00:02:00 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to this amazing street food festival in Kuramae in central Tokyo. This is the Torigoe Shrine Festival. They have it every June and it's amazing. It was cancelled last year, this year it's back. There's people eating, enjoying the smell of food, grilling meats in the air. How you doing? I thought I would take you through here. I'm actually filming this for a main channel episode. I've eaten already a lot, but I might be inspired to try some more. Let's take a look at some of the really nice foods that they're cooking in these stands here. It's really interesting to see and share.

00:45:00 John Daub: Hey, can I take a photo? I want to watch the video. Oh yeah, sure, okay. Well, I'm actually live right now. Thank you, you're welcome. I'm going to eat this. That's nice. Alright, we're on the move here. The quality of this thing should be good. We were getting about 40 megabits per second. Oh, there's some Hiroshima okonomiyaki. And you can see with the eggs on the grill, it's really interesting here. That's a lot of food, a lot of volume for what you pay for. I think it's about ¥600 for this. How much is this? It's ¥600 for that. Oh, and they have like corn on it. I think it's for the color. Wow. It's so hot! It's hot!

01:52:00 John Daub: We're just going to walk through a little bit this direction, and then we're going to just wrap back around. So let's focus on the left side, and then we'll come back on the right side. And let me know what you think. If anything looks really delicious. I'll try my best to explain it all to you. This is a grilled beef, and apparently they have wagyu, although I'm not sure. It just looks like a lot of fat, but it doesn't look exactly like wagyu to me. Street vendors really try their best to make the food look appetizing, of course. Look at this one here! This is also okonomiyaki, but they do something interesting with the egg on top. Look at that. Wow. That is so interesting. This is a Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki. There's pork on top of it. It's not bacon. It's pork. And in the end it looks like that over there, cooked with the egg on top. I'll have to come back to this one. They look like they're doing a pretty good job. Wow. You can really smell the grilling and the sweetness of the sauce that's being grilled as well.

03:04:00 John Daub: There's also a really vibrant Filipino festival, the Philippine Japan Festival, going on in Ueno Park. So festivals are back here in Japan. And shortly tourism will be returning soon. Fingers crossed. This is baby castella here. Small little cakes. Bite-sized, I guess you can call them. Kakigori (shaved ice), which is a staple in Japanese summer. You got the shaved ice here for 300 yen. And you can add in a bunch of different flavors. Ichigo (strawberry). There's mango, I see, and melon. Candy apples are always really, really good. So are the candy apples. Candy strawberries, look at that. That's a lot of sugar there. Of course we got the chocolate bananas. And here we got, I think that's ayu fish. Drilling around a fire. These ayu fish, how old should they be? I think they're 300 yen each. Pretty good. Here's some more roasted wagyu. Grilled wagyu right there. This festival just goes on and on and on.

04:23:00 John Daub: Now Kuramae is considered, they say, as a traditional Japanese food. Like, Tokyo's Brooklyn. It's a low area, older buildings. A lot of accommodations and stylish cafes have popped in here. There's a lot of character to this area. And it's within walking distance to Asakusa, which is where you have Sensoji Shrine and a lot of other really amazing attractions. We're gonna go back and now take a look at the left side. Cookie Ninja, how you doing? Thank you. Let's see if I find something that strikes me. I'm actually full. But I can always possibly eat a little bit more. I'm here tomorrow too, by the way. I'll be filming. I'll be filming tomorrow with Leo and Kanai. And we'll have our yukatas on. I think I'll just have a jinbei. I'm not sure.

05:21:00 John Daub: But this street food festival, I've been coming here almost annually. Last year it was canceled because of the pandemic, which kind of stunk. But you can completely understand why. 2020, I think it was toned down quite a bit. And then this year it's back. And next year it'll be at full strength. I think it looks like it's at full strength right now. What do you think? But here's the thing, okay? A lot of the vendors that have... I've been coming to this maybe for about seven years now. Seven or eight years. The vendors are in the same place. They're the same vendors from the years past. And you can just see them. They just look like they're getting older. I guess like we all are. But it's nice to see them back. It's nice to see the vendors back and having work to do. Because for many of them, these big festivals, you can see there's just so many people. It's not quite as much as it used to be in the years past. But they've been suffering pretty bad because they make a lot of their income at this festival. In particular, this festival. Because they're mostly, I think, local. Hey, Mr. Potato Head! What? Oh, because they have potatoes. That's awesome! So what do they do? Are these potatoes made from Mr. Potato Head? Alright, I just gotta bookmark that one.

06:49:00 John Daub: Tomorrow we'll be back here. And I'm gonna be walking through probably in the morning when they first open. Depends on the rain too because as you can see we have grey skies and the weather forecast is not perfect over these four days. By the way, the festival goes pretty deep in there. Check this out. Leo is taking a nap. Rainer, that's where they are. He should be up soon though. I think he might be joining me. They're going at it with the yakisoba. Check that out. Woah! The smell of roasting sweet yakisoba sauce and vegetables. Oh man. I see katayamas in the house! Look at the kids are in here in yukata. They come with the festival clothes on. And Kanae Daub yesterday if you saw Instagram, she went out and she bought our new yukata. So she'll be wearing that tomorrow. Bob Joe is in the house. Everything is going great. Let's see what we can find here. Irvin is in the house as well. Today you can count to five. Great to see you here, Irvinson.

08:34:00 John Daub: Takoyaki. I've noticed though that some of the street food prices have gone up by 100 yen. Maybe they're using massive bigger chunks of tako (octopus). But inflation has been held relatively low because Japan hasn't raised the interest rates at all. So inflation is low but there's also suffering because of a weaker yen as a result of not raising interest rates. There's other things involved with it. Prices here are pretty much the same as they were before but I'm noticing maybe 100 yen up on some of the things. Churros. I don't know. If you like it, thumbs up. Give a thumbs up anyways. It's all about the effort. All about the effort. This is champong. This is Kanai's favorite one. It's like a meat pancake. It's got some spicy sauce you can put on the side there I think. The thing is I think there's a lot of garlic in it so it sticks with you for a while. Usually pretty reasonable like 300 yen. What was that? $2.50 or so? Yeah but you can see here it's just the batter and it's like basically a gyoza pancake here. Do you see that? That's the stuff, the meat that they put in with the gyoza and there's the pancake batter and then they make it flat like this. Champong is pretty good. It's a good starter.

10:31:00 John Daub: You can see that that candy is on ice. So the ice makes it harder but it melts in your mouth I believe. Look at that. Hey Diane, I'm sorry I'm gonna move out. The signal goes in and out here but it was supposed to be pretty strong. I am making an edited video on street food and taking some shots here. So you will see this in glorious 4K edited soon. Oh look at this karaage. Oh my gosh. You can smell the chicken and garlic. The crunchy chicken and the oil. Look at that. Oh man. That's a thing of beauty. That's a thing of beauty. This is the Osaka yaki. It's sort of like they make them in like a hand held bite size okonomiyaki. You can see these pancakes fit in an envelope and they put the same sauce on it. It's not as complicated as the Hiroshima Okonomiyaki. The two versions becoming street food. The Hiroshima a little bit sloppier but hey you know sometimes with street food that's not a bad thing. Get it all over your face. It's supposed to bring napkins right? Oh here's a Japanese tradition. You try with the paper ladles you try to scoop as many goldfish as you can and each time you break it you have to pay I think to get a new one. And you get to take these home not eat them. You have to be very gentle to get the fish. Wow. I've only tried that once and then I didn't know what to do with the fish because I didn't have a fish bowl. So before you play the game you should make sure you have a fish bowl to put the fish in. And then you really do have to eat it. Oh there's yaki ika or grilled squid. Again they put a really salty sweet sauce like a teriyaki I guess something similar. Oh man. Oh man. I'm going to eat this. I'm going to eat this. Keep moving. There's just so many street food stands. There's no reason to linger too long.

13:18:00 John Daub: Here's another I thought that was okonomiyaki. What are they making over here? Let's go take a look. Looks like something with beef. This is an Osaka South Osaka specialty. What is it? The line is long. Let's start from this top here. Wow. So it looks like each one looks like an okonomiyaki. He's putting an egg on there. This is bizarre. And then they make something like an okonomiyaki? Look at the mayonnaise on it. That is so Osaka. That is a lot of mayonnaise. And then they dump in some sort of stew. Look at this over here. That is sloppy. That is sloppy beautiful. Wow. I think that's the guts. So he puts the sauce in the plastic. He puts the vegetables, pancake in there. The sauce underneath there. And then he adds the meat in this beef stew on the top of it. I've never seen anything like this. It looks like it's got kimchi on it too. Wow. I've never seen it. Wow. I wish you can add your own kimchi on there. It's hot. They say it's a South Osaka specialty. So we're going to have to come back and I'll have to see if I can get them tomorrow morning when there's not as many people around and I can't get them. And then I can get people to say a few words. It's very hard to get a permit to film at these festivals. You just have to give them your business card and ask them when there's not a lot of people around a couple of questions and see if they answer you.

15:37:00 John Daub: Hiroshima Okonomiyaki seems to be very popular. Sometimes every now and then you'll see they've got little shops like this. I guess this is a they do it all at these street shops here. In the back is a place where you can go in and sit if you buy from here. But again, local vendors, they also have local spaces so this is probably not far from their home or their store. Here's some takoyaki going on here. Look at all the color in front of it. That color does attract the eye and then you look at them making the takoyaki. Oh, this is shichimi. This is the old Edo era spices and they would do it as a performance sometimes. And you can see he's got a bowl and he's mixing it in. He'll ask you how spicy do you want it. And try to customize the spices sometimes. That's a lot of fun. You can put this on just about anything. On udon, on I put the spices on everything to be honest with you. Sometimes my wife's like, why are you putting spice on there? It's got a lot of flavor in it. Because I don't put spice on everything. This is yakitori right here going on. It's interesting. Let's move on.

17:26:00 John Daub: The resolution is going to go in and out. This is a live stream. This whole channel is live streaming. But I am filming an 8K or 4K episode coming out soon on Street Food. I was at a... Let's get to the end of the street and I can talk to you for a little bit. Here's some yakisoba as well. It's like a lot of the vendors come from this area. Tori no Ichi Festival which is going... Oh, I ate it here last time! I guess two years ago I think I did a live stream through here too. And I ate at this one too. This is okonomiyaki on a stick. Food on a stick rocks. This is hashimaki. Hashimaki is ohashi (chopsticks)-yaki. That stick is a chopstick. This is pretty cool. I don't know how come... Danny, I don't know why the video is still blurry. All I know is that I do my very best to get the least blurry video as possible. I'm going to cross the street here. Maybe it'll clear up. There are a lot of people here and I did check the internet signal and it's fairly strong. But sometimes it is going to go in and out. So when I'm around people, I have to I do have my mask on. It's very important at this time to be polite in crowded areas. It's sort of the rule. And even though we're outside take a look. There's a crowd of people here so you want to wear a mask to be courteous to other people. If you were sick, having a mask on and not knowing about it would prevent giving it to other people. I don't have the best mask for that but I was just tested yesterday. So I'm all clear. For now.

19:22:00 John Daub: For those joining us, thanks for watching. This is the Torigoe Shrine Festival. The street festival has been going on as long as I can remember. For the 24 years I've been living here in Japan. I've been coming to this one for the last 7-8 years. Because Kanae Daub is from this town, Taito-ku. Which is one of the 23 wards in Tokyo. Taito-ku is a different vibe compared to Roppongi and Shibuya and Shinjuku. This is more down to earth, more traditional. More I don't know, more fun in a way. And if you take a look here on this day, this weekend anyways, this weekend in June, there must be something like 500 street vendors selling stuff. It started yesterday and it goes on from Friday, Saturday until Sunday tomorrow. And I'll be here tomorrow morning too to film this. Fingers crossed that the rain doesn't wash me out. But I'm hoping that if you can get here in the morning then the vendors are a little more talkative and I can get them to explain a little bit more about the process, what they do. Which is fascinating. I want to know more about how people have been faring through the last two years as well. And I know that the street vendors have gotten hit just based on the way that they work.

20:44:00 John Daub: Where do you eat? You can bring your food to these alleys and these streets here and eat on the curb. But just keep in mind that you might want to bring your own plastic bag for trash. Not a lot of places have the plastic bags for you. And there's no trash can, so whatever you do eat you're going to have to carry it with you and throw it away at your own house. That's just the way they do things in Japan. You saw that baby carriage has trash bags on it. Or filled with food. Not trash yet. Hey, Raymond's here! Thank you, Raymond! I'm kind of looking and seeing if I can get something to share with you guys here. But I'll be back here again to eat some more street food when Leo wakes up. They might come out and join me too. I'm not sure Leo is asleep. This is jaga butter. It's just potatoes and butter. So those big wooden things are steaming potatoes. That's pretty awesome. And there's different flavorings that you can do. Mayonnaise, corn, salt, soy sauce, and miso are the flavors you can put onto there. This is more... What is this? Karaage. Oh, it's backwards! I thought it was like, No, karaage. Why is it backwards? That does make an impact. You can see the chicken is marinating here. And then you just deep fry and put in a cup. The small one is 300 yen. That's pretty reasonable. Tapioca drinks are being represented here. Interesting. Alright, we're going back to the crowd. I don't know how good the signal stays. These are some traditional games that you can play here. And if you win, you get to... I guess they won over here. If you win, you get the prize. It's just like a carnival.

22:57:00 John Daub: But I hope that these festivals never change. It's been like this for as long as I can remember. These tents and stands serving food. I really love it. And it does feel like you are going back in time. I'm sure it's been like this since the Showa era. It's part of traditional Japan. It's part of the Japanese experience. So whenever you can go to the cherry blossom festivals or any festival, especially the ones around shrines that are celebrated shrines. You see he's grinding the cabbage for okonomiyaki there. That's pretty interesting. He's got some on the grill. You have to go to these street food festivals. This one has, what, 300-400 shops here? The Tori no Ichi. You'll see in November. Probably the biggest of them all. I think it's like 2 km of shops. Stands. Some of them, you'll see foods repeated over and over again. But sometimes you'll see stuff that you've never seen before. And that's pretty unique. This is the Osaka one. I guess they're cooking it right now. These look like pancakes of vegetables. And then they put some beef stew on it. I'm going to have to figure out what that is. Here, Rainy. I'm not a big boba tea person. If I want soup, I'll get soup. It's very confusing for me. I'm old school. I want my drinks to be wet. Not chewy. Although it is chewy and wet. I thought that was the New York Yankee symbol gone wrong. What do you think? Alright, let's see what we can find here. Tomorrow I'll be here in a jinbei. So I'm just scouting it out too. Today I was filming and I ate about I should have gone live. But I'm filming it for the Street Food episode. They do have cold beer here. Check that out. Oh man. It feels good because it feels like it is a festive time right now. It feels good because we've all been stuck inside. Japan in particular. Alright, let's walk down a little bit more. There's more street food this direction.

25:43:00 John Daub: This is a festival by the way. They'll be carrying a portable shrine down the streets. Oh look at the mochi. Different flavors for the mochi. They're yaki mochi around a fire. So you can put sweet soy sauce on there or anko (red bean paste). So the Torigoe festival is really vibrant. It's sort of like the Sanja Matsuri in Asakusa they have portable shrines that they carry around. Chanting, shouting. There's a lot of police. Maybe because of the value of the shrines or because there's a lot of Some grilling squid. Oh there's a frank hot dog stand. That's interesting. That behind me is a hot dog stand. It says Frank. So in Japan I guess the traditional American hot dog stand has a Japanese style to it. Wow. This is a Sapporo kari kari so crunchy sticks with cream cheese in style. This is Sapporo cheese sticks. I've never seen this before. Every year there's always something new. That's curious. I might have to try that. So it's like a crunchy cheese crepe. So all the specialties all the good stuff is here plus a few new stuff. Whoa look at this street is all the tents almost touch one another. I'm seeing a lot of the foods repeat. And it kind of tins out. But it's nice to see people in yukata. It's nice to see people in festival gear. And I gotta go get some. I have to go get mine. I bought a new jinbei the other day. I'm gonna do jinbei this year instead of a yukata. Yukatas are just they're really hard. When you sweat it gets all wet. Jinbei is a little bit cooler. And easier to manage. Jinbei is like shorts. And a yukata is more like a cotton kimono. But for men, you know I've seen some girls wearing jinbei. They're mostly like how do we say I guess the Yankee girls. The girls are a little rebellious. They call them Yankees. They sort of go with the yukata, the jinbei. They wear men's jinbei. I'm guessing maybe girls have them too. Because this girl looks pretty festive. That is not a yukata.

30:13:00 John Daub: Maybe we can try this. Let's try this Hokkaido cheese stick. I enjoy your videos a lot. Thank you. Nice to see you too. I think this cheese stick looks really interesting. What do you think? Or maybe the okonomiyaki. I'm just so full. I'm actually not hungry. I was looking for something dessertish. Lemonade. That's a cool refreshing drink. Wow that's... Alright let's just go with the cheese. You can't go wrong. The thing is I only have a fiver. So... I only have a five left. I got rid of all my ones. So I'm not sure. It's kind of rude to go in with a $50 bill for a $5 item. That means he's got to have a lot of change. But... I guess I... Gosh. I should have been better prepared.

31:44:00 John Daub: Happy New Year everybody. Here's for you. Hello. Could I have a cheese stick? It's on the table. Sure. Here you go. Thank you. I hope you like it. Thank you too. Here you go. That's nothing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

36:16:00 John Daub: Hot! Alright. Try stuff once. Alright. It was worth it. It's interesting. He's got a customer right now. Nice guy. Thought that I would try it out I've never seen that though the kari kari cheese stick from Hokkaido 2.5 stars out of five so that's not actually bad it's uh I think two stars would be average my ratings are very high it takes a lot to get more than that to break into the three three and a half five star is very very I don't think it's ever happened before Wow you got some takoyaki right here all right let's just keep going this way this is uh see what's at the end of the street here Wow squid that is a lot of people that's a lot of squid going on there my favorite street food might that's a hard one um you don't I do like the okonomiyaki but it's very hard I think that not everything although that they're selling the same stuff not every vendor has the same skill of preparing the food so I find that it's it's the quality is very wildly very wildly different here I like this one here this is the futa tama let me go back here let me know if your signal gets really lousy and then I could try to move around this is a um yakitama this is like a pork this is like an okonomiyaki pancake i thought this is really good too and they put okonomiyaki sauce on it it's hand-holdable because it's in these grills here that give it a nice round nice round shape to it i like stuff like that you know the sauce is really good but i found though that if they're cooking it in the with dough like this sometimes they cook it too fast and the dough isn't fully isn't fully done this thai ramen here is also quite popular you see this right here it's like a soup from thailand this is really good and and kanai approved of that and he was here last year or two years ago in the same spot so it's nice to see him back again this tent is just says nama beer i can get down with that so i'll be doing another live stream tomorrow and uh we could try some more of the food then i'm gonna do a lunch lunch time one before the people start coming in here

39:49:00 John Daub: veldron writes in here i don't know why the the quality it could be just the uh a lot of people whenever you come to an event you don't get the same kind of live streams if you just walk in the street at night and people are asleep and we're between buildings here in an area with you know we're at sometimes it's good sometimes it goes in and out youtube limits it to 720p but it seems like every single live stream somebody is is complaining about the quality of the voice a little bit it's not exactly a good thing you know you know but live stream this channel has always been an experimental channel meaning i just bring you with me and share with you a little piece of japan and um fingers crossed that the signal is good this i'm gonna try to interview this guy tomorrow he was here last year and you see this it's basically just puffed sugar and he finds a way to make just a little bit of sugar into some sort of a a larger looking confection that you could sell for 500 uh two for 500 yen and he was really i talked to him two years ago and was gonna film him but it was cancelled last year so i'll try to because this is a very traditional japanese street food it's like just puffed sugar i remember taking a bite of it and it was gone it's like cotton candy sort of

41:40:00 John Daub: so yeah you know if you wanna if you wanna improve the quality of youtube live streams go to twitter and um at mark team youtube and tell them to to improve the youtube app for mobile live streaming they just simply don't care about mobile live streaming and the app interface hasn't really changed at all since 2017 when i started this channel they still have a ridiculous three second timer for thumbnails course everybody takes a picture and uploads it because they want to edit them a little bit it's just such a really ridiculous um system youtube has put zero almost zero work into mobile live streaming app and third-party apps do not work as well stream yard has a really cool app that allows to do it 10 to 1 1080p but it takes four or five button pushes to switch from the front camera to the back camera so there's trade-offs with every single app possible and i'm not wearing a backpack you be right because that defies the point of like being mobile there you go some people do live streams through the gopro app through youtube through the dji app i don't know i like to go to the front and back camera so i stopped complaining about it a long time ago but i've still got to answer people through to compare it to other live streams. I did a signal check it seemed fine.

43:23:00 John Daub: There's some squid, we've got karaage here. That's a happy chicken. Dos Hermanos Pollos. Is that from Breaking Bad? Fring should have a stand here. Colorful yukatas! I could turn it around here, hold on. Look at the colorful yukatas, that's nice. Fireworks season is just around the corner. A lot of them were cancelled. The Sumida Gawa fireworks were cancelled. I'm not sure about the Edogawa, but hopefully the summer feels like the summer. I think that they cancelled the Sumida fireworks a little bit too early. They should have assessed the situation better, but again, if you cancel at the last minute, a lot of money is lost. So sometimes it's better to cancel it without making commitments. And there you go. At the end of the street here.

44:49:00 John Daub: So street food festivals are a lot of fun in Japan. This one is the Torigoe Street Food Festival. It's not just a street food festival. It has an actual spiritual meaning connected with the Torigoe Shrine just down the street from here. Which has been going on for like a thousand years or more. The shrines are made of solid gold, they say. Probably not, but it looks pretty heavy. But the street food is connected to that. And the amount of people that come here to watch it is very profitable to have a food festival. And it's a very good food stand for this weekend at this spot. And a lot of them are local people. And it's kind of cool for the neighborhood to come out and support them. And I'll be here just filming a little bit more for an episode. I did two years ago a festival that's no longer... Hey, there I am. I was here two years ago. I did a fest... Whoa. That's a lot of food here. I did it. I think it's a mirror. Is it the mirror or is it me? Oh my gosh. I did a festival at Tokyo Dome. Which they don't do after the festival. The pandemic started. But I filmed it in the last year. And I've been sitting on that footage for three years now. So it'll be a very comprehensive Tokyo street food festival video. That goes from stadiums to shrine festivals to alleys and shopping street food. So it should be a really good comprehensive episode that I'm making. So if the signal stinks, subscribe to the main channel with edited video content. It's new. We're just coming close to 175,000 subscribers. It's a far cry from the 1.3 million I used to have on the original channel. But we all got to start over and build. And it's fun to see something grow again. If you plant it, it will grow. Water it and give it love. Whoa. Look at that Shinkansen balloon. It's got wheels. So you can pull it around. Now it looks... I got to get Leo that. But he's going to jump on it. He's just going to jump on it. Like... Which is probably its purpose. Get Dr. Yellow. Oh, that's awesome. All right.

47:06:00 John Daub: So there you go, everybody. I think Leo's awake. I just got a message that Leo's awake. So I'm going to go catch up with them and bring them out here. I'll be doing another live stream here for lunch tomorrow. So don't worry. I'll be putting some of these Super Chats to really good work tomorrow. And build up another appetite and run this off tonight. And yeah. You know, it's just really good to see that the festivals and businesses are back in Japan operating sort of normally. It's a good feeling to see because in life you need to have these breaks in going to work and doing everything every day. These festivals offer these milestones in your life every year that come in, break it up, give a little bit of excitement. Here's another shrine. Look at this. It's nice. So there you are for everybody. Hope you enjoyed it from Tokyo. I'll be back tomorrow. I'll click the like button and leave me a comment. What do you think? What was your favorite street food that you saw today? Maybe I'll try that tomorrow, but appreciate it. Have a nice day. Have a nice night, guys.