00:00:13 John Daub: So here we are in front of the big takoyaki stand. One of the most reasonable prices in Tokyo. We're gonna try a sixer which is 300 yen.

00:01:48 John Daub: Thank you very much. Wow. Alright, now where do you eat this here? Alright, let me take it to the main street. So it's kind of crowded. There really aren't a lot of places to eat here. What you just saw was the ootakoyaki, the daitakoyaki [?]. I think it's the big or gigantic takoyaki. It's been here for decades. I first covered this in 2009 with Tokyo Eye, a program on NHK World. And it hasn't changed at all. Check it out. This is the stand and every time I come to Ameyoko, it's a must-visit stand. I think he's been here for at least the last 10 years. So it makes me think this is possibly an old family business. The building sure is old that it's in. And this is Okachimachi Station between Ueno and Okachimachi. This is Ameyoko. If you don't know what this is, then you haven't been watching the videos. This may be the best street market in the city of Tokyo. It certainly is one of the cheapest here.

00:04:23 John Daub: There she is making the takoyaki. You can see from a distance if you're just joining us here. These takoyaki are bigger than other takoyaki. And I can't eat it there and talk. So I'm going to take you now to a park that's just a couple hundred meters down the street. And then we're going to get a chance to sit down and enjoy it because these takoyaki balls are really burning into my hand. It is so hot. Wow. Takoyaki could also be named the most dangerous Japanese dish. A lot of you might think it's fugu. Actually, it might even be mochi because that kills a dozen people every year, usually people over the age of 65 who don't chew their food enough and choke on it. So this one is dangerous because it's just so darn hot. And I can't remember a time where I didn't burn my mouth. So I'm learning my lesson. I'm giving it some time to cool while you enjoy takoyaki floating through the city of Tokyo, Ameyoko Market.

00:05:44 John Daub: Here's the sign. Oh my gosh. I know you know where I am. Obviously I come here often and today I'm here just getting some stuff for our daimyo supporters on Patreon. There's a couple of new Kit Kat flavors. There's some Christmas confections that just came out. Ameyoko, many people say it stands for America because this is the black market after World War Two where a lot of American products were on sale like Zippos and Army Navy stuff. But ame also means candy in Japanese and it could be because of the candy stores that are all over the place. And there's a lot of really good confections that are cheap. Why not cheap, but they just sell it like wholesalers here. So oh my gosh, this is burning in my hands. Let's get to this park real fast. Last time I think it was in this park one year ago when I live streamed the Kentucky Fried Chicken Christmas bucket.

00:07:13 John Daub: Well, that was Kanae's dad. Wow. That was my father-in-law. What? That was pretty cool. Like I wanted to talk more, but we're on a live stream. So it's like, yeah, I'm in the middle of a job. This is a small town. Very small town. Ameyoko Okachimachi area. It feels like that. All right, here's the park with absolutely no benches to sit on. I forgot about that. We'll make do. I always find a way. All I know is that it's a much bigger location to stream from. So I don't have to worry about social distancing. Let's go over here by the panda bears. I'm not going to give my father-in-law a you found me card. He finds me all the time. Wayno Park is not too far away from here and it's famous for these characters, the panda bears. All right, let's go up the stairs and we're going to enjoy some takoyaki together. What do you think guys? I think they said yes. Let me get the tripod out here. It really is a small world.

00:09:17 John Daub: This is called the squat and eat. It's very popular amongst the youth of Japan. They'll squat together and eat. This is also the position that people in the Showa era would use the restroom. You know what? I refuse to get sick if I can help it before Christmas. I just refuse to, but I'm not going to stay in my house and hide. All right, here we go. Takoyaki is notorious for burning your mouth. It is obviously the hottest and for me the most dangerous food, but inside of it is a succulent piece of octopus, which I don't know, I say succulent because they suck literally. And the best way to eat these is to open it up and let the steam come out a little bit and then cool down naturally. You can go ahead and burn your mouth, but I've lost so much skin on the roof of my mouth. Yeah, it's hot.

00:11:03 John Daub: Oh man. This is a great spot too because in the background you can hear the wonderful jingles of the Yamanote line at Okachimachi going through to Ueno. Oh, that is what I'm talking about. I dropped the takoyaki here. Hold on. That is what I'm talking about. Perfect temperature. It's been cooling for about 10 minutes. Perfect. I didn't burn my mouth. This might be the first live stream where I didn't burn my mouth on takoyaki. That's incredible. It's so good. So good. I cannot tell you it's cheap. I don't even know how they do the prices and stay in business. It's got to be based on volume, but it really does attract a lot of people to Ameyoko just to get takoyaki. Now the chains are really good. Gindako, that's a really good chain. You can get really unique takoyaki, but nothing beats the original which is basically octopus tentacle or piece of octopus inside of a dough ball that's been turned on this circular grill. Usually gas powered by the way because it cooks so much faster and you top that with takoyaki sauce, mayonnaise, katsuobushi (bonito flakes), and then some nori seaweed on top. I think the nori might come first and then the katsuobushi, but I'm not sure. It doesn't matter. It's all going in the same place. Just an incredible price and in the days of inflation, I don't think they're gonna ever raise the price. Oh man, it's so good.

00:13:17 John Daub: So for Thanksgiving, we went to an Italian food truck and we had these very generous cuts of chicken and pork steaks. It was really good. Mashed potatoes. It had the gravy on it. Thanksgiving isn't so much about food as just being thankful for what you have. And yeah, we were thankful because it was really good.

00:14:01 John Daub: So this morning I got in touch with YouTube, and I'm trying to figure out if we can make these streams better using natively the YouTube app. I know it's not ideal and a lot of you guys are telling me to switch platforms or do something different. I know that you need to have more than one band now in order to get a very consistent signal. We usually don't have drops, but I recognize that YouTube is not using HEVC, which is the H.265, a more efficient use of the bandwidth, meaning you can get like HD size for SD bandwidth. So unfortunately, the YouTube app is not using that, that I believe and I'm seeing what we can do to maybe get that next year because I recognize there are other people that are doing it in HD size. But I always thought that the size of the video doesn't matter as much as the story that you're telling and the adventures that you're having. As long as you can see, 720p is not that much better than 1080p. If the bandwidth is falling apart, 4K is pretty incredible. But with that said, I do feel it's time to improve. I don't want to be an IRL, in real life, live streamer. That's not what I do. I look for stories and my hope is that you still watch these videos, even if you don't make it live. And they have value to you to watch these videos, even if it's not live. Whereas IRL streams are only valuable if they're live or something violent happens or interesting happens. You know, I'm not an IRL streamer, but I recognize that watching those live streams, the quality is so much better. So I need to improve that and I want to say thank you to all of you. A lot of you been pushing me and I'm making that leap. As soon as I possibly can and thank you to Peso because we've been talking behind the scenes too.

00:17:06 John Daub: That's enough talking about technical issues. If you're talking about technical issues, you're not talking about Japan. That was really good. All right, you know what these bears could potentially eat the bamboo leaves that this is on, but I'm not going to do that to you guys. What we're going to do is take you back because I know that a lot of you just joining me. This is Ameyoko Market. I'm going to take you back to the takoyaki stand where we can throw this away and I'll take you just a little bit around Ameyoko. I don't want because I come here too much, at least once a month to check out what's new here.

00:17:57 John Daub: Wow. This is basically just, I mean, it's all, I don't think this is paper. So it's really natural forming. So I guess it makes a lot of sense to use bamboo which you could just burn. So it's kind of eco-friendly, I guess, globally friendly eating at this shop and probably biodegradable. There you go. Do you guys know what a Tomica car is? It's like the Hot Wheels cars of Japan, Tomica cars. They have these Japanese vehicles, which I've been sending in the daimyo packages. The packages that are going out have a Tomica car of a Japanese kindergarten bus. Just so cute. So that you'll be getting one more for your collection, but I sent in the police cars, the police Tomica cars a couple last year, I believe. You got a pretty interesting Japanese vehicle collection going on here if you're a daimyo supporter. I think I opened up the tier again for anyone who wants to join.

00:19:34 John Daub: What do you call a group of crows? I don't need to tell you the answer. Just think of the worst word and apply that. It's like that's a synonym maybe of Peter von Gomm's podcast, which I can plug, good friend of mine. Yeah, to attack with one of our daimyo supporters. Yeah, you got that right. I bet the collection's pretty large right now. Oh and definitely let me know which trains you haven't received yet for the mini Lego shinkansen train and I'll put that in there. Anything that's left over just DM on Patreon. I want you and Amber to get the best. Peter's been doing okay. We just had a live stream with him a couple of days ago. Him and his wife came out to visit Kanae and Leo and I on our day out at the festival. If you haven't seen that live stream go check it out because it is the largest, most amazing gigantic street food festival in Tokyo, which is probably in Japan. We're talking hundreds and hundreds of shops, street food stands, a lot of them serving the same thing with just very subtle differences with each stand to make them kind of attractive and a lot of the same stands come back the next year, which makes it really interesting. You could actually get to know the stand owners, which I have over the last five years of being there and I'm putting together some of the shots that I took day before yesterday into a main channel episode, which I hope to release in January about street food.

00:21:16 John Daub: Here's the takoyaki stand. I'm going to toss this here. They do have a big garbage can in fact. There she is. That's all the takoyaki is, it's just batter and an octopus thrown in there and there's some crisps that you'll put in there depending on the chef. It's pretty incredible. Check out some of the options here. This would be interesting. You can make your own little food hamburgers here. That's kind of a sushi might be interesting. Oh, they did. I think that's when you have to work for your food though. I'm not sure that's as much fun. Work for your snacks.

00:22:54 John Daub: All the pistachio has been in everything. You can see these are pistachio cookies and they have these new Kit Kat boxes are out. Some of them are the same but they have a new citrus one. I thought about getting this. Shop is great. If you go up to the second floor, they have more like unique candies and stuff that you can buy in boxes, which I ended up buying a bunch of them for the supporters. So it's nice to shop here instead of other places. And there's the Kit Kat over there on the side here. So usually I'll try to find unique flavors. I actually don't think that they have anything unique now except for maybe this pistachio one and then there's a mont blanc which is chestnut flavored. They have a chestnut flavored Kit Kat right down there. I'm not sure if I'll get the Kit Kat but these Koala's March with the butter flavor look really good. I might have to get one of those. It's the same shop on the other side here and between the two candy shops because they've been here for so long. They're located right next to the shrine here, which is a great place to relax because it's so weird when you go up there because it doesn't feel like you're in a crowded section of the city at all.

00:24:31 John Daub: You can see lining the area here. They have these Christmas bags here and if I can get a bunch of them for Patreon supporters, that'd be kind of neat to put in the bag and they have these boots here. That might be fun too to put in the daimyo packages. Look at this onpalm boot, kids like these boots. I guess I got to get one for Kanae and Leo. There's a dry mom boot. That's kind of big. I don't have that up there. Yeah, they don't have stockings. I guess this is the tradition that's from Germany. I'm not honestly sure but these boots they kind of remind me of stockings, but they're not stockings so I'm not sure. I just know that you only see these at Christmas time and it's not something we have in the US and Christmas is very much not a Japanese holiday because it's, you know, Christmas, sometimes we forget what the holiday's for where it comes from, but in Japan not so much. The great thing about Ameyoko Market on the side streets, you're going to get all of these discount sporting good stuff, especially active wear. A lot of them might be not 100% real which would be if it's not 100% real, it's 100% fake. So I'm not sure if that's the case though. I think maybe it's just stuff that's been passed at selling point right here and like last year stuff or two years ago stuff that's on clearance. Is the oyster and sake store still there? So there are some, they probably changed different areas. There's oyster and sake stores there, but I think the one that I once featured is no longer there and there's another one across the park. It might be a whiskey and oysters now. It's always changing.

00:26:42 John Daub: I really go down the street and then take just one last look of Ameyoko Market. I just love coming here though. It's always something new and unique and if you are here, you see the Yamanote line passing by out there. You definitely got to get that takoyaki. Even if I get it on the go, I'll just put one in my bag and then eat it when I get home because it takes like 15 minutes to cool down. It's usually pretty warm when I get home. These things are like thermal nuclear takoyaki. How many times have I burned my mouth on them? Too many. If you do get off at Ameyoko Market, I guess I could just take you around a little bit. Well, what's that? What the heck is going on there? That's pretty interesting costume. So if you go over here to the end of the street, you're going to see the Ameyoko, the entrance to Ueno.

00:27:43 John Daub: What was happening there? Like I'm really curious to figure out what's happening there. Oh, hi. I've been here and I always watch your vlog. Oh, thank you. So we know what to do when coming in. Okay, so that's how you knew about this place? I watch your Asakusa vlog. Oh, great. I'd say it's one of the better places to stay. Yeah. Compared to Shinjuku and Shibuya. I think so. It's more vibrant. But we stay here in the Ueno area. Oh here. Yeah, I love this area. I'm here like all the time. That's nice to meet you. I'll give you a you found me card. There you go. You're welcome. I'll give you one too here. There you go. You found me too. You're welcome. All right, see you guys. That's nice. I never know if I should put on my mask or not if people come and approach me because I think it would be rude. But like putting on your mask when somebody approaches, I feel like it's rude. I'm still kind of unsure on the whole protocol of that. I don't think anybody really knows.

00:29:06 John Daub: All right. So I'm here on the main street. I just want to show you, give you an idea. This is Ueno. There's Ueno Station just over here. I don't know, a couple hundred meters, Ueno Zoo is in Ueno Park, which is where that green area that you see here is a really urban area. But as those two gentlemen said, I think this is probably a better option to stay in than in Shinjuku. I mean this place is, it's not just because it's cheaper. It's just friendlier and more down-to-earth. I think there's less crime here. You know, you might see my father-in-law walking around the streets because he lives in this area. Another reason why we might be here a little bit more often and Ameyoko Market isn't indisputably way better than anything that you would find in Shinjuku as a market. You could do shopping here. You can eat dinner here. You can eat lunch here. You see you could sit out on the street and eat and drink with locals on the corner. I mean, it's just way better than Shinjuku. I think Shinjuku has got a lot of business people. I think it's way dirtier. Look at the streets here. It's relatively clean. I wouldn't eat off of them. Nobody would but I'm going to change the cards. You found Leo's dad card. But if you're thinking of places to stay in Tokyo, Shinjuku is not high on my list unless you're staying in a luxury hotel. It's just not. Akihabara is, I think if you want to be near Akihabara, this is so much better. Akihabara has shut down and because of the changes that happened at Akihabara over the last couple of years, I do think that it's not, this area is way more vibrant.

00:31:07 John Daub: This is the street that is adjacent to the main Ameyoko Street. There's kind of two that run parallel. Oh, there are some shops on this street that are of note, but more or less Ameyoko Market would consider, I would consider this to be part of Ameyoko Market. But it Ameyoko Market straddles the Yamanote line the tracks above it. The Keihin Tohoku line and the Yamanote line and I think the couple other express trains go through here too, right? It's really when you look at the ground in the area this being an older place. It is really clean. I think Ameyoko is, don't you think? I really think that this is amazing how clean they keep this. They announced the list of the 15 cleanest cities in the world and I'm surprised only Sapporo was on that list that just doesn't make sense to me because I don't know. I know that Stockholm is really clean. But look, mean Tokyo is just so freaking clean for a major city. Maybe that's its problem. Cleanliness might have also something to do with the homeless population. A very tragic issue that we do have in Tokyo as well. It's hard to keep it clean and when people are living on the streets and you have to really help them out somehow. Yeah, it's a very complicated situation. I think in Japan a lot of it might have to do with mental health, but also people can just be expelled from families and lose their fortune or lose it gambling or you know, lots of reasons why people end up on the street or just give up. It might be a little bit different the situations in the US than what happens here in Japan. But yeah, if you compare the public restrooms, I think Japan wins hands down anywhere in the world. So maybe we should make our own list of the cleanest cities by public restrooms. I'm not going to put my name to that list though. I refuse to put my name on the list of the cleanest restrooms in the world by me. No, that's, I'll leave that up to other publications.

00:33:53 John Daub: Look here. This is a manju company and they make their manju right there in the factory. Look at that. He's got the machines for it and he's pumping out the boxes of it. That's the kind of stuff that I hope we never really lose here. Again. I was here just a month ago. There's some ethnic restaurants here. Most of them are business owners that bought property. They bought over the aging businesses of family Japanese family businesses and they brought in more street food. So Ameyoko has become more of a street food market less of a food by stick and more of a food by sitting down and eating which is more of a culture outside of Japan. Oh my gosh. Somebody opened up a durian. Oh my gosh. It smells like a durian. I'm not saying it's bad or good. I'm just saying it smells like a durian, you make that call. Whoa, and then you can get these really well. Look at that rabbit. Oh my gosh, that rabbit is so badass. Whoa. Wow. This shop is offering free PCR tests. That's very interesting. Wow. I saw that dude try to get that guy to go buy some shoes. That was pretty dodgy. That kind of activity has really been cut down in Japan where touts on the street will approach you. It's a lot less than it used to be back in 2019. There's been some really major changes in Japan in particular Tokyo. I think it's probably over the last five years. A lot of it having to do with Japan thinking about tourism and then resetting some of the things that they got wrong and making it right. Roppongi I think is a lot cleaner and safer especially for tourists because it was an awful pit but it was a fun pit but now it's just a cleaner pit. It's like they cleaned it out. I guess you start from scratch again, but now they have mechanisms to keep it clean and that's kind of a good thing.

00:36:43 John Daub: All right, so we're going to end this live stream back at the takoyaki shop kind of burning off those six. I ate it was incredible again. If anybody is coming to Ameyoko Market, the one thing that you cannot pass up is a pack of takoyaki. Don't overeat. They do sell them in four. Oh, this is the katsuobushi shop. One of our patrons was asking about this. This is the old katsuobushi shop that's been in business. They just renewed the sign. So it looks different, but they've been doing katsuobushi for 150 years or so, which is petrified bonito fish. You can see it right here. Check it out. That's katsuobushi. That's the flakes that was on my takoyaki and it's the hardest food in the world right there. Looks like a banana. It's petrified fish is what it is and they shave that make the fish flakes and that's what dances on the top of takoyaki and okonomiyaki. The petrified fish and it looks like that, the what I just showed you like a big hard banana. But that used to be a fish. It's pretty cool. So you can buy the flakes. I wouldn't recommend you trying to grate it yourself, but you can buy the flakes there too. And I think they have a lot more flavor than the cheaper ones that you'll buy. All right, here we are back to the lady who is working very hard making takoyaki for hungry people for over a decade. The prices are listed right above. It's easy to understand. Four for 200 and six for 300, eight for 400 and everybody seems to take a bag home with them. It's like everybody wants some takoyaki. I might take some home for Kanae. I really think I will. Kanae are you watching? I saw your dad. That was awesome. I got to come home.

00:39:37 John Daub: All right, everybody. Thanks so much for watching. I'm glad that you could join me. I am continuously trying to find ways to improve it. I just reached out to another YouTuber that started live streaming as well. And we're looking at other ways to make this happen. And I've actually gotten in touch with YouTube as well to see what else I can do. Maybe there's some things that YouTube doesn't know about but I do know that they have some sort of agreement with the old format. So we'll see but I am on this. See everybody. Have a good day. Have a good night. I'll see you another livestream tomorrow or tonight. I didn't do the Q&A for visitors coming. So maybe I'll do that and I'll put it up. So just look for it. See you guys.