00:00:01 John Daub: Hey everybody, welcome to Tokyo. This is Harumi near Tokyo Bay. This is where the Olympic Village is actually. Today there is a Tokyo Fire Department Festival going on. It's a rescue and parade type of deal. It just finished up here. I have some video that I want to show you.

00:00:23 John Daub: These kinds of experiences are super cool. It gives kids a chance to learn about the fire department but also the history behind the Tokyo Fire Department. Some of the cool machines they have. Check this one out. This here is a mega air conditioner that blows air at a rapid pace. It's basically being behind a jet. It's kind of cool. And they give you helmets and you'll be able to stand here and blow cool things. It's like blowing cold air at you which kind of feels really good.

00:01:00 John Daub: Okay, I'm going to move on over here. I love coming to this area. I wanted to see if we could find Leo but this morning they had the parade and the rescue. Let me show you a little bit of the parade here. Boy, the boats that they have are so cool. They don't have a lot of boats but this only represents I think part of the area for Tokyo, not the entire city. But it was really neat to see the boats and all the rescue boats for this area on Tokyo Bay. You can see Rainbow Bridge in the background. They're all standing at attention. You see on the boat, very symmetrically. It's a beautiful thing to see. Again, all the mayor, the governor Koike was here from Tokyo City Hall as well as some other VIPs all watching.

00:02:14 John Daub: We rode our bicycle out here to Tokyo to see it right on the end of Harumi. You can see there's Odaiba, the Fuji TV building there. It's kind of cool to see. They first came out as a parade and this lasted about 15 minutes or so. Then that helicopter started to come and this was just so freaking awesome. There were three rescue helicopters that came and you're going to want to stay tuned for the next couple of minutes. I'm going to show you the actual rescue operation. It was like a space boat. If a space boat went on fire, this is what they would do. It's one of the Tokyo River buses. You can see they have jet skis or something. That's so cool. Here comes some of the bigger ships here. You see those water cannons on there.

00:03:04 John Daub: You know what they were, they were actually playing music from Top Gun. They basically had the soundtrack from Top Gun. Then they had the US military music in the background. I think that the fire department here is based on the American fire department because a lot of the marching songs go back a couple of hundred years. It sounded like, I basically could hum them. I knew a lot of the tunes. This is cool. You saw the helicopters coming in. They had the Top Gun music blasting on a speaker somewhere. It's just super awesome to see this going on.

00:03:52 John Daub: They're actually getting some of the machinery away. I wanted to show a little bit of this before they close it all down. This is the air conditioner. It looks like a tank. I don't know how they use it, but I think it's to cool down fires or something. They can go in after a fire perhaps. Here's a fire truck that we can get our picture on. Leo was a little bit shy. This over here, I'm going to put a link in the playback if you're watching this about this. About six months ago, I was in this earthquake simulation machine, and that's what this is here. It's an earthquake simulation machine. So you can sit in here and they can simulate a quite powerful earthquake. This machine is done, and it goes around the city giving kids a chance to simulate what it looks like. This truck here is a virtual reality simulation. I think they use it for training, not just with tourists or for kids that are learning about the fire department, but they're also using it for training for the staff members. So it's quite a useful truck to have. And then there's an ambulance that Leo got to go inside and check out as well. It's pretty sweet stuff here.

00:05:08 John Daub: Here's our picture about 30 seconds ago. You can see Leo was a little bit nervous getting on top of the fire truck there. The thing was, a lot of it, you had to be elementary school kids in order to try it out. So he was a little bit too young for that.

00:05:23 John Daub: Let me go into the rescue here. This is awesome. Check this out. All right, I'm going to explain what's happening here. So this is a bus that goes back and forth along the Sumida River here in Tokyo, and they're simulating a fire. You see the black smoke out there. Right in Tokyo Bay, Rainbow Bridge is right there. There's Leo and I. Leo was in a fireman's outfit too, so he got a lot of compliments. So the firefighters, which is pretty cool. So this is basically the same as the fire truck. It's a space boat. It's not as cool, but they're simulating it. And look at that. Two people jumped in because the fire was too hot. Oh, they got to be rescued, don't they? Wait, more people are jumping in. Splash. Did you see that? Oh, this is awesome. All right, they're playing like psych-up music.

00:06:26 John Daub: And here comes the rescue boats. Awesome. The first one. Look at that. Look at that hard turn. That is Tokyo Drift right there on Tokyo Bay. Then the helicopters start coming. You can start playing Flight of the Valkyrie right now if you want to. They send in some frogmen. The frogmen jump in and get the overboarders. Oh, it's so awesome. Oh, there's one more guy right there. All right, the helicopters are coming in. Boy, it's moving real quickly. Here comes the Tokyo Drift. Oh, they sent in the helicopters. Now we're going to get a helicopter rescue. This is so awesome.

00:07:15 John Daub: So they sent in one of the frogmen to get them out. As soon as they rescue them, they take them to the hospital or something. Oh, there's one guy. He's still in there. You've got to get him. Hurry. If this was winter, he could get hypothermia. Send in the frogmen. All right, very good technique. They've been practicing this for a couple of weeks. Leo and I saw this about three weeks ago. Look at this boat rescue. He's getting over there to see if there's any other people to rescue. They've got a couple bringing him to the main boat. Wait, there's more. The helicopter's got a dude on a cable. Oh, this is so awesome. He's going to go splash down for a helicopter rescue. This is absolutely geeky. This is something you would see in the movies. And they had this on display here in Tokyo today, this morning.

00:08:18 John Daub: So, this is a man overboard. They're going to get him, clip him on, and pull him up. Nice and smooth. There's Rainbow Bridge in the back, one of the main bridges over Tokyo Bay. Tokyo Fire Department doing an awesome job. More helicopters are coming. Rainer, as far as I know, there's no sharks in there. I saw Michael Sassano in the house as well. Hey, aloha, brother. This is fun to watch. This all lasted about 35 minutes. So, this helicopter's going to do a boat rescue or drop off somebody. I'm not sure what exactly they're doing, but they have a dude firefighter hero. Let's just call them heroes coming down right onto the deck. It was hard. This is off of my iPhone, by the way, the zoom lens, nine-time zoom on the iPhone 14 Pro. Did a pretty good job. So, he's waving them on, letting them know, okay, we've got him. He's connected. Pull us up. Tokyo Fire Department written in Japanese kanji on the boat there. Very cool. Now he's pulling them up. That's an awesome scene with Rainbow Bridge in the background. Yes! It's so sweet.

00:09:55 John Daub: It was exciting because you have the sound of the helicopter and you also have, like, the music pounding in the background, like adrenaline music. Nightbot writes in here, get him a body bag. How dare you, Nightbot. I'm going to time you out. Can you time out Nightbot? No, you cannot. Meow, meow, meow. Welcome to the travelers. Thank you. Welcome aboard. Now, I told Leo. Leo goes, where are they going? I said, they're going to the hospital, Leo.

00:10:32 John Daub: All right, but there's more. We've got these jet skis. A show of force. Yeah! Look at them. And they're waving as they do it. They came back around going faster, but I didn't film that one. And here are the three helicopters from the districts on the Tokyo Bay. And I think it's just so cool to see the show of skill. This is the finale. This is the best part, maybe. I don't know. But they had these water hoses. Check it out. They're spraying up. I think they said 20 meters, which is like 70 feet into the sky. And then they did it in these colors. And don't worry, it's safe for the marine life, apparently. But this is super cool. I don't know if it's for the Olympics. But this was seriously really cool to see on Tokyo Bay this morning. I've been waiting for this for about a month since I saw the posters for it. And by the way, they're going to have to wash down those boats because you'll see at the end of this, they got a little pink on that one boat and a little yellow on the other. But I'm guessing it symbolizes the Olympics because this is where they had the Olympic village back in 2020, 2021.

00:12:01 John Daub: And here's the ending. Fire department ends their show of force. There are five colors. I guess that purple is supposed to be black. And they had a band, too, that was really cool. Those are the march songs. And then Leo and his fire department wear. Say bye-bye. He's saying bye to everybody as they finish up, thanking them for their hard work. You can see the police boat in the distance there keeping the peace, waving to the police officers. Leo said, I got to wave, too. Yeah, that was pretty sweet. Is it not the coolest thing?

00:12:51 John Daub: This area also Olympic Village. This is where the Olympians stayed back in 2021. We finally, I tried streaming here before. We didn't have a signal in this area, but we do today, which is good. But this is also a really cool playground where kids can come. And this is a pirate ship turned into a, well, not a real pirate ship, but it's a lot of fun. Leo, Kanae and I would come here earlier this year at the end of last year when they first opened this park. Not a lot of kids knew about it. Today, I'm guessing that they do. But Leo was like, I don't know, before he even turned. No, he came here before he even turned two, I think. No, no. When he turned two and he was fearlessly going up to that top deck, going down the slide. He could be a firefighter. Yeah. There's a Rainbow Bridge in the distance there. And you have a lot of things that kids can use to play with. I'm looking for Kanae now. I guess I'll connect up with her a little bit later.

00:14:04 John Daub: One of the cool things is at these kinds of festivals is you get a chance to try some of the stuff here. There's Leo learning how to use a fire extinguisher. He's teaching all three of these kids at the same time. But you have the pin, the hose and the hand dryer. So he's teaching them how to use a fire extinguisher. I like that. So these little things, these little techniques at these kinds of festivals helps to keep everybody safe. Because Japan, you know, Japan's kind of a dangerous place in the sense that they have earthquakes, tsunami. They have landslides. They've got volcanoes. There's so many different natural disasters here. You really need to know some of these disaster techniques. It just makes everybody in the community a little bit safer.

00:14:58 John Daub: And then this is really cool. Now Leo got a chance to use the fire extinguisher. It's filled with air. And so the firefighter Leo is only three. He's very patient, which is nice. A lot of these were for elementary school kids, but they let him go because this is about five minutes before they ended about 30 minutes ago. And the other officer, the fire department here is letting him try it out, which is fun. And now he's going to use the hose with Mama's help here. This is one of his dreams come true here. Well, he was able to use the fire hose to move the balloon. That's very cool. He's so nervous, though, because he'd never done it before. But when you're a resident of Tokyo, they have a lot of these festivals that allow you an opportunity to get to learn about members in your community, because this is where I live in Chukyo, part of the city inside of Tokyo that I live, but also to learn about how the community works and some of the safety areas. If we did have an earthquake or a tsunami, we would know where to evacuate to. We would know where to go, what to do. And they teach you that kind of stuff at these kind of festivals every year. And that's kind of a cool thing, I think keeps us all safe.

00:16:21 John Daub: If you liked it, hit that subscribe button and see you in another episode, guys. Thank you so much. You have any questions before I sign off here? Not too many questions. That's all good. All right, everybody. I'll see you in another live stream tomorrow. We're probably going to do something interesting. There's some more stuff down here. Shall we just check it out? I'll go check out down here and then we'll sign off in a second.

00:16:57 John Daub: CO2 extinguisher is recommended, not the water or foam type. That could have been a CO2 one then. That makes a lot of sense because fire needs oxygen to live. The CO2 would be the opposite. So that would be putting out the fire. Very good, Rainer. Leo is not a fireman. He's not afraid, although he's getting a little bit shy, but I think that could be just, you know, he learned that from the kids around him. Japanese in general are quite shy, but kids typically are not too bad with that though. But Leo is getting a little shy. I'm noticing it. You're starting to see his personality come out a little more. Beautiful day here in Tokyo.

00:17:39 John Daub: And this is a great place to end the live stream. Here they're teaching you again a little bit more about the fire. A little bit more about the safety and there's performances going on here about how to stay safe and I guess the mayor is going to give a speech. Look at all those TV cameras here. And then you have the planes coming in going into Haneda. Do you see that? Here's some tourists coming into the city. And down here, I'm going to pan real slowly for the final shot. Check it out. Thanks, everybody. I hope you enjoyed it. A fun live stream from Tokyo today. I'll see you tomorrow. Another live stream. For Patreon supporters, I'll be doing a Q&A tomorrow morning. See you then. Michael Sassano just joined us again here. Thank you. We'll go get a burger or something. I appreciate it, brother. Mata ne.