00:00 John Daub: Welcome to Tokyo on a wet and chilly afternoon, which is very bizarre for the month of August. That's right, right now the current temperature—well, that's Tokyo Skytree. Do you see it? Just the base is completely smothered in clouds. And that's Eitai-bashi (Eitai Bridge). Wow, you can only see like maybe the first 50-60 meters of Tokyo Skytree. That's the situation right now in Tokyo and in Japan.

00:29 John Daub: I'm going to show you the clouds as well as the river and talk about some of the flooding and how weird this is in August, and how empty the streets are. Look at this, there's nobody around here. So I have this whole bridge to myself except for the cars. But it is chilly. Again, it's 18 degrees Celsius, or about 65 degrees Fahrenheit. The rain has been coming down now for a couple of days, pretty strong even in the city of Tokyo. And in prefectures like Hiroshima, they've been suffering from really bad flooding. A lot of buildings now are starting to collapse just from too much rain. In August we do get rain, usually from typhoons, but this is bizarre. The fact that I have to have a jacket on also is really bizarre because it's not even the middle of August yet. What is it? Oh, it's August 15th today.

01:24 John Daub: Check it out. You can see that the water is starting to pour out from the land into the river. Do you see that? There's a lot of rain coming in here. You don't see that too often. It's really starting to come down. And we're going to walk around for the next 10-15 minutes and get an idea of what this is like. It's just bizarre. And I can't sit inside. Everything has been closed. All the food trucks are shut down early because there were no customers outside. Usually on the weekends the food trucks are in places where people are located. But here, you can see that there's no one outside. The foot traffic is pretty low. This is an area that I love to come to. This is the point on Shiodome (Shiodome). There's some people inside the restaurant there, but not that many. It's one of the Konami buildings.

02:25 John Daub: So let's take you down to the riverside and get a look at the water. This is the Sumida River. This is the main river that goes through the city of Tokyo. Alright, this is where we are. That's Eitaibashi, the bridge, and Tokyo Skytree is over here.

02:41 John Daub: And just going underneath there, I didn't know if she was going to run today. And guess what? She is! That is the Space Boat! Whoa! I'm kind of stoked because I've been inside doing nothing except editing and looking at a TV screen, a monitor. Air to the Run and Space Boat! I know! Maybe she'll stop here and pick me up. What's the harm? I'll pay. Space Boat's here! I thought everything was going to be really bad today, but guess what? It's going to be awesome! Alright, calm down. It's just a boat. But it's more than a boat. You'll see.

03:24 John Daub: Whoa! WRX Hero is in the house! Despite the rain. And Air to the Run is here too. We're fighting it out here. We had the air and buggy out just a little bit earlier too. Alright, I'm chilling out underneath the bridge like most trolls do. And we're going to wait for the amazing sight that's about to come and hit us. Prime Pro Visuals here too.

03:48 John Daub: Is the weather hot? It is the opposite of hot. Which is... I don't want to say cold. I want to say chilly. Not chilly the kind you eat that we can't find very much in Japan. I'm wearing a down jacket. I never wear a jacket. This is the first time maybe ever I've worn a jacket in August. Although I wore it a couple days ago because it was raining then too. Here she comes. This is the greatest August 15th ever. This is crazy. Look at her making her way towards us. Despite the rain. Nothing will keep Space Boat down. Because it's a boat and it's supposed to float and not stay down. It's supposed to stay up.

04:36 John Daub: Domestrobot writes in. There she blows. It's a true story. She is blowing this way. You're watching live footage of Space Boat making her way down the Sumida River. We're about to see how many people are aboard. If we zoom in. Somewhat pixelated. We might be able to see some of the people who decided to ride on this day. The windows look steamed up. I see nobody. Is that an empty boat? That is an empty boat. Oh no, there's two people. Yo! Lucky people! There's no pandemic on that boat. It looks like they know each other too. I should have gotten on it today.

05:32 John Daub: It's pretty amazing. There's just two people on there and they still ran the boat. A lesser company would have cancelled all flights, departures, launches. But not Space Boat. Despite the rain. They keep it coming. I don't know if this is the best area to be standing either. Seems like this is all the rain from the bridge.

06:14 John Daub: Tokyo is not a great place today. Check out this bird. Oh the bird just died in the water! There it is. Don't do it! Let's see if we can save a life today. Bird don't do it! Stay with us. Stay on the edge. Don't do it. It's a depressing day. Don't just stay. No! No! It's hanging on! Hanging on the pier leg. Have you ever seen an inverted bird like that? I think it might be just picking off the barnacles for lunch or something. Come on bird. It's not that bad. I promise you the weather is going to change. It always does.

07:11 John Daub: Got the umbrella out now. You know what? I'm somebody who will walk in the rain. Alright good. We just saved a life everybody. He's gone underneath the bridge. I want to say thank you to all of you for the support. We've done it. It's Space Bird. Space Bird. Life is worth living. Don't mind the rain. Good. He found shelter. I can now safely and confidently depart.

07:44 John Daub: We're going to go to the point now. The pinnacle. I guess you could call it a pinnacle. There's a point to this area. I love this place. For those joining us, this is a very depressing day. I thought I would go live to build up my own spirits here. Bob Joe's in the house. Here's some for coffee and tea. You know what Bob Joe? I need that really badly. It's chilly. Again the weather is 64-65 degrees Fahrenheit today. For August, bizarre. 98% humidity. Which is probably true because we're like basically... I'm swimming right now. But nothing is better than a live stream in the rain. Nothing. Except everything else.

08:36 John Daub: I can't even see the Skytree. It's completely blocked off. Check it out. It's gone. And I wonder if what people went up to the top of the Skytree. This is the day that no one should go up the Skytree. Although you know, I'm a fan of the Skytree. If you need something to do, you could go up it. But I don't think you're going to see anything at all for the next couple of days. It's pretty much so much humidity it has gathered into drop-off. I guess you could say that.

09:10 John Daub: But on a serious note though, this is something that we always worry about in Japan. Landslides and flooding have been devastating the country. Nagano is the latest on the news. And I've been watching as houses are starting to crumble because of just too much water. In Kanagawa Prefecture, the neighboring of Tokyo, they had, I think within an hour, 100 millimeters of rain fall in an hour. Which is 10 centimeters. Alright, never mind. So they had 10 centimeters of rain fall in an hour, which is a pretty large amount of rain.

09:58 John Daub: Space Boat has already come and gone. And it might come again. This is the point here which is pretty cool. There's a marker here to signify something. We bring Leo here every now and then. We watch the boats. This is a pretty cool look back. And if you're on the other side of the river here, oh boy, it feels like April. It really does. This is a seagull.

10:27 John Daub: If you're on the other side looking at us from this direction, you see the skyscrapers here, these tower mansions. And it looks like a little mini Manhattan. It's kind of neat to see. This is Shiodome, which is an original island. It was a little teeny island in Tokyo Bay back in the Edo period. The rest of it is all that you see behind it is man-made islands. This is an original rock. So it was one of the first places that had high-rise apartments on it because it's strong ground. The other grounds had to settle from the 1960s until the 1980s and they didn't start building until about the last 15 years. But this area is original. This is where the Osaka fishermen were kind of trapped here and they would fish for Tokugawa's shogunate and send the fish over to the Imperial Palace, but they were restricted to Shiodome for the most part, which has a pretty vibrant festival. The Sumiyoshi Shrine here has a pretty vibrant festival every two years because it's so vibrant.

11:30 John Daub: No way! The double Space Boat! Did you... What?! Oh, you were so lucky! Honestly! You don't see this very often. Although one day we did see a triple Space Boat. It is a true story. I know... Air to the Ronde knows how rare this is. This is so rare. Just like the air, which is basically pure water.

12:07 John Daub: Wait, wait, no, no! No! Whoa! We are in the best position because the Space Boat is starting to veer to the left. Oh, this is incredible. Typically the Space Boat will go straight towards Odaiba, which is now open because of the Olympics and the triathlon and some of the setup there. The port dock for the Space Boat was closed, but now it is open again, so some of the boats are making their way to Odaiba. However, this Space Boat is unusually veering to the left. Not something that we see very often. I've timed this perfectly. In fact, we all have because we're watching this gracefully. Look at the lines on her. Oh, it's just beautiful. Honestly, you think that the Space Boat could dive at any moment, go under the water, but it can't. And if it did, wouldn't come back up.

12:56 John Daub: Let's digitally zoom in and see if there's anybody on board. I don't see anybody except the driver. Do you see anybody? I don't see any. I don't see a soul. Whoa! That's an empty Space Boat! What is up with this? Oh, this is insanity. Driver, dock here and I will 100% take you and the 700 people watching with us. And we will all pay. Not. Sort of. Just do it! Come on! Captain Nemo is driving that one. Nemo! He'll be back. They're always back. And when you do, I'm not gonna be as desperate. You understand? Look at the caboose on that thing. It's just like a bullet. Such a beautiful boat.

14:02 John Daub: Can't believe Nemo just took off. A lot of kids come down here too and they like to pick all the bugs and marine life. You can see the wake has created tidal wave here. That's the end of it.

14:32 John Daub: The flooding has been really bad and my heart... I used to live in Hiroshima and gosh, they've been hit with flooding and landslides quite a bit over the last few years. And over the last couple of days we've seen some really tragic images from Hiroshima on the countryside and we're seeing it now in Nagano and other places and the rain's not gonna be stopping. So this is going to impact the channel and impact some of the stuff that I wanted to do next week. However, this rain will not stop us from tonight. Oh, tonight is a good one! Oh, tonight is a very good one. Live on Only in Japan Go. We have our buddy, our friend, the man that we all love to watch on YouTube. His name is Greg Lam and he's from the channel called Life Where I'm From. And right now that man, he's not even in Japan. Alright? He's in Canada. And he just uploaded a video on what are Japanese breakfasts really like. Because he's doing a really series. He's gonna be talking about, like, can I become Japanese? Can you become Japanese? He made a documentary that took him three years to make. Greg is a maniac. He invested...

15:57 John Daub: Oh, there's an aosagi (blue heron). Check this out. Shh, shh, don't! How did you know my intentions? This graceful bird, just like Space Boat. Now gone. Just like Space Boat. I'm gonna call that bird Nemo. Yeah, don't come back.

16:26 John Daub: Well anyways, Greg is gonna be here. He's got an amazing channel. He's Canadian. He's a good friend, like all Canadians. And he's gonna be talking about it. I'm really happy about this. We're gonna be doing a studio live stream. I'm patching him in through Zoom. He's sent me some clips to talk about and I'm gonna interview him about this because I'm quite curious. I purchased his documentary on Kickstarter because anybody who puts three years of their life into one work, that's pretty amazing. So I'm proud of the work that Greg did and he's somebody who's inspired me a lot with some of his videos. Tonight I'm gonna ask you if you have any questions about it. I put on Twitter a trailer of his documentary and you can see it on his channel as well. If you have any questions that you wanna ask for Greg about becoming Japanese, about becoming a Nihonjin (Japanese person), naturalized, or if you were, like he basically went across the entire country of Japan to interview people and talk about their process. He found the right people and made an incredible documentary I think that's gonna stand the test of time and it's so good. I think it could be something that's on Netflix. I honestly believe, like I would stream this on Netflix and I think the quality of it is so impressive. Like all of the work that he does.

18:01 John Daub: Here, check out something more beautiful than me. There you go. I'm just really excited to have him on the show and then talk about this tonight. Uh, tentatively I had this set for 1am Japan Standard Time, JST. Which is 9am Pacific Time. Which is, I don't know, what time is that? Like, I think it's like noon in New York and then 8 hours behind. It's like afternoon in London. So that should be pretty good. Uh, the Aussies might not like the time but you must play back or you can stay up. But we have some questions off Twitter and we're going to, um, let's see if I can patch on Discord to have some people asking questions. So if you're awake and you're part of the Discord community you can go in there and fireside chat. I think I can patch you in and you can ask questions to Greg live.

19:12 John Daub: Should we go, go back we go for science. It's a big bird. You know, you can make a rainy day a lot of fun. That's an aosagi too. No, don't take off. Wait for us. Don't listen to my, oh, couldn't understand my true intentions again. How dare you? Look, I have good intentions. Verbally. Good intentions. Hey! Gonna come closer to us. Oh yes, he came closer. Okay. I'm giving off good vibrations. Vibrations. I'm not gonna attack you. I'm not gonna eat you. Just a good guy on a mission to talk to you one on one. Mano y mano. I'm giving off good vibrations. Come on, come on, come on. It's the rap version. I'm gonna put the umbrella away. I think that's intimidating him. I've put the weapon down, sir. I've put the weapon down. I'm nothing in my hands except for a gimbal. I come in peace. Don't! No! Why'd I come back here? Hey! You! Stupid aosagi. Really? Come on. Seriously? I had good intentions. I just wanted to get some nice pictures for the people. Look, he found his girlfriend's over there. Maybe that's why. Can't blame him. Alright, that did not go as planned.

21:37 John Daub: There's nobody out here. There's nobody for me to chase. Chase those pigeons. I'm packing it in for the night. See you in a few hours, wrote in Greg Lam. So I've been in touch with him. He just drop boxed me some clips to add for tonight's livestream. We do have some friends here. Let's go talk with them. Excuse me, sir. Wanted to talk about your friend aosagi, the big white bird. He's not very attentive or not very friendly like you guys are. Eating regurgitated cookie. No? They're not very talkative either. They're busy on this. Let's go investigate what based on there's not much other to do. Let's go investigate what the pigeons are eating. Excuse me. We just want to see what you found over there. John finds a ghastly sight. A severed finger. That would be... That does not look like regurgitate. That's nasty! You're nasty birds. You guys are nasty posse. You understand that, right?

22:58 John Daub: Now don't worry about me slipping because I just got new sandals. Went to the Birkenstock store in Ginza the day before yesterday. So I'm going to go check it out. So we do have some wildlife here. But the aosagi has escaped us. They're coming back for the regurgitation here. Must be that good, huh? Looks like yogurt. Yeah, my mom was... I was FaceTiming to show Leo this morning. This morning I called my mom to FaceTime to show Leo was playing. And my mom saw my feet and she got freaked out. She thought that it was dirty. But they're not dirty. It's just suntan. It's normal.

23:56 John Daub: Alright. You know what? She freaked out. She's worried about me. It's just suntan. You know, there are cormorants? The birds that go diving? Oh wait, someone wrote in something. Xanderman writes in, Not normal laugh out loud. Really? I think it is normal if you're outside wearing Birkenstock Evas. There's nobody out here. I could do anything right now and no one would ever know. I don't think anyone's watching me from these high tower mansions either. Over there is the Meiji Maru which is from the Meiji period. Emperor Meiji rode this from Hakodate in Hokkaido to Yokohama. And it now sits at the Marine University. And I think in better times we're going to go and explore that ship. I think they have WiFi on board now. Technology.

25:10 John Daub: Let's explore a little bit more. If you like rainy walks in the neighborhood, click that like button. I'll do more because I have no choice. Because it's supposed to rain for the next couple of days. That's the weather report and it's awful. Look at this. All the highway for pedestrians is first of all there's nobody here and second it's wet.

26:01 John Daub: Who does that with puddles? Am I the only one? I don't know if you've ever done this. Done this with puddles. The public service. I'm kind of clearing the deep ones for the people. There's a good deep one here. That was nice. Here's a real deep one. Three, two, one. What did you do today, honey? I watched a man on YouTube smashing puddles with a Birkenstock.

26:56 John Daub: What do you think they're eating in there in the grass? There's these little teeny robin looking birds. Got something in there. The bugs come to the surface maybe. What is that? Oh, it's a puddle. I thought that was some sort of weird... We can go see if the ducks are here. So I'm going to take you to the end of this and then that'll be it because this is getting pretty sad. Some people I'm getting pity super chats here. Which is okay. Shonime. Thank you. I appreciate that. Pretty cool.

27:45 John Daub: I do have a Japan travel update coming next week. The reason I haven't done one in a while is because there's a lot of fluidity right now and some of the things that I heard from Amanda who's a journalist from NBC6 Miami. We were talking for quite a long time about how she came into Japan and the process for her coming abroad into the country as a non-resident or citizen because the Olympics not a lot of people have done that. And her process I'm going to describe to you in the next Japan travel update which is going to be next week. This week that's coming up. Because I can't really go outside because it's raining every day. Look they've turned dogs into claw games. That's a UFO catcher it looks like. It's kind of... Robots are taking over the world and they're stealing our dogs. That's what I thought it was. I think that's supposed to be a nod. It's like a non-leash law or something. It's kind of weird. Thanks Wendy. Poor dog. That looked like one of those little terrier dogs right? I guess the UFO the aliens only want the robot aliens only want the terrier dogs. The other varieties of dogs are okay. Mass stocking carriers or some evil plan. I thought that that apartment would be pretty cool to live in but then I saw the prices for it and they're pretty exorbitant. It's got nice big windows.

29:49 John Daub: Okay here comes another riverboat. Walk backwards. It's not the Space Boat. There are other boats besides the Space Boats and I'm not going to say that the Space Boat is the best boat to take. There are advantages to taking these other yakatabune (pleasure boats) ships and one of the big advantages are that the windows are open. Space Boat is closed up and sealed because it could submerge at any time but never will because it would sink. But these boats are pretty good. Let's try to wave and digitally zoom at the people. I'm going to put my umbrella down. Tally-ho! Hey! Tally-ho! Nobody. Is there any waves? Anybody? Did you see? I did wave. Whoa! That is awesome. We did something good. We connected with somebody. Alright that's good news. There's like six people on the boat. I totally should have gone with Kanae on this. Totally. We should have totally done a video on Kanae. I could have had a non-alcoholic beer. I've been drinking this beer called Beerie. It has like almost no alcohol. Peter von Gomm and I had one once because the Olympics disallowed beer outside. So we had a Beerie which is made by Asahi. B-E-E-R-I-E. Google search that. Asahi and you'll come up with this weird drink. They made regular beer but took out all the alcohol except for 0.5%. So you got to drink 10 of them to have the same impact as one normal beer. And I find that I prefer that over regular beer. I don't really need the alcohol. And I'm still pretty productive. Beerie. It's weird.

32:04 John Daub: You know I wanted to bring Leo out today but in his harness carrier thing. But uh, he was asleep. So I had to go out on my own. Jim there's a crow! Look at that crow taking over that whole chair. Let's go over there and taunt him. Yeah you better run. He's really confused. All due to not know my language. Oh crap there's two of them. There was one flanking me. I better get out of here. There's two of us too out here. I'm sure the other human will come to my defense. I'm kind of scared now. I have to, I'm going to walk backwards for a little bit. Never turn your back on a crow. It's going to gank and attack you. Alright the other human is leaving me now. It's not good. Oh no they got the, they got some um, some birds here. Okay. Is that an aosagi? There are a couple of birds here. This is where I once um, scared an entire family of ducks. And we found the duck paradise and this seemed to be they're still here. Let's not scare them. We come in peace. I'll put the weapon down.

34:23 John Daub: You're watching live of Tokyo's Sumida River. The edge of Tsukishima Island. Where ducks are trying to stay dry by being wet. No! That bird just, it's a cormorant. That's one of those birds that dives deep and gets their fish. These are cormorants. What are the cormorants, what are their calls like? Is it like a whooping cough? He's looking over at us. I think we got it. He's looking at us. I'm giving off good vibration. Come on. Come on. Come on. Nothing. Dive deep. I want to see if you get a fish. Let's try his friends over here. They look like little penguins. There's a whole colony of them. Look this one's kind of cheeky. Doesn't want to get away from me. Probably on the edge there ready to dive. Let's add some phlegm to it. It's a loner. There's another boat coming. Add some more phlegm to it. It's too much. Why is he, what did he do to be banned from the group? You know birds have their own civilization, like their own kind of culture. He did something. He did some kind of heinous crime. He stole a fish or he wouldn't share his fish. Oh he's getting ready. Either that or he's doing a duty or he's getting ready to launch. Solitude is bliss. Really? I don't think so. I think he wants to be friends with me. He's closer to me than he is to them. That in itself is a testament of my friendliness. Probably saying all the right things right now. Maybe he was human in a former life. He's between the two worlds right now. He doesn't know if he should come home with me or hang out with his other birds. They're birds after all. I mean they probably don't have the same intellectual intellect as me. As a human being of course. It's a tough decision.

38:23 John Daub: People walking by are gonna get scared. The great thing about today is that there's nobody walking by. So there's nobody to scare except for the people watching. Please stop doing that now. I'm gonna get the noise. Okay, okay, okay. Was it the phlegm? Was that too much? I'm gonna go up here and maybe get a better view of this boat coming by. Sorry about that. Carried away. I'm just trying to connect. I just wanna make friends. Just trying to connect. Sometimes it's hard to do. You don't know how to connect. I don't know that much about the cormorant society. Do you?

39:14 John Daub: Alright, let's see if we can wave to the people. I'm gonna put down my umbrella. Oh, this looks like an accident could be waiting to happen. I'm sitting on the wrong side. Well, it's interesting that the river boats are still on the move. Alright, that's about it for me. I don't know how much longer I can entertain you. The bird noises were a total failure.

40:03 John Daub: You know what I'm gonna do right now? I'm gonna send the postcards. Actually, that's why I came out here. See if I can get underneath this. I think the crows remember me from taunting them when I hear them in the distance. Okay, I'm gonna be underneath this tree. So I gotta send these postcards out to some people here. Let me see who they out to. To Veronica. Veronica, thank you, Veronica. To Lucinda in Michigan and to Edward in St. Petersburg. I'm putting it in the mail right now. Thanks so much for supporting on the postcard club. I'll put it in the post box here. Sorry if I offended any bird lovers out there. That was not my intention. I had good intentions. Positive vibes, good vibrations. The best.

41:06 John Daub: See the mud fly? Alright everybody, that's all I have. I can't find any deeper puddles than this one. There's one over there. This is all. This is the last one and then I gotta go. Probably Kanae's worried about me. This looks like a good puddle. Yeah, Leo would love these puddles. We're gonna have some fun. Come back completely messed up. Alright, 3, 2, 1. That's pretty good. That's a big one here. Double. Let's go double. Man, that got in my sandals a little bit. Just bought them too.

42:13 John Daub: Alright everybody, have a good day. I hope that warms your hearts. Ryan, what is that? Ryan Evangelista, get some towels. Alright. I'm gonna need it. I'm gonna go to the store and get some towels as we say goodbye to our friend, the lonely cormorant bird. Have a good day everybody. Thanks for keeping me company on this day. I'll try to find something. Tonight! Okay, don't forget tonight at 1am Japan time. We got Greg Lam from Life Where I'm From to talk about being Japanese. Queue up your questions on Twitter and Discord. See you then.