00:04 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Tokyo Station. I'm in the Marunouchi side, in the basement, and I'm about to take you on a very interesting vending machine run. Now everybody knows that Japan is the king of vending machines. They have so many of them for so many different purposes. But sometimes the vending machine is more than just a drink dispenser. This is a typical vending machine. This one is a Sapporo Breweries company, so you only see the drinks made from Sapporo beverages, which includes corn soup, honey lemon drinks, some canned coffee, tea, and a lot of drinks that most Westerners have never even seen before, including the waters of Mount Fuji.

00:45 John Daub: But I'm about to take you to another vending machine that has a completely different purpose, in a way. Hi everybody, how you doing? Every couple of weeks we get in the news here about some new vending machine that has popped up somewhere around the country. This one just happens to be in my hometown of Tokyo, and it introduces you to a completely different place in the country. So the purpose of this is more than just dispensing drinks, at least in my opinion. Here it is right here. All of these get into the news and generate a lot of media attention. And sometimes that is the purpose of the vending machine. It's not so much to dispense drinks. In fact, some of these vending machines aren't around very long. In about two, three months, they're gone. They've lost that buzz.

01:55 John Daub: And right here, in between Yurakucho and Tokyo Station, there's an underground corridor. It's a labyrinth. You could actually walk underground all the way from Ginza to Tokyo Station. It's massive. This is a hard vending machine to find. But it's right there. It actually took me about 15 minutes to find it. This here in front of us is an apple vending machine. Not an apple... sorry, an apple juice vending machine. And the purpose of this is to promote the apple industry up in Aomori Prefecture, up in Tohoku. And they have here a Sekai Ichi drink, the golden apple. Look at that in the middle. So this one is 300 yen and conveniently all sold out. But around it, to the left and the right, different kinds of apples. This is a Jonathan Gold apple juice. These are all Aomori Ringo from Aomori Prefecture up in the north. These are Toki, a green apple, which I think it's got a really fresh taste. We're going to try this. And then there's the Fuji apple.

03:08 John Daub: The Fuji apple has no relationship to Mount Fuji. Actually, it's a green apple. It comes from Fujisaki, which is a town up in Aomori. So no relation to the volcano that everybody knows and loves. And in the middle here, they make it kind of almost like a jewel, right? 300 yen for that. Unfortunately, they're both sold out. But that doesn't mean that we can't try all of them. I have here an IC card. So let's go in here for the Jonathan Gold first. And we're going to get a chance to compare them all. So first, push the button. Touch your IC card. We have a Jonathan Gold, which is red in color. But the great thing about this vending machine is you get a chance to try several different kinds of apple juice. Apple juice is not just apple juice. And by the end of this, I'm going to want to jump on a train and go to Aomori. I'm going to want some apples, like that little girl down there that's considering which apple juice to buy. It's not an easy task. It's like going into a cafe, a coffee shop, and then deciding from a menu of 200 drinks. Except here, there's only five.

04:26 John Daub: Now, there are five other apple... There's another apple juice vending machine in a different area of the city. This one just happens to be not that far away. So I'm going to go to the corner here. Jonathan Gold. We're going to compare them all. A little bit more sour. Definitely sweet, but more tartiness to it. A little bit of an acidic taste to this Jonathan Gold. All right, next up. I hope they're all not sold out, too. We're going to make a little collection here. Let's try here the Toki. Toki is a green apple. All right, let's try the Toki here. I guess you could say I'm kind of like Johnny Appleseed. I'm laying my seeds of plastic pet bottles on the ground here. And these are varieties of apples in Aomori.

05:54 John Daub: Wow, it does smell different. Jonathan Gold was very tarty and acidic. This one is so smooth, very subtle sweetness to it. It tastes like they'd added sugar to it, but they didn't. An amazing amount of sweetness, almost no tartiness to it. Tartiness is this slight acidic taste that you get from certain apples. This one, you don't get that. Very clean, very crisp. Smooth. People are queuing up for it because it's been in the news recently. All right, next up is the Fuji apple. All right, next up we're going Fuji. The Fuji apple. 100% straight juice. These machines are popular. Fuji apple. A little bit slight tartiness to it, but nothing like the Jonathan Gold. Definitely sweet, but the Toki was much, much, had more of a sugary taste to it. So this is a good balance between tartiness and sweet. This is probably the normal apple juice that I would drink.

08:14 John Daub: I think I'm going to have to give it to the Jonathan Gold. Here, I put all three of them down here. There they are. I think the Jonathan Gold is the winner for me. I just like that tartiness to it. It's unique and it's worth the money. And this machine got me to buy about $5 worth of drinks. We can take a look inside. Oh, you can see it's like mostly sold out. Very popular, this machine is. So because they made something unique, it got in the news. And I was here about 20 minutes ago and saw a steady stream of people picking this machine over the machine next to it. We've now been exposed to Aomori apples. And we now learned one very important fact about the apple capital of Japan is Aomori. And if you want good apple juice, think Aomori. And by making a vending machine like this, they were able to successfully market their apple juice in so many media outlets for free.

10:18 John Daub: You see, a vending machine is more than just a vending machine. A vending machine is a marketing tool that you can use to promote a good or a service. It doesn't have to be just for drinks. What it does is if you make it unique and special, people will come and flock at least for two or three months. And you get a marketing tool that pays you back. It is genius. So I'm thinking seriously to get an Only in Japan vending machine. It's a gimmick. Right? It works. So I've got to get an Only in Japan vending machine. We're going to have to sell our t-shirts from the vending machines. Vending machines run about 15 to $25,000 depending on what it is. And it can be quite an amazing tool.

11:26 John Daub: Dudes, they got the, they're going to refill it with the Aomori gold. This is the world's best one. This is the 300 yen one. This is the one I've been waiting for, but they're all sold out. How did we get so lucky? So one guy is the, one guy takes the money and the other guy refills it. It was sold out for the whole time I've been here and now just happened in the middle of the live stream. They've got the good stuff. We're going to bonus time. I'm going to go and grab one of those 300 yen apple juices. This is the best of the best. Marty says go for the gold. I'm going for the gold guys. Look, the Olympics might not be on this year, but right now it's the Apple Olympics. And I'm going for the Aomori gold. And look, it looks like he's filled. I see the gold. Do you see it? Right there in the middle. That's the gold.

14:10 John Daub: In about one minute, I'll be standing on the podium, folks. With gold. I never thought that refilling a vending machine would be this much fun to watch for me. Kanae's got three of them. Right there. Now I'm going to buy Kanae new ones. I'll be drinking those. I'll be drinking these on the way home. Apples are full of sugar, you know? Like good sugar. If there's good sugar and bad sugar, apple has the good sugar. They say that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. What about apple juice? Does that apply to apple juice too?

15:28 John Daub: I think in the future they might have robots doing this job. Is this kind of creepy that I'm just waiting here? Hurry up, dude. I'm going to be the first one. Go for the gold. So many things are going through my mind. I still like that Jonathan Gold because I like that tartness. It bites you. This one is so smooth. And but there is some tartness to it, but tastes fresher. Maybe it's because I paid more for it and it had better taste fresher. I would say that this is probably very similar to the Fuji apple. The Fuji Apple is very similar to the gold. However, it doesn't taste as clean. It's not as clean tasting as the Aomori gold one. So there's a difference. So this Sekai Ichi Aomori Ringo, it just tastes cleaner. The Fuji one tastes like it was inside of a carton apple. It's like a drink box. There's like a paper taste to it or there's something there that kind of messes around. It's not as clean. But the 300 yen one has very, very clean taste. I don't know if it's worth an extra 40% more, but if they did have chanting when you bought it, then I would happily pay it over and over again. They should have some sort of chanting when you upgrade. I would upgrade more if there was chanting and angel music or something.

21:51 John Daub: So there you have it for 20 minutes. We've been talking about vending machines. I drank the one that's in the jewel box and you can too, if you live in Japan, come out to these vending machines. There's two of them apparently, and they might be increasing. There is limited numbers and they press it with what they do put on like whiskies, right? Like limited whiskies and letters from the emperor of Rome have these wax seals on them. And now apple juice from Aomori has these wax seals on them limited. If you want to save some money, you can get some apple juice from here. This is the Asahi apple juice. I gotta get out of here. People are staring at getting trouble.

23:40 John Daub: How do you even get out of here? Like trapped in here? The only way to get out of the Tokyo Labyrinth is to go up. This I believe is the Marubiru in the Marunouchi side. So now you know how to get here. Yeah, there's the Marubiru building. And there's Tokyo Station in the distance, that brick building. Oh, if you go up to the fifth floor, you get a really nice view. The Apple Store, by the way, just out of humor, as a man who just chanted. There's an Apple Store right there. Should we ask the Apple employees if they've had the apple juice downstairs?

25:50 John Daub: All right, next up, I'm going to be taking you over here. Right in that building. I want to say a big thank you to Mate in Hungary. Mate, there's a postcard coming right at you. A picture of me in a wild onsen. It's pretty awesome. So thanks for signing up yesterday. This is going to be really crowded with people because of the iPhone 12? This is the new one in front of the Marunouchi side. They have procedures to get in there. Color coded. Apple employees have special masks, I heard, too, designed by Apple. Next week or like in 10 days, I'm going actually back up to Tohoku and one of the places I'm slated to go to is an apple farm. So this could be an episode of good things to come with apples. Maybe I can have some apples, cider, or even cider, which is UK for like alcoholic drink beverages from a pub.

27:42 John Daub: I'm going straight into the, okay, let's go to the post office. Gotta drop this in. Typhoon has left us. We do have some blue skies here. For those of you who can't join us or coming to Japan yet. Yeah, this channel is for you. I'll be taking you all around. I'm planning on going to Nagoya at the end of the week. That's the plan anyways. I gotta finish up an episode that I couldn't finish last week when we drove down there. And I might do a stay in Nagoya City and then at night do another Nagoya City livestream. This is one of the places people had requested in a poll for travelers and insiders on the channel. You could vote on places that you thought were interested and Saitama somehow won. Alright, this is going from the main post office here. Here's the box. So, Mate in Hungary, your postcard just left from Tokyo Station. Very cool. Much appreciated for the support.

29:04 John Daub: I'm so psyched. I'm so appled up from apple sugar. But, we did it. We got four kinds of apple juice. And the winner is, for me, the Jonathan Gold. Cost performance, totally the winner. The tartness, you really feel it and you remember it. The other one's refreshing. Just depends what you want. But this one, this is the Aomori Ringo Sekai Ichi. And this juice is made exclusively from apples grown in Japan's Aomori Prefecture. And is 100% pure apple juice. Straight juice. You can get information aorin.or.jp. Nagoya John has a comment. Nagoya rocks. You know, Nagoya John, I agree with you. I used to live in Nagoya. I lived in Fuji-gaoka. And I also lived in Kasugai. I lived in Okazaki and Toyohashi. And I did a little bit of time in Ichinomiya and Yokkaichi. So I know my Nagoya and Mikawa very well. It'll be nice to be down there in Nagoya a little bit. Just to film this. And I gotta be back up because I got a lot of traveling. Back up to Aomori. Gosh, I can't wait to get back up to Tohoku too. It's nice and cool up there.

31:12 John Daub: So there you go. Apple vending machine in the basement of the Marubiru. Any last questions? Thanks so much for watching. Give me a thumbs up if you like vending machine videos. I got a couple other really cool ones that I found outside of the city center. Although the purpose of this live stream was just to show you that vending machines are not just for dispensing services. They're also media grabbing attention, getting things, machines. And sometimes they'll be around for just two, three months and they'll go away and you'll never see them again. And the reason why? Because they were here to grab your attention. Just like Aomori Ringo's did today.

33:10 John Daub: And tomorrow, what's it going to be next? A pizza vending machine? A crepe vending machine? Actually, those are pretty nice. But vending machines at Haneda Airport are, there's tons of them now. And they all kind of promote the regional areas of Tokyo at the international destination. So, I think that when the Olympics start and since the Olympics were announced, I've seen more and more regional vending machines. There's been vending machines from Mie Prefecture down here. There's been vending machines from Aomori Apples were in packages before. There's the banana vending machine, but that's for promoting eating bananas to Tokyoites. Not so much for getting a banana, but for promoting the banana industry to the Japanese here to eat more bananas. And it worked because a lot of media focused on that vending machine and bananas got a pretty good push. All of a sudden, I wanted to eat a banana. I actually ate a banana. I ate a lot of bananas.

34:09 John Daub: By the way, I'm going up to Tohoku to eat mushrooms. So, I'll be there for eating mushrooms in about two weeks. You'll see a lot of mushrooms. It's going to be a lot of fun. And I love Japanese mushrooms. When I first came to Japan, I got freaked out. What are all these mushrooms? I've never seen most of these before. I thought some of them might have been like poison mushrooms. Like, why would they sell these in the stores? What's up with that? You know, what's with these little stringy mushrooms and mushrooms that look massive? You know, why are these mushrooms $30? I had a lot of questions when I came here. So, hopefully, I can answer that in a mushroom episode. Watch out for the $30 mushroom. Matsutake, I believe they call that. And Matsutake are, they're like the top mushrooms because they're very aromatic and great with, inside of rice and cooked. Adding a very good accent to the food. I'm going to show you all kinds of mushrooms. Enoki, Matsutake, Eryngii. The ones that are called just mushrooms, I believe, are just those white mushrooms that look like the ones from Super Mario Brothers.

36:58 John Daub: We'll figure it out. All right, folks. Thanks so much for watching. I got to go tomorrow. I have another livestream. And I'll be taking you to new areas of Japan over the next couple of weeks as fall gets underway. So do the fall foods. I'm pretty excited about that. Later, gator. Matane.