00:00:00 John Daub: Welcome to Tokyo at midnight. That's a 7-Eleven. I've been searching convenience stores for the last hour looking for something in particular. How you doing everybody? Welcome to Tokyo at midnight. Just the other day I was in Don Quijote— if that constitutes a supermarket—and I saw one of the most unique snacks I've ever seen. Japan is very trendy. They have all sorts of flavors, especially with Kit Kats. But check this out. This is Calbee, basically the Frito-Lay potato chip maker of Japan: blueberry-flavored potato chips. It's totally bizarre, which is so awesome.

00:01:06 John Daub: But wait—this is not just blueberry flavored. This is blueberry gum flavored (blueberry gum aji). It comes in this Lotte gum called Blueberry, which you've had since the 1980s. I remember it was around when I came, and recently I've been having trouble finding it at stores. I can't find it anywhere—this gum—because I wanted to compare the potato chips to the flavor of the gum. You can't find it anywhere; it's really hard. They used to have mangosteen gum—really unique flavors. Mangosteen is one of my favorite fruits in the entire world; you can only find them in Southeast Asia. But we're gonna try this tonight. We need to get a drink with it. Now, 7-Eleven, FamilyMart, and Lawson—none of the convenience stores had the gum I was looking for, but we're still gonna eat the potato chips because it's a midnight snack run, and we do this kind of stuff all the time.

00:01:59 John Daub: Alright, there's two really bright vending machines over there, so let's get something out of that to drink—no caffeine. Hey, new comer, welcome new traveler, welcome to Tokyo. Alright, what we got here? A lot of Boss coffees—they still have them because we're still coming out of winter. I guess it's spring now, but you can see they still have the hot coffee. In a couple of months, these are going to change to just all cold because in the summer months nobody drinks hot coffee out of the vending machine except for me because I like my coffee hot. This one looks promising: Mountain Dew. Hold on guys, I'm ready to go. I think I'm gonna go with this each ego milk—this seems to go with the blueberry potato chips. So let's go with strawberry milk. They got these mini bottles of water—it's weird; this is so cool. Suntory makes strawberry milk with real milk, one percent strawberry juice. Well, you can't expect 100% for a dollar. This will go great with my blueberry potato chips. What do you think? It is midnight—actually, it's 2 a.m. in Tokyo. I'm still up because I was editing video.

00:03:45 John Daub: Speaking of still up, the cherry blossoms right there are still up. That's pretty amazing. You can see the green leaves are starting to pop through. I got a light so we can take the light and get a better view. Oh, this is nice. I once did a midnight snack run right here. So I guess let's sit right here on the bridge—that corner looks a little bit creepy. This is my favorite bridge.

00:04:36 John Daub: Alright, the blueberry chips. It's so quiet for Tokyo. I saw the press release on this about three months ago and I couldn't find it anywhere. And recently, Don Quijote, they had cases of them. I guess nobody wanted to buy them because it's blueberry gum flavored chips. Japanese don't open the chips from the top like this—they open it from the back of the potato chips. Before I do that, let me show you this because this could be for historical reference—this did exist. The blueberry gum is a flavor that came—it says on the back here since 1982, Lotte has been making this blueberry gum. I can't find it; it's a long seller. So they wanted to do something to commemorate it. They took the flavor from the blueberry gum and made it into chips. This is not blueberry flavored—it's blueberry gum flavored. There's a QR code. Look at the ingredients: jagaimo (potatoes). I don't see anything suspicious. There's some blueberry-flavored powder—I guess that's what gives it the taste. So I'm looking forward to eating this. It expires in August. Potato chips, blueberry gum flavored—it's pretty cool. And there's the Calbee mascot.

00:06:30 John Daub: Alright, let's give it a go. Japanese open it from the back like this because then it's wide and everybody can get some. People coming—I can smell the blueberry taste. Oh my gosh, this smells so much like blueberry. The smell of the blueberries is crazy because when I open it up, it just wafted into my nostrils. It's confusing to me. Hey, Peter von Gomm, when are we going to get salt and vinegar flavored gum? Good point. We've already established it smells very much like blueberries—and you know what? It's not the natural blueberry smell. It's like the candy blueberry smell—it's different. Do you remember the slushies? Like slushy had a blueberry flavor that was really blue. And it smells like that blueberry, not the natural blueberry, but the blueberry slushy blueberry. So I guess that's why it's gum. I like it—it's not chewy. Somehow they've been able to take that flavor and put it in chips and it works. This is mind-bending.

00:08:43 John Daub: You ever have sweet potato chips before? Royce chocolate makes them—if you ever come to Japan, Royce chocolate from Hokkaido. It's a very famous chocolate maker. They dip the potato chips in there—they're really expensive, really well-made chocolate. The saltiness and crispiness of the potato chip and the thicker potato chips with that super milk chocolate—it's wonderful. This though—it's like two worlds colliding. It's like my childhood taste of blueberries and that delicious, crisp saltiness of potato chips. It's sweet. I got to get me some more of these because I don't think it's going to be around much longer.

00:09:40 John Daub: Alright, I want to find out if there's powder on it. So I brought a light here because I figured it's going to be hard to see out at midnight. Get the light on—oh, it's like the battery died. It's a $200 light—sorry. Smartphone—this is my smartphone. I want you to squint your eyes and see if you can see any powder on there. I don't know—there is some powder. I don't see any blue powder though.

00:11:32 John Daub: Alright, let's try the Ichigo milk. Let me know if someone's sneaking up on me because I want to check to see if they have a weapon. Ichigo milk—this smells like real strawberries. This is really good too. This is a pretty good milk—it's strawberry milk from Suntory. It's not sweet, which is great—they didn't add a lot of sugar to it. It's basically strawberry with about 1% strawberry juice and the milk is 2.2% fat. Because Japan has actually like 3.8% or 4% fat milk is typical. In the U.S., it's hard to find anything over 2% unless whole milk. This is really good—this goes great with it. We have strawberries and blueberries—it's so bizarre. Yum. Blueberry potato chips with strawberry milk—this is how we do it. Yum, yum. John is tasting an alternative universe—that would be a pretty good way to put it. It doesn't taste like we're in the same place. It's like taking the candy blueberry taste and putting it on the chips, and it works.

00:14:07 John Daub: Like in Japan, how do they come up with these flavors? And what are the board meetings like? You get a company like Lotte with their gum and say, you know, Calbee, we just happen to have 200 tons of blueberry gum flavor powder—can we sell that to you for X amount of money? And you just infuse that into your potato chips to make some weird thing and you'll sell a lot of them, I guarantee you. It is the end of the year—March is the end of the year. So everyone's trying to get rid of any excess money, any excess ingredients, because April 1st—which is today—is the start of the new year in Japan for school, for work, for so many things. April 1st is a very important day. I'm going to take Kanae Daub some—she's going to freak out. That's so good—it's so chemical, but it's a natural tasting chemical because blueberries are natural.

00:16:18 John Daub: You know, the Kit Kats are the most famous confection that has unique flavors. They had whiskey flavor that I've never been able to try. Right now, whole wheat biscuit flavored Kit Kats is the flavor of the day. Actually, I can't really sleep too much at night because we have a newborn—Kanae is now feeding the baby. Well, she fed the baby; the baby went to sleep and then Kanae went to sleep, and then I couldn't sleep. So I just left, and when I go back, it'll be time to feed the baby again. Tomorrow, I will do another live stream because it's April 1st and it won't be anything with ducks or an April Fools joke that I know of. April 2nd, I'm going to stay in a hotel with Peter von Gomm. And then on April 3rd, we're leaving for a Japan Rail trip to Shin-Aomori—this is the coolest thing in the world. JR East gave Only in Japan me a train—I have my own private Shinkansen. I feel like I'm James Bond—like Tanaka. Remember him? He was the MI6 of Tokyo. I got my own Shinkansen, man. I invited Peter von Gomm and he's going to ride the grand class with me. And we invited a hundred people and they're riding the 10 cars—so it's going to be some pretty good social distancing.

00:17:51 John Daub: Because of the COVID protocols, there was some talk that perhaps we're going to cancel the live stream, and I said we cannot—I promise this to you. Japan Rail is going to be giving me a bouquet of flowers—it's to say thank you to our community. This means a lot to them, and this means a lot to me—this is such a win-win. We're going to accept the flowers and then I'm going to start the live stream at around 7:20, I believe. Then I'll show you the train—we'll board the Shinkansen and take off. Around sometime between nine and 11, I'll take you to the grand class and Peter von Gomm and I will do a live stream there just to pretend like we're really cool—because we have our own grand class and you're going to be invited with us. We're going to be out in the countryside of Iwate streaming through Tohoku at top speed. You're coming with us to the grand class digitally—this is beyond first class. There's normal class, there's green car, there's grand class. There's only two people allowed in there—just me and Peter von Gomm. If Hana is really nice, my ex-assistant who left me, I might allow Hana to enter the grand class, but she's going to have to answer three riddles just like in Monty Python's Holy Grail. Actually, Hana's got to come in because she's going to be holding the camera—it's hard to use a tripod in the Shinkansen.

00:19:50 John Daub: The purpose of this is just to introduce a new JR East Tohoku area rail pass, as well as the opening up of Tohoku. And I want to use that opportunity to make an ekiben episode. So I'll get a chance to eat five ekiben on the train—it'll be an ekiben guide. And when I eat an ekiben, I don't eat just one—I eat five. Peter's going to help me eat two of them and I'll eat three, and we're going to introduce them really beautifully. These are going to be like really beautiful studio shots of the ekiben infused into the story of eating it on the train—our own train. And for once we have permission from JR to do this—how cool is that? JR East has opened up the train and we get permission to eat the bentos and film it because every other YouTuber has been illegally doing ekiben videos, including me. I'm doing it for real—and they're letting me do it. How cool is that?

00:21:04 John Daub: So this might not be an exciting live stream, but this midnight snack sets up for an exciting live stream—it's the purpose of this. And the fact that I couldn't sleep because I'm a night owl—not a night crow because crows don't really hang out at night; crows sleep—John doesn't sleep. I do love this bridge. I'm going to save this for Kanae—she's going to freak out. Let's go find a mailbox because I want to send a Pesca's card. By the way, you have about 12 hours to get one of these cherry blossom cards because on April 1st, the new cards start. Do you see this here? This is a lock, and if a tsunami were to come, they would close this so it would keep the water from coming into this island called Shinkawa (new river), which is a manmade island here in Tokyo. It's not as new—it was new 100 years ago. It's my favorite bridge—Shinkawa.

00:23:25 John Daub: Do you see that beautiful cherry blossom tree? So many Yoshino. Cap Fam for the fam and the new baby—thank you for bringing us what we cannot yet travel to. So if you had jet lag on your first couple of days, you would be out here with me too. Oh, it's still nice—look, it looks like snow, doesn't it? This one is a late bloomer because it's a little bit chillier on the backside. There's a couple of buildings here to keep it from getting warm, so it bloomed a little later, but you can see the blossoms are pretty much gone off of them. I know it's low light—it's not the best picture, but it is pretty nice here. But it's nice to see this cherry blossom tree because 350 days out of the year, this is green or barren, and for just two weeks it's white—it's nice. There's a supermarket—I wonder if they have blueberry gum inside.

00:26:01 John Daub: Let's go in and see—nothing. That's been my experience for the last hour and a half—I was looking for blueberry gum; can't find it. Not even Don Quijote had it—can't even find ume (plum) gum. Gotta find it in like a massive mega supermarket like Daiei or something. You know, I would try Amazon, but I've got a feeling they're not going to deliver in the next 15 minutes. The weather is pretty warm. This direction is interesting—this takes you straight to Tokyo Station if you just go straight. And in this direction, this takes you to that bridge, Chuo-bashi, and to Tsukiji—eventually you can get to Haneda Airport, but it'll take you to Toyosu first.

00:28:10 John Daub: Let's go see if the Tokyo Skytree is illuminated—you want to see the Skytree in the middle of the night? It's probably pretty creepy. Tokyo is such a clean city, isn't it? No trash anywhere. Tomorrow I got to go to Tokyo Station and get some ekiben. So I need an ekiben from Fukushima, from Miyagi, Sendai, from Iwate or Morioka, and also from Aomori. But one of my favorite bentos is the Tokyo bento—the Tokyo Station bento. Question: what color is that green on the Tohoku Shinkansen? It's not green, but it's a kind of green—what is the official color of the Tohoku Shinkansen? It's called Tokiwa green—no one was gonna get that. On the JR website, they call it Tokiwa green. These are the little facts that I want to produce for you in the episode—things that make you go, really? That was a piece of useless information that I now erase something that was very useful in my mind.

00:30:59 John Daub: This is the Sumida River where the space boat comes quite often at midnight. And over yonder on the left side, you can just start to make out the Tokyo Skytree. And from this bridge on the other side, you can also see Tokyo Tower—if you look at the right time, but Tokyo Tower has doused its lights at midnight. Whereas Tokyo Skytree, inspired by Knight Rider, keeps the kit-like lights going through the night. Question: what bridge is that in the foreground of this shot? Raymond knew it was the Azumabashi—usually it's blue color, the neon lights, but after midnight, they turn it off too, which is a shame. Cause I'm a little bit of a fan of the Azumabashi. This is my favorite place in the entire world right there—I'd like to sit here, eat a bento and just relax. And you can see all the boats going by the Sumida River here—it's one of the best places to just hang out. Nobody's there yet cause it's like middle of the night. On the other side, you can see just the top of Tokyo Tower—it's hard to see right now, but the lights are off just to keep the planes from hitting it. That's where I rated the ducks just before that bridge—under that bridge is the duck sanctuary that I made them fly away.

00:35:14 John Daub: I don't know what the temperature is, but it's like maybe 62 degrees Fahrenheit—16 degrees Celsius. I still smell like blueberry gum—smack my lips and I can still taste it. I guess somebody's trying to cue night bot for the weather. I think that's all I want to do is just eat blueberry potato chips cause I was hungry. Tomorrow in the afternoon, I do intend to do a live stream—I have to get to Tokyo Station to get a bento and I have to get some sleep. This is the end of March—I wanted to do a live stream. I know it's April 1st here in Japan, but I just wanted to do this. This morning, I said thank you to everybody on Patreon because this month has been the most incredible month of my life—everything changed. I wasn't excited about anything in 2020, and I found myself in 2021 pretty excited about almost everything right now. I need to make sure I still have the energy and get the sleep—but other than that, everything is going really good. All I can do is keep taking steps forward, and we'll get there.

00:37:46 John Daub: If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below—hit that like button because it does activate other live streams, meaning I will do more. And I really want to say thank you—I appreciate all that you've done, all of the gift registries and all of the support through this channel. It means a lot to me. So we'll have a lot more content coming—I have a sushi episode that's about to upload. It's going to be a little bit longer—it's about my friend who did the micro sushi. I went back there a couple of months ago and filmed him on another talent that he has. He's such a broad-minded chef—he's not a snob. He doesn't just stick to one type of sushi or think that experimenting is bad. He takes his creativity and puts it into his sushi because it makes his customers happy—that's why he made the micro sushi for me. He's a rare breed and one of the best sushi chefs in the city of Tokyo, in my opinion, because of that ability to just be daring and bold. He embraces the California sushi roll and maybe will come up with his own design. And he created about 16 different sushi for me called Saiku Sushi (decorative sushi), which takes fish and ingredients to make art on a bed of rice—it's pretty amazing that you can eat. That's going to be dropping probably tomorrow or the day after before I go—I'm excited about that. I'm going to take a break for a couple of hours and then we're going to head back to the main channel. Thanks, everybody—have a good day, have a good night. I'm going to get back home. See you from Tokyo.