00:00:03 John Daub: What a beautiful day in Tokyo. Over there you can see the Tokyo Skytree, and it was in 1733 that they launched 20 fireworks just down there. I thought this would be a wonderful spot to introduce or update you on the Kickstarter project. We have doubled our goal. Yesterday we achieved a milestone I didn't think we would get—5 million yen, or very close to $50,000—which means that we have fully funded two fireworks festivals to try to spread it around and help the Japanese fireworks industry. Hello. That's nice. At two shows, one of them the Japan Fireworks Festival.

00:00:54 John Daub: The other one is Omagari up in Akita, which will be taking place on October 10th. And the other one is in Katakai in Niigata, tentatively scheduled for October 22nd, but we'll confirm the dates with Honda-san and the group up there. Super exciting to announce this, and I want to go over some of the details. Here's the Kickstarter project from this morning. I printed out the page. As you can see, the total there says 5,072,160. I can't see how many people put in—this is incredible. The total amount of support is 6,168,000 yen, which is over double what we had backed from 644 people with three days to go, which means that you have a chance to get in on this as well. Support starts at just $10. But I really want to send you a postcard—postcards are $15. Then just add in the movie, because the reason why I'm doing this is not just to help the Japan Fireworks Association, but I also want to make a documentary, a bigger project on showing how Japanese fireworks are made, how they're launched, and how people feel about them in Japan, because Japanese fireworks have maybe a somewhat different meaning than in the West.

00:02:17 John Daub: At least that's the way I see it. It's more similar to the cherry blossoms, which I think is how some manufacturers might approach it—I don't know, that's why I'm making this documentary. It's going to be, I reckon, an hour long, but usually they end up much longer. This whole project, I was inspired by something that happened in 1732. We had a famine and a locust infestation, as well as some diseases that wiped out almost a million people. Japan was at peacetime because there were no wars during the Tokugawa Shogunate. They had unified the country, so they had a lot of gunpowder. And in 1733, in the summer, they launched it just over there, maybe a few kilometers down the Sumida River here. And it started what is the Sumida River Fireworks Festival annually. They even had it this year as a surprise. We thought that maybe it would be canceled, but they had a few surprises that were not announced.

00:03:24 John Daub: The reason why a lot of Japanese fireworks this year have been canceled is because of the pandemic. They don't want people to come together, just like in all big organized sporting events—they don't want people to group together. So they had to cancel all of them the entire year. And this is kind of heartbreaking to me as somebody who loves the fireworks. Yeah, that's why we're doing this. And also the fireworks industry this year has lost $4.7 billion—it was just announced in the news. And you can see how much of an economic impact losing the fireworks celebrations was. The fireworks festivals, the hanabi taikai (fireworks displays), $4.7 billion or about 500 billion yen was lost. And that's not just in the manufacturing of the fireworks.

00:04:11 John Daub: I want you to think about this a little bit differently. A fireworks festival has a serious economic impact positively on every single region that has one. It draws in tourism. It sells a lot of food—food stands, entrepreneurs that have vendor stands selling food that they love to produce for customers. They were all pretty much wiped out as well. And they also lost revenue, not just the hanabi makers, but also hotels, tourism in that area for that weekend that was going to take place. So many little things and so many entrepreneurs, so many small businesses were lost this year as a result of it. Now, what we've done—5 million yen is just a drop in the bucket. I think about 4.7 billion dollars. Fifty thousand dollars is enough, but I think it's enough because what I want to do is raise awareness about Japanese fireworks. I think that this is something that is priceless and something that I can do with our platform, try to do some good things and help our community out here.

00:05:17 John Daub: It's such a beautiful view, isn't it? I could stand here all day just looking at that Tokyo Skytree, the largest freestanding tower in the world, 634 meters. Yeah. So I'm going to take you a little bit around this area. You might notice the festival headband—I've been wearing this for a long time. It's part of Japanese festival culture. But yes, there are some similarities to wearing this to another guy. I think I put this on Instagram. It's somewhat similar to Daniel LaRusso. So bright out here that it's at the top brightness—it's crazy. But he was like 27 and I'm 47, so it's not quite the same. Everybody says we look alike. I'm 20 years older than he was at this time. I don't think we look that much alike now. But either way, we both really love Japan and we like fireworks and we like to wear headbands on our heads. So in that spirit, go over there and buy a DVD, buy a download copy of this documentary in the spirit of Daniel LaRusso, Cobra Kai.

00:06:48 John Daub: Here's our event poster. If you do buy a postcard, you'll be getting this pattern on the postcard—it's really cool. Made by our artist Dakota, who did an amazing job at the fireworks in kind of a ukiyo-e (woodblock print) design. And you can see there's Kanae Daub down there on the bridge, and all these people. People here represent you. So next year we might be able to—if we do this again—take requests and add some people who want to help contribute to help the fireworks industry, put that in, put you into this image next year too. Might be something we think about. This year has been just a really tough year for everybody, I think. And that's another reason why I'm doing this. There's a lot of reasons. Can I just say because I just love fireworks? I love fireworks. And this is kind of a childhood dream as well. These are bottle rockets—these are much bigger, like watermelon-sized fireworks. But it's sort of a dream to be able to launch this, isn't it? I mean, who doesn't want to have this power now?

00:07:56 John Daub: Yesterday, somebody, I believe, in Europe bought a star mine, which is $3,000 on the Kickstarter page—which is incredible. I'm so excited about this. I was going to launch one anyways. I'm going to put some of our funds here, maybe even two as we can try to put more manufacturers to work. A star mine creates a lot of work for people—it's a lot of fireworks in one star mine, like a movement of fireworks as a tugboat goes by. I guess this is more interesting to look at than me. Hey, I'm trying to shoot here. Cookie Ninjas in the house. That's accomplished that dream. Well said, Cookie Ninja. Well said. I want a Mission Impossible this and jump on that—is that possible? That would make for a really killer live stream, though highly illegal. It's really cool. Yeah, it's sort of a childhood dream not to jump on this moving platform. I'm not going to do it.

00:09:04 John Daub: Gosh, I got so many reasons why I wanted to do it. One, I love to make videos and tell a story—and this is a great one. Number two, this year kind of stunk, and so this is something to look forward to. Number three, fireworks industry lost so much money this year, and I really love Japanese fireworks—and we got to do something. And this is really raising a lot of awareness. Number four, I just want to fire off some massive rockets, see some cool fire in the sky. And number five, I just started a new channel—you got to make a splash. This is pretty good. And so jumping in this river too—but I'm not going to do that. Hey, don't even write it. Someone's thinking that. I always—you know what? I can see the live stream. I see what you're doing out there. This is the uchiwa (Japanese fan)—uchiwa is a Japanese fan. They have a pattern on the front and the back. We're going to be putting Dakota's pattern, his design on the uchiwa.

00:10:00 John Daub: So the reason why I do it and the reward packs—I want to share a bit of Japanese summer with you. A lot of you couldn't come to Japan this year—it kind of stinks, you had to cancel your trips. So a lot of the people backing actually had trips canceled. So they bought a little piece of Japan. I'm going to be sending family packs—four of these, I believe four towels. Hold on a second. I do have it here for Japanese summer towels, which are this big. And we're going to have the design of the festival on here. Usually you can wear it like this or you can make one of these with your towel. These uchiwa fans. And then I'm going to get a blue sheet—I'm going to put that in the pack too. So you could sit in your living room and watch the video. That's sort of my hope—like if you could sit in your living room and watch the video, the documentary on fireworks and maybe get some food, maybe go to Mitsua or one of the supermarkets and get some food over there. That'd be pretty cool. I would like to see people send me videos of them having their own fireworks festival in their apartments or houses or outside on their balcony or something—that would be pretty epic. And that's what I'm going to be sending to you in those packs, the summer packs. But you don't have to buy those if you don't want to. I'm awful at selling. Just as long as you get the video, I really want to make this. And almost all of the money is going to manufacturers of fireworks. We're just making more fireworks—the more money we make out of this project.

00:12:00 John Daub: It's a pretty statue there. Yeah. Hey, Tony. Hey, how you doing, Tony? Tony Javier Ramirez. Nice to see you here, Jennifer French. You're welcome. And Craig Kawaguchi rocking the emoji. I'm kind of secretly waiting for the space boat as well—I don't see it here. Spaceboat. It does feel like summer. I did a live stream just a few days ago, Midnight Snack Run. This is Kyobashi. The Midnight Snack Run was just down the street over there—that's where I started that midnight snack around the Tokyo Midnight Snack right there at that traffic light. Do you see it? So this kind of connects it. And I'm putting you on Kyobashi. This is a great place to watch the Sumida River fireworks festivals. From this point here, all you see is on the left of the Skytree are fireworks. Maybe you want to be over where we started the live stream, but it is such a beautiful spot.

00:12:39 John Daub: And if you turn around to the other side, we used to be able to see the Kyobashi fireworks there. Every single ward in Tokyo used to have them, but they stopped. It was over there. And you'd be able to see the fireworks between the buildings here. It's a wonderful bridge. And because there's a clearing here on the Kyobashi Bridge because of the river, all the water flowing underneath here, you get a really good, really beautiful view of the flat areas. And this bridge, if you look up, is really scenic. They do a lot of Japanese TV dramas here where they fall in love or they kiss for the first time on the bridge here. Somebody said they do adult movies here as well—I don't believe them, I've never seen that.

00:13:33 John Daub: If you do back shokudama (watermelon-sized fireworks), which is the watermelon size—it's massive. This watermelon-sized number ten fireworks. And by the way, in Tokyo, we can only shoot off, I believe, number three and number four—these are number tens. OK, you'll never see a shokudama being launched in Tokyo—it just doesn't happen. Even the ones that they shoot during the fireworks festival here are number threes and number fours. They just shoot a lot more of them, so it looks bigger. But you can buy a number ten. This is why I like to work with Japan Fireworks Association and Idea-san's company called Idea. I like to work with them because they got access to making these massive fireworks. And next year we're going to see if we could do something even bigger, like break the world record or something—kind of a Mr. Beast-esque goal, but it's something that I think we might be able to pull together.

00:14:30 John Daub: Japan also has a typhoon coming in, folks. So I don't know how much I'll be live streaming this weekend, but you can see it's starting to get cloudy. Some weird rain bands have been coming in—it's not a lot of wind, which is good. I think we can see Tokyo Tower over here if we keep walking a bit. I looked at living in that mansion over there—that mansion is what we call condos or big apartments. But it was so expensive we kind of just laughed and walked away. Took some pictures from the balcony, laugh and walk away. We'll be in touch. I think that's Tokyo Tower—I'm pretty sure we get a view of it from over there. Yeah. The prints are going to be cool. The towel—I don't think that I'm going to put the exact same design that Dakota made on the towel, because I think that's really hard to do and it's too colorful. So we're going to reduce the colors and try to make it classy where you could wear it on your head if you wanted to. But we'll do it in a way that's really good because I'm very much into the design—it's really important. That's the kind of thing with planning these events—the design of stuff is kind of important. So we'll make sure it's a really cool design. Dakota's done such a fantastic job with the poster as well.

00:16:09 John Daub: Hey, Mohammed, welcome to the travelers. Awesome. I see it popping up on the screen. We've had a lot of memberships joining up on Only in Japan Go, which gives you access to our hanabi emoji—which is really cool fireworks emoji. Very awesome. I want to jump in this river—it's so hot. And I'm so excited. I woke up this morning and we passed like five million yen and I started screaming—and that freaked out Kanae a little bit. She does not need to be freaked out either. No one's found the hanabi emoji. Peso skinny look peso—you know, I'm not going to do that. And I think if you jump in, you get swept out into the Pacific. I'll be on my way to Hawaii in no time—and I don't even have my passport. That's where I can dance two and a half years ago. I love this spot. And you can eat a bento here, walk along the riverside—it's a good reason to stay in this area. Actually near, not too far from Nihonbashi. It's about a five-minute taxi ride from where I live to get to Tokyo Station. And the reason why is because I want to be able to jump on a Shinkansen at any time and get to where I want to go, make a show. That's what I do.

00:17:24 John Daub: You have any questions on the fireworks project? I think I covered everything in all the streams. I just wanted to announce that we've hit our goal—we've doubled our goal and we're going to be doing a second fireworks festival, tentatively planned for October 22nd in Katakai. It's a closed festival—I mean, if you're in the area, you'll be able to see it. But we're not inviting anybody to go and watch them because we want to make sure we adhere to—it's not an official event. This is something that's just private for us for streaming purposes. But if you are in the area, you know, you'll be able to see these fired up into the sky. These are shokudama—they're quite big. They kind of make an impact—they're very, very loud too. I'd like to see a—I wish we had the capability to build a new shokudama, which is double the size of the watermelon—which is massive. And then a young shokudama, which is the thumbnail—the thumbnail looks like a small child. It's a pretty big one. The shokudama is the young shokudama is the one that I covered last year—and that is an amazing insanity. Insane invention by Honda-san, who started these largest fireworks in the world kind of discussions. He's been doing the young shokudama for over 30 years.

00:18:37 John Daub: And they didn't start getting into the world record, like trying to make the biggest one until maybe about five or six years ago, seven years ago. Before that, he had a monopoly on the world's biggest firework for ages just because of his insanity and his genius—because a young shokudama, the spread of the fireworks. That's who we're getting to make the second fireworks project—the creator of the young shokudama. And I call him a creator—he calls himself an executive. I call him an artist. I think of him as an artistic executive then because he puts on an amazing fireworks show. And I'm so excited to go out to Katakai again and fire it up in a private show. And now we have the backing and the money to do that. This is Chuo Bridge in the center of Tokyo, going over to Tsukishima. And Tsukishima is right here. And this will take you to Nihonbashi in this direction. This island—this is actually a manmade island. The first manmade island on the other side here called Shinkawa, which was made during the Edo period—they just built in an area and that's Shinkawa. And over here a little bit further, and we have Hachobori, which I did in a live stream about six months ago. It was really great.

00:20:05 John Daub: I'm going to take questions for the next couple of minutes—so hit me with your best shot. I'm going to wax on this. I might paint the fence—it depends on which direction you come at me. But look, I take no mercy and I strike first and strike hard. So you just watch yourselves. You see, no bruises on my face—I get by just fine. Irvine writes in here, what's for lunch? I don't know—bento. Maybe there's some food trucks up here. When do they get rolling on the production? Brendan, I'm going up next week to Omagari in Akita and I'll take you with me in a live stream. I won't film the actual production—I'll save that for the documentary. But I want to film—there's a fireworks museum up there and they're going to start to manufacture it next week, which is awesome. They were just like, when do you want to come up here to film the manufacturing? And I'm like, next week. They're like, OK. So there was that kind of openness—this is why I like to film outside of Tokyo. People are so friendly outside of the city. So I can't wait to get up to Akita and start filming the production of the fireworks festival. This is like happening—it's happening.

00:21:25 John Daub: What happens to the fireworks in bad weather? We are—if they don't go up on the 10th, we'll just do it on the 11th. OK, if it doesn't go on the 11th, we'll do it on the 17th. We'll find a day to make it work. And the same with Katakai—if it rains on the 22nd, we'll do it on another day in October, but it has to be in October. I'm pretty flexible that month and we'll make it work. So rain or shine one way or another, this project—those fireworks that we purchased will get launched. Did Kanae enjoy her MOS Burger? She did, and she told me not to go and get her a new one—she said that's a waste. And she didn't eat the whole thing—she said she wasn't that hungry. I did learn something from Adam Astro Boy—Astro Boy is down in Australia. I met him a few times—great guy. Astro Boy told me the meaning of MOS Burger. M.O.S. stands for Mountain Ocean Sun Burger—M.O.S. Burger, Mountain Ocean Sun. Very interesting. But that was—I thought putting in the nature in the name of your burger—it's a pretty smart thing. MOS Burger—pretty smart. Messy on shirt is not what it stands for—Mountain Ocean Sun. And I stand by that, although it is somewhat messy on shirt.

00:22:54 John Daub: I'm going to walk down here—it's getting windy. Oh, it's going to rain for sure—it's raining right now. I got to take cover. All right. I'm going to get inside. I pretty much said all I wanted to say—I just kind of answered a couple of questions here. Astro Boy is watching as well—awesome. For Tama, welcome to the travelers. Are they shot from those in-ground cannons? David writes, yes—though there's actually for the shokudama, there was a fee and they told me the amount of the production. And then they added on a fee for the launching of it, which was something like $160, I believe. So the cost of actually firing up a shokudama goes beyond just making it. I thought that was really interesting. So these kind of aspects of setting up the fireworks festival, I'm going to be putting that into the documentary and I think it's going to be some really fascinating details on how they put together a festival.

00:24:00 John Daub: Are you streaming from the Skytree? Well, not really—it's over there. It's a beautiful day on that side of the city—not so much on this side. It's like night and day with the typhoon coming through. I was actually going to go down to Nagoya tomorrow or today to film—and that got canceled because of the weather. So I'm not sure when I can go down and film that episode. I was planning—it's a really cool one. The only one I've shared information with is, I think, Simon, who's in Canada now—only he knows what I'm going to be doing down there. Top ultra top secret. He's not in the country anymore, so I can share stuff with him—who's he going to tell? The gamer with more John, your videos bring a smile to my face. A friend of mine passed away—I'm sorry to hear that. We'll try to keep your chin up. And I know that your friend would want you to smile and not be sad.

00:25:17 John Daub: Must obtain spare T-shirt—that's M.O.S. Yeah, I bet I can do a time lapse here. It's like watching paint dry, though, if it's not already a time lapse and you're showing it on video. Weird—still pretty. A good day from Sabre. It looks like we don't have too many questions, which is just OK. Why don't you write in where you're watching from? If you're kind of afraid to comment, that's an easy one—just say where you're watching from. You can do it in the live chat here—this is a live stream. This is an all-mobile live streaming channel. And the new Only in Japan channel is doing quite well. I'm happy with the progress that we've done and a new video I'm working on is Omi beef, the story of the real one. Omi beef was actually considered—I'm filled with this amazing introduction, amazing information that nobody knows about historically. Kobe beef is the brand that everybody knows about internationally. But do you know why? This is what the next story is about—why is Kobe beef so popular and all the other brands nobody knows about? There's a story behind this. I'm putting this into the next Wagyu video that I'm making—it's fascinating.

00:26:39 John Daub: Some of the history of the Wagyu—when I heard the story and I sat down with one of the top Omi beef producers—and Omi beef is one of the three top brands: Matsusaka, Kobe, and Omi. And he told me about the story of Kobe beef and Omi beef and Matsusaka beef, and I sat down for 30 minutes talking to him about it—fascinating. And he gave me the insight into how Kobe became so well known abroad and why it's not as big here in Japan domestically, and it's so big internationally. It's a good story—I think there's so many little stories inside. Jay Jersey girl, Salt Lake City, Utah. Oh, like everyone is writing it. Hey, John, we're looking forward to the new story—give it the new channel. Thank you, Sheryl MP. Jan, welcome—is that Jan or Yan? I always—my friends in Holland, I always call them Jan. One of my best friends—his name is Jan. Welcome to the travelers. He lives in Hoogstraten up in Belgium, but he's Dutch. I think he went down there for tax purposes—maybe I shouldn't say that too loud. Jesse S.K., welcome to the travelers. Also, look, we got everybody from around the world—even Michigan, Australia, Nevada, Edinburgh. This is awesome. Wow—Irvine, California, Brazil, Minnesota.

00:28:32 John Daub: Thanks so much for watching and for supporting this Kickstarter. You still have two days—there's 48 hours left. And because it's based on US time, I think there's an extra like 12 hours because there's a—between here and New York, I think Kickstarter is based in Brooklyn. There's 13-hour difference between here and New York. So there's like an extra 13 hours—even though the sixth comes and passes, it's still going on because it's the time difference. So there's actually like two or three days left. Please get in on this. I don't know if I'll ever show this documentary on the channel—this is something just like the hitchhiking project—I've kind of kept it to the backers. So if you do want to back this, I guarantee you it's going to be an amazing documentary showing you insight onto Japanese fireworks that you've never seen before in 4K. And this is all like 720p—so you see 4K.

00:29:29 John Daub: If you do back a shokudama, there's five people who backed one—we can do an infinite amount, according to Honda-san, who I told you is part madman, part genius. So if you do want a shokudama, you can send me a sticker—you can send me a letter, anything that you want. I will put it on your shokudama and I will send you photographs for social media as well. If you have a company logo you want to put on your shokudama, I will—I will. You can send it to me to the Japan Hanabi Association. We will put your sticker on that shokudama and we will launch it up into the air with your sticker on it. You won't be able to see it because it's moving pretty fast, but it will be on there. And in case filming it with three cameras from three different directions—they'll send you that video. So you'll be able to get your shokudama—and I believe they're sending you a number three or a number four sized real firework shell. They're going to send you, which is really cool. And that comes in the mail—so that's like a keepsake for supporting the Katakai industry there. I'm happy that you get a little extra gift. I don't think I wrote that in the Kickstarter, but there's a—you get a number three, which is like that's the size that they shoot in Tokyo. I believe it says Katakai on it or something—they put a stamp on it or something or they write something in Japanese. It's really beautiful—you can display that in your office or something as well as to remember the moment your firework, your shokudama went up and exploded into the air in Hanabi City, Japan. I believe that's the fireworks town of Japan, Katakai.

00:31:08 John Daub: So I'll work with you and you give your addresses in the survey, which I'll be sending out probably a week after the fireworks. This project has been funded, which is on the 6th of September. So you'll get the surveys with your address and any information to put on this about a week after the project ends and we get funded—because I know that people move locations, so actually it's not good to give the survey too early before you actually start to send the packages. I hope you had a good day. Thanks for joining me for 30 minutes out here on the Sumida River. It's a beautiful place. I love coming and walking this area just like the robins over there or swallows. See if we scare them—will they run away like a bunch of doves? For Kai, hit first—fight. No mercy. That's right. Have a good day, everybody. See you on the other side. I'll be back soon with another live stream. Don't forget to subscribe.