00:00:04 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Tokyo. That right there is the space boat that goes up and down the Sumida River, part of the beauty of Tokyo's riverside. Sumida River being one of my favorite places and my backyard neighborhood to kind of hang out in. We're at 100% bloom, or just about, and this Saturday is supposed to be the big day for it.

00:00:25 John Daub: So joining me on this live stream is Leo. Leo, space boat! All you have to do is look up and you see it looks like it snowed last night. Ah, don't throw rocks at it. You've got a rock. Alright here Leo, say hello to everybody. Leo, come here. Say hi to everybody.

00:01:14 John Daub: We're gonna go back up the street here. And I want to take you to the top of the mountain. I want to take you around here and show you some of the beautiful parts. And you know, there's a ton of people over in Ueno and in Nakameguro and in Roppongi and all these spots. But if you just walked a little bit out here, there's so much empty and open space. It's really nice.

00:01:43 John Daub: He wants to give these people a stick. I found that Leo is very talkative and friendly and likes to meet with other people and share what he finds, which is sometimes like rocks and sticks. But this one, we can't. So that one, we shouldn't throw the sticks. Okay, come on, let's go down to the river, Leo. Show everybody a little bit of the beautiful Sumida Riverside here.

00:02:06 John Daub: The great thing about the weekends in particular are all of the different boats that go by. You saw the space boat go by. But a lot of people will bring blue sheets. And Kanae is coming out here and probably will join us in a couple of hours. She actually has to work on the weekends. But people will get the blue sheets and set it up right out here. And it's a great place to go. It's a beautiful thing to just picnic outside.

00:02:29 John Daub: Okay, today's a little bit chillier than usual. But to set up the blue sheet, watch the boats go by. And then above you are the cherry blossoms arcing over towards the river. And it's just such a beautiful sight. It feels like spring.

00:02:51 John Daub: Leo, did you see space boat? So where exactly is this beautiful area, you might be asking? Well, it's right here. It's on an island, believe it or not. This is Tsukishima, which is the original only island in Tokyo Bay, Tokyo Harbor. But they filled it in and now they've made a really long one.

00:03:17 John Daub: And you can see along the riverside, in particular all over Japan, they plant cherry blossoms, some Yoshino variety of them. Look at a little pan out here. It looks like a little Manhattan. The river divides and goes towards Toyosu on one side and then to Odaiba on the other. And the river boats go straight past where we are, that blue spot. Underneath all the bridges there, you see the Imperial Palace on the left side. So we're pretty close to Tokyo Station. We're pretty close to downtown area.

00:03:45 John Daub: This is a nice place. Hama-rikyu Gardens is just down the road. This is maybe one of the more livable places in Tokyo as well. You got the fresh sea air coming in all the time. Nice for the trees and nice for the flowers as well.

00:04:02 John Daub: Do you hear the ambulance? Which one do you want? Cherry blossoms or ambulance? Really? Oh, my gosh. Okay, well, should we go look at the ambulance? You're going to put that in the water? As long as it's not garbage, I guess it's okay. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but they'll just float in the river. All right, but no more, okay? Let's walk.

00:04:39 John Daub: Leo, let's walk this way. That's the Chuo Bridge over there, and you can see right between it the Skytree. Check it out. That's kind of a neat shot right there. It's hazy. It looks like it had been raining yesterday. It was really chilly, raining this morning, and it stopped. And this is supposed to be the last nice day, even though it's chilly, because the cherry blossoms are near full bloom, and that means that the first rain or wind is going to blow them away.

00:05:11 John Daub: The thing you have to do with kids is let them explore, but also keep an eye on them to make sure. You can put that away. Actually, there are some rules to being down here. No open fires, no barbecues, don't leave your trash around, things like this. I guess there's like some kid who put a collection of sticks there. But it's a wonderful place because people do picnic out here, and this makes it a really fun experience in the spring. It's called hanami (cherry blossom viewing).

00:05:52 John Daub: All right, let's go back up here, Leo. Is Jared here? Thanks, Jared. It's nice to see you. I hope you're having a good day. All right, Leo, let's go. No more sticks in the river. I'm not sure you should be putting anything in the river. Sometimes if I run away, he just will follow me.

00:07:00 John Daub: All right, Leo, no more. He's like, I got to get one more. Are you serious? All right, stop putting sticks in the river. It'll be fine. All right, come on. Look at the water skis. Leo, want to ride this one? That's kind of cool. We saw them just a couple of days ago. They were out here in force. There were like a hundred of them going back and forth. I guess there's a water ski club that does this.

00:07:47 John Daub: Tokyo Sam, I think that Leo is the boss here. What is that? Is that like a police boat? I can tell you one time a friend of mine who lives just down the street actually from here. He has a kayak and we tried to kayak on the Sumida River. Fire boat. That's not a fire boat. It's excavator. Oh, there's an excavator over there. And the police actually came in a police boat and told us not to kayak on the Sumida River. This is about 18 years ago, so we learned our lesson. Don't do it.

00:08:24 John Daub: All right, come on, Leo. Hey, no, you can't go this way. We're going to go this way. Leo, you have to come this way. He really wants to go back to the river. Whatever. It's not going to happen. Leo, come on. That's his ride. He's too big for this. But I put a steering wheel on it and he thinks he's actually driving it. So that's why he now wants to take that, which is good because I don't have to carry him.

00:09:14 John Daub: Let's show some people some Somei Yoshino trees here. As I said, this year has been really late and it was hard to predict when exactly. There's a lot of really upset tourists that came. They said, we flew all the way here and got reservations at a hotel that was expensive because it was peak season and all this and there were no cherry blossoms. Well, here they are. They full bloom probably yesterday or today and they're going to be around. I would say some of them are still blooming. They might hang around until next Friday. The ones that are at full bloom now, they're probably going to be gone tomorrow with the rains and winds that are coming in.

00:09:54 John Daub: But it is really nice here and you have different varieties of trees. So again, there might be some varieties that haven't even started blooming yet. One of the things about living out here on the river is that you get a chance to enjoy these boats going by and it just adds a little bit something extra that's better than the crowds. And you don't have any crowds out here. We're about 10 minutes walking to Ginza and there's very few crowds out here. Most of the crowds are on the river.

00:10:36 John Daub: I've noticed that Leo attracts attention wherever he goes. Nemui (sleepy). Okay, come on. All right, Leo, stand up. Good job. I think he's sleepy. He got like 10 hours of sleep. Okay, Leo, come on. You can go in. You can drive your car.

00:11:09 John Daub: They write the rules and the manners here. This is really interesting. It says no open fires, don't stay late at night, remove your trash, don't be too loud, things like that. Leo, look at this black boat. That's an odd looking boat, isn't it? They had these river boats in the canals or canal boats on the Fukagawa area. And they kind of look like this, but that's an electrical version. That's kind of interesting. I hadn't seen one like this. No camping. Although, I think you probably could get away with it, but they don't want you to do that.

00:12:03 John Daub: No blossoms on this tree. Leo, do you want to get into your car? There's a lot of energy here. Or do you want to run back down to the bottom? How fast can you run? All right, three, two, one, go. That's pretty fast.

00:12:57 John Daub: Ryoka (let's go). Where are you going? Hey. Yeah, I caught you. Okay, come on. Oh my gosh. How did you get so fast? So I was thinking of going to Meguro tonight. Let's go check that out one time. Look at the boat.

00:13:52 John Daub: I caught you? No, if you get caught, you're busted. One more time. Alright, okay, go to the top here. You gotta go to the top. Did he say one more time? Are you kidding me? He's gonna sleep pretty good this afternoon. No, you have to start from the top. You gotta start from the top. No, that's cheating. It's halfway, all the way from the top. You can't stop there. You gotta keep going, all the way to the top. Okay, come on. I'll walk with you. You can't stop in the middle. That's cheating. You have to do the whole thing.

00:14:47 John Daub: That's right, hello, hi. He's got his own rules. But again, for me, for cherry blossom season, for sakura, it's not an attraction the same way it is for maybe international visitors. This is a time to go hang out with family.

00:15:10 John Daub: All right, are you ready? Three, two, one, okay, go. Don't fall down. He's faster than I am. Oh no. I told you, you gotta be careful. Itai (ouch). What happened? Oh, why you stopped in the same place?

00:16:25 John Daub: Leo, where are you? Leo. Do you see him? Ah, I see you, go. Ah, dame dayo (no way). You can't go on the blue sheet. Dame, shoes, no shoes on somebody's blue sheet, okay? Dokko iku no (where are you going)?

00:16:59 John Daub: You can see also, I think this is really interesting. People will save their spot. They set up the tents in the morning. I think this might be only in Japan. No one will take it, but they'll set up their tents and their spots and mark their name on the top of it. This one they've written on cardboard. Yamashita? So the name of the person is on there. And I guess I could bring out a blue sheet and reserve this spot for my family if I wanted to. They've got chairs there. You could bring out a picnic table. But people are going to be enjoying this. They're enjoying the rest of the day. And it's supposed to warm up in the afternoon.

00:17:35 John Daub: Hey you! What are you doing? He just keeps going and going and going. But it's a day for family for Japan. And I think that's a big difference between what international visitors are coming here to do and what we actually do here when we have the cherry blossoms in Japan. Because it is a really beautiful time. I think we enjoy it in a different way.

00:18:05 John Daub: I don't think Japanese travel around the country to go to the quote-unquote top spots. Instead, what they do is just hang out in the spots that they know best. And they don't want to travel far. They just want to enjoy their own neighborhood. And we see the places on TV that are really beautiful blooming. I don't think we really want to go there. I think autumn is different. Koyo (autumn leaves), which is the changing of the color of the leaves here, that's a season that's more predictable and a lot longer than the cherry blossoms. So it makes more sense to travel around the country. But in the spring, not a lot of people are going to be traveling to, like, Yoshino in Nara. Mostly it'll be international tourists that go down there. Or locals that live in Nara that are down there.

00:18:48 John Daub: Hey, there's people in that tent. There's people in that tent, Leo. We better go up and get the baby car. We call the strollers baby cars in Japanese. Don't ask me why. ChampagneSumo writes in here, no sakura sake. Not yet. Ryoka, oide (come here)!

00:19:24 John Daub: But it looks like it's gonna be a really nice afternoon. Yesterday was freezing cold. I took you over to Kayabacho, which is maybe the last place you would think of seeing cherry blossoms, but there's an actual street in the center of Tokyo that has 150 lined up that just go up and down the street. It's really beautiful. And they're in full bloom today as well. And there's not a lot of tourists. It's mostly businessmen and residents of the area. And that's, I think the international tourists just go to the top 10 spots that are listed on the internet because they don't know any other place. So maybe it was good this year to introduce some new places.

00:20:44 John Daub: The thing is with the weather, and this is the last thing I'm gonna leave you with. And then I'll try to do another live stream today with when Kanae comes. Spring weather is deceptively chilly. I know the temperature might say like 12 or 13 degrees Celsius, mid fifties. It doesn't feel like that. There's a bite in the air that's just a lot chillier than you would expect. And I really believe you should have layers on. You can always take the layers off, but it's really good to bundle up because a lot of people, they underestimate the chill.

00:21:18 John Daub: Oh, thank you for making grass tea. Wow, is that lemongrass? Oh, and dandelions. Okay, here you go. Champagne Sumo, and this is for you. Leo, only put organic things in here, okay? Cause probably not a good idea to throw anything in the river, but that's coming to all of you in Hawaii. Compliments of Leo. So maybe in about three to six weeks, you'll see, if you see a yellow dandelion in Hawaii, that's from Leo, from you, from us in Tokyo, during the cherry blossom season.

00:22:33 John Daub: Okay, stand up, stand up. Okay, all right. Say bye bye to everybody. That's the best you're gonna get. All right, guys, I'm gonna chase him around for the next 15 minutes and then go look for mommy. There's a couple of food trucks that are up there. One of them is this really good Italian place called Graciela, which is really nice. So if you're in the area, try to hit up the food truck and maybe I'll see you around.

00:23:04 John Daub: Well, probably, maybe we're gonna go to Ueno Park or somewhere different, but probably enjoy this day cause this is apparently the last beautiful day for the cherry blossoms in Tokyo this year. But don't worry, there's lots of other places in Japan. They go and see the cherry blossoms. It's not just Tokyo. Apparently, the news told me it moves 20 kilometers north every day. Japan's got several hundred kilometers long, so it's going to be around for at least another six weeks if you go up to Hokkaido. You'll be able to see them in May, believe it or not.

00:23:38 John Daub: All right, everybody. I'll see you at another livestream as Leo and I, as I try to survive and Leo enjoys himself. He's fixing it, he said. Well, that's good. Keep on doing your good work, Leo. Good job. See you, everybody. Oh, and thank you to Jasmine for signing up for the postcard club yesterday. I said anybody who signed up yesterday would get a second card and I'm gonna send this one, put it in the mail for you today. This will go for today as well. I have a couple more. So if you sign up today, I will send you this card from last month and you'll be getting this month's card, which is Shinjuku. Oh, look, police boat, Leo. That's awesome. Police boat. That's the one I think that busted us when we were doing our kayak. And don't do kayaking in the Sumida River. See you.