00:01 John Daub: Greetings everybody, welcome to the city of Tokyo. It is so cold out here but we are blessed to have the cherry blossoms out. Nevertheless, it's one of those days where yesterday we had like summer-like weather and it quickly turned to winter-like weather. I have a winter coat on, you're going to see in a second, long pants and I'm shivering.

00:23 John Daub: Woo! But the Somei Yoshino (ソメイヨシノ), that's the variety of the cherry blossoms you see right here. They came out over the last 48 hours but you're starting to see places like here near Munzen Nakacho in Ishikawajima Park. The tunnels that they have—well I wouldn't call it little, it's quite a long tunnel that goes for a ways of mostly mature cherry blossoms, Somei Yoshino trees. It's really pretty. But you're going to see a lot of cherry blossoms. You can see a lot of them on this side. It's just they're about 30% bloomed so they've got a ways to go.

01:05 John Daub: It's also cool because you can see some of the boats going by through Tokyo despite the fact that the weather is cold, very cold. They still are doing cherry blossom tourism. How you doing? Oh, it is so cold today and it was raining about two minutes ago. That's why the stream started a little bit late. There's a pretty good chance that the rain is going to come down because the wind is certainly picking up. But as I said, like the weather maybe this, we timed it pretty good. It's going to look good on Thursday in about 72 hours from now. But the rain is going to be here for today and tomorrow and I hope that that's it.

01:46 John Daub: Yesterday was so beautiful, check this out. So, it just looks different when you have the blue sky. Here's some hanami (花見, cherry blossom viewing) goers. Hanami is hana, means flower, and mi means watching. So, yeah, people like to set up these blue sheets and picnic under them. You can still see that a lot of them haven't bloomed yet. Here's another angle, which is great because it means that the season is going to be good for next weekend. But Monday. It's the start of the week here, last day of March. Thank goodness. I'm really looking forward to getting into the warmer weather, consistent warmer weather anyways.

02:31 John Daub: But yesterday was this weird outlier because the day before was cold. Then a warm day came, and now it's freezing again. So only on the weekends do you see something like this. Look at the way the Sumida River is just glistening in the afternoon sun. It's beautiful. But right now, those cherry blossoms, they're about, I'd say, like 40% to 60% bloomed. They're probably about 65% today. So I think they're going to hold on until the weekend, which is such a good thing. But as I said, with the blue skies, the contrast of it, depending on how you catch the light. Here it is. The light is coming from behind. So it really brings those petals out, makes them look just a different brightness to it there than straight on. So different angles gives you different ways to see the blossoms.

03:26 John Daub: And I'm going to try tonight, if I can, depends on the weather, to take you out and show you. I like to do the cherry blossoms with a light. I like to go at night when the sun is down. So with a light, if you take it, it really brings out the white with the contrast of the dark sky here. But you can see the wind is making them dance a little bit here. It's just enough wind and chill to make this sort of miserable. But if we get, I wrote in here a super chat goal, so if we get that, I will eat a bento. I will. I promise.

04:18 John Daub: You can tell my voice is cracking. I woke up today. Yesterday, I started to feel pretty bad in the evening. And this morning, I woke up with no voice, and it's starting to come back a little bit. So I'm getting over a cold, or at least I think it's a cold. I'm not sure what it is. I was not feeling good either. So we're both kind of in this sickness funk at the worst possible time, too. This is so Tokyo with those apartment buildings in the background there.

05:08 John Daub: You can see there we're about 65% bloomed. There's pink buds. They'll probably come out in the next 48 hours. And the ones that are already bloomed, they usually hang in there for a few days before they start to, like typically, if we had already passed 100% bloom, we would have the blizzard, the flurry. We would have the flurry of cherry blossoms going all the way down this road here. It would look really beautiful, actually. Nasal voice. Yeah, it's rough going. I feel a lot better than I did just this morning. So that's kind of a good thing.

05:47 John Daub: This side is not as sunny. And looks like the blossoms haven't even really come out on this tree. This one's only about, I don't know, 20% bloomed. So like this, when people ask me when's the best time, it's like it depends. Even within the city of Tokyo, you'll find some trees are blooming at different times as the one across the street, which I showed you last week. Which is just crazy. Yeah, with the yellow sand, the Gobi sand storm that we had last week, coupled with the pollen, coupled with the cold that I caught probably from Leo, my son, who's at the preschool. Yeah, it leads to times where you're kind of talking a little funny like this.

06:32 John Daub: I eat well. I don't drink alcohol much anymore. Maybe once a month. So I'm in pretty good shape. Mostly. I try it anyways. There's a Skytree in the distance there. Skytree? I didn't realize that. It's 634 meters high, which means it's the tallest free-standing tower in the world. But it's second or third to the Burj Khalifa. It's actually quite a massive structure. 634 meters is pretty tall. Sometimes I forget that. It's one of the top three tallest structures in the world. That's pretty impressive. And it's really moves well in earthquakes.

07:30 John Daub: Alright, let's eat this bento. I guess I could eat it right here. Doesn't matter about the super chats. I'm hungry. I could care less. I actually got it in advance because I figured this is a slow day. It really is a slow day. I wanted to stream earlier too, but I just wasn't, my voice was even worse an hour ago. I've got a tripod here. I'm gonna put the camera on it and then bust out a sandwich. I guess it's kind of a bento. It's kind of, sort of a bento, but not really. Oh my goodness, it's so cold.

08:27 John Daub: You can see the boat over there. Skytree. You know, the boats, boats from Asakusa go through here to get to Toyosu. I didn't realize they have two boats a day going in that direction. All right, we're ready. I wonder if the camera's gonna blow down. Oh, there's a park over there. Okay, let's go down there. Put the gimbal away. This might be a little shaky. Actually, you know what? It's not too bad. The stabilization is on these boats. How is this without the gimbal? I remember the earlier variations of phones were awful with this, but this is actually not too bad. It's almost makes me think I don't need a gimbal anymore. There's a bench right here that we can eat at.

09:22 John Daub: Oh, man, some hot miso soup would be great. I'll have to, that's what I'm gonna have to get after this. James writes in, James, man, thank you. It says it's great. That's good news. All right, I'm putting it here. I'm bundled up. It is cold. It is too cold. This is not, this is typical for spring. I've said this expression before. So this special bento is dedicated to my friend UFO Bob. And by the way, I have four postcards. This is Daniel in Australia. Uh, Chris in Iowa. Chuck in Pennsylvania. And Line in Canada. So these postcards are gonna go out to you guys today. I'm gonna take it right to the post box. Yeah, we got cherry blossoms behind me. So this might end up being the thumbnail eventually.

10:50 John Daub: All right, check it out. So this is, there's a store just down the street here. It's called Takasago. And they make maybe the best roast, anything with pork is really good there. This is a rosukatsu sando, which is really good. So I'm gonna have this rosukatsu sando as my hanami thing. I could've gotten a bento, but these rosukatsu sando seem to do a lot better in cold weather. Bento, I don't know, the rice kinda gets hard. Oh, and I do have this. I don't know if I'm gonna get a chance to eat this one, cause it's, I'm freezing. This is a tare sauce karaage. Look at that chicken. This is really good.

11:37 John Daub: Ramsey sounds like, don't forget the coffee. I should've gone, there's a vending machine down the street. Maybe I'll do that to end the stream here. This is deep fried chicken with a Japanese tare sauce. Kinda soaked in that. And they had these as well. They had much bigger ones, but I thought that this was more than enough for one dude. Thank you, Ramsey. And thank you, UFO Bob. That's great, guys. Thank you. But I gotta catch up with UFO Bob and see when you're making your trip here, buddy. So we could share some cherry blossoms together. I love, look at how perfect this is. It's just like the ultimate pork sandwich. Look at that. Now, it's not as deep as I thought it was. It's like a finger sandwich for sure. But I could smell the sauce. Wow.

12:55 John Daub: All right. Itadakimasu. Mmm. Satrio. It's not frozen. But it's still cold. Refrigerated. Oh, they did it so perfectly, though. It's still crunchy. That's really good. All right. Let's try the karaage. Whoo. Do they say fetal cold to get better? To feel better? Looking forward to the elevator video dropping tomorrow on my birthday. Yeah, it's ready to go. It's gotten approved here. I'm working on the thumbnail, which has been hard. I don't think I have one here. I don't have it yet. Um, I'll put the thumbnail on Discord, though. It's gonna be a really good video.

14:31 John Daub: Infrastructure videos are harder. Food is so easy, you know? I can't wait for that video to drop, too. I'm already working on the next ones for the main channel. Wow. Who else does that? They put the chopstick in their mouth. I've been doing that since, I don't know if that's impolite or what, but I've been doing that for years. Wow. You can see that tare sauce in there. Oh, and I talk about in the episode about the elevators, I talk about the space elevator. There's a company called Obayashi that has a concept based on carbon nanotubes, but they're actually, I think they're gonna start to try to put this together in 2030. Pretty amazing. And I think Elon Musk is doing something as well, which is incredible.

15:35 John Daub: Like, wow. The amount of imagination and thinking on this and to come up with an idea and do it, it's certainly not easy and it's amazing to me. But the space, Japan is one of the biggest, three of the top 10 companies in the world that make elevators are from Japan and they specialize in speed. Mmm. Oh. The best. Invocating. I don't know what invocating means. Is that, I'm trying to break it down in the limited Latin that I have. Maybe my mind is somewhat broken. Hanami is the best season because of things like this. You get to eat outside under the trees, but it's the food. It's just, you see the blossoms and you eat like karaage. For me, karaage always takes me back to certain memories. This tare is so good. Salty, tangy, little bit savory there. Mmm. Meaty.

17:09 John Daub: Oh yeah, that I'm invocating, oh okay, invocating. I'm invocating Mr. Musk. This is worth it. It's like, for one of these it's like a dollar, dollar forty or so. Totally worth it. Thank you so much guys for chipping in on that. Let's go see a couple more blossoms. And then, let's go get something hot. I would keep eating, but I'm really cold. I'm cold. I'm probably going to eat that back at home.

18:35 John Daub: I don't know, that whole thing with Elon Musk, it's an American only political thing. Nobody really cares about it. In fact, a lot of Japanese I talk to are extremely jealous that they have someone who's cutting down on the waste. So, whichever side you come down on on this. I saw something with Jon Stewart on my, he's a comedian, usually. Ha ha ha ha. But he had a reporter, this came in like yesterday. Let's cross the street here. And he was talking about the former president's, the last president's rule, broadband. And it was the steps required to get it done and it's still not done. And they, I guess Jon Stewart's reporter investigated why and he told them. And you should have seen his body language. It comes out like Elon was right. I think he's getting way too much slack, but everybody comes down on different sides of it. So, it needed to be done.

20:10 John Daub: Ha ha ha. You need to do it. People upset usually are those that are in government jobs. So, I have to do something else. Heck, I might have to do something else soon. Because of AI. It's just the way things are. I mean, I took this photo. I was talking with my friend. So, I took this photo of me and Peter von Gomm years ago. And I had AI, ChatGPT turn it into like the Flintstones. And then ChatGPT turned it into the Pink Panther. And then turned it into the Simpsons. They turned it into gritty prison style. And then Scooby Doo. A bunch of them. So, the bottom line was, I really think that the world is changing faster than we realize on so many different fronts. And we have to adjust and learn to do it. And it's painful. People aren't going to like that. But that is the way it goes.

21:13 John Daub: And we will see how much longer we'll see how much longer the ChatGPT can get away with some of it. Or maybe a style is not copyrighted. What do I know? I just know that it made some really incredible family pictures with me and Kanae Daub. Here's one with Leo, Kanae. This was a postcard for our postcard club last year. I think everybody in the world was using it. Oh, and don't forget this one of me and Peter von Gomm. It made us into Beavis and Butthead. Which is so classic. I've been having fun taking pictures and then anime-fying it. This isn't Ghibli. There's a difference between Ghibli and anime look. But, yeah, it's coming out real good.

22:06 John Daub: So, alright, Ramsey's Silence. We are going to get something hot. Please be hot. Okay. I'm going to get some coffee. I haven't had poka before. I don't know why. Oh, Wanda. Here's matcha. It's green tea. Hojicha. Oh, I love me some hojicha. But the coffee looks good too. Yeah, I know I'm going to get the hojicha. Oh, hojicha, hojicha. It might actually be sold out. There's no price on it. What? I think it's sold out. Only one way to find out.

22:51 John Daub: I am impressed. I don't have a gimbal on right now. Oh, it's sold out. Boy, there's not a lot in here. There's just these coffees. Demitasse Premium and black. Sold out or free? No, it's not. There's no number. Alright, I'm just going to go black here. Wanda coffee. Makes me think of Tiger Woods because I've been here that long. Oh, it's so nice and hot. Oh, my God. This is the greatest thing. Ramsey's Silence. The heat radiating is bringing back the blood in my hands. Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho. Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. Ah. Oh, ha, ha. You put it in your pocket and let it sit there for a while and it brings the heat back up.

24:14 John Daub: I think if it rained now, might snow. Yes, Satya, the price has gone up on drinks. It just depends on the vending machine. Outside of Tokyo, they're basically still the same though. Alright, let me open this up here. I notice a lot of the streamers don't use the gimbals anymore. Alright, itadakimasu. That's not bad. It's not bad. It's not the same as going to the 7-Eleven and getting it freshly ground, but it's not too bad. Here we go. There's Takasago. That's where I got the food, the bento. It's really good. That's so good. Oh, I love the alleys here.

25:40 John Daub: Let's see how this goes. I walk through here a couple times a month because it's changing so fast. On the left, you're seeing these new buildings, but when I first came to the Chuo Ward, which is the ward that I live in here, there were only row houses, like really old ones going back from post-World War II. But in the last eight years, a lot of them have been torn down, and then these new houses came in here. It's kind of a shame because it loses that feel of old Asia, you know, and brings in... Because these new houses, I have to be honest with you, they look... I mean, they kind of look like they're plasticky. It just doesn't look... People like privacy, so they don't have windows usually. It's like the opposite of Westerners. We would want bigger windows, more light. But in Japan, they want more privacy, less light. It's just different.

26:48 John Daub: The alleys of Chuo Ward and this neighborhood, Tsukuda, it's so nice, but I don't think it's going to be around much longer. I think in the next two years, it's all going to be gone, the old row houses, and it'll lose a lot of the character. Michael, I don't have any idea. I just... We're losing too many people all the time. So... We're gritty. It's gritty coffee. There's some cherry blossoms right there. There's a post office worker. This is all mostly new. See, you can see here, this green barrier fence here is a brand new apartment building right here that just went up two weeks ago. What was here were these old 1950s shacks right there, that's what was on the left side. These old buildings here.

28:45 John Daub: So now, if you walk down this one, you have... See what I'm talking about? On the left side, it kind of looks too generic, but on the right side, it has so much character. Those old row houses from the 1950s. The change is so fast, and it's hard for me to see. There's a bunch of them towards Tsukishima Station in that direction that have changed as well. My bicycle's over there, though. Wow. It's interesting that I think just walking without the gimbal, this is pretty smooth. I like that. A lot of character in this. Tsukuda. There's a red bridge in the middle of Tsukuda. I think a lot of French tourists come to this area. There's a FamilyMart. They've got the 7-Eleven.

29:55 John Daub: Do you want to hear something interesting? There's a famichiki for two for a 50 yen discount if you buy two. That's something. They all started this something. I was in Nagasaki about 10 days ago. I saw at the 7-Eleven in Nagasaki, I drove there, they had pizza, baked pizza, 700 yen, I think it was, and they will bake the pizza for you, and it comes out hot and fresh at 7-Eleven. I was like, we have gone to the next level. 7-Eleven has bakery now inside. They're starting to put bakeries inside the convenience stores, and you know why? Bakeries have this thing. When they're baking bread, it is almost intoxicating. You cannot not buy the bread. If it's hot fresh bread just came out of the oven, you have to buy it. Same with the melon pan. Everybody knows this. It's a human thing. You smell hot baked bread, and you bring it out of the oven, and you're like, oh, how much is that? Oh, all right, I'll take two. One for me, and then one for me later. One for my wife. I don't know. That's like amazing. So 7-Eleven, I didn't have the free time to wait. I think it takes about 10 minutes, but I got to try that. 7-Eleven Japan pizza. What? It's crazy.

31:34 John Daub: All right, everybody, take care. I'm going to walk back to my bicycle, but my hands are starting to freeze up again. This coffee is so good. My coffee got cold real quick. Thank you, Ramsey Silent, UFO Bob, and everybody for the super chats. I appreciate that, guys. That's really kind of you. I hope I didn't get you. I don't know who passed away, so I'm sorry to hear that. And Steve Wenzel is here. Thank you, Steve. I'm going to get back. I'm still kind of tweaking the thumbnail, but if you want to see the iterations of it, it's a fascinating process. It's on the Samurai Discord server. So if you're a Patreon supporter, there's a special group where I get to interact with some people.

32:19 John Daub: Oh, I have a kumquat. Do you guys know kumquat? These are like cherry oranges. Oh, I love kumquats. Just throwing it the seeds. Somebody said they're called kumquats. Does not sound like appetizing to me in English. But these are good. These are so popular in Kyushu. And I got a bunch of them in Nagasaki. They have them in Nagasaki, too. Great thing about Japan domestic travel is that you can travel with fruit and get meat and fruit and travel with that on the airplane. So everybody take care. I'll see you in another episode, probably maybe tonight or tomorrow. I think a midnight snack run is probably coming soon. Come on. Kumquats. I always get them and loquats mixed up. I call them King Kong because they're sort of like mini Kong, but they're King Kong. All right, everybody, take care. I'll see you in another episode tomorrow. Real soon.