00:01 John Daub: Hey everybody, this is something that has confused and excited me at the same time. It's called Udon Natsu or Udon Donuts. I just did a live stream on donuts the other day, some of the best in Tokyo, which is sort of weird because Japanese food is not known for that. But I thought I would take a break in my day and go get these because they just came out at Marugame Seimen (marugame seimen), which is an udon shop here in Japan. I saw the commercial and look, this is not an endorsement. I don't even know if this is good or not, but I saw this stuff. I'm like, well, this is just weird and Japan always does this kind of stuff. They have curry-flavored doughnuts—like a powder that you put on it.

00:50 John Daub: I wanted to just go and try this out and I figured these aren't gonna be around for a long time because all these gimmicks, food gimmicks, are meant to get you into the shop. But I'll let you guys figure out if they're good or worth it. Basically, it looks like this. I'm using this because there's still doughnuts—eating doughnuts with a chopstick makes it a little bit fun, but also keeps the oil off your fingers so you don't smudge stuff all over it. In the background, we've got Kanae Daub—they're working, so she's gonna get one of these doughnuts. Look at that. That's bigger than her head. All right, let's try this here. Itadakimasu. Oh, wow. Okay, very mochi mochi (mochi mochi), which is like a springy consistency to it. Little stretchy.

02:03 John Daub: Like pushing it in there with the chopsticks—it's really springy. So I guess there is an advantage to having udon donuts. I didn't know how they made them. Tabata—I just show. So let me show you: first of all, you don't—what is it, udon? These are the noodles I found these at the supermarket before I got here. I just went in there and took a look. You can get them—usually it's like a dollar or less for a pack of udon. You can get a three-pack—these are like 25 cents each for one pack of udon. It's like 108 yen for that, which is ridiculously cheap.

02:46 John Daub: I want to show you the experience that I have. This is actually—this is where I saw it. Like you just walk around aimlessly in Japan and all of a sudden you start to see stuff like this. Udon is pretty healthy—it's kind of like carbo loading, like really thick pasta. It's not pasta though. I always get the bukkake udon right there in the center. It's 390 yen or about two dollars and fifty cents for that—that's so cheap.

03:17 John Daub: So I made this video kind of showing you my experience going in and getting udon. This is like the food—you don't have to get into this shop. I think Hanamaru is another shop and this is Marugame Seimen. There's a lot of really cool shops, but what I like about the udon—it's such a simple thing to make. They make it fresh—you saw the chef is actually making the noodles, rolling them out fresh every day. You put it into here so they settle for a bit and then they put it into a boiler. Then they centrifuge the water out, which is really cool, so it's not overly watery. Then they put it in a bowl. You can get them hot or cold—in the summer I would get them cold and in the winter you get them hot. You can get them hot in the summer too. It's supposed to be a really cheap meal.

04:07 John Daub: It's kind of neat here—you have to kind of know what you want to order before you go in there. So I get nami (nami), which is a small size bukkake, and then I get zimai (zaru [?]) which is cold and you can see you can put some negi (negi), green onion toppings on there and you can get some tempura bits. But watch your weight there—that's kind of purposeless unless you really need the calories. You have some tempura that you can use at the lunch service—usually they go pretty quickly. I like the chikuwa (chikuwa), which is this right here, kind of like a processed fish cake. The ika (ika) or squid on the right side of it is really good in the satsuma imo (satsuma imo), that's a deep-fried sweet potato on the left side. There's also shrimp and right there on the top—that's a hanjuku tamago (hanjuku tamago), half-boiled egg. It's 130 yen—that's also really good. And then there they are, the doughnuts. It was five for 300 yen and at first I was a little bit confused and I looked down and said, oh okay.

05:01 John Daub: So you got to put the powder in there so you can flavor it with curry or kibi (kinako [?]), which I guess is just a kind of like a sugar. Yeah, like 300 yen—I mean that was pretty good for five of them. But it's almost the same cost as the udon itself. So I don't know—this is like once and done I think for me. Very cool, very quick—the whole thing took about like a minute and a half to get everything. It's so quick to get udon like this. This is one of the dishes that you have to try when you come to Japan—it's not overly complicated. Stop going to the convenience store and start eating at places like this. Just the food courts are pretty awesome in Japan and getting a bowl of noodles—it's just such a wonderful thing. You can see a lot of the businessmen like to get the noodles too because they want to get back to work really quickly.

05:50 John Daub: This place not too far away also has outdoor seating, which is pretty awesome. And I got in there, got my noodles—there's the receipt—sat down and yeah, I put these down pretty quickly. Now udon is like they say, you know, shingo hitotsu (shingo hitotsu [?]). I learned that from my friend in Kagawa, which is where Sanuki udon is from—very famous brand. She says people slurp this up in Kagawa—they don't even chew the noodles, they just go straight down the throat, which I kind of find hard to believe. But then I watched them and it's true. This is like pure fill your gut and get back to work kind of food. And kids love it because it looks like mini snakes—oh okay, we got some mini snakes in there. And then you know what, they take it to the next level and they decided to make donuts out of it. And you know a fish cake is chikuwa, which is really good.

06:42 John Daub: So I'm actually getting ready to do the daimyo packages for Patreon supporters—you can see the boxes? They're down there so I got to do that later today. So I thought we would go inside here—it's kind of neat. They do that thing where you have to shake the powder on there. I already ate one and looks kind of like this. That's kind of cool, right? It's a neat concept that they take the udon—maybe they use like the day-old udon. I'm not exactly sure how they did it—they weren't very talkative because they were quite busy, which is understandable.

07:15 John Daub: And there you go, Akane—do you want to try it? I know Brandon Daniel wants to try it. Oh my god, that's my office—don't look in it, don't look in there. Okay, thank you. All right, what—I can't move the camera because I don't want to show you. Must come to me—I don't want to show my mess. I'm cleaning, Brandon—I'm cleaning seriously. It's not gonna be that dirty in about 30 minutes. All right, open your mouth. Wait, hold on—hold on, hold on.

08:01 Kanae Daub: How is it? Good.

08:04 John Daub: It's very mochi mochi.

08:07 Kanae Daub: How do you rate it out of five, out of ten? How many points do you give it out of ten—ten being the best?

08:14 John Daub: One being—maybe eight? Really?

08:17 Kanae Daub: What makes this so good? It's very mochi mochi and outside of sugar is very sweet but inside that—nothing. Fans—what do you say? The doughnut is not sweet. Okay, not too oily. Yeah, not too oily—it's perfect.

08:32 John Daub: Really? Oh, guess what—the rest is for you. I'm on a diet. Hmm, really? Okay. Happy birthday to you—we can put some candles on there. It's not her birthday. Also, the sugar is not so sweet I noticed that. Yeah, well you know you can get a sweet one or you could actually get curry.

09:02 John Daub: I'm gonna leave it up to you. I think it's kind of neat that they're doing this. Well, what about curry? Is that aji (aji)? Yeah, curry flavor—cut it. Yeah, they have flavored—you can just take it and you can put whatever flavor you want on to it. You can either do—I don't know, the curry didn't have sugar, it's just curry.

09:26 Kanae Daub: Oh, be sweet—I don't think. Maybe they don't put the sugar for a curry.

09:34 John Daub: I like it. Good, well thank you very much. You can get back to work. Okay, thank you—bye bye bye. She'll be working there in the back. I don't—look at the office. Oh wrong way—it's, I'm cleaning it seriously. Yeah, so there you go.

09:52 John Daub: I don't really have anything more to say. There's a bunch of gimmicks going on for summertime. I know all the convenience stores have summer foods out and when it comes to noodles in particular, udon and soba, you can find that at convenience stores. If you are thinking about it, that's probably the healthier option—they're cold noodles and in the summer people eat cold noodles and it's really good. So I think that's probably the way to go if you're in Japan right now and you need something fast—go get some soba, which you think is a little bit healthier than udon but both are pretty good. You know because udon comes with the tempura if you choose and if it's in front of you nine times out of ten you're probably gonna take a piece of tempura. In particular you know because you're traveling and you're on vacation and why not—especially the hanjuku half-cooked egg is just so good.

10:35 John Daub: That was my adventure for today. I actually lost—get this before we leave here—I actually lost my IC card, is it the Toica (Toica [?]) one? And the police called me and asked me to come and pick it up. How did they figure out it was me? I guess my name was on the IC card and I went there and all the money was still on it. And I said thank you, I left a note for the person who found it—you know you could say arigatou gozaimashita. I guess they're gonna read them the note or something. If they find cash, it's customary if somebody returns the cash that you give them like 10%. If somebody finds cash—oh yeah, it's good to give them a reward so that they're not feeling guilty. So somebody finds a hundred thousand yen and turns it in, the police would suggest that you give ten thousand yen as a reward for turning in cash. So there's sort of this gift that you can give to the person who finds the cash and then you give them a gift back to those that turn it into the police so that they don't keep the whole thing but also so they feel less guilt for having found the cash. Because nobody wants to keep it because they feel shameful for that.

11:49 John Daub: So I thought that was interesting but the police found my—oh it's because it was with my gym card and they were able to find my address by my gym card and the name on the back of the gym card. It dropped out while I was running from my phone so I have to be very careful now. But that hasn't happened in like a year. People say no to 100%—normally would say no to that. I guess the police say if you want to leave a reward. I remember I had cash returned to me once—I lost something and they said I described exactly where I lost it and how much and they gave it back to me. Then they said if I'd like to give a reward or something and so I gave them a thousand yen—I lost ten thousand yen so I gave them a thousand yen and that was okay. The police said but yeah I guess it's polite to give back something. By the guy—I should have given him more, I felt bad. By the guy like a decent lunch or something for turning it in. But I guess it's like 10% or something—it could be up to you and you might not want to give anything at all.

12:53 John Daub: But when I lost my drone I left my drone for 10 minutes or 15 minutes—no that's not true, I literally just walked away and then I remembered that I left my—Michael Sasano's in the house as well. I left my drone in Iwakuni—I went back it was gone. I went to the police station because I just started my hitchhiking trip. They said that they found my drone—it was at the main police station. I took a taxi and went over there and it was like a 150,000 yen drone that I needed for the filming for a month—it'd be impossible to get another one. So the police officer said this is the person who turned it in—would you like to leave a message? And I sat there and hand-wrote a message and I sent them a gift, a thank you gift from Hokkaido when I completed my hitchhiking trip for turning that in in Iwakuni. I thought that was nice that they give you the address for the person to give them a reward or something for doing a nice thing. You don't have to do it but it's something—it's karma. If somebody does something nice to you, you kind of want to do something nice back and that keeps the world working in that karmic way, so to speak.

14:02 John Daub: But that's what I spent done this morning and now I'm doing the daimyo packages for the people who are watching this video and I'm going to be doing a lot of the karmic stuff for those that are on Patreon. So I appreciate the support guys. All right, I gave it like an 8 out of 10. If you guys want to try it, it's at Marugame Seimen—this is not a commercial for them. It's just I want to encourage all the businesses in Japan to do really crazy weird stuff because it makes me want to go and try it. Keep the karma positive—that's right. I appreciate it guys, thank you so much.

14:27 John Daub: Speaking of karma—thank you Michael, let me read your Super Chat here. "I would love to have those donuts right now." I know but listen, not too many okay Michael. When I was in Hawaii I seriously started putting on some heavy weight because of all those donuts and they have these Hawaiian kind of donuts that are so darn good—they're like crunchy on the outside and nice and soft on the inside. It's like the devil. All right, you—I would eat too well in Hawaii—it's just too good. Spam donuts, what else was there? The traditional Hawaiian food that you guys took me to go eat—it was like the best I've ever had in my life, I'm not gonna lie. All right, malasadas—yeah those, they're so good. Mahalo. All right all right guys there you go.

15:18 John Daub: I'm gonna leave the rest of these for you but I know you can't eat it because we can't eat through the video screen so I'm just gonna give it to Kanae Daub. All right, Ramsey Silent was never here—shouldn't say that. All right, see everybody—matane (matane).