00:00:00 John Daub: It is now midnight, or about five minutes to midnight. It's a midnight snack run. I guess you could call it a run because I did run from the living room to the fridge. But right now it's raining. The weather has been pretty autumn. Like, you can tell summer's over. The humidity's gone here in Tokyo. And I haven't done one of these for a while. But there's something really, really cool that's happening with at 7:11 Japan these days.

00:00:36 John Daub: The Olympics are, of course, was kind of a success and kind of a failure. And I don't want to talk too much about it, but I do want to talk about the food, which I heard from people that it was really, really good in the Olympic cafeteria. There were some dishes that were so good that 711 Japan has decided to make the food again, like reproduce what was at the cafeteria.

00:01:06 John Daub: And they made some bentos. And I went out earlier and I bought it. So Frosty here has got it. Got the good stuff in here. All right, let's see here. So this one bento again, you can see the Olympic 2020 seal on it from 7 11. It's good till tomorrow. I don't have a microwave, but I think it's fine to eat it cold. It look, I'm sure it's just as good. So this is the first bento.

00:01:38 John Daub: The second thing that I found was this. A zunda pudding. Zunda is edamame. So this is like an edamame green soybeans and whipped cream pudding. And this is very popular at the Olympic and Paralympic cafeteria. And we have one more here that I could find. This is oden, a summer version of oden. And we're going to try this as well. Now, of course, as citizens of Japan, we could not go to the Olympic cafeteria. So it's kind of cool that 711 is telling me that it's time to get to the table here. I did buy one of the last Asahi official beer of the 2020 Olympics. It has the label. So it is Mr. Doss relevant if Mr. Doss is here, I'm sure he's here in spirit. So let's get these here. And we're gonna set this to the side because they are going to be eaten, including this beer here.

00:02:45 John Daub: I do have an Olympic glass for it. So buckle in for a midnight snack run because right now it's midnight. But wait, I do have an appetizer. These were also trending pretty heavily. These are salami chips from 7 11. I might have eaten a couple just so it wouldn't be a shock. Salami chips. I don't know. It kind of freaked me out when I saw. I'm like, wait a second. So what, do you just deep fry the salami? Is that how you make these? I don't know. So actually I do know, but I'm gonna pretend like I don't. So it makes it really exciting when I rip this open again for a second time and try these. I know. Salami chips. The picture on the wall, if you're curious, that's from our wedding and you can see our family here. It's nice. All right, let's get this thing going.

00:03:49 John Daub: So I got a pair of chopsticks here. Let's use the one from 7 11. These are too nice. All right, these are the 711 chopsticks and a bottle opener. And then we are moving over to the next room. It's so exciting. Nice. I got this Olympic glass at Don Quixote. It cost me about $7. I think things are starting to get on sale here. Raymond's antennas in the house. I was highly interested in these items.

00:04:22 John Daub: Oh, I think you're going to like this live stream. And I think we had a shoutout here from Bob Joe. Howdy, Bob Joe. Here's Leo's cleaning devices for the milk bottles. Just thought I'd show that to you for a second. Thank you, Bob Joe. No relationship to the super chat there. All right, moving along. Ah, don't drop it. As you can see, I have a brand new light to make this nice and evenly lit experience for you.

00:04:55 John Daub: Okay, close this door. Wow. Midnight. Okay, let's have a seat here. Okay. All right. Well this light is pretty good. Look at that. This light is pretty good. Hold on, I can. Ah, nice. Evenly lit, very cool. Now before I eat these items, I already introduced it to you a little bit. I set up the Internet on the television set here. And this is seven eleven Japan's website.

00:05:26 John Daub: I can't take you into seven Eleven because you know, it's raining and the weather is really bad. But seven Eleven's website, which is SEJ seven eleven Japan SEJ Co JP I put the link in the description here. I'm gonna pan. This is the 711 Japan's website for the food items that they have. So I found three of the four. So this one right here I could not find. I'm gonna click through to this.

00:05:58 John Daub: There it is. This is the athletes' somen with tomato sauce. Okay. And unfortunately, this is not available at the 7:11. I guess it was sold out. Looks pretty healthy. This one down here is the Zangi wa chimitsu lemons. So it has a lemon sauce with some chicken. So it's basically chicken lemon sauce with the— with what is it? Tomachiki. Tomachiki. Like, I guess it's like a tomato and chicken toss.

00:06:30 John Daub: That's gonna be pretty exciting to eat. This third one here is oden. Natsu version. So summer oden. And then we have the zunda pudding. So this is gonna be really good. So these four items are here. And I've got three out of the four from the Olympic village kitchen. Awesome. All right. This is pretty cool. All right, let's get the beer here.

00:07:01 John Daub: It's been a long time since I had one of these live with you guys. Midnight. This bottle opener here. Shouldn't you shouldn't drink after midnight? Really? This is the time stop. But I'm gonna be up for a while because I have a lot of editing to do. So this is my late dinner. All right, everybody. Goodbye to the Olympics. Kanpai. Tomorrow's the closing ceremony. The Paralympics.

00:07:32 John Daub: So congratulations to all the Paralympians. That tastes good, Asahi. First, we're gonna try these salami chips. What? Salami chips? I know. I don't know how they make them. I don't think it's actually salami. I think they've reconstituted. Hold on. I'm gonna pretend like I open it. Okay. I think they've just reconstituted. These look like poker chips. You could just— they've reconstituted like a potato snack with pork extract or something in there. I don't know. Hold on. Let me put this in the— let's get the good light here so you can really investigate this. Get this pan down here a little bit. All right. There you go. Salami chip. Soylent red. True story. They do look like salami slices though, right? Gotta be good. Gotta be good.

00:08:32 John Daub: All right, let's try this here. Is it? Gimas writes in slices of life. True story. This way. Now. Two at one time. They're really salty. So they're salty and spicy. So they got the salami spice correct. There's a like a meatiness to it, like a Slim Jim meatiness to it. So they put the extract into that crispy crunch. You're really good. I know it's not good for you, but they're really good.

00:09:04 John Daub: So I gotta say, like, I don't know if these are still gonna be around, these salami chips. But if they are, you had better go to 711 and get these here. I mean, this isn't a commercial for 7 11, but if they're gonna innovate like this, then you should get on this, right? They're really good. Hey, heir to the rounds here. Team no sleep. Checking in much Dump beer. Little Sahi. You know, I don't. Yeah, I think it is soy. A lot of soy chips. I just know the ingredient list here is quite long, so I'm popping positive. It's not good for you. Caramel coloring is also in here. Garlic paste. Garlic powder. Sorry. Table salt. Salami. Salami like salami, flavored salami like flavored powder is also in here. That's pretty cool.

00:10:08 John Daub: All right, well, hey, you know what? They did a pretty good job with it. It tastes pretty realistic to me. It's very salty, though, so you probably don't eat a lot of them right away. Next up, we're gonna save this for last. This is the edamame pudding, the Olympic pudding from the village. So we'll go first. First off, we're gonna go for the oden here. This is the Olympic oden, the summer version.

00:10:41 John Daub: So you can see it's pretty healthy. You get some corn and stuff in here. But the best way to really, really know all about it is to open it up. Investigate this. 711 has really upped their game with the food inside there. Oh, send the chips to the daimyo. I was thinking about that. I was thinking about that. I might do that. In hold on a second. I think. Hey there.

00:11:11 John Daub: Hey. I'm back here. I was gonna I was gonna send those in the next month's box, I think, because I get this month's box is so full. I ordered some taiyaki, which is from a famous shop, which is going to be really good. It's there are little, small taiyaki made from local ingredients. So we'll see. We'll see what we can do here. Whoa. All right, hold on a second.

00:11:42 John Daub: Let me get this front camera in here. We're gonna take a look at the goodies here. Wow. So we have here. It looks like an ajitama. No wonder this is really popular. I'm gonna dig in. I guess the Olympic food was very healthy there. Oh, hold on a second. There's some sort of dressing that's supposed to go on here. All right, we'll do that last. Okra, which is probably a little mushy.

00:12:15 John Daub: Baby corn, which is a konjac. Konjac potato gelatin, which is super healthy. You see it's been sliced here. They do that because then the soup or the sauce gets inside there. So when you take a bite of it, it stays in there. So that's kind of a neat little trick they do with it. This stuff is super healthy or doesn't really have much to it, but it does fill you up.

00:12:46 John Daub: Oh good. Look at this little fish. Fish roll here. I like those. A tomato, very healthy. Some eggplant. What? Oh, wow. And some tofu here on the bottom. Super healthy. Isn't all looks good now the egg really does. Oh, I'm getting already egg on there. Okay, let's put the sauce on there. This is what the Olympians ate. Of course they have an easy open here. It is easy open.

00:13:17 John Daub: I guess you just put it, just put a little bit on there. I don't know. Wow. All right, let's try it. All right, we're gonna go for that ajitama first. I usually save this last because it's so good. You can seal the congealed egg inside there. That's satisfying. Oh, that's good. And my friend Danny's here. Yo have a nice snack and evening for me. It took. It looks delicious and maybe a little weird.

00:13:50 John Daub: Maybe one day I will try it. Danny, as soon as travel comes. We are expecting you in Tokyo, my friend. All right. The konjac, very rubbery. I don't know what that sauce was. It had a little bit of dashi in it. I think it's just to bring out a little bit of a little bit of saltiness and a little dashi to the flavor. Give it more of a wafu, like a Japanese style taste to it.

00:14:20 John Daub: And very good. This is very good. Okra. Hey, Roy's here from Singapore. How you doing Roy? PC gamers over there in Melbourne. It's quite late over there, huh? These are all really good stuff. This eggplant I know is going to be good. Looks like it's been really soaked into the juices. Oh, it's good. Eggplant or absolute fish cake roll? Baby corn. Tofu. That's really nice.

00:14:52 John Daub: This is the natsu Olympic oden. And this oden is very healthy. 360 yen, about $3.50 for that. Well done. And there's not a lot of preservatives in it. It's mostly vegetables. I can see why the athletes would like this. Moving along. Next up is a bento. Now it's supposed to be heated. It tells you the directions up on the top. Oh, let's get it on the front lines. It's a little bit cleaner on the.

00:15:24 John Daub: On the other side there. See my reflection in the television here? So this is about 498 yen. Close to $5 to be like maybe 475 with the exchange rate. It is an official licensed product by Tokyo. And you can see there's even a registration number on it. How cool is that? What do they really need a registration number? I guess so. But the mascots here are in cooking gear so that's pretty cool.

00:15:56 John Daub: Chicken Salmon. So says here salmon, chicken, carrot, honey, lemon sauce, garlic. Very cool. And there's the directions for microwaving it. It's good until tomorrow. Inside the package looks pretty good. So yeah, this was the last one that was available at the 711 that I went to. And not all the 7 11s sold this. This is really interesting point. Not all the 7 11s had the Olympic food.

00:16:28 John Daub: I went to three of them first. In my neighborhood they did not have what's 5%. Oh this sticker. I think if you use this payment system you get 5% off. I don't usually do like point cards and stuff. Yeah, the three 7 11s around me didn't have it. I went to one that was on a very busy street and then they had the Olympic food there. So that was really unusual for me because the website promotes this.

00:17:02 John Daub: It says it at every 7 11. That's not the case. So sometimes you have to check around the different seven 11s. I did not think that it would be a lot easier to find. But it wasn't. I did get another pudding. Don't worry. I got another pudding for Kanai so there's one for her to try tomorrow. Oh, this smells great. I can imagine if they heat this up it's going to smell even better.

00:17:37 John Daub: But we don't own a microwave, believe it or not. So they called it zangi. And zangi is Hokkaido for karaage. I remember when I went up to up to Hokkaido you can ask for karaage which is like a Japanese deep fried chicken bits. But you're not going to find it because they call it zangi with a Z or Z to start off with. This is like a I guess it's like a deep fried salmon.

00:18:07 John Daub: Zangi salmon, which is gonna be very interesting to try this. It looks like there's chicken in there too. Wow. All right, let me give you the good lens. And we're deep into this bento because this is history. This these are not going to be around for much longer. Okay. These bento are not going to be here forever. So let's investigate. Oh, hold on a second. Oh, did you see that?

00:18:39 John Daub: I should have known there was something sneaky. So you have this tray, and the rice is in the second bowl. What? That's deep. That's very deep. Okay, put this over to the side here. On the top you have the chicken mix in with the tomato sauce. There's the deep fried piece of salmon, a little tamagoyaki there, some vegetables, and what looks like carrots. Usually they have a gobo salad, which is burdock root mixed up in there, but looks like just the carrots.

00:19:17 John Daub: And I guess you eat the rice separately, but it should be heated. I don't have that option. So there you go. Get a little bit closer. Feel the food. There's a deep fried chicken. A little bit of a congealed sauce on there. I bet you it's 10 times better if you heat it up again. I don't have a microwave because we just don't have a microwave. I just never bought one for some decade or so.

00:19:50 John Daub: I just never had never used a microwave. You know, the stores have microwaves. So typically when you buy a bento at a supermarket, you can heat it up. Right. Every supermarket has actually. You can just eat it separately like this. So I'm gonna try this salmon zangi. Looks like there's a pickle attached to it. What is that? Oh, that's it looks like a lemon.

00:20:21 John Daub: So it looks like the lemon has been already squeezed on it. This should be quite good. This is really good. That is a good piece of salmon. When you deep fry it, you kind of hardens a little bit too much. I think heating it would make it a little bit softer and a better consistency in the mouth. But yeah, there's that battered deep fried goodness all around it, like tempura-ed temporified salmon.

00:20:53 John Daub: Who would be against that? Not me. Okay, we're gonna put the rice to the side. Oh, that needs to be microwaved. That needs to be microwaved. It's still kind of hard. That's okay. I probably. It's probably healthier not to eat the rice at midnight anyway. All right, again, this is what the athletes ate and this course was available. The athletes in the Olympic village, they ate really well.

00:21:25 John Daub: Let's try this chicken mixed in with some tomato sauce. Wow. This sauce is awesome. Look at the sauce on this here. I'll use the better lens so you can look at the sauce on there. There's a piece of chicken. It's not just tomato sauce. It's the garlic taste is really coming through. But it's not heavily garlic. That's pretty good balance. You know. It's.

00:21:56 John Daub: It's like a happy sauce. I guess that's sort of an Italian Mediterranean type of a taste to it. It'd be way better if it was heated, but it's still pretty good like this. Wow. Misty writes in here. So wonderful to see you. Brings me back to late night tent camping. I know. It was one of the things I was thinking of going to, but I just can't go back to the 2020 era.

00:22:29 John Daub: Bless you and your little family. Stay safe. I'm so hungry now. Sorry I missed you for making you hungry. Yeah. I can't go back to the way it was in 2020. You have to go forward. So midnight camping. Maybe I'll do it again one day. But we sort of moved on and I started traveling again now. So we should be okay to go. Let's try the carrots here. Mmm. That's mixed in with a little bit of tuna fish there.

00:23:02 John Daub: Broccoli. A little bit of garlic sauce on that. It's mixed in with the corn. I like the deep fry batter. And deep fry this just like this. That'd be pretty good tempura overall. Except for maybe this. This oddly placed piece of hot dog. What? Why do they do that? Besides this. It's probably a pretty healthy pretty healthy meal. Huh? I could dig it. If I was an Olympic athlete.

00:23:34 John Daub: I would gain like a thousand pounds. A thousand kilograms eating. I would just eat. Because it's all probably like free food there. Wow. This is so much fun. So satisfying. Those two dishes are really satisfying. I wish we could wish I could try the that third one here. I'm sorry? The the third meal. This one right here. I wish you could try this one, but it's just not available.

00:24:07 John Daub: I can check it out tomorrow. But that's 510 yen. So we ate this one here. This is the one I just ate. But definitely microwave this before. It's just not the same unless you microwave it. I put a link in the description. So you can see this website on your own smartphone there. This is the summer version of the oden. Simmered vegetables. Very healthy.

00:24:37 John Daub: And the this is what we're gonna eat next. The Zunda. It's a pudding made of edamame, which is going to be delicious. And this is dedicated to Irvin over there. Our friends in the in the Midwest. Thank you, Urban. And I did buy. Don't worry. I bought Kanai one of these too. So I got two. There's one in the fridge. So when she comes home, she'll have these two characters waiting for her. Kitchen mascots.

00:25:10 John Daub: These were sold out too. These were hard to find. I went to that 711 again this evening, and they had about five left, so I bought two of them. So Zunda is edamame. Oh, hold on. I don't have a spoon. I don't have a spoon. All right, wait right here. Here, look at this. Just look at this. And the fear. Okay, just look at these items while I go get a spoon.

00:25:40 John Daub: Oh, gimbal. Stop it. Just look at that. It's a spoon. Spoon. Hurry up. All right, we're back. Do you see the gimbals acting up again? We're gonna have to give her a name. I'll show you that last. It's weird. Yeah, I did. I did get a switch. So I'm gonna start using the switch in the Twitch live stream on Monday morning, Sunday night, US time. Let's give this a try here.

00:26:10 John Daub: Is it Akimasu. This is not matcha. This is edamame, which is soybeans. Oh, oh, hold on. You have to see it from the other side. You have to see it from this side. Pan down. You have to see it. Wow. Okay, so you see there's like some pudding there and looks like some mousse on top there. So it's two kinds of two kinds of edamame and a little bit of whipped cream in there.

00:26:41 John Daub: That's gonna be a nice bite. Let's give this a try here. IDDQD2. Thank you. Is that a doom. That looks like a doom character on there. Did I guess part. See, when you're eating a pudding like this, you are expecting it to be sweet, right? You're expecting a pudding type of taste. It's not the consistency and the sweetness level is totally off the wall.

00:27:12 John Daub: And I mean that, like, it's unexpected. It's not that sweet. It's vegetable sweet, which means it doesn't taste like it has any added sugar. It's salty. There's like a pleasant saltiness to it. It's like if you have you ever eaten edamame before? You get it out of there and you're just popping them in your mouth. It's like that, except it's pudding-ified.

00:27:44 John Daub: It's pleasant. And edamame has a natural sweetness to it. So Zunda, which is very famous in Sendai. Oh, this isn't Leo's spoon. This is my spoon. I got it at a friend's wedding. Isn't it cute? You get a little legs there too, so you can pick stuff up with it on the other side. I always eat with small teaspoons. I never use real size spoons. It doesn't make sense to me.

00:28:15 John Daub: Wow. Highly. Highly enjoy this. Although it doesn't taste like a dessert. This tastes so much like like a side entree or something. Hey, Jerry, Beers here. Hope you have Animal crossing for the switch. Would love to see how the island looks now. Yeah, you know what? I haven't gotten that. I just bought it for Densha de Go. But I actually have this. The controller.

00:28:45 John Daub: I guess I can show. There's a couple of things I want to show you before we end this live stream. So just hang on for another couple of minutes and I'm going to show you some stuff. But this is really good. Okay. I'm gonna enjoy this later. Off this stream. You definitely need to microwave the rice. It's still hard, which is a disappointment. But the Olympic beer is very enjoyable.

00:29:17 John Daub: I did pick up when I got this stuff, this tea here. At first I did a double take. I thought, this is it looks like whiskey, doesn't it? It looks like a bottle of whiskey or something. So when I walk by them, like, wait, what? Whiskey for a dollar. And it's not. It's tea. So just kind of confused me. Just the black cap on it and the label, it's all classy whiskey.

00:29:47 John Daub: It is. It's Kyoto blended roasted harmony. I guess it's like some sort of nut tea. I don't know. So I'm gonna try this on there. But the packaging is beautiful. There's a little fan on there. It's made by Suntory. It's 600 milliliters. Oh, there's the website if you're interested. You can look it up here. See the website I Yemon JP I know some people gonna look it up.

00:30:22 John Daub: It says tea on the top. So it's not whiskey. But I like the look of it is it's not whiskey. Oh I'm not going to drink a lot of that. It's like a Hojicha. Okay. This is a pleasant taste. This really does go well with with the bento that we ate here. This is like a Hojicha but just the packaging of it looks very whiskey. Whiskey-ish. So this is a new product. I don't know if they're gonna be around in 2022 but I thought I'd pick it up and try it and it's quite good.

00:31:00 John Daub: It's Hojicha and I think it's mixed in with a couple of other things. It's a pretty good blend. But the Hojicha doesn't have a lot of caffeine. But it has caffeine. Not the best thing to eat at 12:30 in the morning. So that, that's about it. The Olympic beer. I kind of I'm gonna miss this gold bar on all the Asahis. Tokyo 2020 official beer. It's a shame to have to say goodbye to that.

00:31:32 John Daub: But the closing ceremony for the Paralympics is tomorrow quiz because I think it's important that we all learn a little bit about the Paralympics. I wanted to do a lot more but it's just it hasn't been very easy to find things. And then the weather today was really bad. I couldn't take you to the Paralympic activities center which is what I wanted to do earlier today.

00:32:03 John Daub: What does the para para in Paralympics mean? What does the para para in Paralympics mean? There has a meaning to it. Just a question for you. Peso just gave a pretty good clue. It's a pretty good clue right there. Satrio is stumped. Yeah. So we got it right there. Parallel. It means that it's going on at the same time as the Olympics. So it's the second biggest sporting event in the world after the Olympics.

00:32:38 John Daub: So it runs parallel with the Olympics. So parallel Olympics. That's what it means. Now I'm showing you this angle up my nose for a reason. Okay. Okay. I guess I can show it to you. So I got this here. Kanai and I are going to eat this on Monday. We're gonna eat this on Monday for you. This here. I ordered it two weeks ago. That's how long it took for this to come.

00:33:08 John Daub: This box is a watermelon box but this is a watermelon cake, but it looks like it came in a fruit box, right? It came with information and stuff like this, but we had to keep it frozen in the freezer until before we ate it. So it looks like this. So you're getting an advanced look. An advanced look at it right now. Yes. These are Aussie beef pies. This and this is a special like watermelon cake.

00:33:40 John Daub: We're gonna eat this on Monday. You're gonna want to see this. This is pretty cool. It looks super authentic. It's a Bamku head made out of made to look like a watermelon. And I bought this as a gift for Kanai and I said, well, we gotta live stream this because this is just too fun. So we're gonna do that. So what is that? Oh, oh, a watermelon with an E.

00:34:11 John Daub: Right now it's frozen, but it's gonna be pretty good. And the other, the last thing I wanted to show you is. Oh, right here on. This is the new controller for the Densha de Go. So you can control the trains software very, very well with this thing. I did play around with it. It's brand new. This controller just came out in August so it's only it's less than a month old actually.

00:34:42 John Daub: So I'm gonna set this up for Twitch Stream and try to do this. I might do this for Only Japan Go stream as well. Pretty it's pretty cool, huh? So it's made very well. I was surprised at the sound and everything of it, so it should be a lot of fun to play with this. So I'm going to hook that up to the computer and live stream it on Monday. Monday morning, which is Sunday night in the US time.

00:35:15 John Daub: There's a lot of stuff happening. The next episode of the Only main channel. I think I'm going to release it on Tuesday cuz I have better luck with the release there. It's just about done. I just have to put in the narration. But I'm going to sit on it for another day or two and then release it on Tuesday. So that's going to be nice. And the channels are rolling again.

00:35:45 John Daub: I travel after the state of emergency ends. Excuse me, after the state of emergency ends on the 12th, I'll be going down to see my friend Kevin Riley down in Osaka and we're going to be filming a special episode of Only Japan main channel and do a live stream at a restaurant that asked us to come and try the food there. And I haven't been able to film this for a long time.

00:36:16 John Daub: So it'll be nice to go with Kevin and stream at this restaurant to give you an overview what what we want to do is this. All right. I don't think traveling is going to be open, but for any of the residents, if you live in Kansai, Kevin and I are inviting you to a free dinner in Osaka, where we're going to be eating the cuisine from Kochi Prefecture in Osaka. And I'm kind of excited about this.

00:36:48 John Daub: I want to be able to cook it myself. I want to get in the kitchen. So Kevin and I. And Kevin is very famous in our world for Kuma's Kitchen. He's a chef, too, and he makes some really delicious food on his channel. And I'm gonna see if he can get in the kitchen. He can cook some of the food for us too. I think it's gonna be a really cool experience. We're gonna do this in November and release the information to you probably next week, depending on when exactly I can get to Osaka and how the state of emergency and all this stuff is going to.

00:37:33 John Daub: So that's pretty cool. And I'll probably film an episode for the channel with Kevin, too, so we get something special there. I'm also filming an episode with Eric Surf 6 next. Is it next week? Next week in an area of the city for an edited video. This is my revenge. I'm gonna try to get this up in September if I can, or in early October. So a lot of things are popping, and the channel's.

00:38:05 John Daub: I think the channel's gonna pick up some steam. So I do appreciate the patience that you guys have given me. First O.I. meetup in years is Satrio, if you're not there, I will be a little upset. I gotta see I gotta see my brother from from Indonesia here with the kids, if you can. I don't know what I don't know when that's gonna happen. I think 2022 just seems like the year for that. So I get some exciting stuff to build up the channel.

00:38:35 John Daub: And my gut says that we're gonna pick up some steam and things are just are gonna start popping really good by the end of the year because now I can get back on airplanes and back on trains fully vaccinated. Just be really careful. The numbers here are going down, which is a good thing. But Delta is still out there, so I have to be very careful not to bring that back to to Leo. I've got to get PCR tests, like, all the time.

00:39:12 John Daub: Now which is costly, but it's worth it because that's just part of if you want to work in the pandemic, you have to be in taking a lot of precautions here. Chan. Look, you know, Chan, I like I hope you can at least find a way to get the person driving that you to to come to Japan. Okay. I don't know how you're gonna do it, but you gotta come here for the meetup as well.

00:39:48 John Daub: A collab with Tabby Eats would love to do that. We're talking about when things are safer and maybe sometime in September that might be good enough to meet up with them because we've both had our vaccination shots and just have to be really careful. The PCR tests are pricey. You can get them at Haneda airport for like $20 for PCR tests but you have to travel all the way to Haneda and that's in itself a risk.

00:40:22 John Daub: So I'd been doing the mail in ones that you can get at the pharmacies but they run about $70 a test so they get a little bit pricey. But we have, you know, we have some pretty good support on the channel for me to be able to do that. And I think that's what's going to take for me to continue to do the episodes by traveling to every corner of Japan. You can still do it, but you just have to take as many precautions as you can.

00:40:59 John Daub: It's part of the job. I know it's very pricey and I'm always looking. If you go to the clinic, it's even more so it took. It depends on the company that. But the mail in PCRs can take anywhere between 36 hours and 72 hours. So the turnaround time is pretty quick. The one that I got was I guess the research place was in Ebisu, which is not that far. It's just on the other side of the city.

00:41:31 John Daub: So I got the results in less than three days, which is pretty good. And then I could travel to Nagano. I make that episode tomorrow. So tomorrow, sorry, Monday we're going to be doing the Baum Kuchen Suika, the watermelon with Kanai and Leo maybe. So you're gonna want to tune in for that Monday morning which is Sunday night. And then after that I'll do a twitch live stream and we'll try the game night with the chomp Vivian.

00:42:06 John Daub: We'll we we'll see if we can try that out with a little bit more success. You know, Vivian, actually, I think maybe better we do this unlisted with our community first. So we'll see if we can do that before before Monday. And if not, we'll just do game night in the next Twitch stream. We want to test this out. And then I do have the the Densha de Go that we can try anyways, so that's going to be a lot of fun.

00:42:37 John Daub: If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. I do appreciate it. Give us a thumbs up if you do like the midnight snack runs. I'll try to go outside to do it. It's just that today it was raining. I was going to eat this all outside. All right, I'll message you. Vivian. Yeah, I want to do this outside, but the rain just is keeping me in.

00:43:11 John Daub: The weather has gotten really chilly for for people used to summer, so that, that's gonna be I don't know. I think it's a good, good time to do midnight snack run for real. I do want to meet up with with Tokyo's Tkyo Sam to do the night walk through Shinjuku. I think the situation's good enough now where we can do that. The state of emergency ends. Still got to be responsible and respect the rules.

00:43:44 John Daub: Even though the numbers are going down, I still live in Japan and all my neighbors are respecting the rules. So I have to do my very best to do it. And I'm sure I don't do it as good as they do, but it's important to do that. I know other YouTubers are also filming, but I think they're filming locally now, so it's okay. Let's see here. What is that Director's cut? When for what is it Autumn now?

00:44:16 John Daub: It kind of feels like autumn. It's 67 degrees, 19 degrees Celsius, according to the Nightbot. So it's a little chilly. I basically I can sleep with the windows open, no air conditioning and with a light blanket and it feels great. It feels great. I would love to do a revival of the Yakiniku club, but it took so much time. Peso. You know what? When I get Tokyo Sam to get together in the night walk, we'll talk about this.

00:44:51 John Daub: Satrio asks about the Kickstarter announcement. We hope to launch the Kickstarter next week. I think we're looking at September 6th, the week of the 6th. So sometime next week we're going to launch it. We have a group on discord. And if you want to jump on a discord, you can. If you're a Patreon supporter, you can ask to be in this group that's helping to test or to come up with ideas for the rewards for this Kickstarter.

00:45:23 John Daub: It's kind of hard because there's some things that just don't make some make a lot of sense, like T shirts are really hard to deal with with the different sizes and the costs that they have here in Japan. It's kind of ridiculous. But we have some good rewards this time. We've added a couple of things and Dakota is now making the design for it.

00:45:57 John Daub: So we'll release this after a couple of weeks into the campaign. But I'm editing the main channel episode as well. At the same time, I'm editing the Kickstarter introduction video and I want to have that done on Monday into the Kickstarter and then Kickstarter needs a couple of days to approve it and then the project goes live. So hopefully by next week this thing will be live and we can start raising money.

00:46:31 John Daub: We picked Nagano for a reason. And the video that I made will have that because I interviewed not just the one of the local politicians there who really headed an amazing effort for the people there, but in 2019, they had really awful flooding. A lot of people, I don't know, it looked very much like the tsunami that came through TOHOKU back in 2011. This was just, you know, almost two years ago now.

00:47:04 John Daub: And there's because of the pandemic, they never really recovered fully. And you could see the area still is is still not 100, but they're getting back on their feet. And they haven't had a I don't know, they've had a fireworks show, but they haven't had anything this year. And so this is something that the local people, when I went there, they already knew that I.

00:47:34 John Daub: They already knew what we were doing. They knew. They're like, oh, you're you're John Daub from Only in Japan. Oh, thank you so much for coming. We're looking forward to the fireworks. It's like, wait a second, I didn't even start to fund this. We haven't actually raised any money for it. Just hold your horses here, local people. But we're gonna try to get that. And I think we're gonna be able to raise.

00:48:07 John Daub: I don't know if we're gonna do as good as last year, but we're gonna be able to raise enough money to put on that show. Even if I have to put in my savings into doing it. But I think we should be able to to do this. And again like all the fireworks festivals this year were canceled. Maybe one or two went off, but they were must have been different in size.

00:48:38 John Daub: Sumitagawa canceled. Edogawa canceled. Suwako Hanabi Taikai canceled. Omagadi where I the festival that we launched the fireworks last year canceled. This is a special fireworks show that they're putting on for us on the river. Just us and the city of Nagano is going to join our fireworks festival which is pretty cool. It's like just I'm just like I. For me it's very humbling.

00:49:09 John Daub: I just had had this idea with the fireworks association to do this. But the fact that the localities are really helping with this makes me feel really good and gives me the energy to to really get back into making the Only Japan series. Because there's a lot of meaning for me to do this to do this YouTube channel. More than just me. You know. This is more than just a career.

00:49:40 John Daub: It really helps people here in Japan when I make these episodes. So I have to keep to keep doing it. All right guys, that I could wrap on about this for ages. So leave me a comment below if you have anything else you want to add. And I'll see you probably tomorrow for another live stream if I have some time. But definitely Monday morning. When can I and I eat some cake?

00:50:11 John Daub: Yeah. Have a good day. Have a good night. Have a good weekend. I'll see you in the next live stream.