00:00:01 John Daub: Greetings, welcome to Tokyo. You can see above me the cherry blossoms are still hanging on there. We're going to go take a look at it with this light, which really brings out the color, the contrasts of it. This is a place I was here just 12 days ago, and now this one is blooming. The other one has green sprouts on it. So it's kind of interesting when you look at the whole picture of the cherry blossom from the start to the finish. We're now pretty close to the finish. And I also have some snacks here and possibly a vending machine run in this episode. I'll take some questions from everybody because it's been a while. I hope everyone's doing well. I can't believe it's midnight here. But first of all, I can't believe that the cherry blossoms are still here.

00:00:43 John Daub: Check it out. I thought that they were going to get blown away. The rain was imminent. The weatherman had said it was going to rain about 72 hours ago. The rain never came. It got windy. There was some sprinkling. And then as soon as I ended the live stream, I guess about an hour later, the sun came out. It was weird. We took some family photos outside and that's going to be this month's postcard. Unexpected extension to the cherry blossoms. So I think they're still going to be here on the 10th for the one person who asked me about that. They're probably going to be here until the 13th. I don't know. It's hard to predict Mother Nature. It really is.

00:01:20 John Daub: There's actually a shrine here. So I'm going to keep my voice down and be very respectful because this is what you do during the cherry blossom season. You don't hang on the branches. You respect. And you love Mother Nature for what she has given us up there, which is just incredible. I also went to the local FamilyMart here and I got some goodies that were spring themed. And one thing for Jeanette and the Dodgers here, I actually got something that was Ohtani themed because I know that you might be watching from Los Angeles.

00:01:53 John Daub: The first thing I picked up was this green tea tiramisu with a little bit of pink on there to represent the cherry blossoms. They do such an amazing job in every convenience store, right? And then I saw Ohtani and you can't help but see that handsome guy promoting the brand new premium onigiri. I almost got a sandwich, but I didn't see any fruit ones. And that demi-glace burger looked pretty curious, but I ended up going for that onigiri. I don't know if that's what I'm actually going to eat, but we will see. The night is young. The goodies are right here in my basket. This tiramisu does look quite interesting, but I didn't think about the possible caffeine issue, so I might not eat all of that. And then the onigiri, we'll get into that in a second.

00:02:49 John Daub: But first things first, before we get into eating, I really want to take a look at the cherry blossom and I don't want to be disruptive with the light. I picked this place because I know that there's no residential area, no residential apartment buildings around it. And it's midnight. So you kind of want to see the difference between no light and light. It is a huge difference. That might be too bright. So you have to move it back a little bit, but it really does bring out the beauty of the cherry blossoms. We're already seeing the green sprouts to the cherry blossom. So this is probably the last day. I think it always comes down to like the first wind and rain right now is going to knock these all out. There are some that are still kind of blooming here, but with the bridge, it's just such a beautiful place. I love this area of Hachioji.

00:03:41 John Daub: Let me see if I could zoom in here. Here, the cherry blossoms up at the upper extremes. You can see with the light, it really is pretty nice. Might see a bird making a nest in there. Hey, Faisal FM from Singapore. No questions would have a snack on me. Happy resuming midnight snack runs. I am tonight. I just couldn't sleep. I think everybody in Japan is kind of wondering what's happened with the politics and everything going on in the world. But the one thing that's great about the cherry blossoms is at this time of year, you forget about that stuff that's going on. Let the politicians do their job. And we do our job, which is to go out and marvel in the beauties of nature. Look at that right there. That bunch right there is just absolutely stunning. Oh, with the bridge in the background, that's really nice. And psych guys here for the yummy snacks. Much appreciated. We're going to dig in in a second here.

00:04:51 John Daub: So having a light like this, holding it up to the lights for your photos in particular at night, it really does add a lot to the experience and also makes some creepy midnight faces. It's hard. I'm going to turn the light off a little bit. Let me see. Like maybe you just turn it down a little bit. The brightness is pretty intense. If I keep it at 5%, it's like 20%. I think we need to have the light so you can see the food here a little bit. So that's kind of helpful. Rain or I hope I didn't freak you out there. All right. I want to go back to 12 days ago. Do you guys remember this? This is the tree across the way. Same bridge. I did a live stream here. Look at it. It was full bloom because it's next to a heater and it was getting some sun that was reflecting off of the windows nearby. Absolutely beautiful.

00:06:21 John Daub: And there it is right now across the street. It's hard to see. Hold on. It's got green leaves there so you can see the cherry blossoms. It didn't just end. It's completely over for it. And now across the street from there, I pointed from that tree to this one and the one that is right now in full bloom or well past it now, 12 days ago, look like that. So that puts it in perspective. This is how fast the cherry blossom season goes by. It's important to note it's very hard to predict mother nature and to time this right. You got to make your hotel, you have to like be a soothsayer or something. You have to be able to read the tea leaves, so to speak in order to get it absolutely perfect. And well tonight we kind of did. So we do have it now fully bloomed and I do have some snacks. So let's dig in a little bit.

00:07:30 John Daub: I appreciate it very much. Okay. I think that light has no meaning. I actually have a tripod here, so I might have to put this on this tripod. So it makes it a little bit easier to snack on, but we're going to stand over here to the side. I'm glad the microphone is working today. I also have a bunch of questions from the past and things to talk about because a lot of stuff has been happening over the last couple of weeks.

00:08:40 John Daub: We've got cherry blossoms in the background, me in the foreground, slight weird white balance going on. All right. The first thing I'm going to try is this. This is an Okinawa shoga harami salmon. Okay. So this was next to the Shohei Ohtani exhibit. Apparently Shohei Ohtani, probably the greatest baseball player of our generation, is also the spokesman for, or at least one of the faces of FamilyMart, which is a pretty big get in the competitive market. And he loves his onigiri. This was expensive. Actually, it's in the musubi department here, which is a Hawaiian type of onigiri, I guess 298 yen or 300 yen for an onigiri. That's a lot. This better be good.

00:09:41 John Daub: And I'm not going to eat the whole thing. I'm going to save it for tomorrow morning. I'm just going to take a bite. I am a little bit hungry. That looks really good. And it smells really good. And it looks really good, but does it taste really good? You see, they just wrapped it up like this. That usually if you pay that kind of a price, you're going to get a serious piece of meat in the middle of it. So I'm going to start off at the bottom and go right into it. It's an aglio. That's so good. Salty. Salmon is very salty. Seaweed. Good rice. Good, moist tastes fresh. I approve. I don't know if it's worth 300 yen, but it's going to fill you up. And if you're coming here on a budget, onigiri is probably the way to go.

00:10:45 John Daub: This one, I like the way that they could keep the packages so that they keep the seaweed crunchy. I kind of prefer the crunchy seaweed, but other people might be different. This is moist. You can get two onigiri for the price of one. I think it might be better, but the rice and the quality is better. So just depends. And if you're living large, it's really good. I'm going to save half of it for later. That's the give and take of me doing midnight snack runs these days. I can't eat as much as I used to when I was in my whatever I was the last time I did it, but that doesn't mean we can't have some fun every now and then.

00:11:43 John Daub: So this, oh my Lord, I can smell it. I opened the lid and it just wafted out with this deliciousness. It is matcha ichigo no tiramisu. Or in English, matcha and strawberry tiramisu. I'd never heard of this. And there might be Italians going, what are you talking about? What this is not tiramisu. Tiramisu is coffee and custard or you know, it's not this, but it is today. So there you go. I can put it like here, it looks like it's got like a layer of gel or jello at the bottom strawberry. It certainly looks good. Doesn't it? It smells good. I don't know if it's tiramisu. I think it's like you're breaking the rules a little bit.

00:12:47 John Daub: Where's the matcha from? Does it say? It says Yokohama? That's probably where it's produced. Raymond's here. Let's go for the goal. There's a vending machine right there. So we're going to have to wash it down with that. Thank you. I'm looking for if it says it says coconut, which means it's made here. That's good. It doesn't say where the matcha is from just inside Japan. Matcha, you know, Nishio is maybe the second most famous brand after Uji. Everybody knows Uji, but matcha, it's quite a popular item these days. Let's go for it. I'm going to dig deep. Wow. All right. I got a little bit of everything in there. Sweet. It's very subtle. The matcha is very subtle. Like I'm not complaining, but I thought it would be a little bit more bitter and more robust. It's light. It's not a complaint. It's just light. Maybe that's tiramisu. But it's funny because coffee is used for tiramisu and they're using green tea, which is also a caffeinated drink. So I guess qualifies as a tiramisu. But one thing is for sure is really good. And that the green matches the leaves that are sprouting out of this cherry blossom tree behind me. This is satisfying.

00:14:49 John Daub: The one thing I got to say this, strawberry doesn't go good with green tea. It's too, it overpowers the matcha. I think the colors are good, but the green tea is overpowered by the sweetness of this. Maybe that's why they put it at the bottom. So you don't have to get into it, but there's a little bit of strawberry jam on the top. So I think it's a little bit much, but I'm not going to complain. You're making me jealous. Yamato, I'm sorry. I live, I'm surrounded by convenience stores. What am I supposed to do? Something towards the thanks next. Tobias, thank you. And Jenny verse, I for one approve of anything vending machine. All right, well, we're going to get a chance. There's only one over there. So let's go. Let's go have a look.

00:15:53 John Daub: This'll be my breakfast and lunch dessert for lunch. And we're going to go over to the vending machine over there because I believe we hit our goal. So I got to put you back on the gimbal. Now you guys, you want to go for a ride? No, you don't have much of a choice. It'll be over. It'll be painless and quick. And we're done. Welcome back. I'm going to leave my bike here because I live in Japan and it's midnight and nothing's going to be happening. Only three people in the last 15 minutes have passed me. There's a sakura tree. We're going to end the live stream by getting the light. What I like to do kind of a pastime that I do on this channel is to show you in different ways to appreciate the cherry blossoms. And that's one of them.

00:16:53 John Daub: I want to be quiet because I'm not sure if there's residences in this area, but there could be also at midnight. At midnight, around 11 PM, the lights go out. So the traffic lights are shut down. You just have to be careful looking left and right and not focused on the live stream screen. It's a hard thing. It's an Itoen. This is the Shohei Ohtani one. But I can't get green tea. This is interesting. Mikan jelly from Wakayama. Wakayama is down near Osaka. They have some good mikan on the Pacific Ocean. The jasmine tea looks really good. Here's another Chinese tea. Itoen makes some amazing tea and the green tea I'm going to stay away from just because it's midnight. And if I, this one was interesting. The black bean tea. I think I'm just going to go with the jasmine tea because it doesn't have any caffeine in it. Right. It's got a really good smell to it. Three, two, one. Almost no one uses coins anymore. Everybody uses IC cards. You can see there's a receiver to pay for it right there with an IC card. All right. We got it. It's in a nice see-through PET bottle for transparency. It is jasmine tea.

00:19:01 John Daub: We are about on bicycle. It's a bicycle. It's about a five to seven minute bicycle ride from here to Ginza to Tokyo Station. Ten minutes. I love living here by taxi. If I need to catch a flight, I can get to Haneda in 30 minutes. Narita is a little bit further and we live in an apartment that has a pretty good rent comparatively for the area that we're in. I'm trying to open the drink. All right. Jasmine tea. Is that who I think it is? David Kimura. I haven't seen you in ages. Thank you. It's nice to see you, David. All right. Come by, I guess, everybody. Oh, man. That's really good.

00:20:00 John Daub: I am aware of the trade war going on right now and the politics behind it. I'm not going to get into it because it's going to have to just play out and it doesn't matter what I say. But I can say I'm not going to get into it. I've been to China three times backpacking one time for a month. That's how long the visa I had. I got out on like the 28th day or something. I used to ride the trains in China all the time and we would have these plastic or metal tea jugs. And I remember when I was in Beijing, I found a jasmine tea and they come in like these flower balls in China. And I bought, I don't know, it was like maybe 200 grams of it, which is actually a lot. And I just sipped on all the Chinese trains at the time. Now, they don't have them anymore because they're high speed trains there. But everything was slow and it was awesome. And you had unlimited hot water. And I would just continuously fill my tea jar of jasmine tea. And it takes me every time I drink jasmine tea. I go back to riding the slow trains in China in another lifetime because everything is an express train in China these days to get people from where they need to go. But the culture from 20 years ago was so much better in China, I think. I miss that China actually. Japan hasn't changed that much, but China has changed. It's an amazing metamorphosis from then to now.

00:21:44 John Daub: It really is amazing how much you go to Shenzhen, you go to Beijing, you go to Chengdu, you go to any of the cities except Hong Kong. It's sort of stayed the same in a way. It's amazing. So I hope that they find a way to work it out. I'm sure that they will. Negotiations are never easy. So good luck with that. Because now I don't give a darn. I'm just going to admire the cherry blossoms for the next couple of minutes. And I hope you guys don't mind. I'm going to use the main lens here and we're going to just relax and look at that because, you know, these cherry blossoms, they're going to be gone in 24 to 36 hours. It's just you can already tell there's no more new ones coming and you're already seeing the blossoms on the ground. It's just beautiful. Look at that. This is such a treat to have it a little bit longer. I'm really grateful that we could watch this together.

00:22:51 John Daub: China is a lot more expensive than it used to be, but it's not as expensive comparatively to Japan. The quality of the food, certainly you can tell that that's not the same. That's why I love the Chinese visitors when they come here. They eat a lot at the Japanese restaurants. But I always thought that the Chinese food was quite good. So I remember going in the first time in 1998 and having Peking duck and I got the bill and it was like three dollars. I was like, you've got to be kidding. That's just insane. You know, when you have these streetlights, it kind of makes a little bit tougher because you get these red lights. It's not really the most desirable color. That's why these kind of lights really do help to bring out the color. It's really just bringing out the natural white color of the cherry blossoms. And you can see down the street that's kind of what I really love about the cherry blossoms. The Somei Yoshino in particular, the white blossoms look like snow. So it looks like it's snowed, doesn't it? And when you have hundreds of these trees altogether, it really does look like it's snowed and they light it up really well.

00:24:07 John Daub: So that's one of the reasons why the countryside, the festivals going out to Fukushima. There's a riverside with a thousand trees not that far away from Miharu Takizakura, which is like a 1000 year old cherry blossom tree, the mother of them all. They like to call it at least I like to call it that. That's really worth going for a visit. That's just stunning. And the best part is that at night, like right now, you have it all to yourself. Everyone's asleep. So for me, after midnight, at least once a year, I like to come out, even if I'm not filming. You really feel something different. There's the quiet. The city is asleep. There's no tourists. There's no locals. There's nobody. A few people. There's some police over there. But the point is, you really feel that connection with the nature then.

00:25:16 John Daub: Right now, the cherry blossoms are done for. Already in the canals, in the lakes. I'm gonna see if I can pull up something here. Yeah, Leo and I were. Here it is. Okay. So I was walking through my favorite neighborhood here. And you can see the cherry blossom petals are all over the canals, the rivers, the waterways, the water fountains, millions and millions and millions of them. This is gonna get worse or better. I guess depends how you look at it in the next 24 hours. But for sure, the flurry of cherry blossom petals started around 36 hours ago. And they will probably end the day after tomorrow. So essentially, tomorrow you're gonna be able to have hanami. You could probably do some festival celebrations. But it won't be quite the same because they're like thinning hair. You're gonna get a little bit less and less as the days go by. And but that doesn't stop people from having fun. And you can have a picnic at any time because it's the weather. The weather is pretty darn warm right now comparatively. It's so nice right now. The weather has turned. I think spring has broke for good. We might have a couple of days of some cold weather. But we're on the tail end of that as well. The sankanshō, the cold, hot, cold, hot, cold, hot back and forth. Now the weather in Tokyo has broken towards spring. And now we're going to have like probably the next six weeks are the best six weeks in Japan. Like the middle of April through Golden Week. And then the first three or four weeks all of May. May is the best month to visit Japan. And if you're coming here in May, you guys are in for a real treat.

00:27:09 John Daub: Watching from the Philippines. How you doing? You know, everyone in the Philippines right now is talking about the YouTube nuisance streamer that got arrested there, Vitaly. I'm watching the news as well. And kudos to the Philippines. They're gonna put that guy away for a long time. He deserves it, man. He got on the top page of Kik. And then he went to town to see how disruptive he could be. I don't know what it is with these nuisance streamers. It seems like they're coordinated in some way to just try to wreck havoc. They seem to do it all at the same time. They all descended onto Japan at a certain time. They all descended in Korea at a certain time. And I'll probably talk about this tomorrow. But I am so much in awe and so much mad respect for the Philippines. For finally, like one of the ministers there. He looks like he's a pretty buff guy. He's just gonna throw the book at this guy. And whatever happens, they're not gonna deport him. No one's gonna go and disrespect the Philippines anymore. Japan needs to do that.

00:28:13 John Daub: And I'll talk about this probably tomorrow. The news is gonna get bigger and bigger because I feel like we've now passed a threshold, even here in Japan where lawmakers are thinking of new laws. But they need to do something just, they need to make an example out of somebody. So this dude who doesn't know anything about the Philippines is gonna spend some time in the prison system there. Maybe he'll have an interesting story in five to ten years. And Johnny Somali, I hope he gets some prison time as well because apparently, like all the stuff that I see Legal Mindset talking about, it's just some wicked, wicked stuff. He did it in Japan. He went to Israel. He went to South America. Everywhere he goes, it's the same MO. And now Korea has a chance to do it. The Philippines did. And I hope that they throw the book at him if he's guilty. I mean, he's still gotta go through a court of law, but we all kinda know that Legal Mindset is streaming right now. I bet. He always does it late at night. I guess he's on Bangkok time. But yeah, it looks like there's gonna be some nuisance streamers getting put away. I don't like to see anybody go to jail, but if you commit the crime, you have to be responsible. And I love the way that they said this in the Philippines. Such a balanced way that they talked about it. He said that creators have to be responsible for the work that they've done. So if you go in there and you become a nuisance streamer, that's on you. But if somebody comes to the Philippines and they're making content and it's not really disruptive to anything, hey, that's on you too. You can have a good time and maybe make some friends. But for me, this medium is a way for me to connect with you, to show you the beauties of Japan. So for me, I can't get my head quite around these nuisance streamers. I really can't. I don't know who watches them and who supports them and how this happens here.

00:30:19 John Daub: This also crossed my desk, which is Instagram here. I'm seeing more and more of these sites completely, I don't want to say lie, but what is wrong with the statement here? 7-11 started in Japan in 1927 as Ito-Yokado. But it wasn't until 1946, the year after World War Two, that it became the iconic 7-11 we know today. During the occupation? Obviously, 7-11 Japan did not start, it started as an American company and didn't come to Japan until 1974 to Toyosu. And that location that first opened in Japan is still there today. It was licensed by a group that Ito-Yokado was in. But this kind of stuff is just propagating on the internet and it's disappointing. But what did we expect? That's the internet. But this has 2.2 million followers on this Instagram page and it's completely irresponsible to talk about something like that.

00:31:43 John Daub: And I talked about the exaggerations of the mega quake and the Mount Fuji. Of course, we're all aware of that and we prepare for this kind of stuff. But the exaggerations do worry people so much that perhaps they won't come to Japan. I think that you need to evaluate and study about earthquakes but not base your decision on social media posts. And this one by Alan writes in here, I'm always relieved that we have experts all over social media. And I replied, we can agree. No one knows other than someday we will have a big one. And that knowledge makes everyone an expert. And that's sort of where we are. We all know that a big one is going to happen sometime. It always does because that's what happens on the Pacific Rim of Fire. But we don't know when. We're just prepared for it and the chance is higher. But nobody can predict when rocks are going to crumble underneath a tectonic plate and release energy. You just don't know. But you cannot plan for it. Therefore, you should not alter your trip. Nothing has changed between now and then.

00:32:48 John Daub: Here is a great comment as well. I was talking about how one of the problems with the American cars in the Japanese market is American car makers don't make cars for the Japanese market. And the Japanese market is very niche. They know what they want. And it isn't a really big car. I was just in Nagasaki driving a car. If I was driving an American car, like a typical size American car, I would be trapped in there. So it's not something that Japanese really want to have. But I think there's a really good niche market. So I think that there's a good chance that American companies should come in and try for the Japanese market again. And this comment here I thought was really good by Kengo. 70% of Japanese cars sold in the U.S. are manufactured in the U.S. Japanese auto companies are creating jobs for Americans. That's so true. I got friends that are working at Honda. I taught students that lived in Japan. This Toyota City that had lived in Kentucky. All over the U.S. They came back learning English, American culture. So this has been really good back and forth. And there is no tariff for American cars into Japan because I think Japanese government is pretty sure that they're not going to sell a lot of cars here. But you have to make the cars for the Japanese. And I'm sure that there's a lot of non-barrier tariffs, so to speak, that are in place too that make it harder.

00:34:12 John Daub: But Trump's tariffs may lead to their layoffs. We don't know that. Japan does not impose tariffs on imported cars from any country. That's very true. We don't know what's going to happen with the tariffs. I think the markets go up and down. The stock market is going to go up and down. It's very easy to panic. I would not sell. You get stocks for a long-term game, right? Not to, why would you sell when it's going down? There's no reason for you not to sell. It's going to go back up again. We know the reason why it's going down. And I'm really encouraged. I'm encouraged by the talk that the U.S. is now meeting with Japan. And that's the first that they're meeting with. And I think it's great. They're going to restructure stuff. If a deal happens, then the stock market will be fine. And the pressure will be on China. And I know that Chinese—the one thing I've noticed that the media is not talking about—I'm talking about CNN in particular. They don't talk about the Chinese economy and the effect and the cons for the Chinese people and the Chinese economy of a trade war. They only talk about the U.S. And that kind of upset me watching their analysts and experts not talk about the demographic issues that China has, about the devaluation, about the intellectual property theft, about all the other issues with the Chinese market. CNN didn't even say anything about it. They just go on about the cons for the U.S. side because the U.S. is their audience that are watching it, and that's what they feel. But you have to understand this is a negotiation. And the Chinese are—The economy is much smaller. The U.S. is the deficit nation. They have all the bargaining chips. But I have no idea how this is going to play out. I don't like it. But President Trump's been planning this for probably four years. So you've got to give him the benefit of the doubt, at least for another week or so.

00:36:05 John Daub: It's making everybody nervous. Everybody's really nervous right now. So I'm just really glad that Japan is finding a way to work and negotiate. And that's what you're supposed to do. Make a deal. It's true, though. I mean, a lot of this stuff—Japan could use American rice. We have a rice shortage. But the tariffs on rice is prohibitively expensive. California koshihikari could come into the market and help us balance it out. So there isn't a huge—Right now, people were lining up to get rice at supermarkets at certain places. That should not happen. So there's got to be a way to find a way to work better together. And I think that maybe this is—This is one of those things where you light a match and they work things out a lot quicker. Because this kind of negotiations in Japan would take way too long. So in a way, there's some good and some bad here.

00:37:02 John Daub: Yeah, well, all things are down and all things come back up. And in fact, if you take a look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 1976, look at how the line just kept skyrocketing and skyrocketing. That kind of scares me, too, when you look at that. Since 2010 and to where we are for 15 years, it has been a straight line up. That always kind of worries me. So what we lost in the last week, you can hardly even tell that it's—what is it, like 8%? It's such a little blip. It's probably going to go back up in a couple of days. Once somebody makes a deal—I think Japan probably will—this thing will be something that we don't even talk about anymore. That's the way politics and business kind of work. But in the news cycle today, we're going to see a lot of things change. We feel it all in the moment, and it goes away pretty quickly. We'll see how it plays out. I think that there is room for negotiation.

00:37:53 John Daub: Shared about a year ago that I would be moving to Japan, hey, to start a business, and I want to share that it's happened. This is really good news. I am in the Saitama Prefecture. Your videos help me prepare. I'm going to Saitama next week. Opidei o Usene-o. That's a long one. And I see the super chat's coming in from Japan. That's really good. I'm going to Saitama for an episode. I can't say what it's about yet, but I'm going to be filming a champion something for the main channel episode. I'm looking forward to it. But Saitama is a pretty cool place. It's a striking distance to Tokyo. I'm really happy for you, and congratulations. I know Laura in Ecuador, if you're watching this, there's a lot of hope for you, too. There's a lot of people who want to come here and start businesses, and I think there's never been a better chance than right now. It's not easy to do that, but takes some time and learning the market. And if you can envision it, you can see it, and you have the fortitude to fight through it because you're going to have adversity, you can accomplish pretty much anything. But you have to see that goal, and you have to be able to continue to do it until you get there without giving up. I get hammered down all the time. My God, I got hammered down all the time. You all know I lost my channel. I had to restart. That was a pretty big hammer. That's life, you know. You get hammered, you come back up again.

00:39:25 John Daub: I don't want to talk about too much politics. I've just given you my point of view on that. I'm a pretty balanced person on it, but we've got to let it play out. And in the end, don't panic. It just kind of works its way out. But so far, he is delivering on everything that he said he would do. It's not really a shocker. I don't know anybody who's really shocked. But that's the way it goes. I think the news of jail time for nuisance streamers will be probably the most welcome thing that I have heard in a very long time.

00:40:00 John Daub: There's one last thing I want to do, and this is to Alice and David out there, because I have not been promoting it nearly as enough. I have an Only in Japan store, and these are my associates in the U.S., viewers. And I love these guys very much. They've been supporting me and the channel, since maybe one of the first people to do it, along with Matsumi and a bunch of other people. But I still have copies of the Hitchhiking DVD. And this was, I think it was eight years ago now, seven years ago now. On this day, I was somewhere in Tottori going up to Kobe. No, going into Hyogo to a Kobe beef farm. I was picked up by a guy. Let me see. I got the picture here. I was picked up. This is what the DVD set was. I spent a lot of time making this. I think it's really beautiful. There's a picture of all the rides.

00:41:12 John Daub: There we go. Where is he? Right here. This one. So this is Mr. Ishii, and he picked me up, and he took me to his Kobe beef farm. You don't know how fate is going to present itself to you. He picked me up in, I think it was, somewhere near Tottori, Kyoto, like Maezuru, I think. And he went inland towards Hyogo a little bit. So I stayed the night in Tajima. And he took me to his Kobe beef farm and introduced me to the president of the company. And the president of the company drove me to another place where I spent the night at a hotel. But he also stopped off at his restaurant. I think that's him here. And I got to eat Kobe beef in his restaurant for free. And he just grilled it up on a skillet that he had in his restaurant. Or a butcher shop. I don't even know. It was closed.

00:42:21 John Daub: This couple lived in Hakuba. And you'll see it in the Blu-ray if you buy it. And they took me. It was a little bit of a trip. It was off my route, but I said, we're going to Hakuba. That sounds cool. Let's go. And I ended up staying in their summer cottage. They had a special place in a forest. In a wooden house. And I spent the night there. With their six dogs. Super, super amazing people. And I'm still in touch with them. I saw them the other day. Sorry, last fall. When we went camping in Hakuba. They came out and said hi to us at dinner. So that was really nice. This is Ainu, but he was living in Akita. These people picked me up in an EV car eight years ago. And took me all the way to Akita. Which is great. This mother picked me up in Hirosaki. And she took me to the Cherry Blossom Festival there. With her daughter. That's how loving the people are. I mean, would you pick up a hitchhiker when you have a four-year-old daughter? I was like, no. But I guess I was smiling and looked just pleasant enough.

00:43:31 John Daub: I got to get in touch with this guy. I promised him a copy of the Blu-ray. Oh, this guy, he lived near Chitose Airport. He picked me up right outside of the Ainu Museum. And this is Mr. Wakaki who was in the toy episode. These two people live in Sapporo. They picked me up and I said, I got a friend in Noboribetsu. I want to go there. So they picked me up in Hakodate. They dropped me off in Noboribetsu. And they continued on to Sapporo. I stayed at their house when I went to Sapporo. And I got to talk with my friend, Wakaki-san and his wife in front of the toy store. And that's where we are there. He picked me up. He found me the first hitchhiking trip in 2003. A couple of guys at the Aoiike, the Blue Pond. And this is like nowhere Hokkaido. And the last ride, which took me to Wakkanai. She was a student and she felt bad for me, I think. And this family picked me up near Bifu. I think they're naming the place. I don't know where the town was. There's a lot of really good memories here. Oh, the Chako, right? This is Chako. He's a Brazilian dude. He was on his way to the village in Gunma. He picked me up in Hiroshima, or near Hiroshima. He took me into the city. We hung out for a bit. My host family in Yonago. Oh, is this Alexandro from Matsue? I got to get in touch with him. It's been ages. Oh my god. I'm all in this Blu-ray disc that I made. We still got a couple of copies of it. And Kanae makes an appearance in there as well. Where was I? March or April 7th. I was in Yonago. I got sick eating ramen in Hamada. So I was in Yonago for a few days recovering. And then I went to Tottori and Tajima. Okay, so I'm a little bit off. Tajima was a couple of days later. There you go.