00:00:01 John Daub: Alright everybody, welcome to Tokyo. This here is a square watermelon. I'm going to turn it here so you can see that it really is square in every single way. It's kind of cool. And I've had this for four months now. I can't keep this in my office anymore. Actually, they say this can last for six months, even up to a year, depending whether or not you are keeping it refrigerated. I kind of did. The summer was pretty hot. It's not stinking or anything like that, but I think it's just time to make a watermelon-o-lantern. Or square watermelon jack-o-lantern. Or jack-o-melon. I don't know what you would call this thing, but it is certainly going to be something that's only in Japan.

00:00:43 John Daub: Happy Halloween, everybody. It is the 31st in Tokyo, the 30th Mischief Night in Japan. So this is definitely going to be a mischievous live stream here. I'm in an isolated part of the cemetery. I'm in the Sumida River here in Tokyo. Aloha! This is exactly where I am. So if you guys don't try to come find me, I don't have any You Found Me cards. And I'm carrying a kitchen carving knife out here. So we're going to be doing this here. There's not a soul in sight, actually. This is kind of a hard-to-get-to place. But it's a beautiful place. If you get a bento or you bring some lunch with you to come out here to the Sumida River in Tokyo, it's a really nice place. I'm probably not going to be here. But you can see I've got a view of all the boats and all the tugboats as well, the construction going on in the city. So it's kind of cool to see that here.

00:01:37 John Daub: How you doing? John Lopez is in the house. How you doing, guys? Kelvin as well. So yeah, now the square watermelon, just to give you a little background on it, I did an episode on this. You guys have probably seen this one here. This is on the Only in Japan main channel. And I have had this since the day it was harvested. By the day it was being grown, I've known this watermelon. So it's got a sort of a sentimental value to me. And at the harvest in July, the beginning of July, the end of July, the beginning of August, this is at the end of July. I've had this square watermelon. It was harvested in the middle of July. So it's pretty crazy that this watermelon, which is a fruit, is still actually okay. This is the main channel episode. If you want to know more about the square watermelon, definitely go in this because this is the most thorough video on this topic, I think that's out there from the man who invented the square watermelon or his father to the jack-o'-lantern until the butchering of a square watermelon. I'm kind of sad about this.

00:02:44 John Daub: I do have one issue here. I'm putting down some paper, so I don't know how much of a mess this is going to be. And I don't even know what it looks like on the inside. But I think the best side to pick would be the one with the most scars, the scariest one. And I think it's this one. Now, the little micro cuts that happened about three months ago, they start to brown over and get a little scary. So it looks like this side or this side. Which side do you think this is the best one for the eyes here? This side has got kind of a sloping corner. I think actually this side is kind of scary. This side is kind of sloped a little bit. This almost looks like Frankenstein in a way, his head. Maybe this one here because it's got all the scars. So it's between the eyes. I think it's between this and this side. I don't know. It's a tough one here. I think this one here. Yeah, the more angular side. I'm going to say the most scarred side here.

00:03:41 John Daub: So the first thing that I think we should do here is probably to marker this up. I have a marker here. I want to put on what exactly the design I want to cut up here. I think the best way to do it would be to turn it around actually so you can see. This is why I don't like Rode products from Australia. The Rode microphones require you to have a Rode wire, which I don't have. You have to have these proprietary wires for Rode stuff. That means I can't use the mic. Luckily today, I don't actually have a lot of wind here. So it's not a problem so much. I'm guessing that this side here looks like it's all scarred up here. I guess the best thing to do is let's go with the traditional triangles. Alright, this one here. That looks pretty good here. You definitely have to marker it up or else you're going to make a mistake somewhere. And then we have a nose here. Should we put the nose upside down maybe? That's nice. That's hard to write. And then we'll have a zigzag mouth. Something like that. Oh, that's scary. Got to keep it square. Actually, maybe the nose. I can't erase it now. I'm afraid maybe this is going to cut too close and then it'll cut out the mouth. So maybe I'll do this a little bit higher. But gives me a good perspective. I can wash this off later.

00:05:32 John Daub: Alright, so this is a knife I got in an Only in Japan episode. It's got some little Damascus steel type of pattern here. I believe you just got to cut it in. Cut it. Actually, maybe I could do this. Start it off here. I don't want to do too big on the top, but you have to do it from an angle so it sits well. Oh my goodness. I have not. I'm just making a start as an incision and it's like. I think it's like waxed or something. It seems like that there's some white residue. This is very different than a pumpkin. Let's be honest here. This is not a pumpkin. I don't know. Goodbye, square watermelon. Yeah, it's been blemished now. So it's game over here. Alright, I'm just going to be really careful. Okay, I'm trying to do it at an angle here. It should probably cut away from you instead of towards you. This knife is super, super sharp. Okay, there's some water here. I wasn't sure if there was any water anymore because it's like this watermelon is four months old, if you can believe it. Okay. Okay, right there. It's cutting pretty good. Trying to cut at an angle so the top will. Okay. I haven't done because I live in Japan, we don't have these orange watermelons.

00:07:06 John Daub: Alright, does this will this come off? Look at this. There's a square on top of a square here. Oh my goodness. Oh my. That's sort of like a melon. This is weird. First of all, because it's a WRXR Turbo's in the house. He writes in here, go Dodgers. Yankees fans, can you counter him? World Series going on. This is so weird because it's so flat. Alright, and then I guess we could I don't know. I'm going to cut this off here. It almost looks like I could eat this. It's actually sweet. I can't believe that this is. It's almost ripe. I cannot believe that this is a square watermelon. This looks like it's edible. What? This is crazy. It does look scary, like a spider has been in there or something. Fairly nasty.

00:08:17 John Daub: I brought another tool. This is a spoon. Because I have done enough lanterns in the past to know that you do definitely need like a shovel or a spoon. A lot of you might say that this is such a waste. It's not. This is its purpose. It's not meant to be eaten. It's meant to be a display fruit. But what is shocking me right now is that how much water is in here? This is like five month old water. Alright? This is not normal. I thought and maybe because it's four months old. A little bit maybe a little bit more than four months old. I'm not sure exactly when they harvested it. This is four month old watermelon. It looks like maguro. Check it out. That looks like tuna to me. That's weird. This is weird. Sorry for everybody watching the World Series. Watching it. I don't know what the score is. I'm going to go back after this is done here. But we got to do this because it is Halloween. Oh my goodness. Look at all the water. Oh my goodness. Look at all the water.

00:09:40 John Daub: It's supposed to rain tomorrow. So it might rain a little later on today. We've had a kind of a wet October here in Tokyo. Last few days it really cooled off. But it's nice to be outside and get some sunshine. It doesn't have a smell at all. It smells faintly like a watermelon. But it's hold on. I'm going to give it a sniff just for you guys. Alright. It does smell like a watermelon. It literally was a watermelon. Watermelon it just has been in a box alright I'm gonna have to drain the water on the on the grass here but I want to get get rid of some of the pulp there's no reason to get the table table this wet because it's just basically it's basically a lot of water in here get rid of some more of the pulp and the seeds and know if you do plant the seeds you're not gonna get a square watermelon it doesn't work like that you think it would but it doesn't oh give me some send me some score I guess I get all sorts of weird comments send me some square watermelon seeds so I can grow square watermelons at home that is not how it works alright takes a lot of patience and time to get a square watermelon but now we're really just using the shell of it the fruit part of it because the the the the skin the exterior because the fruit is not really it's not edible I did take a taste of it you probably wouldn't get sick it's interesting that it looks like these are harvested on ripe it looks like it ripened over time doesn't it the candle will have a better stand yeah we're gonna have to I have a towel as well so I'll be able to clean up that clean up here but again I it's gonna rain soon it's gonna wash everything away a lot of water I was surprised I'd usually these watermelons are mostly like just fiber but it looks like there's some fruit in there get rid of some of the pulp and then I'm gonna get rid of some of the pulp and then I'm gonna get rid of some of the pulp and then I'm gonna get rid of some of the pulp and then I'm gonna the water here let's go ultra-wide that's a little better all right so the water here let's go ultra-wide that's a little better all right so I've gotten out to the part where I can see the wall here so I can see the I've gotten out to the part where I can see the wall here so I can see the orange wall of it I don't want to go too far but I want to get rid of as much orange wall of it I don't want to go too far but I want to get rid of as much of the fruit as possible but upon this is a lot harder than a pumpkin would be and the reason why is it's just the pumpkin it seems like the guts come out Not real easy.

00:12:40 John Daub: You just kind of yank it out like Mel Gibson and Braveheart at the end there. So everything kind of just spills out, the guts, which makes it even creepier. That's why pumpkins are so creepy as fruits, right? The guts just kind of. But the watermelon, it takes a little work to dig this thing out. All right, we're getting there. We are getting there. It's funny. I didn't really need the knife. I thought I would need the knife to. I left the house without a spoon, by the way. I had to go back and get it. That would have been a disaster. Imagine you have to use your hands and your fingers to dig it out, and that's not ideal. But again, these square watermelons go for about $500, $600 in the foreign market. There are people that were buying this online for a ridiculous sum of money. And we're in the era where social media. People make that money back by posting this. This is the kind of stuff online.

00:13:59 John Daub: All right, we're almost there. We're almost there. Here, let me turn this around a little bit. So I'll get a couple of shots of me going from the other direction so you guys can also see the area and the hard work that's involved from this angle. You won't be able to hear me as well. Maybe not, but this is pretty cool. Just kind of scraping off the pink part of it here. You know what's funny, though? Now that I'm scraping it off, I'm not going to be able to see the pink part of it. I just found myself in a corner and trying to keep the corners square. That's not something you have to do with a jack-o'-lantern. So when I'm done with this, you're going to see a pretty unique sight of the inside of this square watermelon. This literally is a dissection. This is what the guts look like. And let me be honest with you. This is weird to see on the inside. I bet you the farmers have never done anything like this as well. They won't admit to have eaten them either because they don't want you to eat them. I thought that was funny, but I'm pretty sure they've eaten them. You try them to see what it's like.

00:15:30 John Daub: Alright, we're almost there. There's a lot of water on the bottom here. But the pink fruit is just about gone. Did anybody go to the Shibuya Halloween? I don't think it was very popular this year. My feeling was that the mayor of Shibuya is marathoning this. And over the next few years, it'll become less and less a tourist attraction as new stuff comes in. This is so interesting. It's like art to. It's a real construction project to have to clean this thing out. Because you've got to get into the corners. This is so freaky. Because it's square inside. Not that I doubted it. It's just. We're almost there.

00:17:09 John Daub: For those of you who want to pray for this watermelon, that it has another couple of weeks left in it, please do. I think if I remove some of the sugar and the sweet part of the watermelon, maybe it'll last a little bit longer. I can't do it too much because I cut off the edge at an angle. If I take any more of it out, it's going to ruin the slant so the top won't fit flush. It won't fit nice and cleanly. A lot of water. I always cut away. Cut away from you. And this is a super sharp knife here. It's awesome. Alright. Here's the box, by the way, if you don't know. The square watermelon box is also something of a thing. Alright, come on, let's go. In this direction now. This is fun. Thank you, Aiken. We got a good job going on here. I appreciate it. Shubhad Tirumali writes in here, Melanolandrin looks great. Well, thank you. It does. It's coming along pretty nicely here.

00:19:13 John Daub: Actually, what we can do, I have another. That's so soft. It's kind of a disgusting consistency here. Alright, so I'm going to dry this off a little bit. And then I've got another paper that I've prepared. The reason why is I don't want to get the water to rot it. And that would be. That actually might make it look a little bit cooler. Oh, there we go. It's almost like. That's kind of cool. Alright. So we're nearly there. Now it's time to put in the face of the melon. I think maybe I should go a little bit higher than it was before. I'm going to use this here. So it's about. I don't know. It seems like a little bit less than an inch thick. What is that? Like one and a half centimeters or so. I think if I go a little bit higher, it might be better. Because I want to leave some space for the. Now this part, I could mess this up. I'm using a not great knife because I don't want to cut myself. But now I'm realizing that by not using a really nice knife, I probably have a higher chance of cutting myself as I clench my teeth. See that? It's got like this white residue on it. I wonder if they wax these or if it's like a natural thing. What do you guys think?

00:20:59 John Daub: Oh, this is cool. Alright, here we go. That is so cool. That is so cool. Dull knives are more dangerous. Alright, I got this thing here. I got it online. It's supposed to be used in case of an emergency. So I have something if there's an earthquake in my earthquake bag. Here, just make sure. Michael Sassano is in the house. How are you doing, brother and Aiken? The red-pink interior, perfect for Halloween. I'd suggest to the growers to market that somehow. I think they totally should do that. Michael writes in here, Aloha, brother. Finally made a livestream this week. Thank you. I was looking forward to seeing what this looked like on the inside. Now, what's inside a square watermelon? You literally know this. Now, my friends Lincoln and Dan from What's Inside Channel, Lincoln is now going to college. He's quite an impressive golfer. I think he's got a full scholarship at the University of Utah, which is amazing. That channel is, the main channel is kind of like slowed down a little bit because it was more of a father-son type of project, which I loved. It does look like wax. But he's still doing the family channel. And they came and for their main channel, I think it had like eight or nine million subscribers. They cut open a square watermelon together and it was great. I was just happy that they came to visit. I love those guys. He's very much into Tesla cars and that scene.

00:22:39 John Daub: Are you, let's just, let's not mess around too much with it. This is actually, the dome life was actually easier. I'm going to push this through and then I can kind of fix it. Actually, it's not too bad. Sometimes if you fix it, you make it worse. But in this case, that is not the case. Now we're starting to see something, Saya. Look at this. Careful. Scary watching you cut the watermelon. It's scarier than to see me cutting it than it is actually scarier than to me, to me, than the watermelon itself. That's funny. All right, we're going to go with this upside down triangle nose. And I'm praying that it's still, it's far enough apart that it's not going to collapse the, collapse it. I do wish I had a better knife. That's for sure. This knife's not too bad, but the other one was, was way too dull. This one's going in a lot easier. Let me get a little, a little smaller here. Leo's going to, Leo's going to freak out when he sees this. This year he's a, he's a NASA astronaut. Very cool. We were all watching. Elon Musk's catching of the rocket booster. That was one of the coolest things I've ever seen. This part is kind of hard here. I'm wondering, let's see here. What do you guys think here? This is, this is a hard part, hard, hard decision here. How the mouth should go. If I get it to, that's a nice thumbnail. That's why I'm doing this as well. If I get it too, too close, it might fall apart. What do you guys think? This does look like Frankenstein. Oh my goodness. He needs a wig. But then if you try to, try to do that, then you lose the, I'm scared that I'm going to get this too close and something's going to happen. Hold on a second. All right. We actually have more space on the bottom. So I'm going to, I'm going to make it a little bit lower. And I'm going to start off by doing that part on this side because I want to stay away from this area, which is structurally. I've been watching some prison break and watching Michael Schofield. It would be structurally weak at this point. Should I do that? So Michael Schofield, thank you. I heard they're going to do season six, but darn internet. You can't trust anything on the internet anymore. All right. So far looking good here. Michael, do you think this is going to scare some, scare some people in Hawaii? Is Brandy here? Nice to see Brandy here. Has lived through this square watermelon age. This is kind of creepy.

00:26:00 John Daub: All right. This is so it's getting easier. This mouth is going to be really wicked. I just don't have the arts and crafts talent of some of you guys out there, which I think will inspire more people to do square watermelon jack-o'-lanterns in the future. Don't you think? I think we've done it. I think we have done it. This is so exciting here. All right. Um, let's push it. Oh, look at this. A monster is born. Oh, okay. Hold on. I feel some tension here. The one thing is never force anything. It should go naturally. Okay. There we go. Surely it's still, I like the fact that it is not it's off center here. That is one at mama. This is the greatest thing ever. Oh my gosh. Halloween. It's not a, it's not a holiday that I especially like. There's still a lot of water. I'm going to have to do some work on it, but this is scary. This is like Frankenstein.

00:27:38 John Daub: All right. I'm going to, I'm going to put these two knives away because I think it's a, it makes me look like I'm not a good person. If these are standing around clear on the table. I did bring a light. Of course I did. Okay. It's on. Well, we got to get the, the strength of the light on. Lightning. How do I get a brighter? Okay, here we go. I'm going all the way to a hundred percent. You actually have to push the button in order to get it brighter. So I have to push it 99 times. It only goes up to 50. What's the deal with that? That's the best we're going to get here, but it'll give us an idea. I think it'll give us an idea. That's kind of cool. See if I can put it, if I put the light in here, flat, flush down the bottom. Let's see. That's really cool. You can see some of the lights. There's a pink in there. He's got a personality of his own. I think he's very much like a Frankenstein. There's the guts there. All right, let's turn it around for a picture. A memorial picture as we say thank you to the square watermelon. This is crazy. What am I doing here? What am I doing? It just feels really weird. I've had this thing on my desk for ages now. And finally. After. After a very long time. There you go. What do you guys think of the square watermelon jack-o'-lantern? I want to hear your comments below. Is this something like, I don't know. Maybe they should market the square watermelon. Keep it in your refrigerator as a design for a few months and then make a Frankenstein here. Because this is just amazing. This is scary. And then turn it into a drum. That's the next level here. He's got like this wax. All these scars on his face. I love it. I love it. Oh, this going to be the best Halloween ever. This is the best Halloween ever.

00:30:33 John Daub: As you can see, I'm on the Sumida River here. Frankenstein is the theme for this watermelon. This is so cool. So there you go. I'm going to set this up as a thumbnail here. You got square watermelon jack-o'-lantern with knife and guts and man walking here. That is. That's pretty amazing here. That's a cool thumbnail. Don't you think? With the guts there on the bottom. He's got a little stump on the top there. How you doing? All the sides here. Mission accomplished, guys. That doesn't get any better than this. It's not a bad. I'd love to see people get a little bit more creative with the designs. I'm sure that they will. I bet you more YouTubers do this kind of stuff. The funny thing is I got the guts all over my hands here. I got the guts all over my hands and it's not that sticky. It's because there's not a lot of sugar content and one of the reasons why the square watermelon. And I encourage you guys after watching this. This is a cool thing. Go check out the video here. This is the main channel episode, the Japanese square watermelon. I put a lot of love into this episode because I wanted to represent the farmers who work so hard to do this kind of stuff. The best that I possibly could. So this is the end of the square watermelon. And yeah, this is as far as he will go. So there he is in the thumbnail. And there he is at the end of his life. Well, not yet. He's got a second life here as a very scary square watermelon that will probably go on for a couple of weeks. Well, we will see how much longer this thing can go on. And maybe I'll make this into a YouTube shorts or something like that. But it's kind of a fun thing.

00:32:35 John Daub: This month's postcard is really cool. For those that want to know. If you want to support the channel, this postcard is available just for the next 48 hours. So make sure you get on the Patreon support the channel. This is in Kochi Prefecture on the very end of Shikoku in a town called Tosa Shimizu. A shrine that fishermen's wives and mothers would go out there and pray for their sons and husbands to come back safe. And I was there last year. And that's this month's postcard. And yeah, don't forget the clothing rental episode. And yeah, that's it. If you don't want to bring luggage into Japan, you can rent your clothes here. They actually, Japan Airlines has a service. That's actually me doing a Joey putting on all my clothes for the thumbnail shot here. But yeah, Japan Airlines has a service for those that come to Japan. If you don't want to overpack or pack too much, you can get winter clothes rented. Pick it up at your hotel. You can choose the set that you want. And that episode was kind of a lot of fun. And here's Leo in his firefighter costume. He's going to be doing a little bit of a He's going to save some lives there. Awesome good stuff here. Any last questions? I'll take a little Q&A here before we end it. Get back to the World Series. Thanks everybody for watching here. And Nightbot just wrote in here. It's patreon.com only in Japan. Join the postcard club or the daimyo's. I still got a couple of packages there with purple sweet potato potato chips this month from Japan. I think they're down in Kagoshima. A local farmer made some chips and I sent that along to the Patreon supporters as well as some apple cinnamon cakes from Aomori Prefecture. And taste of autumn this month, which is really good. Yeah, thanks guys.

00:34:25 John Daub: How many weeks will it hang on? That's the question. Must have cost a fortune for the square watermelon if you buy it in the store. The square watermelons cost about $85 actually. If you get it from the farmers, the retail cost was 12,000 yen. Which is approximately $80 US I believe with the exchange rate $85 or so. Of course the exchange rate fluctuates right now. It's 153 yen to the dollar, which is still crazy. I thought it would go down. But we've got a lot of political problems in Japan, including the prime minister who sort of lost an election. He lost his majority now. So it's even more messed up in Japan. Let's just say they're resetting. I think that's a good way to look at it. But yes, 6,000 Philippine pesos here. And you know, if you get it at the store, I've seen that as high as about $500 in Japan. Or 55,000 yen. I guess it's about $400 now. That's a lot. Because it goes through a reseller and then a reseller. And then they keep on adding on to it. So the best thing that you can do is maybe go down there and pick up your own. But you can find them in the fruit shops. I saw it for the retail price at a couple of shops in Shibuya. But you just have to get it in season. Which is probably August 1st. If you're in Japan on August 1st, you're going to be able to see the square watermelon. Probably at the retail price. They only made it. I'm showing you this for a reason here. Space boat's going by here. It's pretty sweet. They only made 400 of them this year. Which is 200 more than five years ago. They've got some more people making them. But they only make 400. That's it. That are official square watermelons. So they're pretty rare.

00:36:19 John Daub: Now I've seen YouTubers that are actually making the square watermelon. Like I saw one YouTuber. He got like 10 million views on a shorts or something. And he had this plastic thing. And he had a contraption. And he copy pasted it. I think onto some clips from my old video or something. I'm not sure. What are you going to do? People have been kind of borrowing my content for years. Because I go out and I get some permits to film this kind of stuff here. But he didn't use the actual metal box that are patented that they used down on the farm. He had this kind of plastic 3D printed type of a contraption. And maybe that works okay. But there's a reason why they use metal boxes. Because the amount of pressure that these watermelons create when they're inside of that box is incredible. It busts open the metal. He's had some glass that breaks and the metal warps inside. And he has to recycle it or repair them every year for the next season. I'm talking about the inventor of it. And shout out to my friends down in Zentsuji City in Kagawa Prefecture who invited me to film this year. I was really happy to be able to do that. And this is a fun experience.

00:37:29 John Daub: I'm going to do another experiment to do with you guys. If you have any questions, leave it in the comments below. I'm turning off the light here. Leave it in the comments below. And yeah, happy Halloween everybody. We'll be back I think next year or the year after we're going to be going to the United States for Halloween. Because I think it's just not fair that Leo doesn't get the trick or treat door to door. If that's something that you still do in the United States. If you do that with your kids. I would love to go to the best neighborhood for trick or treating. But we, you know, maybe up in New England or something. I'm not sure. But yeah, Leo should definitely get a chance to trick or treat. But they just don't have that culture here of trick or treating. Halloween is weird here. Most people get that through Disney. But the Shibuya Halloween is something that's discouraged now. And there's just too many problems. And I think over the next five years it's just going to keep getting down and down as they kind of press people out. This year the police weren't really facilitating much at all. Just kind of picking up people off the streets which is not nice. But anyways, happy Halloween. I'll see you in another episode tomorrow as I take you to another corner of Japan. I was going to have Peter on yesterday but the weather again was really bad. I was going to have Matt Ault on yesterday as well. But again, it wasn't just the weather. I'm working on something with a podcast with my friend Matt Ault. I guess I could show you a clip really quickly here. Where this will probably go on in the beginning of next year. I can't remember. We're doing this for a client. So I'm kind of happy I can show you a clip here. Where Mia and I are. Mia and Matt Ault are doing a podcast. Like a vodcast type of an experimental thing. Talking about how Tokyo is a hub for travelers that are coming here. And I think it's a really cool thing because the more information we can as like residents here. And Matt's been here for I think something about 20 years. And I've been here for 26 years. It's really good to get this kind of inside information. I think it really helps your trip. And Matt and I, we, here's Matt right there. This book, Pure Invention. I think that this is going to be a really helpful video that's coming out. And I've been editing it really hard for the last couple of weeks. So it's done. It's about 23, 24 minutes long. Another asshat. So happy Halloween. Mischief night. Take care of yourself. And I'll see you tomorrow. Matane.