don't know where the Starbucks is. I might have to stop the stream for a minute to Google Map this thing. People telling me on the stream, go left, go right. I'm listening to everybody. Right now, I'm just following my nose. Oh, this one is really beautiful. Look at the limb on it. It's like popcorn. Some moments you can just sit there and soak it up. And that's what the Hanami (cherry blossom viewing) is for. Hanami is H-A-N-A-M-I. It means cherry blossom viewing. It's a cultural thing. In Japan, we'll get what we call blue sheets or these blue plastic sheets. You can find them at the store for $3, $4. Usually, they're either two tatami mats or you can get them in four and six and ten and twelve tatami mats, quite large ones. You can fit a lot of people in the blue sheets. You put some food, bring some food with you and you put it in the middle of the blue sheet and everybody sits around in a circle underneath the cherry blossom trees really enjoying just being there. Everything stops when you're doing Hanami. Everything stops. All the work, everything that's on your mind, all the stuff. Maybe you've lost a relative or there's bad stuff happening in the world. When you're doing Hanami and you're just sitting underneath there, guys are drinking beers, joking. Wives are there with their kids, with your friends, being outside. That's Hanami. That's cherry blossom viewing. It's such an amazing time of the year. This year, it's been pretty much canceled, although people are still going outside. The data says that Japan doesn't have the same level of problems that the rest of the world has, although I'm not 100% convinced of that. That's all we got to go on. Those are the numbers that we're getting. That's what we got to go on. This isn't a political show.

00:44:57 John Daub: Zapdos71, right here from Australia. Stay safe down there. Thanks a lot. Thanks for joining us too. It's like getting autumn in Australia. It's so weird because it's in the southern hemisphere. Autumn down under and up here we're hitting spring. Beautiful. This is towards the Meguro, I believe Meguro Station. I believe this isn't my neighborhood. I know some things about the city of Tokyo. I don't know too much about Meguro and Nakameguro. I used to live in a place called Futako-Tamagawa in 2004, but that was more than a decade ago. Look at this one. It's just dancing over the river. Beautiful. That's kind of the end of it. Let's go up here to the bridge and look back. I passed a lot of places. There's one in Hiroo, which is near the German embassy I might stop by. The National Azabu Supermarket. It's there. There's some attraction. I might just stop there and do a live stream for 15 minutes or so in about 45 minutes from now because I think that that'd be pretty cool to see. I don't think a lot of people have done live streams from there. If you want to see some more live streams on the Cherry Blossoms in a different area, click the like button. I would appreciate it. This Nakameguro River is so much better at night and not on this year. You probably want to come like next year.

00:47:08 John Daub: Meguro, which is on the Yamanote Line, does not feel the same. I have no idea where the Starbucks is. Everyone's saying, go to the Starbucks. That's where we just walked all through there. You're walking the wrong way. It's the Nakameguro. I could try running there. I got to go back this way anyways to get to my bike. So this is Meguro. This is the Yamanote Line area. This isn't too far from Meguro Station. We're in the city again. Oh, I see we're getting close to 500 likes. I'm going to speed walk this way then. How's that? Hyperlapse in slow motion. This is a DJI Osmo 3 gimbal and I'm using it with a wide angle lens on the front camera so then it doesn't look like you're standing in front of my face. I can't stand that. It's way too close if you don't have a wide angle lens on the front. And we have a wireless mic, the Blink 500 it's called, keeping the wind down for you today. I put the mic closer to my mouth on suggestions from Matsumi, who is mic professional and UFO Bob, giving me good hints on how to use the mic better.

00:49:09 John Daub: We are now speed walking to the biggest Starbucks in Tokyo now while we're cherry blossom viewing. And I'm speed walking now. At the end of this live stream, you will have seen all of this river area with the cherry blossoms. You've seen it all because I've been lost all for like 10, 15 minutes now. How do you get lost along a river? You just go along the river, right? That was my reasoning. But because everything's shut down and I feel pretty disoriented. Actually, when I did come here, I would always come through Nakameguro, right? So this is good here. That's the blue sheet I'm talking about. And they have a blue sheet with a arrow with a do not over it. They put it in several languages. Securing a space with a picnic sheet and having a party are not permitted. So no having fun here this year. But I think it's like that all the time. There's just not enough space for blue sheets. If you put blue sheets here, you wouldn't be able to walk along. These cherry blossoms don't get as much sunshine as the ones on the other side. Not as bloomed. This weekend's gonna be pretty nice for the Meguro River. I'm a little bit too early. I get too excited. I overshoot or undershoot.

00:51:02 John Daub: But I'll tell you this. Kanai and I are probably gonna rent a car and go back to Mount Fuji and take you with us. This is beautiful, this area here. Kanai and I are gonna rent a car and go back to Fujiyoshida and the area. It's gonna be different. Or we're thinking about going to Shizuoka's Izu-hanto (Izu Peninsula). We were trying to do that once a week to break up being trapped in our house and not going outside. But if you ever rent a car, we usually will rent it and then Kanae does an alcohol thing where she alcohols and sanitizes the whole car. And then we get in. She's like, wait, I got this. Just spray, spray, spray, wipe, wipe, wipe. Car is clean. And then we're gonna try to do like a Mount Fuji day and maybe a Shizuoka day. Just rent the car maybe for a full day. Rent it in the morning and return it the next morning. Maybe we spend the night in Mount Fuji. I'm not sure. Back to the other side. So you have literally seen the entire of the Meguro River for the cherry blossoms here. When you come, you're going to experience it with your own two eyes.

00:52:56 John Daub: I don't think it's going to be too crowded. I don't think I'm even going to go in if I do find the Starbucks. I'm not really. I think I passed about 20 Starbucks. Watch out. Don't skateboard hit your neighbor. I love the use of cartoons and animation to make a point here. They'll make a point. Then the boss of the artist will say, no, make the point more ponian. Like, make it stronger. Can you give that guy more pain? And then it just becomes comical. I've seen some really funny PSAs in the subway stations, but I think that's the point. It makes you really look at it. And then in the end, it hammers home the point. And then everybody takes a picture of it because it's ridiculous. We're back here. How have I missed this? Here's Nakameguro Station. Keep going. This is a factory. It's a green factory. Look, they're putting, do you think that's plastic or real grass on the side of the building? That's what this fenced in area is a construction zone. And they're building a grass factory.

00:56:33 John Daub: Their cherry blossoms were really beautiful. The ones on this side are about 10% bloomed. This tree has like just two pieces of popcorn on it. I'm going to hightail it back to Nakameguro. I overshot. Welcome to the Meguro River. For those of you joining us, this is the premier Tokyo cherry blossom viewing spot. Top five on my list. I've taken you to three of the top five, I think. In another live stream, I took you to the Yasukuni Kitanomaru Park area where there's a walkway that's very famous. It's called Chidorigafuchi. Along the way. It's in the moat of the Imperial Palace. And that was fairly bloomed. Here it's like on this side 10% bloomed. On the other side, like 80% bloomed. It makes no sense to me. Lee's giving me directions textually. As you are walking over, it is further as you pass the Nakameguro nine minutes walk.

00:58:31 John Daub: Here we are again. I'm going to hurry to get to the other side. I think I'm going to give up on this Starbucks. Is a Starbucks a big deal for people? Is that like, it's the biggest Starbucks in Tokyo. For some people, it's a big deal. The Red Bridge. I'm just gonna keep going and we'll find it, I guess. At least the other side has more cherry blossoms. You can see the city over there on the other side. Lots of traffic on this side of the river. It's not, it's different. This is a new building. Beautiful right here. We are practicing social distancing, which the news said that we should change the term social distancing to physical distancing. I'm gonna physically distance myself from you. It's easier to understand. Why Japan has not locked down? Because the numbers are different here. The situation is not the same and people have not been affected according to the data, which could be on or off. We're not sure that's the data we got. It's just not spiking like everywhere else. Hospitals are not full of people the same as everywhere else. So we don't have a lockdown. So a month ago when everyone was worried about coming here, it's the other way around now. But that doesn't mean that this is a place where you can be complacent either and not worry about it. This is a place where you should be even more, I think, because at any moment, the situation can change quickly as we're learning in other places.

01:05:20 John Daub: Oh, this is so beautiful. How dare I talk about this topic? I refuse to talk about it anymore because we've got this. If you want to talk about that, go somewhere else. What we're talking about are these blossoms, baby. Lots of them. The best kind. The cherry blossom kind. And no, they do not make cherries. No, in one week, we're not going to have a bunch of cherries fall on the ground and people picking up and eating them and making cherry pie and stuff like that. It's just not going to happen. So just back off, people, with asking that question. Japanese motorcycle cops got awesome bikes. It's going to change into a transformer. It's more than meets the eye with that bike. But the question is, is he an Autobot or a Decepticon? My favorite police officers are, um, in terms of uniform, maybe the Thai police officers, because their uniforms are always two sizes too small. And it's so darn hot in Bangkok. Uniform is important. Lee, what am I doing wrong? Oh, ducks. Can I ducks? Ah, they flew right at us. Like, they're coming back around. Are they pigeons? It's hard to say. Is it, if it's a bombing run, I don't want to be around when they do. Ducks are awesome. They're like little boats. They're going through the rapids.

01:09:04 John Daub: Gretchen, I'm not going to jump in. What do you think I am, two years old? River is pretty clean. This is a, oh boy, the pollen is really strong in the air. My nose is running from it. Between the end of February till about the middle of April is hideous for pollen if you have hay fever. And I never thought that I did, but the older I get, the more I'm impacted by it. Tokyo is the worst. The year 2004 was awful. You could see it in the air. We also had dust coming from Mongolia, from the Gobi Desert, flying to Japan and cover the entire city of Tokyo. We had yellow sand all over. This is Nakameguro area. Lee, I hope it's here. How much further is it, Lee? You said nine minutes. This is like 20 minutes ago, but I did stop to see the ducks. The yellow sand. I mean, I never, I had been to Mongolia. I took the Trans-Mongolian Railroad in 2001 across Siberia. It was awesome. That was one of the most awesomest trips. If you ever get a chance, take the Trans-Mongolian Railroad. It leaves from Beijing, and it goes up through Mongolia. And then you can change the train. They have to change the bogey from one side. The other. That's pretty cool to see that when they leave China. And Chinese trains are the best. Mongolia. And then we rode into Siberia, and we hit Lake Baikal, the deepest freshwater lake in the world. Awesome. And it was 10 days it took me to get to Moscow, and then eventually through Belarus to Berlin, and then Amsterdam. What a trip that was. Is this that red bridge you guys are talking about? I don't see no Starbucks.

01:12:11 John Daub: So for those of you that couldn't make it to Japan because the flights were canceled, or you had to cancel your trip, just worried about safety issues, rightfully so. You should be staying home. You're better off at home than in a hotel in Tokyo burning money because we don't know honestly what the situation's like here either, except that people are out and about. This is the Meguro River area. I'm crossing the street to go over because Lee is guiding me by text to the Starbucks. But I'm not good with directions, so I've probably gone the wrong way. 2021 sounds like a good year for the Olympics. Why not? It's all good. Safety first. You have to worry about you don't have athletes, you don't have games. I think Tokyo realizes that. That's got to be the train for Nakameguro Station, which means that we're like here. Temperature is a little nippy. It's a little chilly. It's about, I don't know, 50. It's getting warmer because we're getting closer to noon. But when I came here, it was very, very windy, and the temperature was, yeah, it was, must have been like, felt like upper 40s. That's Fahrenheit. How come the US doesn't want to get in the metric system? You know, I'm American. Once I started using the metric system, it just was easier. Everything's by tens. You just get it. How many feet are in a mile? I can't even tell you that. Like 5,700 maybe, something like that. 12 inches in a foot. It's weird. 5,200. That's pretty close.

01:14:59 John Daub: This is Nakameguro Station. It does look pretty nice here. I do not see 3,785 milliliters in a gallon. Why do you just use liters? Why do you got to use gallons? It's confusing. Gallon of milk. I can't even, if I put a gallon of milk in my refrigerator, there'd be no refrigerator. It'd just be a gallon of milk in there. Hey, they're schmutz. I like schmutz. Schmutz is, it's got a really good background story where two German guys that moved to Tokyo started making sausages and sold them at Aoyama Market in Tokyo. The sausages were so popular, they were sold. Then they moved from a truck selling them into a restaurant and then got investors and now this restaurant is everywhere. And they invited me to eat at a couple of the restaurants with me and Peter von Gomm and that was a lot of fun. I guess let's go to the other side. Oh wow. I should have came here. This whole area smells like sausages. So this is the Nakameguro area of the Meguro River and there's a lot more people here. I should have came here to start off with. For the thousand people that are joining us still, welcome. The Meguro Station is not the one to go to, although Google Maps has it over on the other side. If PMX, it just got really crowded and I'm not gonna be staying around here too long because I'm practicing social distancing too and I do have a mask on with me, but I'm just gonna try to stay away from the people.

01:17:57 John Daub: Why didn't I come here to begin with? Although I think it was pretty nice where we were. Took me 78 minutes to get to the right area. How dare I? There's even a route for the Meguro River Sakura. They didn't have that the first 78 minutes of this livestream. Was I just in the wrong area for the entire trip? And then Lee directed me to the Starbucks, which then exposed the awful truth. I was in the wrong place. This is a lot more narrow, too, than where I was. People at this, this is the selfie area, too. Looking back, they really love taking pictures of flowers. I'm in the middle of the bridge staying away from people. Oh, he coughed, back away. Wait for five seconds, let it clear the air. Okay, we're good. Yeah, I don't like, there's a lot of people here. So this is Nakameguro area. This is the backside of the Nakameguro River. Meguro River, as I said in the beginning of this livestream, it's five miles long, or about 7.8 kilometers, 4.7 miles, I'd say. And starts in Setagaya. It's not very big at all, but goes, it meanders, sort of meanders between buildings and it's just a concrete canal, more or less. But we still call it the Meguro River. Robert writes in Starbucks in five minutes, you know what, Robert? Battery says 10%. So we're gonna see who holds out the most.

01:20:07 John Daub: This is a trendy neighborhood. There's lots of little shops. And many US chains, cafes and stuff, I'm not talking just about Starbucks and Tully's, but other ones have popped up here too. There's Sabon, which is this hand salt thing. They made me do it once and it really made my hands feel so soft. See that? They have like this sink there. And some lady will go, come on in, guys are welcome too. And they give you these salts. You rub it all over your hands. They go, look, feel your hands. I'm like, whoa, I'm like young again, like 10. Freaky. So then everybody ends up buying it. Once you go into the sink and rub your hands with their salts, you buy it. Especially if you come with Kanae, you have to. It's required. Look at this nice cafe. I guess the next bridge is the Red Bridge. Somebody's reporting that the Starbucks closed. Yeah, thanks a lot. You told me that as soon as I walked 25 minutes in that direction. We're on this side of the river. For those of you that are in Tokyo, make a mental note. We're 40% bloomed here. It'll be a lot more beautiful in about, uh, three days. I'm walking in the center of the road, just avoiding people. It's really hard. It's a game of slalom right now.

01:22:30 John Daub: Treat people. Somebody told me this. You know, just treat people as though that they're infected. This is like, really? Well, he said that's the only way. Somebody more paranoid than me. Just treat people like they're infected. If you have that mindset, you're going to be fine. That mindset doesn't, there's nothing fine about that mindset. And yet, it's not wrong either. Ureshi Pudding. It's a pudding shop. People are attracted to pudding like zombies to a deer, fallen deer. They do have some food stands here. Although the government told them not to. The other day, K-1, which is this, uh, I believe it's a fighting, they had an event at Saitama Super Arena on the weekend. And 7,000 people joined together into a stadium to take part in this event. And the governor of Saitama said, do not do it. And they did it anyways because there's no law saying that they have to not do it. Awful, right? So they made a business decision and had the event. There's a cheese dog. So they had the K-1 fight and it was a business decision, not a health issue. And the prime minister, I'm not gonna get political, but there's no cause of, you know, emergency. So there's no law saying that they can't hold an event for 7 to 10 or 20,000 people. But they did it this weekend in Japan. And I was, people were shocked, including the governor. They couldn't stop them. I saw the people there, they're all young people. And just said they were so happy to be able to go to an event and get out of the house.

01:25:54 John Daub: Let's take a second, just look at a blossom. Let's power up by looking at a blossom. Come on, stand still. Stand still for the camera. Say cheese. Nice. Like a bee, inject myself into the flower. Suck out all the honey. See if we get the 750. Just like. Like flurries are fun. Because you can see the number going up and you are a part of it. Take credit. Somebody says I'm very close. It doesn't feel any closer. I'm down to 5% battery. Which will come first, the end of this live stream or look at the purple truck over there. So there is some kind of festival. They canceled everything. But stuff is still going on. Temperature's about 50 degrees maybe. It's kind of chilly. Chiller than it was a couple days ago. It was the 70s. I do have zip off shorts just in case. My dad said that I gotta get more vitamin D. And you get vitamin D, which is the vitamin D that's good for the immune system. Through in the sunshine. So not wearing like a lot of the sunscreen and letting the sun hit you and you can make, body makes vitamin D. By the way, the manhole covers are cherry blossoms in the city of Tokyo. Just to make that point there. I can't believe we're going to get to 750 likes and have been lost half this time.

01:28:51 John Daub: Is this it? Oh, there it is. I found it. I found it. I got to beat the battery. I found it. I saw a big R. All right, here we are. This is it. Click like if you want me to run faster. We did it. We made it to Starbucks and I don't even know why I wanted to come here because Lee made me. That's pretty massive. This was like a museum. This looks like a museum. R for roaster. Look at the windows, how clean it is. Someone's got to throw a milkshake against the window just to break it up. It's closed. There's nobody inside. It's closed. Closed. Ah, dear valued customer. Yeah, that's too bad. I'm going to go. So you have to stand outside all day and say sorry. It's a shame, but it opens up again on the 29th and it's probably a pretty good idea because I think a lot of it would be pretty crowded. And oh, there's the, is that the red bridge? So the Starbucks is closed. Don't do it. Is that the red bridge everyone was talking about as well? It's nice that Starbucks has some dude outside. Look at the dock. Starbucks has a guy outside to say, sorry. That's very nice. And I said, you, so is it your job to stand out here the whole time? He goes, yeah, he goes, it's cold. I was like, yeah, it is. Funny that he has to stand outside and that's his job. There's one person inside there and I guess he's cleaning the machines or something. Sorry guys. No Starbucks this time.

01:31:49 John Daub: However, I do plan to go live again in about a, it's going to take me like 20 minutes to get back to my bike. When I get close to the national Azabu and the German embassy, I'm going to try to do a live stream in the center of Tokyo. And then maybe later on in the afternoon or tomorrow I'll address the Olympic postponement. I get some information to you about that because I myself am quite curious and I want to get the feeling of how people in Japan feel. Was it such a big deal? Did they think that perhaps it should be canceled as well? Wow, this is so beautiful. Look at this. You try refreshing your screens, everybody. Here's the red bridge of love. You're going to want to refresh for this. This is a hotspot. I got to social distance. Get away this way. Shlalom, shlalom, shlalom. So if you want to write in where you're watching from, I'm going to put it in the chat. You're watching from Austin, Texas. I saw that. Well, this was fun. I was on a mission. I completed the mission. The mission said that they're not open but come back on the 29th. So Starbucks Roastery is closed until the 29th. This is breaking news. Starbucks Roastery is down.

01:34:20 John Daub: But that doesn't mean the whole chain is down. I passed about 20 of them coming here on my bicycle. I'm going to recharge the phone, reset a little bit. I got a ride there. It's about 30 minutes back in that direction. And there'll be another live stream that's a lot, lot shorter and maybe more beautiful. Although I thought that this is pretty nice here. Just make sure you come in by Nakameguro and not Meguro. Something like that. Something that we learned here. Make sure that you're in the Nakameguro and come this way. It's a little bit better for the festival. But they canceled the festival. At night, they have canceled the festival because there's no lights. At night, they usually light it up. So bring your own light. That is a massive Starbucks. I'm telling you right now. It's one, two, three floors. It's three floors. I have some, an announcement coming by the end of the month as well. About the series. What's going on with that. As well as a lot of videos that I've been editing. So that's all coming as well. So there's going to be some big changes. April 1st marks the change in the year in Japan. And so April 1st, there's going to be as many changes as I can possibly do. And get the content up to 4K. I'm pretty excited about 2020 despite what's going on. I hope that you are too. And I do always appreciate you joining me. If you can't make it to Japan, you can with these live streams. And I lost the battery. So I have a, I'm charging it by wire now. Sorry guys. When you go into like an hour and a half, you're going to, you're always going to lose battery. Thanks for watching. By the way, I know her. I used to teach her. That's the Sakura Kiss. I taught her like 10 years ago in English school. Now she's on the billboards here. That's Chieko Kawabe. Looks like she's doing well. That's funny. All right guys, have a good day. See you in 30 minutes or so. We're going to live stream cherry blossoms in the background.