00:00:00 John Daub: How you doing everybody? Good evening. It is now three in the morning, a little bit after 3:05. I can't sleep because I've been working on a video and I just wanted to thank everybody for the really wonderful birthday wishes. Gosh, I received so many messages and I can't respond to all of you, but yesterday was my birthday—actually two days ago now that it's already the 10th of February. And just the outpouring of warm wishes from all around the world really made me happy. So this live stream is for all of you because I'm going to be sharing with you the cake that Kanae and I ate on my birthday that I couldn't show you because we wanted to have a really quiet party and I was really exhausted. And also discuss something very important.

00:00:48 John Daub: This is a very important live stream. Look, Japanese food, Japanese chefs make some really amazing food in this country. It is some of the best in the world. You cannot complain. But when it comes to just birthday cake—I'm not talking about everyday cake. I'm talking about birthday cake—they stink. I've never had many very good Japanese birthday cakes. Do you want to know why? They're just whipped cream and cake. It's not even sweet enough for my American palate. I honestly think there's no butter in the icing. It's just one big complaint on my part. And it's just shocking to me because everything else in Japanese cuisine is fantastic. Right? And when it comes to confections, again, don't get me wrong.

00:01:51 John Daub: Before this live stream, I went to the convenience store and I got some snacks. This one's from Lawson's. Lawson's is having some kind of Godiva (ゴディバ, luxury chocolate brand) thing going on here. And this is from 7-Eleven. They didn't have any normal cake. They just had this mille crepe cake. So like, you know, they do cakes pretty interesting even at the convenience store. Oh, and by the way, this is the Godiva beef curry pan (カレーパン, curry bread). And maybe if you're lucky, I'll eat this today, but I might eat it tomorrow. It's weird, right? This luxury brand. I'm making a beef curry pan bread. It's weird. But so when Kanae asked me, what do you want for your birthday? I just said I wanted American butter icing cake. And I did get a good cake.

00:03:12 John Daub: This is the cake that Kanae got me. Check this out. Hey, you're to the Ron. Thanks. Was the 7-Eleven strawberry sando better? It was. It wasn't any competition. It was like hands down. Look at how fancy this is. This is cake. You can just see how buttery the icing is, right? Cause you got these perfect smoothing of the icing. And I ate the flowers, but look, there's even these silver jimmies on there. That is style. And she ordered this cake from Hokkaido for me. So they had to deliver this in a—it was frozen and thawed out for a couple of days. Icing is gross. If you eat too much of it, then you run around the house like a kid until you throw up. Done that before. But you know what? It was a really good cake.

00:04:44 John Daub: Has anybody else had Japanese cake and had the same problem as me? Is it just me? When it comes to American cakes in Japan, there was a bakery in Asakusa. There was this big bakery called Angelus [?]. I think it was Angelus. It was around for decades. I'm talking like since the 1950s. It was like a long-serving Western cake shop. They had the best frosting icing. They went out of business just before the pandemic. And that was one of the biggest shocks of my life when we lost that. And I had just introduced Peter von Gomm to that shop. And I remember one time he sent me a picture. He goes, look what I got today. And I was jealous. He got these butter icing cakes from Angelus [?]. I don't even know how you say it. I just remember where it was. That's where I used to get my birthday cake.

00:06:06 John Daub: One of the other reasons I'm doing this live stream—I know it's like 3:15 in the morning—is because I'm about to release a new episode on the main channel. It's about yuzukosho (柚子胡椒, yuzu pepper paste). I went down to Kochi. It's about 16 minutes long. And after this live stream is finished, I'm going to release it. So you are all privy to this information. All 460 of you. I'm going to try this and guess what? I got two. One of them is for Kanae and one is for me. So I'm going to let Kanae have hers and we're going to eat this together. And then I'm going to have a piece of this cake for dessert. How about that? This is the Godiva. And I think somebody on Discord really wanted to see this. This is from Godiva. This is a beef curry bread. If you like this, click the thumbs up. Let's see if we can get to 500 likes by the end of this.

00:07:37 John Daub: This is the cake that Kanae got me for my birthday. It was kind of expensive, she said. And it tasted it too. See how like the crust, the icing actually is butter. It's actually butter. It's not quite the same, but it was pretty good. Kanae is, of course, she's sleeping. Just don't wake her. You gotta keep it down. That's more butter than icing. It's like just butter and cake. This is a De'Longhi from Italy or something. So hey Sakura, happy belated birthday, John. Thanks for this late live stream. You got it. Appreciate that. Tony's here with us. Oh, I smell the chocolate. Tony, I'm up because I've been editing the video. I just put it on Patreon and actually, if you're an insider, you can see the video now. I put it on the community tab for insiders on YouTube. So all the supporters there can go and watch the new episode right now if you wanted to. But as soon as we finish this, I'm going to release it to everybody because I want to do that before I go to bed.

00:10:16 John Daub: Does anybody know what this is called? This is actually a citrus fruit. This is called kinkan (金柑, kumquat). A lot of these come from Kochi Prefecture, but it's a bite-sized orange, right? It's pretty insane. You can eat the skin. When I first got these kinkan, I actually was peeling these because I'm like, how do you peel it? This isn't worth it, so I stopped buying these. And then I saw some guy just eat it like this, and I said, wow, that makes sense, and it's really good. Mm, they're really good. Yeah, you eat the peel. It's crazy, right? So you wash it, you eat the peel, and you just spit out the pips. It's pretty cool. And after I found out that you eat the peel, it started to make sense on why these things are being sold, because if you peel it, there's not a lot of fruit in there. The peel is actually not bitter. The peel is actually sweet, and it has this really unique citrus sweetness to it. And the meat of the peel, or the rind, it's very pleasing. It's hard to explain, but when you start to eat these, they become like a snack, little citrus things that look like cherry tomatoes. It's pretty good.

00:12:22 John Daub: All right, I think this is done. This is the Godiva beef curry, and it's nice and crispy, but so hot. Three, two, one. Hot, hot, hot. So in Japanese, we call this Godiva (ゴディバ). In America, it's Godiva. In Belgium, I don't know what they would call it. The weird thing about this is, it's beef curry. All right, let's open this up here. Oh, it's nice, and it's actually really perfect right now. Boy, it was so weird. The curry inside there. You see that? I wonder if it tastes like chocolate. It does. It has a chocolatey smell. All right, let's try it. It's not a chocolate donut. It's a curry, beef curry inside. Okay, good. So actually, there was a nice crunch to it. You know, chocolate doesn't have to be sweet. This is a bitter chocolate. That works really good. So it's a bitter chocolate bread with some crunch. It has some oil to it, which is good. It's a donut, pretty much. But the beef curry is pretty good, too. This is on the expensive side. This is almost $3 for one of these. Interesting.

00:15:20 John Daub: Yeah, I'm not gonna eat the whole thing. I'm saving it for tomorrow morning, because at 3 o'clock in the morning, you don't want to eat a lot of carbs. It's a midnight bite. Pretty good, right? It's weird. It's got beef, wheat, egg, milk, soybeans, and chicken. And beef. Yeah. Interesting. I probably should have just made an episode on this, because until I go out and travel a little bit later on at the end of the week, there's not a lot of stuff for me to do, like Lego building and stuff. Eat at home. That's all I really kind of have. I don't have too much more to say. I'm just really appreciative. I just wanted to say thank you to everybody for all the amazing birthday wishes. And it kept going on. And now I'm getting belated birthday wishes. So I just want to say thank you to everybody in the community on Discord, on Patreon, Instagram, Facebook. I got so many messages. That's gonna take me forever to respond to. And if I don't, I do apologize. I'll probably just give you like a little heart like or something.

00:17:27 John Daub: Tomorrow, I'm probably gonna do the Lego, which is gonna be a lot of cool. I'm gonna put together the city of Tokyo in Legos. And on Friday, I'm going up to Akita. And I'll be there until Saturday. And I'm going to the Akita Inaka School just to check it out and see what are they doing during the pandemic. I got invited to film at the festival in Akita. And I think it's a lot safer now. But because I'm invited, it's work. I can go up there and film it. But I'm really interested to see this festival because it's one I've been wanting to go to for a very long time. And I'll bring that to you live here on Only in Japan Go. So if you're subscribing, you're gonna come with me to Akita on the weekend. And something to look forward to, I think. Especially if you're at home and waiting for this pandemic to end. Other than that, there's not too much more to talk about. Do you have any questions before I cut out this live stream and release the video? Which you probably can see if you're already an insider. Any questions? You always have to ask the class. You gotta raise your hand.

00:18:54 John Daub: What would you rate the Godiva bun? Out of a scale of 1 to 10, it's probably a 6.8. Because I've had some really good curry pan. But the Godiva chocolate and the bizarreness of it gives it that 1.8 extra. I can't give it 2. It's pretty good. Isn't a kinkan an oval kumquat? I don't even know what a kumquat is. Happy belated birthday from Denver. Wow. I've never been to Denver. Can you make about Akihabara and retro gaming stuff? John, I made a video on retro gaming about three years ago in Takadanobaba. Maybe I'll go back, see if there's some new games. But it's very hard to get access to film inside of the retro game arcades. You have to pay for the arcades legally. You have to ask for permission. A lot of the arcades say no, and some of them allowed me to, but you had to pay in order to get access to film. So the arcade that I filmed, I had to pay them an hourly fee, which made sense. Because I'm kind of like renting the place to be able to film it. Although people, customers are still coming in. They just wanted a little kickback, I guess.

00:20:34 John Daub: Time to find your own cake recipe. I know. I don't think it's very hard to make your own icing. I'm just lazy, maybe. You know, Costco has pretty good cakes, actually. But I think the quality of the milk and the butter that they use is just not quite the same. And I always get kind of a stomachache. Maybe it's not the ingredients. It's just that I eat too much of it. Do you think that could be it? Yeah, I tend to, if you get a tub of tiramisu or a cake that's this big, you tend to eat like two or three pieces, a little bit more than that. Japanese cheesecake is pretty good. But I saw this at the supermarket today and it was even 5% off, which is a little plus, from the Cheesecake Factory. And I noticed that Japanese don't like it. It's too heavy. But Kanae, I met Kanae in New York, so she likes the New York cheesecake. So we got this for dessert. But I had the birthday cake. The problem with the birthday cake was that the baker put rum in it. There's a little bit of rum in it. And Kanae doesn't drink any alcohol. She has an allergy, so she couldn't have it. So I ended up eating my cake and I ate it too. Because she gave me her piece. I had all the cake actually. It's kind of like the perfect birthday really. Like if they give you cake and you get to keep the cake. And nobody else eats it. It's kind of like a dream come true.

00:22:24 John Daub: Oh, I saw melon pan at 7-Eleven. It was Nintendo melon pan. They had like Super Mario like bread at 7-Eleven. If I don't do this, Tabi Eats is going to do it. Because Tabi Eats is all over the convenience store food. You just see like, they've done like two weeks straight of convenience store food. And I got to tell them just to take it easy. Because that stuff is, they got to do some more home cooking. I love those guys. I'm probably going to go over there and maybe, they got like Super Nintendo. And they got like weird collaboration bakery foods. That's an episode. I'm going to do that. Alright, maybe I'll do that tomorrow and put the Lego onto the side for a little bit. We're going to do like Japanese convenience store collaborative like bakery items. Because Lawson's has one. And 7-Eleven has one. And Family Mart has a bunch of stuff too. Like weird stuff in Family Mart. And I went into Family Mart and I couldn't find white cake. They only had like weird stuff. So I think that might be a lot of fun. I think the caffeine from the chocolate bread is starting to hit me. Alright guys, that's all I really had. I just wanted to say thank you for 23 minutes and 59 seconds. This is insane. Now I'm going to go over there and release the video.

00:24:04 John Daub: Actually, I can tell you some information. So you can see. Do you see this right here? So I was filming myself, okay? Because I filmed myself to do the thumbnail. So I photoshopped the thumbnail. So I'm going to show you right now. This is my desk here. That's my web camera. I do the narration there. So this is the thumbnail. Alright, you see this? And I totally faked it. See that? I even faked. I even put an extra. Use it in the corner because it's just more pleasing. It's awful, right? And then I made the yuzu bottle bigger. Do you see that? Totally fake Photoshop. I even like touched up my face and gave me like a healthy glow. It's pretty bad. It's like cheating. And then I took a picture of a piece of wagyu with yuzukosho. And I photoshopped that too because everybody likes wagyu. Pretty cool, right? And I've been using these. You can kind of see in the background here. So in that layer, I just put it in the multiply here. You can kind of change the. So this is the layer. See it's on multiply. So if I change it back to normal, it turns there, right? Pretty cool. Having a good thumbnail is very important.

00:26:09 John Daub: This is actually the YouTube video and I'm about to release it right now. So any of you going to go over to the Only in Japan YouTube channel and I'm going to release it right now. You ready? Ready? Oh, hey, it's me. YouTube studio. Here it is. Content. All right. Here we go. The video is unlisted right now. Do you see that? We're going to change that to public. Oh, yeah. I don't want to do that instant. No, I'm just going to release it. Private public. There you go. All right. You ready? You ready? All right. Hold on a second. If I release this. All right. You go in there and you have to leave a comment because the comments there's 700 people watching. Just go in there and leave a comment. If we can get like 200, 300 comments, just write anything like, oh, I want to eat yuzukosho in the morning on English. I'm going to eat the English muffins with an egg. Just like whatever. Just write something in there about the video or encourage me or say something. Tell me a joke. Keep it clean. You can make it viral. Our community can totally do that. If we can do this, then we can do anything.

00:27:58 John Daub: All right. Let's do this. Are you ready? Look at that. Three, two, one. It's totally public right now. It's public. Did you get the notifications? Anybody get the notifications? This is my... Shh. Can I sleep? Pretty good, right? Can I sleep in? This citrus fruit harvested in Kochi Prefecture has turned into the greatest condiment you'll ever eat. Inside this little bottle is a world of... That's me. This is the story. We'll follow it from the factory to table. Move over, Ketchup. It's time for yuzukosho. I made that in Photoshop, too. Isn't that exciting? Exciting? It's pretty cool. So go ahead and take a look at the new video. Leave me a comment. Please leave me a comment. The best thing you can do is, of course, share it. But let's see if we can make this thing just a little bit more viral than it would get to. Who knows what'll happen? The great thing about YouTube is you work really hard. You release the video. You don't know what's gonna happen, right?

00:29:18 John Daub: Oh, here's the birthday card I got from Kanae. That's nice. I put it right next to my desk here. Yum. So go in there. Leave me a comment. Thanks so much for watching. And just once again, thank you so much for the birthday wishes. This has probably been the best birthday that I've had in many, many, many years. And I think with everything being kind of crappy out there, it's nice to have just a little bit, like, a special day. And for me, it was that day. It's not two days ago because it's the 10th. But thank you so much for making it really special to all of you in the community. I'll see you on Discord. I'm gonna start to promote the heck out of this video. So I'll see you again tomorrow, probably for a bakery run. Because that Super Mario bread looked really interesting. Bye, everybody. Oh, Spike021. Pro moves. Thanks, John. Or thanks, Spike. I forgot to thank everybody for the Super Chats. If you did give a Super Chat, I'm really sorry if I missed it. Hey, I'm like touching the screen. Nothing's happening. This happened yesterday with Peter von Gomm and I. It's like four in the morning. All right. I'll get you back on the other side. Thanks. Air to the wrong. I saw that. Thanks for all you do, JD. I'm ready for the yuzu and cake. Go get them. See you tomorrow.