00:01 John Daub: Welcome to Ginza on the weekend. They close down Chuo Dori (Central Avenue) and you have this beautiful walkway where pedestrians can just stroll down the streets of Ginza. It goes all the way down in this direction to Shimbashi if you keep going straight, and you can see the Shinkansen going by on the right side. This is the luxury neighborhood of Tokyo, but what's odd is not that the street is shut down. It's that if you look up into the sky, you see not a cloud in it. And I'm completely speechless—no, I'm not, I got a lot to talk about. I'm perplexed, I guess. Look at the sunshine here. It feels great, and this is the rainy season. There's no doubt about it—this is the middle of June.

00:42 John Daub: This is supposed to be rainy every day with really cool weather. Yesterday was sunny, today is sunny, and if you look at the weather forecast, it looks pretty sunny for the rest of the week. Well, there's going to be some rain of course, but it doesn't look like it's raining every day, which is what the rainy season is here. It's supposed to be a high of about 30-32 degrees, which is like the mid-80s. It's wonderful. I got my shorts out—absolutely summer is here. But I just can't understand where the rainy season is. It's not here. There's an article that came out in the Yomiuri Shimbun (Japanese newspaper) saying the rainy season has begun in Shikoku from June 9th according to the JMA (Japan Meteorological Agency). It arrived four days later than average and 11 days later than last year. So it is later, but is this really the rainy season?

01:46 John Daub: Last year it was pretty short. The rainy season was not very long here in Japan. This is something you have to plan for when you come, but how do you plan when it's like this? Rainy season has already been declared in Okinawa, Amami Islands, Kagoshima, and the southern parts of Kyushu. I don't know if it's technically been announced for Tokyo if JMA has, but it certainly is the latest maybe ever if they haven't. And this is really hard to plan for your trip because the rainy season is a weird time. It's when it is summer, but when the rain comes down and the clouds are here, it is actually chilly outside. And when it's sunny, it feels like this—hot. Sweat coming out of my head. Gotta wear a hat to keep it off. It's really hot. Right now my brain's starting to fry because I'm standing in the middle of the street, and that street is right here.

02:41 John Daub: So this is where we are in Tokyo. Ginza is pretty much in the heart of the city. You can see the street right there that cuts right across this Chuo Dori. If you've never been to Ginza on the weekend, I highly recommend it. It's a peaceful place. You get away from the crowds. You can just window shop and see the luxury of Tokyo. This is the main intersection called Yonchome. You can see on the right side the historical department store called Wako. They have one of the nicest toilets on the top floor—I think it was made of gold when I went up there about 10 years ago. I had to use the restroom—why not go to the very top? I didn't realize the toilets were made of gold. But that's where I am right now in Tokyo. It's my backyard essentially.

03:26 John Daub: I wasn't actually going to do a stream on the rainy season. I was actually going to go to the Nagano store and they have blueberries from Nagano. They bring them into Tokyo and sell them there. They are the best blueberries I've ever had—hands down, no question. The sweetness, the size, the juiciness—blueberries at another level. We have good blueberries in the U.S. where I'm from, and they're pretty good coming from Oregon as well. But there's something about the Nagano blueberries—maybe because it's fresher. But they didn't have the same kind of fruit this year—they're late. They had them this time last year. I remember going to buy them. Pretty expensive though—you get like a little box for about $25. It's not something you normally would get, but this is fruit in Japan.

04:12 John Daub: Here's the street closing down—you can hear the bells in the background. The staff come close down the street. So it's from 12 o'clock noon to 5 pm—you can walk the streets. They actually put chairs and umbrellas so you can visit, get out of the sunshine, enjoy summer in Ginza. I haven't seen anybody lay down on the street with a blanket yet—that seems very un-Ginza-like. But if you look across to the other side, you can see there's a lot of people. The road going across here of course is not shut—you have to cross on a green light. But it goes way down all the way to where it used to say Lixel—now I guess they took that sign down. Now it says Brill (glasses brand). You can walk all the way, so you can get in 10,000 steps walking back and forth this wide open avenue, which is a cool feeling. You also see the go-karts going back and forth—that's still a thing in Tokyo.

05:24 John Daub: If we go to the other side, there's a tourist bus going by. It's just such a peaceful relaxing place—no bicycles here. There's security guards that will bust you—they'll take you out if they catch you. You see, I'm just right there—they've just set up about two or three minutes ago while I started the stream the umbrellas and the seating. If you snag one, you can get a sandwich from the bakery right behind me and sit there and enjoy people watching, which is kind of fun here in Tokyo. I think it's different than in Shibuya—Shibuya's got a lot of construction, it's noisy. Right now here it's so relaxed, so much calmer. And this is why I'm proud to call Ginza my backyard. Tokyo Station is only 10 minutes for me on bicycle to get to as well. That's one reason why you see me there all the time. I love Chuo-ku (central ward), the ward that I'm living in right now.

06:20 John Daub: Champagne Sumo is in the house—thank you. It's very hard to find a vending machine, but maybe we can walk around a little bit and see what we can see, sort of enjoy summer and talk about how do you plan a trip for this. I don't know if you're a fan of the vending machine—you're like, what's the vending machine? That's a weird question, Peso. But you can give the phone number here—I think it was 813 area code, Peso. We have got a phone number that I'm going to tell you publicly now, and tomorrow I probably am going to listen to the messages in the live streams from now on. I'll take three or four of them. If you're calling to insult me, you're wasting money doing it. I think it's a safe bet that we got a really good community of people here that you'll be leaving good messages. Peso's got the phone number, and I'll put it in the description of this video afterwards. I think it was 813-CALL-OIJ. Just let's wait for the bot to come in and chime in with that number.

07:26 John Daub: Wow, I'm hearing all languages here—this is kind of cool. Hey, Michael Cicero's in the house. Bakery Cheat and me—you got it. Actually, there's the daifuku (mochi sweet) place that I got some the other day. I might take some more of that back for Kanae and Leo, who loved the blueberry daifuku. It was so good. Now you can see the seats here a little bit closer. It's kind of cool to be chilling out underneath the umbrellas. It's not—the humidity is not there yet. That's another reason why I think this is a really good time. June is good when it's not raining. It's not raining the whole time in the rainy season, but it's raining most of the day typically. And when it's not raining, it's really hot and humid like summer. But right now, the humidity is just not there—it's just hot from the sun. So I'm really liking it. I can't be inside right now just because it's too nice. As much as I want to work, it's just impossible to do that because it's too nice.

08:32 John Daub: All right, here's the security guard. These guys will take you down—no bicycles, get off and walk them. They will hunt you. I've seen them tackle people. I don't think it's a physical tackle—it's a tackle with the tongue. It's verbal. And then they look like they're going to tackle you, so you get off the bicycle. Guys, this is the speed at which you have to walk. The guards are not here just to tell you about not riding your bicycle here, but they're also showing you the speed that you should walk when you're doing the Ginbura (Ginza stroll). It's almost like the bride going up to the altar walk—it's very slow. You see, that's how you should be walking in Ginza. I'm not joking—it's a thing. It goes back like 150 years. The strolling in Ginza—you want to be seen in your kimono. You still see local residents walking around Ginza in their kimono. They get dressed up to go out and show yourself in the streets of Ginza.

10:00 John Daub: All right, let's go find a vending machine down one of these alleys here. I'm starting to get a little parched because it's so sunny and hot here. It's also the pace of sleepwalking—that's a good observation. I've never sleepwalked. I've gotten up in the middle of the night at my age to use the restroom a couple of times, but I walked a little bit faster than that though. It's when the urge hits you, you must—it's more like a mini run. Here's the largest Uniqlo in the world. It's always good to highlight small business—they were a small business when I got here in '98 from Hiroshima, just a small shop, small chain.

10:59 John Daub: I'm trying to finish off a video, but I can't get access to one of the restaurants called Happy Pancake. For some reason, it's been booked out two weeks in advance. I call them and they won't give me media access—they said, please wait in line like everybody else, but you're welcome to film. I go in there for standby and it's a 300-minute wait, which is six hours. So I don't know how I'm going to finish this video. I think I've gotten in trouble with that—Happy Pancake is what it's called. I filmed an episode a year ago in Hawaii and I've been trying to finish this off forever. Brandania was here a month ago and we filmed a couple of places, but I still have to film this Happy Pancake. There's a reason behind it, but I think the quote-unquote Japanese pancakes is going to be a really interesting episode because I did some journalistic work on this thing—I tracked down the story. Pancakes for some reason seem to be a really popular thing in Japan. It's not a Japanese food, but tourists eat them, and so do the locals. The fluffy pancakes, essentially called soufflé pancakes, are pretty popular.

12:19 John Daub: If you haven't already, the Ginza 6 building is absolutely wonderful. I've been up here many times. Up on the corner, you get a nice view looking down on the entire street as people are doing their Ginbura. What is that picture? They're getting a picture with the sign saying the street is closed—slightly odd. John, you could create a network of local food spots—that's not a bad idea. REO is already looking forward to the pancakes. Oh my gosh, those pancakes—they are not really pancakes. They're so light—it's more like a snack. You really need to eat like 10 of those to do any kind of dent in your appetite.

13:21 John Daub: Now there's a guy I don't want to focus in on him too much, but he's in the corner there and he's got a bowl. I've never seen—he's not in any kind of gear. I wonder what his story is. We don't see beggars on the street, but we do see from time to time religious shamans, I guess, with a bowl that you can donate to. It's a little unusual, slightly creepy in the sense that it's not something you see every day. My friend Alicia at Oriental Pearl has been focusing on a homeless situation here in Japan—a lot of troubling stories, which I guess is a good journalistic piece.

15:47 John Daub: A lot of these pharmacies have been springing up in the tourist areas, and that's mostly because tourists just love to take home gifts from the pharmacy. So this Matsumoto Kiyoshi (drugstore chain) is like dedicated to tourists—it's not something for residents. The only reason you would open this up is because tourists staying at hotels would be shopping there. Yeah, it's like face packs and eye drops and all sorts of things that you can pick up—it's just a great souvenir that tourists would buy. They do pretty good business. You do find a lot of kimono shops in Ginza, and this is a great place if you have the money to get a bespoke kimono. It'll take some time, but if you've got a couple of weeks, I think they can do the first and second fitting and then send it to you or you can come and pick it up in a couple of months.

16:46 John Daub: Kimono made of domestic silk is ridiculously expensive to buy here in Japan, but the quality is second to none. There's no way that another country can claim to have better quality when it comes to textiles because it's the people. But I don't know for how long—it's the people who are making these textiles, usually quite old and have been in the business for quite a long time. A lot of them are leaving because they're just so old, and I don't know if Japan is going to be able to maintain it. Let's just say there it is right up here—that's the Happy Pancake sign. Let's see what the line says. They had some system—you had to scan a QR code and then make a reservation. I'm wondering how I'm going to finish this episode, but I came here for blueberries and they're not at the store yet. I should have called them in advance before I came to Ginza. Anyways, gives us a chance to walk, take a look around. There it is on the seventh floor.

18:03 John Daub: As you can see, they've got a ton of tourists who come here. Please wait outside of the building until your number is called—please come back to the seventh floor after email is received. Oh, they've really automated this booking process. Please note that the reception is here but not the seventh floor—so the reception is digital. It's weird. Alright, can somebody go—does anybody want to take a screenshot right now and tell me what the wait is? You can take a screenshot and then open it up in your photos or something and then you should be able to access it. But tell me what the wait is for standby and I will appreciate that. It was like 300 minutes before—that's just off the charts. No way. There's just like a Noah Cafe—I don't know what this is, but this just seems new and they have some interesting stuff there. Pancakes and beer, really? That's actually doable—60 minutes.

19:22 John Daub: That Starbucks is the first Starbucks that ever opened in Japan. I'm not a huge fan of the chain—it's just too expensive to be buying drinks regularly. And anyways, there's paper cups. Somebody told me that there's microplastics in there—you know, that's why the cup never gets wet and they put the hot liquids in there. So they said if I ever want to have kids, stop drinking coffee from the paper mugs at chain shops and bring a tumbler. I don't know if they were trying to sell me a tumbler or if there's something to it, but maybe you guys have more information on that. Hey, anyways, there's the first Starbucks—there's a plaque in there that'll let you know. The year that I came, '98. So if I Shinkansen and travel here to get it back then—when they opened one in Osaka, I took the Seishun 18 Kippu and rode seven hours to get one. They didn't have one in Nagoya at the time. I was just homesick—I was an English teacher. I wanted to try it out. It tasted like coffee. I didn't feel foolish—I felt a little like a waste of time, but I thought it was kind of a cool experience to go that far for a cup of coffee on my weekend.

20:52 John Daub: I brought—I guess it was a coffee, an Osaka coffee mug back and that was kind of neat. That was in the HEP 8 building near Osaka Station. And I spent about an hour just sipping coffee and reading a book. We didn't have internet back then, or Wi-Fi—you had to read books. So I read a book and drank some coffee. The olden days—some of the best days. You can see other people—they got the sun umbrellas out because it is super sunny. Super sunny means there's no clouds in the sky, but a couple did come in, so it's just sunny now.

21:36 John Daub: Alright, let's go over to the Yonchome. I think the signal's gonna die around the corner here. You can see here's another kimono shop that makes them, and also yukata (cotton kimono). They're much cheaper and you can get these made for like $200-$300 custom-made yukata. The obi (silk sash) is gonna be the most expensive thing most likely—they usually start at $100 for good ones. But there's a shop in the alleys here—I think it's called Motofuku [?]. I met the CEO about 15 years ago on an NHK show and tried on—like $50,000 kimonos at the time. That was pretty cool. And he showed me what made them $50,000. And I think I might do an episode on this—I'm gonna get back in touch with him. We kind of had a lot of fun making that episode, but he was also in his 80s, so I wonder if he's still around—it was 15 years ago, he'd be like 95 now.

22:44 John Daub: Alright, so for car connoisseurs, we have here a firm Corragia [?], the Nissan building, and today they have this Jeep—this looks like a retro Nissan Jeep. That looks pretty sweet. And then inside here they always have concept cars. This looks like a disaster support vehicle—very cool. I'm not going to be doing a bus tour for the fireworks this year, but Ide-san—we made these up together, but she really helped me out finding a distributor for them, a producer. She's doing a bus tour to Omagari and giving Only in Japan community members 10% off the trip. Omagari is the capital of fireworks in Japan—the national fireworks competitions are up there. It's pretty massive, a huge tradition. The manhole covers have fireworks on there—a reason to go up to Akita.

24:07 John Daub: I won't be going with, but I was talking to my assistant Emi, and she said why don't we do a bus tour in Shizuoka, where she's from. So we're putting together a whiskey drinking, onsen, go see Mount Fuji in November. We got a local guide from Shizuoka—she's doing this stuff, getting local businesses involved, a local ryokan (traditional inn), no chains. I'm not sure about the whiskey yet—she's working that out. Maybe that'll be a side trip, but a little bit more time for decompression, like just hanging out in the hotel and soaking in the onsen, and less time spending on the bus, which is one of the criteria to making a successful one of these. But that's going to be in November—I'm kind of excited about that. She's doing a lot of work to put this together. I think I'll announce it probably in August—so this is a good three months before. I think we're going to do two nights, three days—that'll be fun.

25:16 John Daub: Yeah, Saya, Omagari fireworks are amazing—they absolutely are. That's where during the pandemic, we raised money to put to work one of the big firework makers who didn't have any because they'd all been suspended. And you can see the live stream of that on this channel, put to music. It was a lot of work on our part to put this together, but I think it was worth it, and I'm glad that we got a chance to put a bunch of people to work as well and brighten their day, because all the events were canceled at that time. It was just a depressing time, but we were able to do something good with our community, and that is pretty awesome.

26:04 John Daub: The new entrances and exits to Ginza are pretty awesome as well. They've done a great job of renovating this area quietly, in particular the last five years—it just looks newer and feels—it had this older vibe to it. Now feels a little bit younger, and that's a good thing for this neighborhood because it certainly needs to have that trendy feel to it—it was lacking that. This street is really cool. It's actually when you go to the back side—and we're going to do that right now as I go to my bicycle, if you guys don't mind. I parked it at the Nagano store—I'm going to go to the Nagano store.

26:43 John Daub: Hello. Oh yeah, sure—I'm live if you don't mind. You got a YouTube channel, right? Oh yeah, yeah—I need to follow your YouTube channel. Okay. All right, thank you very much. You're welcome. Where are you guys from? Malaysia. All right. Have a good day, guys. You too. Awesome—you're just from Malaysia [corrected to Indonesia in chat]. That's pretty cool. Oh yeah, that's right—I do have the You Found Me cards. Hold on, I brought them together. Hey, do you guys want a card? I have one here—if you find me while I'm streaming, you get a card. All right, sure—you're welcome. Thanks, guys, keeping me busy. Make sure I get rid of these older cards so I can order some new ones.

27:43 John Daub: Let's go off of the street. Now there is traffic down these alleys. I think that the next one is—yeah, you can see there's a buffer zone here. And the police and the staff put up the barricades to keep the traffic out of here, including bikes. So basically, there's a lot of traffic—this is Miyuki-dori (street). You can tell because they wrote it here—Miyuki Street. For those that watched the James Bond, You Only Live Twice, when he came to Japan—the only time he ever came to Japan—he drove the car down the streets of Ginza in a couple of them. And this is one of the streets, I believe, back in 1965 when they were filming. Of course, it looked much different.

29:09 John Daub: Check this out—they're opening up a Niigata store here. About freaking time. The one in Omotesando is not positioned well—they're calling it the Niigata. They got a bottle—it's probably for sake. Maybe it's just a restaurant. On the first floor, consultant center for living and working in Niigata. Really? That's interesting. So if you come here, they'll find you a job in Niigata? They certainly need people. Just recently in the news, they announced that they've finally finalized the revamping of the worker program here in Japan, which is hugely needed—hadn't been done since '93.

30:08 John Daub: I think Japanese businesses are really taking advantage of foreign workers—not all of them. I think there's a good percentage of really corrupt people taking advantage of the system, not having to pay people, not having the same rights as Japanese citizens. And we heard a lot of horror stories—NHK World actually broke a lot of them, as well as the Japan Times on the abuses of the old worker program. But now, seems like it's going to be okay. The one stipulation they put in for residents of Japan is if you don't pay your taxes, you can get deported—so I like that. I pay my taxes—my gosh, it's not cheap. There's absolutely a labor shortage in Japan because of the declining population. There's just not enough people to do things like drive trucks, taxi drivers, hotel staff, nurses and doctors have been in short demand. There seems to be an ample amount of dentists though—it's not hard to find a dentist.

31:29 John Daub: I can talk about this here. Let's leave the bike here for another 30 seconds. The blueberries are here at the Nagano store—I come here all the time, got a point card. The next time I buy 5,000 yen worth of stuff, they give me a 500 yen coupon. Let's go around the block and see what the daifuku is at Akebono for right now. A couple weeks ago, we had the blueberries out. I see the blueberry daifuku is here. Apologize for the weak signal, guys. I'm gonna get another box of that. I wanna thank everybody who gave Super Chats to buy it last time because Thomas from Denmark was here—he bought me one. That was really cool—not that long ago.

34:23 John Daub: For the story, I think it's done, but I think it's gonna be a little work. At least the croissants and the baguettes because that could be the reason. I hope that you can leave them in the comments below. I think that the rainy—it's not a good thing when the rainy season is so short.