00:00:01 John Daub: This is such a unique sight. On a weekend in Tokyo, nobody in this cherry blossom park. It's a famous place for them. There's a lot of residential homes in this area, but not a lot of people. It's just a little bit odd. But that's what you get on a rainy, cold weekend day in Tokyo. The cherry blossoms are really a spectacular time.

00:00:29 John Daub: And we've got them all to ourselves, except for those people that just passed us. Those are the first people, probably in the last 10 minutes I've been standing here, that walked past me. This is crazy, the fact that there's nobody out here. But there is a silver lining to this really crappy weather during the cherry blossoms, is that the cherry blossoms are not 100% bloomed. This is really a good thing. They look like popcorn. Basically, I would say it's about most trees between 35 and 60% bloomed, closer to the 35-40, I think, which is such a blessing. Because that means that the cherry blossoms are going to hang on in this rain and any wind for the next 48 to 72 hours. And that means by next Tuesday, I bet you they're going to be 100% bloomed and we're going to hit this at the right time. And that is actually rare. You can see the blossoms just kind of popcorn-ish. They're not that pretty because it's not done.

00:01:31 John Daub: Let it go for a little bit. It's going to keep growing in there. I am freezing. Now, I've had a cold over the last 48 hours after I did the last live stream. I think that the yellow sand or the Asian dust that came from Mongolia, as well as the pollen, really dipped down my immune system. And I got a head cold, probably from Leo and then from Kanae. So the last 48 hours, I've been at home kind of suffering, sneezing, runny nose. I didn't sleep very well, but I'm feeling a lot better today. Thank goodness. But the weather's not. It's really cold. So I'm going to take you around for the next 5, 10 minutes, kind of give you the vibe.

00:02:10 John Daub: Oh, check this out. They're still doing cherry blossom tours. Hello. In raincoats. The show must go on. And that's what's great about these canal tours in Tokyo. They'll take you to a lot of the spots. You don't have to do the walking, get on the subway. The boat will take you there. And then it slows down and stops. It doesn't even stop here. This is kind of a famous area. It's stopping right now, I guess, because it's going under the bridge.

00:02:51 John Daub: Let's take a quick look at the blossoms here. I'll take you. I don't know if I could take you to the other side. The signal's kind of funky in this area. But the weather is like near freezing. I bet you if it stayed like this temperature tonight, I bet you it could snow. That's how cold it is, which is not uncommon. Oh, look at the way the rain's just kind of beating up on that blossom. This is what happens in March. Very cold rain. And I'm hoping that these blossoms will soak this up in a little bit of rain because it's going to get nice and warm and sunny in a couple of days. So I'll probably be out and take you out. If the rain clears, I'll take you out tonight or tomorrow night. I like to get a light. Maybe I'll get some bokeh here.

00:03:45 John Daub: See, the thing is, like when the sky is cloudy like this, there's some good things. Then there's no shadows. Something positive with it like this. But when you got the blue sky, it really does have a good contrast with the white Somei Yoshino (cherry blossom variety) blossoms. These are Somei Yoshino trees. There's a couple of other varieties that are here. You can see... These trees are in a little bit of a warmer area. So they're about 60% bloomed, actually. Shane Wheeler's crying. He wants some sakura. Here's Shane. Shane, I'm gonna take you right underneath, right underneath the tree. Nice. There you go. Oh man. My hay fever is kind of crying as well.

00:04:37 John Daub: Alright, let me take you out to the main street. This is Monzen-nakacho. I come here every year. This is my backyard. Ginza, Monzen-nakacho, this area. The rain's starting to come down now. I think there's a lot of talk of politics, news, all the stuff that's going on. A lot of bad stuff happening in the world. And what's so great about March, you can kind of put that all in the back. Especially in Japan, a peaceful place. Tune off the news and all this political stuff. And just focus on... Let them do their job and you do yours. Go out and enjoy spring. Turn off the TV, turn off the video games. And, I don't know, go meet up with your friends. Maybe not today, but save up for tomorrow.

00:05:25 John Daub: YodaJedi01, you're not late. You probably are tying this perfectly. This is not Meguro. I mean, what do you look... At Meguro, they have a lot of stuff there, but there's also a lot of people. What are you looking for with the cherry blossoms? I think a place like this is a lot better. You know? Most people... Well, it depends. If you're a tourist, that's different, right? Depends on what you want. If you're a tourist, I think that this is just as beautiful, maybe almost as beautiful, this area, the Fukagawa area of Tokyo, as the Meguro River. This is the canal. It's sort of similar to the Meguro River in a way. But, of course, there's more Somei Yoshino trees, but there's way less people. So, what kind of experience are you looking for? I think it's like a zoo. I get deep-fried chicken bits and lots of stuff from the store. Maybe, you know, you can make a run to McDonald's or 7-Eleven or whatever. Cook some stuff and bring it over. Get a six-pack of beer, which I don't drink much of anymore.

00:06:26 John Daub: Yeah, it might be buffering. Let me get... Let me see if I can get out to the main street. See, there's another variety. There's another variety of the cherry blossoms. This is Shibazakura's Island? It's keeping me warm. And Champagne Sumo's in the house. Woot back to you and Aiken. Nice to see you for 57 months here, brother. Alright, let's go. On the other side, the cherry blossoms keep on going. So, you can really... You see they got the flags out here to celebrate. You can see that the wind just makes the chill even worse. Like, there's my bicycle right there, getting wet. Looking back at the area. It is... Trust me, it is close to... It's close to freezing right now because I can see my breath. It's cold.

00:07:30 John Daub: And this is the... You know what? Tomorrow I'll probably do an episode on this. How do you dress for the cherry blossom season? So many tourists come at this time of the year. This is the most complicated time of year to dress, to pack for. Because you got days like this and then you got days where you can wear shorts and you can really enjoy, like, the warmer weather. You get both. And it's almost impossible to plan to do outdoor events and indoor events. It's so hard. So, let's do a spring packing episode tomorrow. Kasai is to the right. And Tokyo Station, Nihonbashi to the left. This is a very convenient area to live if you're thinking of living in Tokyo. Monzen-nakacho, very livable place. It's got that shitamachi (old town) feel to it. But you're a five-minute taxi ride from Tokyo Station just about. Which is crazy, right? So, you get the best of both worlds at Monzen-nakacho.

00:08:35 John Daub: Okay, so you got the weeping willow blossoms. They're starting to blossom. I guess they're about 50-60% bloomed. I know the signal is not good over there. I'm gonna avoid that area. This is the Oyokogawa. This place really does... This canal really... It's like a hidden cherry blossom. They light it up at night so these lanterns will be illuminated. So when you have some lights in here, it really brings out the white color of the blossoms at night with the black sky. The contrast is beautiful. But I like to bring my own light. And I'm gonna show you that. A lot of you probably who have been watching this channel for years know all about that. On the other side, they keep on going. So this is why... This is like the secret Meguro River. Because the blossoms... And again, they look like they're about 35% bloomed on the other side. You can keep on walking. And get a really incredible experience. And today, on a day like this, even though it's Saturday, everybody's staying home. It's so cold. I can't even feel my fingers. I'm gonna leave my bike there. Let's see if we can get... I wanna say thank you to the Super Chats here.

00:09:56 John Daub: I miss Sakura Daifuku. Yes! That salty, floral, sweet taste. So subtle. You know who has stuff like that? Mister Donut. Mister Donut. Alright, let's just do a quick walk into town. They have some... I believe some Sakura Donuts that have that salty, floral taste to it. They usually do this time of year. Oh my gosh. My hands are frozen. I wanted to make this a really short one. So let's keep this to about 20 minutes or so. I don't wanna... I'm still kinda recovering from this head cold. I guess you can tell from my voice. I love the alleyways, right? In the rain? It's really nice, isn't it?

00:11:05 John Daub: Have you guys been... Who else has been looking at the chat? GPT, the new imaging the other day. Everybody's doing it. I put a video... I put a picture up there with Kanae and Leo. I printed it out. They print out really well. Here, let me get into the subway area. I can show it to you. Check it out. So this is a photo from last week. This is Leo's third birthday photo. And then I got this done like this. Now, again, I think they have to find a way to compensate some of the creators. But this is really neat to do something like that. So you still have to pay $20 a month for the ChatGPT. But you can also do Ghibli style. So you say, make Ghibli style, please. Be polite to the AI chatbot. He's working hard. I know it's just a bot, but it's not just a bot. It's artificial intelligence.

00:12:32 John Daub: All right. So maybe they don't have it. I don't know. They move the donuts further in. Oh, no, they do. Oh, they do. They have some kind of sakura donut with the line and there's real long. All right. Let's go get a warm drink. It's so cold. You guys see a vending machine? Actually, maybe I can get a coffee from FamilyMart. Look at the cherry blossoms across this. It's all being used. Let's look for a vending machine. There's a line. There's a queue for the coffee there. I think the weather is supposed to warm up a couple of days.

00:13:53 John Daub: Do you see this? Like, I don't know what, but the Paw Patrol is on a roll. They are now everywhere. This is the Matsuya is now promoting Paw Patrol stuff. Very creative. I could probably name all the Paw Patrol characters now. There's Chase. Chase is on the case. Sky. Zuma. Wait, I know them all. There's Rex. Rocky. Dozer. Is that his name? I don't know. This is Sekai Ichi Barista. That looks interesting. And it looks like it's got sugar in it. And these are all cold. They turned off the heater. Oh, no way. Rubble. Rubble on the double. Then there's Ryder. He's the boy in charge. And Liberty. And Everest. Who are super cute. So that was worth it.

00:15:45 John Daub: There's a 7-Eleven up there. Oh, you know what we can do? You guys up for this? I don't even know if it's open. All right. There is. This is still like a five minute walk to get there. There's a place called Tony's Pizza that's open only on the weekends. I've kind of already ate lunch. But you guys up for pizza? I can show you. Oh, all right. There's a beautiful cherry blossom on that area. And I got to walk all the way back to my bicycle though. But this could be worth it. All right. We're going to do that now. We've upgraded from just a hot drink to a slice of New York style pizza from Tony's, who is an American guy from Queens who moved here. He might not be there. He's got an assistant who's there. He's from Queens originally. And he opened up this place. But it's only on the weekends. Like how do you make business out of that? Right? He's got all sorts of pizzas. And it's really not for Japanese prices. It's really not that cheap for a slice. It's like 800 yen, which is $5 a slice. I mean, that's not really, it kind of feels expensive for Japanese. But I mean, it's Tony's Pizza. It's only on the weekends. So let's go and do it.

00:17:09 John Daub: It's going to Kameido. Kameido. This one's out of service. You can get these Tomica cars, which are like Matchbox cars, which are kind of cool, for 300 or 400 or 500 yen. It depends on where you can get them. I've seen them on sale for 380 yen, but usually about 580 yen. I guess while we're waiting, I can show you. All right. I'm not the only one that's been going to town here with this. So remember this image? This is me and Peter von Gomm back in the day. Keep this in perspective. We're going to have some fun as we're walking towards the end. We're going to be walking towards Tony's here. All right. I said ChatGPT. Let's have some fun. So there's different styles that you can do with this. So first I went for this one, which is obvious. How come I got to be Butthead and Peter was Beavis? All right. I'll take it. It's kind of fun. Next up on the hit parade. Flintstones. I like this style. The Pink Panther. That's kind of cool. This one's going to be hard to recognize. Richard got it on our Discord server. That one there is Scooby Doo. Scooby Doo style. Simpsons, of course. It's so funny that this could be done. And then I started to and this one here is I think 1980s GI Joe. I was like, what? And so I got a little bit freaky. I said try a gritty one. Gritty prison style. So this is me and Peter von Gomm in gritty prison style on ChatGPT. It's pretty interesting.

00:19:36 John Daub: That was a postcard for our Patreon supporters. That was a postcard about two years ago. That image. And they did such a pretty good job. Here's one where Kanae and I went to Paris in 2016. Or 17. Here's one from the fireworks festivals. Very nice. Makes everything look a lot better. And this is from last night. It does a really good job. I look a little bit older. It gets the white hair in there. Now here I know this is kind of a dead area. Let's go get that piece of hot pizza. Hot pepperoni. And then I want to show you. We'll eat the pizza. It's a takeaway place of course. And I want to show you real quickly one of my favorite trees. I think though it might be a Kawazu zakura. It might be finished when I think about it. But I can show you the Sumida River here. Oh my goodness me. Alright we're almost there. Pepperoni? What do you guys think? Here's Tony's right here. There's Eitai-bashi. Eitai Bridge. And here's Tony's. So there's a line right now. So I'm going to give it a minute. It takes a second because they reheat the pizza.

00:22:07 Tony: Hello. Hello. Well. I'll take it home. What should I do? Then I'll have the pepperoni. Can I have the hot pepperoni? Yes, please. How about curry? I'll have the curry. I'll have the curry. I'll have the curry. So what? 961? Yeah. I'll take it home. Four dishes. No umbrella?

00:23:05 John Daub: It's okay. Just gets in the way. Actually not far. I grew up in America. In New Jersey. Yeah. Is Tony around these days? Is he in New York now? Oh, you're Tony. You mean Dave? Yeah, that's okay. He'll be around maybe in August or something. Okay. Yeah. New York, nobody buys pizza I guess. Yeah. Well, it's the same as you can't buy. I like the free rides. Thank you very much. Yeah, stay warm. No, it's okay. Thank you.

00:24:29 John Daub: He's wearing ... So I didn't want to put him on the video, but he's wearing a mask so I couldn't recognize him. I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah, you are Tony. Dave is the other guy. He's the westerner guy. Tony is Japanese. This is not Shakey's. This is Tony's. It's special. It was 900 yen. All right, I'm going to go up here to the bridge and we're going to eat a slice. This pizza is nice and warm. Oh, this feels so good in my hand. Thanks guys for the ... Look at that cafe over there. Gumtree Coffee Roasters. That looks really nice cafe. Let's get up here to the corner. I love the fact in these public safety ones, here are the criminals that they're looking for. Public safety ads in anime. It's so cool. It's only in Japan. There's a police box. Now, historically, they had police boxes at bridges when you went in from one ward to another. It's kind of like police checks back in the day. Oh, no, that one is a Kanzakura. Look at it. That's all finished. But, we've got a really nice view of the Sumida River now and you see a lot of the yakatabune coming.

00:25:50 John Daub: All right, let's take a look at this pizza here. I'm going to come over here because it's less windy. I'm hoping that the pizza is good. I'm hoping that, oh my goodness, I'm hoping that it doesn't rain anymore. They're putting a tripod down here. Okay, sorry, kind of shaky. Now, we're good. All right, you still there? There's a couple of blossoms on that Kanzakura here. No one wants a wet pizza. It's in a plastic bag, so we're all good. Oh, my goodness. This is so New York style. Oh, my goodness. Look at that slice. That's a lot of pepperoni. This is how I eat it. I don't know. You could eat it with a fork, I guess, but I eat it. Oh, that's good. Taste of pepperoni takes you back to your childhood because we don't eat pepperoni that much here. I don't even know you could find it. So good. He has sausage and jalapeno there as well.

00:27:49 John Daub: Kawazu sakura is already finished. There's World War II bombing damage to the top of the bridge. And there's Tokyo Station. That's a big skyscraper going up. So only about a five-minute taxi ride from here goes straight. You get to Tokyo Station. It's pretty amazing. I think I demolished that. Pretty good prices. Thank you, Tony. Tony, he was not a lot of people.

00:30:54 John Daub: Should I say the story? So I have a friend who runs a kitchen car or a food truck. And he's the one who introduced me to Tony's Pizza Place. And he said, John, you got to go see Tony. And he said, you know, Tony used to be the interpreter for Magic Johnson. Whenever Magic Johnson came to Tokyo, Tony would be his interpreter. So I'm like, whoa. So last time I came here. I asked him a little bit about that. He goes, how do you know about that? And I said, the food truck dude. He goes, oh, yeah, I know him. That's some pretty good stories. But he's been here for a very long time. And, of course, fluent in Japanese. But I wish he was open on the weekdays, you know. And I wish a piece pizza was a little bit cheaper. But it's sort of a luxury when you get a slice of pizza like that. And I think 20 years ago you wouldn't be able to find a Tony's pizza in Tokyo. It was just really hard to find any kind of Western food. You couldn't get the ingredients. There wasn't a market for it. So when I came here 26, 27 years ago, in 1998. I got homesick a little bit because we had Domino's pizza and stuff, but it wasn't the same. And the only time I got Western food was when I went to Hard Rock Cafe or you go to McDonald's. I didn't do that that much. You go to the Hard Rock Cafe. You can get nachos and you get a burger. And then you taste kind of like home. So we go out to the Hard Rock. But it was kind of expensive back then. But these days, these days we're just spoiled rotten. Japan has become for Westerners such a livable place. It really has. And across the street here, it really has become such a livable place for Westerners, in particular Tokyo, the cities. But if you're going to the countryside, it does feel like it did maybe 25 years ago when I came here 27 years ago. Gosh, I can't remember the number anymore.

00:33:18 John Daub: Can I ask, how did you originally end up staying in Japan on your first visa? English teacher. I interviewed for the JET program. Laura knows my story. Laura from Ecuador interviewed for the JET program because my college roommate was a Japanese man. He was a major at Ohio State. And he encouraged me to come to Japan because you can make a lot of good money and you can see Asia. It's really cool, dude. You got to come out here. Great vibe. OK. I wasn't into that as much as he was because he knew Japanese. But I went into the JET program, got an interview, which was hard back then. So you had to do an application and an essay. So I passed that. But once you get the interview, I had to go to the Washington, D.C. branch. There were only like three or four. The Washington, Chicago, New York. And Los Angeles, maybe. So there weren't a lot of choices. And so I failed the interview. Pretty bad, I think. I was so intimidated because inside that interview were all these dudes like you could tell they, I don't know, they were just obsessed with Japanese culture kind of dudes. And I was like, OK, I want to go. But I don't. I haven't been studying the culture like these guys do. They're all stiff and they have this aura around them. Kind of like the Westerners who's been in Japan too long. Kind of a feeling. That's what I got. We're meeting them like they're not Japanese, but they're kind of acting Japanese Westerners. They said, we can put you in a school in five weeks. You up for it? Five weeks is very quick for this kind of a thing. Back then anyways. So I said, yeah, let's do it. The teacher got fired. There was a bad situation. I said, I'll go in there and help. And I did. They put me in Japan five weeks later. I was flying on a Northwest Airlines flight from Detroit to Tokyo and it was to Kansai. And I was here the first visa one year, of course. But the school renews it for you anyway. So it was the great thing about doing an English teaching school is they kind of take care of your accommodations. They take care of your utilities. They take usually a lot of that stuff. So it's a good question.

00:35:41 John Daub: We got old Coca Cola sign. Great thing living in such an ancient city. Like, you have all of these pictures and signs around here. The history. It's very interesting. A lot of this area got bombed really badly on March 9th and 10th, 1945, 80 years ago. And from that, it just became a blank slate where they had. Oh, boy. See if I missed anything here. Gosh, it's so cold. Jared is here as well. Jared, thank you. I missed that earlier. I missed Jared in Yokohama last week. Just missed. I like I wish I could have seen you, but he sent us the most amazing macadamia nuts from Hawaii. So I'm so appreciative that. Thank you, Jared. Mahalo. We're thinking of going to Hawaii or Guam. I got to use my miles. They're going to expire. So I found I got a lot of miles. I found that I could book a trip. I got a trip to Guam for 60,000 miles for the entire family round trip. So I might do that. I haven't been to Guam. So I might do that. We have viewers in Guam. I met many of them at meetups. There's several really nice people. I probably could do a meetup in Guam. So that's going to be pretty awesome. I'm not sure it's not decided yet, but might go there. Brandy is coming in May. I believe we're looking forward to that. And next month after the spring vacation, we're going to go to Tokyo Disneyland. Take Leo there for his birthday. He didn't get a chance to go before the spring vacation, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to go when spring break is on because the lines are so long. Even on a day like this, it's so cold and miserable outside in Tokyo. Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea are so crowded. It's a lot of people there. I was surprised. I thought there was an advantage. Oh, it's cold and rainy. Nobody's going to go. Yeah, that's wrong. Everybody was there. It was pretty rough. But, you know, you can make some coffee breaks are a little bit better because you're more appreciative of the hot drinks.

00:38:24 John Daub: Bob three is I am in Guam. Awesome. I'd love to know where we should stay. Everyone says Tumon Bay, but I don't know. You can see the bridge in the distance there. So it's quite a walk. Asatrio no plans yet to go to the Ghibli park, but you never know. I might be heading down in Nagoya. We are. I am heading down in April to Osaka. I'm hoping that I can catch up with Kevin Riley, but I know he's quite busy. He's doing some amazing tours around Osaka. Shout out to Kevin Riley and his tours around there. So, yeah, Kameido is doing something with the Expo? Not me. Kameido? That's really funny. I think I got a couple of requests from the Expo, but I turned them down because they just look like not fun. There are some advantages and disadvantages to working with governments. When you make an episode. One of the disadvantages is the oversight. It is ridiculous and sometimes too painful. And it's not fun. And if it's not fun, it's like, what are you doing this for? Look at the cherry blossoms out of this tree. And this one looks like it's done. I think it's because it's just warmer. You see, the blossoms are starting to fall off. There are some blossoms on the ground. Nature has a way. I'm always reminded of Jurassic Park. Chaos Theory. Jeff Goldblum. Nature finds a way to break out. We cannot contain nature. The cherry blossoms are like the hell with branches. I'm going to do it right off of my trunk.

00:40:21 John Daub: I see Nightshade Giggles is here. Hey, do you recommend teaching in Japan? I do. If it's your first time and your intent is to live here. But you have to remember that Japan is not. It's one thing visiting here as a tourist is another thing. Working for a Japanese company and teaching is not teaching. It's a business, especially if it's the eikaiwa (conversation school). That's the biggest thing I learned. You're not a teacher in the sense of teaching. Like you went to school to learn from a teacher. You have to make sure that the lessons are fun and good enough, not just in the content that they speak English, of course, you want them to learn, but also to have fun so that they want to go to your school and want to continue, especially for kids. And it's the same for adults, too. The bottom line is that most of the adults are not going to learn English very well. They just don't because it's once a week for 40 minutes. It's more like a hobby or something that they want to study to kind of hone their skills for work or something. So you want to make sure that the lessons are fun and memorable and it's a good time. And then they renew and then the company you're working for is really appreciative of that. But if you don't do something like that, then you don't understand eikaiwa or English teaching in Japan is a business first and foremost. I didn't understand that my first year, but I got a lot better. I got a lot better really quickly. Once you can understand it's a business, it's not just the JET program might be different, of course, because nobody's buying into it. JET program. I don't know if I would recommend the JET program. I didn't get into it, but if you can, it's always salaries have gone up in Japan in general.

00:42:29 John Daub: So you're going to get different sakura trees at different times. Here's a Somei Yoshino right here in the street. And that's about 40-80% bloomed. We're starting to get the buds coming through. So where there's some heat and it's warmer, the blossoms are almost done. It's kind of a weird thing, right? Nothing blooms at the exact same time. JET is more of a cultural experience opportunity. I think when it comes to work experience, if you do it right, you can parlay an English teaching job into really good work experiences. But what I learned because I had an economics degree, I did pretty good in my economics back in Ohio State, and after I did the English teaching thing, I wanted to do something else. I had a friend who was a VP at a place called Deutsche Bank. And I went in for an interview at the Tokyo office. He got me into an interview. He didn't see us. I can get you into an interview, but I can't get you the job. I'm like, okay, it's all about who you meet, right? I remember going into there and I had researched what they were doing with certain projects around the world. And I said, well, I could help you out with these projects here and here and here. I was pretty specific in the interview, but they just said, look, we usually hire people from Harvard, Yale, like they were into pedigrees and stuff. He said, you made a pretty good case, and it was impressive that you got into the door. He said that in the interview. This is at the Tokyo office. It was impressive that you got into the door. But yeah, we can't hire you. But if you want to go out drinking someday, maybe I'll buy you a beer. Okay, well, your loss. I don't think pedigree is as important as it used to be anymore. But back then it was sort of a big deal in the 90s. I think I did that interview in 2001, 2000. I was still what, 26.

00:44:42 John Daub: I would have gone back and get a master's. But really, if you don't know what you're going to do, you're just wasting your money. Unless you're in Germany, which is awesome. I think you get paid to go to school. So people get PhDs in Germany. I have so many friends in Germany. Really smart. In a way, they got degrees, but they don't have any practical work experience. They try to do internships, but it's hard. But if you can't get a job, then you can study and then you get paid a certain amount. It's a good system. But then you have too many PhDs and you're overqualified for work, which happens a lot. Because nobody wants to pay PhD money to somebody who has no work experience. You know what I mean? All right. Rain has stopped. My bicycle is still there and it doesn't have a ticket on there. So that's kind of good news. Ask Alex. He's from Germany. Yes, I think Alex is one of our moderators as well. My bicycle is still there. Hallelujah. Shorty, long time no see. Nice to see you here. It's still really cold here.

00:45:50 John Daub: So the good news is for those that are watching, I've recovered from my cold and got a piece of pizza. The bad news is, though, that the weather is really bad. You can see the black clouds, black sky here. It looks like it could rain a little bit more. But the fact that we're only about 35% to 50% bloomed is a blessing because that means I think around Tuesday, the festivals in Tokyo are going to be so good. I hope that the weather, warm weather comes back. Usually it's a few days cold like this and then it gets warm again. It's a few days hot. So we're going to have the cherry blossoms. I don't know what next weekend is going to look like, but I got a feeling like Tuesday and Wednesday are going to be really nice. Really nice. All right, everybody, take care. Thanks for hanging out with me for the last 40 minutes or so. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. If not, thanks for watching. I'll see you again tomorrow as I take you to another spot so you can feel the vibe of Tokyo this time of year, which is really cool. See you.