00:00:00 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Ikebukuro here in Tokyo. That's the Seibu department store straight ahead. We're going to be doing a walk around this area. Greetings! Welcome to the city of Tokyo. How do you do? So this, I think this would be South Ikebukuro or East Ikebukuro. I'll put a map link in the description.

00:00:23 John Daub: But I wanted to start off by showing you something that's the rage in Tokyo right now, or at least in Japan. Check it out. Starting today, at your local Starbucks coffee in Japan, you have a choice of a Frappuccino from every one of all 47 prefectures. It is insane. There's so many different kinds. This is the Tokyo one here. It looks kind of nasty because I had it about a... one of the reasons why I started a little bit late. It's the caramel coffee jelly Frappuccino. So there's coffee jelly in there. It looks pretty sweet.

00:01:02 John Daub: But I like it because every single prefecture has some sort of flavor. The Hokkaido and the Okinawa ones are pretty interesting. I think they have something inside. Hold on a second. They made a nice little map. I'll just show it to you really quickly. Check this out. So there's 47 prefectures in Japan, and each one has a different flavor, including Okinawa, which I don't see it on the map. But Hokkaido is the one I want to try the most. And Okinawa. It's 47 Jimoto (local) Frappuccino. So it's called that. It's pretty cool. She said she'd only made three today. This is the third one that she's made today. So let's give this a try here before we take a look around Ikebukuro.

00:01:54 John Daub: Thanks for joining me, everybody. It's good coffee jelly. I did get shot today. Check it out. So the doctor said I can't actually drink any alcohol or anything, but I can have sweet things. I specifically asked, can I eat sweets? He said, sure. All right, cool. I'll reward myself with one of these new drinks. I'd like to be one of the first to climb the mountain of Frappuccinos.

00:02:34 John Daub: So the reason I think this is Ikebukuro South is because Minami Ikebukuro Park is one of the destinations we're going to be going to. There's a park on this side that's not too far away from the Ikebukuro shopping area that I took you to last time. Just about two weeks ago I was here, but this is where the clinic was where I got jabbed. So, hey, you know, I'm here now. They told me not to exercise. I said live streaming is that exercise? Maybe, maybe. I like this side, though. Here's the Seibu Department Store. It's melting real fast.

00:03:35 John Daub: Hey, degens in the house. Let's go for four. You got it. Raymond said tenno starter for all 47 fraps. Raymond. You know, that's going to take a long time to get there. By the time I get off, I wonder if there's going to be people who go out and try to do this travel to all 47 prefectures. I guess they had to wait till the state of emergency was lifted before they could go in and do something like this just to be responsible. But the Tokyo one's not bad.

00:04:06 John Daub: So the Seibu Department Store and Dugan's in the house. Thanks. And is right over there. And this used to be, as I said before, one of the biggest department stores in the entire world. Founded like right after World War Two. Department stores in Japan still are kind of going strong here. Ron Barr's in the house, too. Thank you, Ron. All right, let's get moving.

00:04:31 John Daub: But sai means west and tobu means east. So Tobu Department Store is on the other side of Ikebukuro and Seibu is on this side. You see right there. That's the start of Seibu? I'm just going to pan and show you how massive this department store is. On the right. On the roof is a beer garden. Just pointing that out. Tasty Chronicles, please be sure to drink plenty of water each day so the vaccine can easily circulate. Thank you. It's kind of retro looking, isn't it?

00:05:06 John Daub: Tony P's dancing in the house. I'm hoping that Tony P's postcard also arrived. Today's also the last day to get the postcard of me and Kanae at an onsen on the Pacific Ocean overlooking a sunset. I will send that out to you today if you join the club and you haven't already. And Tony, if your postcard doesn't come, just let me know. Whenever you see Tony in the house, start using the Toby emoji just to show our appreciation.

00:05:43 John Daub: Wow. I was there in 2000 and 2010. Yeah, I started this club called Yakiniku and invited about 40 or 50 people. And after the Yakiniku event, which was at the end of the year, we got that beer garden on the roof up there. We went across the street and had drinks in there. That's the last time I was in there. 2010. I think it was November. How do I remember that? It's 11 years ago. Crazy.

00:06:25 John Daub: So there are a lot of hotels in the area. Here's the Daiwa Roynet Hotel. It's kind of a weird name connected with a 7-Eleven, which is interesting. If you stay there, you have a 7-Eleven as your lobby. Sort of. Here's a manga kissa (manga cafe). You could stay here. What are the prices going for manga kissa? Let's take a look. Three hours for a little tatami room. 820. Sorry for the flashing, everybody. It's just the way it is. 24 hours for 3,500 yen or about $30. That's not too bad.

00:07:25 John Daub: Wow. This site is so much more chill. But there's so much stuff here. My clinic where I got the shot is up there on the top floor. A pediatrics clinic. But there were no kids. Just people getting shots. That's weird. Check this out. See across the street? There's a Famima, a FamilyMart. It looks like a pretty snazzy looking FamilyMart. And then across the street from that is another FamilyMart. So apparently they own this intersection, I guess. It's pretty interesting here.

00:08:06 John Daub: Can I try this sandwich? I'm going to try this sandwich. It's like a butter biscuit sandwich and she said it was really good. I also have to bring her home a Frappuccino. Oh, here's a Hanamaru. It's one of the big udon chains. They do a good job too. Some little bukkake action with some raw egg. Prices are always so reasonable. If you need a quick bite to eat in Japan, you're waiting for a train or something, udon, three minutes in and out. It's so easy. This one looks good. Beef and egg and thick broth. I'm going to try this. Smallest size is $5. That's a really good deal. You can add tempura to it as well. Get some shrimp tempura or something you can put on there. The crispy parts absorb the soup, the dashi, and it tastes so good.

00:09:04 John Daub: Oh man, I'm getting hungry. Is that Irvin here? What? Get lunch at Niku Gekijou. Is that on this side? You got it. WX Turbo in the house. I'm going to try this. I say that a lot. That makes me happy. Whenever a new business opens, they'll put flowers outside. I like this tradition. Congratulations from supporters and people who are friends of the owner or backers of the group. This one looks like a yakitori place. Toriyaki. So it's a chicken place. Smells like chicken. Tastes like chicken. Must be chicken.

00:09:48 John Daub: There's a kai over there. The drinks start at 190 yen. For sake. Really? Wow. I can get down with that. But I'm not supposed to drink booze because of the vaccine. Or as we say in Japan, wakuchin (vaccine).

00:10:08 John Daub: Danny! Hey Danny! Good morning John. Happy to hear you received the first dose. Welcome to the club. I'm a little bit behind. But for Japan, I'm kind of early for my age group. My second will be around July 16th. Have a nice day and take it easy for one or two days. I will try to take it easy today, but it's going to be hard.

00:10:25 John Daub: Alright, this is Minami Ikebukuro Park. And it's, if you just put it in Google Maps, you'll find out where I am like in 15 seconds. Minami Ikebukuro Park or Minami Ikebukuro Koen (South Ikebukuro Park). I've never been here before, so I thought we would take a look inside. Looks pretty festive. Look at the green grass. Wow. This is nice. I love Tokyo's parks. Each one, you never know what you're going to find unless you just walk and take a look in there. This is not what I thought it would be like. Look at how wide and spacious and how beautiful this green grass is that we're not allowed to go on.

00:11:18 John Daub: Hey, John Maness. So, uh, son. Hey, John, have you tried the 50 Hertz 50 FPS to get rid of the flashing on the iPhone Pro? If I use the different app, I think I can control it. I might want to go into the settings. I'll see if that works. I could be broadcasting in 60 FPS. I'm not sure what the YouTube app allows me to do that or not. Oh, yeah. Let's go check out that restaurant or cafe over there. Rose's Scenes? Is that a place in Chicago? Rose's Scenes Street. Isn't that where Sean Connery gets shot down by Capone's man?

00:12:03 John Daub: Why is he filming a guy cutting the grass? Is this part of a... is he acting? Is this for real? Why is there a cone on top of the... we'll have to investigate. Come on. Maybe he's trying out for position. That's a long shot. He's trying to get a shot. Oh, look at this. Social distancing arrows. So you're not allowed to sit next to this guy here.

00:12:38 John Daub: Dad looks fun over there. Hey! Trespasser! Look at that bird sitting there in the middle. Totally not fair. Why does he get to go and we don't? We're humans. We paid for this. It must be the mower's birthday. It could be. Mower should be going after this big guy. He's big. On the other side, I see kids having fun. I can't wait for Leo to grow up a little bit more and run around and stuff. Or maybe I can because some parents tell me that that's the hardest.

00:13:22 John Daub: That is an angry bird. He looks like a happy bird, but anyone who tries to remove him, someone could freak him out. All right, let's move. Let's get up here. Let's go check out this Rose's Scenes and see what's going on. The action going on inside there. As we watch them film, he's doing PR, he's doing really good lines. Welcome to South Ikebukuro. The home of wonderfully mowed lawn. Wonderfully mowed lawns. Look at this. It smells so good. I'm getting a mixture of the Tokyo Frappuccino, which just started today and grass. Refresh. Those are really good lines. So soak this in for a second. Enjoy the sounds of a lawnmower and visuals of beautiful lines for a second.

00:14:37 John Daub: I don't think it's anything special. Hold on. Come over here for a second. I don't think it's anything special. It's okay. It costs $6.50, I think. And it's not that big. I know there's a lot of calories. If you like coffee jelly, this is the bomb. If you don't, it's not. The caramel, you could get a caramel macchiato and that might be better. It's just weird. You have to chew it. It's quite pricey for what you get, but I like these chairs here. I can sit on the chair. I can see myself bringing my laptop and just chillaxing underneath these trees. I'm very anti-boba. The boba teas. And I think they're out of business here. I don't think anyone's really getting them.

00:15:36 John Daub: Whoa, they got beer. Nosh, they got beer. Craft beer. Check this out. From farm to beer. This is farm to table. This is farm to beer. Hyuga Natsu. Natsu would be summer, right? 380 milliliters for 980 yen. That's less than a pint. That's like half a pint, maybe? No, a little bit more than half a pint. It's pretty pricey. But you know what? If you could soak up this view and enjoy the smell of freshly mowed grass, I think it's worth it. You're not paying for the beer. You're paying for the smell. Grass. It's a peaceful looking scene, isn't it?

00:16:32 John Daub: Scotty H is here. Happy jab number one day. Are you saying because number two day is going to be really painful tomorrow? They do have smoked barbecue course. Look at this. Wow. Okay. That looks really good. Some pork, coleslaw, a plate of barbecue stuff. Barbecued chicken. I see there some beef and a hagu sausage. Like a herb sausage, I think. Roast chicken set looks good too. Rotisserie chicken. Nice. Put me down for number two. All right, off we go.

00:17:25 John Daub: The Rose's Scenes likes to promote the fact that they're farm to park. So, craft beer, natural wines, getter pub. Smells great. Oh, check it out. Look, it's Curious George Japanese. That's when George got busted. Remember that one? Man with the yellow hat had to bail him out. Police brutality. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. We wrote that. Tampa Terry 54. The policemen are all smiling. George looked like he was having fun too. Not sure if that qualifies, but who knows? Artist's rendition. That's nice.

00:18:21 John Daub: I actually was a children's teacher for six years when I, before I, in my first six years in Japan, I taught children and I got to read a lot of children's books in Japanese. And of course they're in Hiragana. So that helped me learn the vocabulary and some of the words. Probably my gateway into Japanese language was children's books. So I figure if a child can read it, why can't you, right? As an adult. But you'd be amazed. Children are pretty smart. Ryo's already coming along pretty good. I got a feeling he's going to be a genius. All right.

00:19:02 John Daub: Doesn't seem to be anything this side of Iga Bokuro. So let's go this way because I see what looks like a Japanese book. Oh, it's a teppanyaki. That looks like a spatula that you use on the teppanyaki to eat okonomiyaki or something like that. I haven't read that book, but you know, now that Leo is here and he's three months old... Hey, I'm going to save your life right now. Skedaddle, skedaddle. Hey, get out of the street. Save your life. I did something good today. Don't go back there. Stay on the sidewalks. Good job. Human set a bad example. Look at the pigeon setting a good example for humans. You don't see that very often. Now he's going, I guess he's got an appointment that way. It's good to see.

00:20:17 John Daub: Oh, it's Hiroshima style. My favorite. You can always tell how expensive a restaurant is by pricing a jockey of beer. The normal namachuu (draft beer) is 500 yen. That's a pretty reasonably priced beer. When it starts to get like 580 or 600, then you know you're probably going to end up paying more. Yeah. 500 is pretty reasonable. You can find places for 380. If it says 280, you have to question whether or not it's real beer. It could be happoshu (low-malt beer), which is made from like chickpeas or something so they can get around the tax laws, but it tastes like it's made from chickpeas. So I don't often prefer it.

00:21:06 John Daub: Here's the park street. That's what it says here. I do like how Kuro Neko (black cat, Yamato transport) and the takkyubin (express delivery), all of the Sagawa, they're using these carts to get the packages from place to place. And they all have many units, not too far within walking distance. We have a guy who carts things around too. Like before the pandemic, I used to chat them up. These guys who deliver packages, they know everything about everywhere and they know everybody too. If you get, become friends with your UPS guy, start learning a lot of secrets.

00:21:58 John Daub: Is that it? Is that the end of the UPS? We're back at Ikebukuro South. And we're back at the main intersection. This is where you would go to get to that shopping street, I believe. This is a pretty cool intersection too. Let me pan around. You guys are all around the world to soak this up. This is Ikebukuro.

00:22:42 John Daub: Chan, I received the Pfizer today. The first of two. So I have to make an appointment for the second one. They couldn't do it at that clinic, but I was lucky enough to get an appointment early and they honored it as long as I got the paper. Whoa. So, um, I can explain to you if this is something that's interesting to you, the vaccine rollout in Japan has been pretty slow and weird, but over the course of the last three weeks, it has been massively fast. Everyone is, every clinic, dentist offices, everyone is giving out vaccines. And the thing is you need to have a voucher or a ticket. I don't think I could show you the ticket, but maybe I could show you the ticket. I'll show you something or let me see.

00:23:35 John Daub: The thing is this, okay, all the vouchers are done locally. All right, here's the voucher. I'm going to cover my address. So this came in the mail for me here. It's got my information and stuff for the vaccine from Chiyoda-ku? This is Toshima-ku (Toshima Ward), but there were some places that didn't care where you were from. They would take your appointments. This place that I went to last week, they didn't require a voucher, but about three days ago, they required the voucher. However, I got lucky. My ward sent the vouchers out two days ago and it arrived yesterday, one day before my appointment. If that voucher had not arrived yesterday, I would not have been able to get this. In fact, I was emailing PBG at 6 PM going, the voucher didn't come. I can't get my shot tomorrow because his shot is tomorrow and I'm going to beat him by one day. It means something. So he's left. He's laughing it up and saying he's going to get the shot first. Then something amazing happened. Japan Post delivered it at 7 PM. Mail came at 7 PM with the voucher. So last night at 7 PM, I'm like, okay, now I'm going to get my shot. But before that I had pre-shot anxiety. I was more worried about that than anything else. It's crazy. So both PBG and I will be vaccinated within the next 24 hours, which is pretty cool. At least with the first shot. And yeah. We're kind of early for our age group, I guess.

00:25:12 John Daub: Um, I'm walking across the street now, but right here you see Seibu department store and we're sort of leaving South Ikebukuro and we're heading East to East Ikebukuro. So it's a nice neighborhood. Wow. I liked the shot with Seibu is massive there. Hey, look at the bus has a big heart mark on it. You see that what's up with that? The city buses. They're quite good. A lot of them are more wheelchair friendly. And I like that because the step goes down even for people that aren't in wheelchairs. So never trip over the steps. So it kind of helps everybody.

00:26:10 John Daub: Since I'm here, I'll take you down the main street. So South Ikebukuro is finished and we're now heading towards the main street, which is right here. We're in the epicenter. Oh, that pigeon tried to attack that guy. These birds are crazy. Here last time I got lost in the station, but this time I was able to get out pretty quick. Found my bearings. Um, we're here. This is the big camera and this is the main street, the Sunshine 60 Street. And I guess I can take you down there one more time. I don't think it's changed much. Or I could take you to this Naka Ikebukuro Park and then we could see what that looks like. I'm kind of interested in parks today. The parks of Ikebukuro on the backside here is the Metropolitan. And I've taken you to that park in the past as well.

00:27:17 John Daub: I can't have any booze. So Mr. Das, if he's watching over there in Canada, sorry, man. No Asahi at least for the next 36 hours. Although I did have a beer last night. Don't tell anyone. Oh, look at this bakery. Oh, check it out. They got like colored bread. Matcha and jaga. Satsumaimo (sweet potato). Oh, wow. I like that purple color. This is really popular right now. Basque cheesecake. Has anyone ever had this before? I've never had it. It seems to be the rage. Everyone's baking Basque cheesecake. They're basking in the cheesecake. Oh, that looks good. Club sandwich. Daininke? Look at that omurice. Is that tomatoes? A lot of sundaes. Whoa. Can I make a reservation for that? Forget the second shot. Just give me the chocolate. No, I'll take the second shot.

00:28:51 John Daub: Welcome to the Sunshine 60 Street, which goes to the formerly tallest building in Asia. It's no longer. There's another Basque cheesecake place. Look at that. See, I told you it's like all the rage. That's what I look like today. This music is kind of weird. Let's keep going. It's nice. It's a nice tune, though. It's kind of weird out of place. Japan. It's still surreal. There's just not a lot of people here. It feels surreal that Sunshine 60 Street is like this, right? I don't know. This is usually filled with people. I guess it depends on the traffic light because we're getting attacked by strollers right now. All right. Let's go to the park. I promised you a park. I shall take you to the park after we look at some gachapon (capsule toys).

00:30:04 John Daub: Premium gachapon. What the heck is that? Look at that. Inside each capsule is a light. Really? Oh, these are all premiums. 800 yen for that. What? No way. Tony wanted one of these. Hey, look. They have aardvarks. Is that an aardvark? That's premium. 500 yen for that. Oh, look. You can get construction men. What is that? Why do you need this? You can put it inside your apartment building and make it look like they're cleaning your window in your bathroom. So you have little men doing stuff inside your room. On your mirror. That's kind of creative, though. You can put it on your mirror, on your wall, on a glass window and have little... Oh, no way. First, they have like pigeon hats. What's up with that? Really? Look at this. It's like dead pigeons. What? Are you serious? Surely you are joking. Is that a crow? Really? Look at that pigeon being all coy. All right. Do I have to get this? And there's a mystery one. Should I get this one? Really? No. Who wrote that? Get the armadillo. What? All right. Let me see if I have 300 yen. Okay. All right. Relax, Internet. It's all good.

00:32:08 John Daub: And I have to remember I gave Kanae taxi money to go take Leo somewhere today while I got my shot. All right. Let's go do this. Remind me to go to the ATM because now I'm done. All right. Which pigeon are we going to get? I can't believe I'm getting a freaking pigeon. I'm spending money on this? Gosh, what am I doing? Oh, I got the dead pigeon. I got the one that's advertised. I don't feel lucky. Why do I not feel lucky? I spent my cab fare on this. This is my ticket home. What is this? Oh, this is weird. All right. Some lucky daimyo (feudal lord) is going to get this in his box or her box. I can't deal with this in my house. This is something that belongs up in northern Canada with Shane. I thought Irvin was in Iceland. Maybe I should keep him in the bag. Should I just keep him in the bag? I don't want to let the smell out. It's already out. In some countries, that's a delicacy. All right. You know what? I'm just going to... Okay, fine. I'll take it out of the bag. Oh, internet. I can leave it on the street. Do you think if I put it in the middle of where there are a bunch of pigeons, how will the pigeons react seeing their own like this? It looks like a baby. All right. If we can find a pigeon, we'll test it out. All right. Let's keep going. To the park we go.

00:34:37 John Daub: Oh, there's my friend's vending machine. I know that the owner of these. Very, very smart and creative guy. You pay $10 and you get some sort of mystery and there's all sorts of good stuff. You really get. I've seen what's inside. There actually are some really good things inside there. The Tokyo one. It's okay. I wouldn't buy it again. I think Starbucks has better drinks than this Tokyo Frappuccino. This is the 47 Jimoto. Every prefecture for those that are joining us. Sorry. How you doing? Starbucks started a campaign today. I can show you just over here. Hold on. As prime provisional gets buys half of a Frappuccino. It's $6 for one of these Frappuccinos. But Japan has 47 prefectures or states. And today they launched their 47 Jimoto Frappuccino, which is a Frappuccino for each prefecture. There are 47 different tastes. I can't get the Chiba Frappuccino in Tokyo. I have to go to that location. So it's a way to promote travel. Instead of a stamp rally, you can have a Frappuccino rally. And the Tokyo one, I think was kind of disappointing. I didn't think there's anything special about it. But Tokyo Starbucks is famous for its roastery. They have a Tokyo roast. So I think that's why they chose coffee jelly. And caramel is also kind of famous in Tokyo. I don't know why. Let me see if I can show you those of you that are just joining now. The Jimoto campaign. Do they have it here on the other side? Oh, here it is. Tokyo is number 13. And you can see every prefecture has like its own drink. It's part of the 47 Jimoto Frappuccino thing here. You can go online just right in Starbucks Japan. It's on the top of their website. You don't need me to tell you. I'm just going to take you to show that to you.

00:37:41 John Daub: All right. Where's this park? That's supposed to take you to unusual looking people here. Oh, Animate. Guess that's why you get like anime stuff here. Dolls and things like that. Maybe that's a skyscraper. Really? They got that much stuff. It looks more like a love hotel. Otome Road (maiden's road). That makes sense. All right. Here's the park. Well, there's like this park has no trees. Or two trees. This is a strange park. The park we went to had the most beautiful green grass I've ever seen in the city of Tokyo. Seriously, it was pristine. Here, this is a different kind of park. This has no grass.

00:38:57 John Daub: Hey, Kimi Lefsen from Sweden. As a student pilot, I hope you can travel around the world soon enough. Keep up the work, mate. Keep up your work. Thank you, Kimi. Yeah. And I've been to Sweden many times because I have a lot of friends there. In Uppsala, which is where the university was, I used to go there and drink schnapps with my friends. And I have very little memory of it because we drank too much schnapps in Stockholm. And my friend lived in Småland, and we went to her little cabin there. And Göteborg. Can I have ever been there, though? Sweden's pretty cool.

00:39:40 John Daub: Oh, dudes! Motherlode. All right. Let's put it down and see what happens. Just kind of hanging out. I am one of you two. I'm a bird. You're a bird. We're all birds. Just kind of casually drop it. How do they react? Okay, back away from the dead pigeon. How do they react? Oh! They're approaching him. They see a resemblance. All right. They won't accept him. I think he's already lost. No one's... They're not pecking either. All right. Okay. Now that I can put this pigeon back into someone's daimyo package, now that it's been sitting in filth on the street, you're welcome. If you are a daimyo, who wants it? Just let me know. I won't put it into your box. Whoa. That must be the king. Look. He's overlooking the entire population from a higher position.

00:41:21 John Daub: Ah! There's another British pub house! All right. This is a strange park. There's no grass whatsoever. So you've been able to see a little bit of Ikebukuro and get a feel that this town has some pretty interesting parks. This one has no grass so I'm not sure. This would be pretty cool getting a beer from a vending machine or a convenience store and just sitting down and drinking with your friends. I could see me doing that here, right? What do you think? But no grass. If you were to lay down on the street you'd probably get attacked by pigeons. But they do have some rock chairs which is nice. I used to do that a lot on the other side. So I used to work at an English school that was based on the other side and at the Metropolitan building there's this huge square but they had some seats there. So after we finished teaching we didn't have a lot of money. We were getting like 1400 for each lesson while the school was taking in 7000 or something ridiculous. It didn't matter. We had fun talking to each other. We get a beer from the convenience stores and just sit in the park and drink for like an hour afterwards and just talk about stuff and then go home tired. Yeah.

00:42:43 John Daub: I can't actually drink any alcohol for the next 36 hours but I'm okay with that. I don't really drink that much really. Whoa that's crow hangout. Did you see that crow up there in that circle? Do you see him? He just jumped from one perch to another. That's their lair. All right. Let's go underneath that tree and scope this out. They're always watching you. Better watch your back. I can't watch all of your backs. Crows are too intellectual in order to fall for the prank of a dead pigeon on the side of the street. Just so you know where we are we're at Naka Ikebukuro Park and we walked from Minami Ikebukuro Park and we basically started from here at the Starbucks, walked down the street and we've come to this area. This is the area of Ikebukuro that I did not take you on. There he goes. I saw him leave the lair. All right let's see if there's a nest or something. Maybe we can rob some eggs make an omelet. Get revenge. If snakes can do it so can I. Oh there is a nest up there seriously there's a nest up there there's a crow nest. Oh now we know where they all come from. We found him. I'm gonna let him know that I know where he knows and he could tell everybody else not to mess with me anymore. We're good. I think the message was received. Message received. Don't mess with them man they are pretty evil.

00:45:02 John Daub: I was watching the Netflix drama they're doing right now. They're doing a Naked Director last night on the background. Season two is pretty good. It's more for research because I have to learn about Japan's past. There's just nobody here. It's so weird to see this place so empty so quiet. I haven't seen all of season two but Kanae's watching with me so that means it must be really good. She would not watch something like that unless it was really good. I think she got hooked. The acting is really spot on. Uh you should be over 18 to watch it. Don't watch it with the kids or something like that. John told me to watch it and so you know little Billy you can sit down next to me and watch season two. Don't do that. Put Billy to bed lock the door then turn that on. But the title tells you to do that okay Naked Director come on on a family show. Oh that ramen looks good. Oh wow um 720 yen it's pretty reasonable. Looks like they got some pretty good ramen. Oh this is the frozen Mitsuya Cider. It comes out frozen. I did this in a vending machine episode earlier in Asakusa. If you buy one of these it comes out um it starts to freeze when it hits the air inside the bottle. It's pretty cool. If you find it um you might want to try to get one. Did that I think it was like two three years ago I got that.

00:47:15 John Daub: Whoa Tucanos is here too that's a Brazilian barbecue place it's pretty good. All right um I'm gonna take I wanna end this live stream down at a place that I should have taken you to before. Yeah I can make this light uh Ikebukuro means... does anybody know what Ikebukuro means? What does Ikebukuro mean? Ikebukuro means pond bag right? Ike (pond) fukuro (bag). So it's an unusual name and it was I think the pond looked like a bag initially. Or people were selling bags next to the pond. Like, why would they do that? So, Ikebukuro has sort of a mascot, and it's Ikefukuro. And fukuro is a bag, but it also means owl. So I'm going to take you in to go see the Ikefukuro statue, which I didn't do last time. It's actually down the steps here. And I also want to stop off. And last time, before I went back home last time, I stopped here out of the suggestion of supporters and got a Ringo apple pie. It took me a couple of seconds to find it. It was on the corner here. But you can smell the sweet butter coming out of that shop. It's pretty darn awesome.

00:49:18 John Daub: Justice FX. Hi, John. Thanks for all you do, man. Keep up the great work. Thank you so much for joining me here. I am working right now to try to improve the quality of the live streams. I know I started this live streaming channel in March 2017. And the best I could do was standard definition for ADP live streams. They raised it up to 720p in 2018. And now in 2021, three years later, it hasn't changed much. But I need to start to find a way to get the quality better. And there's some sort of bonding technique with signals that Abroad has been telling me a little bit about. So we're going to find a way to do that. I've been scoping out like rigs and stuff like that. So we will find an answer to improve the quality of this. And it might not be just 5G. This one I got too. The lemon apple pies is pretty good, but it's $5 for one of these little puffs. So it's hard to justify it. And Twitch is coming back, too. But I'm spending most of my time researching medicines for a family member that's not doing too well. And it's frustrating. It's kind of frustrating.

00:50:46 John Daub: Well, there's a Tokyo mascot on a bus. Who's excited for the Olympics? Click the thumbs up button if you like the Olympics. Woohoo! Olympics. Click the thumbs up button. Click it now. Do it right now. Underground. No, it doesn't work like that. That's right. Give it a thumbs up. Do what Mario would do. Give this a live stream a thumbs up as I lose my voice. And now it's time for me to take you to go see that owl. Found it last time. Took me a little bit of time, but eventually found it.

00:51:30 John Daub: For those that are joining us right now, we are in Ikebukuro, which is called Pond Bag in literal translation. Pond Bag. But there's an Ikefukuro down the steps. And that is pretty cool. Beckers. I'll always remember it as the last place I saw Tokyo Kuni before he returned back home. Always hope he makes it back to Tokyo and hang out again. There's lots to talk about. All right. Follow these guys down. Oh, there's people hanging out in front of it. This is a big hangout. I'll meet you in front of the Ikebukuro owl.

00:52:29 John Daub: So, everybody, this is the Ikefukuro statue. It's from 1987 and it's I guess it's from JR. Yūgingaisha Suzuki Masonry Company. And yeah, it's kind of like a symbol of Ikebukuro. It's quite famous in this area. Who? You. And it's inside the station. Play on words. Ikebukuro. Ikefukuro. It's kind of funny. So everybody wants to go to an owl cafe. That's cool. Just make sure you get a shot of the owl inside of Ikebukuro station. It's quite a hoot. That was a good one. Baz Wildcat. Well done. It's a dad joke.

00:53:39 John Daub: Oh, wow. That's it. Is that an onigiri (rice ball) shop? I can just take a quick look here. So they just rice balls. That can be your lunch set. And they have a pretty good selection of rice balls here. Onigiri. Thanks for hooking us on Japan. Feels like we're from Tulsa, Tokyo. Tulsa to Tokyo. Yes. Church. Seven. Seven. Thirty two. I'm so happy you're here, too, because I don't know. It's kind of lonely without doing the live streams. When I do go live, it feels like we're all together. All 1068 of us here. That's where we kind of started the live stream. So if you want to see that, you can go in the playback and check out if you're watching now. But you can kind of check out the vibe here. That's about all that I have here. I'm going to go back home and bring back some goodies for Kanae and Leo to eat. There's loads inside the station. There's a Don Quixote over there. Actually, it's a Don Quixote Superstore. Check it out all the way to the top. Don Quixote has got a super interesting history as well. I was studying it the other day.

00:55:10 John Daub: So there you have it. We kind of looked at the south and east side of Ikebukuro. But it's a place that kind of growing on me. And if you do come to Japan, I guarantee you right now there's a thousand people watching and probably a couple maybe 20, 30 thousand will watch us in playback. And a lot of people love Ikebukuro. It's a place where a lot of people just feel comfortable staying here.

00:55:36 John Daub: What is this thing? What? Becker's is getting weird with their menus, man. Roast beef mountain plate. What? Looks like a bloody mess. Would you eat that? Is that sauce supposed to be like snow? Looks like a I don't know. Would you eat that? With a drink first? For small size, it's eleven hundred yen or for mega size, it's fourteen hundred yen. That's actually reasonable. I don't think it's this big. I think it just looks like a bloody mess. I don't think it's as big as it on top of it is a raw egg or an onsen tamago (hot spring egg), a half boiled egg up there, soft egg. And down here they have poutine, which looks better than the one I ate the other day. That one sold out, which is the gravy sauce. Oh, that would have been so good. I haven't had gravy sauce. In Japan, they seem to do meat sauce more. I don't even know if meat sauce is a poutine. It's just meat sauce and cheese on potatoes. But the gravy one seems very Canadian, but it's sold out because it's Canadian. I don't know. This was a Japanese version of poutine. It's a mentaiko sauce, meaning a spicy fish egg sauce. That's not poutine, man. Canadians are going like, don't ruin our national one of our national foods. Croissant roast beef looks pretty weird, too. I don't know. Looks original. Lived in Canada and never ate poutine. Really? When I went to Montreal, that was the best thing we ate there. Went to some famous place and had to wait an hour to get in. All right. That's all that I got. I just want to show you the massive mountain made of bloody meat. Have a good day, everybody. And I'll see you in another livestream real soon. Probably tomorrow. Yeah. See you on Discord.