00:01 John Daub: Well, here it all is. How you doing everybody? This is making a kaisendon (seafood rice bowl) at home. Look at that steaming rice. This is going to be the base of our kaisendon. It is a little bit—actually this time is wrong. It's about half past 11 p.m. at night. How you doing everybody? I'm in my kitchen and we are about to completely destroy it so my wife gets angry at me in the morning. Never mind that. Today we are going to make a kaisendon.

00:40 John Daub: What exactly is a kaisendon? It is a rice bowl of seafood on top of it. It is really good and it's one of the dishes that if you do come to Japan, you must enjoy. It's usually pretty pricey and it should cost you over $20 for a bowl. I'm saying this in Tokyo because the quality of the ingredients is very important. You know if you're paying too little, you're probably not getting fresh ingredients. And I'm going to explain why in this episode.

01:13 John Daub: Now there's lots of places to get kaisendon. Today in a live stream, I went to a vending machine and I got this out of the vending machine. Do you see this? This is ikura (salmon roe). It's $2.50. It's 250 grams of fish eggs. See that right there? They're beautiful. Little globes of orange goodness. Slightly salty. And yeah, this cost me about $35 for this. Alright, pretty crazy. It's from Hokkaido, don't worry. It's not imported.

01:42 John Daub: And here it is right here. This plastic on top of it. I tried ripping it off. Japan has like an easy access to open everything. Not this. Had to use scissors here. Look at how glorious the orange globes are. Honestly, I could look at this all day. It's almost like something in a lava lamp or something. It doesn't seem real, right? I love the color of it. I never had ikura until I came to Japan. And then after I got here, I'm like, dude, this is too weird. I'm not going to eat this stuff. And then I started eating it one day and I never stopped. It's very expensive. This is $35 worth of it from the vending machine. And if you want to see that live stream, you can just click the link here or just look at the last live stream I did on this channel.

02:45 John Daub: Let's just go ahead. Oh, I bought some maguro (tuna). And I'm going to explain to you why kaisendon are super expensive. This is the base of the kaisendon. I have some hon wasabi (real wasabi) from a tube. I didn't grate it myself. And this edamame, I don't know what this is doing here. It's just for me to snack on. All right. Let's get going. Woo ha ha ha. Midnight is snack time for me. Anyways, I don't know about you. For normal people, don't eat at midnight. All right? It's just not good. I'm not normal. All right. Let's get moving.

03:30 John Daub: So the first thing you want to do is to get your rice in there. A rice cooker is called a suihanki (rice cooker) in Japanese. This thing, you see the ridges on it? It keeps the rice from sticking onto the spatula here or the rice server. And the way I do the rice is go down. That's right. There you go. Oh, it doesn't go down far enough. I'll turn it around here. The way I do the rice is I learn to just make a cross like this and then mix it up a little bit. This is one cup of rice. We need some music here. There's something in the background. It's kind of boring. We got some rice here. Look at that. The good stuff. And then with one hand, because I'm holding the camera with the other, make a base for your kaisendon.

04:26 John Daub: Now, many kaisendon places, they might not use rice. They might cool it down a little bit because the heat does impact the seafood a little bit. So that's about three quarters of a cup of rice. That's a lot before you go to bed. So it should be fine. Hey, Mr. Das is in the house. Midnight is actually beer time for me. And I do have something special for you, Mr. Das. It's the king of beers. And I got this. It was right next to the Asahi, by the way, in the supermarket. So we'll have this in a moment. Thank you, Mr. Das. It's always nice to see you. Long time no see. The ikura, I'll put that on next. But I want to explain to you about the ingredients here.

05:06 John Daub: So I picked this up at the supermarket. This is akami (lean tuna), just sliced akami. It's $6 for this. Just this. Check it out. This is from the supermarket. And I really want you to understand why you don't want to underpay at a kaisendon restaurant. That's a reasonable amount of meat. How many grams is this? It doesn't say. Well, it's this much. Wait a second. Hold on a second. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I got a scale right here. So we can kind of weigh it. Right? Look at this. People who doubt me. I will help you get there. I'm a simple man with very few cooking skills. I need to be accurate. How much? Oops. Hold on. Three, three, two, one. Okay. So that's all good. So 130 grams of this cost $6. Pretty crazy, right? Yeah.

06:32 John Daub: So let's lay this on to the—you can do it with chopsticks or you can do it with your fingers. Just make sure you're clean. I'm not sure if I am. So I'm going to go the chopstick route and then just lay it on to the rice gently. Oh, look at that beautiful maguro cut. By a sushi chef at the supermarket. We're just going to do a few pieces here. This is my cooking voice. That's what I sound like when I'm cooking. It's very peaceful and calm. Everybody says that I yell. I don't yell that much really. It's very peaceful, very calm. So that's about, I don't know, I'd say about 85 grams. No, my voice isn't that high either. Sorry. Freaking some people out. Next up. No, don't do ASMR. Okay. I'm not trying to. It's just the microphone is so close. It's not my fault. Don't blame me. I'm a beginner. All right. I don't do cooking. Danny, how you doing? I'm at job, but I watch you. All right, Danny, don't let your boss know that what you're doing is might be slightly naughty.

07:41 John Daub: This, this is another reason why kaisendon is super expensive. This is from the supermarket. All right. Check this out and don't blame my wife. There's a lot of, sometimes Japanese housewives are watching this and going, how dare you John have such a dirty house? His wife must not care. She's not here. So, um, she's staying with her dad right now. So that's okay. It's my fault. So any critical housewives do not blame. Can I, it's all me. So you've seen any stains or anything. I did it. This is just two little pieces of scallop. Okay. And these are pretty big scallops, but they're two of them, 483 yen, which is like $4 and 75 cents. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous, right? Look at that. That was $4. It's like 4.50 for just two pieces.

08:29 John Daub: So that's it. I don't like vinegar. I try not. You don't have to put vinegar on the rice. That's up to you. If you do like the vinegar rice, you can do that. I, the rice vinegar for me, that's not a criteria for kaisendon. This is not sushi for kaisendon. I don't like the vinegar rice for kaisendon. I want to taste it without the rice vinegar on it. Sushi you need it. It's almost like a requirement for it. But already we've put on about $10. Right? We've put on about $10 of fish here, which is pretty crazy here. See scallops. It's almost five bucks. Two. Mr. Miyagi will not be happy with my chopstick skills. Stick into the paper. Daniel-san, you are very foul at this. There you go. All right. Look at that. Very nice.

09:39 John Daub: So we have Landon, uh, Paulist Gaming going, ew, gross. I'm going to go ahead and get this. So I guess Landis is not on board with this quick shot of me saying what's up with that. All right. Next up, uh, I have the ikura. I think, oh, it is pretty much 250 grams. It's 272. But if you were taking consideration, um, the plastic, it might be slightly over that. That's impressive. Thank you. Vending machine. It was expensive. Here we go. Oh, ikura. I had to de-thaw this. So it was in the refrigerator for a good seven minutes. Seven hours. Oh, I'm going to drown it in this. You bought it. You eat it. Remember that scene, full metal jacket with the donut. I bought it. I eat it. Hey, thank you, Paulistia, uh, for joining our Twitter. Just saw you sign up there. Much appreciated. I should leave something for Kanae, but yeah, that's okay. That's about, I'd say that's about, um, I don't know, 80, 85 grams. That's about. Um, about $9 of ikura. So right now we've got for a homemade kaisendon, we're at about $18 for this, I believe. That's crazy. So that's about $18 with supermarket and vending machine stuff. This is why a good kaisendon from a restaurant, you're probably going to pay 2000 yen for $20.

12:02 John Daub: Next up. Bear with me here. Next up is this is tamagoyaki (rolled omelet). This I also got at the, um, uh, Suki restaurant. Now the owner of the restaurant, he gave me, um, uh, six, a half a dozen of eggs for free. He said just for today. And he knew I was a YouTuber. I was YouTubing, uh, live. You can see that live stream a little bit before, but, uh, what was it like 10 hours before something like that? Very nice. People are pretty friendly. I always found like if you go at off peak times, people are a little bit more friendly. And always. If you see an, uh, a cute old lady, always say something like, you know, like, um, kawaii desu ne (you're cute). Like, bijin desu ne (you're beautiful). Like say something like you're so beautiful to her. She'll give you extra food. Always does it at the market. So wherever I go in Japan, flattery gets you free food. So I do it. Flattery gets you free food.

13:13 John Daub: Hitchcock would like this. All right. Um, that's good enough. I'm going to go. Tamagoyaki. I don't think we need the whole thing. So I'm just going to cut a small piece of it. Oh, there's a piece of negi (green onion) right there. Oh, that's too good. Oh, it's slightly sweet. I like this. Hmm. Nice dashi (broth). I'm going to cut it this way. Five because four is not a good number. So there you go. A little bit of tamagoyaki. I'm going to put this in the kaisendon right here. Um, it adds a little bit of color to it, right? You can add some green to it if you want. This looks pretty good. There you go. So we're pretty much done. There's one more thing. This is a low budget production here. One more thing. Get some mood lighting here. One more thing that I want to do. I got to now. That's actually pretty, it looks pretty good. I got to get the soy sauce in there with the wasabi and that's right.

14:40 John Daub: I think I could just turn on the overhead light. Hold on. How's that? See, there's like a, it's flickering like I'm in a horror movie. I really have to move. Like there's a force inside this room that I don't want to mess with. Don't ask questions. Maybe I should get to play some happy music. This is like not good. Next up is the sauce on here. Are you following at home? Are you taking notes? I hope so. Oh, this is crazy. I'm going to put this in here. This is pretty crazy. That wow. That looks pretty good. I'm impressed so far with my ability to make this. And right now I'm just making the thumbnail here cause I have to have something to put that looks better. I should put this on Instagram here. What are you doing looking at me? Look down here at the kaisendon. It's much better. I'm trying to get a good shot of it here. Oh, that's nice. Get them on there. Oh yeah. Homemade kaisendon.

16:23 John Daub: One more point down here. People are watching. You know, in a live stream it's hard to do everything yourself. The one thing I learned, I cannot actually film an edited episode and live stream at the same time. It's impossible. You start to lose quality. Um, and it just makes you go crazy. Frosty's going good. Better than this light. Hold on. We're going dark mode here. Better than this light. It's kind of creepy. Uh, Mr. Das, the force is okay. It's July 5th. Not May the 4th. That's a good point. It's a very good point. Um, just so you guys, I want to say a happy Independence Day to everybody in the United States. Tomorrow Peter von Gomm and I are going to celebrate or not celebrate, but I know Memorial Day has passed. Um, and we celebrate Independence Day. Uh, I've been wanting for a long time to go to Heiwajima (Heiwajima), which is an island where the Omori prison camp, where the POWs, American POWs were held there during the war. It was a brutal place. And Peter von Gomm and I both had family that fought in World War II. And we were thinking tomorrow morning at 9 AM, we're going to go down to the memorial to Heiwajima and pay our respects to the servicemen that were captured and a lot of them did not make it. Um, and leave some, this is sort of why I have a Budweiser. We're going to leave some Budweisers behind for the boys that didn't make it home. Uh, and say thank you. Uh, you know, war is a tough thing. Um, it's something we both wanted to do and Happy Rails and other veterans are very interested and asked me to do this. So as I'm your legs here in Japan, as many of you can't come here, I'm going to go ahead and do that. Uh, it's going to be really emotional.

19:09 John Daub: All right, let's pour this now on top of the kaisendon. We're getting there. We are getting there. This is not complicated. Oh, look at how good this is. Oh, look at how good this is. I can't believe I made this myself. It should be legal. I should never let John in the kitchen. Just stay away. Nice. Go, go, go, go, go. Soak, soak, soak. So that's a kaisendon. That's pretty much it. Um, it is select seafood on a bed of rice. The tamagoyaki cost me about $4. That's a big block of it right there. So I'd say this is about a dollar's worth of it. Um, this has negi in it. So I asked for that because I like negi. The ikura was 250 grams for $35 and this is about 80 grams. So about 900 yen worth of ikura, which is the most expensive. That whole two scallops there cost about $4 and the maguro there, that's about 40% of the $6 I got there. So makes that about $4. So 4, 8, 17, 18 plus the rice. This is $20. This cost me $20 to do it at home.

20:39 John Daub: So that's why when you go out to a restaurant and you're spending less than $20 for a kaisendon, I guarantee you, you're not getting good fish. Do you understand now? Does this make sense? This is why I wanted to do this. It wasn't just so I could show you my dinner, but I wanted you to understand that when you go out to eat in Japan, quality matters. You get what you pay for in Japan. There's no getting around it. If you want a cheap meal, you can get that in a uni gohan (sea urchin rice) or sandwich at the convenience store. It'll probably have some chemicals in it. It'll taste good, but it's not good for you. If you want authentic kaisendon, you're going to have to pay like $20 for it. In fact, if you want like shrimp and other stuff, probably closer to 30 to $35 for it is not out of the question. It is not cheap. Um, but it is not expensive. It's not expensive for a bowl with what I would call treasure from the sea. Now the word kaisendon, don at the end of it, don means a bowl like donburi (rice bowl) and kai comes from the sea. So kaisen is seafood and it's a seafood bowl.

22:00 John Daub: Now I got to eat it. All right. If you like John cooking in the kitchen, click the like button. And if you don't just click it anyways, because I'm sure that there's some people who think that this is totally ridiculous and is a complete waste of time. All right. Kanpai to everybody. I've put it in a glass. Hold on. Let's see. For scientific purposes. Let's see if Budweiser looks the same in Japan. You be the judge. Yeah. All right. Kanpai everybody. It's not the same as American Budweiser. It's not the same. There's something missing. Not quite the same. Um, let's eat this thing here. Pretty hungry. I held off of dinner so I could make this with you.

22:54 John Daub: We're going to try first the ikura because this is the treasure right here. Oh, every bite of this is going to be good. It's even better when you make it yourself. Use the fork. Do you mean like use the force? I'm not going to use a fork. What country do you think this is? All right. Next up. I love talking. I love eating with the chat here. I really should have the discord chat on here and taking questions, but we'll do it. This is the scallop from the supermarket today. Scallops are pretty fresh. That is actually a massive scallop from Hokkaido. I made sure ingredients were as fresh as possible. What does scallop taste like? John, it tastes like scallop. Meaty, fresh. There's no fish smell to it. There's no offensive smell or anything like that. It's very meaty. A little bit of the wasabi and soy sauce on that one. There wasn't much that had gotten in there. Um, really good, really meaty. I think if you cook it, more of the flavors come out a little bit of salt, but as is, it was amazing. Really juicy. Um, I can see, I love scallops and I can see why they are pretty expensive at the size and quality. You get what you pay for. As I said, um, that was $2 for that one scallop. From the supermarket. All right, let's get back down here. They were thick, right? They're thick.

25:08 John Daub: Um, next up is the maguro. I'm going to take this piece right here with a little bit of rice on there. Again, I don't put rice vinegar in my kaisendons, but you know, you can do whatever you want to do here. The beauty of kaisendon. Here's some maguro right there. Follow it up. Oh, that's good. Ah, you can have chūtoro (medium fatty tuna). You can have a higher quality of maguro on top of your kaisendon. Don't, I like akami. I like akami because it's got more character to the meat. The fattiness is good in the chūtoro, but when you put the soy sauce and the wasabi on top of it, you want the akami and you pay less for it and you get more of it. So you know, for me, it's a win-win. The akami for the win. I'm going to put this away in old frosty here. Wow. All right. Last but not least is the tamagoyaki that I got from the store. Let's give this a try. It's a nice piece here. That's good. You know, good tamagoyaki should be juicy, wet, not sloppy wet, but it should be wet. I mean, have some moisture to it.

27:03 John Daub: After you've had, I had tamagoyaki at, it was the last piece of sushi that came to us at Sushi Saichi. I went to a restaurant called Sushi Saiki in Roppongi Ichome. I went there about three years ago. We spent about $400 a person because we drank a lot of wine and sake. Now a little bit more, $400 a person, the last piece of sushi, and you got to do that once or twice in your life. It was worth it because when you have the best of the best and after you've been eating at like conveyor belt sushi places. Or medium grade nigiri sushi places like Sushi Zanmai, which is great. When you have the best, you really are blown away by it. You have to have been eating sushi for a little bit before you go to high end. When you go to the highest end, oh my, you really can taste every single flavor. It brings out emotions in the food. I almost was in tears sometimes from the one piece of fish. How could it have that much flavor and be so good? It was perfect. It was like the chef had thought about the moistness and said, no, 32.65 is not good enough. We need 32.7. That's perfect. Like they had studied it to find the perfect umami, satisfactory flavor, taste, texture, everything. That was worth $400. That's why high end sushi is worth it. It is expensive sushi. It's a different experience, but it will move you. But kaisendon will move you too because I can't guarantee the quality of my cooking. All right. Move you to the restroom. It'll be fine. I can't believe that I got this ikura from a vending machine. I got it from a vending machine today. It's pretty crazy. Mmm. That is some good stuff.

29:33 John Daub: Questions. I will take some questions from the audience. I'm going to take some questions from the audience. Click that thumbs up button. John Daub three plus years ago equals Ralph Macchio. John Daub now. Vince McMahon. What? Look, you know, that's not a question. All right. That's insanity. Um, Asiya Khan. I'm a big fan of yours. Thank you. How much of it put uni (sea urchin)? Nothing. Hello. There's no uni. I can't afford that. What do you think I am? Ever since I tasted authentic sushi, I've been eating it. I ate sushi at Tsukiji market in 2018. This is from Larney Rivera. Everything else that I eat in Australia tastes like two out of 10. Nothing beats authentic chefs and ingredients. Exactly.

30:27 John Daub: The Sweden one. Uh, hi John. Happy 4th of July from the United States. Uh, sorry. I keep messaging you other live stream. I can't catch up on them. Thank you. The wasabi faces is pretty hideous. Adding uni would make it expensive. I don't know. Uni is what I get like a kopi-don (police box rice bowl). This is a kopi-don. Don't. All right. This is not a position that any woman in an office would want to see a man with a hand against the wall and you can't escape. This is you right now. You're caught. You're kopi-don. And kopi means police box and don. I've taught you don't kopi-don people. All right. You're coming down right now. I just noticed it's pretty bad. Pretty nasty idea. And don't pick rice out of your teeth when you do it. This is all like fail. All right. Amaebi (sweet shrimp) would be pretty good on it too. Um, sweet shrimp would be excellent. Uni is an acquired taste. Not everybody likes it. The cost performance of uni I think is not there, but if you're in Hokkaido, if you're in a place that specializes in it, like in northern Aomori, oh my gosh, you have to get it.

31:39 John Daub: There's a place in northern Aomori. It's not near the city. It's not convenient. I think you might even need a car. There's no train lines going there. A bus. Um, but it's in the boonies. An old lady makes it. Every morning she makes like 10 kilograms. She scoops out 10 kilograms of uni sea urchin and she sells like a massive bowl of it for like 800 yen. It's massive. It's just topped with uni. It's insane. It's mind blowing. That in itself is worth a trip there. Listen to this. All right. I'm going to tell you this. Um, I want to go back to Aomori and film her because she's such a gem. Um, she does all this alone and there's a line out the door. All right. She's just really good at it. And we were the last customers in, I was with the guy who was working with the prefecture of Aomori at the time. He'd invited me to come in and film the maguro episode for the old channel. And on the way back, I stopped at the uni place. I wish I had live streamed. I think I might have live streamed it on here. After we were done. Um, and we're about to leave. The kitchen was filled with bowls. It was a disaster zone. So me, um, him, Saito-san who's a friend of mine over there and two other people, we washed the dishes for her. We washed the dishes for about 30 minutes and cleaned up her kitchen and we didn't want anything in return. It was our pleasure because she's a master of uni. And it felt pretty cool to be that close to the master and to help her out in the kitchen. But she was doing it all alone and she's like in her seventies or eighties or something, but more energy than me. And that's crazy. Cause I had a lot of energy. Um, my average hours of sleep is like six to eight. It's normal now. It's all right. Depending on if the baby's here or not. It depends. Uh, you look fresh at midnight. Um, this is my peak. I edit usually until four. And then I sleep until nine or 10. But um, I'll edit a little bit tonight before bed, but I'm going to bed early tonight. Uh, it's been a pretty rough June. Um, pretty rough June. Yeah. But I'm happy that we passed the fourth of July and could celebrate Independence Day together. So happy Independence Day, everybody. Budweiser from Japan to you. That does not taste the same. It's better. How does Budweiser here taste better? Why? If you do come to Japan, you're going to try Budweiser. I'm a Budweiser fan. It's bizarre. Budweiser here tastes better than Budweiser in America. Just like everything else.

34:24 John Daub: My friend and her husband works for a company there that farms uni. Apparently there's too much of it. I don't doubt that. I do know that up in Aomori, they do get it out of the sea there. I don't know if it's farmed or not. I'm not sure. I guess it would be, but she, no, no, I don't think it is. She literally goes out in the morning, collects it from the sea in season. She collects it from the sea. I'm not kidding you. She'll scoop out 10 kilograms of it. And she has a bucket of uni. She has a bucket of it. This is like thousands of dollars of uni she carries in. Um, and she just scoops it and puts it on rice and she makes, I don't know how much money she makes, but she doesn't charge a lot for it. And she works her butt off for everything that she got. Um, I can't wait to bring you that story. I'm going to try to go up there. Um, maybe at the end of the summer when uni season is here. Yeah. Um, click that like button. I do appreciate you joining me for dinner. Um, and helping me pay for this ikura, $35. This all came from you. I appreciate the support.

35:26 John Daub: Tomorrow, my friend Peter von Gomm and I are going to be going to Heiwajima, depending on the weather, but it's raining. We're not going to go, um, and give our thanks to the servicemen who didn't make it there. Um, just so that we can remember the people that gave their lives for us to have Independence Day. For us to have what we do have, um, just to say thank you and remember them because it's important to do that. Um, Peter von Gomm and I'll go there probably around nine in the morning. So I don't know when the live stream will start. Maybe 9:30, 10 o'clock. I'm not sure. It's a 13 kilometer bicycle ride for me to get there. So we're going to earn this thing. Greetings from Singapore. Thank you. You can write in where you're watching from to end this live stream. It's always nice to see where the viewers are, but please have a good morning. Uh, enjoy your week coming up. I think it's Monday morning for a lot of you in the United States. I'll see you guys next week. Um, and I'll see you tomorrow in the next live stream, maybe from Heiwajima at the marker from where the Omori prison camp was. Um, we'll leave some beers behind for the boys that didn't make it home. Have a good day guys. You can enjoy the last 20 seconds looking at this butchered kaisendon. This is very not appealing right now, but this is my dinner.