00:00 John Daub: Hello everybody and welcome to the Torigoe Festival! Let's celebrate a little bit before we get to some of the street food. It is a beautiful sight and this is the main one here. And this is what people celebrate here. Then you have the street food here. And then you have me, just a hungry man, walking down the streets here in Tokyo.

01:23 John Daub: Today and this weekend, they have the annual Torigoe Festival. I'm glad that we could see that. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. I just want to give you a feel of what this festival is like. I've done livestreams here before. It's been a while because we're coming out of two, three years of not being out so much. But it is very special. We'll actually be playing the drums at one of the events if the rain doesn't come down. And it's just starting to sprinkle. We had a really heavy rain this morning.

01:54 John Daub: Let me show you where this is on the map here. So you can see Torigoe Shrine right in the middle of your screen. It's in Kuramae, near Kuramae Station, which is considered the Brooklyn of Tokyo. It's kind of a hip, stylish place that's up and coming. A lot of youth hostels in the area. A lot of buildings. It's close to the river, sort of near Ryogoku. But it's around the streets of the shrine that's in the center of your screen down there that the festival goes around and around. It's been going on for centuries, this festival. You'll see them walking around the streets on this weekend. And it is magical when you do catch it going by here. But it's also magical because of the street food that they have here. I'd say it feels like about 250 shops. Usually the shops from last year are the same shops that are here this year as well. This is the main thoroughfare, I guess. And if you just go straight and then take a left, you're pretty much at the shrine. I'll end up there. We're going to take a quick look around here.

02:56 John Daub: Here's a look at the festival a little bit more at street level. So there's Leo. He's dressed up in his festival wear. And he's really obsessed with the taiko drums. And you can't blame him. It's pretty exciting. Here comes the omikoshi (portable shrine). So let's get a feel of it going down the street with some music here. This is the main one, by the way. It's quite heavy. Look at that golden bird on the top there. A lot of people carrying it.

03:35 Kanae Daub: Kana, you carried it before?

03:37 John Daub: Oh, you did? A long time ago? Me too. Ah, yeah. It's a lot for him to see for his first time to be street level with the festival here. These are the omikoshi going down the street here. So I'm going to walk around with some of the food. Show you around. And then I want to show you a little bit of the shrine. I don't think the signal's too good there. But you get a lot of this usual fare. If you've been to any Japanese festival, you're going to see it. Like the Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, which is what we have right there. You can see it in the middle of your screen. Big healthy serving of mayonnaise on top of there. Sometimes they have maidamayaki, which is the egg yolk.

04:34 Kanae Daub: So, are you going to go to the shrine?

04:41 John Daub: Yeah, okay. Alright, so we gotta make this quick. Leo, say bye-bye.

04:44 Leo: Bye-bye.

04:49 John Daub: He has matsuri (festival) wear. He's wearing today festival clothing. Unfortunately, the rain is starting to come down. I don't know if he's going to actually get to play the drums today. What do you have? Pom-poms? He has a baby castella. So he can spin the pom-poms. Okay. Alright, I'll see you in 10 minutes. You guys gotta bye-bye. Alright, let's go on a tour here. I'm going to livestream. If he starts crying and stuff, it can be embarrassing. In 20 years, this could come back and haunt the poor kid. Every episode that I've ever done could come back and haunt me. So, let's see what we can find. Maybe get some food.

05:33 John Daub: This is, oh wow, yakitama buta. I've had this before. It has pieces of pork on top of there. Do you see that? Oh man, that looks so good. Let's keep going. Walk down the street. I was going to buy one of these masks, but Kanae told me not to because it was 1000 yen. 8 dollars for this plastic mask. That's usually 100 yen. She just looked at me and said, nope. Like she just could not do it. Look at the octopus out here. They're making takoyaki at this booth here. Wow, 600 yen for that. This is Kanae's favorite food, champimyon (Korean cold noodles). And there's yakisoba, big serving. That's the thicker noodles there. There's the egg yolk type and then you have the chocolate banana there. That's a new one here, these 10 yen coins. There's some squid, grilling squid you can tell. Lots and lots of booths around here. There's tapioca in Korean. Let's walk down this street just for a second and then I'll swing back around here. Maybe we're going to get some of the karaage (deep-fried chicken), which is one of my favorites. There's a hot dog booth. There's not too much on this side. Let's go back down the other alley. There's some pineapple. And then if you walk down here, oh, is that the oyaki? That's one of my favorites, the oyaki there. These 10 yen coins of cheese have been really popular.

07:35 John Daub: I'm going to get one of these oyaki because this is one of my favorites. There's the Hiroshima. The Hiroshima yaki with the egg on top of it. These are usually about 600 yen. They're so hot. So make sure you don't burn your mouth. Hiroshima okonomiyaki is different than Kansai, the Osaka version because you see there, it has noodles on the bottom of it. And that sometimes makes it even better than the Osaka version. At least if me and Kevin Riley have a debate, I will always pick this and he'll always pick his national version.

08:12 John Daub: Bradshaw Studios in the house, nice to see you. And Michael Sassano, good to see you buddy. Hi John, hard to imagine not that long ago this was pretty empty. I know! It's really changed quite a bit. Alright, let's go get that oyaki.

08:36 John Daub: Nasu miso onegaishimasu (eggplant miso, please). Arigatou gozaimasu (thank you very much). 300 yen. Arigatou gozaimasu. Thank you. Do you want a drink? Oh, it's so hot. Look at those big potatoes. Wow, those girls had these spiral potatoes. I guess they call them like tunnel potatoes. I forget what it was. Potatoes.

09:28 John Daub: Alright, this is in front of Torigoe Shrine right there. So let's try this oyaki. Oyaki basically, this is one of my favorite foods. It's like a hot pocket. Usually grannies will make this out in the countryside, especially in the winter. And you can pick out, and usually there's like 20 different flavors. Traditional stuff like this one is eggplant and miso. There's pumpkin or kabocha (Japanese pumpkin), which I really like. They'll have some sweet ones, sweet potato. They'll even have some mochi and black honey, things like this. So you could get like a donut's place, get a dozen of these and chomp on them. Mmm, this one's really doughy. Mmm, I don't think it's quite done. The miso gives a little bit of sweetness to it. And then the eggplant has, you know, like that consistency. It's been grilled. That's quite nice, but I think that the bread's not quite done. Mmm. That's nice.

10:44 John Daub: I want to show you just for a little bit inside of the shrine because I want you... Hey, Cobra Bebop's here! Long time no see! This is the Torigoe Festival. I think I put it in the title of the video. And North by North is here. Nice to see ya. So the thing with this festival is that it is still a festival for the shrine. So there's lots of food. Oh, there's a car coming through. Hold on. There's a car going through. It's not... The shrine is not so attractive when there's a car coming through. But people, when they're a little bit older, they'll allow them to come in via car for accessibility. I think that that's fair. During the festival days, they'll bring out the colors. It's a very peaceful place. And during New Year's, this is one of the shrines that the family will come to. Arthur Vandelees in the house! And the shrines with the family will come to celebrate hatsumode (first shrine visit of the New Year), which is the New Year's prayers. Starting on the 31st at midnight and going on until about the fifth day of January. But it could go on to... I think some of them might go on by the seventh. But if you're usually local, you'll get your prayers in the first few days.

12:21 John Daub: Alright, now that you've seen the shrine, there's the Torigoe. Let's go back out and see some more street food. Tonight I'll be in a plane heading to Honolulu. This is a nice last minute celebration, a nice last minute stream. Get some Japan before I get some Hawaii. The aloha. Oh man, that karaage looked good. Deep fried chicken right there. You can see from there the squid. So the squid booth, I always like this. It's quite healthy. It starts at 400 yen and it's chewy. So it'll last for a while. So I do like squid and I think they put some cheese in there. But these 10 yen coins with cheese in there, you see on the left side, they're quite popular now. I did a live stream when they first came out. It started at a Don Quixote, if I remember correctly, in the shape of a 10 yen coin, which is brown. So makes a lot of sense. These are baby castella (small castella cakes), which are the Japanese cakes. And he's turning it there. Usually they pop them out of the machine. It's kind of fun to see when they're actually done.

14:03 John Daub: Anthony's here. It's been a while. Yeah. Nice to see you, Anthony. Thank you. I'm going to get... We just got 20 baby castella for Leo and he's been chomping on that. So I'll find some more stuff to get him. And Stepu Hu. How you doing? From Indonesia. Oh, this is candy here. You see this? They put it on a block of ice to make it hard. You see that? And this candy, it eventually melts in your mouth, but I like the presentation of it. The block of ice is a nice touch. And this takoyaki looks really good. I don't think you get fresher than that when you have the octopus out like this on the street. You know it's going to be good takoyaki.

15:03 John Daub: All right. So the question is, what do you guys want? I got one more snack left in me. I got takoyaki. We've got karaage chicken. I'm going to let you guys vote right here, right now. It's up to you. We got karaage deep-fried Japanese chicken. We've got takoyaki, which looks really good. You saw how fresh it was. We also have baby castella and we have the buta tamayaki, which is the pork. It looks like a big chunk of bacon inside of a... I'll show you again. But you guys have about one minute to decide because I got to go and... I got to go and get Leo.

15:41 John Daub: It was this one here. So which one should I get here? This is the buta tamayaki. You see it's basically grilled big pieces of pork in the middle of it. People are saying it's not really bacon. It's pork. So it doesn't have the cured salty taste. That's quite good. Maybe even a little bit healthier. People are going takoyaki, tamayaki. Alright, we're getting... This is a pretty good mix. The chicken, chicken, takoyaki, Japanese chicken, tamayaki, a dessert, karaage. Carrie goes karaage. That Van chick. All of them. Oh, Van, come on. I'll tell you this. If you do come to the festival, I do highly recommend getting this Thai ramen from Thailand. We get this every single year, at least once. And it's really good. And it's always here right here on the corner.

16:46 John Daub: Alright, 30 seconds. Thank you, Jim. I see you're here and I will absolutely get something. Trust me. My suitcase is coming back fully packed. And there's a postcard on the way to you, my friend. By the way, just a shout out. This live stream is brought to you by you. To everybody who supports on the postcard club. This is this month's postcard. If you saw the video that just dropped a few days ago with me and Scotty from Strange Parts. We went to this vending machine park. And this has about, I don't know, like 30 of the machines. And on the back there's a picture of me and Scotty from the shoot with the owner. So I will send this to you if you guys join the postcard club on Patreon. And I sent this one to you, HelloHi821. So there's one on the way, which is exciting.

17:46 John Daub: Alright, it looks like, it looks like the chicken. It looks like I'm going to get this buta tamayaki because it's just closer. Iron Iconic Balls writes in here, that video went viral. I don't know if 100,000 views is viral. It's pretty good. But it's still like 30% of your subscriber base, right? Thank you.

18:24 John Daub: Mayonnaise, please. Thank you. Please. Thank you. Thank you. You can see the piece of pork on top of there, right? It looks like a big chunk of bacon. Oh my gosh, it's hot. I know you say karaage but this, when the food's right in front of you, it's, it's, and you're running out of time because your son is going to go play drums. Alright, let's try this. It is, oh my god, it's so hot. See, I knew that this, oh gosh, it's so hot. I can't do this. Oh, ah, ah, hot, hot, hot. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. I have to put this on somebody's, oh my gosh, it is so hot. They put on katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes), which are petrified fish flakes, which is so good. There's the mayonnaise on top of there. It looks like a mess. It looked a lot better when it was on the grill. But I already got my jacket right there. It's part of the experience of eating live.

20:20 John Daub: Put the tripod here. Let's see if we can find a place to sit down and eat. So what people do is they just go in the corner and squat. So that's how I'm a squatter now. Alright, I'm squatting. Itadakimasu (let's eat). I can't even eat this. This is, it's ridiculous. You have no idea how hot this thing is. It's burning my hand. Alright, we're going to open this up together. Ready? Oh my gosh, here we go. Three, two, one. Oh, it burns. Oh, it burns. It smells really good and it burns. Oh my gosh, it's so hot. I'm surprised it's not melting through the plastic like alien blood. If you've ever seen Aliens, you shoot one of those things, that blood goes through the spaceship. It's the last thing you want to do.

21:28 John Daub: Alright, let's do this. It's so hot. If it weren't hot, I would be, you know what? It's funny. If it weren't hot, I'd be more worried, right? Oh, you got the beni shoga (pickled red ginger), a little red ginger in there. Do you want to try it? Mmm. It's basically... I see Jason's here. How you doing? This is basically... It's like, it's acid hot. Jason. This is basically takoyaki, but in a big flat, big circle format. Okay, it's like a takoyaki pancake, I guess you could say. Instead of octopus in the middle, it's pork, which I'm going to show you right now. It's a piece of pork. You'll notice if I turn it around the other side. There you go. It's not bacon. It's not bacon. Holy smokes, it's hot. Oh, it's burning my hand. It is quite good. It's the sauce there. Do you see the sauce? Also very sweet, but also tangy. I think it's a soy-based sauce. Salty, somewhat sweet, tangy. And it's soft. It's got kind of an eggy taste. So definitely use eggs in the batter. This is really good. There's nothing you can't complain with the guttata. They also have something called osakayaki, which is like an okonomiyaki, but it's in a capsule form like this in these round shapes. It fits better in the hands. That's why they call it not okonomiyaki, but osakayaki for those.

24:03 John Daub: And this is what the bag is for. So you don't have to eat it all at one time. I can save it. Save a little bit for later. And that's what I'm going to do. That's a lot of food. That's a lot of food. Hey, is that Rainer? Hey, Rainer's here. How you doing, buddy? Your postcard's going out too. That is a lot of food. That's just so hot. It's like burning a hole through my hand. All right.

24:53 John Daub: I'm going to take you guys one more time through the festival just to give you a feel for it. And I think at the end, there's the ohashi-yaki. Ohashi are chopsticks, right? So what they do is they take like an okonomiyaki and they wrap it around the chopsticks. And I thought that was kind of a very creative dish. So let's go to the end of the line here and take one look at that. I'm really, really glad that the rain has held off. These are cheese balls. And the sign has these crystals on it. Look how nice that cheese is. Look at it. It looks like a disco chi. That's cute. Look at him. He's chopping the onions for the yakisoba. That's so smart when you do it fresh like that. You do it right in front so the customers can see the ingredients are fresh. That's really smart. Here's Hiroshima okonomiyaki. Again, they put all the ingredients in the front. And look at that cabbage shredder. That's super cool. I've never seen anything like that cabbage shredder. Wow. And they have the okonomiyaki right there going. Looks quite good. That one is, you know, the tamayaki that I got is quite good. But I don't know. If I had to do it over again, I might have gone for that Hiroshima okonomiyaki.

26:41 John Daub: Oh, there's some ayu fish. These are so good. It's summer, so they're in season. Ayu (sweetfish) is sweet fish from the river and grilled with salt like this. It's so good. You could eat the head and everything. 700 yen is a little pricey, but if it's real, like from a domestic river and all that. It's probably worth it. A lot of vitamins. Very healthy. I don't know about all that salt, but a lot of calcium and some good stuff in there. Here's yakitori (grilled chicken skewers). Look at that. Oh, they're grilling some good stuff right there. You can smell it wafting in the air.

27:29 John Daub: In the summer, you have to. It's good because all these street foods are local. I mean, it's not a chain, so it's really helping their business. I always wonder how they come up and they pick this certain. Dish I never understood. Like I'm going to make this is Miyazaki beef here. I'm Miyazaki chicken. Oh, wow. So I just did an episode on Miyazaki chicken. Do you guys see that one? Miyazaki is one of the three famous places for chicken. There's the old governor of Miyazaki. He promoted their chicken very heavily because he looked like a chicken. But yeah, jidori (free-range chicken). I did an episode on jidori chicken and it didn't do as well as this vending machines. But jidori chicken's a favorite. Hey, Brad, Daddy, I'll see you in like 12 hours or something. I still got to find something to bring for you and Michael. There's the candy apples. You want a candy apple? Will that make it? Wow. Look at that. I just want to take a big bite out of it. Hey, North by North writes in here. Buy a ukulele. Buy a ukulele. Buy a ukulele in Hawaii to bring back for Leo. I think I will. I will try to. You know, Kanae and I are going to be going back to Hawaii probably pretty soon after this. The reason why pure jealousy. The fact that I'm going for work to film a couple of episodes did not leave a good taste in Kanae's mouth. I can tell she's not exactly happy about that. That I'm going to Hawaii by myself, but I will be back.

29:28 John Daub: So this vendor here, he's taken the ten yen coin of cheese and turned it into a chicken. Turned it into 500 yen coin of cheese because it costs 500 yen. That's maybe smart. You can see the cheese. But I thought it was good, but I didn't think it was overwhelming. It just depends. I don't know. It's something to try once. Here's the here's the final here. The dress is very interesting. This is the festival where it's usually a fundoshi (traditional loincloth), but it's covered up by the happi (festival coat). And then here is the last one I wanted to show you here. This is a hashiyaki (chopstick savory pancake). She yucky. How she how she mucky. I should say sorry. And you can see he wrapped. He wraps it around a stick. So there's a lot of different things that you can get. The one with the egg is quite the maidamayaki. Amayaki? It's quite popular. That's pretty much it. That's a lot of street food. Here's the Oita karaage, which is deep fried chicken. This is always a must. You must get deep fried chicken here. Again, like I'm slightly on a diet here. I say slightly because I just broke it. But I did a pretty good job. You can see the chicken there and they're in there right now. They're actually got the raw chicken and picking it out. And the whole street here is just filled with all these different things to eat. And that's what really makes the festivals quite special. That's connected to something deeper, like with the shrine, the omikoshi going around here, the portable shrines. And you hear the music and the drum beats like we heard when we started this live stream. But it's also mixed in with the food on the left and the right. And the bigger the festival, the more the food is. The biggest street food festival in Tokyo is the one that's held in November. And the episode with the most views on this channel just happens to be of that festival. So, yeah, everybody likes street festival food.

31:46 John Daub: All right, everybody, thanks for watching. I got to go home and pack and get ready for a trip to Hawaii. I got a lot of filming to do. I am working on several episodes for the edited channel. Things are starting to pop here. If you didn't already, do check out the latest episode on Only in Japan. How food vending machines work as my friend Scotty from Strange Parts and I go inside of the vending machines and find out how they work, which is fascinating. You think they just use microwaves, but that was not the case. They used like old school technology. And if you haven't already, this video, I highly recommend checking out. This is the most beautiful tree in the world. It will inspire you to come in and to travel outside of Tokyo to go and see just one tree. It's that beautiful. It's like it hasn't been so popular. Here's the chicken chicken one that I was talking about as well. So if you haven't seen on the main channel, please go check him out. Leave me a comment. I like to hear from you. And I usually will see the notification and try to respond if you're asking me a direct question. All right. Maybe I'll see it. Not eat the airport in a few hours. I don't know. But I'll definitely see in Hawaii. As well. As long as I can find like a pocket Wi-Fi or something to do a live stream. I'll bring you with me and we'll do some Hawaii streams. Aloha. Get the spirit going. See everybody.