00:00 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Tokyo. I'm in Ginza, my vending machine area, and I just happened to have an entire bag of sakura cherry blossom themed sweets from Muji Ryohin Kenkyujo (Muji). This is the season of spring where all of these sakura cherry blossom confections come out. Muji, over the last couple of years, they've done a really good job of creating some sakura themed sweets that I think are quite interesting to the tourists that are visiting here. Thus, I'm here making these.

00:44 John Daub: I'm going to be sending, by the way, for my Diamond supporters on Patreon, one of these sakura cream sandwich cookies with a little sakura blossom on there. So this will be in your box as a thank you. Thank you for supporting. And by the way, thank you so much for JKO Adventures. I got your package at the hotel, so we're going to snack on that tonight. Or see what's inside of it. We don't know if it's snacks yet. Leo's name's on it, by the way, as well.

01:19 John Daub: Alright, let's start here. First, we'll go in for these sakura cat's tongue cookies. What? It's kind of a unique name here. It says sakura no neko no shita (sakura cat's tongue). Alright, I never had these before. They kind of look like the shiroi bita (white bite) Hokkaido white chocolate cookies, right? These are 490 yen, or about $3 for this pack of six. That's 50 yen a cookie. Thank you, JKO Adventures. It's really light. Okay, so these are individually packaged cookies. They're probably quite tasty. Alright, I got it open here. I don't smell the blossom, but... Alright, they're very subtle. They're really good cookies. I don't know why, besides the color of pink, I don't know why these are cherry... They're very subtle. Like a floral, salted, sweet blossom taste. Cherry blossom confections typically are sweet, floral, and salty because the cherry blossoms are preserved, which is why they're salty. Mmm. Okay. As a cookie, 5 stars out of 5. As a cherry blossom cookie, 3 out of 5. It's not even... I don't get a cherry blossom taste here.

03:15 John Daub: Um, next up. This was half off. I don't know why 50% off. I guess that's near... Oh, it's because it expires in a couple of weeks. Sakura cream biscuit. Let's give this a try. Amanda in Maine is in the house. Thank you, Amanda. I got the canvas prepared to start painting and it's gonna have cherry blossoms in it. Oh, that's nice to hear. Well, you're gonna see some really beautiful cherry blossoms on this channel in about three days. The first cherry blossom bloomed in Kochi today. It was announced on the news. So Kochi Prefecture down in Shikoku Island has cherry blossoms today, and they're only gonna bloom, I guess, could take about 96 hours before we get mangyo (full bloom).

04:09 John Daub: Again, I don't taste... All right, so for science here, I dissected it. You can see there's some pink cream on there. It doesn't work. As a cherry blossom confection, one and a half out of five. Maybe that's why it's half off.

04:47 John Daub: Alright, next one. Oh, this looks good. This is gonna be good. Let's see if I can get a coffee as well, because I am in front of vending machines. This is Sakura Baumkuchen with red bean paste. Anko. That looks really good. It almost looks like a biscuit, right? It's soft. Let's give it a try. Just give it a whirl. Getting a bunch of, a little bit of a sugar high here. Do not eat. I don't think besides the color of pink, it's really hard to taste the cherry blossoms. Does it smell it? Hold on. There you go. The cake is good. It's so subtle. It's really not... Little anko and layers of the Baumkuchen, which is so good. Baumkuchen, I didn't know about that until I came here to Japan. It's German apparently. It's like a cake that's rolled over and over and over again into layers. But, two out of five. As a Baumkuchen, it's two out of five. As a cherry blossom confection, two out of five. It's just slightly disappointing.

06:43 John Daub: Alright, this is their claim to fame. The Baum Stix. But I'm guessing that since I just had it, I'm not gonna open this. I'm gonna leave this for Leo and Kanae. I think it's the same thing. What else did I get here? Oh, okay, here we go. This is maybe the best one here. This is the Sakura Financier Sandwich Cake. I wonder what the history is with Financier. Is it like a bunch of people in Wall Street got together and made cookies or something? Why is this Financier? They financed the back, they backed this? Looks good, don't you think?

07:27 John Daub: That was real good. Preserved cherry blossom on there. Alright, I'm gonna get a coffee. I can't do this on... The hard part now is, it's hard to ignore Shohei Ohtani right there. But I don't know. What do you guys think I should get here? The Tully's Black Barista Blend. Ooh, all right. I'm sold. I'm only getting this because Shohei Ohtani is on the vending machine. You know what? I can use my IC card. I think I have just enough money on it. I think I do. Oh wait, I don't. I see cards not on me right now. Nihon Nio, thank you for the coffee. Saya likes black coffee. I don't know what is the barista's blend coffee? Support my barista. That's Kilimanjaro. Blend always sounds interesting but I think it's just black right? It's a standard taste. Alright standard. Do it. It's hot. Thank you. Every time you buy it you're supporting Shohei Ohtani. Every time you buy a drink he has to hit a home run. Is that how it works? Alright Ohtani come through. He's gonna hit a lot of home runs this year.

09:07 John Daub: Thanks again Nihon Nio and Amanda in Maine thank you guys. Oh it's hot. Oh that tastes ahh okay. There's a little bit of sugar in here and milk so it's a milk sugar coffee. It's not bad but I don't know if it's that good. I should have gotten the black, you're right. But it does taste good. It does taste good with the cake here. All right, let's try this here. The Sakura Financier sandwiches. Just open it up. This one has a longer shelf life. The other ones say April 9th. This one has May 28th. So there's that. I guess that's anko red bean paste on there. Here, check it out. Now, Saya, you know me better than I know myself. But you knew I was going to not do it. I was trying to do something different. This looks good. It looks kind of like if I pick it up with my fingers, it's all going to fall out. But you see that cherry blossom right there? These are, again, salted, sweet, preserved. Probably picked last year. The Odawara area in Kanagawa is very famous for preserving the cherry blossoms.

10:43 John Daub: I was going to do this in front of the Muji store. But I saw a couple of viewers came to say hi. And I'm like, oh, there's no way. If I do it there, everyone's going to find me. Moist, buttery, four and a half out of five. Oh, my goodness. This is the best one by far. Four and a half out of five. This is so good. This is, yeah, this is the best one. I'm actually going to eat the whole thing. It's moist. It's heavy, buttery, slightly salty. It has a sakura taste to it. It's a winner. I think it's good. I think this was 290 yen. Check it out here.

11:36 John Daub: Okay, here's the video of the entire. So let me just show you my experience inside. I should have showed this from the start. So usually these sakura confections come out around the end of February. Right after Valentine's Day, more or less. These Baum Stix are so popular. You've got banana and chocolate. And then over there they had sakura, which is the season here. This is the sakura Baum. And that's a very famous one. But the other stuff that they have here. Like, I just tried. I tried this one. This is the anko red bean paste Baum. This is the scone. I sent this out to Diamond supporters last year. That was really good. It was quite popular. There's the financier sandwich. I guess you can see the prices there. Yeah, last year's livestream tastes like, feels like yesterday. There are the cookies, the cat's tongue ones and the 490. Oh, that blossom is so, I just ate the blossom. It's so salty. I didn't get those pancakes because I had those last year too. And they were sort of a disappointment. They're okay. They have other things in there like spring blend coffee bags for 80 cents. These Uji matcha chocolate covered strawberries look really good. People were buying them and so many of them. Oh, the strawberries were interesting. They had Amaou as well from Saitama. This was the winner of the strawberry championship in Japan. This is the most tasty of the strawberries in Japan this year. So they're quite popular. Um, a box of them. It's like $18 for a little plastic, 10 of them. So there you go.

13:21 John Daub: I got a bunch of stuff to try out. And I, maybe I should have pushed stop on the record button there. Maybe. How long does this last? Uh, there's the floor at Muji Ryohin Kenkyujo. You can see they clean very well inside there. Oh, okay. So then there's some sakura latte. That might be worth trying. You can see I got a lot of stuff. You know, I'm a tourist. I'm not a tourist, but I felt like a tourist in there and the staff all speaking English to me. I'm confused. So I just respond in broken English. I don't know why I did. I was stupid, but I don't know. It's weird because I just lived down the street. I don't know. All right. This is really good, but I ate the blossom and it was quite salty, not sweet. But I think this was the best one by far. Mm. Oh, yeah. Very good.

14:30 John Daub: So I think if you're coming to Japan, to Tokyo, it's kind of fun to try all the different types of confections. The sakura confections. Usually they stop making them around now. They're sold out more. It actually it's sold out, but because of the tourists coming in here, the season for the sakura sweets has been extended probably until the middle of April, just because they sell so much more of them because he wrote sakura in there, but it's worth trying it, checking it out. Um, in general, it should taste a little bit salty. You should be tasting a little bit of this floral. You'll know when you taste it. It should be sweet. It should be pink. I suppose, although the cherry blossoms are actually so many, you know, are actually white, but I don't know. They gotta be pink, right? And you'll, you'll be able to tell if it's good or not. You just kind of know, and maybe because I've had some good stuff, but this, this was, um, the financier sandwich was a five out of five. That was really good. That's worth getting a bunch and taking them, taking it back home.

15:35 John Daub: All right, everybody take care. Uh, I just want to do a quick live stream, just to a shout out. The schedule has been released for the cherry blossoms yesterday. They were budding in Tokyo, so they should be coming out maybe tomorrow. The weather's supposed to turn a little bit cooler soon and rain. So hopefully they stay hold on. And the next week is going to be a really great cherry blossom week. I'll take you to a couple of places. I can reminded me that he has a, a brace for the bicycle so I can ride around with the bicycle, maybe take you to Yanaka cemetery or something in a live stream. I think the signal there wasn't too good. I remember anyways, take care. I'll see you another live stream. I'll leave me a question in the comments below as I get out of this, uh, uh, area between all these buildings. Good luck trying to find me. I like to hide back here. All right, everybody. I'm done. Bye bye. Thanks. Saya.