00:03 John Daub: How you doing everybody? So I'm going live again because I was walking past this and I saw a purple ice cream cone being promoted. And how could I not? This is Japan's answer to conserving, protecting the world from plastic, which I think is a pretty important thing to do. You can take a look at this. It's pretty cool. First of all, it's purple. We're going to check out what flavor it is. I don't think it's blueberry, but more importantly, it's the spoon. Now, I typically don't eat a spoon when I eat ice cream, but this spoon is a cookie.

00:38 John Daub: It's a cookie spoon. How genius is this? I'm pretty sure other people probably had come up with this idea before. This isn't just Mini Stop, but I thought I would enjoy this ice cream. Yeah, let's try this ice cream. I don't even know what flavor it is. It's not blueberry and it's maybe grape? I took some pictures. Here, check it out. So this is the ice cream. Juicy, soft, maybe grape?

01:41 John Daub: I think it might be grape. It says Nagano grape, Nagano purple. I know, right? I thought it was going to be like sweet potato or something, but no. Here's the menu. This is interesting too. The ice cream here, it was 330 yen, 356 yen with the tax. They had vanilla as well, which also looks pretty good. But all these other desserts on the menu here at a Mini Stop. And Mini Stop is so famous for its soft cream (soft serve ice cream). Everybody says if you're going to eat soft cream, ice cream at a convenience store, you got to go to Mini Stop. And they're right.

02:34 John Daub: I'm not actually going to eat the whole thing. There's no way. I'm going in about five minutes to this pancake shop. So this is a warm up, I think. I just had to show you this. So right now in Japan, there is an actual movement, which I think is great to try to use less plastic. And I think it's in a lot of places around the world. Of course, Japan does a really good job of recycling. You'll find PET bottles right in front of the vending machine.

03:04 John Daub: And I think that's one of the things to do is to not put your recycling in the proper order outside. You want to get in trouble with your neighbors. Don't follow the recycling rules of your neighborhood. Get in trouble really fast. But they still have plastic bags at supermarkets, but you have to pay for them. And this is a great thing. It happened about four or five years ago where you had to pay an extra three to five yen on top of it if you wanted a plastic bag. Now, of course, you still need a bag to carry stuff out. But as people get used to recycling, they're like, oh, I don't want to use plastic bags. So I'm bringing their own bags with them. I think it's pretty good. Pretty cool.

03:43 John Daub: That lady had a bag. She's one of the people who's smart and has a bag. So if you don't have a shopping eco bag, I guess they call them with you, you can still get them. But I've noticed that a lot of people buy them a lot, use them a lot less. And I guess that's a really good thing. But now if you can get rid of spoons, because they used to give spoons, that's a great thing. Then as Mini Stop does this, you can get rid of the plastic spoons.

04:07 John Daub: Yesterday we saw on the internets that 7-Eleven in Hiroshima started to individually wrap the coffee lids. That was also kind of the opposite of what Mini Stop is doing. I guess it's a sanitation thing because the coffee lids are usually anybody can pluck them from the counter and put the lid on. And I guess they've been wasting a lot of lids because maybe greasy fingers had touched one of them or something. You just don't know. So they individually wrapped each lid. It's like a little bit of plastic, but it's still more plastic. So I'm not sure if somebody were to get sick because of dirty fingers touching your lid, I wouldn't want a dirty finger lid. I don't know how to feel about that. But I want to hear your opinions. Tell me in the comments below, what do you think about 7-Eleven individually wrapping the coffee lids?

05:08 John Daub: I got to put the camera down to finish off this ice cream cone before I go and eat pancakes. This is an awful day. If you're trying to diet, don't come to Asakusa and diet. It's just not smart. Oh my gosh. This is really good. I'm not going to eat it all. Oh, the cone is great. This is a good ice cream cone. It's got a lot of volume to it. For 330 yen, I think it's pretty premium ice cream here. This is really good ice cream.

06:08 John Daub: You can get them in cups as well. But if you get it in a cup, you still get a cookie spoon. Which I think is awesome. It's really a pretty good ice cream cone. It's grape. That's what the cookie spoon looks like. It's a good idea. What do you think? Has Mini Stop earned your respect? It's earned mine. Alright, now to eat the spoon. Bye bye spoon. Oh! This does not taste like a waffle cone. It's more like the old school ice cream cones? Remember those? It was more crispy. It tastes like that. You can still use it as a spoon if you eat half of it. So if you make the mistake and eat your spoon, you still got enough to use it as a spoon. It's pleasing.

08:06 John Daub: I'm not gonna eat that whole thing. I can't eat that whole thing. Not if I'm gonna go eat pancakes. It was worth it though. You can try a little bit of everything. There's Tokyo Skytree in front of us. I just did this walk. If you wanna go see a longer livestream with more information and adventure, check out the one I did about 20 minutes ago. As we walked from Nakamise-dori (shopping street) in Asakusa by Senso-ji (temple) Temple all the way to Kappabashi (kitchenware district), which is where the utensils and kitchenware are. It was a really fun livestream.

09:03 John Daub: Skytree is showing itself. So the rain seems to be done for now. But it had been raining pretty hard this morning. I'm gonna be going running tonight. Johnny's going running tonight. Long gym session tonight. I ate a lot of carbohydrates today. But how do you avoid it? If you're visiting Japan, you cannot avoid it.

09:35 John Daub: Oh, look at the fish. They're gonna be sushi soon. Let's pay our respects to these sushi fish. Hasta la vista. See you then. Thanks everybody. Leave me a comment below. What do you think of the ideas that Japan has for conserving plastic and the ideas not to do it? Because 7-Eleven is individually wrapping its coffee lids. It goes one way. Somebody pulls and the other person tugs the other way. So I think in the end we end up at the same place. Maybe. Possibly. I don't know.

10:21 John Daub: Oh, and another thing. If you're riding a bicycle, it's good to know on the left side usually people are riding bikes and on the right side people are walking. So just keep that in mind. But for the most part, you should be riding a bicycle on the road. There's usually an arrow. If you're going to be riding a bicycle quickly, fast, don't ride it fast on the sidewalks. Ride it on the roads. That's what you're supposed to do.

10:48 John Daub: Oh look more sushi. Oh there's fugu (pufferfish). Hey look at the big puffer fish. How you doing? I would totally go in there and save you. I think there's little that I can do. These are puffer fish that are going to become somebody's dinner. Or lunch. Freaked him out. A lot of them are farmed so the poison is not really, I don't know. It's not really the same as it used to be anymore. Kind of an insider thing. So you have to ask, has the fugu been, is it farmed fugu or is it wild fugu from the ocean? Or is it genetically modified fugu with liver and that has no poison? Imagine getting one of those fugu and trying to be a crab. And then being a criminal and using that to do something awful. And then finding out that actually it was fine. Because it's a genetically modified fugu. Like a James Bond episode where the bad guy failed.

12:19 John Daub: Jared show the aloha. I will see you soon. I think we're talking right now for the meet up on Tuesday at 5:30pm at a shopping mall. I think. But I'll put it on Facebook. The event. Maybe people can sign up.

12:41 John Daub: It's time for me to eat some pancakes. That ice cream cone by the way is the first thing that I've eaten today. 3pm. I'm getting better. I don't have sugar cravings anymore. Until now. I think I just blew a hole through it. Alright here's the pancake place I'm going to eat at. There's already people waiting in front. You need a reservation. And mine is at... Let me see here. They gave me this. I had to make a deposit for my pancakes. It's at 3:40pm. I had to pay a 1000 yen deposit. And my meal starts at 3:45pm. So I can't be late. It's souffle pancakes. Apparently they're a big deal. So much so I had to wait 2 hours. But the good thing is that I got 2 live streams today. And I could share a little bit more information from Asakusa.

13:46 John Daub: Check out this new apartment building. Someone's going to move in there. Across the street from the pancakes. Alright everybody. If you would take a left here. You'd get to Sensoji. The Kaminarimon (Thunder Gate). The big gate to Senso-ji Temple. That's quite famous. And I will see you again in another live stream tomorrow. This is fun. Thank you to Mini Stop for this delicious grape ice cream. And cookie spoon. It really was. It was worth the experience to try it. Bye everybody.