00:00:01 John Daub: Hello everybody. Welcome to Ueno Station right there. We're gonna go take a look around. See if we can catch the cherry blossoms. There are a lot of people, so I'll be streaming in 720p. Take you around to some of the famous parts of Ueno Park here. Here's a map. There's a listing of things that you can and cannot do. They do a pretty good job of making sure that parties finish up by 8 p.m. No more blue sheets and waiting for days.

00:00:35 John Daub: There used to be salarymen that would be out here waiting with their office workers but having a lot of respect for the other people in the park. Shout out to the drunks. But Ueno Park is pretty big. We've got a Starbucks in the center of it but it's this part of it right here that we're going to be really focusing on. So we're going to take a left outside of the JR station and see if we can go to the other side of the station. We're going to go into this Shiki Masaoka Memorial just past here the stadium. There's a lot of areas that you can do sakura hanami (cherry blossom viewing).

00:01:09 John Daub: The monument of Dr. Wangan right here. This is also a really beautiful area if you can get a blue sheet there. So let's go and see what we can do. Let's go and see if we can keep the signal going. How you doing? I was just—the signal is not so wonderful so that's why Friday consider they're just for a Friday this is just a lot of people. When I was coming in to Ueno you could see there was just a ton of people getting off at the station. Check out the line for Ueno. This is us walking around to get to the location. It wasn't too bad right now but Saturday and Sunday is going to be a nightmare.

00:02:02 John Daub: So something to consider. A reason why Tokyo might not be the best place to see the cherry blossoms because again wow they have English speaking guides available too so you can there's like an English speaking guides booth there that's interesting never seen that before there's just so many tourists in here so guess it's good. I think guided tours of Ueno Park would be so fascinating but I don't know if they'd cover some of the darker history of Ueno Park when I was researching the Tokyo firebombing in 1945.

00:02:37 John Daub: I came across the story of a downed American aviator who was kept in one of the cages in Ueno Zoo. Oh gosh I forget his name every time I come here I kind of think about him. All right we're now in the middle of the park. Wow Starbucks right there the zoo is straight ahead although the entrance to the zoo has gone around the corner so you can't get in from this side. Spot but this is it everybody if you can still watch with the signal in and out every now and then and as a result yeah the chat isn't coming along really fast so that's how I know that there's some issues with the video but well we'll see what we can see and I might have to upload this later.

00:04:02 John Daub: The great thing that they've done—I guess they've been doing this for years but to make the traffic flow well—have keep to the left. So if you're going to be walking this direction, you keep to the left and then those walking from the other side are keeping to the left and walking this way to the right side. And they put it over on the other side because there would be really large parties that would have the blue sheets down for days before the blossoms even started. And it also generated a lot of trash. But they've done a really good job of putting recycling, trash recycle receptacles all over the place. And which keeps the park very clean.

00:04:42 John Daub: There's another one we're coming up on in a second. But Yoda Jedi 01 RIP to the 720 stream. I know it's really hard. I might not be able to upload this, but we'll see what we can see. Here's the recycle receptacles here. So again, like the blue sheets would be coming out here about 10 years ago. And before that, the parties were legendary. But there were no foreign tourists, like very few foreign tourists back then. And now I would say it's more like 50-50. But I think salaried business people, they're no longer here. Here's the recycle bins. It's such an amazing thing, isn't it, Japan? It's in English now. Cans, PET bottles, combustible waste, plastic sheets. The blue sheets, you can just throw it in here. They do an amazing job keeping the park super clean.

00:05:40 John Daub: We're already past it. I think tomorrow when the winds pick up, all of these are going to fall off the trees. Shuba Tiramale, thank you for showing us Sakura, Missing Japan. Well, thank you very much, Shuba. Shuba, I appreciate that. You are with me here in Japan. All right, let's go inside here now. We're going off the main walkway into the sides. And this is where the blue sheets, green sheets, whatever sheet you've got, you'll be putting that down here. Or no sheet, which is sometimes the case. You'll come here.

00:06:36 John Daub: That's Hibiya. This is not the desirable place to be, because it's too crowded. There's some wind now. You can see the blossom starting to fall. Hey, Jared is here. Aloha. Miss Sakura by a week and John by a city away. You were so close, Jared. You're still with us in our refrigerator. We are really savoring those macadamia nuts, buddy. Thank you so much for that. At least we saw one tree in bloom. Yeah, some of the early bloomers were around. But hey, Jared, you missed the weather the last four days. It was just awful. So in that sense, you did quite well with the weather, I think. It was really bad, Jared, over the last four days. This is such a blessing right now. This is such a beautiful day. And it's those really nasty days with rain and cold that make you appreciate the blue skies. Look at that. And that's what it's all about here. The contrast.

00:07:54 John Daub: You have to move away from the green trees and check this out here. Yeah, when it comes to the blue sky. You really don't get. It seems like every cherry blossom you get like two or three days with the blue skies. It's just the weather is so unpredictable at this time of year. And I live in Tokyo and even living here. Maybe there's only two or three days that I really can soak up the cherry blossoms. So if you're making a trip to Japan just for that plan to go outside of Tokyo, it just works out better. The weather in Hirosaki at the cherry blossom season. I think it rains a little bit, but it's like three weeks away. So the blossoms won't be blooming up there for three weeks. I think if you want to see the blossoms and better weather, plan your trip for the Hirosaki Cherry Blossom Festival. And go there. Hirosaki, thank or kick me later for doing that.

00:09:21 John Daub: The one thing that's good with having all these people is that it has a more festive feel to it. Coming from the JR station, there was like German beer music going on there. I was like, wait a second, what country is this? And recently they've gotten some food trucks in here and that's kind of cool. So let's go check that out. There's a festival going on near the Starbucks on the other side of the park. Whoa, Cuban sandwiches. Can't go wrong with that. Well, I don't know, you could I guess. I don't see any Cubans in there. Smells good. Smells great.

00:10:07 John Daub: Alright, I was here like 15 years ago with my mom. She came to visit. My mom is the only family member that's come to visit more than once. And by that I mean like my wedding. But I remember taking pictures. So if mom is watching. I've got a picture of her leaning up against this tree right here. And there were not that many people here. It was just such a different vibe. You're going to see if the signal holds here. It's such a beautiful scene. I love this part of Ueno Park for cherry blossom viewing. And it looks the best right now at this time of the year. I have a picture of her like right there leaning against a tree with all the white sakura in the background.

00:10:51 John Daub: I can't imagine how the weekend will be. I know it's going to be insane. But you can see there's a lot more trees here. There's a curb. So it kind of puts you inside of the park. Which is wonderful because it allows you a chance to walk around. So you don't have to walk through everybody's stuff. But these blue sheets. I kind of want to note this. See that poor girl sitting in the middle of the blue sheet. She's probably like a new worker that has to sit here until the whole team comes.

00:11:41 John Daub: So get into the park. I'm going to be walking through. Just walking through. Soak it in. Leo is at school and Kanae is working. She's super busy. Soak it in. We'll try to all make some time for tomorrow for our family cherry blossom. Wow. That's a big white sheet. All these company parties. Look at the blue sheets for the company parties. Where are your co-workers? All the blue sheets. And then some of the company parties. The boss is like, oh, just f it. I'm getting out here. F it. Everybody throw your stuff. Let's go out and start drinking. And that's what it's all about for the companies, I think. Nomikai (drinking party) communication. Nomikai means to drink. So nomikai communication is such a big thing in Japan.

00:12:31 John Daub: People just walking and admiring them. What you have are the blue sheets of people. This really is Japanese cherry blossom viewing parties like this. And it's less about the trees and more about the drinking, I think. Although the trees are beautiful here. I didn't think we'd have any kind of a signal here. There's also like what is that, like the boys on one side and the girls on the other. But you have a lot of parties going on and that's a little bit more. Well that party's getting warmed up over there. That's the vibe.

00:13:40 John Daub: If you are a visitor to Japan, you put your blue sheet next to a bunch of drunk business dudes, everyone after the third beer starts to try to talk English to you. And comes out to be some of the best pictures that you probably have. And looks like that they're congratulating some of the work members here. So we can just take a quick look-see here. That's funny. Yeah, Jonathan remembers. They'll send the freshmen or the first years, they're already getting a lousy wage, I don't think they're doing much responsible work anyways, but go send them to the cherry blossom viewing parties. Go make them set up the blue sheet send them with what like one of the sophomore guy bosses.

00:14:27 John Daub: We'll see easy the company as well, and we would have the teachers and the school would have parties. But I don't know that's one thing that I miss about Japanese work culture the one good thing about it is like this team unity. The mingling the circles you get a bunch of fried junk food and you just get some beer at in the cherry blossoms. That's another wonderful thing about this. You really are resetting everything and that's another reason you know the Japanese New Year ends on my.

00:15:03 John Daub: If it's oh hello is a livestream even working can you is it working? Oh, you know what you just caught me naturally. Oh, hi. Hi. Hi. Oh you're welcome where you guys from our from the pp on you the third person ever in the Philippines walking around this is crazy. Yeah, oh thanks for coming yeah, how long you here for. Okay, oh great, this is crazy. Yeah, I love it here. All right. Bye.

00:15:44 John Daub: That's very cool, so they're from the Philippines this is third the third group of people who came the same high I don't even know if the live stream is working so. This tree is very famous. It seems like it's past its prime here past a hundred percent and the blossoms are starting to come up. But it's really a beautiful one. Let's just take a quick look see at it that purple is just so striking. Every single viewer from the Philippines that's come to say hi most awesome people biggest smiles. So warm you just it's so infectious you get this warmth feeling when people come to say very cheerful. I love it. Gosh. I'm dying to go to the Philippines. I'm going to Guam with Kanae and Leo next month, so if you do live in Guam we're gonna come in come and visit you over there.

00:17:02 John Daub: But if you're in the Philippines keep inviting us because it's like we got a family in Hawaii I know that but I think we've got a pretty big family in the Philippines as well. So if we did a meetup in Manila, I bet you we're gonna have like a hundred some people turn out to come say hi. That would be crazy. All right, the last thing that I want to show you here is there's this temple here. Yeah, you know, I'm gonna see if I can upload save a copy and then upload this video later so you get a chance to see it without interruption in the playback.

00:17:38 John Daub: This is one of those weeping willow sakura trees. With steady, I think it's this is quite beautiful as well. There's so many different kinds when that once the blossoms lose the green leaves they'll come out. It's hard to see because the the Sun has gone down under not Australia, but down under the horizon a little bit. Okay, so we can see a little bit here popping out on the top of this tree. Oh, it's almost almost done. Yeah, I bet Nada is popping right now. Yoshino. Yeah, over there is probably pretty crazy so many tourists visiting that area at that time of year they have what is it like like a hundred thousand? Sakura tree I'm exaggerating but feels like a hundred thousand sakura tree in Nada at that time.

00:18:51 John Daub: All right, let's go up here to the shrine. Actually, I think this is a temple I'm sorry. We're making our pilgrimage we have to come and say. Wow yeah this shit data is not good. I thank you for reminding me yet. That's it. This is that's what they are. There's beautiful sakura trees. Somebody just said in English Shogun temple. He's here. So then there's a tourist tourists help all over the city, which is pretty crazy. That's not the Ueno that I remember. Ueno. It's hard to pronounce. If you say it in English, the American way, it's just Ueno, and then you get half of the people. Well, some people get triggered. I've noticed how people get triggered in the world these days. I think it goes past the Generation X stuff. That's my gen, I guess, Gen X. I've never really gotten triggered by anything. When I heard that term for the first time, I thought of the triggerfish because I used to do scuba diving in Ko Tao in Thailand.

00:21:10 John Daub: I got my dive master's license there, and they had a ton of triggerfish. The triggerfish, they would see you, and for no reason, they would pull the trigger and then just lunge, come right at you. It was crazy, the triggerfish of Ko Tao. One of my dive pictures was called Buddha View. Beautiful. It was a wonderful diving school, one of the top ones. They had instructor licenses available. If they can do that, then you know it's a pretty good school. They're also doing scuba dive instructor courses. That was an amazing experience. Ko Tao, beautiful place, but I haven't been there since. I got my license in 2004, so I took it 20 years ago. That's crazy.

00:21:55 John Daub: I think you all know where I am right now. Zero coverage of the expo? Yeah, I don't really care too much about the media expo anymore in Osaka. I don't care. I could jump the shark, the whole expo stuff. I'll still go down there next month. Can you name that samurai? He's looking very nice. People are confused by the expo. People don't like the pricing of the expo. People think it was just done in such a hard to understand way for a lot of locals. Then a lot of the country said we're not going to be doing our exhibits. It wasn't as much. It was just a lot of enthusiasm. Like the 2020 Olympics, Osaka was kind of over-hyping this. Trying to overdo this because the 1970 World Expo was such a big deal. When we got to the 2021, it's like, well, yeah, I can see the nostalgia. I know that they want to use this experience.

00:23:36 John Daub: This is my favorite. The reason I'm walking here is this is one of my favorite spots. It's a great place. They want to give back that spirit that they had in the 1970s of being like a revitalization. But really, it's not the purpose of the expo. So this is one of my favorite spots from here. Check it out. Sakamoto Ryoma. I'm not sure if that's the correct answer. What do you guys think? Actually, we could go down there. Yeah, it's pretty nice from all different directions. You have the train platform above ground. You just have to find you can only go this far on from the stairs. You got to go from the escalator on the other side. But this sorry, I guess it's stairs only might lose the signal. I'm surprised we still have a signal so far. Maybe not here in the belly of this beast of a building.

00:25:23 John Daub: Let's get down to the ground floor really quickly, and I'll take you through Ameyoko market a little bit because I got to get to the Oedo line. I can hear the trains going by. That's an Ebisu beer bar. I can smell it. I can smell the beer. There are so many kinds of Ebisu beer. Kanae's father's favorite beer. All right, we're back down on the ground floor. He likes the Sapporo Red Star. Black label and red star, not the regular one. So it looks like some rain is coming. One of the reasons I wanted to do two streams today is because you can see the weather is not going to be like this forever. So it's nice to do a stream in this weather. I forgot to turn off the stabilization on the phone. So it's not as wide as normal.

00:27:10 John Daub: These G-Wagon Mercedes Benzes, I'm seeing so many of them here. Why would you get that when you have the RAV4 and so many other better cars? Nothing against Mercedes Benz. It's just really expensive. They start at like $100,000. Crazy. RAV4 starts at like $36,000. I guess they're just completely different experiences. I've driven in one of them once. My friend of mine has one. I get a lot of friends. And I got a chance to sit in the front seat and drive around a little bit with him. But it's all right. I prefer the RAV4. That's the car I drove when I went out to Western Tokyo. And if you haven't seen it already, this episode is up just this morning. So it's doing quite well. So go check out.

00:28:08 John Daub: Japanese manufacturers since 1978 have been producing the world's fastest elevators. And that technology is very much connected to the trains, the shinkansen, the technology. And the world's fastest elevator manufacturer is Hitachi. And I had friends there. And I got a chance to take a look inside the Mito plant. So you're getting some inside looks and some footage of how they made the Mito. The world's fastest elevator and how fast these elevators could go in the future. I think they pretty much met the limit because it's just not. It's too expensive to run. I could talk about elevator. I become an elevator expert. Elevators are just too. If you try to do these super fast ones, they can't fit as many people. So if you can't fit as many people, there's often a queue to line up to get onto these elevators. And it doesn't make a lot of sense if you're stopping at every floor to use a super fast elevator. So they have to be express elevators. So there's not a lot of reason to make elevators for pure speed to try to break a record like this. But 47 miles per hour is where they're at right now. And I thought that this is such a fascinating story on the practicality of elevator speed. Only nine times elevators. The world record was broken in the last hundred years. So it's not something that they do very often.

00:29:31 John Daub: I'm walking down Ameyoko. Just wanted to go see my friend before we sign off here. Every time I do a shout out from him, he's so appreciative. I don't know if he's going to be there today. But I can smell the grilling meats here. Yeah, 47 miles per hour doesn't sound a lot horizontally. But when you go vertical, I mean, you can feel it on the weight when you're standing on it. And you can also feel it. But going down, it's definitely like a third of that speed. Because if you go down 47 miles per hour, you're going to start to feel weightless. Like if you were to jump, you'd hit the roof. The elevator would leave you. So the world's fastest elevator going down is in Yokohama at the Landmark Tower. So that's a little bit of information for everybody that's playing Trivial Pursuit. Does anybody still do that? Wow, Ameyoko. I haven't been here in so long. It's such a colorful part of the city. I want to come back here and make a video on Ameyoko. Again, this is such a better market compared to Tsukiji Market. I say past Tsukiji. It's such a tourist trap. I used to be okay with it, but now it's just such a disaster. Tsukiji is such a tourist trap. Even the people working there aren't locals anymore.

00:31:06 John Daub: So this is, I'm back here at Shimura-san's shop here. So Shimura-san is always here doing the 1000 yen. So make sure you stop here. Excuse me. There he is in the back there. There's Shimura-san in the back there. He's working hard. I think he's eating something. I won't disturb him. But if you give him 1000 yen, they put so much chocolate in your bag. It's really worth it. So I'm going to come back. I'll talk with him and meet my friend later. And Shimura-san, for decades I've been coming here.

00:32:03 John Daub: Oh, hello. Hi. Hi. How you doing? We're seeing you on the live stream. Is it working? Sometimes I don't know if the stream is working. You want to say hi to everybody? Sure. Hey. Hi. Where are you from? Boston. Boston. Oh, awesome. Yeah. Just for the cherry blossoms? This time, yeah. It's our third time. Oh, wow. Okay. We took a lot of your suggestions. It influenced a lot of your channel. Really? Oh, okay. We watched all your videos. It helped us decide to go to Nakano Broadway and bunch of other places. Yeah. We were just in Shimokitazawa. Oh, Shimokitazawa. Yeah. Yeah. But we missed you. Oh, so you traveled to... We didn't know you were there. We didn't know you had some experience. Oh, no. Wow. This is exciting. Yeah. I took the Shinjuku Line to Iwamotocho and walked to Akihabara, so it's pretty quick that way. Cool. Cool. But I live here, so it's...

00:32:55 John Daub: Wow. You want to take a picture? Yeah. Yeah. It's so cool to be here. Yeah. Let's do that. So how are you? So exciting. You're back? Yeah. I'm back. Take care, guys. Sorry, sir. Big fan from Sweden. Can I just get a picture with you? Oh, yeah. Sure. Sure. I used to watch your videos. I never thought I'd run into you. All right. Thanks, man. Thanks for everything you do. You're welcome. What part of Sweden? Stockholm. Oh, okay. I should talk about that. Yeah. It's nice. Also, house in Småland. Right. I've been here a long time, so it seems to make sense. No, but it's really good. It's really good. Even for me, I'm a second generation Japanese living in Sweden. Okay. And it helps me a lot as well to navigate some of these things. How's the Japanese food in Sweden? Because it wasn't so good when I was ... Yeah. They make an effort, but it was ... Well, yeah. First of all, you don't get the ... What do you call it? The groceries and stuff like that in the same quality. Soy sauce and everything is produced in Europe. Right. Every time I come here, I have to buy everything from here just to get some kind of authenticity. Right. Whatever you do. So it's nice. It's really tough. London's getting a little bit better, I guess. It is, but the same thing there. All the ... It's not the same. No. I guess a lot of Japanese people living in Sweden, they've been living there for so long, so I don't know. Their taste buds get distorted a little bit. Could be all the schnapps, because that's ...

00:34:33 John Daub: Oh, you can see here, there's something of a crowd. What's going on here? Oh, wow. So they've got ... Yeah. I can see it right here. Super strawberries. Check it out. Wow. It's quite a booth. So they have Amaou, too. Amaou is the champion. They have the Amaou, and they have my friend's, the Shiroi Houseki down in Saga Prefecture. They have that, too. I wanted to go and film that again, but he's very busy. He said, this year's crop was not as big. Come next year, he said. So I'm like, okay. That's what you say. I'm going to come next year.

00:35:46 John Daub: Boy, there's four shops here. I know ... Hey, how you doing? I know the ... I've known them for decades. Some of these people here I've known for decades. That one guy, he's smiling when he saw me. Oh my goodness. I got to make a really good episode here. But it's changed so much. Look, there's more strawberries here. This has become kind of an ethnic melting pot for Asian culture, not just Japanese. And by Asian culture, I think sometimes we forget our friends over on the other side of Asia are ... The other side of Asia is the Middle East. I think we sometimes forget that Saudi Arabia, UAE, even most of Turkey is [?in Asia?]. Really? And you know, like, in Asia, so you get such a mix. Asia is amazing. You can smell Asia. It doesn't smell Japanese. This smells like Asia. I can tell. In Japan smells so different. Oh yeah, the spices. All right, everybody. Probably tomorrow, if Kanae Leo and I can get out. And the weather's good. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go.