00:01:00 John Daub: Hello, welcome to Tokyo. That right there is the schedule for the 2024 sakura (cherry blossom) season. In this episode, I'm going to go over it with some surprising information. I'll tell you right now, it's later than we thought by a few days. That might be significant for some people. You can't plan your trip around the cherry blossoms. I say that every year, but people do it anyway. Why not? It's an adventure. Right behind me are cherry blossom trees. In fact, the entire Sumida River, just about everywhere you go, you're going to find a Somei Yoshino variety—the one with the white blossoms. So beautiful.

00:37:00 John Daub: We'll take a look at them, as well as look at the maps, and I will go over every single location in Japan, save maybe Okinawa, because they're already blooming or finished there. It's going to be an interesting episode. Let's get right into it. It's quite windy right here, so I do apologize if there's any wind noise. This is the full map of the whole country. You can see down in the southwest is Kagoshima, and in the northeast, Hokkaido up in the top of the screen. The cherry blossoms do not bloom at the same time. And this is one of the biggest confusions for international tourists. They think, oh, I might miss the cherry blossoms. Actually, if you're coming anytime between mid-March and the beginning of May, you could possibly see cherry blossoms all over the country.

01:34:00 John Daub: They stop blooming around June up in the very north in Wakkanai in Hokkaido, where that green area is. But the majority of people are in the zone between Osaka and Tokyo, and that's what we'll also focus on today. So let's start off at the region. Let's take a look at the situation right now. If you look over there across the river, that's the Tokyo skyline, and you can see the cherry blossoms right there. It's a nice sunny day, but quite windy. On the lower part of your screen, you'll see a ton of bare trees. Those are actually cherry blossom trees, Somei Yoshino variety, and there's nothing on them yet. That doesn't mean that the other cherry blossoms aren't blooming. Wow, it is really windy here. These are cherry blossoms. We're going to walk over there and take a look at them and just to see what's going on.

02:33:00 John Daub: We'll see where we are according to this schedule. Let's start off down where everybody is probably tuning in to right now, the Tokyo area. This is the Tokyo-Kanto area. You can see that Tokyo is slated to have the cherry blossoms come in pretty early, around March 20th, which is about 5 weeks from now. That seems pretty early. But cherry blossoms are pretty much done in Tokyo around April 2nd or 3rd. The first rain around that time, the first weekend usually, the rain or the wind blows them all away once they get to mankai (full bloom), which is 100%. It's interesting that the Tokyo area in the red there is one of the first places, basically because the Pacific side of Japan is warmer than the Sea of Japan side, and thus the cherry blossoms will bloom earlier. The urban heat in Tokyo, the asphalt also makes the surrounding areas warmer, so the trees do bloom earlier as a result.

03:44:00 John Daub: The later regions in the center, also because of the mountains—that's where the Japanese Alps are. You can see pretty close to Tokyo, if you just go up to elevation, the cherry blossoms blooming at a different time of the year. Up on the top of the screen is Utsunomiya, March 26th. At the bottom of the screen, Nagano at April 3rd. So that's the window of the area surrounding Tokyo. Nagano being of course in the mountains and closer to the Sea of Japan side, Nagano City. But in the area, it looks like just a few days after Tokyo, the rest of Kanto starts to bloom. Mito is a week after Tokyo. It's a little bit cooler up there in the north on March 27th. Interesting. All right, let's look at the Kansai region now.

04:28:00 John Daub: Osaka is five days after Tokyo. We're still like five weeks out. I don't know how the weather's going to be for the next five weeks. It could change and be earlier if we have warm weather with lots of sun like it is right now. But Osaka is right now set for March 25th according to the schedule. Nara is March 25th. Kyoto is March 25th. Wakayama is March 25th and Kobe March 28th. And then you have there up in the mountains around Shiga Prefecture is March 31st. And then the Aichi region in pink is going to be a little bit earlier. So the Kansai region, about four or five days later than Tokyo, I would say. Generally, it's like that. I guess it's the urban heat.

05:30:00 John Daub: Now let's go all the way down to the west. This is Kyushu now. Kyushu Kagoshima, March 26th. You would think this being further south, it would be warmer. But it's actually more west. I don't know why. Sometimes the cherry blossoms will actually bloom earlier here. It just depends on the variety too. Essentially, when we talk about cherry blossoms, we're talking about the Somei Yoshino, which is the predominant variety in most of the country. Those are the white blossoms. Kumamoto is March 24th. Nagasaki, March 22nd. Oita, March 25th. Miyazaki, March 24th. So it's pretty much like the middle, 23rd to 25th, it should be blooming all over Kyushu by then.

06:33:00 John Daub: All right, let's take a look now at Shikoku. Shikoku, we might be surprised yet. Kochi Prefecture says March 22nd. But Kochi is usually one of the first places to bloom. You see that red down on the bottom? That looks like a mini Australia. That's Kochi Prefecture. That's Shikoku Island. And Kochi Prefecture on the Pacific side. Typically, some trees start blooming around March 15th. So we'll see how this all shapes up. Tokyo likes to be the first, or thinks they like to be the first. But I get a feeling Kochi might make a comeback here. They get a lot of sun. Well, it depends on how the weather is for the next five weeks. But Kochi might surprise us.

07:14:00 John Daub: Looks like Hiroshima will be March 23rd. Matsue, which is near Tottori right there, Shimane Prefecture, March 27th. Again, cooler on the Sea of Japan side. Shimonoseki at March 25th. And we have Tottori, March 27th. Yonago and Matsue. It's all part of the Sanin region. Okayama, March 26th. So pretty much about the same time they start blooming down there a week after Tokyo. All right, let's move up to Tohoku here. This is Japan's north. And this is where when I say, oh, I miss the cherry blossoms in Tokyo, don't worry. Take a Shinkansen. Go up, especially to Aomori. And you're going to find some really beautiful cherry blossoms at the festivals up there.

08:04:00 John Daub: Aomori is April 10th. I think if you look a little bit more to the mountains, you're probably going to get to April 17th. So the cherry blossom festivals there are probably going to be earlier, it seems. But Aomori City, they have right now on the schedule as April 10th. Seems a little bit earlier. Morioka, April 9th. Akita, April 8th. So there you go. It's like later in the Tohoku region. Yamagata, April 4th. Of course, if you're going inland to like Ginzan Onsen up in the mountains, it's probably going to be closer to April 15th. Sendai is March 31st. And then Fukushima is March 29th. So yeah, Tohoku. And you can see based on the mountains there, mountainous region, it's going to be later.

09:00:00 John Daub: Let's look at Hokkaido now. This is the very north, the island up there. Hakodate, April 17th. You can see if you really, really want to see it, jump on a flight, get up there. You can even see it in Nemuro and Kushiro. Kushiro, look at that on the right side, is May 5th. One of the last places. And Wakkanai also says up there, May 5th. I've seen them on cold years. They're still blooming into June, okay? Up there, like the end of May. I've seen up in Wakkanai the cherry blossoms like around June 1st. Some of them still lingering on there. So yeah, cherry blossoms in Japan, you'll find them up in elevation in north, up in Daisetsuzan National Park near Asahikawa. Still lingering up in June. So no worries. You can still see them if you really are die-hard fans.

09:50:00 John Daub: Obihiro in the center of Hokkaido is April 21st. And Muroran is April 22nd. Sapporo, April 18th. A little bit earlier. But yeah, it's after Golden Week, or just before. Typically the cherry blossom festivals—now here's the asterisk mark that you really need to know here. The asterisk mark is, alright, that's when they start to bloom. That's when they start to bloom. And the starting to bloom means that they don't hit mankai, which is full bloom, until about a week after. Again, it depends. Like, sometimes they'll just open up really fast if the weather is nice. But if it's kind of chilly, it might take a week to ten days before it's mankai. And then they'll hang on for another three or four days. And then the first wind or rain, it's gone.

10:45:00 John Daub: So when it says the cherry blossoms start to open up around March 20th, which is later than normal, that means probably around March 27th will be mankai. Or March 25th to 27th. And that'll be the peak time to see it in Tokyo, according to the schedule. You can't go wrong. If you're coming around March 23rd to March 28th in Tokyo, you're probably going to see a really beautiful view of the city at that time. In the other regions of Japan, again, add another week to the start of it, and you'll get probably mankai, which is when the blossoms at 100%. I hope that's really useful for you guys here.

11:22:00 John Daub: Already it started, though. I mean, I saw this post from Asahi Beer. Cherry blossom fever really picks up starting today. Cherry blossom is a very good plant. The finale is going to be on the 28th. The day after Valentine's Day is just the day after that. The day after Valentine's Day, the chocolate gets moved to the side, and all the pink stuff comes out. Because Valentine's Day is just a little weird in Japan. The women give the men the chocolate on Valentine's Day, and on March 14th, the men give the women the White Day gift, a return gift. So the women have to make the first step in relationships, according to this holiday. I don't really celebrate it, although I got some really good chocolates from Kanae. And Kanae this year gave Leo some chocolates too. Actually, it was just a cookie, but he got something, so now he's got to buy something for Kanae.

12:09:00 John Daub: So the day after Valentine's Day, all these products start coming out, including, and you can see the beer is a big one here. At the supermarket, you can see, like, I'm always surprised. And the weird thing about the wrapped beer cans for cherry blossoms—these are good to drink underneath the cherry blossom trees—is that these sell out before the cherry blossoms start, and it's hard to find these pink cans during cherry blossom season. So you have to buy them in advance, or you can get them on Amazon.co.jp perhaps. But they're brewed now. They started coming out at the end of January. What? So early. After Setsubun, which is around February 3rd, you start to see some cherry blossom products coming out, which is just bizarre. Already we're seeing the cherry blossom products from Starbucks. They just released press releases. It's a big deal for them.

13:08:00 John Daub: You start to see Japan's cherry blossom confections. You've got the frappuccinos and, you know, the marketing and the gimmicks. Is it any good? They kind of just taste generic to me. It's like white chocolate infused with pink stuff. Cherry blossoms in general, they taste salty with some floral in there. The donuts are sort of interesting, but I prefer just their sugar donuts, to be honest with you. But their products for like tumblers and stuff, quite cute. Girls seem to like it. They have these mochiri an balls, which are these donuts with sakura and infused tea. The chiffon cake with a pickled cherry blossom on top. And then there's the sakura donuts. So, you know, it's... They've got some pretty interesting stuff. Starbucks, you know, one of the leaders in weird confections, but certainly not the only one. All the products come out pink around this time of year. And when the cherry blossoms come out, all that marketing is gone because they've already moved on to the next thing. It's always kind of weird.

14:14:00 John Daub: Let's go down and take a look at the trees just to get an update. One of the earliest places where the blossoms bloom, there's different varieties of the cherry blossoms. They're already blooming. I saw at the end of January some blooming in Toyosu. These are Somei Yoshino in front of us. So they're not going to come out for another five weeks. But we'll take a look. Who knows? Maybe there's like one that just came out early. The first tree in Tokyo with the cherry blossoms coming out is the one at Yasukuni Shrine. And Yasukuni is in the center of the city. So it is warmer with the urban asphalt heat. And that is called the indicator tree that the Japan Meteorological Association uses to judge exactly when the cherry blossoms will come out. This report seems to be a little bit earlier than usual. But I think you can never get excited enough for the cherry blossoms.

15:31:00 John Daub: All right, let's look over here. If you haven't already seen on social media, there's a city in Shizuoka down on the Pacific side. Shizuoka is always on the Pacific side. But down on the peninsula there from Atami, that's famous for having the first cherry blossoms because the river is lined with that early variety of the cherry blossoms. And it was stunning. And that's blooming right now. And I almost got on a train to go down there, but I got just too much work here. Maybe next year I'll do that. All right, we're coming into the Somei Yoshino trees here. The Skytree is going to be disappearing behind there. Beautiful sunny day. It is kind of windy. Let's investigate the lovely Somei Yoshino trees right here.

16:22:00 John Daub: My backyard in Chiyoda, you can see nothing is blooming now. Kawazu is the name of the town in Shizuoka. It's a nice little town. I've been there many years ago, but it wasn't during the cherry blossom season. You can see sort of where the buds are going to come out, but they're still quite brown. But in about a week or so, we're going to start to see some of the buds coming out. Not the buds, sorry, the branches get greener start to come out as the sun and the warming weather for spring. We start to see the trees starting to regenerate and grow. And that's when I get really excited when I see any green on these Somei Yoshino trees. It's pretty exciting.

17:14:00 John Daub: Ramsey Silence here. Get yourself some coffee on the go to go with the chocolates. Thank you for that. I think I will. Yeah. And we'll put that, I have to start thinking about Kanae's White Day gifts too. So, and I know you were never here, but the coffee is very much appreciated. Thank you, Ramsey. It's very, very quiet on those trees right now. You know, it's so beautiful too. There's a light up there. And one of the beautiful things with the cherry blossoms in Japan is they illuminate them at night in many places. That light is not a beautiful light though. It's not the greatest one. But looks like when the Somei Yoshino trees have peaked and gotten to mankai, 100% bloomed, it looks like it snowed.

18:02:00 John Daub: And I usually go to the trees. I go outside at night and I'll take a light and I just like walk around and there's usually nobody outside but me and my light. I love to just look at it. And maybe I'll take Leo this year. Kanae likes to stay home. It's usually typically still kind of cool. But these branches are heavy with those blossoms. And then they fall and those petals go into the river. They go into the waterways. And for a day or two, you have these beautiful white rivers and waterways filled with the petals. And I have cherry blossom fever as you know on this live streaming channel. I probably won't do as many live streams about cherry blossoms. I say that now. But they do get kind of old, the excitement. Well, unless you're wanting to come to Japan during that time, I guess it's a reason to kind of share it with you.

19:04:00 John Daub: During the last few years when nobody could come to Japan, dare I even say the word, it was great to bring you with me. But now that you can come to Japan, a lot of you will be here. So hopefully we can do a meet up. It would be great to sit down underneath the cherry blossom trees, have a drink or two. I don't drink so much alcohol anymore or actually eat much of the junk food that they have like the deep fried chicken and stuff like that. I don't eat as much of that as before. But a picnic's a picnic, man. I'll take it.

19:32:00 John Daub: So that's where we are right now. It seems kind of early. And I thought it was funny that they released a schedule. But hey, you know, if they do that, that's news. Could be the first one. Thanks for bringing it up. Yes, I'm still planning to do that, Sir Lance Geo. I've gotten in some requests to make some videos around Japan. So the dates to book the boat that hopefully will come right past here. I still haven't decided that yet. So it looks like it's going to be maybe in April. The thing is, yeah. Got so many questions. Got so many things on this schedule. That's one date that's immovable once I rent the boat because I've already canceled it once before last year. I booked it. And then what did they do? They like tourism kept coming back and forth. And especially in the pandemic, it's something I've been wanting to do for a very long time.

20:31:00 John Daub: But it's going to be my 50th birthday boat. It's sort of a present to me and to the community. So I will have to charge a little bit for it because we are all going to be there. We're going to chip in and pay for the boat. But yeah, it should be a lot of fun. I'll see if we can get like a alcohol plan if people are interested in it. I'm not so interested in that. Maybe BYOB if that's going to be something or if we can get food on board the boat. But whatever happens, it'll be fun. Well, thank you. I don't feel 50. But I'd probably look at... I was looking at video. I guess I'm not. I'm not a huge fan of John Stewart's Daily Show, for example. But he did come back to that show. And he was showing images of him when he first started it and images of him now. And we've all aged. You cannot escape it.

21:30:00 John Daub: And, you know, I get trolled a little bit. Well, you've really aged. And I really don't get bothered by that because what are you going to do about it? I'm just happy that I have my good health and I'm feeling good. And, you know, I have a family. Now things are I could say maybe even better than it was 10 years ago. So, hey there. But in the end, you can't stop father time. All we can do is revel in the beauty of what we have in the present and which is right now. And even this tree looks beautiful to me. It's going to be so much more beautiful in about five weeks. And I hope you guys are here.

22:10:00 John Daub: All right. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope this is useful. Important information. There's a little bit about the schedule that we have right now in English. Thank you to all the news agencies for reporting about this. I'm just passing along the news here. But if this is around your trip, great. If not, don't worry about it. Just get on the Shinkansen train. Get around. You'll be able to see it. I'm planning to go to Mito. So maybe we'll get a chance to look at the ume (plum) blossoms one more time. Got something I have to film up there. And we could see some beautiful spring coming up. It's just funny because it's like the middle of February. And actually, I'm very warm right now. In fact, I could shed this jacket and go in a T-shirt, get some sun. It's an unusual day.

23:05:00 John Daub: So the rest of the week, it's going to be about 20 degrees Celsius in Tokyo. Who knew? It's warmer now than it was in Okinawa when we were there last week, which is crazy to me. All right, everybody. That's all I got. Take care. Peace and I'll see you again tomorrow with another livestream. Mata ne. I'm disappointed. I thought that the SpaceX bullet will at least make one pass. Maybe I missed it. Maybe I did.