00:00:00 John Daub: All right, there is your lineup. Wait, this one's upside down. I got three convenience store sandwiches for lunch today, and we're going to kind of compare, you know, which one of the convenience stores is the best, which one is better than the other ones. These are our basic run-of-the-mill white breaded sandwiches that you can find at every convenience store. They almost look exactly the same in the cut and perhaps in the weight and the volume. Maybe I should go and get the scale. It is raining cats and dogs here in Tokyo, and this is a live stream that I thought we could share lunch together. Joining us in this live stream are Kamen Bell flavored chips by Calvi. They are very inventive with their chips. This is going to be a treat because you can't have a sandwich without chips. And to wash it all down, the very unusual grape and muscat looks like almost yogurt sort of drink. It does say yogurt. It's a weird Fanta.

00:01:07 John Daub: So the first drink, first, how you doing, everybody? Yeah, it's kind of not the best day to be outside here in Tokyo. It is coming down. And just for perfect clarity here, I want you to understand that I don't typically eat convenience store food for lunch, and you shouldn't either. This is a type of meal that you eat when you're on the run. You have very little time. Or your wife is away, and you don't want her to know that you ate convenience store food. Don't live stream it either. You want to make sure that the proof and all the guilt is thrown away. Luckily, it's trash day, and I think you can get the wrappers out in time. Hopefully, she's not watching. Convenience store food, of course, is fast food. It's basically the same thing.

00:01:48 John Daub: So here is our lineup. Here's our lineup. This is from Family Mart. This is a brand new one. This means a brand new. Hatsubai, which is a new product here, announcement. Lettuce, red onion, and roast beef. So this should be pretty interesting. How good does Japan do with roast beef? We're going to find out. Look at the lettuce in there. And how deep does the meat go? That's something I'm always looking into when I eat these sandwiches. This one really has a lot of volume.

00:02:25 John Daub: This is 7-Eleven's chicken, broccoli, and honey mustard. Wow, you can almost feel that honey mustard. Look at that congealed egg. 7-Eleven does a pretty good job with their sandwiches and has been upping the game for a long time. And last but not least, from Lawson's. And I don't even think it's marked with Lawson's logo on it, is it? That's pretty weird. This is a yakisoba with a ham katsu, a breaded deep fried ham cutlet, and then you have some egg in there. So I'm going to be talking about the egg as well because the 7-Eleven sandwich has one over there too. Now, Lawson's has a lot. This is the best looking sandwich that they had. Lawson's has a very high hill to climb to be competitive with these other two. And then there's the chips.

00:03:25 John Daub: Gosh. Where do you even start with a meal like this? Obviously, with the Fanta. Every winter or the end of fall, right before the Christmas holiday, we start to get some pretty bizarre drinks from beverage makers. This one is brand new.

00:03:44 John Daub: Oh my gosh. Wow. This really does smell like grape. Okay. Not bad. The yogurt, I guess, gives it a sort of, um, like a sort of body to it. I don't know. I'm not too certain. I think if I'm ever going to drink a carbonated sugar beverage, it's probably going to be Fanta. There's some vitamins in it. But you know, that's pretty sweet.

00:04:26 John Daub: Alright, no complaining. Time to get into it. Alright. We gotta open up the chips. Now, in America, on the top, I open up the chips like this in the top. In Japan, especially at parties, you don't really keep the chips around. They come in much smaller bags. Typically, you'll eat the whole thing. I probably will share with kanai when she gets here. This is the only proof and I can say I get to the supermarket, I do not eat convenience store food for lunch. John does not eat convenience food for lunch. We usually we'll rip them open from the back like this, and it makes it easier for you to grab them, especially if you get more than one person here. So that's how that's how the Japanese would eat the chips.

00:05:28 John Daub: Common bell chips, oh wow. All right, chips win the tips win. Um, for anybody who is uh on our discord server or moderators, I guess we can start start a uh, a poll, and maybe we can take some questions from people, uh, and you can listen and watch live and talk. Well, I'm gonna start off with this one here. This is the the long shot. This is the yakisoba sandwich from Lawson's. I don't know that this is going to be good or not. I just have a feeling it's not gonna be extraordinary. So it's got a high height as I said, like a very high mountain to climb. Wow, okay.

00:06:17 John Daub: Um, I guess we'll go with this one here. Now this is pretty in your face because I'm holding it right to the screen in your face. Um, you can see that yakisoba. It out, this is basically Japanese soba noodles in a savory sauce. I would, it's not teriyaki, I don't know what it is, yakisoba sauce, but there's like this chunk of mayonnaise in there and this is ham, uh, deep fried, uh, breaded ham cutlet.

00:06:50 John Daub: Trouble with love is here, thank you for the chips. Thank you for buying me some chips there. All right, let's get, let's give it a try.

00:07:02 John Daub: Okay, it's not bad but it's dry. It's really dry. All right, here's some mayonnaise.

00:07:18 John Daub: In the corner, you know, it's too dry. Let's go for the other one just for a bite. We got to do comparison here. This one has the um, egg in there. And Japanese convenience stores are very well known for for that. But already it's like taking a hit here. If we open it up, check it out, like what happened here. This is a lot of bread and not enough noodles. I think I don't know, it's kind of light in the noodle department here. So I don't know, it's good effort, try to be positive here. All right, let's, let's go straight into the middle. That's a little bit more moist. The last thing you want is for your sandwich to be really dry. You remember that. But I mean, it's good to have a drink to wash it down and have some chips to forget about it. But um, 288 yen or about, I don't know, two dollars and fifty cents. Let's say yeah, not too bad.

00:08:44 John Daub: All right, next up here. I'm gonna go into the uh, discord server, let's see here. I don't want to show you anything that's private. Was I talking about, I might remember when I do this.

00:09:01 John Daub: Hey guys, um, where is it? Uh, fireside chat. All right, start the stage. Okay, so I just started a stage here. So anybody, if you want to come on to the fireside chat here, we go. Japanese sandwich eat off. All right, I just started a stage here. If you want to, you can just join, join in here. Raise your hand, I'll bring you in here, and you can ask me some questions. No profanity, don't ask anything too personal because it's just, just don't, you you probably can, but I might not answer.

00:09:45 John Daub: All right, here we go. We got a bunch of people coming in here. All right, next up, I think I'm gonna go with this one here because I'm, it's staring me right in the face. Hey, Michael Sasano, love me some konbini style sandwiches. Look at yummy. My friend, thank you, Michael. Boom, ah, that's on me, boom. This is a chicken broccoli and honey mustard. You can see here it does look good. Um, it is the heaviest sandwich out of the three, so it's got some really good volume to it. 360 yen, so that makes it about uh, I don't know, like three dollars with the exchange rate. Let's see, well it says it's got 20.6 grams of protein, so I'm gonna need to work out and uh, earn it here.

00:10:43 John Daub: Again, if you're if you're populating and I see that it's populating here, if you're an audience on the discord server, make sure the youtube video is muted and also raise your hand so I can bring you up onto the stage. Many moderators in here, so it's just me. This is okay. All right, let's get one of these out here. This is a moist maker. Look at this. Wow, it is really moist. Look at that. That is broccoli in there. This actually looks somewhat healthy. They didn't go wall to wall with the filling, but they almost did. Look at that egg sort of just popping there in the corner. This is pretty heavy in my hand, and it's certainly moist. I can kind of feel it coming through.

00:11:41 John Daub: I just lost the light. I lost my studio lights. Director, oh no. Oh no, my camera's going to misfunction. You can see there's a studio light that just went off. Oh no, the battery. Gives it some drama now. No one's raising their hand here, so if you have anything that you, if you want to talk onto the stage here, I will bring you on Discord, and you can have lunch with me. You have to raise your hand, though.

00:12:02 John Daub: Here we go. Itadakimasu. This is good. This is really good. Wow. Wow. That broccoli, and I think there's like celery in there. Is there celery in there? I think so. It really does have a very healthy bite to it. I think it might be a little bit of that celery. Mmm. The broccoli, though, really good. I think that's a great combination. It is pretty, it's not wall to wall. They never are. They always jip you, do people still say that? We see it in the 1980s. They kind of rip you off in the corner here. You see that? So it's kind of, they show it to you in the front, all the goodies, and then in the middle, in the back, there's nothing there. If they did that, it would be worth every yen then, but usually that's kind of a disappointment in that side of the sandwich here. But in all in all, this is a wonderful sandwich. I would highly recommend it. This isn't even the most expensive one. That's this one. So we're going up, we're going up the scale in price.

00:13:59 John Daub: Wow. None of the people in the audience wants to join me for lunch and actually talk. What are you guys here for? What are you listening for? Raise your hand, join me for lunch. Nobody, nobody wants to join me. It's just us. Mmm. So what? Honey mustard. Honey mustard.

00:14:31 John Daub: Boom. That was great. You know, the honey mustard was not on the front of the sandwich. I had like celery and other things, but then you keep on biting and you discover new flavors. Maybe that's the way to go. Maybe having zones in your sandwich, like this zone is the honey mustard zone. This zone is the celery zone. This zone is the broccoli zone. This kind of makes it a little bit more fun. All the tastes are very pleasant, very moist sandwich, which I kind of like. You don't want to dry. A good balance between the bread and the ingredients inside filling that sandwich. Now I give this one, it's going to be a high hurdle for the last sandwich to beat this.

00:15:11 John Daub: This is a roast beef with red onion sandwich. Um, I, um, let me see if I can bring some people up here. Can I just bring everybody to the front? Hello. Welcome. Hey, so how you doing? Thanks for joining me for lunch. It's getting kind of a little too quiet in this house.

00:15:52 Discord Guest: It looks delicious. It does look, they all look really good. I, this is a really hard battle.

00:15:58 John Daub: This is the most expensive of all, all of them. This is from Family Mart. It's a roast beef sand, sandal with lettuce, red onions, and roast beef. I wonder what the sauce is that they use in this that brings it all together. Again, it's the most expensive. Oh my gosh. It's expensive. It was a 400 yen or about $3 and 20 cents. It's hard to do dollar yen conversions these days.

00:16:39 Discord Guest: Oh wow. Okay. Hey, so yeah, what's up? I may be at a park somewhere in my day off.

00:16:50 John Daub: Oh, it's 10:30 my time at night. I think John, John is like 12:30. So it's like right time for lunch. Yeah, this is, you mentioned something about broccoli and celery.

00:17:00 Discord Guest: That sounds like you. I'm here guys. I can hear you. It's 1:30 PM here. It's lunchtime.

00:17:09 John Daub: Oh, yeah. It's 10:30 my time at night. The red onion is strangely on the outside of the bread here. And I have to be perfectly honest with you. All it's like a, the roast beef is all right in the middle and these ends of the sandwich, you can, if I, you could just see, it looks like an onigiri where the, the, just the center is stuffed. So to be fair, let's start on the ends and take a few bites and get into the middle. Cause maybe that's the way you typically start a sandwich on the end here.

00:17:49 John Daub: Okay. So you see there is some red onion in there with the sauce for the roast beef. I really don't, it's, it's not a lot in the bite compared to the last one, but it, I mean, this comes down to, it's a good, it's a good sandwich, but there's not a lot. It's not too, it's quite light. It just depends how much of a premium is roast beef, right? Would you pay extra for roast beef? I don't know if I would.

00:18:22 Discord Guest: I would if it's in Japan because it's cheaper than in America.

00:18:31 John Daub: Mm. Sandwiches would be, but cost performance. I don't think you get, if you buy a sandwich at like Wawa, which is on the East coast of the US where, where I grew up for, for three, four bucks, you get a, you get a pretty darn good hoagie, uh, sub sandwich there. Japan can't compete with Wawa. I'm sorry. Hands down US makes better sandwiches.

00:19:01 Discord Guest: I live in Oklahoma. I've never been to a Wawa.

00:19:08 John Daub: Okay. You have to go. Wawa's in itself are like tourist attractions.

00:19:12 Discord Guest: I remember it was the first place on the East coast. It was the first place where ATM fees were zero. They just wanted to get you into the shop. I think it was one of the first convenience stores to start selling gas too. Pretty incredible.

00:19:23 Discord Guest: But I have to say, John, I love all your videos. I've watched so many of them. It's crazy.

00:19:31 John Daub: Thank you. I'm editing, I'm editing the next one right now. This is sort of the break. I started watching what you were doing, uh, your early, only in Japan, uh, with, uh, Ryu.

00:19:56 Discord Guest: Oh, that's a good, um, I love your manga cafe.

00:20:04 John Daub: Which one? The manga cafe. Okay. Wow.

00:20:13 Discord Guest: Yeah, the manga cafe. That one is, um, your... That's 2013.

00:20:17 John Daub: Wow.

00:20:19 Discord Guest: And your, um, the festival you would do. Not the, um, not the Nekken, not the Nekken festival, but the, um, oh, um, gosh. The, um...

00:20:43 John Daub: Kanamara festival?

00:20:43 Discord Guest: If that means the member festival, then yes.

00:20:46 John Daub: Okay. Yeah. I can tell you some info on that one. I took that in 20, 2015, I think, and I didn't release it for two years.

00:20:56 Discord Guest: Oh, wow.

00:20:56 John Daub: Yeah. And then when I released it, the festival had changed. This is the Kanamara festival in, in, um, um, Kawasaki, also known as the phallus festival. And, uh, the priestess who was in charge of it, uh, was, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the rest of it had, had, uh, stepped down and, and, uh, uh, left the day to day to her son who changed the, changed it more to a conservative festival. So it's not quite the same. They have a drape around the pink phallus one, but, the, the history behind it, not even the Japanese media had ever covered that episode. So I was really happy to, to release it. I interviewed the, the, uh, priest there and she told me like, um, it was, it's a, it's a, um, a shrine where if you have a an STD or something because it's very close to the Yoshiwara where a lot of the the prostitutes were back in the Edo period would go there to pray um and there has to be a place for such people to you know to have a spiritual help to get help at all so that was the purpose of that shrine um and uh of course the priests there are very um um what's the word they have a very great feeling empathize for for everybody uh in particular those people so when the transgender community here in japan had asked if they could be represented um and they she they told about the hardships and the reason why this is important to them she said yes and allowed them to bring that pink ballast in which brought a lot of impact and also really made it take it to a different level.

00:23:00 Discord Guest: so you know whether that you agree when you understand the background behind a story like that it really does change the way you see it and i don't think the western media portrays it the way that it should be seen from the point of view that they had intended it to be.

00:23:16 John Daub: but yeah you're one of the reasons you are one of the reasons why i want to go to japan so badly.

00:23:22 John Daub: Oh, thank you for that. Yeah, you're quite, quite welcome. Where are you living now? Right now, I'm living in Oklahoma.

00:23:28 Discord Guest: Oklahoma, it's right above Texas. Oh wow, okay, that's the tornado alley.

00:23:34 John Daub: Yes, I don't, I don't want to talk about it. I think it's the end of the season now anyways. Right, you're getting into December so something like that. We get tornadoes, we get ice storms and earthquakes.

00:23:49 Discord Guest: Okay, wow. Earthquakes too, you'll feel right at home here in Japan then.

00:23:53 John Daub: You might feel safer in Japan than you do in Oklahoma. Maybe I don't know. In the summer, oh my gosh, the summer.

00:24:11 Discord Guest: oh wow i can i can imagine it must be really hot the humidity it right now is 79 percent wow right now 79 humidity right now it's crazy yes and that's actually common.

00:24:57 Discord Guest: yeah good night how you doing pretty good day.

00:24:59 John Daub: Good. Sort of filled up here. I'm about to give my final opinion on the sandwiches. Which one do you think looked the best?

00:25:10 Discord Guest: Yeah, the green one looked a bit kind of cool.

00:25:14 John Daub: Which one?

00:25:15 Discord Guest: Yeah.

00:25:15 John Daub: Oh, the green one, which is to your right hand side.

00:25:23 Discord Guest: Oh, okay.

00:25:24 John Daub: By far right.

00:25:27 Discord Guest: Yeah.

00:25:28 John Daub: Yeah, yeah. The roast beef.

00:25:31 Discord Guest: Yeah.

00:25:32 John Daub: Mine is the one, not that one, the other two.

00:25:37 Discord Guest: The other ones are there.

00:25:38 John Daub: Okay, the other two. All right. In third place, I'm gonna go with the roast beef sandwich. I think cost performance, it's really not good. The roast beef is in the middle. It's not as flavorful. The sauce has a kind of a salty sweet sauce to it. It's savory, but I don't know, just the lettuce in there and the onions are not powerful. It's not flavorful enough. So it doesn't have enough flavor. For the price tag of 400 yen makes it the most expensive. Didn't get, I think, what I paid for out of this sandwich, but it's not a bad sandwich. It's just in pretty hard competition here.

00:26:16 John Daub: In second place then would be the yakisoba and ham and egg katsu sandwich. The egg one is much better than the katsu, but it's a little dry, but I think you—

00:26:28 Discord Guest: That looks delicious.

00:26:38 John Daub: This one definitely tastes good. It's the most Japanese, probably from the sauce and the yakisoba. Noodles and sandwiches is very underrated. I think if you ever had spaghetti, cut open a baguette and just put the spaghetti and sausage in a sandwich, and that might be more fun. That's the way I would roll. I mean, to me, Japanese food is like, they found a way to play with the food and make it fun like you would as a kid. So some of the ideas that I see typically were things that I think kids had ideas with, when they played with their food, and their mother said, don't play with your food. If you came to Japan and did that, you would start a trend, which would be very marketable in this country, and be able to, by playing with your food, come up with innovative ways to make it fun and then sell more. That's what sort of Japan does with this, and it is a lot of fun.

00:27:35 John Daub: One of my favorite things in the world that I created myself when I was a kid was peanut butter and jelly with cheese.

00:27:47 Discord Guest: Never heard that before.

00:27:49 John Daub: What kind of cheese?

00:27:52 Discord Guest: What kind of cheese?

00:27:54 John Daub: It's American, so Kraft American.

00:27:56 Discord Guest: Okay.

00:27:59 John Daub: Mm, that's not too bad. If it was the Velveeta one, that would be, the melted Velveeta might be a little bit too much.

00:28:07 Discord Guest: Yeah, just kidding. You'd have the cheese running out the side and stuff.

00:28:13 John Daub: Peanut butter and jelly is not something that's known in Japan at all.

00:28:18 Discord Guest: Oh, wow.

00:28:20 John Daub: I've never seen a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at a convenience store. I've never seen the combination asked of me. That's never been on a menu. And when you talk to Japanese about it, only the ones that have lived in the United States know about PBJ.

00:28:40 Discord Guest: Oh, wow. Do they have a natto sandwich though?

00:28:44 John Daub: Natto sandwich, yes. I've seen those. Again, playing with your food is kind of a big deal here. I've seen them in, like, I've seen them in onigiri form. And I remember traveling with some elderly people, and they complained to me and asked me to, like, talk to the store manager about getting their money back on the sandwich because it tastes like, it appeared to be tuna, and they said it tasted like rancid tuna. And then after some back and forth, I realized, oh, no, this was natto, not tuna.

00:29:22 Discord Guest: Oh, gosh. All right. That could look like, sometimes there could be mysterious ingredients inside the sandwich. I don't think that they told me, tell you about the celery, but it was quite powerful in the number one sandwich, which is this one from 7-Eleven, the chicken, broccoli, and honey mustard. The celery was pretty powerful. That wasn't listed except on the back.

00:29:42 Discord Guest: But, my gosh, did they give you the money back?

00:29:46 John Daub: No, they didn't. I apologize profusely. I did a lot of gomenasai the moment I realized, oh, no, that's natto, not tuna.

00:30:00 John Daub: They had at 7-Eleven, let's see here, Family Mart had fruit sandwiches. This month's selection of fruit sandwiches is kiwi and pineapple with cream, whipped cream. And that was the most expensive, 380 yen. And 7-Eleven had strawberry and kiwi. I guess kiwi is pretty big right now. Strawberry, kiwi, and something else. And they're fruit sandwiches. And Lawson's didn't have a fruit sandwich. But, you know, I always thought that fruit sandwiches were a waste of money because after you've had one, it's like, you know, they have like eclairs and stuff. I'd rather, if you have calories, I'd rather use those into something better than a white bread cream fruit sandwich.

00:30:53 Discord Guest: Does this mean you're going to do a little sequel to your sandwich episode?

00:30:56 John Daub: If it keeps raining, I will. I wanted to be outside today. I wanted to be outside today. But it's cold and wet. It's like November rain. It feels like a Guns N' Roses video.

00:31:13 Discord Guest: I remember a video you did a while back. It was, the best way I can describe it is chocolate cheese.

00:31:21 John Daub: Oh, on this channel, the live streaming one. I did an episode. I went to the supermarket and we found this trend where, processed cheese and the plastic packs were coming out with these weird flavors, including chocolate cheese. Just cheese that you could, it was chocolate that you could, it wasn't cheese, actually. It was just chocolate that was, that was soft and rollable chocolate.

00:31:55 Discord Guest: Yes. And you've got the whipped cream with the peanut butter.

00:31:59 John Daub: They still have that sometimes, but I don't see it as much. I think the trend is over. They still have the Philadelphia cream cheese has these cheese slices where it's like American cheese with cream cheese. And then another cut of American cheese and it's like really thick. So they've done all the work for you. You could just slap that on a sandwich and then you're done and it's pretty cool. A little pricey for that, but I don't know. Like those kinds of ideas are really creative in Japan. You don't see them so much. I maybe you are more, more in the US, but when I left back in 1998, it was hard to see the inventiveness in the food products. People just stuck to their guns, which was, you know, not, it was pretty smart.

00:32:56 John Daub: The only problem with this is when you find a product that you love. You know, like a vending machine drink. Maybe you fall in love with this drink. You better buy a case of it because in about three weeks, it's no longer available anywhere. So it doesn't even matter if it's popular. The reason the Japanese consumers are just so much different than American consumers in that way. You cherry Coke was here for I don't know for a couple of months and then it was gone. Vanilla Coke was here for a couple of months and it was gone. They were all trends or people could try it and then it fizzles out. Nobody really wants to drink it anymore. Japanese will love to try new things, especially from companies or brands that they like. But those never stick around. Even the green tea changes. It's crazy.

00:33:56 Discord Guest: What was that bottle? You're holding that Fanta.

00:34:02 John Daub: This is grape and Muscat or yogurt Fanta.

00:34:06 Discord Guest: Oh, that sounds delicious.

00:34:08 John Daub: Really? The yogurt is not to you. It's not too yogurt. Though. I'm the only one around in this area who likes weird stuff.

00:34:26 Discord Guest: I guess when I think of Oklahoma north of Texas, I think of like barbecues and stuff. I don't know why like ribs and really good beef and stuff.

00:34:39 John Daub: Yeah, we got barbecue, but it's we get more than just that. Maybe maybe my only exposure to Oklahoma has been through our the YouTube community and maybe Chandler from Friends getting having to move off to the branch office in Oklahoma. It was like 25 years ago or something, but I think Chandler fell asleep in a meeting and then when he woke up he had agreed to be transferred to the Oklahoma office. And of course, of course barbecue was a big part barbecue and smoking was a big part of to me. That was probably my first experience with Oklahoma. And of course the Sooners football team, which is always pretty strong.

00:35:26 Discord Guest: We have a job jabroni 95 here.

00:35:36 John Daub: How's it going?

00:35:38 Discord Guest: Pretty good. Just better wrapping it up here. Which sandwich you think was the most? Let's go down the list of people here. Which sandwich do you think would be the most attractive to you if you came to Japan you were hitting in your hitting up the convenience store?

00:35:52 John Daub: I thought that was the Katsu.

00:35:54 Discord Guest: Yeah, the Katsu. Yeah, the Katsu yakisoba one. Yeah, right in the middle of this sandwich. I destroyed this one. The one with the with the ham Katsu was good. I think the one with the egg maybe it's just not enough yakisoba in it. But you know, it's not too bad. I think after eating that the roast beef one this one grew on me when you get ones that have just all the stuff in the center like that. Do you ever just leave the white bread around the outside? Just toss it out?

00:36:23 John Daub: Yeah.

00:36:25 Discord Guest: Seems reasonable.

00:36:27 John Daub: You know, I'm just going to say I don't know if Neil T on here if you've ever been to there's like two ramen places in Oklahoma City that I went to when I lived down there. Goro and Tawashi.

00:36:45 Discord Guest: Yeah, those are really good.

00:36:47 John Daub: Oh, you gotta check them out.

00:36:50 Discord Guest: Oh.

00:36:53 John Daub: Yeah, you wouldn't think I lived in Oklahoma and Tennessee and in Nashville. There's Otaku ramen. And then in Oklahoma City, there's Goro and Tawashi and all three of those are super good. You'd never think down there. But all those little hidden ramen spots. So and then in Tennessee, there was also in Nashville. There was 210 Jack, which was like an izakaya.

00:37:12 Discord Guest: How long have these Japanese places been around though? Because when I left in 98, Japanese cuisine was like unknown, including sushi.

00:37:19 John Daub: Yeah. I don't know. I was stationed down there in 2016 through. So I was in Tennessee from 2016 to 2018 and then 2018 through 2020, I was in Oklahoma. So I'm guessing that this is just a really recent phenomenon like since 2013. I saw that the boom to tourism to Japan started around the time. I started the YouTube channel. No relation. I'm sure and and this but but Japanese cuisine in the United States has been booming especially ramen and gyoza and teppanyaki wagyu beef became a thing as well. I mean, it's it and of course there's always been sushi. You can get them at the supermarket. Not that I would eat them because it's bizarre tasting bizarre. I like salmon processed salmon with with what is it like deep-fried onions and stuff. That's not sushi. That's just I don't even know what you call it. Sushi is supposed to be an art. I don't know but it's not yeah, it's very American.

00:38:36 Discord Guest: We do have a sushi thing at one of our grocery stores and they don't do the onion thing. They actually do raw salmon and raw tuna on top of the rice.

00:38:42 John Daub: See it's so good. Yeah, see salmon is just something I think that's really more accepted as a fish in the US. That's why you don't get anything salmon is probably the most impressive fish on the I guess most used fish for sushi in the US, right?

00:38:56 Discord Guest: Yeah, seems so. I live in the Pacific Northwest. I'm up in Washington State. So we get a lot of salmon up here and then we actually get a lot of different types of seafood up here as you would imagine and there's actually a fairly on the west side of the state. There's a fairly large like Japanese and Korean population over there. So you can actually get some good stuff. We have the waji Maya Market over there, which you could get some more some more traditional stuff. If you're not able to.

00:39:21 John Daub: Yeah, you can get over to Japan. But luckily I am going to Japan on the 4th of December here. So after like 13 years of waiting, the high school finally going back.

00:39:37 Discord Guest: Awesome. Excited.

00:39:39 John Daub: Yeah. What's the first thing you're going to eat when you arrive into Japan? First food. Where do you go?

00:39:49 Discord Guest: Oh my goodness. Oh, I'd have to take your recommendation. I saw touchdown and not each I get off the plane. And where do you say I go? I'll eat anything. You got any here.

00:39:59 John Daub: The airport's got everything now.

00:40:01 Discord Guest: Oh man.

00:40:03 John Daub: I've got my fiance here. What do you want to eat first?

00:40:07 Discord Guest: Oh, she wants to go to 7-Eleven.

00:40:10 John Daub: I started up the livestream saying don't eat. Don't eat family. Don't eat convenience store food unless it's like your last option because it's so it's like basically fast food. But then with that said, probably if you go into the McDonald's and if you're American or I guess you do eat McDonald's at home, it's interesting to try McDonald's in different countries. Probably the one in Japan, at least the ones that my friends that they come and try they say that McDonald's Japan is better than the McDonald's in the US, which I find hard to believe but I guess there might be because the Japanese eaters themselves are quite picky. So that might be why the flavor of the taste might be better. Although I thought that the portion size might be smaller.

00:40:59 Discord Guest: Well, it's funny you say that because I like I said, so I'm 30 now and I went when I was 17 with a class trip and we ate at a McDonald's there and I got a quarter pounder and I still to this day remember sitting on that sidewalk and eating that quarter pounder because it was the best quarter pounder I've had in my entire life.

00:41:19 John Daub: And often the food that comes out looks like the picture in the advertisements, which is pretty impressive.

00:41:23 Discord Guest: I think for sure.

00:41:28 John Daub: So yeah, I mean, we're huge ramen fans. So probably seek that out more than once.

00:41:36 Discord Guest: So yeah, to try and I'm probably going to regret it. It's not to know.

00:41:44 John Daub: Are you kidding me? I tried it. I can't do it. Not double grow on you. It's an acquired taste. Rest of the people might travel group didn't like it either.

00:42:01 John Daub: But interesting thing here from Michael Sassano in the live stream chat. The portion size. The Japan McDonald's is smaller than the US. Okay, so it's confirmed. Thank you Michael for the information. I always wanted to try that take a burger with me and then weigh it. Of course, it's not scientific and I don't think you can do that. It probably gets stuck at customs or something. If you you have to declare your burger. What do you do like you get to the US you get the JFK Airport. You're like, yes, I'd like to declare McDonald's cheeseburger. I think you get in trouble. It is 100% all-American beef, right? I don't know. Actually, I don't think I don't know if McDonald's Japan is American beef though. Is it is or is it like I don't know Australian beef would be the closest source. I don't know.

00:42:56 John Daub: But one thing I really want to try is Taco Bell.

00:43:00 Discord Guest: Oh really? Here the Taco Bell experience here is really not great. It's it's three times the price for how it's I mean, they don't have a dollar menu, right? It's they don't have a cheap menu. Everything is a premium. Yeah, because they they kind of sell it that way. There's not a lot of Taco Bell's in Japan. Most of them are just concentrated in the cities. Of course menus is so much smaller and they don't have the the they don't have the same stuff every now and then they'll have a like a Japan only item, but it's like $8. So I I leave their spending. Yeah, like a thousand yen every time but they do have beer so you can get a a. Pint like a cup of draft beer. I saw he's super dry for 500 yen or something. So maybe that's makes it a little bit better, but it's definitely not the same as Taco Bell in the US, but it'd be interesting to hear more people chime in on that that have tried it.

00:44:07 John Daub: I was disappointed. I was there the maybe the first week that it opened the dog and Zaka shop in Shibuya, but I was there way before it came to Japan in the 2001 was a 2000 and. I don't know. 2015 or something. Maybe I was they had a test shop in night. I might have talked about this in 1998 Taco Bell had a test shop in Fuji Gaoka Nagoya and the menu they had bean burritos. They had a dollar menu. It looked like the Taco Bell in the US. They were just testing it out, but Japanese the reason why it went away was because the Japanese weren't ready for Taco Bell. They'd see the sign and they would come up looking for Takoyaki. Instead and be disappointed when it was Mexican food. I guess they didn't think about that and we didn't hear from Taco Bell. On the taco shell and that's a million dollar. Yeah, taco taco. Yeah, so we didn't hear actually we say we don't say taco for taco like the Mexican taco. We say tacos. All right tacos is tacos. So there's always more than one. I guess tacos tacos tacos rice for example. It's not taco rice tacos rice. Tacos rice and that's like an Okinawa thing. But I guess after they closed up shop in 1999, I think and we didn't hear from Taco Bell for fit for like 20 years or something and they came back in 2015 20 years later. Oh and they thought about the menu quite a bit. What will sell here? What will make money and the dollar menu see because they can't sell on volume Japanese consumers just don't see Mexican food. Food or even American Mexican food the same way as Americans do so they had to you know, make the menu prices a bit higher, but I think that the main focus people who eat that are all expats that just miss home at the only that that's the only reason I think I would eat Taco Bell. Maybe once a year because perhaps memories of college or something, but the menu again is so disappointing.

00:45:51 John Daub: I'm looking at the Japanese McDonald's menu online. And it doesn't say where the beef is from. Yeah, I would assume could be from China. I don't know. Not that there's anything wrong with it. Beef is, you know, the beef is beef by gas at McDonald's. It's all probably all probably there's an interesting take though large-scale ranch. Eat.

00:46:22 John Daub: Yeah, there's an interesting taking a livestream chat from fresh rider to be fair. Every country has smaller portions compared to us. All of Europe has sizes you see in Japan. Lol. Interesting. I remember I remember because I've backpacked to about 80 some countries now and I remember, you know, I would try McDonald's and all the different countries and that's quite true. The portion sizes were much smaller.

00:46:55 John Daub: Has anybody in the chat eaten at a McDonald's outside of the US that was and had a menu or is an item that was really startling at a McDonald's. You can write it in the chat. If you if you want to share that experience, it might be fun to see that. But I had was the two strangest places where I had McDonald's. One of them was was absolutely Romania where I walked into the only McDonald's inclusion of polka, which is considered the capital of Transylvania. Beautiful city. I've been there many times since and the McDonald's there had just opened up and nobody ordered anything that was actually on the menu except for two items French fries and milkshakes. That's it. So they had a lot of French fries. They had a lot of milkshakes. Everybody's sitting in there when I sat down with my backpack and I, you know, I look like it was a backpacker. I looked around me. Everybody was on a date. Oh, wow. This is 1997 1997. That's very interesting. It was pretty expensive. I ordered a Big Mac and it took 30 to 40 minutes to come because I don't think that they had Big Mac stuff there and they had to call it like the McDonald's at Bucharest or something. I don't know. But it took forever to make them a Big Mac and I figured out why they had French fries and they had milkshakes and everything else must have been like a deep freezer or something. I don't know. It cost me an arm and a leg prices three times more than in the US but you know at that time the Iron Curtain had just come down and not too long before that and it was, you know, very special to see.

00:48:23 John Daub: We have a few responses from the chat. Oh, okay. I love McDonald's in Paris. They have a McCafe and go for it now said German McDonald's at beer. That's true. The 13 I travel to Dubai. So over there in McDonald's, they have something called the Mac Arabia. So that's like a wrap. It's like a shower, but it's like inside. You've got like different McDonald's beef or chicken patties, which is which is which is the taste of its own. That sounds really good. India, of course, has come is pretty good. It is pretty good. If you travel to either Saudi Qatar or Dubai, they do tend to have Mac Arabia and that's that's worth giving it a try once. Wow. I remember the McDonald's in India and I figured how could they have that because you can't have really beef because oh my God. Yes, yes in McDonald's. They've got some of me. Yeah, and a lot of it is veg and the Maharashtra burger, which is was chicken. I think I can't remember but they don't use beef. They had other items very creative and very very tasty. I wish they had those items. They have the veg Maharaja Mac also. There's like an aloo tiki too, which is like a what do you say like a potato patty, but it's spiced up and really well made with cheese. That sounds so good. Yeah, I was surprised. I'd only had it because food we look when I go to the US. The last thing I want to do is eat Japanese food. All right, I remember meeting up with I remember meeting up with with the with people and they were like, where would you like to go to Japanese restaurant? Like that's the last thing on our mind. We want pizza. We want burgers take us to an In-N-Out burger or something. Okay, because we don't want to have sushi in America. We come from Japan the home of the king of sushi. So yeah, when we travel to India, the last thing I want to do is have McDonald's. So usually with my family and they stuffed me with everything. I don't want to eat anything actually. When I go to India because I just tired of. Tired of food. Oh my gosh, you have no idea. Have you ever served for a bit Indian McDonald's? It's kind of way more costlier according to because lots of taxes are there.

00:50:44 Discord Guest: Oh wow. Have you observed this?

00:50:47 John Daub: No, I haven't. I just remember that it was quite pricey to eat at McDonald's comparatively. I would say it's cheaper than McDonald's in North America. Like me having lived across like Middle East India and now living in North America. Yeah, I'd say it's still, it's still pretty cheap compared to North America and the quality is like way, way, way better than anything I've had in North America so far.

00:51:07 John Daub: Well, I would have to be the quality would have to be really good for McDonald's in India to compete with the other food around it, which is so damn good. It's I just I could if I had a choice between a McDonald's in India and and I don't know anything on any Indian food. I would pick that of course, because I don't I don't know. But then when you have the McDonald's, it's quite good like a masala dosa. For example, they're really cheap. They're super tasty. I'd prefer that over anything that they had a McDonald's. So I guess they would have to make it very tasty to compete with something like that. Wow. Don't you not believe me? They've come like I'm similar to masala dosa item.

00:51:51 John Daub: What? For McDonald's breakfast in India. So I cannot wait. I cannot wait to go back to India. It's been a few years because of the pandemic, but every time I go, I'm just shocked at the at the like Western companies that have gone in there innovated in India to make fast food. It's just fast. It's always so much more expensive than the other food, but it's just fascinating to see even the Starbucks in India was like different, you know, I thought it was just coffee, but they had so many other items on the menu.

00:52:23 Discord Guest: That's how you ever had a KFC in Japan.

00:52:26 John Daub: I'm sorry. I like weird. KFC Kentucky Fried Chicken. Yeah, I've had it here, but I'm not there. I I never got into Japan. I never got into Kentucky Fried Chicken because it was just too oily and I always felt heavy after eating it. Actually, I can read I could probably count all the times. I've been to KFC in my entire life on my hands and half of them were in like live streams. Probably. I remember having in Jakarta. I had KFC. Because there's nothing else that I could find and it was it was okay. Like when it stayed with me, it stayed with me for like days. I felt and it wasn't as good but this is years. This is decades ago. So I mean, yeah, have you had Nashville hot chicken? I have not I've only been through Nashville. I've never been there because I went to Ohio State University not too too far. We usually drive through there going to Florida and stuff, but oh for sure. Yeah, Nashville hot chicken. I don't eat very much, you know, fried chicken or anything like that because it is so heavy like you said, but Nashville hot chicken is a whole different experience. It's super gay. We didn't believe me if I tell you that Nashville hot chicken. Now, there's a trend for Nashville hot chicken now in Toronto over here. They're like shops and kitchens that are coming up that make Nashville hot chicken and people are going nuts over it.

00:53:55 Discord Guest: Wow, really? I believe it. It's delicious. You'll cry while you eat it because it's so hot, but it's you know, if you taste it properly, but it's totally worth it. Gosh, now I'm starting to miss home. We ended up here in Washington.

00:54:06 John Daub: I'm starting to miss home. Stop it guys. Stick the Japanese food.

00:54:15 John Daub: Okay, let's just bring them over for a bit. There was... Brenda said, Mo'Hail McDonald's has poutine. Michael Sassano said, only in Hawaii does the McDonald's have a Hawaiian. Fruit punch. Why is the punch in... McDonald's serves Fanta fruit punch. What? Oh my gosh. I can't wait to go to Hawaii too. We've got so many so many viewers in there. We'll be having probably the biggest meetup. Maybe like Singapore when we get to get to Hawaii. Speaking of Singapore, Sean Lee said the Samurai burger or the Ninja burger was in Singapore a couple weeks back. Whoa. When I last visited back in May, they had the salmon burger. And I think Oji-san covered a lot of Japanese. Flavors and McDonald's for this past year. So interesting. It's just fascinating in that, you know, I don't eat a lot of McDonald's much at all. Maybe once a year usually for live streams seriously, but I mean I would never knock McDonald's because of the innovation the way that they can serve people so fast and you know, you don't you don't get sick eating it. It's the consistency and the taste. It's just an impressive. Fast food chain. Whether you agree with fast food or not, you eat it or not. It's just an impressive what they can do worldwide. And I did I wish that they would bring those global international menu items to other countries to try because that would just make it even more more interesting. I'd love to try the burgers from the Middle East and India and in Europe and South America. They had they had. The only place I could get avocados in Guatemala when I was in Antigua was at McDonald's because they put they had an avocado burger at the McDonald's in Guatemala. But if you want to run around they had avocados, but they just would export it the same with coffee. The only place I could get Guatemalan coffee in Antigua. This is 20 years ago. 2003 19 years ago was at McDonald's. They were the only people who had Guatemalan coffee. Everybody else had Nescafe. And this is in Guatemala. So it was very shocking. Same in Africa too. For Kilimanjaro coffee. You had to go to like McDonald's to get Kilimanjaro coffee because everybody had Nescafe on the base of Kilimanjaro. What did what did everybody drink Nescafe with that sweet milk? It was very disappointing. And if you found Kilimanjaro coffee often it was not Kilimanjaro coffee. It was like another like Vietnamese coffee. It was sold at Kilimanjaro. The guy told me, he told me in like Swahili English, don't buy this. It's not real. I was like what? It's like how would you know? We export all the Kilimanjaro coffee because that's where we get the best prices. We don't actually have any to sell at Kilimanjaro. Interesting. So they've sold Vietnamese coffee beans roasted in Vietnam and then sold as Kilimanjaro coffee. In Tanzania at the time. This is 2001. Still high school 2001. A lot has changed in the world.

00:57:41 Discord Guest: A lot has changed in the world. Did you ever try the Halloween burger?

00:57:45 John Daub: A Halloween burger in Japan?

00:57:48 Discord Guest: Yeah.

00:57:52 John Daub: I never heard of it. It's a black burger with at the time with squid sauce. Squid ink. Okay. There might have been a trendy item. I don't think they had that this year. I'm not sure. Burger King had red burgers and orange burgers and all sorts and black bund burgers. So they had a lot of... It could have been Burger King. They had some bizarre... The only way that Burger King could compete is to be even more bizarre. And they do a pretty good job of that. They have all you can eat stuff. And they have to go beyond the Whopper to compete. But there's a few Burger Kings here in Tokyo. But it's not a very popular place. McDonald's is just an institution here that's been here since the 1970s. Has a long history. And I guess it's a generational thing where fathers will take their children now because it's been around for a while. It's going to take a while before that Burger King or even Wendy's has the name appeal to have the same kind of pull as McDonald's has in the culture here in Japan. Wow. Yeah, I think so. For Wendy's, it's an uphill... Wendy's or something like Chick-fil-A, it's going to be an uphill battle because they've got so much of fried chicken out there, if I'm correct. It's not only KFC. You've got Family Mart chicken. You've got every other... Convenience has got their own brand of fried chicken, if I'm correct. And it's very good. And again, I don't know how you can compete with something that is so cheap and so good and so convenient. And at every outlet. Family Mart is everywhere. I just... I don't know how even KFC stays in business. It's not... It is popular, but it's not that popular. McDonald's, of course, is the king of fast food. And when you have Yoshinoya and Matsuya and... There's so many other Japanese chain fast food shops where you can get like a curry rice or a gyudon or something. Oh my gosh. Coco Ichiban. I'm not sure why anybody goes in for American food. I don't know if there's American fast food at all here in Japan, to be honest with you. I forgot Tsukiya. Tsukiya is also in there. There's a couple of other really big ones. Was it Nakao? And there's even like Western-style ones that's like really homegrown Japan brands like Royal Host.

01:00:19 Discord Guest: Yeah. Royal Host. The Hub. The Hub?

01:00:21 John Daub: That's a British pub, right?

01:00:22 Discord Guest: Yeah.

01:00:23 John Daub: I think it's a Japanese pub with a British name. I'm pretty sure. It's not... Right now there's an image of Elon Musk after his Twitter coder meeting. And somebody in Japan had... Have you seen this one yet? Had put Elon Musk with like half-foam beers in the Hub, which is a Japan-only pub that expats go to all the time. It's pretty funny. I don't know. You have to check on Twitter. But I guess if you searched Elon Musk Hub, H-U-B. It might turn up. But somebody had reposted that. I couldn't stop laughing. He said the Hub only has girls tonight. And it was a bunch of coders drinking half-foam beers and Elon Musk in the middle with that. Hub is an institution that's been around for quite a while as pubs go in the cities here. Cheap beer. There's also Syzeria and Jonathan. Syzeria. Even Denny's is more Japanese than it is American here in Japan. You got Japanese items like Katsudon in the Denny's here. You don't have a Grand Slam breakfast items, for example. You have like weird Japanese dinners. It's like, what? Denny's? What? That's owned by the 7-Eleven Japan group. So, yeah. Denny's in Japan is Denny's Japan. It's not Denny's USA, which is interesting because it's got the Denny's branding and everything. It even looks like a Denny's inside for a lot of them. But it's not. It's Japanese food. It's good. It might even be better.

01:02:12 Discord Guest: Denny's is extinct here, writes Princess D. Yeah, there's a Denny's right by the hotel where we're staying and I was going to not go to it because, like you said, I don't want to travel around the world to go eat American food again. Definitely want to eat all the Japanese food on my way into street food markets and stuff like that mainly.

01:02:29 John Daub: Exactly. That would be pretty interesting. Just as a one-off kind of funny novelty. Are you doing any meetups in December at all?

01:02:36 Discord Guest: We'll be there from the 4th to the, the 4th to the win. The 18th, I think. Maybe. We'll see how this 8th wave, right now we're in the start of an 8th wave with influenza and people are getting the flu.

01:03:00 John Daub: Oh, right. It's been in the news every single day to scare everybody to peace and quiet. We've had a lot of cases here in Japan. Right. Yeah, there's a double wave going on or I forget what, they had like a flu-nami or something. They had some sort of weird, well, they had some sort of weird, like, word to dub this period. It's people are now catching the flu and COVID at the same time. That's knocking them on their butt. Yeah, so there's a flu outbreak that's getting worse here.

01:03:31 Discord Guest: So I'll play it by ear. I might do a meetup, but I don't know. If I bring all these people together, it's also about the other people that are getting together. It's not about me getting sick. It's like everybody else in that group might get sick from everybody else. It's my fault. I'd feel a little bad about that.

01:03:48 John Daub: Yeah, it ran through here in a similar way probably a month, month and a half ago where it was just like, I remember walking into the office and just being like, wow, it's a ghost town. This is really odd. And then I got sick and I was like, oh, okay, I guess that's where everybody was. But now it seemed to be coming out the other end of it. Hopefully.

01:04:16 Discord Guest: Yeah, I think... If you do a meetup, it would have, for me, it would have to be like, I have control of that. No, I would love to meet up with you in October of next year because that's what I plan on going is in October. I'll probably be safe by next year. But right now, I mean, I don't know. I'll play it by ear.

01:04:40 John Daub: Probably announce it like a week before I do a meetup. But I had a bunch of events that I wanted to do, like renting a Yakata Bune. I've been putting that on ice because of... Just the risk isn't really worth it. And to be honest with you, I got a lot of stuff to edit. I'm really behind in that. So I have to focus on getting those episodes out as priority number one. So yeah, it's been tough in this eighth wave is going to put a little bit of a jinx on all of the... That's not the right word, but it's going to make it a little bit harder to meet up. But yeah, I might still do one. I'm not... If you find me in a live stream, I do have you find me cards.

01:05:20 Discord Guest: Oh, yeah.

01:05:21 John Daub: You come and say hi. But bringing everybody in a group might be really hard to do.

01:05:31 Discord Guest: Yeah. We'll see. That was kind of the calculated risk too with going now. It was like, you know, I mean, I'm sure you were plugged in, you know, intimately with it where it's like, oh, okay, country's back open, but asterisk, asterisk, asterisk. And that was something that we weighed was, oh, should we wait? But I just... We had tickets for April of 2020 and then bad stuff happened. And so we couldn't go. And I think by the time October 11th rolled around this year, I just couldn't wait anymore. So I was like, you know what? We'll just do it. It'll be what it is, you know, but... You got to go when you can go.

01:06:03 John Daub: Go when you can go. And, you know, Japan's open. COVID shouldn't be... It's like, you know, don't be held at gunpoint because of this pandemic anymore. You do what you can do. You get vaccinated. If you're into that, you get your three shots. You've done everything that you've done. And go and travel now. Just be smart about it.

01:06:29 Discord Guest: Absolutely. Nobody wants to get sick. And I don't want to make light. That's the one thing I never want to do, make light of anybody who... Of the virus that's going around because there's too many people that have lost too many people as a result of it. It's nothing that we can really ever take too lightly because it's... I know, you know, friends that have lost family members because of COVID. So that's something that also weighs on my mind. Despite the fact that we have all of these drugs and stuff now that can help us out, that would devastate me to, you know, if anybody got sick because of something that I did.

01:07:08 John Daub: All right, guys, I got to get back to editing, but it was fun to have you here talking about junk food and all the goodies around the world. Very interesting and unique perspectives. Just a shout out to... I'm sorry. I have an event that's going to be on Facebook Live because it's weird because I don't do anything. I don't do much on Facebook, but I'm going to be doing a live stream from a sword museum on Facebook. The reason why is because it's with JNTO. The Japan National Tourism Organization has asked me to come down to Osaka. Sorry, to Okayama for a day to do a live stream at this particular sword museum that not a lot of people, I think, know about. And of course I said yes, because it's something that I would cover and they get access to it. It is pretty cool. It is a job, but they're also live streaming it on the JNTO YouTube channels. And like, you can't really share content like that on YouTube because it's a copyright thing. But I'll open up, you know, the Facebook, which is a different platform. And I think that that's a smart thing to do. And then maybe I can do a live stream after that's original content, but I don't want to have the same content. I want to have the same content on another, on like three other, you know, JNTO sites. But you can watch the live stream on, I guess it'll be on Sunday in the US, but there's a notification for the event on the Only in Japan Facebook page. And you'll be able to catch the live stream there. It will be 7.30pm on Saturday. Saturday, November 26th, 7.30pm US time EST.

01:08:43 John Daub: Okay. 7.30pm Saturday US time. Thank you so much. Yeah. I'm not actually going to be holding the stick and live streaming it only in Japan style. There's going to be a cameraman who will be filming me and I'll be more of a host, I guess. I have a script. I probably won't stick to it, but I will have a lot of fun. And the culture and the history and the words associated with sword making, sword smithing, it's going to be really fascinating to introduce that to you at the museum with people who know what they're talking about. I do too, mostly, but I have a fascination with history and the culture behind the sword making. And I'm going to take you with me to that museum and share that with you through the power of J&T. It's going to be fun.

01:09:37 Discord Guest: Yeah, it should be fun. I'm not... I think that they might be showing you the process on how they make it as well, which will be very interesting. I think I'm also doing it with another YouTube creator who's in Niigata. So I'm doing a livestream in Okayama and there's another YouTube creator in Niigata that's introducing some artistic cultural point of Japanese culture over there. So it's kind of a neat thing. I believe her name is Bunny, I think. Travel Instagrammer. Thank you, Peso. Yeah, Bunny Tokyo or something. I don't know who she is, but she's really nice. We had a short meeting recently and I'll be passing the baton to her and she'll be introducing an artistic event that's going on over in Niigata. I think it's pretty cool that J&T is doing this, kind of showing the less... the places that are not shown to you enough, I think. You always see the same places from YouTubers because it's popular. When I did livestreams on Shoto Island, I had much fewer people watching those because not a lot of people knew about Shoto Island. So from making a living off of YouTube, it makes more sense to stick with Kyoto, Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima, places that people have on their itineraries. But for you, it's very important to learn about the places that are not on anyone's itinerary because Japan is an amazing place and there's all these cities and towns that have stuff that you're looking for that you don't even know exists. So that's what I hope with this channel, I can introduce you to those kinds of places. This museum is maybe one of them. I've never been to this museum either, so I'm looking forward to that.

01:11:26 John Daub: Thanks, everybody. I'll see you in another livestream. We did have some Super Chats here. Thanks, guys. Thanks, everyone. And I'm off of the Discord. And thank you all here. I did see some Super Chats come in. I'm sorry if I missed any of them. I always like to say thank you. The Hegemonic guys here, we miss Japan. It's been so long.

01:11:56 Discord Guest: I know.

01:11:56 John Daub: It's really great to see everybody starting to come to Japan as well. I see everybody on the street walking by. I try to go by, say hi, if you say hi to me. I don't assume that anybody knows me, but it's really nice if someone comes and says hi to you and says, hi, John. Some people will walk by while I'm just walking down the street and somebody will say, hi, John. And I turn around. There's two people smiling and waving from the other side. And you can wave. That feels really good to me to have that kind of interaction. And I haven't had that for a long time here. It's usually just, you know, like, Kanai, Leo, Kevin Reilly every now and then, and Peter, you know.

01:12:36 John Daub: All right, take care. I'll see you real soon. Maybe tomorrow, another livestream. You know, I think Peter might be in a livestream soon. We did a line thing. Maybe tomorrow. We'll see. Anyways, see you again later. Bye-bye.