00:00:02 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to the city of Tokyo with five minutes to go before New Year's. Four minutes actually. How you doing everybody? It's sort of a tradition over the last several years. Since I started a live streaming channel in Japan, I've taken you out someplace around the city. This year the Shibuya festivities have been cancelled, believe it or not, for a record third year. Although they haven't been doing the New Year's on Hachiko Scramble for very long. Sort of a touristy thing to do. Most Japanese aren't even awake. Most of them will stay home, watch NHK, and go to sleep before the countdown. Like Kanae Daub, my wife, and my son.

00:00:47 John Daub: But it's still really great to be here with you even though it's just us. And this place is really cool because one, I live not too far away from here, and number two, it is loaded with street food. So not only are we gonna be celebrating the New Year's in a couple of minutes, we're also going to be eating a couple of things that we find along the way. Let's just take a look right now. You can see possibly this is the live camera of Shibuya loading right now. It looks pretty crazy over there. I don't know if you guys can see that. You can do picture-in-picture here. Even though the event right now is absolutely cancelled, people are still going to the Hachiko Scramble right now to celebrate the New Year's. And it looks pretty crazy right there.

00:01:35 John Daub: I'm very glad that I'm not in that area. It's absolutely insane. Now, apparently Coca-Cola and a bunch of others over there, but again, cancelled officially. Unofficially, you see there's just a bunch of people that are really having some fun there. I like, I'm sort of a local guy. I kind of like to stay right in my neighborhood. And there's a reason why for that. So let me know when it hits midnight or I guess the people around us will let us know. As long as the signal holds out. There's a lot of police in the area tonight. This area is famous for that. There's a lot of stuff going on here. Check out that meat here. That looks really good. That's just like, grilling meat at midnight.

00:02:24 John Daub: WRX Turbo was in the house. I believe we have about 15 seconds to go. Happy New Year!

00:03:20 John Daub: You can see the line of people here, it's pretty crazy. Happy New Year everybody, you just heard the eruption of people here in Monzen-Nakacho celebrating the New Year. Let's go over here in the corner, that was a pretty cool spot to do that. That's awesome. Happy New Year everybody, we made it. Good riddance to 2022. Happy New Year. The spirit here is quite nice. I'm really happy that we're in 2023. Guess what, the last three years uh travel situation here into Japan, luckily we're mostly past that. And we've had I think a million tourists came here the last month, which is the most like combining all the months together. This is crazy. It feels different in this air of 2023, doesn't it?

00:04:48 John Daub: Let me know if the signal gets it. I'm actually streaming at 720p with a lower bitrate bandwidth because I know that it's going to be a crowded area and the signal is not going to be perfect, but hopefully it's better than last year's live stream. Speaking of the last time I came out to a New Year's countdown in Tokyo where we didn't have a pandemic was in 2020 and we did not know what that year was going to bring us. I actually have a video queued up here. You guys can take a look at it. Boom. So this is Kanae Daub and I. We were walking around Asakusa, which is Tokyo.

00:05:51 John Daub: The pandemic seems surreal. The whole wearing helmets. It's not here. All right. Hopefully the signal is a little bit better in this intersection here, but I can imagine that it's not going to be. It's sort of a sad corner to be in, but because of the signal, there's not a lot that we could do here. This is a sad intersection. Happy New Year. There's no party here. All of the New Year parties were canceled, most of them. The public ones anyways, where they were going to have a crowd here. We're in a pretty nasty eighth wave right now in Japan and people are on the cautious side. Of course, the buffering is really bad.

00:07:11 John Daub: This is on the lowest bitrate. I'm not sure where else I can possibly go. What do you do in this kind of situation? Panic? No, you celebrate and try really hard. Shibuya is probably pretty crazy right now. We can take a look at it. That's Shibuya live. If you can see it through the buffering, that is pretty crazy. Apparently not all of Japan is like that. This is just I think the police. I'm going to cross the street in a second. I think that the police really are having some trouble in Shibuya, but probably expected there to be a lot of people.

00:08:12 John Daub: I've been out of action. I've been pretty sick over the last eight days, so it's nice to be back here. Shibuya is pretty crazy. It's always crazy. Again, there's no official party. But as you see, you don't need an official party for Shibuya in order to make it a party. I can embed live streams and other channels onto the live stream. I can live stream here. Yeah, you know, I don't know if I can actually live stream around here. I'm shocked at how bad the signal is. It was better last year, which is weird. All I can do is walk back on the side of the street here. But it's pretty nice anyways to share it with you in a consolidated video in there.

00:09:33 John Daub: We're going to have a pretty good 2023. I actually have just about gotten the eSIM for another cell phone server. So I'll be able to have clearer live streams and more concentrated places as a result of it. And that should start this year. We've had a very, very crazy 2022. The signal is looking better. Thank you, Apple Bob. Yeah, I was very sick for the last eight to ten days. And two days ago was that day I decided to take it even slower. And I feel a lot better. Thank you, everybody. Yeah, it's just so exciting. 2023 is here. I absolutely wanted to get rid of 2022. It was just one of those nightmare years where things weren't really going right.

00:10:50 John Daub: And what's so hopeful with 2023 and with any new year is that you can start over. All this stuff that happened in 2022 is out the window. It's gone. It's done. You can turn the page into something new. This is Tokyo. The reality is that in Japan, most people don't go out or go into the streets for countdown parties. You know what they do? They go home and they sleep. And that's sort of what I'm going to be doing in about three weeks. I think that's what my wife and my son is doing too. But I can't do that. I have to go outside and dance. Yeah, this is it. You know, it's quiet. A lot of people are going very quietly to the shrines. And that's in the direction in which I'm going right now.

00:12:01 John Daub: A lot of people will watch the sunrise. One New Year I think it was the year 2000, I watched the sunrise from the crazy present. People do drink. There are some instances, some situations. But I'm guessing on the other side of the street, it's going to be a lot of people. Hatsumode (first shrine visit of the year). This is the New Year's prayer. And yeah, you know, I think I will do this tomorrow, but definitely not at midnight because there's already a massive line of people. You want to be the first one, I guess. Maybe if you're late, the Shinto gods have heard too many prayers and they don't honor it as much as the first ones. I don't know why everyone's in such a hurry, but I can understand because I want to move on to 2023 too. And I got a lot to pray for for this year.

00:13:27 John Daub: Hey, Brandania is here. You know, if there's a big lag, I don't know if I can even show you the street food. I'm going to just keep on. I'm going to go past this here and to the other intersection and we'll walk back until it gets back. This is weird. That's what I smell. Someone's got chestnuts roasting. It smells awesome. Let's see what's going on in Shibuya. The police are still keeping the people off of the streets and letting the cars go because there's no official. And then when everybody crosses the street, I guess there's a party again. Hey, Jennifer French is here. Happy New Year. 4 p.m. in Denmark right now. Thanks for the update on that. The whole world is just about to jump into 2023 going through the time zones. The Australians are already there. I got news that 2023 looked pretty good on the other side. And it does.

00:14:52 John Daub: I can now tell you definitively that 2023 is going to be a good year. 2023 feels better than 2022. It's definitive. 2023 is way better. It feels there's less weight on my shoulders. I feel more free than I did in 2022. I don't know why. It's interesting. I'll have to play this video back if it's unpixelated and say that I thought this was going to be a good year when something good really happens. Just feels that way. Hey, Happy New Year. That's awesome. Hey, Katayama is in the house. By the way, Katayama, because it's been a long time since I did any live streams. Leo loves the gift. Thank you so much for sending that. He's been trying to plug stuff in. He gave us his little unit where you can, kids can be really interactive with things. And we love it. Thank you, man. That was great. And UFO Bob, we got your Christmas card. Thank you, buddy.

00:16:16 John Daub: So down there, down there, there's actually a lot of street food. If you could see it behind that car on the other side of the street. That's where it was last year, I believe. Yeah, I started the live stream right in front of Naritasan (Narita Shrine), which is the shrine there. Justina Simon received my first Only in Japan postcard last week. That's awesome. Thanks, John from Alabama. You guys got about 14 hours to go. How's the signal so far? Is it getting worse? It's Monzen-Nakacho. So you can see the sign right there. And let's go to the end of the street here. Okay, thanks for the update. The live stream looks pretty good. I'm tempted now to cross the street and get some street food. So we'll go in and make the most of it.

00:17:59 John Daub: Let's see, the karaoke should be pretty. They're going in the karaoke because it's warm in there. I know that that's why. It's warm in there. I don't know if you saw it before, but I was telling everybody the last time I felt really good at a new year was 2019 to 2020 when Kanae Daub and I were in Asakusa. And this is before the pandemic. Again, we didn't know just a couple of months later, the whole world was about to change. And it was just funny. I was looking at this earlier with Kanae Daub. We didn't have any masks on and we didn't think this was supposed to be a thing. We're in the middle of a crowd of people not even worrying about anything in the world except possibly going hungry because they're looking for food for half of the night. 2020 Olympics never happened. They were suspended and delayed for another year. Look at the streets. Nobody wearing masks. We're in a crowd.

00:19:18 John Daub: A lot of people knew who I was and what I was doing. Not that many live streamers back then. The signal was nonexistent. We actually prerecorded this and uploaded it later. But you could see there's just so many people around and it felt so warm. And I think that 2023 we're going to return to this. Look at this. This is so cool. We're going to return to this hopefully in this next year. In this next year, hopefully we return to that. That's just so much fun. That was 2020, January 1st and now it's January 1st, 2023. And the streets are so quiet. Alright, I guess I could cross the street and see if we can get some street food.

00:20:05 John Daub: Yeah, tomorrow I'll be home. I don't think I'm going to be going out much on New Year's Day. We have to stay at our own home this year. Kanae Daub is doing okay but she's at the end of her sickness now. And we'll probably do a live stream from home tomorrow. There's so many things that I've wanted to talk to you about over the last week but I haven't been able to do it. And now it's nice to just reconnect with you in this live stream. Even if it isn't maybe the greatest signal in the world, we got to celebrate just a little bit of it. We walked by the shrine at the moment that midnight hit here in Japan and now we're on the other side. Alright, we could try this out. Let's go see if we can see some street food and then cross the street here. Just let me know if the signal doesn't hold out and we'll change it up here.

00:21:10 John Daub: We'll walk past here one more time. Actually, what we could do is go around the back because the front is just so packed. Let's see if we can go down the side here. Shall we do that? That's a good idea. I know this neighborhood pretty good. I know the back street like the back of my hand. There's a reason why nobody's going this direction probably. But I'm actually going this way. I'm going for the food. Most people are here for the prayers. I'm going here for the food. Let's give it a little bit more time and see what we can find and hopefully the signal will boost up a bit.

00:22:09 John Daub: Right now I'm using the Prism app which is pretty good. I'm using it at 720p this time instead of 1080p because I know that the signal strength even with the new app is not going to be as strong, just based on the location and the amount of people. You have to make a decision. But typically outside of the shrines here, they will have yatai (food stalls) or food stands all over. And this festival is no exception. Naritasan and Monzen-Nakacho, they got a bunch of street food. We went up the front street but the signal strength was just really bad. So I'm trying to find a short distance. And I'm going to cut around the back. And I think we're doing a pretty good job. But this street is one of the most famous streets in this side of Tokyo.

00:23:20 John Daub: It looks really quiet but on most days it's just a small alley with a bunch of bars. I think a lot of those bars are shut down because of the 8th wave that we're in. And the city has cancelled a lot of the events, which is not so festive. But we see the light at the end of the tunnel. That's a good thing. Lori's sending Kanae Daub some much love in 2023. Thank you. I appreciate that all. Happy New Year from Guam. You guys can write in where you are. And if you are in 2023, let us know. What is it like on the other side? We passed in it about 15 minutes ago. And 2023 looks pretty good. Looks quiet here. Not so much in Shibuya. You can see here there's Shibuya. It's pretty crazy. The future is pretty cool.

00:24:42 John Daub: We're trying to find a way to get to the street food without losing the signal. I'll just follow the line here. I don't want to go for the prayer. I just want the yatai. I'm just going to go straight here. My word. There's the line for the prayers. Do you see that? It's really dark. You can't see anything. But there must be about 5,000 people there. It looks like there's a bar. That's a lot of people. I'm just going to go this way. There's snakes like a Tokyo Disneyland lineup. People line up in Japan. It is a national art form. It's amazing how beautiful people line up here. No other country lines up better. And it's right now. You can see they snake that line. It looks really gorgeous. Except they did it in pitch black conditions.

00:26:30 John Daub: I should have brought a spotlight. That would have really upset 5,000 people. That's the one thing you don't want to do. Start filming and put a spotlight on a swarm of people. It's like zombies. They'll see you and follow the light and will attack you. Get man with camera. All right. Straight ahead I see some street food. I don't know if the signal is going to be any good. But then. I think if I make a left here, I can get into some yatai on the back side of the shrine here. Yeah, I like it. It's a nice peaceful stream. I like that comment. Nice peaceful stream. Rightson John for 2023. Absolutely. It feels like this is going to be a wonderful year. And once again, I said this about 20 minutes ago. I feel like there's no weight on my shoulders. It feels really good.

00:27:35 John Daub: Here we go. Boom. I knew it. Follow these people. Let's see what we can find here, folks. Cross your fingers. We want a nice clean signal. If I can get some cash for. There you go. No firecrackers. That's the wrong New Year's. Japanese New Year's is the opposite of China. Japanese New Year is so peaceful. It is. Maybe of all the celebrations, Japanese New Year is so cool. It's so quiet and peaceful. All right. Here we are. We are in a place where maybe we can get some food here. Wow. Oh, there's their chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Just let me know if the signal is really bad, you know, I'll try to move.

00:28:56 John Daub: Wow. Oh, my God. Look at those grilled oysters. All right, we're getting reports that the signal was fine. That's really cool. So Popa Boba. Yeah, it looks like it. It looks like in Shibuya, it's pretty crazy right now. But like again, I'd rather be here. There it is, that's crazy, that's a lot of people. I guess this signal there is frozen. All right, let's go in here, see if we can get some food. Let me know if the signal uh. So that's 700 yen for one ika (squid) fish, that's crazy. It's so crazy, I would pay for it but that's not what I wanted. I saw some takoyaki up there, I might just go for that.

00:31:24 John Daub: Oh there you go, here's some takoyaki. How much, what's the damage on this? Oh that's only 500 yen. All right, let's see what we got. Takoyaki looks like it's a winner to me. Chicken steak, wow, there's yakisoba on the right side. It's not really too crowded. Oh I love these, these are like these pancakes, check it out. Well there's nobody in the store right now, like obanyaki (filled grilled pancakes). It's just like a round grilled cake, it's so good. They put stuff in the obanyaki, champagne that's one of Kanae Daub's favorite. It's still early, these yatai here have just started. Hey Brandania is in the house.

00:33:06 John Daub: By the way this is the first live stream in a long time and Brandania and I were going to be announcing the winners of the packages from Japan to two people who submitted haiku and they also submitted some pictures. We went through all those pictures and then haiku and found some good ones and we're gonna announce the winners and those who don't win, uh five sub winners who will be getting a postcard from Japan. All right I guess that takoyaki looks like a winner to me. Let me just walk down the street a bit and show you a little bit more of the area. Hey Brad Shot Studios in the house, happy new year. Oh is that potato sticks, satsuma imo (sweet potato) stick? That looks pretty darn good, the sweet potato sticks there. Wow that's it, that's a street food I can get behind. Wow look at the steam coming out of there.

00:34:28 John Daub: I sent Rion in a message. A lot of you have been asking for us to do some sort of collaboration and so we couldn't find any time to meet up and do it. It was just as well because I was kind of sick. See there's some. That's a funny one. Other stories. We're going to the east, that's a good mira. So maybe in January there's a chance where we can do that. Let's go back here, I don't want to have to leave. Then Jorge's here, George let's see here I have a good one my friend. Japan didn't win the World Cup so I'll be heading to Argentina maybe in four years. So if Japan had won the World Cup we'd be getting you as a tourist. Well guess what, maybe they'll win in four years. They seem to have a developing team in Japan and that'd be great to see them winning the World Cup one day. Look that's massive, those are some massive sweet potatoes. Check that out, there's satsuma imo which is purple.

00:36:13 John Daub: All right let's go back to that street food stand, up that takoyaki look pretty good. Boom Shakalaka's here to the hardest working man in Japan thank you. I'm behind the scenes working hard watching them cooking the food right now. The hardest workers are those that are right now serving people and then everybody at the shrine. That's squid that's cooking right now, it smells so good, just a little bit of soy sauce on there. Oh man. Squid is so good when it's grilled like that with some soy sauce, it is so good, squid steak man. All right let's get some takoyaki or maybe you'll find something else here you know at 1am I'm not really that hungry. It's nice to support the local yatai and I'll probably come back here with Kanae Daub tomorrow or the next day.

00:37:54 John Daub: The street stands here at the Japanese festivals during New Year's they usually will go on until around the fourth at least the fourth and then they might even go on to the seventh because hatsumode goes on until around the seventh and then yeah maybe even the eighth I can't remember. I've never gone that late. Usually I do hatsumode which is the New Year's shrine visit in Japan, I do that almost right away within the first couple of days typically with the family and then you don't have to go back. You just have to do New Year's prayer once. Most people do it at the other neighborhood shrines. They don't go to like Meiji Shrine or Sensoji Shrine, they try to avoid the crowds. Younger people go to crowds with their friends which is okay. What are these things here? Oh that's castella (sponge cake) here, these are like little cakes here. Let's get the takoyaki here, I gotta get something.

00:39:46 John Daub: Good. Let's see if I can get some amazake (sweet fermented rice drink). Alright, I got 300 yen here. And that's how much the amazake is. 300 yen. Amazake, please. 300 yen. Here you go. Thank you. Wow, it's nice and warm. It's nice and warm. Let's go to the end of the street. I think there was a little bit more space at the end of the street here.

00:41:56 John Daub: That is a really small cup of amazake. But it's enjoyed. Wow, the streets are so quiet on this side. I didn't have to go far to find absolute and utter desertedness. Look, it's just a kid off of the street. Alright, I think I can put down my camera right here. I'm double fisting. It's a New Year's miracle. Alright, perfect. There's a wall here. Okay. Alright, this is a Dixie cup. Do they still call them Dixie cups? Like a Dixie cup of amazake. That's so small. I bet it was going to be way bigger. Oh, they sweetened it. Oh, they shouldn't have done that. I love it when the amazake is non-sweetened.

00:43:28 John Daub: Alright, hold on a second. Alright, we got nature in the way. Which is fine. I think the tripod will hold. Nature. Let's try the amazake here. Kanpai, everybody. That's sweet. They put sugar in that. Not going to complain. It's 2023. It's still good. With real chunks of rice. Alright, let's see the takoyaki. Oh, that's hot. Alright, pan down. I don't think I'm going to chug. I'm going to space it out a little bit. I don't think chugging amazake has ever been a thing. Oh, man. That is so hot. You can't just pop one of these in the mouth. You have to wait.

00:44:50 John Daub: Lee's Travels here. I was just in Japan a month ago. Made a whole movie on our channel too. Okay, well check it out, Lee's Travel. Thanks. It seems like the whole world was here a month ago. Doesn't it? It was crazy. I can't believe how many people were visiting. And I wanted to meet up with a lot of people. Just wasn't really a lot of time. This isn't going to work, is it? Peso knows what's going to happen. No, no, no. I have to open it up. Open up a little hole. Let the steam come out. Gooey. Salty. Mayonnaise-y. I like it.

00:45:46 John Daub: All of the revenge tourists are out of the way now. Everybody come in 2023. All the revenge tourists are gone. It's like everyone that was waiting for years came in this rush. All right, we're good. No mouth burn. But my eyes are watering. I think I'm going to save the skin up there this time. We're good. It's a pretty big piece of takoyaki. Octopus. There's only five in here. So it's not exactly the greatest deal. Like in Osaka, this would never fly. It's way too expensive. But we're in Tokyo.

00:47:08 John Daub: Leanne, don't forget. Happy New Year's from Missouri. Hey. Awesome. You guys will be getting New Year's in 13 hours from now. Wow. That was a pretty good piece of takoyaki. I got a tentacle. Chewy. You know what? You got to open it up a little bit. Just let a little bit of that steam out. It's like a pressure cooker in there. All that pressure. Pop the bubble. Mmm. This is the noise level. This is about normal for Japanese New Year in the city of Tokyo. Shibuya is an exception, is an outlier.

00:48:16 John Daub: You know, before Shibuya became the center for New Year's, the real centers historically were Shibakoen (Shiba Park). Right in front of Tokyo Tower. Because Tokyo Tower would light up the year. Like Happy New Year 2020 or 2015 or 1984. So people would go in front of there to see Tokyo Tower light up. But now we have Tokyo Skytree. We got a bunch of other attractions. So Shibuya has become the forefront. And everybody would go out to the clubs in Roppongi. You know. They don't do that anymore. It's now, you know, go outside or go to Shibuya. But clubbing hasn't been a big thing for a while in Japan that I know of. Or maybe it's just me.

00:49:28 John Daub: When winter hit a few weeks ago, I noticed there was an increase in the fire brigades. It does a little ringing around the neighborhoods. Tell people to make sure to be careful with fire. And toyo kerosene heaters to be really careful about it. So they go around the neighborhoods with announcements to remind people. And even if your windows are closed, you can still hear the announcements. Because they're blasting it from megaphones. Tokyo is a city. It's like London, you know. We've got such a long history. It's suffered from a lot of fires. Right? One fire starts in one part of the city. It takes down that entire neighborhood. So you got to be careful. Nowadays in Tokyo, the buildings are much better. But back in the olden days.

00:50:25 John Daub: Pack of five. I'm not complaining about five. Because I wasn't that hungry. It's fine. That was great. This amazake for 300 yen was not a good deal. It's like a thimble. Usually, you'll have it in a bigger cup. Let's call it inflation. The prices didn't go up. This stuff got smaller in Japan. I saw. It's interesting. Compared to just last year. The prices of this stuff for some of the street food went up by 100 yen. And in the places like the takoyaki that I got. Typically, there'd be six in there. But there were five. I'm just saying. The yen is weak. And the quantity has gone down.

00:51:32 John Daub: Meiji milk, which is the big one, reduced their cartons from one liter to 900 milliliters. And you can't even really tell this looking at it. But they did that a while ago. But the price stayed the same. These hats I get are from a place called Gorn Brothers. I used to buy them like 2013, 2014. I can't buy them anymore. Because the prices stayed the same. But the quality dropped massively. The stitching is awful. The shape of it is different. The material is not the same quality. But they keep charging the same price. I noticed that with a lot of stuff over the last 10 years. It's not a complaint. It's just an observation. I guess it is sort of a complaint. Because I like the hats the way they made them. Then they changed it. But I do think that I'm probably going to have to custom make my hats from now on. I know exactly why I want them.

00:52:43 John Daub: Question. How many people are coming to Japan in 2023? What month and where are you going? You can do it in the chat right here. It's super interesting to see how big of a year this is going to be. It's going to be massive. 2023 is going to be a massive year. Yeah, John. Actually, at around 7 o'clock, Leo, Kanae Daub and I, we had the first New Year's meal, which was soba. Japanese will eat soba on the 31st before New Year's. And then the first meal typically is not takoyaki. They have osechi ryori (New Year's feast dishes), which is a special New Year's meal with a bunch of elaborately cooked stuff. It's awesome to look at. It's not my favorite cuisine in the world, but it's New Year's cuisine. It's not to my palate, but it's still good.

00:53:41 John Daub: Then there's ozoni (mochi soup), which is everybody knows ozoni. And this is like a mochi soup in it. Really big chunks of mochi. And a lot of people die and choke from it every year. But ozoni is really good. And out in the countryside, they're banging the mochi to put into the ozoni soup. That mochi soup is probably my favorite meal for tomorrow. And we were going to go see Kanae Daub's parents, Kanae Daub's dad and her family. But this year, we're going to have to stay at home because she's at the end of her sickness. And there's a certain amount of period that you have to stay at home. And I'm past that. And she's more in the beginning of it. That's why I wasn't live streaming last week. It was a really tough week. But I got over pretty quickly.

00:54:39 John Daub: Satrio will be here in 2023, November. One year from now. Wow. Ashford will be here in August. Oh, that's great. There's a piece of tree here. Sorry. Nature. I can't escape nature. But now. Is that okay? You know what? I hate to rip nature. Right there. It's a leaf. I'm just watching the chat. You guys are talking to yourselves. I'll be in August. Right, it's in Jimmy. That's cool. August. This summer is going to be crazy. I bet you it starts from the cherry blossom season. By the way, if you're coming for the cherry blossom season, just keep in mind that you probably want to be here around March 20th in Tokyo. And then it's over by April 3rd. Typically.

00:55:52 John Daub: There's different varieties of cherry blossoms, but it's typically over by then. But if you're in Japan, if you go to Tohoku, you'll see the cherry blossoms in late April. Cherry blossoms are not here for tourists. They're here for Mother Nature. So there's no best. People ask me, when should I be there for the cherry blossoms? Where are you going to be in Japan? They don't bloom at the same time all over the country. Cherry blossoms is the most dangerous time to come in Japan because there's a high chance that you're going to miss them. But typically, March 20th to March 25th is near the peak. Typically. Just so you know, you'll be here at a good time. You should be okay. You'll find cherry blossoms somewhere. It might not be in central Tokyo, but you'll find cherry blossoms. You'll find them somewhere at that time.

00:56:46 John Daub: Yeah. Kelvin's coming in February. Awesome. Yeah. Just a shout out to my Patreon supporters. The last week I wanted to do a live stream. I wasn't able to do that. I just want to say thank you to all of you. We have an amazing Patreon community there. I send out postcards every month. That postcard community has been growing as well as the Daimyo supporters. I really appreciate you guys. Even through the pandemic. We had mail suspended. Mail was super slow over the last two and a half years. We still got the postcards out. We still got the packages out somehow. For most people, even the Canadians. I'm still double packaging up for the Canadians to try to catch up. But it's been a really challenging three years. And now that everything seems more normalized once again. I'm really grateful. 2022 was maybe the roughest of it.

00:57:44 John Daub: And I'm really grateful. There's a lot to be grateful for. But 2023 is a massive year. It feels massive. I feel light, my shoulders feel light. But I can, I'm like standing on the bow of a ship and I see land. And it's a massive land. It's like New York, baby. 18th century New York. I've got a gang behind me. Sounds like a DiCaprio movie. All right. All neat little box. I'm taking it home. Gangs of New York. Is that what they call it? Yeah. I'm really happy. I got a chance to meet with the government of Japan. Talk about certain things that we can do in 2023 as well. Different prefectures. There's so many different things that I'm going to be doing with the main channel. You're going to see a lot more content as well.

00:59:01 John Daub: And by the way, if you're a videographer. I'm kind of looking for a videographer right now. Somebody to accompany me on location. I'm going to be doing a lot of stuff. I'm going to be doing location shoots to help me with shooting. If you are one of these people. I don't really recruit among the community here, but if you'd like to contact me, I'd be happy to consider you for the younger position. We'll go out on location shoots. I need somebody to help me with the camera work and possibly even edit the videos afterwards. Hold on a second. I'm just going to go straight and cross the street again. Back where we were before. So next time, if I do come here, I'm just going to start the live stream in the yatai area. I'm just going to start it here. Right. Look at it. That's really cool.

01:00:11 John Daub: Yeah. So I'll be looking for somebody for some help. I've got an assistant who's already setting up a bunch of location shoots for me. And just want to put together a couple of people to help me out with the editing and get that out quicker. And the channel is going to really grow in 2023. I just got a good feeling about it. But the last video that I posted, I don't know if you guys saw, it was pretty crazy. It went from zero to 1.7 million in six days, which is crazy. So I'm pretty optimistic that I can find these topics and make some videos that grow this channel. And it just feels like it's going to be a massive year. I could be wrong. My feelings are pretty off sometimes. It's cold out here. Amasaki did wonders to warm me up. Boy, there's a lot of police out tonight.

01:02:04 John Daub: Oh, yeah, thanks, Nightbot. Yeah, that's right. I still got a bunch of Blu-rays from the hitchhiking trip in 2017. And they're available for purchase off of my Shopify. And they're sent within the United States, so they move pretty quickly. I've been selling like two or three a week, every week. It's pretty amazing. The Blu-ray is a box set with all the photos and the maps. The map and photos of all the people who picked me up. Beautifully done in high definition. Yeah, you don't really sell a lot of Blu-rays anymore. But it's cool to get a physical disc and put that in there. There's something about it, it just feels different compared to streaming media when you put in a Blu-ray or a DVD. It seems more significant to me. I don't know. Streaming is just seems like, well, streaming. It's like YouTube. But when you put in a disc, it feels like an event. I don't know. I'm kind of sad that we're just streaming now these days. But I still have those Blu-rays and that's kind of cool. We're still selling those.

01:03:17 John Daub: All right, I'm back. I was on the street about an hour ago walking by. It seems like it's starting to slow down a little bit. People are going home. It's cold. So the signal is getting better just based on the fact that there's less people out. For live streaming, a lot of people are switching over to Rakuten from Docomo because Docomo is just such a packed bandwidth. The other ones are more open. That's a new one. So you probably shouldn't tell other live streamers that because then they're going to start to do that. Rakuten has pretty good uploads. It's not great upload speeds, but because there's nobody else doing it. It's great. It's more freer. So you're getting people with better live streams. And that's what I want. Happy New Year, everybody. 2023.

01:04:19 John Daub: It smells like takoyaki, but that's because I just ate it and that's what's in my mask. That's what I smell. Oh, my trip to the Oki Islands got canceled. So we're going to be doing with Dean Newcomb. My buddy, Dean Newcomb, who's been in on the live streams as well as the main channel a couple of times. He's going to be helping me out with filming some live streams instead of Oki Islands. We're going to Hiruzen (Hiruzen Plateau), which is the national park in Okayama. And it should be snowy and cold and pretty awesome. And we're going to be there for about three days doing live streams and taking you with us to very different part of Japan. And that's what I love about this channel. I don't take you just into the city of Tokyo like we are right now. I will take you out to the middle of nowhere away from tourist destinations and find new ones that will probably you want to put this one on the map, especially if you're in the Tottori or the Daisen area.

01:05:27 John Daub: Well, what's there? I'm kind of curious. I've only been to Hiruzen a couple of times. I'm almost at my bicycle. So I'll be there on. I fly into Okayama Airport, which is called Momotaro Airport, which is really funny. Momotaro is the legend, the peach boy who slayed the demon. It's a pretty cool story. And you'll see Momotaro, the character in front of Okayama stations, the Shinkansen. But the airport is named after Momotaro. So I thought that was pretty funny. And I'd never flown into Okayama Airport before because it's on the Shinkansen line. It just seems like convenient to go there. But it's a three and a half hour Shinkansen ride or it's like a 55 minute flight. So Dean's going to be picking me up in a rental car and then we'll head straight to the plateau of the National Park. There's a little ski area. There's a really small historical town I want to check out. And I don't think anyone's really covered it on YouTube. So it's going to be a nice opportunity to do that.

01:06:47 John Daub: I've been on Matsumoto. In fact, I've got a couple of live streams there. And I tried to get access to film in the castle. But they're very protective. No filming whatsoever in Matsumoto Castle. And they told me so much. They told me I had to turn off my cameras. I even called to get access to film and they turned down the permit. So that stunk. I guess, you know, there's some locations in Japan where there's a lot of people. They're still very much into the TV media type of thing where NHK would pay them like a thousand dollars for media permits. And they don't understand the value of having social media. There's still a lot of places in Japan like that. They want a media fee where they won't let you film unless you pay them like 50,000 yen or 100,000 yen.

01:07:43 John Daub: There was a sumo stable that we'd contacted to film. And they wanted a media fee, which is like a thousand dollars to film. And I can understand that because YouTubers will make money off of the content. But seems like there would be a win-win, a mutual win-win for so many of these places. That's not the case. Apparently people just want the media fee. For what? I don't know. I guess you can double dip. People pay it. I did a shoot at an arcade, a retro arcade about five years ago for the old channel. And I had to pay a media fee. They wanted like 20,000 yen. So I paid them. I bartered and I knocked it down to less than that. I can't remember what it was, but I had to pay the media fee because the story was too good. And I justified it like this. If I got in the Shinkansen and traveled to Osaka, it would cost the same amount. But it's right down the street and I don't have to buy a Shinkansen ticket. The story's right there. So just pay the damn media fee. Takadanobaba, exactly. And they are doing a lot of work to preserve those retro games so I can understand it.

01:09:41 John Daub: But there weren't a lot of people playing those retro games. So you would think perhaps they would want people to go there. This is in the early days maybe of YouTube. There weren't as many YouTube creators as there are now. But perhaps they would want people to go there. So I'm not sure why I had to pay the media fee. But then you just pay it if it was low enough where I could justify it. And then the old channel got all that content. Ticks me off. What are you going to do? I'm coming in Tokyo in February. John finally username. Thank you. Username. Your name. I'm looking forward to seeing you in February. Daniel. My select seems to be much better for some reason. Now what I couldn't sell yak. I don't know what that is.

01:10:20 John Daub: Do you still do some projects with NHK? Dave writes in here. Not that much. Tokyo I ended last March and I haven't called Chris since then. I have his phone number. I might get in touch with him and see who wants to do something. He you know, we both have families now. He's got a daughter and I have a son and it'll be pretty cool if they could hang out. I haven't seen him in a while. I've been in touch with NHK a few times on shows, but it just never works out because I'm on another location shoot for Only in Japan. My priorities Only in Japan, but I'm always, I love NHK. I love working with them. I love the team atmosphere of it. The cameraman, the audio, the director, the producer going into a studio. I just love that. That's my background with NHK. Before YouTube, I was doing that. I'll never say no to it. Almost never say no to a job, but it also has to work out with the schedule too, because priority is always going to be YouTube. But NHK is very dear to my heart. Thanks for asking about that.

01:11:31 John Daub: Gary Johnson, thanks for being a member for one month as well. NHK New Year's Eve is the thing, man. Everyone was watching it. And Kanae Daub wanted to watch Netflix. Kanae Daub wanted to watch this NHK? So we're going to watch this. We're watching them. And it is sometimes the worst singing. This is not a complaint. It's hilarious. The singing is so bad. And they had Korean instead of J-pop idols. They had Korean K-pop idols on Japanese TV, which I thought was very interesting. K-pop is good, man. If I'm not a K-pop anything or idol group. I don't care about idol groups. But if you had to compare the Japan idol groups and the Korean idol groups, you can't even compare. Korea is so far ahead in idol groups and in YouTube content and in storytelling. Korea is just amazing.

01:12:26 John Daub: And, you know, I was just shocked at how bad Japan was with some of the performances were just really awful. I think some people got toasted before they went on live TV. I might have if I were in the same situation. But my wife refusing to acknowledge that. Arturo. Exactly. Kanae Daub and the family, Japanese families will always tune in to NHK no matter how bad the programming is. Just part. It's part of the DNA that we have here. And I watched it and I'm part of it now. NHK is still on New Year's Day. It is the thing, you know, it is.

01:13:12 John Daub: All right, guys. Much love. Air to the Ron. Happy New Year. Thanks for joining. It's nice to see you to start off this wonderful year. We're going to have a great one. I get a new episode on the main channel coming out really soon. It should come out by Tuesday I figure. But it'll come out when it's done. But it's on the wagyu, on how Japan, how the top Japanese brand is decided. You know, it's not Kobe beef, by the way. Just put that out there. Kobe beef is not the best. And if you think it is, it could be because maybe it's arbitrary. It doesn't really matter. Can you taste the difference anyways? But there is a way that Japan will judge the beef. So which is the number one brand? And I went to it. It's cool.

01:14:06 John Daub: All right, everybody. Have a good time. Happy New Year. Here. I turn the camera on. Look at the intersection here. Share your New Year adventures in the comments below. Let me know how yours went there and where you're watching from. And I want to hear from you. Tell me when you're coming to Japan. What month are you visiting and from where are you visiting from? And that's an easy, easy thing to comment with. And here in Tokyo, we're done with 2022. We've entered into a new year. And this year is great. Looking forward to sharing it with you. See you. Have a good night.