00:04 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Tokyo. That up there is the Tokyo Skytree. Do you see that? There's the observation deck. It's a beautiful sunny day in Tokyo and we're here for one thing in particular. Just about 100 meters down the street from here is a vending machine that serves cake in a can. And it's such a unique thing. Now I once saw a crepe in a can. It was a glass jar the shape of a 330 milliliter can. It was pretty neat. You put the crepe in there. You put it in the vending machine. You get the glass jar. You take the crepe out and you eat it. It was a few dollars and they made a killing on that machine because it was just so cool. Alright, let's walk down the street. This is the Oshiage neighborhood. So it's not that far away. It's not far from the Skytree which makes it pretty convenient but it's not at the Skytree which means there's going to be some available because probably they're sold out if they're at a really high location here.

01:20 John Daub: Check it out. It's not cheap. That's about $11 for one of these cakes in a can. But I'm not complaining at all. Look at this. Paul S., thank you. At Bradshaw Studio contributing to one of these cakes. What is that? Clean caramel. What is that? Oh, we're going to have to get a can of that to go along with this other sugar rush. Is that like pudding? And then over here you got another. It's hard to get it with the glare. Hold on a second. There you go. These look scrumptious. Well, it's a pretty penny and we're going to try both of these. So let's give it a whirl here. The pudding looks amazing too, right? I don't think you can go wrong with this machine. Now it's about a one minute walk from Oshiage Station which is just right over there. So you don't have to go that far to get here. I keep my bicycle though because I'm not riding the subway this time. I'll ride and take my bicycle. It was a good 30 minute ride for me.

02:30 John Daub: All right, let's get some cash here. I got a thousand yen. So let's try. Let's go for this cake in a can here. This is the original here. That's 1100 yen. This is not cheap. I still need 100 yen. Okay, there we go. Boom. 330 milliliter cake in a can. Number one. Let's go right for the top. I like the fact that it comes with a spoon because I forgot mine. It's really light. It's a lot lighter than a can of cola or something. It's made out of pretty strong plastic too. I'm trying to push in there and look at that. What? That's exactly like how Asahi has these beer cans that basically turn the can into a can of beer.

03:20 John Daub: Oh my word. Bob Joe here's for the vending machine fun. All right. We're already taking contributions for the pudding and the coffee. Don't do what I just did. Don't lick this. This is dangerous. Okay. Don't do it. But I might have done it. Whoa. Cake in a can. All right. Dig in. Literally dig in. Oh, oh my gosh. Oh, I'm in heaven. I'm literally in heaven right now. Chan, I got to go get myself a coffee though. I think a hot coffee would help make this go down a lot easier. Snodgrass nod. Thanks a lot. I'm going to get that pudding in a can next.

04:00 John Daub: Oh, you got to check this out here. Oh my gosh. Whoa. It is really good cream. You can tell. Not good and good cream. It's got you're getting your money's worth, which is like 11 bucks for this thing. That's really good. Cake almost like a tiramisu. The cream has soaked into the cake a little bit. Almost like a tiramisu, but without the coffee, which is why a coffee would be absolutely perfect. Oh, wow. Hmm. That's really good. All right. I'm not as hungry as I thought I was after that bike ride. So I'm going to put this in this bag here and save it because I want to save room for the other stuff here. Always travel with a plastic bag in Japan. Always travel with a plastic bag because you never know when you're going to need it for rubbish.

04:50 John Daub: Oh, here's some coffee here. Let's see what that other drink is. All right. Let's try the other drink here. Back we go to the vending machine. So I got a 500 yen here. That's enough for the whatever the drink is some kind of caramel brulee. What is that caramel cream? My gosh, this is a sugar and other stuff, too. I got to come back here. Why am I whispering? There's a vending machine cake in here, but they probably already know that street. But I feel guilty because there's people watching me now because I'm holding a camera. Look at this on the side of the building here. They must have something with grapes or something. Yeah, this is super expensive for this here. But we're going to go for it because, you know, you're here with me. Look. Oh, no. Check this out. Caramel cream, caramel custard pudding. It's pudding in a can. That's it. I thought it was a drink.

06:00 John Daub: All right, let's do it. 500 yen for some pudding. It is pretty expensive, but totally worth it. Rick H agrees. Thank you, Rick. Push the number nine here. Came with another spoon. Oh, this is much heavier. This has some volume to it. Wow. This is pretty incredible. I think I can eat this over here. Oh, this is cool. I got pudding in a can. Pudding in a can. Not gonna see this every day. It doesn't have to rhyme. Just has to be a lot of fun. So it's like a craft beer. I like that really clean silver can color to it. All right, let's open this up here. Boom. This is an Eric Surf Six type of thing here. Eric should be here. Oh, man. Look at that. What? You can see the vanilla beans in there. Look at that. What? This is some good stuff. Itadakimasu! (Let's eat!)

07:00 John Daub: It's not that sweet, but it's sweet enough. It just hits you. It's not a fake sugar. This is so important. I don't know how to clarify this. Like there's stuff with chemical sugars in it. You can tell it's overly sugar. If it's so sweet, it hides the egg taste in it, right? Sometimes you don't taste that in the pudding, the egg in there. This you can taste the milk, you can taste the eggs, you can taste the vanilla bean, and you can taste a little bit of sweetness, but it doesn't overpower the ingredients, which makes it so much fresher. That's the best way that I can describe it. Just the ingredients, you can taste them all. Oh wow. I wonder if there's like caramel in the bottom of this. It is for $5. This better be really good pudding. Pudding's usually like a dollar.

08:00 John Daub: Oh man. I don't think I can eat this all. I reached down deep and there is some caramel. Do you see that in the bottom of the spoon? Oh, there's a lot of caramel. Look at that. I knew it. They put the caramel on the bottom of it. Oh, babe, babe has it right. It is a creme brulee type of caramel. It's like a burnt caramel. So there's kind of like a blow torch bitterness to it. Oh man. This is a luxury type of a thing here. You can't eat this every day or else it'll ruin you. I'm glad I live 30 minutes away by bicycle to this place. If I came here all the time, it would kill me. Oh, this beats the cake in a can. Oh yeah. This destroys cake in the can. This is so much better. The pudding is a winner.

09:00 John Daub: Oh man. The thing is that once you open it, you have to eat it all. You have to kind of eat it all. And I don't know if I can do that. This is too good. Can I show you inside? Let me see. So you can see inside the bottom here and hold it steady for you. You can see there is some caramel. You can see the caramel in the bottom. It looks kind of nasty now, but it's been in my mouth. All right. It's fun. I love vending machines. You don't know what you're going to get. No, you know what you get because you can see it, but vending machines. Sometimes you can have some of these. You can have some really unique things inside of there. I'm just super excited. Thought maybe by the time I got here, it was going to be sold out. Diet? What diet? I saw that, Darren.

10:20 John Daub: All right. I'm going to put this in my bag again. It's not going to fall out as long as it's upright. I'm going to show you the vending machine one more time and we're going to go take a walk towards the Tokyo Skytree. By the way, everybody, thanks so much. Nicholas Lazak always gives me a really generous super chat. He gave me one for cheese pizza, but the pizza didn't cost that much. Nicholas, I'm taking some of that and I'm going to buy one for Kanae to take back. She wants a cake in a can. Kanae, actually, if you're watching this, just send me a chat if you want the pudding or the cake or both because I know that we're both on a diet. And this isn't a good thing. All right. Onwards.

11:20 John Daub: Oh, let's go take a look one more time at the vending machine and then I'm going to take you over to the Skytree just to get one view of that. Well, someone's in front of the vending machine. I think, oh no, he was looking. That might be one of the store owners. I bet you that he was looking to see if anything was sold out. So one last time, here is the vending machine with cake on there. It is about $11 for one of these parfaits. I don't know. It's a cake. It's from Sapporo. The company is from Sapporo, but they do have a couple of shops around here. One's in Shibuya and then one is here in Oshiage. And I think that there's something in the Skytree, too. There's the pudding in a can. Is it a scam? What do you think? Is it overpriced? Do you think it's too much for what it is? Or is it just something really cool and convenient? It does take IC cards like the Suica. You can put cash in here or coins. It's all good. It's called the Shortcake Can. And I don't know. I think it's kind of expensive for $10, but I think it's just fun. Life is once, so do it.

12:50 John Daub: All right. I got to come back here to get my bicycle. So let's go on a little walkabout. Take a look at the Tokyo Skytree, which is 643 meters high, I believe. It's over a thousand feet. It is the largest freestanding tower. It's the tallest tower in the world, beating out the CN Tower in Toronto. Sorry, Canadians. I'm sure that a new one will be built soon. There it is right there. But we're going to get a better view from the Oshiage intersection here. Look at this. I was looking at this before. Family Mart has been really up in their game. That's a takeaway bowl of what is it? Like kind of a chashu don. Just a bunch of pork on there. Oh, man. And the coffee is pretty good here, too.

14:00 John Daub: Should jump in there. Kyle writes in, what CN Tower no longer the largest? That is right. Tokyo Skytree came in about 10 years ago and has made an impact. Literally, it's the tallest, so you can't get any more impactful than that. I'm going to be doing some main channel episodes there, too, by the way. So get ready for a barrage, a blizzard of content. I just finished two episodes. Japan Rail is previewing one of them. Because I got access inside of one of the stations to film. And another one is a coachee living out in the countryside, leaving Tokyo for the countryside. Here we go. Three, two, one. Whoa. There's two observation decks. You can see them both.

15:00 John Daub: All right, let's get back out to the intersection. If you cross the street here, that's when things real. You get amazing panoramic views. And a lot of people say that the Tokyo Skytree looks very much like a train. A samurai sword. Sleek like a samurai sword. What do you think? Tobu is the company that built this. Of course, the group of people. This must have been a lot of money to build something like this. Tokyo is also an earthquake country. So to build anything this large is not easy to do. Let's cross the street here.

16:00 John Daub: Speaking of fruits, fruit cakes and fruit sandwiches, I got a really good strawberry sandwich at the 7-Eleven here. And they have the sandwiches out now. The fruit sandwiches at the convenience stores are out. The strawberry season in Japan is now. It's in winter. It's not in summer or spring or fall in some other countries. They grow it in greenhouses here because in the winter, they grow slower. And the slower a strawberry grows, the more the sugar content is. And which is why Japan has the best and probably the most expensive dessert strawberries in the world. They actually export strawberries. They export strawberries to some countries. For dessert cakes, it is intense. The sweetness of a strawberry in Japan.

17:00 John Daub: All right, here we go. This is one of the best views of this Skytree here from this intersection, from this bridge. This is the Solamachi Shopping Mall (Solaris Shopping Mall). That's a lot of carbon steel. There's the tip. I think that's also a helicopter can land on the very top, maybe. I don't know. I thought that a helicopter could land up there. I thought that when they first opened the media went up to the very very top but I can't find that picture anymore. It was in one of the newspapers when it opened I believe it was like 2010 or 2011. They were still maybe building it when the earthquake happened but my story and you get really good shots if you follow this canal down on the Skytree from a distance.

18:20 John Daub: It is earthquake proof i'm going to show you that in another episode but the Skytree really changed this area and the reason why they built it here was because this is one of the old land areas around Tokyo there's a lot of open space but a lot of it is very soft ground this is a place that had hard ground so you could build a really heavy tower like this there's a lot of places that you can't build such large towers all right let's go back to the vending machine now but during the 2011 March 11th earthquake uh the tower held strong um inside of there i did this for an NHK Tokyo episode about three years ago i was inside there taking a look at the earthquake proofing and everything the it's there's a um the tower is actually in a capsule inside so there's space between there that allows it to move left and right without damaging the structure so it kind of um pivots left and right so it oscillates with the one one goes up and one goes down and one goes down and one goes up and one goes with and one goes against the earthquake thus balancing it out so you don't really feel a lot and the Landmark Tower in Yokohama uh had some similar technology where they found a way to balance out the vibrations of the earthquake by putting a ball on the top of the Landmark Tower that would oscillate in the opposite direction of the shake now when the shake is going up and down that's a different subject because sometimes the earthquakes go up and down sometimes the earthquakes go left and right sometimes the earthquakes swirl.

20:50 John Daub: Listen to this dump this truck it'll tell you it's turning left do trucks talk in your country it says that it's turning left please be careful all right i'm also fascinated with the parking garage everything with japan i'm pretty fascinated with do you see that the technology and so the car can't get out maybe they do this in other countries too but the parking in japan is pretty expensive uh actually it's not too bad but in the center of the city you could pay what 40 50 an hour it adds up pretty quick what makes it expensive is it's not just the center of tokyo where the parking is expensive it's like all around so it adds up if you don't really want to have a car in the city.

22:00 John Daub: This is the train station this is the exit Oshiage Skytree station and that connects up with the Hanzomon Line the Tobu Line the Asakusa Line and the Keisei Line right there so what exit is this i guess this will help if you're trying to get out this is exit B2 make a right and you're just about at that vending machine all right let's see if i can get a coffee to end this live stream which how many youtubers show you the ground huh whoops all right let's get a coffee here today all right let's go back to this vending machine and i'll finish up with the final words.

23:00 John Daub: Let's go with haido i a lot of you i know do miss japan and i think that there's going to be an announcement made by the government this week with blueprints of opening up the country finally Finally, now Japan is deep in the Omicron wave, so I guess the end is closer than the beginning when you get deep into it because this is hopefully peaking and will be over with soon. Japan needs to have a plan to start to think about everybody coming back, opening up again, and I certainly hope that that is the case. I'll give you a travel update as soon as that happens. It's big news and kind of break it down for you. I know for the last two years, I have been waiting for you to come back. Hold on a second. I've been waiting for all of you to come back. It's crazy that there have not been tourists here for two years. Well, not tourists from abroad. The tourists that are here that are foreign live here.

24:30 John Daub: Hold on. I've got to get this coffee. Hey, David. Hope you and Kanae have a great New Year. Thanks, David. It's nice to see you. I can't get this coffee lid. Oh, yeah. So he comes out of that door. So the bakery guy, he comes out of that door right there. The pink and the gray door. And he fills that vending machine right there on the corner every now and then. Oh, boy. That's some good stuff. That is some good stuff. All right. So I'm going to try to do a midnight snack run in the next couple of days. There's a lot of stuff happening. In the middle of February, the 15th and the 16th, I'm going to be driving over to Nagano for a location shoot I got permission to film at. I'll be there for a couple of days. So we'll take you inside of a Japanese ryokan (traditional inn). Okay. You'll get a chance to look around there. But I'm not ready to tell you the exact topic of it because it's a good one. It's one I've always wanted to do for a couple of years now.

26:20 John Daub: And by the way, I do have the merch store, which opened. So for those of you that have been waiting forever for a hitchhiking, I can get the cake out here. All right. Now I want to get the cake out. Those that want to get the hitchhiking Blu-ray, it's a box set. It's like a box set. It opens up and you get lots of really nice pictures. That is available. For purchase right now. Big shout out to Ellis and David for making that possible. There you go. Thank you guys for making it possible. We've already sold, I think like 40 or 50 of them already. Oh, there's like some almonds in there. Oh, there is. Do you see that? Chestnuts. Wow.

27:30 John Daub: When I did the Kickstarter, I think there's only like 300 people who bought it. But I had to make a minimum order. I had to make a minimum order of a thousand. So I have 700 of them sitting at home. And this is a limited edition. Once they sell out, that's it. I'm not making any more of these Blu-rays. Who buys Blu-rays, really? I mean, everybody has a Blu-ray machine, though. I think it's kind of cool because I wanted to have it as a set where you get pictures. You have a schedule of all the places that I stopped in. You have pictures of the rides, the people who picked me up. You can see the signs, the cardboard signs that I used to get people to stop. It's just cool to have. And I think it looks a lot better. I made it a really, really high-quality Blu-ray with a director's voiceover. So there's one track. You can watch it two times and get a different experience. One track has the original. And the other track has me just director's comments voicing over what I was feeling, thinking, and seeing.

29:20 John Daub: And Kanae also is on there in the voiceover describing what it was like to visit me in Hakodate. Because she flew from Tokyo to meet me in Hakodate because I hadn't seen her in three weeks. So I'm really excited to see what she's going to do. I'm going to be on the road. Jacob, you can play it on your PS4 for sure. Yeah, Bela has just arrived in the Midwest. He just got his sent. His was sent and just arrived. So that's super cool. They're getting up pretty fast. They're being sent from the United States because they're all in the United States.

30:30 John Daub: This is amazing. This is so good. Cake in a can, man. And then the pudding in a can. Pudding is better than the cake. But they're both pretty good. They're both pretty good. That pudding is so good. I gotta get Kanae the pudding. I think I'm gonna get Kanae the pudding. I'm gonna get her both. Yeah, please do order it. The link is store.onlyinjapan.tv. s-t-o-r-e dot only in japan one word dot tv. It is through Shopify, which is really cool. We were able to set up this merch store through there. Unfortunately, David and Ellis are doing a really good job of getting those out to everybody. And I'm just happy to be able to get them. Because I know some people have been waiting for two years to get a copy of it. I sent some out before the pandemic started. Some of them were returned to me. Australia stopped the mail pretty quickly. So it's been really hard to get international mail sent out. I think even if you're in Australia right now, the mail's been suspended for a lot of the world.

32:30 John Daub: But if you are in the United States or in North America, it moves pretty quickly. And I think you can order it and get it somewhere. to europe it's a little bit pricier uh we don't have anybody in europe to to send these out yet we can get a merch store being sent from europe that'd be pretty pretty darn good they'll keep the the whole idea is to try to keep the prices uh like the shipping costs as low as possible so that uh and as quick as possible because in this pandemic age i found that it's really really hard to ship anything anymore globally it's just unpredictable the mail was fine in in september october and then it in november it just changed again and now everything's been suspended and then in june uh japan is raising the prices on EMS which is uh all the packages are being raised to a ridiculous price it's 20 more to ship stuff starting from june and that kind of ruins um some of the things that i had planned for the future because i didn't expect a package to go from fifteen dollars to thirty five dollars who i mean why i guess just fuel costs maybe but when the flights come back you would think that it would go back to normal but of course the post office isn't doing that well anyways i guess they need their cut.

35:00 John Daub: Saya it's awful the postal situation worldwide is pretty bad more than twenty dollars i'm not sure what to do um so here it is the final look at this this is the uh cake in a vending machine one second there you go i didn't try this uh parfait but i'm guessing that this is going to be a really sweet cake and it's really sweet and there's some gel on the bottom of there so you can try that out if you want but i have to say the best is the pudding in a can and it's only five dollars it's only five dollars there it is from a distance i don't know if you want to see from a distance it's pretty interesting.

36:20 John Daub: All right if you do come to japan this this vending machine is going to be here it's a it's a really quick walk from oshiage station and it's separated from the skytree in the shopping mall so you can come here through the mall and i don't know if you want to see what's in there but it's gonna be really cool this is the only place in the country that has a really cool place it's pretty cool that's the beauty of this location it's kind of secret it's pretty cool all right everybody have a good day have a good night i'll be back again um with another update probably on a travel update depending on what prime minister kishida and the japanese government plans for a blueprint of reopening the country but it looks like we're at that period i was sure that it was going to be sooner than later and since it looks like the pandemic is starting to peak japan needs to have a blueprint to open up there's just too many people waiting to get in here look it's not an open border it never has been japan you need a visa to come in here except for certain countries so it has never been an open border but spouses and students with visas and people who have a reason to be here should be able to come and i've been you know since i since i kind of understood this situation a little bit better about a year ago i've been trying to fight a little bit more uh to to help people that are that are stranded outside of japan because it's an awful situation and if i had left i could have been one of those people too so i completely understand um how i i'm not in your shoes but i can understand what it could be like because i might have been one of those people too.

40:00 John Daub: Um thanks so much leave me a comment if you have any questions do click the like button uh and if you want to see me do some more vending machine videos or you have a a tip sometimes i get them from eric sir six he's the vending machine master uh let me know in the comments and i will go and check out that vending machine and possibly hit that up this one was really special because i got a sugar rush i'm talking like 60 to 16 words a second which is the way it should be i'm excited about everything every day is a blessing all right everybody have a good day see you from oshiage this this part of tokyo i'll be back on the road as soon as possible maybe even renting a car the day after tomorrow taking you a little field trip.