00:01:00 John Daub: Hey guys, how you doing? I'm here in Akihabara in Tokyo. This right here is a cup noodle spoon. I thought this was a pretty unique invention. Japan has found a way to innovate the spoon. It's more of a glorified spork. You can see there's a really nice divot in here, a spoon-like feel to it. But you have the bonus of these forks. It's not any ordinary spork. It's got ridges on here that are supposed to catch the noodles just perfectly.

00:32:00 John Daub: And we're going to try this out with this really weird one. This is Sushi Zanmai cup noodles. It's the freeze-dried noodles with Sushi Zanmai. This is the guy who always pays a million dollars every year for the first tuna. Not this year—he lost—but I thought it would be kind of fun to try it out. We're going to unbox this spoon and eat it here and see if the spoon works.

01:01:00 John Daub: I don't know if this ramen is any good. It's made from maguro (tuna) stock from this maker, so it's going to be pretty interesting. Here, let's take a look on the other side. You have to let it sit for three minutes as it says on the box. We've just about passed that time. Don't worry, I washed this before I left. I kept it in the package for fun, so it's pretty clean. Is that it? That's the most unique thing I've ever seen. I saw it on Amazon. It's like $2 for this thing. Made in Japan, too, which is pretty amazing.

01:37:00 John Daub: Check it out. Even on the package, it says made in Japan. It's got to count for something, right? This basically makes the ohashi (chopsticks) irrelevant. They gave it to me at 7-Eleven, but I'm not going to be using them. I'm going to be using my glorified spork. Which is really funny. I guess there's some sort of pack here for the soy sauce. We can omit that. Here we go. Oh, wow. Okay. That looks like any other cup noodle. I'm supposed to mix it around in there.

02:10:00 John Daub: So I found this inside of 7-Eleven. There's tons of ramen in there, but I'm always looking for something interesting. And then boom, there it was. Oh, that spicy one. No, let's go for that one because I know that face. I know that smile. I once caught a fish this big. Sushi Zanmai. So it has maguro dashi (tuna stock). Very good. It's kind of cool. I almost never eat these noodles. It's like if there's anything left, this is what I do. But this is a special live stream. It looks okay. They have hot water pumps in here, these hot water boilers, and you can fill up your cup noodle right here. This is about six or seven minutes ago, so I'm guessing it's done. It's still pretty piping hot.

03:20:00 John Daub: Alright, let's just go and see if this thing actually works. I'm going to pan down a little bit. Okay. It's always kind of weird eating on the street. So you want to mix it. Oh, look at that. It's so much easier than chopsticks. You kind of want to mix up the good stuff a little bit. All the treasure. Unless you just want to go for the treasure. They have little stars in there. Little flowers. That's cute. Look at that. So I can get the broth. That's so easy access to the broth. And then I can get the noodles from the spork part of it. You can get noodles and broth in one bite. Wow. That is pretty cool. And it just sticks in there. The noodles can't go anywhere. They're locked in place. Oh, wow.

04:22:00 John Daub: Did you ever eat on the street in Akihabara? It's a little weird. Slightly weird. Kanae's like, I'm sold. I'm not selling anything. I just thought it was really cool. All right. Itadakimasu. This is a weird sight to eat noodles on the street in Akihabara. All right. Itadakimasu. Here you go. That worked as a great spoon.

05:07:00 John Daub: What's cool about it is that you're taking the spoon from the side like this. A spork doesn't have the lip in this direction. So it's not the same as a spork. It's not the same as a fork. But look at that. You get a little bit of broth in the spoon. So this is so much better than chopsticks. Wow. So I could get the noodles and the broth in the same bite, which you can't really do with chopsticks. That, my friends, is an innovation. Look at the steam coming from this. This is crazy. That's really unique. Genius, right? I guess you have to have one of those minds to innovate silverware, cutlery.

06:07:00 John Daub: Now, I was on the hunt for this. About 12 years ago, I made a video with the vending machines and this one had canned ramen. But now they only have oden (stewed items), which is not a bad thing. You could use a spoon for that. But the canned ramen is gone. However, they brought back the canned ramen at the end of last year. And I found it in a live stream and was going to do that. But now they're all sold out. I was looking all over the place. So I went in this direction, kind of looking for what it was 13 years ago. They had these cans of ramen for 300 yen. It's crazy. And they're actually really good tonkotsu ramen. But they don't have it anymore. They brought it back.

07:07:00 John Daub: Let me see if I can pull up a screenshot that I took of the maker. 300 yen is a pretty good deal. The oden is not that great. It's still there. But the ramen, the Hakata ramen, it came with this. Look at this spoon on here. This is also innovation. It's not a spork. It's a spoon. So you have to sip it from the can. But this dude's going to town. He's a friend of a friend. This is the canned ramen. If you can find it, let me know. I'm still looking for it. It's made by a company called Sun Vending from Miyagi Prefecture in Sendai. Sun Vending Machine released this in the middle of December. And I found one in Akihabara near the Gachapon Kaikan. It's gone now. It was 500 yen. So it's 200 yen more. But this looks like a major upgrade to the ramen in a can that we had like a decade ago. So if you can find it, let me know in the comments. And I'm going to go over there and attack it with my new spoon.

08:31:00 John Daub: I'm actually not going to eat all of this. I just wanted to try it. The other thing that you should probably keep in mind when you do get stuff at the vending machine or at the convenience store is it's a plastic bag world. We're getting rid of it here in Japan, which is a good thing. But these are so useful to have because if you don't have it, there's no place to put your garbage. So just carry one and you can use it for like a week if you wanted. This is awesome. I'm going to just keep it in my bag. I'm going to wash it when I get home, but then I'm going to keep it in my bag. So I always have a spoon. I always have a fork. And I always have a spork. It's like all three in one. But this is not a spork. Or is it? Let me know in the comments below. You can put it in the bag and then you don't make a mess. And you can take it. They have a place where you can dispose of wet garbage at the 7-Eleven. So if you don't finish it all, you can dump it in there. I'm not going to eat it all. It's full of sodium. There's nothing wrong with eating it all, but it's kind of a lot of sodium.

09:47:00 John Daub: Just a shout out here. If you haven't already, check out Matt Ault and I did a podcast 20 minutes long about Tokyo as a Hub. Day trips, food, accommodation from capsule hotels to luxury hotels to manga cafes. How to get around the transportation system in Tokyo. It's kind of like a really good introduction, even if you've been to Tokyo two or three times. It's from the perspective of somebody who's been living in Japan, in Tokyo in particular for over 20 years. That's on this channel right now. Released it about three days ago.

10:17:00 John Daub: All right, everybody. Sid's here. Machio no Ralph Daub, AKA Daniel LaRusso. All right, get it out of your system. In fact, we have it on this channel where if you do the hash mark karate kid chat bot, it gives you advice from Miyagi-san himself. Man who catch fly with chopstick accomplish anything. But what about with a spork? That is the question.

11:00:00 John Daub: The weather here in Akihabara is pretty warm. It was warming up. A lot of sun up there. But this is where I ate the ramen, probably the busiest part of the city in front of a bunch of people. And we did have an audience. So if you have any questions about the new spork, man, let me know in the comments below. They're on Amazon. They're made in Japan. I'm just saying. If you have it, you can get it and have it sent to your hotel. I saw similar things at the Daiso, the 100 yen shop. You can get them probably at Tokyu Hands.

11:45:00 John Daub: Where are you guys from? Okay. I'll go say hi. Yeah, well, thank you. You just kind of encountered me. Yeah. We just had a meeting. I like the time here. Yeah. Yeah, man. Thanks. Take care. They're very cool from Calgary. How cool is that?

12:02:00 John Daub: All right. That's all I got for you. I have the You Found Me cards at home. I've got new ones with the new logo on it. But yeah, if you ask me for one, I'll probably have it started next week. I got to put it in my bag. I got a meeting to go to at 12:30. However, I might be back at another location. Tomorrow, I'm planning to do some Japanese fast food to keep with the health kick that we have going on here with instant ramen. Nevertheless, if you have any questions, leave them in the comments below, and I will try my very best to help you out with your trip to Japan.

12:33:00 John Daub: And the Postcard Club, postcards went out two days ago. You can join them on Patreon. I send them out every month. This month was the onsen (hot spring) in Fukushima. Me and my friend were sitting at an onsen with a waterfall in the background like a big wooden tub. Very cool stuff.

12:50:00 John Daub: Hey, I'm a big fan. Oh, hi, how you doing? Where are you guys from? LA. Okay. Everything okay? Yeah, for the most part. We're about 10 or 15 miles away from the biggest fires. Well, that's good. Yeah, so we're okay for the most part. That's very good news. I love your videos, man. Well, thank you. Yeah, take care. Bye-bye. Awesome. Aloha Michael Sassano is in the house here. Happy Aloha Friday lunch snack time on me. Thank you. I'm going out to another part of the city to get some lunch maybe. I'll send you a picture, Michael. I appreciate it.

13:19:00 John Daub: See you guys in another live stream. I'll be back tomorrow. We're going to eat some fast food, compare the prices of some of them. It's kind of a controversial thing in the US. Prices are going up real fast. But what about in Japan? We're going to check that out tomorrow. Mata ne (see you later). A lot of tourists here. That's kind of cool. I wonder if I stand here for another five minutes if anyone else is going to come and say hi. Maybe not. Mata ne.