00:08 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Tokyo. This is a final live stream just because it is so beautiful outside and it's one of the times that we haven't seen over the last two weeks as the blossoms have opened. It's the end, but it's also the best weekend that we've had for it. And you can already see on the ground the petals are just filling it, making it look almost like it had snowed.

00:33 John Daub: But you're about to see the traditions of Japan in full bloom with the people and the residents of Tokyo as they come to the riverside, they come to the sakura (cherry blossoms) to picnic in an event called hanami (cherry blossom viewing). I'm going to turn the camera around and you're going to see a bunch of people here. Not a huge party right now, but I think coming to local neighborhoods is the best place. Check it out. A lot of people bring out tents. And they stay for most of the day here. And the cherry blossoms above will drop the white petals on them because we are on the very end of it. It's a pretty amazing sight.

01:23 John Daub: We haven't seen this sight in years. So for me to see people, everybody has their masks off, almost everybody really relaxing and taking it easy outside, enjoying the spring weather. It's a really great thing. You can see in the distance the Tokyo skyline. You can see the Skytree there with the cherry blossoms. And again, it's just such a warm, beautiful spring afternoon. It feels like the worst is behind us in the sense of winter and spring is here. Also, you can see every single breeze that hits, the blossoms start to fall. And we'll have a flurry of them coming. You see them falling down here.

02:12 John Daub: How are you doing, everybody? So for the next five minutes or so, I'm not going to be very long. I just wanted to take you along the riverside, give you an idea of what it's like to be in Tokyo. Over the next week or two, I'm going to be taking you to the countryside and show you why Tokyo probably is not the best place for cherry blossoms. It gets even better than the last two weeks I've shown you. So this is the Sumida River. That's the spot that I used to do cherry blossom viewing. I used to do barbecues. They actually have like a massive tent there. There's a bunch of people.

03:02 John Daub: Yeah, Carlitos, this would be the last from Tokyo. No more Tokyo cherry blossom streams. But when you come to the very end of it, I have to be honest with you, I really don't care. If you're tired of cherry blossom streams, this is such an important part of Japanese culture in the spring. It doesn't last very long. And when it's here, as soon as it's here, it feels like it's gone. But this neighborhood, this is one that I come quite a bit to. I bring my bicycle. Leo, Kanae were here. Kanae's gone home, so Leo fell asleep. That's why they're not here. But we were here. We got too much sun already. It feels almost surreal after the years that we've had to see this.

04:20 John Daub: So I can kind of turn the camera around here. Look at that. They brought a table outside. That's so awesome to have a table like that. Oh, my gosh. That's a lot of work to put it away. And, of course, we'll see Space Boat every now and then. We'll go through here. But looking down at the Sumida River, you can already see that the blossom petals have made their way here. And eventually they get out to the Pacific and make their way to Hawaii. So they'll be coming your way real soon.

05:03 John Daub: We've been here for a couple of hours out here on the river. And I have to tell you, the amount of boats going by here have been pretty awesome. Let's see if we can get them to wave at us. Yeah, there they go. How cool is that? There they go. And then they're doing a flyby. They didn't have to get that close. That was pretty cool. I guess they just want to also feel a little bit of the sakura because they got none on their boat.

05:50 John Daub: So for all of you that are wondering, like, oh, no, I'm not going to be in time for the cherry blossoms, that's not entirely true. Again, Japan's a very long country. Next up is Fukushima, Sendai, and into the mountains towards Nagano and Yamanashi. They're starting to bloom just now. And then over into Mount Fuji. Kawaguchiko in that area just starting to bloom right now. So it's finished here in Tokyo this weekend for sure. It won't even last until next week. There's no way. They're already blowing off pretty strong. You're getting some very thick white flurries of petals.

06:26 John Daub: It's nice to see here Jason. I think Carrie's taking a bath over there at Enoshima, which is great. Pirate Queen's here. How you doing? Travis, Steve, Peso. Nick, Jeffrey, welcome. Oh, Jeffrey just left Kaisei. Hey, Jeffrey, thanks again yesterday. That was great to see you. Let's walk a little bit along here, and then I'll take the second floor. We'll walk back. Again, this isn't going to be a very long one, Peso. Your rule won't apply. I guarantee you I'll be off in, like, a couple of minutes.

07:09 John Daub: Whoa! We have a massive. Oh, hello. You've been meaning? Yes. I worked with you in Seki City [?], Gifu prefecture. Oh, really? We ate eel together, and we went to pick up some leaves. Oh, yeah, the leaf festival. Wow, that was five or six years ago. Wow! I'm glad you're here.

07:32 Unknown: It's been a while. It's been a long time. I saw you, so I brought you here. I live in China. You're from Akachidoki [?], right? It's close. I'm glad you're here. I'm so happy. I'll see you again. I heard Seki City was great. Yes, it was, and it reached 2 million people. It was really popular. Thank you. I'll see you again, someday. Yes. I want to eat black karage [?]. Next, I'm going to eat black karage. Bye bye.

08:19 John Daub: Oh, he missed the boat. So I know them. They lived in the town nearby. And I worked with her on the knife episode in Seki City, which is in Gifu, which is quite far away. That was shocking. It took me a second because I haven't, I'm just not used to seeing people. And wow, that was pretty cool. I guess it's hard. Yeah, I was watching the movie, and I was like, I'm not used to seeing people. I was walking back with Kanae on the road and somebody in their car came and said, Hey, love your videos. I was like, wow, that was very nice. Thank you. I didn't expect that because just walking around. So it seems like everybody's back. And that's really cool. Everybody's not just back but out. And today, because it is the last day of the cherry blossoms, because the weather is so awesome.

09:10 John Daub: Let me take you up here. Oh, here comes another boat. They've been coming in force up and down the river. So there's a lot of people. There's a lot of boat owners that rarely use them. I guess they're like multimillionaires. Some of them park their boats across over here. There's a boat like a little marina for smaller boats like this. But they're just in force today. And it's nice. Half of them wave back half of them are probably I don't know. But the traditions of Japanese hanami are full on. The first time I've seen this since 2019, which is such a good feeling.

10:06 John Daub: Sean is here headed back to Tokyo from Kyoto on the Shinkansen. Hope to find you in Kyoto, Tokyo. Yeah, I'll do a couple more streams in Tokyo before I head up to Tohoku. But this is the last cherry blossom specific one. I think I've beaten that one up pretty good. I'm glad that you're here and having a good time, Sean. All right, let's go up the steps here and take a look at the blossoms one last time. And we can get a view looking back. At this, it's just really pretty. And it's just really pretty and really great to see people out and about underneath the sakura trees.

11:02 John Daub: So I see more and more people just taking it off. They're feeling more comfortable. And if you look at the rate of people that are getting sick, it's so small right now. It's really not much at all. These blossoms are at the end already. We're seeing the green sprouting through and that's the end of them. The first rain, the first wind. It's game over. It's been a good season this year. We've had good weather. This last few days have been amazing. In fact, Danny came from Canada where there's still snow up in Quebec and he's got like a massive sunburn. He said summer has started already. I'm like, yeah, I guess this is about Canadian summer weather.

11:54 John Daub: So let's look through here at the sakura. That's really pretty. I think Danny went to a day, but today I'm not sure. I will walk down the steps here one last time. It's really nice with the blue skies. That's the last of them. Thank you, blossoms, for making our year better. All right, let's get a move on. We'll go back to the river and then. I'm just really happy. I got a chance to give you guys a taste of what it really is like.

13:21 John Daub: We saw a little bit of Waino [?], but the blossoms are so early this year that we still had kind of a chill. It was weird weather. They came out so early. So typically I think it would be a week later. You'd have them into the first week. This is April 1st. I didn't expect them to hold on this long, but the timing was really good. The rain. There's always a rain that hits. Some, but they didn't. They didn't. The rain came when they were just at like 90% and they hang on when they're at 90% because they're still kind of fresh onto there. Hey, Tedster is here. Got to find Bill. I just figured out that TDSDR was Tedster. It took a while. I think it's because I was watching that Keanu Reeves movie recently.

14:25 John Daub: We got the blossoms here flying right at me. I can smell grilling meat. It smells so good. I have yet to see Spaceboat go by here. Speak of the devil. Hey, so do you know what's to my right? Tedster, do you know what's coming up? Somebody cue the music. The Doctor Who song is it anyone playing Doctor Who in their minds? Wow. Is that the Hotel Luna? They we saw it a few times and they're starting to get the people out a little bit earlier. Typically the Spaceboat. The boat from space. That neither submerges nor flies. It just kind of cruises.

15:43 John Daub: You used to not be able to get out onto the deck this early. They would wait until you got out to Tokyo Bay. But now they're starting to get allowed tourists to get out onto the deck a lot earlier. Perhaps they're loading in more people and I'm glad for that because they took a hit when there weren't any tourists here and they kept operating the boats with nobody in them. And now I really think that they should be making some money off of this. So I'm kind of happy. Let's wave to them and see Nagoya John. It's the boat. The plane boss. The plane might be a little bit too old for some of you.

16:24 John Daub: Wow. Let's see if anybody waves at us here. I'm waving at them. Waving. Spaceboat people. Wave back. Acknowledge me. We got somebody. That's awesome. We got somebody waving back. I always thought spaceboats should even go slower I think. This is like warp speed for them. I'm used to waving at random people, Pirate Queen. You know why? Because Leo does it. And if Leo's waving at people and I'm not, I look like an idiot so I have to wave at them too. Well, no, Leo looks like an idiot so I have to, if we both do it then we're together in it. So. He waves to the bus driver. He waves to the garbage man. He waves to boats passing by. He waves to dogs. He waved to the pigeon. He's not waving to the crows. And that definitely is better for all of us.

17:51 John Daub: Alright, so I'm going to walk up to the steps here. And then we'll take one last look back at the beautiful cherry blossoms and the hanami parties that are going on. Probably today and maybe tomorrow the last days of this. I smell hot dogs. It smells like a ballpark, like a baseball game. Just walking by here. It's set up like it's some sort of an event. Ah, hey! Oh, wow. Okay, let's look back here. How cool is that? Wow, I haven't seen like parties here. It just looks so surreal to me.

19:28 John Daub: So there you go. I hope this helps you get an idea of what the cherry blossom season is like. I know we really haven't had much of it over the last few years, it's been sad. Whenever I was doing live streams in the spring, I just felt like I wasn't really giving you a good impression of Japan. Look at the flurries over there. Wow, they're falling pretty good now. I didn't think that was giving you like a really good impression of Japan because of the pandemic. And everybody had masks on. It didn't look like a really friendly face. It looked like what it was. And now this for me is a real confirmation that Japan is good. It's back, baby. It's the way it's supposed to be. I'm pretty excited about it. And I'm happy to be traveling again, making episodes.

20:29 John Daub: If you haven't already, please go back and take a look at the last episode I put online, which is about the world's oldest hotel. It's a fascinating story. 52 generations of the same family ran this from the year 705 A.D. And then the story is even better. Because the 53rd owner of it is now outside the family. And he took over. He used to be a general manager for the hotel. He took over in 2017 from the 52nd Fujiwara family. And this has become his life now. And I think that's a wonderful story. I put some love into it. So I hope you enjoyed it. Leave me a comment if you did. And if you didn't, it's okay. I could have made that episode like two hours long.

21:24 John Daub: All right, everybody. Thanks for joining me. I hope you had a good time. I'll see you again in another live stream, maybe tomorrow, as we move away from the cherry blossoms and into, like, maybe some ramen. Bowl of udon. Some traveling. Other prefectures. Have a nice day. See you guys.