00:01:00 John Daub: Alright, I just pulled in here to Oshayo Farms. This is a place with a vending machine for cherries, and I'm not going home empty-handed. The cafe is closed, unfortunately. They're famous for having soft serve ice cream. I'm driving back to Yamagata Station to catch the Shinkansen. This is a little bit before cherry season, however. I do have some cherries here, but this place is famous for also having a cherry vending machine. So let's go get some for the ride home, because as you all know, I'm not going home empty-handed, right? Ramsey Silent. We're not going home empty-handed.

00:50:00 John Daub: This is my rent-a-car. All the cars, they're white from Toyota Rent-a-Car. I don't know why they gave me like a burgundy one. State Class, San Diego. I don't know. And I don't know what this is here. It's supposed to be some kind of surprise vending machine box. I'm not really sure what's inside there. I'm not going to risk it because I'm not a gambler. Apparently they are, though. That's interesting.

01:14:00 John Daub: Alright, let's go get some cherries here. I'm going to be back here in June, maybe. Alright, here it is. Cherries. It's nice and cool inside these boxes, so that's a good thing. You can't really get a good look at it to pick one, but I think this one looks really good here. So the price for the cherries is 1,000 yen per pack. It's 200 grams. So let's go ahead and do that. Compliments of Ramsey Silent. Thank you, brother. Oh, I gotta pull this up here. It's one of the new bills. Alright, there you go. 1,000 yen is in.

02:05:00 John Daub: I guess you just push a button and take it out. Ramsey's, which one? Left or right? I think we'll go right or left. That one looks pretty good, too. I'm going to go with this one here. Ah, that's it. It took my money. Alright, there you go. Look at the little grass that they put in there. This is a luxury good here. Look at how red this is. These are probably picked today. Wow.

02:41:00 John Daub: Alright, we did it. We got it from the vending machine. We're going to... Oh, look, they got candy, too. I want to get a drink. They have some cherry juice, which we're going to get here. But first, I want to take the thumbnail for the video here. Let's open this up. Get a closer look. Oh, my gosh. It smells. These are some good-looking cherries here. Check it out. That's really cool. It's amazing that you can get almost anything from a vending machine these days in Japan, right? So, there you go. 1,000 yen for this. We got it.

03:23:00 John Daub: Alright. Do all my shopping from a vending machine. Oh, look, they have a cherry festival here from the 31st. So, this cherry season doesn't actually start for a little bit, but they're already harvesting some of them. Alright, let's put this in the car right here. And we're going to get a cherry juice to go down with this. It is very expensive for cherries. You can get some frozen ones. This is Fruit Ice Pop for 540 yen. Oh, they got gyoza, too. Hey. I'm going to go for just the red cherry juice, here. Well, they have- What is white cherry juice? White cherry juice and red cherry juice. Which one should I go for? But all of this is made from here in Japan. White or red? What?

04:18:00 John Daub: White cherry juice is made from the sakuranbo. It's a different variety. Let me see here. Sa- We want to go- Do they have the- Oh, this is the Sato Nishiki. I think this is so we're gonna go for the white cherry juice. This is the Sato Nishiki, which is the very famous one. Got 500 yen coin. Just this is an older one. All right, let's get it. Three two one. Boom. Oh. Wow, it is white. Look, it's not really white. It's just a brighter color but all-natural. Which doesn't mean a lot these days. Yeah, all natural.

05:09:00 John Daub: Across the street is actually a cherry orchard. You can see. They're not quite red yet. There's the ones in the vinyl houses. They're already red. So what I was able to film was that one but I shall be back. Let's get in the car. What's nice and cool. It is getting really hot out here. This place has some really amazing ice cream too. I looked at it on the internet. It's a shame that they're not open yet. Luck of the draw. I'll be back here next month.

05:51:00 John Daub: Alright, let's go in for the cherry here. So we have the run-of-the-mill cherry pack here in Japan. They're expensive. Cherries and is very expensive. The Sato Nishiki is the variety that you really want to get. They're very popular here in Japan. I guess you're supposed to wash them. But I'm just gonna eat it. Wash it with my mouth. Itadakimasu. Oh, that's so good. The thing that's unique about Japanese cherries. This cultivar. We have Bing cherries in Washington State in the United States. They're really sweet. They're really good. They're too sweet. If that's a bad thing, I don't know. It's just really sweet. These cherries from Yamagata, they're more balanced. There's a little bit of tartness, but not a lot. Very little tartness. It's just like a really balanced sweetness to it. Which is great for parfait, for ice cream, for desserts. But the best thing with cherries is to just eat it as is, you know.

07:10:00 John Daub: It's really hot today. I should have brought my cotton hat or a linen hat. Let's try this juice. Let's get it going. Let's get it on. So this here ladies and gentlemen white cherry, which is just cherry. But you can see in here like if I take one of these cherries and just bite half of it. See, it's not really red like a Bing cherry would be in the United States. It's a little bit whitish. So that's why I call them white cherries, I guess. But yeah, the hundred percent juice. What a waste though. I mean, how many cherries does it take to make a bottle of this stuff? It says 100% so it's not mixed with water, right? Very carefully. It's mixed with water. I don't think so. It says 100%. Alright. Itadakimasu! The good stuff. Oh my gosh, that's so good. It's not like cough medicine cherry. It's such a good balanced juicy. Of course, it's juicy, but very. It's hard to understand. It's not too sweet, but it's not green. It's a very difficult flavor because that's not like any cherry that you had before. It's almost gone. Oh my gosh. That's so good.

09:07:00 John Daub: Let me show you a little bit about where we are right now. So on the map here, can I bring it up? There you go. So you can see I'm quite a ways north from Tokyo in the Tohoku region of Japan. This area is I think it's very close to a town a city called Tendo. This city is actually called Higashine. Higashine City, Yamagata very famous. I'm gonna pan out here. You can see all those places down there. I'd say like 80% of it is greenhouses for cherries. Some of them are outside. Some of them are covered in little vinyl huts. But this is cherry town, Cherry Town, Japan. A lot of the cherries come from this Higashine and Tendo region here. Oh my gosh. You drive around here and all I see are like cherry trees left and right. It's a thing of beauty here.

10:17:00 John Daub: These are skills that you don't want to see John have. And even if I did I probably wouldn't admit it. Yeah, not right away. So I actually went inside here. Let me show you a little bit. So I'm making an episode on the cherries. These are the very premium 2L sized cherries that they have here and they make them in such beautiful boxes. I'm taking one home to film in my studio and then with nice lights. It's just this is the thing. You don't see cherries like this packaged like that in any other place. I went to the Michi no Eki (roadside station), which is not that far away from here. They don't have a lot of cherries in this season. In about three weeks from now this is all gonna be cherries. This whole table and the cherries are about half the price of what they are in Tokyo. And I went to the cherry farm. Most of them are about two weeks away from being ready. This one is cherries on the tree here. This is the Sato Nishiki cultivar. So it's about two weeks away from turning red. One of them is red there but not quite there yet. And here's what, here's one that some of them were though. So they are harvesting them already. This one is about 70% of the way there. Maybe in 10 days this will be done.

11:48:00 John Daub: I wanted to do the live stream earlier. But I'm filming this for main channel. So you got to focus one of the other. Mr. Suzuki who is the farm that I got a lot. Got a permission to film at took me up the top of the hill to get a look at some of the greenhouses. This is such beautiful country folks. This is such beautiful country. It's like a blessing to be out of Tokyo and in Yamagata today, especially with the Sun out like this. It's so nice and inside of there is cherries lots and lots and lots of cherries.

12:24:00 John Daub: This is the most interesting thing. This will be in the main channel episode. But you're getting a sneak peek at this they have this machine they put one cherry on a scale. It weighs it and then puts it in the appropriate box. So that one the weight of it is 2L size. So it'll put it in the 2L. This one is a L size and it'll put it in that one. It just knows because each one has a scale on it. So I'm like mesmerized with this. These will be like stories I put on the internet. Sorry, I get cut on my lip there some things you can show gonna be those. So cool and the other side they have smaller ones. It's really cool. I've never seen anything like that before. These are probably smaller size cherries. These aren't quite large. But you can tell with the color. The color. Oh my god. So good. Hi John. Here's more fun me for more juice.

13:32:00 John Daub: Alright. Hey, this juice has been brought to you by Kamen Rider and these cherries by Ramsey Silent who was never here and rest of it's going home. Ramsey's Island, I have actually spent a bunch of money on more cherries down there in that bag. Kamen Rider, this is the good stuff. It's like craft cherry juice. It's so good. Usually you can recycle the bottles over there by the machine. That's all I have for you. I got to drive now to Yamagata City. I got a long way to go. It's about a 45 minute drive. Return the car, get on the Shinkansen, get home, and make sure I get these cherries into the refrigerator.

14:22:00 John Daub: Mrs. Suzuki was so kind. She gave me some Tochiotome, which is the variety from Tochigi, but they grow them here. Look at how beautiful these strawberries are. Holy moly, right? And I have a different cultivar of cherries here. This one's darker. So I bought some, and then they gave me some luxury ones in that box at the bottom. I'm going to film that when I get home. They're so nice. I bought some at the Michi no Eki, too. Got to support the local economy, folks. That's what we got to do. These farmers here work really hard. Thank you, Ramsey Silent. Farmers working really hard here. It's super yummy. It's summertime. This is the time where the fruit starts to come out. You got to really love it. You got to really enjoy it. I'll be back here next month. Maybe I'll get an ice cream. It's closed. The owner was really apologetic. She said, could you come back? Sorry, it opens on May 31. Come back next month. And I said, you got it. I'll be back here. Maybe sometime in the end of June to go check it out.

15:26:00 John Daub: It's a different vibe. So remember this. You were here when I was here just before the season, when everything was kind of closed and slow. And when we come back in a month from now, you're going to see a completely different Higashine City. It's going to be buzzing, popping, exciting. And I'll be here. All right, everybody. Back to the Shinkansen. I don't know if I'm going to do another live stream for the Shinkansen. I need to get an ekiben. If we can do it, I'm going to try to do it. The signal's not too good out in the countryside, so I don't know if I can live stream it. But let's see what happens. You never know. Live streams, they just kind of go with the flow, right? Just kind of go with it.

16:04:00 John Daub: This is a cool boxy car, though. I think it's called the Tank. I'm not sure what this one is. I think it's called Toyota's Tank. But it's got a really big window here, so I kind of like that. But absolutely no power, which is maybe why they call it the Tank. All right, everybody. Leave me a question or comment below. Make sure you see yesterday's live stream. I walked around Yamagata Station area, looked at the hotels. It's kind of an interesting look in there of Yamagata City. I love getting out of the city of Tokyo. It's my dream come true every time I leave Tokyo. For you, like for a lot of you watching, going to Tokyo is like a dream for you. Nah, for me, it's like getting out of Tokyo. This is Japan. This is a real Japan out here. Have a peaceful day. Thank you, everybody. Safe trip. Thank you, Saya. I see Saya is here. Saya, your box is on the way, by the way. I sent your Daimyo box. It's on the way, as well as your postcard. Everything's on the way there. All right, everybody. Take care. I'm off. Drive safe, John. Bye. Matane. I'm going to get rid of that coffee. Put the coffee down here. I'll probably stop off at a 7-Eleven en route. Matane.