00:00:02 John Daub: Hello and greetings! This is Shibuya in central Tokyo. Everybody knows what Shibuya is, where Shibuya is, and what to expect when you come to Shibuya, like flashing lights. How you doing everybody? I'm here because I saw that there is some unique green food coming back to Tokyo. I guess this a lot has to do with the fact that tourism is returning in just a couple of weeks. Maybe there's going to be some more unique things popping up around the city. Life is getting back to normal. I'm seeing more and more people not wearing masks, which is interesting. So I think that the whole country of Japan has kind of pivoted, which is very good news, even though it might be late compared to the rest of the world.

00:00:44 John Daub: So I'm gonna take you into this shop here, into the back entrance anyways, and we're just gonna pick up really quickly. I don't think actually we're allowed to film. I really don't know. But we're gonna take you in and be as un-invasive as possible through the back entrance. And we're gonna get a what is it? It's a 10 yen coin. Now, it was about four years ago, these really stretchy cheese Korean things on sticks. Potatoes around it. Really trendy. I even did a couple of live streams getting that. You go like this, and there's a big piece of cheese that would stretch to the end of time. And then you have to bring time back into your mouth. We're gonna get one of these, but they've done it a little bit differently.

00:01:32 John Daub: This is the richest 10 yen coin. This is the most expensive 10 yen coin that you'll ever find. Because it has cheese. And it costs more than 10 yen. In fact, this snack or street food will set you back 500 yen. And this is the new 500 yen coin. Those that are coming to Japan will discover it for the first time. It's pretty sweet. It's got like a bicolor to it. I guess a platinum, gold, and silver. And it's got a Mount Fuji. Is that a Mount Fuji on the top? Almost looks like it could be, but I don't think it is. This is equivalent to $5 three years ago, but now closer to $4 through the exchange rate. So we're gonna go inside, pick up one of these, be un-invasive, and get out. And yes, I did get a haircut. Yes, I did. All right, mask's on. No one knows it's me. Let's go do this. I'm actually gonna take the phone off of the gimbal to be even more un-invasive.

00:02:47 John Daub: To do this as quickly as possible. But I think it's important that we share the experience of going together. Here we go. We are on handhold. We're being handheld. This is gonna be fun. All right, let's go do this really quickly. Into Don Quixote we go. Spy camera. Oh my gosh, it's like sold out. It doesn't take new 500 yen coins. That's funny. Actually, I got a thousand yen. I have 1000 yen. Really? Thank you. It's actually 463 yen plus tax, which makes it at even 500 yen. Sorry about the shaking. Thank you. Thank you. So it takes about 4 minutes.

00:04:54 John Daub: Wow. It's kind of fun. You know, it'll take four minutes for him to make it. I guess needs to cook. Wow, that's big. Four minutes to cook this thing. And I'm gonna eat it right here if I can. Just set up the tripod and do this thing. Thanks so much for the super chat. You basically have sponsored this livestream. Who wrote that in here? Hey, is it Frencho Studio? Frencho Studio, this cheese is for you, buddy. All right, let's go back in. All right, it's getting close to the end here. That's so cool, it should look like this. I almost said, when I said Frencho Studio, I almost said Brandania, and then Brandania's here. That's so cool. Is it gonna be a stretchy, stretchy as this? I wonder.

00:06:26 John Daub: Oh. The waiting is killing me. They have the Halloween stuff out, which is pretty cool. Waiting is the hardest part. I think we're like almost there though. The cheese pull is going to be insane. It's just before lunch time too, so I'm surprised there's not more people here. But I guess nobody wants to eat stretchy cheese as their lunch, just me. But I think it's pretty cool if you can get, like make something like this in a shape that's so unique, you're gonna get people to notice and that's a lot of fun too. I guess the reason why it's 10 yen coin is because the 10 yen coin is actually brown on this. Hold on a second, let me get a 10 yen coin on that. Oh, you're right. Here we go.

00:08:31 John Daub: All right, let's follow the 10 yen coin out. Oh, this is insane. This is crazy. All right, let me put you back on the gimbal. It is, I'm glad that it's on a stick, but I'm afraid that it's gonna suck. I'm afraid that it's gonna slide off the stick. All right, I'm gonna put you on the gimbal for a second. Just give me, don't freak out. You're getting stuck onto a stick here. Okay. All right, you're back. Oh my gosh, it's so piping hot. I'm guessing you could just eat it like it is. So, the, oh wow. So I'm guessing this is brown because a 10 yen coin is brown. Let me get one out for you. Holy smokes, they don't have one? Only hundreds, but I think you get the picture.

00:09:37 John Daub: The 10 yen coin is brown like this, and it wouldn't make a lot of sense to do a 100 yen coin because then you'd need a silver thing, but cheese is popping out of it. What? Is that like cheese is popping out of it? Oh my gosh, look at how golden brown that is. Oh, this is so nice. All the details are in it. This is the yen sign. If you turn it around, that's so awesome. It even says like 10 yen coin. There's a little ribbon there. Are people going to send a picture of this to me? Someone's got to send me a picture of this for the screenshot. So take the screenshot here. That's really good. You can see on the side. Look at this. A 10 yen tunnel. Oh my gosh, that's so good. It's not like a salty cheese. It's just a stretchy, fun cheese. Whoa. That was a good pull. Oh my gosh. That was a lot of cheese. Was it worth it? Was this worth it? Yeah. Oh my god.

00:12:33 John Daub: This is so worth it. I think the price should be more like 350 yen maybe 500 yen. 500 yen makes it easy, right? One coin. Wow. Oh my gosh. So good. The bread here, the pancake, it's kind of sweet, but it's not sweet. It's like... Did you ever eat a pancake without the syrup on it? That's sort of what this is. But goes really good with the cheese. And the cheese is not overly salty. I think they really thought a lot about this before they decided to sell this here. Oh my gosh, there's still a cheese. Oh my gosh. That is so good. No more cheese. Colin, thank you. You just emailed me a screen grab. That's awesome. Alright, that's all I got for this live stream. But bonus, if we can get 200 likes, I'll keep on going. We've got like 100 likes. I can't believe we only got 100 likes for that. It's alright. It's all for fun.

00:14:23 John Daub: In six days from now, I'm going to be in Kagoshima. So that's kind of exciting. I'll be taking you with me, of course, live. Whoa! It says here, what? That's a 50 yen drink. Wow. 50 yen for that. And Pocari Sweat is a very well-known brand. I have not seen a vending machine drink that cheap. I think it's like close to the expiration date. But should still be good, right? You know what? I don't know. Should I get it? It's still good, right? It's not a question of the price. It's just a question, do I want to carry it around for the next bazillion minutes? I don't know. I mean, how long is this livestream going to be? I said it was going to be 15 minutes. How long is it going to be? What's your equation say? Alright, just do it. Maybe they'll get a 10 yen coin, and then I can show you what a 10 yen coin really looks like. I can't believe it's only 50 yen. Oh no, it's all sold out.

00:15:51 John Daub: I'm going to rip off. What is this new drink by Coca-Cola? It's called Chill Out. I'm not chilled out. I'm pissed off. Wow, cool. Processing cardboard. Alright, we're back. I actually do have a drink here. Look at that merch. You find all sorts of interesting stuff in Shibuya. The town is starting to come back. Oh, this is where the Jackie Chan ramen was. Back in the year 2002. Now it's something else. Jackie Chan, I guess, failed in the ramen business. He had Jackie Chan ramen. No other YouTuber knows about that. This is like before the time of YouTube. It wasn't too bad. I was surprised at the taste of it. I mean, I don't know. I guess it was just location.

00:17:06 John Daub: Hey, Chicago Africans here. You should do a meet up next summer for people when they come back to Japan. I plan to. I absolutely plan to. And Arthur. Thank you, Mr. Vandeley. I appreciate that. I like the Vandeleys in the house. Make sure you get out of the street. I keep forgetting, like, this isn't a pedestrian zone. There are cars going whizzing by here. Sometimes whizzing. That car was just going. Going at a normal speed. Oh! I could get dessert. But I think that what I ate was dessert. I'm kind of watching my cholesterol. But they had that Tsukimi. By the way, that's not the thing you eat if you watch your cholesterol. The Tsukimi burger. Of course, everybody knows that. It's the McDonald's burger with egg on it. But they also have a Tsukimi pie and a Tsukimi milkshake now. Which is something that you might want to consider when you come here. Because it'll still be being sold in October. Because it's an October thing.

00:18:04 John Daub: Should we go down Center Gai? Or... We got the 200 likes. We hit the threshold. Should we go down Center Gai or the other street? And you can see here. This shop is out of business. It's the one right near the Purikura shop. You can see it's gone. What? I don't even know it was there. Bershka? But whatever it is, it's been wrapped in plastic. So do we go down Center Gai? Or do we go down the other street? You know what? We're going to go the other street. Executive decision. Because Center Gai is... I think the signal is no good over there. I got to burn off this cheese now. I promised Kanae I would get her a burrito for lunch. So that's what I'm going to do. Wow. It's been a while since I came in this direction. I think some of you might know exactly where I am. You can pinpoint me. That's a kōban (police box). And if you go up here, you get the Tokyu Hands and eventually NHK.

00:19:23 John Daub: I didn't know Swatch was still... I didn't know that Swatch still had stores. Does anybody actually buy a Swatch? That's what I had when I was in seventh grade. I could tell you a story here. So I was in the seventh grade and I had a blue Swatch watch. And there was a girl in the homeroom that I liked. I didn't think she liked me because she was one of the first girls to get a boyfriend back in the day. It was in eighth grade. It even had like one of those plastic bags. It had Swatch protectors on it. And I'm guessing that she might have liked me because she asked me... She says, can I wear your Swatch? I almost said no. She's like, how would you want to wear my Swatch? I'm a kid, right? We don't know this stuff. She said, okay, sure. So I gave her my Swatch watch and she just started wearing it. I didn't have a watch anymore. And she wore it for like a good ten days. And then I told my other friends. And we were all a bunch of geeks. We didn't know what was going on. So they said, dude, you should go get back your watch. It was like 50 bucks. And I went in a paper route and I paid for it with my paper route money. I said, okay. I wasn't even thinking probably at the time that she liked me or anything. Now in self-reflection, that seems to make a lot of sense that she took my watch because she liked me or she couldn't afford her own, which doesn't make sense. Although I guess if you have a paper route when you're 12 years old, you're willing to pay for it. I'm one of the richest people in the neighborhood. I have income. But I went up to her at lunch and I said, ah, can I get my watch back? And she said, okay. And then she gave it back to me. And then I remember when I got it back home smelling the watch and it smelled so good.

00:21:17 John Daub: Hello. Hey, how are you doing? Good. So we're live as you know. Yes, we're live. Yeah. Yeah. What's your name?

00:21:27 Guest (Life): Life.

00:21:28 John Daub: Nice to meet you. I'm John Daub. Oh, okay. Yeah. Are you visiting? You live here?

00:21:36 Guest (Life): Visiting at the moment. Visiting in-laws.

00:21:38 John Daub: Okay. So she's got that to take care of. Oh, Fukushima. Yes. Oh, yeah. I lived there for a year back in, oh, you know.

00:21:45 Guest (Life): I know. I know. But I've been, I've been doing a little watch training while I was up there as well. I've been running around. I was just, I didn't quite get into shorts. I was up in a little bikini. No kidding. And. Did they have something for you? Yeah. Yeah. I had enzo and an ethanol. I think the enzo one might have more, because it's got the pig. It's been a while.

00:22:12 John Daub: So, you're a YouTuber as well?

00:22:13 Guest (Life): Yeah.

00:22:14 John Daub: Oh, what is your tag? H T I A L One.

00:22:17 Guest (Life): I tell the people here. It's H T I A L One. H. H T I. A L. AL1. Check it out.

00:22:25 John Daub: I went backwards. I was just a couple of times like, oh, I know where you are. And I was like, I'm right behind you. I'm like, I'm right behind you. I can hear myself. What is that? An echo. Wait, that's me. And there you are right there. Yeah. Oh, that's great. So you went back to Milwaukee today.

00:22:41 Guest (Life): No, no. We're here for four days because we were at Disneyland yesterday. Oh, wow. Nice. Not yesterday. The day before from what I think. Yeah, it's been like, yeah, 28, 13 hours at Disneyland. We're here for four days with our friends. Housemates from back in Milwaukee and Nagoya in 2004.

00:23:03 John Daub: Oh, wow. That's what I was living in Nagoya as well. Fuji-Gaoka, I think. I was in HMV. Oh, okay. That's where I started in Okazaki. That's crazy. Switching paths here. Yeah. I went to get back to it. Yeah. And then we changed. Cool. Hiked back up the hill to our accommodation. Well, if you come back in the city, I'll probably start meeting up with people again. Okay. Because I haven't joined that sort of thing since then. Yep, it will. Yeah. All right. All right. That's so nice. I love it. You know, it's been for ages that I haven't actually met people out and about, and this is so cool. You never, you know, the city is filled with so many people. You never are alone here. And that's just an amazing feeling.

00:23:54 John Daub: And he's living in Iwaki, Fukushima, and that's a city that is close to my heart because I was a resident of it. And because of the stuff that happened in 2011, it's been really hard for that town in particular. And I did go there to promote the Hawaiians, to try to help them out off-season. There weren't a lot of people swimming there, but it's like going to Hawaii. So maybe I'll do some more stuff for Fukushima because I really love that prefecture and they have a lot of pride there. And it's not, it has not been the same. Everything's, everything's cool now as long as you're not in that area. But Aizuwakamatsu and Urabandai, Bandai-san, Mount Bandai, such a beautiful place. Wow. This is like deja vu. Wasn't I just here? I think I was just here. It's weird. Maybe I should go a different way then. I don't, I don't remember. Let's cross the street and then I'll take you up and see what the new Parco looks like.

00:25:00 John Daub: You see that building straight ahead? I don't think we went in this direction and then I don't think I've ever gone this way either. So let's just go in this direction and then maybe I'll cut off the live stream here because I think, oh, that's what we had. Kanae had one of those badges. That's what pregnant mommies get so that when you wear the badge, people let you have a seat so then you don't have to stand on trains. But then there were a lot of people. There were a lot of pregnant women that were really shy to get that because there were some strange, wacky guys who would punch women who were pregnant. They were in the news and maybe there are only a few cases of it, but it really freaked out people. I don't know who the hell would do that. You have to be psychologically messed up to do that. But caused some women not to want to use that badge a few years ago. I know, Brian Downey, that's an eye raising thing. But I think you have to. You have to kind of tell the good with the bad. This is weird. So there's some the Apple store in Shibuya is back. I didn't know that. I can tell you definitively that I'll never go back in there.

00:26:21 John Daub: Ten years ago, I did a presentation in there. I was a podcaster, Weblicious. It was the number one video podcast in Japan for like three years. A lot of people don't know that. So Apple knew that. A lot of the staff that was watching my show. They invited me to give a presentation on the first floor. And I think it was Joseph Tame. I had another friend who came with me to help me out more than ten years ago. Wow. Jason knows about Weblicious. This takes you up to Yoyogi Park. I'm just going to swing down the hill. Let's see if that TGI Friday's or Jonathan's is still there across the street here.

00:27:27 John Daub: They've been cracking down quite a lot on smoking in the city. I know that in the past you could walk and smoke. You'd see a lot of people smoking. But now the police are ticketing people who try to do that. And the fines, I think, are kind of stiff. I see a bunch of foreigners. It looks like a tour group. Here we go. All right. I'm going to go down to the end of the street here. I don't even I forget where the burrito place is. They did that a great job. Look at it. This is the new Parco building. It's been redone to add trees. And I guess it's just more scenic now. We'll have to get back in there one of these days. Can I need the new down jacket? Does anybody have a company that they can recommend for down jackets? I thought I'd buy her that for her for Christmas. That's what she wants. I bought her a vacuum cleaner, a Dyson last year. And people said, don't buy your wife a vacuum cleaner. I said, that's what she wants. That's what she wanted. This is the best. That was the best present. She's so happy with the vacuum cleaner. I can't understand. People tell me what to get and what not to get. I know what to get. I don't know what not to get, though.

00:29:24 John Daub: It looks like the TGI and the Caesars is gone from here. The Caesars has become the Torikizoku, which is a very cheap chain. That was Simon and Martina's favorite chain restaurant, I believe. I hung out with them. I hung out with them two or three times. We ended up there. You can eat until you drop and it costs like almost nothing, which makes me wonder where they get the food from. Yeah, we were just here. All right. You know what? I'm going to cut out here and head to the train. But yeah, there you go. There's the Tower Records straight ahead. And there's the burrito shop. All right. There it is. Boom. So, Kanae, your burrito is coming. She's watching. Do you want steak, chicken or pork? Send me your order, Kanae. I'll get that for you.

00:30:38 John Daub: I just remembered. I think I forgot to give it you found me card. So, yeah, I'll see if I can catch up with you again. I'm not going anywhere. Taco Bell is. I didn't know there was a Taco Bell truck. Wow. That Taco Bell truck really does look like they sell a lot of tacos. Where's the Chihuahua? They don't do that anymore. There's the Blue Ramen shop inside there. I wonder if they're still in business. The Blue Ramen. It's really good. All right, everybody. Thanks so much for watching. I'll take you in another adventure tomorrow, but I'll be in Kagoshima on the 5th of October. So that's going to be a lot of fun. And we'll be in Kyushu for a week, a solid week. I've got to rent a car and be driving around. But I'm going there for a couple of events. And I'm going to be in the and one of them and one of the episodes of doing there. Actually, all those episodes are going to be top secret. Maybe I'll tell you when I'm there. But right now, I'm not saying anything. Is this a taxi? This is the color of the Indian auto rickshaws. It's a weird looking car. Black and yellow top. Isn't that an auto rickshaw, right? India. Except it's a nice one. All right, everybody. See you again tomorrow. Take care and get some exercise in for me because that stringy cheese thing is starting to get in my way. It's going to really weigh me down. Peso's conversion factor is quite accurate. Approaching 37 minutes. I know. He's got me pegged. Bye, everybody.