00:00:01 John Daub: It's a beautiful sunny day here in Tokyo. There's the Tokyo Skytree on the Sumida River. And you see on the right side coming into view, some yoshino sakura (cherry blossom) trees. These are the white blossoms that are most famous in Japan. They're everywhere, especially along the rivers. And today, this year, 2024, where are they? I'm shocked.

00:00:29 John Daub: How you doing, everybody? I'm still a little bit sick. The last few days, I've been inside trying to recover, editing videos. If you haven't already seen it, I just uploaded a pretty epic adventure, especially for those that have been watching the series Shogun, which has been a pretty unique experience in itself. I'll share a little bit more about that. But this is a head-scratcher to me because I looked at the footage from last year. Check it out here. Let's take a closer look at this tree.

00:01:02 John Daub: This is 2023, March 17th. And we have blossoms on the trees. At least the buds of them. And this would have been six days ago. It's five days ago. And now I want to show you what it looks like today. Look at this. There's nothing on there. There's no blossoms. There's no buds. And I'm trying to wrap my head around what exactly is going on here.

00:01:36 John Daub: But this is Mother Nature. There's nothing. There's no green at all. And this tree's got a lot of sun. And you try to wrap your head around Mother Nature, you're going to start banging your head against a tree or something. But look, you can't make a trip to Japan and base it on the cherry blossoms and say the best chance to see it is at this time. You just can't do that. And I feel like I get every year several hundred messages asking me to help them plan their cherry blossom adventure. I can't do it because I don't know when they're going to bloom.

00:02:14 John Daub: And everybody said, oh, this year, global warming is going to make them come out early and early and early. And this year it's late. It's so late that even the ninth forecast—they released nine forecasts. This is the ninth one. And this came out just yesterday. And they're wrong. So it says here that the mankai (full bloom). And here's the forecast that's been updated. The cherry blossoms will start to bloom today and it'll be mankai on the 25th. There's no way. There's no way—they don't even have green buds on them or pink buds. Nothing. Maybe some of them do. But I don't think that this is going to happen.

00:03:06 John Daub: And I can explain to you the reason why—we're in a cold spell here. Here's Sapporo. You can see Tokyo at the bottom of the screen. It says here it's forecasted for March 22nd, which is later than the last few years, and the full bloom March 28th. So we should start seeing them in about three days. I don't even see the buds. 28th is full bloom. And that means after full bloom, there's about two days and then they start to blow away. So again, you can't really forecast this stuff. We'll still get Kyoto. Kyoto is about two days later than Tokyo. This is the ninth forecast. I think they need a tenth one. But Kyoto is yeah, Osaka. This is a little bit odd because they're further west. The further south and west, so you think that they would bloom earlier. But Tokyo is typically earlier because of the heat in the city from the asphalt helps them bloom a little bit faster here.

00:04:06 John Daub: I was inside. I thought I would come outside to a spring wonderland and look at this. There's like nothing here. I know and it snowed just recently in Kyoto, which is making it like a head-scratcher. But that's the thing with weather. You just don't know. I've mentioned this before. It's called sankon shion (three days hot, four days cold). This is an expression in Japanese—three days hot, four days cold, and then it'll go like cold, warm, cold, warm, cold, warm and then it breaks and then spring is here and it doesn't go back to the winter right now. It feels like winter. Seriously. The wind hits you and this is the thing with spring. It's deceptively cold in March because of the wind. This would be pretty good for February. But this feels although we're closer to April. It just feels colder because of the wind. There's spring winds and every year we have these spring winds here in Tokyo.

00:05:06 John Daub: It's just not the same and I'm actually kind of happy that it's late this year. But the thing is for the hundreds and thousands of people that are coming to visit Tokyo now that are hoping to see the cherry blossoms, you're going to miss it or you only have like a few days sometimes and if you planned your trip and you only gave yourself a few days, this is what you see in most places. Now there are other places around. Let's go to the end of the little island here. We can take a look. These are all sakura trees that I'm walking past.

00:05:50 John Daub: My brother Michael Sartano was looking forward to when you were going to update us on the cherry blossoms. Indeed. I just left my bunker. I'm feeling a lot better. I'm closer to the end of this than I am from the start of it. So that's good. Everybody is sick at Leo's school except for Leo. In fact, I think everybody in Tokyo might be sick. This is the end of the line. Tons of sunshine. You think that this would have some green buds. This is not a good sign that we're going to have a cherry blossom season in the next few days. It's odd. It is very odd. The trees just said, nope. It's like we'll be back again—come back in a couple of days.

00:06:49 John Daub: I'm perplexed again. Like if you've booked hotel rooms, you're going to have to go anyways. You're not going to see what you've come here to see. Anyways, it's kind of interesting. Why nobody is there because there's nothing to see. And this is more of a residential area. I like to walk here because it's a lot freer and it's quite cold. Shout out to Norm. Thanks, Norm, for the book. He gave me this beautiful book on Kengo Kuma as a birthday present and a nice gift of a Tommy car for Leo. I really appreciate that, Norm. He comes to visit every now and then in Tokyo. It's great to see him. So Norm walked down here and I got a chance to see him. I wish it was to hang out with him. And yeah, this is a residential place where you're going to feel more of Tokyo. You can watch the boats go by. There's a supermarket nearby. You can get a bento right now. There's the wood-fired brick oven pizza truck. The wood is here today. So if you just walk over the tool bridge and you go about 100 meters, there's a brick oven pizza from 11 to 2 and then it's back open from 5 to 8 for dinner. The guy's got a brick oven in a truck and he comes here and makes pizza so you can get a couple of pizzas and just eat it on the corner and watch the boats go by.

00:08:27 John Daub: Shout out to this live stream about the cherry blossom updates. Going to get more views in this episode I just released. I have a I worked on this one for over a year on the main channel. It's a beautiful, epic adventure. Again, those who watch Shogun, this is the end of Shogun. The story of Japan turning modern and ending feudal Japan. Manjiro was a huge catalyst. He was somebody who was shipwrecked, picked up by an American whaler, taken to the US and educated. Then he came back to Japan, which was closed—sakoku (national isolation). Those that left or came back were executed. And he came back anyways because he wanted to see his mother. And he ended up becoming a samurai. He was just a little fisherman—a peasant. Became a samurai that impacted the shogunate and helped to open up Japan because of his observations on the West. Because of the life that he lived. It's an amazing tale. When I first heard it, I said, I got to make this episode. And yet nobody is watching it. More people will watch this live stream on the cherry blossom forecast than they will this video. That's kind of a shame. History is one of the great fascinations of Japan because it's got so much of it. And it's extraordinarily interesting. So I appreciate if you guys check that out.

00:10:08 John Daub: And you know, the postcard, I've sent them out. So they're on the way. This is this month's postcard. The cherry blossoms for us this month. I wanted to highlight that for Japanese people and for people living in Japan, it's a local thing. This is a time where we don't go to Ueno Park. We typically stay in our neighborhoods and appreciate the trees because once a year they look like this. And I come to this area often. So I'm often looking at these exact trees. And for 10 days out of the year, they look absolutely stunning. So it's a special thing when you do live in this area.

00:10:40 John Daub: James Mayer writes here, chicken soup fun. Thank you. I will stop by and get some. It is actually lunchtime and I appreciate that. Add Shogun in the title of the video. It's relevant for the show. It's not relevant for that video. So that would be clickbait. Although there might be a way because he does work with the shogunate. But I don't know. I think in the end, people will discover this video. But it's not doing so well. I think it's heartbreaking. It really is heartbreaking. It could be because of the AI footage in there. I don't think so. It's debatable whether or not the AI footage is helpful or not. These are full-on AI videos. By the way, I had to do a lot of Photoshop to them to make them. But if you take a look at this image here, like I had to do a lot of work. This one right here. I had to delete somebody because I kept on saying, please put five people in the cave. But they kept on putting six and a half. So I had to delete somebody. I had to make the cave opening bigger. I had to change the lighting outside. I had to fix like some guys with six fingers and stuff like this. This one, I had to delete another guy. And a rescue boat. This one, I had to get rid of some sails that looked more Chinese. And it did look Japanese and change some of the aspects of it because it mistook China with Japan. This one, not so much. But this one, you see this. That one was interesting. I had to change here because the stars on the flag was wrong for the age. So I had to change it to this. American flag is interesting. We've all grown up with it with 50 stars. But it actually, as this country grew, added stars to it. And the flag had a star pattern to it in 1853 or 1854. So I had to add the right flag in there that the AI is not.

00:12:53 John Daub: For those artists that are complaining about that episode, AI is not the threat that you think it is yet. It's absolutely hard to work with because it doesn't get it absolutely right. It doesn't get it right at all. And you can tell. But it is also just B-roll. And when you do a historical video like this, you just don't have any footage. There's only four photos of Manjiro in his whole life. So you have to get creative here. And we've got tools to do that. And I utilized AI in this. And I think AI is in my camera. AI is in my phone. AI is in everything. And it's not the threat that we all think it is. And I believe Adobe has their own stock footage that has been purchased and comes out and uses their own closed system. So it's not thievery if they have it all. But I do agree that there is a lot of AI that is taking from other people and using the internet. And I hate that too because my videos are poached. Just look at the world's largest firework or building through a highway. It's made tens of thousands of dollars for other creators who quote-unquote borrowed it. But that's the nature of social media and the way the world is going these days. Once you put it in the public domain, whether or not it's your license or not, people are going to poach it under fair use and all this other stuff. A creator creates. So you move on to the next one. But that video has taken a big hit. Because it's a great video. There are a lot of artists that are upset that I used an AI tool for 1% of the video. It's just accents that might not even be useful. But nevertheless, it is what it is.

00:14:55 John Daub: All right, guys. There you go. It's a beautiful day. I'll talk about it a little bit later on. I think that the comments that I received from all of you. Every creator and that's the great thing about YouTube. I get a chance to read the comments and react to it. And hearing from the audience, it's important that I listen to everybody. The people who love it and the people who don't. And understand why and find a way to make content that resonates with my audience. And if my audience is not watching it, then I have to find a way to get my audience to watch it. And that's how YouTube suggests it. And that's why a video will get to a million views. Because my audience loved it first. And right now, the Manjiro video, the audience isn't loving it. They're not clicking on it. Because they don't know it. And the story of Manjiro is not very famous yet. I'm the first one to use AI video, it seems. So I'm getting the—like when you're in a Braveheart movie. When you watch Braveheart, there's these dudes that are running into battle. And those dudes are the first ones to go. They take all the hits. So I'm taking a lot of hits right now. But that's okay. That's the nature of the beast. When you're using new technology and you do anything that has to do with change, it is scary for a lot of people. And I do my best here with it.

00:16:22 John Daub: Brandon writes in here, as an artist, I feel we need to learn to use AI as a tool. That's absolutely right. And it's not going anywhere. But we can find new inspiration from it. Because every artist—you don't learn how to be an artist when you're born. You learn by emulating and learning the techniques of past masters. And then making your own style from that. And AI can help you do that. But you can't blame a creator for utilizing AI. Blame me for the warpness of it or something. And trust me, I worked really hard to try to get that out. It's an imperfect science. If that at all. It was kind of a disaster. Blame me for other things. But it's a story. So I hope that it's a story that you want to read and you comment about it and you take away from it. Because it is an inspirational one. In fact, a lot of creators—I'm in a couple of groups where creators are talking to each other around the world. And the vast majority of creators are afraid to do it. But the whole story of Manjiro is that if you don't have courage, you'll never be successful in anything. If you don't have courage, you're not going to be able to do what you want to do. If you don't have courage, you're not going to succeed. You're not going to live. So in that light, I guess it had to be a Manjiro story to release AI footage, right?

00:17:58 John Daub: It's on YouTube, Lance. It's on my main channel. It's called Only in Japan. It was at youtube.com/@onlyinjapan. It'll take you there. If you don't know that channel, this is my live streaming channel. And the other one is my edited video channel. And it's been a while since I uploaded it because I was obsessed with this story. And you'll see in the 33-minute video just how obsessed I was with it and the enthusiasm that nearly killed me because it was a hard, hard edit. To get the timing right, the music, and everything. I tried really, really hard with this one. So I appreciate everybody who leaves me a comment or pass it along. It's a good video. I think it's one—some people are saying it's the best. It's the best video. But it's the video that is watched maybe the least right now. I think it's 10 out of 10 out of the last 10 uploads. And this is definitely not a bomb. This is a good, solid episode. So it's just not what people want. It's not food. It's not a light topic. It's not politics. It's just a positive inspirational story of Japanese history. And that's just not something that is palatable to the audience right now. It'll change. Like the cherry blossoms will be here soon.

00:19:22 John Daub: Alright, so for those that are joining us, the cherry blossoms are not here yet. I believe it's gonna be one more week. And that's my guess. It's gonna be one more week. So it's the 22nd. I think we're gonna start to see the blossoms here on the 27th. So everything is just delayed a week, let's just say. Because we've had extraordinarily chilly weather over the last—and cloudy weather. And the blossoms don't like that. But maybe today will help with the sun. And maybe if it warms up over the next couple of days, it'll help. But I'll be back. And I'm gonna take you, I guess, after I finish this edit. I'm doing one on food to make up for the Manjiro one. The Manjiro video is so damn good. Go and watch that. It is so darn good. I can't believe I'm putting myself down there.

00:20:12 John Daub: Lance Hinkley, thank you so much. There's a Shinjuku food video night tour I did. And this is a—I wouldn't say a sponsored video. I guess it could be. I worked with Magical Trips, which is a tour company. Which is something that has been requested from a lot of people. Which is great. A lot of people ask me, where do you go to eat? And one of the places is Shinjuku. Because it's got everything. And it's one of the most crowded and vibrant parts of Tokyo. And I got a chance to work with them and a guide and take you through there. And that video should be coming up in just a couple of days. I'm just about done editing it. And I'm gonna go back and work on it now. So there you go. Give it a week. The blossoms will be here in a week. And I'll take you around Tokyo and Japan. And we can go and check it out. Because every year I'm just in love with these blossoms. Because it means that winter's over. And by gosh, I hate winter. Alright, I'm not a skier. I don't like the cold. I just really prefer the hot, sunny, sweaty weather to the winter any day. So I'm gonna go back and work. Thanks for joining me and hanging out for a couple of minutes. I'll see you again in another livestream. Probably tomorrow. It's the weekend. Let's go find something interesting to do, see, eat. Matane (see you later).