00:02 John Daub: This is really incredible. I'm riding my bicycle along the river here and I see these cherry blossoms opened up. It's January 18th. It's just so confusing to me. I had to do a double take and stop and just kind of check this out. Yeah, it's not even full bloom. There's still some buds here. So what is this kind of black magic and why are cherry blossoms blooming in Tokyo in January? Is this not some sort of global warming conspiracy?

00:32 John Daub: Or something like that? You know, it's not. This is actually a variety of cherry blossom that blooms in the winter—kanzakura (winter cherry)—and it's got a lot of people stopping to take pictures of it. You don't see too many of these in Tokyo, but we do today. How you doing everybody? I cannot believe it. The Japan Meteorological Association also put out the first forecast for the cherry blossoms, which is never right, but it gives us hope. And when I saw this, it gave me hope because I don't like winter. It's just too freaking cold. I'm sure a lot of you in the United States are getting that Arctic blast that's coming down right now. Thanks a lot, Canada. For those in Canada that have the super long winters, there is hope. And I'm looking at it right now.

01:04 John Daub: Now, I believe—I'm not a botanist—that these are called kanzakura. Kan meaning winter. It's a special kind of sakura blossom that blooms only in winter, and they are really pretty. As you can see, they got a little pink hue to them. This is not an ume (plum) blossom. This is not the only cherry blossom variety, and they're not cherries. Cherry blossoms is like the English translation of sakura, which is the name of this tree. Ume blossoms will bloom in the middle of February, most famous in Mito, which is up north of Tokyo, one of the three great gardens of Japan. But the kanzakura will be blooming from now. It's just like, what is going on? Right? And we got some of them budding right here.

02:13 John Daub: All right, let's take a look here. So this is the schedule from the news source, the press release of the official cherry blossoms on January 9th, which was last week. The first cherry blossoms will be coming out in Tokyo, so they say, on March 24th. That's a pretty safe bet. Last year it was later than usual, and we had a pretty cold winter coming in late. So February and early March were really cold, so the blossoms said, you know what, we're going to stay in for a couple weeks longer. That ruined a lot of your plans. I tell you, never try to plan around Mother Nature. You can see Sendai is April 7th and Fukuoka March 22nd. I can tell you right now that it's probably not going to follow the schedule.

03:12 John Daub: It's the first forecast, but they do this, which is really nice. It kind of gives us some hope, right? Because those that hate winter, including myself—I don't hate it, I kind of do. It's just a time where the days are darker, shorter. It's cold outside. You don't really get a lot of sunshine. You can't go out unless you're a skier, but you need time to go to those ski resorts. And I just don't have that. So it's kind of like, yeah, I'll take what I can get here. This gives us some hope. The cherry blossoms were predicted to be very similar as the years in the past, but they always turn out to be plus or minus a week. Sometimes they're early. We'll start to see them blossoming usually at Yasukuni Shrine around the middle of March. There's an indicator tree that the Meteorological Association uses to say that the season is here. That usually comes out around March 17th or so, but last year was a little bit later than usual. I think when they have 11 blossoms pop up on that tree, the season has started. But you know what? This variety has started now, the kanzakura.

04:37 John Daub: There's also the Kawazuzakura, which is a very famous blossom that'll open up in February. There's a festival—there's a city called Kawazu in Shizuoka—so if you are here in February and you want to see a festival with blossoms, it's going to be a little bit chilly, but the Kawazuzakura will be blooming in February. That's the first blossom to open. The schedule that I showed you earlier has to do with the Somei Yoshino variety of cherry blossoms. There's more than one variety of sakura, so just keep that in mind because you'll see different varieties blooming at different times. Everybody asks me every year, "One of the cherry blossoms is going to be blooming," and I say, you know what, which variety are you talking about? The Somei Yoshino, there's schedules for that, but the other varieties, well, you know, the kanzakura are blooming right now. And I'm just assuming this is kanzakura. There's no label on the tree. Usually over the years past, they put the tree variety like a label on the tree, but I don't see that here.

05:47 John Daub: So where are we right now? We're here in Toyosu, which is along the riverside here in Tokyo. It's a really pretty place. I like to ride my bike here because there's no traffic lights going all around this entire island. This is a great place to live as well. Toyosu is built on garbage. That's why a lot of Japanese don't want to live here, but I think there's nothing wrong with that. A little garbage—it's still an island. That's at Lalaport, a shopping mall. There's a massive home center called Viva Home. You have a lot of attractions opening up. Odaiba is just a 15-minute bicycle ride from here. And all around that island you see in the center of your screen, there's no traffic lights and you can run around here. I think it's about six or seven kilometers to go around the loop there. There's the point that Leo and I like to go to look at the boats at the end of the Toyosu Gururi Park, and you get a nice view of the Rainbow Bridge. Go get a bento from the shopping mall here in Toyosu and walk or ride your bicycle there, and you get a really nice break from the city.

07:06 John Daub: But it really is stunning to see cherry blossoms in January. Because I got to be honest, I've been inside editing all day a video that I'm going to release pretty soon tonight. So I'm looking forward to it. This is the thumbnail—it'll be dropping tonight. I think it's a really good story. It's my tribute to the Japan Post Office, which does such a great job every year getting the postcards to you guys. Just a few months back, I went on a trip to the top of Yamadera, which is this beautiful mountain temple that is maybe the most beautiful spot in Japan, arguably, of course. This guy got to climb 1000 steps every single day, like six days a week, to pick up the mail. I was shocked about that. And I called up the post office and they said, sure, come out and film and follow the guy. He's a really nice guy named Sasahara-san.

10:25 John Daub: It's gonna get uploaded on the channel tonight, Japan time. Wow, just so nice. His knees must be strong. He's in his 60s, believe it or not. He's in really good shape to be doing that. You'd think they'd hire somebody who might be younger, but I think he does such a great job of it. He's got the personality, Sasahara-san, to do it because it's particularly the Japanese tourists—when they see some guy walking the route here, he's something of a celebrity. A lot of people stop him and say, "Are you the postman? Do you actually deliver mail? Do you have to walk up these steps every single day?" Yes, he does, which is really crazy. When I climbed up to the temple about 20-some years ago, I remember seeing that post box and going, I wonder who picks up the mail. And I found him.

11:41 John Daub: So I'm so used to calling them cherry blossoms. That's what they are in English—they're cherry blossoms. But just keep in mind, there's so many varieties of cherry blossoms. There's not just one. I'm thinking about going to Shizuoka this year, to Izu Peninsula, and checking out that cherry blossom festival. If you guys like that idea, leave me in the comments. Let me know what you think. I think it would be really cool to see that. And you all know I'm a sucker for the cherry blossoms because I live here in Japan, of course. The kanzakura isn't even close to full bloom yet. We still got a lot of buds on this tree. It's sometime in February, I believe. I remember I was riding the train to get to the port in Izu where Commodore Perry came in with the black ships to get some footage for that. I went past the festival and I saw a lot of stuff. I'm like, dang, I wish I had the time to go and see that. I got to go next year. And that year is now.

14:48 John Daub: But yeah, Japan is a lot more than just all of those attractions and the food. It's a place that's so deeply connected with nature. And I think that's why the cherry blossoms are such a wonderful time. But to be able to see them on January 18th is pretty special to me and you. Look, you can see this one has opened up really nicely. Wow, it's pretty. Oh, these look like they've fallen off here—the petals are off. Maybe it is, you know, this spot in Toyosu gets a lot more sunshine, so it could be that these are done. Just crazy.

14:59 John Daub: Hello, welcome to those joining the chat. Just kind of panning the kanzakura—K-A-N-Z-A-K-U-R-A—which are the winter sakura. These are the confused sakura trees that seem to come out in January for some reason. But I rode my bicycle last week with Leo. I took him to get some cotton candy in Odaiba as I promised him, and we stopped. They're like, "Dada, sakura." And I go, what? I stopped and go, yeah, you're right. What's going on here? This is freaky. And Leo was looking forward to festival food and music and all the other stuff, sitting out with family. But not today—it was too cold last week. It's kind of too cold this week. There's some photographers out here taking pictures of it, but there's just a few trees. If you look in the distance, you can see Rainbow Bridge. So it's a nice spot in Tokyo. This is—this would be my front yard if Ginza is my backyard, I guess. And if you pan across there, that right there, those buildings, that's the Olympic Village from three years ago. They're starting to settle that in there.

16:30 John Daub: I've done a live stream walking around what was once the Olympic Village, but it's a beautiful area. It really is. Sorry about the signal that might be going in and out here. It's just kind of a park. And this is also an interesting story here. You can see on the other side here of this Toyosu Park, it's a beautiful place. They just opened up this coffee chain called Blue Bottle. This wasn't here about three months ago, I don't think. It's just a recent thing. And since then, a lot more people have been coming into this park here to hang out at that Blue Bottle. I was a little bit surprised it wasn't a Starbucks—a Blue Bottle opened up here. If you've got kids, there's a shopping mall right there. They've got a Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant. That was like 25 years ago, and there's a Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant here. How did that movie have so much impact? There's pretty good shopping. There's a massive home center with some really amazing stuff. There's a Super Autobacs over here, which is like you can get Japanese accessories for your car. There's a Yurikamome line that runs across to go to Odaiba and to the Toyosu Fish Market, which is right here. So this is a pretty cool area. I like it. I ride my bicycle here. Leo and I sometimes are at the playground here every now and then.

18:39 John Daub: All right, folks, there you go. Thanks for spending an afternoon with me. I'm going to try to go to some fast food places tomorrow. That's something that's been in the news quite a bit. Fast food prices in the U.S. are like crazy. Over the last 10 years, they've doubled. I was looking at Arizona. I had a local news that was looking at the prices. I took some screenshots of it, and they show 2014 to 2024. It's like crazy off-the-charts prices. We've got this chain called Shake Shack, which is just exploding in Tokyo. I'm shocked that they're able to sell as many burgers as they can. The average price of it is like 1,300 yen, but the same burger in the United States—we're going to see how much that costs because it's interesting, and you get to eat a burger. Why not, right?

19:41 John Daub: Shohei Ohtani made me into something of a Dodgers fan. I'm still an Ohtani fan and still a Yankees fan, but hey, I got to root for the Dodgers, too. I got to root for Shohei Ohtani. So as we end this livestream from the top of Toyosu Park, we'll end it as we soak in the beautiful warm rays of January. It's sort of warm. As our friend Space Boat makes its way into Toyosu. Yeah, this one Space Boat that comes this way. He's all over the place, and no, they don't dive underwater, but it'll make a stop in Toyosu and then go on to Asakusa. You can ride it from here on this beautiful day. I'm really happy to see a lot of people riding the Space Boat again because I was worried that they might not make it through the no-tourist age, but they did. Kan-zakura. Thanks for watching, everybody. See you in another livestream real soon. Matane. Thanks, David.