00:00:29 John Daub: English speaker with occasional Japanese place names, food terms, and cultural words. I don't know if the petals are already falling now. It looks highly unlikely that it's going to make it, because this weekend could be really pretty too. Let's walk to another tree here. You know, for the Japanese economy, people are spending so much money right now because of the cherry blossoms. And only if it could last another five days, this would be so good for the economy. And not just that, but the beauty of this country. By the way, there's a secret shrine in there. Just thought I would tell you. And trying to find a way to make this season even longer would be pretty darn awesome.

00:03:18 John Daub: OK, there's some cherry blossoms over there at the end of this street here. But if you're planning to come to visit Japan, I want you to remember this. And I'm going to say this every livestream that I do a cherry blossoms episode. They might be blooming and finished in Tokyo, but they're not bloomed yet in Tohoku. All you got to do is travel a little bit to catch up with the cherry blossoms. The cherry blossoms don't all bloom at once. In fact, there are dozens and dozens of varieties of cherry blossoms. The Somei Yoshino (a common cherry blossom variety) making up maybe like 80% of them. They're blooming right now. But this particular one, this is a Yaezakura (double-flowered cherry) maybe? Is really beautiful too.

00:03:57 John Daub: Oh god, this is perfect. I don't know if, hold on. Maybe the sun is over there. It's not doing it justice. But you could see the way that this one just is blooming. It's got those fresh green leaves sprouting out of the branches right now. But this is, and I see some people here writing that they were at Ueno Park. Just saw that comment come in here. I want you to look right now at this. It's virtually empty around here. And this is the majority of Tokyo's cherry blossoms experience. It's only when you go to the really popular parks that actually locals, unless you live in Ueno, probably don't. Probably locals are avoiding the big parks. And they're going to the little local parks. And that's where it's at. Along the river, along some of the streets. Not so much in the parks.

00:05:08 John Daub: I've always wondered why everybody flocks to Ueno Park. I guess it's because it's just fun, right? But the nature's all around you, even in the city. This one is beautiful. I think this is a Yaezakura. The birds are going crazy. I think they know that the rain is about to come in. The Somei Yoshino is white, which looks like snow. This is more of a pink, which is a light pink and white. It really is stunning, isn't it? Aloha, Michael. Nice to see you here, buddy. Welcome. There's some Somei Yoshino trees on the other side. Let's go take a look as we pass this little canal area of Shiodome (business district) Island where the fishermen used to live back in the Edo period, fished for the emperor.

00:06:03 John Daub: These are at full bloom. You can see there's one of Tokyo's security cameras. I think they do that for disasters and things like this. I don't think they do it for crime. I'm not really sure. I don't know who's on the other side watching. You can see already that this was just a beautiful place to sit. No one's even there. All these tourists are here, millions and millions of them, and they haven't found this place that's 10 minutes away from Ginza, which is in itself pretty insane, right? Why am I showing you the secret spots of Tokyo? Don't come here. Leave it for locals, maybe. We want to have some spots that don't have tourists. Although you know what? Just come. I changed my mind.

00:07:01 John Daub: This is what is making people go crazy right now, and it's making me go crazy because I promised that I wouldn't be doing all of these live streams on the cherry blossoms, and then you see nothing is decided until it is done. Basically, you cannot not do this. You have to do the cherry blossoms. It's just such a big thing. I've already said this in live streams before. I saw that National Geographic was trying to make this into a global warming thing. You know what? Zero talk on this right now in Japan. Everybody just stops with the negativity, and everything is just so positive for the next 10 days during the blossoms, except the weather. The weatherman gets it. Only the weatherman is attacked during this period of peace and harmony, and it's amazing.

00:08:00 John Daub: It just seems like it's so negative outside of Japan. Another reason to come during the cherry blossoms is because there is this amazing amount of peace where you don't think about any of that negativity that's on the news and trying to block out all of the social media. It's another reason that I love to cover these cherry blossoms. It's so peaceful and beautiful. Sometimes in life we forget about the things that are really important because we are being told over and over about the things that are going wrong in the world. All you have to do is walk outside your door and you can see everything that's going right, which is Mother Nature right now. Sure, there might be some problems 50 years down the road. But you still have to live in the moment. Sometimes you can't be an activist on everything you do, National Geographic. So eat that. I'm just stating the obvious here. It is so beautiful here.

00:09:09 John Daub: Let's walk around a little bit more. Enjoy this for the next five minutes or so. There's a bunch of other cherry blossom trees in the back here. They've done a lot of renovations in this neighborhood as well. Oh my gosh, this is just so sad to see the petals on the ground though too. They're going to end up in the water as well. Millions and millions. Maybe I could say billions of them. Hey, Champagne Sumo is back. Have a cherry coke while watching cherry blossom. It's hard to find cherry coke in Japan. Used to be around but now you can't find it. You can't even find them at Loft or import stores, which is kind of insane. They always had cherry coke and now you can't find it. They had vanilla coke for a little bit, but these were like really trendy drinks. I will try to find it, but I think you could just get cherry extract or something and put it in coke. Isn't that what cherry coke is essentially? I grew up drinking cherry coke.

00:10:26 John Daub: All right, let's go take a look at this tree at the end of the road here. These look like younger Somei Yoshino trees. Oh, look, there's some more over here. And this goes towards where Leo Kanai and I were just a couple of days ago. And it was almost full bloom then and it looks like we're past full bloom. So yesterday would have been the big day. These are already, you can see the petals on the ground here. So this is the end of it. Look, they're already kind of, a little breeze caused them to start to fly like this. You can see the blossoms kind of fluttering in the wind already. So just a light breeze can cause some major, major structural damage in these Somei Yoshino trees.

00:11:19 John Daub: But you know, we call them in English cherry blossoms. We don't in Japanese. They're called sakura (cherry blossoms), okay? And sakura are these blossoms and there's that confusion of why they don't make cherries. That's an English thing. Again, we don't use English in Japanese for, there's Japanese names for all of these and cherries not in any of them. So how'd they get the cherry blossoms? I guess we have to ask George Washington who cut down a cherry tree and broke the law apparently. He's an outlaw. At least that's the rumor from 18th century surveyor turned president, general turned president Washington cut down a cherry tree and no that cherry tree apparently had no blossoms on it. I don't know. I wasn't around.

00:12:18 John Daub: Oh, it is more beautiful when it's falling. This might be the most beautiful time because they're falling. You get one little breeze and they all start to fall and that's just a. The scent of the cherry blossom. It's not as strong as you would think. The Somei Yoshino don't have a real floral scent to it. It is quite delicate, quite light smelling when you have millions of them. Perhaps it makes a smell, but you could see the blossoms in the river here. Hey, Satrio watching while craving daimyo sakura package. There's not a lot in there right now. The cherry blossom petals on the water, but I bet you if we come back in about 24 hours, there's going to be a lot. There's going to be a ton of them in there. Satrio, thanks so much for buying last month's daimyo package. I got some for this month. In fact, the postcards are going to be going out at the end of this week as well, so we're almost there. I appreciate that. There was some goodies in there. All sakura.

00:13:41 John Daub: In Japan, we love to not just enjoy the sakura cherry blossoms. We love to also eat them in confections. They're usually the Kawazu sakura (pink cherry variety), I think. The pink ones are in the foods there. Boy, this PRISM map has really improved the transitions between the zooms and the wide shots. I was quite impressed by that. Let's see if we can find a vending machine. Maybe we can get a drink or something. Oh, the white is going to be gone in about 72 hours from this tree. I'm kind of sad. Even though you can see some of these blossoms are starting to come out now, you can see this one's not...most of them are gone. Most of them are 100%, but this is about 90%. These will be coming out soon. We're already at the end of this. So, the rains that are on the way, if you look at the sky, it does not look good. Any rains, that means the end of what you see here, this paradise. They all start to fall onto the ground. Any wind and rain.

00:14:55 John Daub: Food, look. What is your number one spot to see sakura in Tokyo? First, my number one spot is not in Tokyo. But if you were to go and see sakura in Tokyo, it's probably the best spot. I would say, like, wherever you are. Gosh, that's such a hard thing to give you advice on. What is the number one spot? I don't like the Meguro River, unless you just like the festive part of it. I don't think it's the most beautiful place for the cherry blossoms. It's too urban. Ueno Park is too crowded and the trees are too big, and you feel like you're at Disneyland, walking. There's too much, there's crowd control. And when you have crowd control, that kind of takes the fun out of it. Just ask anyone who's visited Disneyland or Disney World in the last six months.

00:15:52 John Daub: In Japan, they say Mount Yoshino is the best, but I wouldn't say, I would say no. I think it's worth to make a trip if you're traveling for cherry blossoms. But it's because it's at elevation and they have thousands of different varieties of trees and different colors of them. So they all pop on, depending on the weather. But I'm not sure if it's worth a special trip to go to Mount Yoshino. But if you're going to rank stuff, they rank it as number one. People who go there are usually pretty content, who are pretty happy with traveling to Yoshino Mountain and Mount Yoshino in Nara. But I don't know if it's worth a special trip to go there, to be honest with you. I think that you can find those cherry blossoms just about anywhere that you are. In Tokyo, I don't know. I would say maybe the most beautiful. This is my favorite place because it's not crowded, because you can walk around. There's lots of supermarkets around and you can have a picnic.

00:16:52 John Daub: That's a really tough one. Maybe Yoyogi, but Yoyogi is not that great as a park for cherry blossoms. If you go out to the countryside, Yoyogi is just destroyed by the beauty out there in the countryside. But if you're talking about the city cherry blossoms. It's more about the festival and the partying, not so much about this. So I want you, if you are in Tokyo, get the heck out of Tokyo. Go up somewhere else. Just get on a train. The Seishun 18 Kippu (youth 18 ticket, seasonal rail pass) is good until the 10th. I think you got like two days left. Just take a local train and go somewhere else. Go to, I don't know, Kamakura or Nikko. They're going to start to change there really soon and you're going to be amazed at how much more beautiful. The cherry blossoms are in nature with the temples and shrines in the background. That white contrasting against that dark wood is just beautiful. You don't want to be in the city so much.

00:17:57 John Daub: I think it's nice because we live here as residents, but I never understood why. Okay, that's not true. I know why. Because it's a time when you get to see Tokyo probably at its most beautiful, but Japan is at its most beautiful then. Tokyo is a little bit more beautiful with the cherry blossoms and Japan is a lot more beautiful with the cherry blossoms. So I don't know if it's worth staying in Tokyo. Although everybody's different. Everybody has their own likes and dislikes. So it's a really hard thing. It's based more on personal preference of anything else. Here on the Sumida River. Again, the cherry blossoms along the river sides are usually the most beautiful because of the water, because of the openness, because the cherry blossoms, you know, they're going to really love being near the water too. So they're probably the happiest. And it just so happens that I live nearby.

00:18:57 John Daub: This weekend, this area was extremely crowded. Leo Kanai and I came out here for a picnic and it was pretty crowded. Which is nothing like Ueno though. Ueno's on another level. Shinjuku Gyoen used to be nice, but now they have this online reservation system. And you can't just go there. You have to reserve a spot. And it feels like very much like an amusement park. And that is a huge detractor to it. Because you want to just enjoy nature. You don't want to have to get a ticket or sign up for it. You know, you want to be able to just go there and soak it up. And you can't do that in Tokyo. It's hard. It's not possible. So you go where places where you can just enjoy it. You know, do what you got to do. Go to the all the attractions and eat the restaurants. And a lot of this food is just a trendy gimmicky food dishes that are kind of cool. But I've seen them on Instagram. My mom like, that's not really Japanese food. That's just kind of a creative way to repackage something. I think that that's cool. It gets a lot of views.

00:20:29 John Daub: It's curious. You know, and curiosity is one of the four big things that drives viral videos. So people do it all the time. Curiosity, hunger, shocking stuff and fear. These are the four things that drive viral topics. It's a really beautiful time of year. It just changes every year. You can't really predict when the cherry blossoms are coming and that's the whole thing. And this is the thing. I think those that have been watching this channel for years, first of all, thank you. And you know, you can't predict mother nature. Now the autumn foliage is much easier to predict. You know, and because I think it lasts longer, the autumn colors on the trees, the blossoms are definitely short lived, shorter lived, which makes it a harder to catch. It's easy for me because I live here. But if you're coming thousands of miles away to catch this season, there's not a lot that I can tell you. And the weatherman, as I said, is the one that is getting trolled and put down. And the weatherman, that is a really tough job at this time of year. You just can't predict the blossoms. It's impossible, but you can get like sort of around this time.

00:22:11 John Daub: Yeah. You know, they've been starting around March 17th in Tokyo. And this year it was like March 28th. All right. You started to see them and it's not full bloom until like April 3rd this year, but usually it's full bloom like March 23rd. So that's a huge difference for tens of thousands of travelers coming to Japan. Huge. All right, let's jump. We can jump off road here. Yesterday I chased Leo here a couple of days ago. He was so fast, but you could see how the weekends are and now you can see how the weekdays are. So it's a definitely a completely different vibe. All this was full of blue sheets. And this is the great thing, I guess maybe about being a tourist here in Tokyo on the weekdays when everyone's working, you have all this open space to do your sakura parties. And it is relatively warm right now. Although it looks pretty ominous over there by the Skytree. Do you see that? That does not look like a beautiful, that looks like rain, right? I'm going to have to say these blossoms are done for. This whole area is going to be gone in about 36 hours, I'd say. And that's heartbreaking.

00:23:48 John Daub: And I said, this might be the last day for it, but if you do sign up for the Only in Japan Postcard Club, I will send you last month's postcard, which is from here in Tokyo. Which basically sums up this whole cherry blossom season. This is my wife Kanae Daub and my son Leo, actually right here at this spot, enjoying the cherry blossoms. I threw them up in the air. Don't worry, I caught him, but he was a lot lighter back then. I will send you this with this month's postcard, which is Shinjuku. Uh, so you'll get two for the price of one if you sign up and you're a new signup. Um, today is the last day probably. I'll make today the last day because I got, I don't have that many left. I'm going to have to go to the post office. I don't want to, but we had about, we only had three signups. It's not like there's a huge rush to join, but I appreciate this. And the kayakers are out. I guess you have to be on a kayak with a guide or something because I tried doing this and I got in big trouble with my friend. We hit an inflatable kayak, but I don't know if you're allowed to do that. I'm not sure, but you can see the Skytree, uh, it looks like it's going to be hit by lightning soon. That is not good.

00:25:33 John Daub: Wait a second. These balls. I don't know. I guess somebody lost their balls. Somebody should fish these out or they're going to end up in the mighty Pacific. You know, it looked, when I was chasing Leo two days ago, I was like, he kept on running away. And if you look at it, it looks like I have, it's a body cam because for some reason on my YouTube suggested videos, there's all these like US police arrest videos that started to show up. And it looks like body cam footage of me chasing down Leo and then arresting him. I thought that was a little bit funny now, after seeing that maybe it was, YouTube suggested it because I took video of Leo and chased him. Like it was, it looked like I had the camera here. It looked like it was chasing with a body cam. That's pretty funny. But these gimbals that I'm using right now are just so smooth with the video. Now I know that this is not a great spot for the signal. So we're probably going to lose it. It's a good place to end the live stream perhaps.

00:26:27 John Daub: But you could see on the weekdays after that first weekend, which is, I can't believe that this was the first weekend that we had at full bloom. Usually that's the end of the blossom season. And I think the feeling is with the locals, it's about over. This is the part where you just walk around and sort of enjoy it. And one of the reasons why I bring this stuff to you is because I want you to know that I want you to enjoy it with me too. Uh, Zolmak is here. Hey, thank you. All right, let's go up and see if we can see a couple more blossoms here. That's St. Luke's hospital over there. One of the first Western medicine hospitals, a lot of long history. Um, the Tsukiji area where Tsukiji fish market used to be, now it's in Toyosu. That was famous for being the first place of the foreign residents in Edo after the Meiji era, the foreigners mostly came to Tsukiji and lived there. The first American embassy was in Tsukiji and there's a rock at St. Luke's hospital showing where the first US embassy was. Then it moved over to Akasaka, which is where it is today, which is a fortress of Japanese police and Marines, which is kind of intimidating. I try not to go to the US embassy cause it's kind of scary. You have to make appointments and you have to go through all these procedures and stuff just to renew a passport or something.

00:28:09 John Daub: You can see all of the white petals now on the brick here. And that's pretty much the end of it. Tomorrow it's going to be, this is all going to be white. It's going to look really pretty. You know, maybe tomorrow might be one of the prettiest days because you have like a walkway that's just completely white. And then you have cherry blossoms over there. So maybe I'll bring Kanae Daub and Leo out for a picture. Very scenic. Arriving in Japan on Thursday. Will there be any cherry blossoms? It depends where, Gracie. It depends where, because the cherry blossoms are all over the country blooming at different times. They move north 20 kilometers a day. If you want to see cherry blossoms and they're kind of on the end in Tokyo, all you have to do is jump on a train and go north about a hundred kilometers and you're going to see cherry blossoms. And then you have cherry blossoms like it was five days before in Tokyo. That's sort of the guide. And in Tokyo I would say no. I think that the rain that's coming in today, probably going to wash away 50% of the Somei Yoshino and there's going to be some gaps. And I'd say by this weekend, we're really not going to have much left. But I think that you know, I bet you this weekend there's still going to be some people partying and some food stands. And that, but it's not going to look the same. We're at the end of it. And unlike autumn, the cherry blossoms, they come quick and they leave quick. And that's a sort of the symbol of life. It's a time where we kind of reflect on our lives.

00:30:01 John Daub: This is where I took Leo's picture too. Oh, this is where the postcard was taken. Leo and I, I threw Leo up in the sky for that postcard right there. Maybe you can see it. There's that tree. But it was a sunny day. Bro 555-808 writes in here, have a sakura dessert on the way home. You got it. I'll stop off at the supermarket for something. Bring something for Kanae and Leo. Hi, hey, how you doing? Actually Leo, Kanae and are sick. Leo has a cold. He had to stay home from preschool or nursery school. I don't know, hoikuen (nursery school) is what we call it in Japanese. So I'm doing great. I feel good. So I'll stop off at this supermarket. And I'll bring them home some lunch. And I will, thanks to that, I'll get some sakura stuff for them too. I appreciate that. Bring, I'm going to bring the sakura to them. That's nice.

00:31:15 John Daub: What is the best sakura treat this time? You know, that's a good question. I think, you know, two places were really, it's harder to find new stuff, I thought. There's restaurants, for me, there's confections that I can send abroad and they have to have an expiration date more than two weeks. Right? So I found the best places were Kaldi. But a lot of that is sold out already. Kaldi is this store you can find all over the country that has unique foods in there. They had all sorts of sakura flavored stuff I couldn't find anywhere else. I thought that was very creative. And then there was Muji this year had sakura scones, sakura cake, sakura dorayaki (pancake sandwich) with mochi inside. It was really good. Surprisingly so. And I'd never seen Muji have this kind of confection. So I bought a bunch of that. Those two places were really good. And Muji still has it in the Ginza store. Some of the sakura confections there. Sakura mochi (cherry rice cake), you can get that in a couple stores in Ginza as well. In fact, all over the country, the dangosanko dai (three-color dango), these mochi balls in three different colors are very popular. The pickled sakura blossoms are also very popular on confections like cake, cheesecake, tarts, and things like that.

00:32:36 John Daub: You know, if you have a toron (sweet bean paste) looking like this, you'll see them all over the place. They're salty sweet, like a salty caramel sweetness to it. But they're a slight floral taste to it. It's something I maybe have to like, Leo doesn't like it, but he's still too young. I think it's something you might have to build a taste for, but that's what a cherry blossom taste is. It's a salty floral taste from the pickling of it with some sweetness in there. I love this and this one's pretty good. I like it. It tastes like spring to me and it has a floral smell to it which is very nice. But it's not this white Somei Yoshino. It's usually the Kawazu zakura which is a pink one and they harvest them down in Odawara is what I was told down in Kanagawa and harvesting there they have a pickling industry. So I tried to get permission to go to film there but I guess I was too early or too late but I'll try to go back and do this again. I think that might be a pretty cool episode in the future. Cherry blossom pickling. They use this yaezakura I believe which is a pink sakura and you'll see that in all of the confections here. But I heard it's down in Odawara has some of the best ones. Which makes sense because that variety, the Kawazu zakura is actually from Shizuoka.

00:34:04 John Daub: Alright everybody I hope this was really interesting for you. I enjoyed taking you and especially if you can't come to Japan right now and sharing a little bit of the cherry blossoms. This is sort of my backyard so it's nice to have you with me. These blossoms won't be lasting much longer. This is the end of it. This is the final 36 hours I think for this neighborhood. You can already see the green. Oh I got some raindrops on me. Yeah the rain is starting to come in you can hear the birds are chirping a little bit more. There's some birdies up there. Usually they know when the rain is coming in. He's having a field day! A lot of bugs in those trees too. That's like lunch. The raindrops, all the other raindrops are coming down. I can feel it now. But this time of year is very precious. It's a time of year. I'm planning to go to Hirosaki.

00:35:18 John Daub: Alright couple of things. I'm planning to do a meetup I think next week. Brandy's coming from Hawaii. I'm gonna try to get a day. I'll announce it in the next live stream or the next one. But if you are in Japan, it would be really cool to meet you. I need some help. I'm filming at a place in Asakusa. Alright? I'm making an episode there. And if people want to do a meetup and join me, you could be in an episode as well. This is the main channel edited channel. It's an episode where I also went to Hawaii to film a part of it. But I have to film the rest of it. Brandy's coming from Hawaii. So I said, well, that's kind of cool. The timing's good. And I want to get this up this month as well. So if you are in Japan next week, it'd be cool to meet up in Asakusa and we can have like a brunch together. There's a place that I would hope that we could get the whole restaurant filled with people. That'd be really cool. It's food episode. Dare I say more? No. But more to come. And for those that wanted to try to catch me. You can do that for sure. And ask us next week.

00:36:25 John Daub: That's some of these apartments are the ones that were in. This is a famous place to film Japanese TV as well. So you'll see very famous apartment buildings in the area, too. I wish I lived in one of them. Actually, no, I don't. The rent would be just way too high. I'll take my humble abode, which is just fine. There's a police boat patrolling. I wonder if they got those kayakers. Japanese police speedboat on the Sumida River. Take down spaceboat or will spaceboat zap it out of the water or just dive? Not sure. There you go, everybody. I hope you enjoyed it. It was fun to take you around the cherry blossoms on the last day of full bloom. I would say we'll see what happens tomorrow. I will take you if these last and I know of a place in Tokyo that still looks pretty good. I'll take you around one more time. Enjoy the cherry blossoms because it's hard not to do that this time of year.

00:37:34 John Daub: I also like to just tune out everything that's happening in the elections, everything that's happening abroad. For some reason, I've been following or watching Canadian politics, and it's been really fun to see Justin Trudeau getting destroyed by Pierre Poilievre up there. I don't know anything. I don't know about the political parties and whatnot, but it seems like it's very interesting. And I think if you're American, the Canadian politics are very interesting. Canadian politics is much more interesting right now than in the US. It's going to be interesting election there, but I don't know. I like to push all of that away, and I like to focus on what is beautiful in the world. And for these next few days until they're all gone, it's this right here, these cherry blossoms are what is so beautiful in the world. And please keep in mind when everything is really bad, everything is going bad in your life, there are places, there are times that make it worth living. There are times that make life really special. And this is one of those times. And that's all I have to say about that. Life is like a box of chocolates. Forrest Gump, that movie is just so genius, wasn't it? All right, everybody, have a good day. Have a good night. I'll see you in another live stream in 24 hours or less. Mata ne (see you later).