00:00:08 John Daub: Hey everybody, welcome to Ginza on the weekend where they close down the street. I've got here to celebrate the last episode on matcha. Let me get it in the sun. This is an iced matcha tea. If I put this down right on the street, you can get a pretty good look. Look at the green on that. That's just incredible. And it's refreshing too, these matcha iced teas. How you doing everybody? I'm looking down on you from the big streets of Ginza.

00:00:39 John Daub: It's been a really incredible week and I thought I would end off because it's Saturday here, right here on the streets of Ginza. It is more crowded than I thought it would be. This is actually pretty crazy. I'm just panning around. I haven't seen this many people in a very long time. Now we're getting closer to the end of the day. You can see the sun is starting to set which is quite early for Tokyo in the winter. I'm still not used to it. The iPhone doing a pretty good job of tapering down that bright sunshine in my eyes. It's actually looking better than I thought it would be.

00:01:09 John Daub: It gives you an idea that Japan has really bounced back. There's a lot of tourists here. In fact, I was getting this out of the Marunouchi building where there's a Uniqlo here in Ginza. I was walking out with this tea and a tourist who was looking at their smartphone just totally body checked me. The tea went sprawling all over the place. The entire area was green. It was actually quite interesting but I was close enough to the shop. I went back and a shout out to the staff of this coffee shop, matcha shop. They gave me another one for free. I was totally willing to pay for it but they saw that I actually had green all over myself. They gave me all these towels. It is a problem right now because people, I don't think they're actually used to walking around crowded spaces anymore.

00:02:11 John Daub: It's interesting that I'm getting body checked a lot. So you got to put the smartphone down or always be looking around when you walk with one like I am now. I'm not really focused on the screen too much when I'm doing this. I'm walking around the town. Ginza is such a beautiful area. And if you're in Japan, the Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 5pm, it's a really cool place to be. Let's try this out. I'll give you a taste. This is a celebration of the release of a new main channel episode long time coming on How Matcha Is Made. I think it is the best video out there on the process where I take you from the farm to the factory and to the grading on how they make the best. So kanpai. Otsukaresama. Otsukaresama deshita. That's bitter. No sweetness. It's a very even bitter. They use Kyoto Uji matcha powder. And the lady at the shop had a whisk and she was making it fresh like this, putting in some cold.

00:03:15 John Daub: She said they used, I can't remember the name of the brand. She used soft water with a very balanced. It's neither acidic, it's like perfectly balanced soft water, which makes it taste better. I don't know, but it tastes a little bit. It tastes bitter to me, which is actually refreshing. So if you want to see the process, go check out that video. I'll put a link right there. And I appreciate it. I think it's one of the best videos on YouTube about making matcha. If I don't pat myself on the back too hard.

00:03:49 John Daub: Right there. So in this episode, I'm just going to take you down the street. Actually, a Patreon supporter of mine left a package for me at a hotel on the other side. So let's go walk there and pick up the package. I hope it's still there. It's been about five days. I just haven't had time to go and do that. And John is also here. I haven't had a chance to meet up with him. But I do have a couple of "you found me" cards. And I'm happy to give you a hand. I'll give you one if you find me, but you have to find me. And don't body check me because my hand hurts. Pretty crazy is a mysterious package. Now it's a very good guy who left it. So it's not anything nefarious.

00:05:06 John Daub: We're gonna go off Broadway here. Mainly because I want to check up on my bicycle and make sure that it has not been tagged by the people. Yeah, I always thought that Main Street in Ginza is really nice to walk on. It's nice and warm with the sunshine off of the street. But also the back alleys are where it's at, man. Yeah, I totally got body checked. Hey, that's it. The figure skater. Isn't that not now or now? I forget her name. She was in the Olympics. Just remember she had that really like happy, little awkward smile, which is comforting. I like that. The flower shop back here. Yeah, like bumped into another one. I don't know if it was on purpose. I was just shocked. And then they kept on going. It was another some other tourists that came up and there's also a bicycle. It could have been. I think it'll happen quite fast. There was a bicycle right there too that had fallen over. So I was wondering if maybe he was looking at the smartphone or he was avoiding the bicycle. It didn't matter. He just kept on walking. Anyways, I got another tea out of it. And a little bit of drama.

00:06:25 John Daub: Tourist shop and lounge. What is that? I guess you can go in there and relax if you're a tourist. Do you have to show your passport? It's interesting. Like sometimes in areas like Ginza, they have these lounges that a lot of people don't know about. All of these department stores have lounges for shoppers that you can relax. It's part of the shopping experience. I know Mitsukoshi has one too. And this is I'm right now behind Matsuya and the first ever Starbucks that came here in 1998. The same year I did. That's the only thing we have in common, which is actually a lot. There's my bicycle right there. It's still good. You're going to see at the intersection. Mitsukoshi has gotten the Christmas lights out and they probably turned it on around 4:30.

00:07:50 John Daub: Because the sun is setting around that time. And I'm just surprised how early darkness hits Tokyo. I forgot about that. Because we're so close to December 21, which is supposedly the darkest day. So again, land of the rising sun, get up early. Get up and get your sunshine at 6:30 in the morning. And then go to bed early because the sun goes down pretty early. Unfortunately, I'm up at like 2am editing, because that's what I can get most stuff done. The body check is like a hockey term. I can't believe we're still talking about being body checked. Body check is a hockey term where they take your body and they slam into you. It was just a move, I guess. All right, mask on because it's kind of a crowded street here. That's how you kind of judge, you look around with the people around you. They all got their mask on. It seems like a crowded place. Put your mask on. That's what I do.

00:09:18 John Daub: All right, let's take a quick look. This is the only place to cross the street. The next one's at Higashi Ginza. This is the one at Ginza. And you can see just how many people are here. I wonder if we got mosaic going on. How good is the signal? I'd be surprised if it was a clean signal here. It's just so many people. I'm not used to this. It's out of focus. Well, it's actually in focus. It's just too many people here. So we're gonna have to get off of the main street and get away from it. It's not a problem that I've had in Ginza for a long time. And I guess it's a good problem. Maybe we're not looking down. The camera lens is clean. Camera lens is totally clean. It's just probably the signal strength because it's so crowded. Yeah, you can't see the Christmas lights yet. But they're on the side of the wall. In fact, you probably see it as eight bit blocks. So let's get out of here. There's an incredible amount of people in Ginza.

00:10:37 John Daub: It's not my network. Your network is slow. My network is the 4G LTE of Docomo. And yes, it is. It's slow because there's a lot of people using it. That's how 4G works. It's out of my control. But yeah, I think Daniel's got it right. Ginza is back in business. Ginza is back in business. I'm walking towards this hotel. He had stayed at a hotel called Aloft Ginza, which I believe is in this direction. Despite the I know the live chat's talking about bandwidth issues. It's always going to be an issue with a crowded spot. That's why I try to avoid these places on the weekends. I was just shocked that there were as many people as there are right now in Ginza. Very shocking. It should get a little bit better to move away from Yonchome, which is the big busy intersection. Hopefully.

00:12:10 John Daub: Like Hato Bus has been booming lately too. I've seen them all over the place. And they have a depot right on the Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station. And there are so many people. Every time I go to the post office, I'm shocked because of the stark contrast between 2020, 2021. And then now Hato Bus is booming. And I'm really happy for them about that because they've been hurting for a very long time. They even use those Hato Buses to whisk people away to the mass vaccination centers in the Otemachi business side of Tokyo Station. That's how those buses were being used. So they were taken by the city and used to get older people from Tokyo Station to the mass vaccination site back in 2020 when the vaccines first rolled out in the fall. I guess it was around July or August. I think I live streamed that. Mass vaccination center. But if this stream does look as crappy as everyone is telling me, I'll probably do it again.

00:13:20 John Daub: I definitely wanna do a stream tonight about green tea because I really wanna hone in on this. I'm not really drinking it either. It's so strong. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Gosh, I learned so much about green tea making that last episode. And over the last year. Something I always wanted to do. And the great thing about this job is that I pick topics that I'm curious about as well. With the same with every YouTuber who tackles a topic that they don't know about. Some YouTubers will go out there film factories, film how things are made. You learn something new from those and I think that there's a lot of value in taking on that kind of challenge and I took on the green tea challenge and I'm learning so much and it's nice to pass that knowledge on to you guys. So if you like those kind of episodes I will keep making those kind of episodes.

00:14:24 John Daub: I believe it's right around here. Wow is that a Ferrari? It's a Lambo? No it's a Ferrari. It's Ferrari oh my gosh. I guess you can afford to park it if you've got one of those cars you can afford to pay for parking in Ginza and that's a pretty penny. Ferrari 488 Spider.

00:15:10 John Daub: Ryan Walsh just suggestion, John Lemmy and with me Japan streamers have clear quality I think because they use Prism Live app. I don't know. Yeah it's a 1080p they use a different encoding. I will try that this month but bad bandwidth is still bad bandwidth. It doesn't matter if you're streaming in a crowded place it can be challenging. But every app has a new how do I get into this hotel? I found it here. The one downside are the this is something that I don't like here Japan gives you these paper straws and they're so bad. They fall apart after a couple of minutes and I've been struggling with that. I'm gonna have to put this matcha latte matcha in my bag here you think it's gonna be okay? I mean if I zip it up all right maybe if I zip it up there it should be okay. Calvin I don't know this seems to be the hotel looks like a nice hotel Aloft oh gosh that tea is really sloshing all right let's just see here all right I'm just gonna go inside and pop in and ask.

00:17:14 Hotel Staff: Hello. Hi.

00:17:15 John Daub: I think about like, it took like five days ago, someone might have left a package for me.

00:17:20 Hotel Staff: Five days ago?

00:17:21 John Daub: Yeah, John Daub, YouTuber.

00:17:23 Hotel Staff: John Daub.

00:17:25 John Daub: He left a package for you over here?

00:17:26 Hotel Staff: I think so, yeah.

00:17:27 John Daub: Did he stay here?

00:17:28 Hotel Staff: He did stay here.

00:17:29 John Daub: Do you know his room number?

00:17:30 Hotel Staff: He's not here anymore, that's why he left it here.

00:17:33 Hotel Staff: Okay, please wait a moment.

00:17:34 John Daub: Sure.

00:17:40 Hotel Staff: Is he John Daub?

00:17:43 John Daub: Yeah.

00:17:52 Hotel Staff: So do you know when did he stay here?

00:17:55 John Daub: About five days ago?

00:17:57 Hotel Staff: Five days ago?

00:17:58 John Daub: Yeah.

00:18:03 Hotel Staff: Okay, so I think he's not here anymore.

00:18:09 John Daub: He left a package for you over here?

00:18:11 Hotel Staff: I think he's not here anymore, that's why he left it here.

00:18:11 Hotel Staff: Okay, please wait a moment.

00:18:11 John Daub: He left a package for you over here?

00:18:20 John Daub: Yeah.

00:18:20 Hotel Staff: Can I have your name and address again, sir?

00:18:24 John Daub: My name is John, J O H N, D A U B.

00:18:30 Hotel Staff: D A U B.

00:18:32 John Daub: E A U B.

00:18:33 Hotel Staff: E A U B.

00:18:34 John Daub: Yeah.

00:18:34 John Daub: I can try to go online and get more information about it, but I know he was...I had no time to meet up with a viewer of mine, and so he left a package here at the lobby over here. He told me to come here to pick it up but it's been a while.

00:18:50 Hotel Staff: Okay, so, I'm sorry, may I have the name of the name of who's the

00:19:12 John Daub: Um, I did, I, you have a small area here so I'm sure. I'll come back in like 5-10 minutes or so, I'll just go and check online.

00:19:21 Hotel Staff: Yeah.

00:19:25 John Daub: That's interesting. I can't quite remember. That's interesting. I didn't know they had so much English staff here. Alright, so, I hope that the package is still there. I have to go onto the emails and check, I don't know if there's a confirmation number or something. Oh my. I just thought I would just go there and pick it up. Um, yeah, I'm really appreciative if everybody comes and leaves me packages but I don't have a lot of time to come and pick them up. I'm kind of just making a special trip here. I really appreciate it though.

00:20:01 John Daub: I'll go back in here, I gotta check on the Patreon site. Oh my gosh. Yeah, they're really nice in there, just they seem like quite, kind of busy because people are checking in and I'll do it off camera. I'm just curious, wow, what is these cars? They're all coming from these parking lots here.

00:20:33 John Daub: Yeah, I'm gonna look into the quality of these live streams in the crowded area. There's not a lot that I could do about it. I turn off, so what I do is I turn off WiFi, I turn off the Bluetooth, I turn off all the cellular connections to every app except for the YouTube app and then I push live streaming. And the feedback really does help guys because I do give this to YouTube to fix the app but, if it's not working, I'm gonna go back to YouTube. And I've got the third party, I thought about using even the GoPro today, just to see how that would work. I think you have to connect it wirelessly, I have the GoPro Hero 11, I don't know what the new Bluetooth that they have on the new iPhone and with the new GoPro if that's any better. So let's experiment this month, what can we do? Let's see what can we do to make this signal better and I appreciate you guys pointing that out to me because I'm always trying to get it in a better situation.

00:21:25 John Daub: I don't think airplane mode is the best mode. I think that turns off your cellular. I think that's a great idea. I'm not sure you could do a very good uh you get two LTE connections and join together I think it's called like cross bonding or something yeah you could do that too one of them is an e-sim and another one I thought about that as well i'm not sure how it works i think the software has to work with that and i'm not sure if the youtube app does that i like to stay native i've had bad experiences with third-party streaming software in the past really bad it just never worked you couldn't see the chat so i didn't know who was asking what there were differences in the audio um delays between what you saw from my mouth and what you saw on the screen so youtube app is ideally would be the best for live streaming but as you can tell you know prism live is a really interesting app as well and uh think peso and i we were playing with this a couple of weeks ago so might be time to investigate the only thing against prism okay you can't schedule them i can't give you a notice all i do is i connect with youtube and you have to go live so that's the downside with the prism live app and i like to let my patreon supporters and discord and everybody know like even 10-15 minutes in advance before the live stream.

00:23:06 John Daub: Now that I remember very interesting here you can see here they have if you can see they have a new elevator entrance for Higashi Ginza station I did not know this this is pretty new or the first time I'm seeing it and this is great because the city of Tokyo as I've said over the course of the last five years of doing these live streams hasn't been really good with people who have disabilities who can't use stairs that there weren't a lot of ways to get into subway stations and just the amount of elevators have been popping up makes me feel real happy that we're giving priority to people who actually need this here too although everybody uses them and there are some benches here where you could eat a bento even in Ginza that's good to go by the way I lost half my tea so it wasn't Kelvin you're right that was bad idea.

00:24:41 John Daub: O'Neill's hey man it's me I'm Martin the guy who's the smells inside there too I don't think I described that enough but I certainly want to in full glory detail I could do that in on in a directors take on that main channel episode which I think I'll do tonight John I totally validated you Kelvin I totally did you are so right I should not have put that in my pocket what are you gonna do it doesn't matter how old you are does not matter all right there you go there's the kabuki-za theater in the distance I'm thinking about doing an episode with that the historical significance and the changes in that building in itself you see that right there I just zoomed in on it and that skyscrapers in the back part of it it's so cool no lid no good I did have one I just didn't use it I should have what did I use it yeah.

00:25:38 John Daub: All right one last thing everybody and don't forget to hit the like button if you love minecraft minecraft quality livestreams I released last night I wouldn't Peter and I were up till 2 a.m. just kind of playing around with the trailer we didn't want to waste a lot of time on it but we I think we did a pretty good job with that edit at least Peter did a good job of it he narrated it added in some some words of wisdom that's available if you're a Kickstarter backer you can go and check out that trailer which is also on the arm my Vimeo page and it's about two minutes of that motorcycle adventure and you can see a lot of the best shots in there I think maybe we gave away too much maybe there's also a police officer in there and I might have fallen but I got back up it's true I'm still here Pbg is working pretty hard on editing as well he's using Final Cut Pro I'm using Premiere Pro it's not exactly the most efficient way to edit anything but we'll get it done I lived and I am telling the tale thanks everybody I'll see you maybe tonight for a director's cut on that green tea video and again on Sunday Monday Tuesday I'm gonna try to livestream a little bit more as we get into fall and move into December I can't believe how crazy that the end of the year's here like goddamn it.

00:27:05 John Daub: Gosh, and don't get body checked. Don't walk with your smartphone, okay? Do not walk and look at your smartphone. Lessons learned by someone else and me. See ya.