00:00:03 John Daub: Wow, look at those pink blossoms. These are cherry blossoms, sakura. Just one of the many hundreds of varieties or cultivars that you'll find all across Japan. This is just a small park not too far from where I live, and you can see they are in full bloom. In fact, we might even be past it. This variety of sakura cherry blossoms is called Kawazu-zakura (Kawazu cherry). And I like that the city actually writes this down so you know which one it is. This particular variety or cultivar of sakura will bloom starting around the middle of February, and in particular in Shizuoka where the town of Kawazu is all down the river. I might even have some video to show you of that because I was just there about three days ago. But it is absolutely stunning, in particular when you have the blue sky and the light shining through it like it is right now.

00:01:08 John Daub: It's such a warm afternoon in Tokyo, abnormally warm for February. How you doing everybody? So in this episode I wanted to talk about why the cherry blossoms have started early, and the answer is that the cherry blossoms are not cherry blossoms in that sense. Apparently there are over 200 cultivars of cherry blossoms. According to Wikipedia, Japan claims there are 800 cultivars. I think that goes a little bit too far. Maybe the answer is truly somewhere in between, but there are maybe about a dozen or so really popular ones. These are the ones you'll find prevalent across Japan. The Somei Yoshino (Somei Yoshino), which are the white cherry blossoms, those are the most popular ones. Those are the ones that you'll see—maybe 80% of the cherry blossoms are probably that variety.

00:02:05 John Daub: These are special. The Kawazu-zakura ones come out early, and you can see when they are planted in the neighborhood they really do add a lot of color. Now I was just across the bridge on the other side. There is a Somei Yoshino tree—you can't even see it. Let me bring that up. You see right there? Not a bud on it. This cherry blossom season probably starts to bud around March 15th, I would say. Typically it's around March 12th or March 18th, somewhere around between there depending on the weather. It's been getting earlier and earlier, but you can see not a bud on it. That's a Somei Yoshino. This is gonna be a white blossom and it's so beautiful.

00:02:49 John Daub: So when you ask me—and I get tons of email messages—you could look even beyond that. This is where I am now. You can see how stunning the Kawazu-zakura is in the distance. So when you ask me like when is the best time to come to see the sakura, I guess well, I'll put my head down and go you know what, there's no bad time and there's no right time. There's the peak time which is the most crowded, but I want you to look around. There's not a lot of people around here which makes it maybe even better to come just for the Kawazu-zakura and kind of enjoy it. Now when I went past the town of Kawazu in Shizuoka—it's kind of on the Kanagawa-Shizuoka border on the Izu Peninsula—there were a lot of people there. Not as many as there in Ueno Park at peak season, but foreign tourists and nationals coming here don't even know about this festival. The vast majority don't even know that the sakura are blooming right now, but it's like what kind of sakura.

00:04:05 John Daub: The most beautiful one that I found in Japan is the Kawazu-zakura. The one that I found in Japan is the Miharu Takizakura, which I made an episode on not that long ago last year. Which is hey Brad Judd Studios in the house. I think if you haven't seen this episode please do. This gives you—it's in glorious 4K on YouTube. This is from my main channel. This is a 1,000-year-old cherry blossom tree that has seen samurai and warriors going past it. It's seen everything, this tree. It is one of the most stunning in all of Japan. I had permission to film with the city and tell its story. It's a weeping cherry blossom, so it's different than the other varieties. Before it turns white it turns pink and there are like pre-blossoms. This is what makes it so beautiful. You see it looks pink colored right now. Those pink blossoms go away and then they turn white in a couple of days, and this is just one of the most special cherry blossoms.

00:05:05 John Daub: In fact this is probably an iconic tree, meaning when you hear and see cherry blossoms this tree is the one that gets put on posters for example. Look at it—it's got its own place right there on the base of a hill and you can walk around it, seen from every single direction. It is a special place. It's about a three-hour drive from Tokyo for me and I hope to get back there. Please go watch that episode. I think it's one of the least viewed episodes on the Only in Japan channel for some reason. I guess it's hard to break through the clutter when it comes to cherry blossoms, but if you're watching this you might be a little bit interested in cherry blossoms. It's a big deal.

00:05:38 John Daub: You can see here this is the JNTO website, the Japan National Tourism Organization. They already have their cherry blossom stuff up there, but they are also very much like me making sure that you guys know that there are more than one variety of cherry blossoms and each one will bloom at a different time. So you have here the schedule. This is from last year—April 20th for Aomori, which is one of my favorite ones at Hirosaki, and then March 26th is the best ideal time to come to Tokyo. But this year I think it's going to be like March 23rd maybe, a little bit earlier. There's a lot of locations that tourists like to go to that are in the tourist books, but I wouldn't recommend going to some of those places. There's so many better places and you're just going to be shoulder to shoulder with a lot of other foreign tourists—and that's not a bad thing, I guess. But is that what you want? Cherry blossom is supposed to be connecting with nature.

00:06:42 John Daub: The best place to go and see the cherry blossoms is this right here. Let me show you. This is called Mount Yoshino in Nara Prefecture. This is the number one spot for Japanese in particular, and I think it's getting some more traction for foreign tourists coming here. But you can see it's up along a hill, so it's blooming from around the mountains. It's in the middle of March because it's on a hill, all the way up to the top of the hill. Those don't start to bloom until like the middle of April. So it's a solid month. If you go here, you're going to see blossoms. But there are so many different cultivars and there's so many colors, and it creates this amazing pink and white and like a deep violet. There's so many different colors on there. This is the place that I would recommend tourists go to visit if you are.

00:07:33 John Daub: Let me pull this up on the map. You can see it's very close to Osaka and Kyoto. The Kami-senbon (upper thousand trees), I believe that's the higher level of Mount Yoshino, which is where it is in Nara Prefecture. I remember taking—I went there about 12 years ago to film an episode on the old channel. And I remember spending a day there and just was overwhelmed with the beauty of it. It wasn't enough time. But if you get there in the morning, you want to get there first thing in the morning so you can explore and make the most of it. It's on a mountain. You can hike up to the top there and see the cherry blossoms, and then you hike down. And there's a cable car that will take you part of the way up there. But it's just a stunning countryside view of the cherry blossoms. There's Shimo-senbon (lower thousand trees), which is the lower part of the mountain for the cherry blossoms, and those bloom earlier. So it depends on the time of year that you go. I prefer going around March 26th. You probably get most of the mountain in full color at that time between March 26th and April 1st. And it gets pretty crowded around April 1st, those weekends especially with domestic tourism.

00:09:12 John Daub: The schedule for the cherry blossoms this year, I published this already before—you can take a look at it. This is supposed to be the 2024 schedule. Tokyo is March 20th. I think that's when it starts. It doesn't really reach the peak until about the 25th of March. So you're going to start to see blossoms actually around March 16th this year, and then I think around March 23rd. A week after you start to see the blossoms is mankai (full bloom). And then after that, you got to move up north. So when is the best time to see the cherry blossoms? You just travel the whole country. And I have to keep saying this over and over again because it just doesn't get into people's minds that nature is not a tourist attraction. You have to pick the right times and pick the right blossoms. And for today, it's these. And it's just really stunning.

00:09:42 John Daub: All right, I'm going to go and show you one of the trees. Let's go down the street a little bit and show you this one at the end. And while I'm doing that, I'm searching for a video of actually the Kawazu River. I went by on the train just a few days ago and I took some video of it. Here you can see what it looks like from the train. This is the Kawazu tree and this is Kawazu Station. The train went by the river, and this is just the mouth of the river. This is the side with the least amount of trees, and it's past its peak in Kawazu. This is Kawazu Station on the way to Shimoda, which is where I went a few days ago. It is more stunning around the middle of February. On the other side I had an obstructed view, and the trees go on for like a kilometer—you can walk it for 15, 20 minutes. It's just tree after tree after tree. And it's right now at the end of it in Kawazu. It's absolutely stunning, isn't it? I mean, this doesn't do it justice because it's after the peak, but there's still a lot of people there.

00:11:18 John Daub: Again, a little bit of a breeze makes them dance so nicely. And this is the kind of day where you want to get a box lunch and sit outside and just appreciate the warm sun on your face. And it is March 1st after all. So the Kawazu variety of sakura are at full peak, and if you're coming in the middle of March you're not going to see this. So that's a good reason for me to broadcast the Kawazu variety just for today. Oh, you can see some of the—there's some bees in there too. They're buzzing all over me. I don't mind, I have no fear of bees. They do have sakura honey, I think. But these are the sights of central Tokyo.

00:12:47 John Daub: Would you consider hanami (cherry blossom viewing) to be romantic? I would. I'm sharing this experience with you. When you do cherry blossom hanami underneath the cherry blossom trees, you'll see a lot of couples in particular—young love or first love or new lovers. And you can tell when you see it, and it's so nice as well. But it's also a time where businessmen will come out and they'll have big drinking parties. I don't drink too much alcohol. But you see that. I've already gone through that stage in my life. But you see a lot of this is when you really see Japanese culture. And I think since we're past those really tough four years, it's going to be an especially great cherry blossom season.

00:13:42 John Daub: This is a nice point here where you get to see the canal, one of the many canals of Tokyo and the bridge. It's really beautiful. Let me go over here. We're going past some of these people enjoying lunch or the sunshine. This isn't the only place where you can see it—it's all over Tokyo. I saw these blossoming just riding over to Tokyo Station the other day. Here's one—you can see the picnickers on the benches over there. Everybody kind of just taking a break from work and enjoying mother nature as we are right now.

00:14:28 John Daub: What is your favorite sakura-themed food or drink? Sakura tea is nice, but they usually mix that with black tea, so the taste is quite subtle. I would say just the daifuku. Sometimes they'll have sakura daifuku where you can eat the cherry blossoms. I think it is the Kawazu variety, but it's pink usually and they pickle them, meaning they put them in some salt and it has a sweet floral taste. So it's good to put on like mochi or confection. I would say just a normal daifuku with anko (sweet red bean paste) and some sakura mochi. Sakura mochi is very famous. I would recommend if you do come to Japan to make sure you try sakura mochi because it is just absolutely—look at that. Ah man, beautiful. It's a dream.

00:15:54 John Daub: I've never heard anybody call sakura daifuku sour. It's extremely sweet. I've never heard that it was sour though—that's interesting. Jason writes in here, it's nice in the sunlight. It really is. So nice. But I'm thinking like I might want to go back up there and I think I want to see the takizakura before it changes to white. I was too late when I went. This is the drone shot of it. This is not the most beautiful time to see it—it's at this time, a few days maybe a week before I actually saw it when it was pink. But that's what makes this particular variety of cherry blossom so incredible.

00:16:53 John Daub: Now before I leave you, I want to run through the types of sakura. I went on to Wikipedia. You can see Kanzan (Kanzan) is also like a very strong type of cherry blossom—it's quite big blossoms. And then you can see all the different varieties here. You'll find this blooming at different times. The two places would be Yoshino, Mount Yoshino in Nara, and I would say Shinjuku Gyoen (Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden) if you're in the city. That is probably the best place. You have to pay to get in there. In fact, if you haven't been to Japan in a while, I want to say you need to go online and make a reservation to go and see Shinjuku Gyoen now. I remember Kanae and I went last year or two years ago, and you needed a reservation online in order to get in to the public park. Well, you have to pay to get in, but I was a little bit disappointed. Didn't know about that. So this year we're already starting to make reservation times and they don't allow everybody to go in there. Basically it's gotten too crowded and they're trying to limit the amount of people at Shinjuku Gyoen. So this is good information for you to make sure maybe even a week in advance to try to book a time to go there.

00:18:10 John Daub: This is just the Wikipedia. I searched cherry blossoms just to see what would come up and here it is. I'll run through it here. The Somei Yoshino of course is the top there. Sergeant Cherry, Yamazakura (mountain cherry). Okame cherry. A lot of them are Japanese. Ukon (yellowish-green cherry). Ichiyo (single leaf cherry). Kanhizakura (winter cherry). Kanzan. Shibazakura (moss phlox), the weeping cherry which is the takizakura (waterfall cherry). The Kawazu-zakura, which is what I'm showing you now. The wild black cherry tree. There's a ton of them. They're not actually going to produce cherries. They're just called cherry blossoms. Cherries in there, but they don't produce cherries. I get that question all the time. Now you know. They're blossoms. They fall off. And after that you can see the green leaves—they start to pop through.

00:19:50 John Daub: And this is pretty much all you need to know about the cherry blossoms. I think if you're coming at the time of year—and so many people do because it's so beautiful—you're going to want to make sure you bring a warm jacket because even though it's warm during the day, it does get cold at night at this time of year. And in fact, winter can make a return even though it feels like summer. It's a very unusual time of year.

00:20:14 John Daub: Look at the bird—it's coming right up to me. How you doing? You're doing great. You picked a good tree. Looking for the bumblebees to eat. Looks like a crow to an untrained eye. What do you think, HelloHi821? Too cute to be a crow. You can see them in there just playing in the blossoms. I guess the cherry blossoms bring in a lot of bugs too. So I imagine he's having a meal out of it. But also maybe it smells nice to him. There he goes. Toby (crow). It's nice. I can see my neighbors as well and they're all kind of enjoying this too. Everybody knows about this spot because it's along the river here. It's such a peaceful place. I come here quite a bit. I don't know if I should tell you all my secret spots. This is nice. This is kind of renewed as well—it wasn't like this 10 years ago.

00:22:33 John Daub: Anybody who's joining Discord, a note from our moderators over there—we could definitely use a boost or two. So if you are a Discord user and you're a Nitro booster, we really appreciate it. We have your own special community there. I'm not sure how active it is, but I wanted to promote that and push it. Not a lot of people know that we have a Discord community and we really do appreciate the boosts. Just because we have such an active community, it does make a big difference. So thank you for everybody who's boosting on our Discord server. We love you and thank you for making our community extra special.

00:23:10 John Daub: I want to thank our early pioneers who actually left messages on our first Only in Japan. Satrio did as well. But I have a phone number for Patreon supporters that you can call me. This is a Texas number from San Angelo, Texas. Just wanted to see if this was working. And you are right—this is a Texas number. That's kind of cool. And it serves the area. So this was—I came in on our new answering machine for anybody who wants to call and leave me a message. And I get to hear it and put it on the show. So I appreciate that so much for the message. And I'm glad that it is working right now. That's for all of our Patreon supporters. There's a US number you can call and you get my message answering machine. Kind of cool. It's like that 1990s technology, right? It's really fun. So you leave me a voice message and ask me questions. Sometimes in these live streams I'm going to ask you a question and see—call me and give me the answer by voice. I think all of us love that we have a live chat here, but it's so much cooler when we can hear your voices. And since we don't have the technology, shout out to Peso for helping make this possible. Now you can call and leave me the message, which I can use to put it in the No More Faxing answering machine.

00:25:12 John Daub: Oh, and I just got a note that we got a boost during the stream. So thank you very much—you saved our server. We were about three days away from having to downgrade our server. So now we don't have to do that. I appreciate it very much. Thank you—it was instant. Awesome. So the last images I want to show you here in Tokyo is a wide shot. I'm just going to pan around and I'm going to be going tomorrow to Niigata. So I think we have one person who lives in the Yuzawa region—I'm going to contact you today and see if you can make it out and help with filming this. But I have a cameraman coming with me in the morning and we're going to be filming the Naked Man Festival from Urasa in Niigata Prefecture. And yeah, this will be a main channel episode. But I'll try to do a live stream of the street food and some of the things around there if I get a chance. Because I always like to share the experiences I'm filming. But my priority is to make an edited video.

00:26:15 John Daub: You're coming with me. And by the way, the weather is supposed to be zero degrees or minus one, and it's supposed to snow tomorrow. And I'm supposed to be in a thong running around practically naked and immersing myself in water that is near freezing. What could go wrong? Everything. It's really good content. It's fun to do. It brings me closer to Japan and the people, and helps me learn more about the richness, the deepness of Japanese culture. And you do that by doing crazy things. And also I just turned 50 this year. And I have to remember to always keep doing things that make me feel uncomfortable so I can learn from them. We should never stop doing it. It doesn't matter how old you are. But I've noticed that the older people get, they tend to not do crazy things—which is probably a smart idea. But this one, maybe the last naked man festival that I do. They do have naked man festivals with women, but the women wear brown garments now or certain garments that cover them up more than the men. So trust me—if you're looking for that, you're going to be disappointed because you're looking for the wrong thing. Anyways, I appreciate it guys. Take care. I'll see you from Niigata tomorrow. See you.