00:02 John Daub: Hello everybody! This is Tokyo sui (Tokyo water), which is basically a drinking fountain. However, I just noticed this in the city of Tokyo. Check this out. This is a water dispenser. All you have to do is put your water bottle in, push the button, and it'll give you free water. I just happen to have a water bottle here. And it's funny though because Tokyo is famous for those vending machines over there. I wonder if this is going to do any damage to those. I mean, it's free! And it's right here.

00:46 John Daub: How you doing everybody? We all, over the last several years, have been buying water more and more. I can't figure out why. I actually at home drink normal tap water. There's some places where you can filter it at the supermarket. We have these 4-liter jugs. You can take it and get free filtered water. I haven't paid for water except yesterday when I did because it's so convenient. But I think it's really great that the city of Tokyo is doing stuff like this. And in this episode, I'm going to be comparing the water quality from here with the ones from the vending machine.

01:21 John Daub: So I just went to get some water from the vending machine. And I picked out a couple of brands here. This is the number one for 130 yen, which is about 90 cents. I went in and I bought the Suntory water. I think everybody who's ever been to Japan has had this before. About 95 cents for this. It's so convenient. I like the packaging. I'm just used to the brand actually because it's cold. It comes from Minami Alps (southern Alps). They actually get it from snow from the Alps. But if you look at the other vending machines, you see every vending machine now has water in the center, eye level. It's the first thing that you almost look at. Sometimes the water's flavored. This one with salty lemon. I would never buy that. But there's Evian, the French water. And then there's Tansan sui (carbonated water). And I buy this because I like the bubbles. And it's healthier than Coca-Cola. And here's another water brand that's new, that just came out. How good could this thing be?

02:32 John Daub: So what we're going to do is to try the Tokyo water. And they're putting these all over the city. This is the first time I've seen it here. Let's give it a try right now. All right. Open. Slide it. All right. Oh, it's an auto close. So I'm putting it right in the middle. Push the button. And does it fill? It does. It looks like carbonated water. I think this takes up to one-liter bottles. So you can fill it as much as you want. And there you go. Tokyo free water. I made this with my Daio printer [?]. How good is it? On a hot day, it's actually kind of cool. On a hot day, anything is good if it's water. But itadakimasu (let's eat/drink). It's good. Like, why would you buy water after this? It's cold, which is odd because it's coming from this, which are water fountains.

03:50 John Daub: We used to use these back in the olden days. Like, there might be some kids like water fountains. Really? Yeah. We used to use these back in the days. These are in every train station. They're in every department store. Every shop has one of these water fountains. But lately, I've been seeing them less and less because they're not used. Because everybody prefers to buy the water. Maybe because it's cleaner. But in Tokyo, you don't have to do that. Here's what a water fountain looks like. And you know what? It works. But I think especially during the pandemic, I think we all got a little bit overly worried about stuff.

04:38 John Daub: Alright, now I see Michael Zasanoff [?] is in the house. And he kind of writes it here to help pay for free water. Really? Okay. There's my bike over there. And I saw the cop and I was a little bit worried. I thought maybe they were angry. He was coming after me. Alright, Michael. Thank you. I'm so glad I made the last train. I wondered if Japan sells alkaline water. They sell everything. There's fiber water. Alright. This is not chest hair. Just so you know. It's the microphone.

05:13 John Daub: So I have here the two waters that I purchased. So Katayama [?], there you go. This is the new one called Miyu water. And this is the Minami Alps natural mineral water from Suntory. This is the most popular brand in Japan. Surprisingly, not a Coca-Cola one. And this is the Tokyo free water. So we're going to kind of taste it for you so then you can make an educated decision on your own. Alright. Let's go with the base here. Refreshing. Cold. Pleasant. No smell. Just expected. Slightly colder.

06:21 John Daub: You know, I think the one thing that I've noticed with these bottled waters is that it does have a little bit of a plastic taste to it because it's been sitting in plastic for as long as it was bottled. But you do get a 550ml bottle which is more than what would come from a Coca-Cola. Right. So that they're giving you a little bit extra water. Although it doesn't really cost them that much. Although I told you they actually bulldoze the snow and melt it which is where this comes from. And then they process that. But it's refreshing and good. And cold. Which is important. But is it better? I like this better. I like this better. I'm coughing because it went down the... I kind of have a little bit of a cold today. Why the heck am I paying for water? And why doesn't the city which is elected by the people put more of these in? Is it because of business? I just don't think we should buy water.

07:32 John Daub: Alright. Let's try this Miyu one. I did get this because I was also curious. I thought we needed a second water as a base to kind of figure this out here. So I went in and I put in 120 yen. Which is less than the other water by 10 yen. Because it's new. And we're going to try Miyu water here. How much better could it be? There's only one way to find out. There's like this... So they put this magnesium salt in here or something. I can see the kanji for salt. Shio (salt) and magnesium. So they've added in some ingredients. It's 250 milliliters like its competitor. It tastes... It has like this sort of a natural sweetness like coconut water. But it's water. I don't know if it's doing anything that justifies the 90 cents or 120 yen price point.

09:07 John Daub: And now I'm trying this one. I like this. Tokyo gets a bad rap for the city water. It does not taste as chlorinated and as strong as New York City water. It's so much better. It comes from an aquifer outside the city. It's filtered. It's good. It travels in pipes. It doesn't have any plastic smell to it. That's refreshing and it'll keep you cool. And it's coming out of the water fountain. It's cool on a hot day like today where you need to have your chest hair exposed. The great thing about this is that I can dump out this water and I can fill it with free water which doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense so I'm not going to do that. But the bottom line is that these water dispensers work well and they're free.

10:01 John Daub: Happy Fourth of July everybody. Happy Independence Day. Down with the Brits. No taxation without representation. Only the Americans will understand that. The Brits are going we've been fighting this for ourselves at home for a long time. It's good. I love water fountains. I wish there was one where it would automatically turn on when you put your head near there. But there you go. So in the end, the Tokyo Free Water Dispenser wins the day. You know what? I want to share this water with this tree here. So let's give the tree some water. A hot day. It's not even going to get to the roots I bet. Poor trees like landlocked with urban stuff.

11:05 John Daub: I'm going to take you over there to take a look at the water at those vending machines. But first, because I shared my water with the tree, we love trees. Let's go in here one more time. Again, inside there you can see 280, 500 milliliters. I think it goes up to 1000 milliliters. You just have to put it in the center. And then I think you can keep the door open. So let's do it. Hit the like button as I power my thumb. Three, two, one. I can feel the likes coming in. Whoa. Free water. Is this legal? Let's do it again. This is kind of fun. I guess we can do it because it's free. There's the spout up there. Oh baby. Free water. That looks so good. When it's going in the bottle like that. Wow. It's the price of freedom. Alright, let's not waste it. It's going right back where it came from to be filtered. It is good to conserve water. Let that be a lesson. People from California cringing.

13:05 John Daub: Hey, you know what? Japan gets tens of thousands of kilograms of your almonds and your produce. Thank you for your water. I don't know. That's a big problem right now in California. Speaking of which, I was watching that skit, the Californians on Saturday Night Live with Kate McKinnon [?]. She's cracking up the whole time. What are you doing here, Stuart? Alright, let's check out what's here at this vending machine. I dropped my water. Oh look, they do have it here. This is the Miyu, the water we saw before. If I'm ever going to buy water, it's always going to be this carbonated one. I think it's a carbonated one because I think that there's value in bubbles. I don't know because that's not something that normally is done. It requires energy and work. 120 yen worth, I'm not sure, but I do get a lot of carbonated water because the other ones just have sugar and stuff in it.

14:13 John Daub: Japanese drinks in general do not have, well, there's Pocari Sweat that has sweat in it. No, it doesn't. This is the Asahi bottled water. You get 600 milliliters. So they give you more for less. And thus, it's sold out. No, no, it isn't. It's okay. So for 110 yen, but does it taste better? I'm not sure. And then here's the Daido [?], the Miyu water again. Oh, this is the Mitsui Cider. You know what? This comes out frozen and when you open it, it's, no wait, it comes out not frozen. When you open it, it freezes. It's so cool. The cold experience they call it. Boom. So, yeah. It's a good thing.

15:03 John Daub: Frank, the tank is here. Finally caught you live again. You had quite the crowd following you in Ameyoko the other day. I did. I'm coming to Japan in September and going to Suzuka for the F1. Awesome. Have a great day. You know, my buddy, Andrew, I believe he works at this Tokyo Ale Works, which is over there. Huge, huge F1 fan. Like he travels down to Shikoku to watch a lot of the stuff they do. And he himself rides a motorcycle for speed. He used to brew his own beer, too. I've seen him working in there. I met him at an English school, Gaba, back in the day. But now we, you know, don't do that. So that's it. You have the vending machines over there, which will cost you a dollar for each one. You get a plastic bottle. But if you do have your own, guess what? You get to use your own.

15:56 John Daub: How you doing? Oh, great. And you can use these water fountains here, which are really cool. Really good as well. Do they have those in other parts of the city? I've only seen it here. Yeah, they have one or two, but they don't have a lot of these refill stations like this. It's too bad. I use MyMizu, which is an app to find refillable water. Oh, that's great. MyMizu. Oh, cool. It means my water (my mizu). Right, right, right. I didn't know there was an app where you could search. Yeah. So, you know, the two co-founders there. It started an app. It goes all around Japan. And so wherever you need to fill up your water bottles, you can go. So whether it's a restaurant, an office, something like this, you can actually map it out. Oh, cool. Yeah. So you're on it. You're already taking a video about it. But yeah, MyMizu is a great app to download. Thanks for the suggestion. Yeah, no problem. I appreciate it.

17:02 John Daub: I didn't know there was an app. So MyMizu is an app that'll help you find water dispenser points. And, you know, I don't know how you feel about the governor Koike here, but it's a political thing. But one thing that she has been pretty vocal about is the reduction of plastic. And if you go to stores in Tokyo, you cannot get plastic bags automatically now. You have to pay extra. So, of course, they need to give you a bag or else you wouldn't be able to carry it. It's still not. People aren't quite used to it. So that's still an option. But these types of things will help. These will help to reduce plastic. I just don't know how they're going to balance it with public businesses that are now making money off of selling water. And now they have these free dispenser points. I would like to see more people carry their own bottles and then refill the water.

17:56 John Daub: And for me, it's really good to see, I think for a lot of you too, to see Tokyo doing just that, right? You would expect them to be on the forefront, you know, being Japan. A lot of things. And water is the most important thing. So I think having an empty bottle and then using it to fill it up. I didn't know that people actually used it. And now we're seeing that. People filling up their water bottles. That's right. The app, I haven't downloaded it myself. Kyou no no kuma [?]. MyMizu. M-Y-M-I-Z-U. Download the app and apparently this will help you find other water dispensing points. So you don't have to pay for the water. But more importantly as the financial hit of something that should be free in Japan, you can save using plastic. And I think if we use less of it, that's always a good thing too. Right? I think we're also ingesting the plastic by using too much of the plastic. I think a little bit of that gets ingested. And that's why maybe some of us don't feel so well who always drink from plastic bottles. I don't know. That's controversial.

19:18 John Daub: But there you go. The heart of Tokyo. This is in Yurakucho. You can find it right here. This is exactly where we are right now. And in front of the international forum. Come here and have some water. If your hotel is nearby, you can come and push the same button that I just did because it's kind of cool. And you'll get some water. And support the water movement. I'm an activist now. No, actually, this is a smart idea. Alright, I'll take some questions here because this is a little bit of a long video. I'm going to do a live stream and I want to hear from a lot of you guys. What do you think about this? Do you have this in your own city? And do you think that it is wrong or right? Or do you think the city should do more of this? Do you think other cities should do more of this? I read somewhere that Slovenia has beer fountains. I was in Slovenia 23 years ago and I don't remember that. It might be like a social media thing. Back then we didn't have social media. That'd be cool though.

20:33 John Daub: You should put in the link in the description. I will. I just found out from it. This is the great thing about human beings. We share information. That was cool. He stopped by and he gave me a good tip. If you haven't already seen the video here. So my friend Peter von Gomm and I, we went out on a Hokkaido expedition adventure. And we rented motorcycles and rode around Hokkaido. And this is also available here. A lot of stuff did happen. And the reason I bring this up is because I was a beginner rider and I fell down a lot of times. And I show you that because I want everybody to understand that you're going to fall down to learn. And I haven't fallen since by the way. I've rented the bikes. I think we did it three times since and I haven't fallen. So I learned from that. But the important thing is that I learned from other people. I learned from other riders. And I asked a lot of questions. And I got a lot of advice. And that's how we kind of grow as people.

21:32 John Daub: The pandemic, we were trapped inside not having that kind of interaction. Just with whatever we saw on social media. So I think it's good to meet people in person now. For me, I was kind of stoked. I'm just hanging around a water dispensary. I just saw in Dubai that they had a water bar. Like a water restaurant or something. A water bar. And they sell water. And they have water with like lemons and fruits and stuff in there. Alright, yeah. I can see that as maybe it's hard to get for Dubai. But I think perhaps people were going a little bit too far. Yeah. I think we're going a little bit too far.

22:20 John Daub: Alright. Any other questions or comments here? I think it's a great idea. Saves money for us. And the government has to pay to recycle the bottles. Saves environment from too much plastic. Actually, the government, I don't know if they actually pick up the recycling. I'm not sure who. You could be right. I just know that the recycling is not picked up by the city. It's picked up by the dispensary, the companies that sell the drinks. You see the recycle bins to the left of them? And those plastic bottles are then put into bags that are reusable, by the way. And they're thrown on the top of the trucks that refill those vending machines. There's another blue vending machine over there. And then when they get back to the warehouse, they then put it into another truck that takes it to the recycling place. But the bottom line is it does take a lot of gasoline and energy to go and recycle that.

23:17 John Daub: Like you see here. Like this is just an example. They'll throw it on the top of the truck there. So that's what I'm trying to illustrate, which is a great use of space. So then there's an opening, kind of an opening on the top of the drink trucks. And then the sides will open up so that they can refill the machines. Japanese ingenuity. Carrie writes in here. Hey, Carrie. Queensland cities have filtered water stations in most public spaces. That's really cool. I think that, you know, I've had for the last 15 years. Now, Tokyo, you can still find this in some of the old neighborhoods in Tokyo. There are water pumps. Before there was, I guess after World War II and even before that, yeah, before World War II, there were these community water pumps all over Japan to wells where people would pump their own water. And your neighbors and this was you would wait with buckets or containers to fill water to take home for cooking, for toilets, for everything back then. And you have to go to the pump. Sometimes kids would go there. Their parents would send them to do it like 100 years ago. You could still find these around the city of Tokyo. In fact, there's some in Sumida [?], which is where you'll find the old nagaya (row houses) still are. And that old culture.

24:47 John Daub: Now we have it for free right there. And I think that this is great because it kind of goes with the tradition of Japan has with these water pumps being community centers of exchanging information and talking with people. So I wish that Tokyo would bring that back. I never really had that. But the supermarkets are doing that in the sense like you can buy these four-liter PET bottles with a handle that you can hold. They also have two-liter ones. The four liters are better because you go less and you can fill up that with filtered water. That's just tap water that's been filtered. They change the filter. So you don't need any ones with that. So I'm not sure how we got lost with buying.

25:33 John Daub: I don't know why the signal's buffering. But all right, everybody. Thanks really soon as we talk about some other topics that are going on here in Tokyo. That's a nice kimono. This is so cool in the center of Tokyo. You'll find people wearing that. But this water point is right here in Yurakucho and I'll see you here again on this channel soon. Bye everybody.