00:02 John Daub: Welcome to Tokyo. This is Kitanomaru Park near Yasukuni Shrine, Kudanshita, in the center of Tokyo. You can see the blossoms are just beginning to bloom here. Everybody talks about how Tokyo's cherry blossoms are so beautiful. They are. Like I'm somebody who really loves to go out to the countryside, I try to get out of the city at this time of year. But if you are in the city, you should definitely try to enjoy them, right?

00:34 John Daub: Kitanomaru National Garden is what it's called. This is where the Nippon Budokan is, where they held some of the events. Let me show you on the map exactly where I am in Tokyo. This is maybe one of my top five favorite spots here. There's the Budokan that we are looking at, building up on the top of your screen now. It's around the moat, which is the old imperial moat of the Edo Castle back in the day. One of the entrances to get into where the emperor lived in Kitanomaru Park. It still retains that beautiful imperial-like garden, in particular because of that moat. And all around the moat, those trees there are the cherry blossoms. Right next to it, also what makes this really great is Yasukuni Shrine, that torii gate (shrine gateway) you see at the bottom of your screen that we just passed, going up to the Yasukuni Shrine. Right near it, that's the Sakura no Shinkei (cherry blossom indicator tree), which is the indicator tree for the Japan Meteorological Agency to decide when the season starts. So you have a couple of really good sites here.

01:32 John Daub: Tokyo is a big place, so there's tons of places to go and see the cherry blossoms. This one is Asakusa's Sumida Park, and you can go here. This is also a favorite place. It's a little bit more space because you're out on the river. You don't feel so confined like you would at the Meguro River, for example. I kind of like it out here. There's some street foods, there's stands. You can go to Sensoji Temple, kind of make a day out of it.

02:04 John Daub: How you doing, everybody? It is a warm day. The sun is out, but I'm going to do an episode maybe tomorrow about how to dress in the spring because it is actually kind of hard to do because the weather is more unpredictable at this time than probably any other time of the year. I have a jacket on. The key is layers, as many layers as possible. Let me just show you where we are right now. Now, I thought that because the indicator tree, where they decide where the cherry blossom season starts, is actually in this area, this would be one of the earliest places to come and see the cherry blossoms, but you're starting to see like, you know, they're like only 25% bloomed. That's kind of exciting to me because that means we've still got a lot to look forward to. Some of the branches have green on them, which is a little surprising, but it's just been in general a pretty unusual winter. One of the warmest winters, so you would think that they would bloom early this year, but then we had a really bad cold spell over the last few weeks, and that created a lot of trouble, some chaos with the blossoms. Or should I just say confusion?

03:09 John Daub: One of the beautiful things about this particular spot, and I'm going to show you from this point, you can look across and see Chidorigafuchi (moat walkway), which is one of the most recommended spots. It's usually in everybody's top five. That walkway over there is Chidorigafuchi, and that's the Indian Embassy right above it, which is kind of cool. I've been there many times before to get my overseas citizen of India card. It's a pretty nice location for them to be. There's the Indian flag flying above it. You can see the orange and green there. But it's also, again, that walkway will take you there. The signal's not very good over there, so this is maybe the best spot for it. And right below you have a lot of people that are renting the boats. On the other side, you have to walk around Chidorigafuchi to get to the launch, but you can get either a swan-shaped boat or a paddle boat or a rowboat. And the rowboats are pretty popular on a day like this. And there's the swan boat coming into your picture right there. I think you want to get some sun if you go out here. You want to feel the warmth on your face. I would probably take the rowboat if I had a choice. But it's all kind of fun. Take what you can get, maybe. The way that the cherry blossoms, these old ones here, kind of sweep over towards the water makes quite a nice photo.

04:46 John Daub: This place is also very popular at the end of the cherry blossom season. I'd say in about 10 days from now, all these petals are going to fall into the moat. And there's like, I don't know, it depends on the year, but sometimes there's so many petals that you can't even see the water. It just turns white from the petals falling into the moat. And then they make their way to the sides of the moat, which is an absolutely beautiful time. And you can see young couples, families, making their way to go see the cherry blossoms, just touching the water there. It's kind of a neat scene. Get some photos. That's how you enjoy spring.

05:32 John Daub: Up here, looking down on them, this is the gate to Kitanomaru Park here. It's pretty because you have an Edo-era, which is a 19th century-looking gate with the cherry blossoms in the background. Again, we're about three days away from it being near full bloom, so kind of early. The contrast between the blossoms and the day, the dark bark of the cherry blossom trees is pretty stunning. I always like that. With the blue sky in the background, it's nice. So let's go over in this direction here.

06:21 John Daub: On the other side, it's not quite as exciting. You have the Showa Memorial Museum, which is, I don't think I've ever been in there. The museum of the Showa era. And you do have some trees here. It's not quite as striking as the other side. This is where they had the war trials for World War II inside that building, where they tried the tribunals. There used to be a beer garden on the roof, which is kind of funny. But if you know the history of the building, of course they have to protect that building. It's an older one. But they do at night, will light up the sides of the moat here. So another reason to come here at night. And if you're staying in this area in particular, it is striking. Probably in the next 72 hours. It's going to be really nice.

07:19 John Daub: You can still see the pink buds are still there, right? The white blossoms just started a couple of days ago. So we're about 25% of the way there. Which is actually good. As I said, the saddest thing to me is when we hit 100% because it's all downhill from there. But you have a lot of people that are taking pictures, really getting some nice shots of the blossoms right now. Because it's something we look forward to for the rest of the year. For the whole year. When it's over, we're counting down 365 days to the next cherry blossom season. Because I mean, summer is coming. The cold weather is over. But in the next live stream that I do, I'm going to be talking about how to dress for spring, how to pack for Japan in this time of year. And it's kind of confusing. Just like the cherry blossoms felt this year. It's not easy to pack for spring. Because you have to... Like this guy here. You see he's wearing shorts. He's wearing a t-shirt and shorts. And he looks like it's summer. This guy is a real outlier. See over there. I've got on a jacket, a t-shirt. You can have a heat tech t-shirt underneath there. I have zip-off shorts. Just in case if the mood strikes, I can zip it off and get some shorts going.

08:51 John Daub: Why don't we go take a quick look over here at Yasukuni and see what we can see by going up the steps. Anybody who's been watching this channel knows that there are more than one kind of cherry blossom. And that means there's more than one time in which the blossoms bloom. But for the most part, the vast majority of the cherry blossoms are Somei Yoshino. Which are the white ones that you'll see all over the country. So cherry blossoms are in general they're white. But they're also pink and you've seen them like purple and they're different colors based on the time that they're blooming. There's the takizakura (waterfall cherry). Which is a waterfall type of a cherry blossom. That has the cherry blossoms twice. It starts off pink. And then the pink blossoms go away and it turns white. And then they go away and it turns green. So it's like... It's got a lot of feeling behind it. Look at this little... This young one just starting to get some popcorn cherry blossoms on there. That's a Somei Yoshino. Just a baby baby. Hey Jamie. Celebrating 20 months of membership. I want to say thank you to everybody who's been subscribed for so long. I appreciate it. I think it's 99 cents to become a traveler on the channel. And I'm changing up the emojis here in April as well. So you get a chance to see some new stuff for those that are travelers. If you do during the live chat you have access to some neat emojis that you can add in there. Make it a little fun.

10:51 John Daub: There's the torii gate of Yasukuni Shrine. As we walk up. Never walk in the center. Kind of walk to the sides because the center is reserved for the kami-sama (gods/spirits). You know the thing with Yasukuni Shrine is they used to hold a festival here. And it was really like a lot of drinking. A lot of business people in the area in particular. You know I used to work at Shueisha which is one of the publishing houses. If you've ever read Shonen Jump you probably know that it's a huge place for manga to be made. I was working in the magazines department so it was not the anime, the manga. But I got a chance to go out and meet and talk and drink with a lot of people in the company. And this is one of the places that we would go in the spring. And back then. I'm talking like I don't know like 15 years ago. More like 20 years. Oh my gosh. This was all blue sheets. And they stopped doing that around 2018 because it just got too crazy. They used to have a lot of street food. I think they might still have some of them. But you can see it is a really scenic place. But got a little out of hand. Could be because of the booze. But here we're seeing that the blossoms are more like 75% bloomed here. What? I think it's just warmer up here maybe. Maybe there's more sun. I'm not sure.

12:28 John Daub: One of the most popular places to go is the Meguro River. And I kind of wanted to show you this on the Google Earth. It was hard to get a good render of the map. Maybe it was because of the signal. But the reason why I don't like the Meguro River is you can see it's quite narrow. There's a lot of old ugly buildings around. That's why it's better to go at night maybe. It's not exactly. To me it's more exciting at night because they light it up. And that's sort of the magic of it. Here I'm kind of going along the river here. You see the sakura trees in this Google Maps rendering. At least they're trying their best to do sakura trees. See how white it is? Because that's how beautiful it is. That's the only time I guess the Meguro River is only pretty maybe during. I'm somewhat biased. I kind of like to get out of the city. But for people that are locals to Nakameguro, this is kind of their time. This is the neat time where the Meguro River does look so stunning. And if you're a local that's where you want to go. But there's so many tourists that go there as well that I don't know. It just kind of lost its appeal. It's just too crowded. You don't have any connection with nature. And that's sort of what it means to me because I've been here for so darn long. I look forward to getting away from Tokyo. Which is what Leo and I did yesterday. We went up to Ibaraki for a day to go visit Jaya. Who has a channel called Tokyo Llama. And hang out with him for a little bit. That was fun. Hey, hello to Dominique from Poland. How you doing? If you want to you can write in where you're watching. It's always nice to see.

14:25 John Daub: This is a younger tree. Looking back at Yasukuni and the entrance here. That's the view that you get. Again, there used to be hundreds of blue sheets here about 10, 15 years ago. And that's all changed. And maybe it's better. But they do have some of the street food that came back during the COVID-19 years. Dare you even say the word and you get marked by the platform. So during the COVID-19 years. I can see. You all know what I mean. That's cool. Look, they put some benches here. This is all street food. And you couldn't even walk through here at night. It was more like pushing. But now that they do, they did bring back some of the food stands. Which is kind of neat to see. There's some churros here. And there's a kakigori (shaved ice) over there. Karaage (fried chicken). That one looks very cherry blossom-y. Look at that stand. What do you think they got over there? Beer. They got some booze. But they've done it where it's kind of separated by this gate here. That's interesting. So you have this gate here just to keep people inside of the area. So it's more orderly. It's a hot dog stand. It's a cherry blossom hot dog stand. What? That's the most dressed up hot dog I've ever seen on a pink bun.

16:08 John Daub: Ueno Park at night. Is it lit up? It is. Ueno Park, the two places, Ueno Park would probably be my choice out of the two places. And then there's Yoyogi Park, which is not really lit up at night. Yoyogi Park is all about, is not so much about the cherry blossoms, it's more about the party. So if you're younger, I guess, you know, under 50, maybe that's the place to go. You get to meet a lot of people. Usually everyone's a little bit tipsy after about 6 p.m. And it has a good vibe. But the cherry blossoms are not why you would go. There are cherry blossoms there. You go because it's more fun. There you go. There's some tacos. There's, what is that over there? It looks like it's ramen. And there's some baby castella. Oh, it smells. You can smell the churros. And they're making like castella balls, like this traditional cake, Portuguese cake or something. It's pretty good. It's basically just pancakes. It's pancake balls is pretty much what they are.

17:40 John Daub: Boy, it is a beautiful day when the sun comes out and it's not raining. But the hardest thing to do is to dress and prepare for spring because you get rain, you get clouds. You have like three days it will be really cold like winter again. And then three days it will be like summer and it's scalding hot. And then three days it's kind of warm where it feels like summer and then it goes cold again. And it does this back and forth and back and forth. And people are getting sick all the time as a result of it. You're outside. It's, it's, it, it, and then after, I guess it's like April 15th or so after Golden Week for the rest of the time. Although June can be chilly. There's going to be some buffering because we're going into a place where there's a lot more people and the signal isn't so great. So I'm going to do my very best to try to find it out a little bit in this area. But I thought it's pretty nice to just take a look. And for me, it's about scouting it out. I want to take a look myself to see personally where we are in the cherry blossom season. If it's really bad, I end up uploading the downloaded version of this video so then you can see in HD.

19:08 John Daub: All right. This is the gate to Yasukuni Shrine. Beyond this gate lies one of the most beautiful places in Tokyo at this time of year. I've shown in the past the Miharu Takizakura, which is the old one. And it wasn't too long ago. Look at the seating around it. What? So you can... Maybe they had a presentation. They have a Noh theater (traditional Japanese theater). This is a Noh theater inside of Yasukuni Shrine. But this tree right here is the indicator tree. And when it has, I think it's like 8 or 13 blossoms, it turns into something really beautiful. So that's when the season starts. So this tree now, it's like full bloom. Typically, it's the first one. It's beautiful. It's nice with that Noh stage in the background too. But this is the first time I'd seen the seating here. I appreciate the patience, guys. You're joining me live right now as I show you the Metropolitan Sakura Indicator Tree, which is that one right there that everyone's taking pictures of.

21:23 John Daub: On the other side, there's also quite a lot of trees to check out that are beautiful. The whole area. I think it's one of the top five spots. You should check out if you're into the tree blooms. Food if you want. But it's got a different vibe. All the neighborhoods have a different vibe. Nakameguro River at sunset. Just because you can see the... There's Yasukuni Shrine on the right side. Just because you can see the blossoms lit up. It's maybe my favorite time of the year because it means winter's over. Maybe a bit more for that. But it also brings people together. And parties or meet up. And it's been kind of a downer. Last year was like a buffer year, I guess you could say. So this year, a little bit more freedom. So we're going to see what Ueno Park is like. I know that my friend Joseph is having a party at Yoyogi Park. And Peter von Gomm said he might stop over there as well. And I don't know. I might do a meet up on Friday. So that would be pretty cool. I intend to meet up with some other friends on Thursday. So I might do a meet up on Friday. That would be very good. It's been a long time since I did something like that. But thank goodness we're out of the woods and into the blossom season. Which is really beautiful.

23:27 John Daub: Yeah, most of the people wearing masks are doing so because of the pollen. Not so much because of COVID-19. So for those that have this deranged mask syndrome or something. That's why. There's always like... There's a small percentage of people that just... They just get really angry. That guy's got a clicker and he's trying to estimate the number of people coming in. That's got to be a tough job. Just keep clicking. Beautiful. So there you go. You're also getting a chance to look at how people are dressing in the spring. Japanese... Nobody's wearing shorts. There are no locals wearing shorts, including myself, yet. But I've seen a number of tourists wearing shorts. Some of them wearing t-shirts and shorts. Or it's like it's summer. I love that. That's spirit. That's spirit. It's not that warm. Alright, the sun goes in and out, too. But when it comes to hay fever and the pollen... And Tokyo is one of the worst in the world, okay? That's... The mask does help. It helps people that have acute allergies to this. And that's why a lot of people are wearing masks right now. It has nothing to do with getting sick. Although it might. You never know. There's many reasons why people would do that. So kids are always wearing shorts. Alright? Anybody who's like an elementary school kid, I think they wear shorts from April onwards. Just because they're so active. But, you know, an adult, probably not going to do it. Not going to do it.

25:36 John Daub: Channeling Dana Carvey's George Bush from 1990. It's a beautiful area. But we've still got a ways to go. And that's kind of exciting for me. I'm not going to turn this channel into a cherry blossom channel like I have in years past. But I leave that up to changing my mind as the passion of the blossoms hits me. And I feel cherry blossom fever, which is very easy to catch. Because once you catch it... I don't know. I'm not inside very much then. You kind of just want to be outside. But you lose it the first time that... You get a little depressed when the cherry blossoms are out. And cherry blossoms do leave. And that first rain and wind after they hit 100%. It's a little depressing to me. I have to be honest with you. But I've gone through the ringer a couple of times. A couple of dozen times. Not the same kind of impact. But we've got that hot summer to look forward to. No, actually we have the beautiful weather of May to look forward to. Which is nice. It's nice.

26:40 John Daub: All right, everybody. I hope you enjoyed it. Just a little walk around here. And a little introduction into some of the places to explore. You know. There's going to be cherry blossom trees all around the city of Tokyo. Just pick one. Go get a bento. Enjoy the spring. You don't have to go to one of the attractions. But there are reasons why people go there. To relax is usually not one of them. If you do want to get a blue sheet and put it up. You've got to get there quite early in the morning. And I don't know what they're doing at Ueno. But gets a little out of control. I know that Yoyogi Park can get a little dirty and out of control. In particular at around sunset. And I don't know if they kick people out. But we will see. I'll see if I can make a trip over there. All right, everybody. Have a good day. I'll see you in a live stream again. Maybe tonight or tomorrow. I'll try to get back on real soon. Because this is a great time of the year. Michael Susano, you just joined. What? All right, Michael. I'm going to go over here and zoom in on a couple of. Immerse ourselves into what I've been telling you. Tokyo is not the greatest for cherry blossoms. But I do live here. And this is my town. So it's nice to see it looking like it does right now. Wow, that's 100% right there. All right, everybody. See you.