00:00:08 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to the city of Tokyo, our home. And for the next 20 minutes or so, your home too. As the boys explore Sunday along the Sumida River at one of my favorite places, right along the Chuo Bridge here. And we're going underneath it and you can see Tokyo Skytree. Check it out! Boom! The tallest freestanding tower in the world.

00:00:42 John Daub: It's kind of an overcast day. It's not exactly the best day, but it's good enough for us. How you doing everybody? So I'm here with Leo and we are going to be taking a break at the corner here, which Kanae and I like to come and hang out with Leo every now and then. And Leo's getting a chance to walk. Leo, you're getting really heavy. Do you have anything you want to say besides chewing on your baby carrier? No. No comment.

00:01:13 John Daub: So over the last month, I've been away from Tokyo a lot. Hokkaido. I've been in Fukushima. I guess it's Hokkaido, Fukushima. I haven't been home as much. But on Sundays, Kanae is usually working and I get to take care of Leo for most of the afternoon. You're heavy! So I'm here. This is the corner. I always say that if you're coming to Tokyo and you want to just relax with your family or something to come to this area and have a bento and just watch the boats go by. Because Tokyo is very much a city of canals and rivers. Back in the Edo period, that was the main way that they got goods from one place to another before the railroads were really big by horse and more frequently by boat.

00:02:17 John Daub: And here's Chuo Hashi (Chuo Bridge) that we just went under. This is the boys' day out. I'm going to put the camera down for a second and take Leo out and he's going to get a chance to walk around on his own. This is the point. Check it out. When you stand on this point, it's like standing on the bow of the Titanic. You can feel all the power of Tokyo. At least the wind coming in your direction if you're lucky enough to have that. I guess you could call it walking practice, maybe. Alright, let's get Leo down. We're going to get him walking around. This is such an open and safe area.

00:03:13 John Daub: Alright, Leo, hold on a second. You're getting released, buddy. Nice warm afternoon. Off you go, Leo. Walking practice. Leo, this way. Dada. Dada's here. He's on the attack. He's got Melonkuma. Dada. He's looking for pigeons. Uh-oh. Dada. You know, the shoes are kind of high. I noticed this with kids. They're really good at walking without the shoes, but the shoes add like another centimeter to his height. So it's just kind of weird for him to walk at first. I wonder if all kids are the same. I guess it must be like this.

00:04:54 John Daub: Ike writes in here, Leo's going really fast. He is. And I have to thank a lot of you because a year ago, all of you were... You know, we couldn't go out. We couldn't meet with anybody. And all of you made our year really special. Ohayo. Eric Pug, thank you. Takai likes the Melonkuma bib. I actually bought this a couple of weeks ago. If you want to see where Melonkuma's house is, you could check it out in the live stream. I'm going to go back in about three weeks and then you get a chance to see Melonkuma's house. Leo, don't put your head in there because when I was a kid... One of us put our heads in there at the shopping mall and we couldn't get it out. And the police came and there was a whole big ordeal. It's kind of scary. But yeah, Tokyo in the spring, this is the best time of year.

00:05:48 John Daub: Where are you going? I got to watch him. I'm not the only one that brings their kids out for walking practice out here. The weather in Tokyo is the best at this time of year. Between April 15th and May 15th, I just love this time of year. Yeah, maybe the cherry blossoms aren't blooming in Tokyo. And they're not that great in the city anyways. They're much better out in the countryside. The weather here is so beautiful. You have sometimes overcast days, but the temperature is perfect. You can wear shorts. You can wear a light jacket. The humidity is very low. The flowers are blooming anyways all over the place. Bradshaw Studio recognizes how much Leo has been growing. Very true story. Yeah. There you go. Get the microphone here. Yeah, Leo's been growing a lot over the last year.

00:07:11 John Daub: Leo, don't attack the phone! No! All right, I just have to keep an eye on him. He's going all over the place. Leo, don't you just want to hang out? Oh, you should see him now. He freaks out when he sees space boat. It's okay. Yeah, kids do love phones. This is too much. Now, here's the thing here. I can watch him in the screen here. He just started something called hoikuen (Japanese nursery school). It's not preschool because it's not really school. It's not daycare either. And parents at around one years old, they will drop off their kids at hoikuen.

00:08:10 John Daub: This started just like last week, like really recently, because he was going to hoikuen for maybe a week. Maybe one hour or two hours to get used to it. But he just started going from nine to five. And I found that I could start to get a lot of work done finally, like editing video that's been sitting there for a very long time. But the problem with hoikuen is that I've noticed he's getting sick all the time. Leo! He's getting sick all the time. And that means I'm getting sick all the time. So I've had a runny nose a little bit yesterday, but I got better pretty quickly. I kind of had a fever for a day, but then it went away. And we've been taking these, we've been taking COVID tests like once a week. But whenever we don't feel good, we'll take one. And yeah, it's been negative.

00:09:03 John Daub: So Leo, I have a present for you. Leo-kun! Look what I brought you. You didn't even see this, buddy. Hey, usually you don't want to walk away from me. The most ferocious mascot in Japanese history. And Leo has taken a liking to him. Usually he has blood on his teeth. Be careful, buddy. Hey, Vine. Vine, thanks. You know, there's a food truck near here I walked past. I might go check that out. Do not throw him in the river, Leo. Okay, buddy. Leo. There's a food truck near here I walked past. This area is great because there's also a bunch of playgrounds.

00:12:18 John Daub: And I've noticed that around Tokyo, there's a lot more parks than you would think that there were. I mean, in the middle of the city. And the parks have swings and slides and everything. And I have to keep an eye on him very closely. Hey, buddy. All right, this area you can't come to. Oi. All right. This area you can't come to, so I'm going to carry you back. Oh, boy. You're so heavy. You're more than a bag of rice. Don't drop that on Kuma. All right, attack. It should be any moment now a space boat makes its way in this area.

00:13:16 John Daub: Hey, Katalpa writes in here, isn't this where your wife danced? It is. It is where she danced about three years ago when I introduced her to everybody because we had just gotten married and I kept that part of my life separate until the very last moment. Chris the ghoul, I never got my iPhone. I'm sorry. I'm still kind of waiting. Rainer loves Japan is here. Hey, Rainer and Mom. Just let him play. I get to wash this anyways because he's been drooling all over it. So now that we have to. I'm just going to follow him, see where he goes. There's still getting over his cold here. He doesn't fall down very much anymore. He's past that phase. I'm not too worried about it. Somebody even said to get him a helmet. And I figured the kids are going to fall down. I don't want him to wear a helmet when he's walking.

00:14:40 John Daub: That scream just reverberated over the water to the other side. Oh my gosh. And he loves flowers, I've noticed. Leo-kun. Oh, we should touch this. Probably the dog went pee-pee here. Just have a feeling. Oh yeah, there's a doggie here. Wow. I love dogs. Hey Leo, do you want to sit? Leo-kun. Do you want to sit? You're shy. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye doggie. That was nice. He said a lot of the dog owners will let you come and touch them. Oh no. Our arch nemesis is this. It's bad. Bad news, Leo. He understands. He's trying to find a way to get up there.

00:16:06 John Daub: This is the moment where you cue the baby elephant song. As Leo figures out ways to get up to the top to play with his enemies. Frenemies. Sometimes we're in sync. But most of the time, it's Leo who's going after them. Chasing them. Finding ways to destroy them. It's a lot of work being a parent. I've noticed that you can't take your eyes even for a second. Make sure he doesn't put something in his mouth. But in Tokyo, there's so many. I was just really surprised at how many options there are for kids here. Now the daycare, you can't always get into one.

00:16:53 John Daub: In fact, I was talking with Peter von Gomm yesterday after I took him out to lunch. Thank you for the lunch money to take Peter out too. Guys, I appreciate it. And we were talking about the preschools. And Peter said that his son couldn't get into the first one. So they had to go. And they had to find a roundabout way to do it. I'm not going to tell you exactly how it was because it might not be ethical. But apparently, to get an apartment in Tokyo, you also need to have key money. And key money is like a bribe or a gift to the landowner. They don't do that as much as they did 20 years ago when I first came to Japan. But there's still a lot of places with key money. So there's ways to get into the daycare that you want to. But you need to have some sort of incentive sometimes for somebody somewhere. It's crazy.

00:17:52 John Daub: Ryoka. So we got to go back home. It's almost 11. We're going to eat. It's almost lunchtime. And then he takes a nap at around 12, 12:30 for two hours. Ryoka. OK, come on, buddy. Oh, he's falling down. That means he's getting tired. OK, jump. This is how I spend my Sunday afternoons. That's how we spend Sunday afternoons. It's a thing. Oh, no, he's going to go. Ryoka. Come on over this way. And then the little guy is... Spaceboat is just a couple of seconds away, I think. Seems like he's close. No!

00:19:01 John Daub: I think he wants to go to that food truck. OK, whenever I pick him up, I tell him to jump. And he starts to, like, bend his knees and go up and down. Look at the flowers. See, he loves flowers. That's a good sign. It's peace. Love and peace. And let's go terrorize some joggers. Yeah, you want to go terrorize a jogger? Yeah. He just runs randomly. That's how kids are. I know some of you might be not old enough to have kids. You can never be too old to have kids. But Leo is... He's got quite a bit of energy. All right, hug that. There. There's some slides and swings not too far away from you. There's a little park here that we'll probably go to after this.

00:20:08 John Daub: Glenn, I don't know. That's up to Kanae. Could be. But he is going fast. And it's nice to share with you a Sunday afternoon just a little bit, too, because I know you all are very much a part of the family in some ways. And since you can't come to Japan and meet us, that'll just take a couple of minutes where we come and meet you. Ah, doggy. Attack! Oh, my gosh. He's not afraid at all. Leo's fearless. Leo, but you can't drop your buddy, Melonkuma. He's also your pillow in case you fall down. All right, Dada is here. Leo-kun. Bye-bye. Sometimes this will get him to come your way. Leo, bye-bye. Dada, bye-bye. Bye-bye. No, it's not working. He's saying bye-bye. Did you see that? Bye-bye. He's like, no way. You're not leaving without me. Bye-bye. You're on your own, buddy. Guess not.

00:22:08 John Daub: Yeah, JH, for those that are members, you do have a Melonkuma sticker, which is pretty cool. I added that in before I went to Hokkaido. We're getting a chance to meet Melonkuma in a few weeks, and we're still seeing whether or not Kanae and Leo can go, but that would be pretty crazy. Ah, Leo-kun. He likes to say hi to people. Leo-kun. Jump, jump. Ready? Watch his legs. Jump, jump. Leo, jump. Let's go. I guess he doesn't want me to pick him up yet. He's on a mission. He's got more energy than I do. Can you edit some of the videos that I have to do soon, sir? He's very quick to pick up stuff. He'll imitate, so if he watches me edit, maybe he'll pick it up pretty fast.

00:23:19 John Daub: But he can't express himself with words. It's like that Meet the Parents, the second one, where the little kid, he could imitate, but couldn't speak, so he used sign language. So I'm trying to teach Leo some sign language here. But Kanae just makes fun of me and says, don't do that, because then he's going to be a freak like that kid in the movie. This is hard work. He's crawling. Leo-kun. Let's go to the swings. This is good. He's getting tired out. All right, jump, buddy. Jump, jump. Jump, jump. Jump, jump. Jump, jump. Wee! You're so heavy.

00:24:25 John Daub: All right, we're going to stay for a minute longer to see if we can get to the space boat. And then I'm going to take him to the swings. I can't play with, I can't record and play on the swings. It's impossible. Mommy has to be here to do that. You want to escape? Really? All right, here. Down you go, buddy. Just be careful. Teaching him songs. Do you know How's the Weather? How's the weather? It's sunny. It's sunny today. That's not cloudy, Daddy. All right. He's like going to army crawl. All right, Leo-kun. Time to go. Say goodbye to everybody. Okay, Leo, say bye-bye. Bye-bye. He can do that. How does he? That's the first time he's done it like this. Say bye-bye. Bye-bye. What? He's done it. Oh, that's awesome.

00:25:48 John Daub: All right, everybody. We're going to go to the swings now, but it was fun to spend Sunday afternoon with you. Frannie, thanks for just signing up to be a traveler as one of the members. I'll be traveling again next week and taking you to some other areas of Japan as I film the episode, but I have two videos that are going to be coming out. There's a barrage of videos coming. I've been working really hard behind the scenes to get them out to you. So I believe we'll have two videos out in April on the main edited channel taking you to Nagano and Hokkaido. It's going to be a lot of fun. All right, everybody. Have a good day. Leo, say bye-bye. Bye-bye, everybody. Bye-bye. Have a nice weekend. I'm going to go get that food truck now. Maybe the swings. Bother some joggers. Take some dogs. Pigeons, where are you? Pigeon.