00:00 John Daub: It's an incredible day here in Tokyo. You can see behind me the autumn foliage has changed and actually peaked. Most of the leaves are down on the ground. We're going to walk through Ginkgo Avenue here in Aoyama. This is the crown jewel of the Meiji Restoration, I suppose you could say, in terms of urban planning. This avenue was set up in the 19th century, but really was planted in the 1920s. I guess that was the early Showa period. But planned out in the Meiji era. It's beautiful. We're going to take a look at it and you can smell it too.

00:37 John Daub: One of the biggest mistakes with romanization of Japanese words is the ginkgo tree—ginkyo (銀杏) in Japanese. The audio is coming from this microphone. I always double check that. This is a live stream. Tourists are coming here like crazy. Check it out. The angle that you want to get is not eye level actually these days because look at that yellow. It's so striking. There's a reason why they decided to pick ginkgo trees. It wasn't because of the smell. It was more because of the shape.

01:21 John Daub: They wanted in the Meiji Restoration when they switched over from the Edo period of feudalism to the more western style, that kind of presentation. And you get this with four rows of the ginkgo trees. Not just the ones along the street but there's one straddling the path here. The ones that are near the road, the leaves have actually fallen off. And you can see down here. She's right in the middle there. I did not expect that. The leaves on the ground here as well as a lot of tourists. It's hard to get an unfettered view. A lot of TikTokers here as you can see.

02:03 John Daub: You can go on the other side of the road. Let's walk down here. Kind of get an idea. But before we do that, isn't it amazing? Here's exactly where we are. This is the Meiji Jingu Gaien (明治神宮外苑) area. Actually it would be more like Gaien-mae Station. And it's pretty close to the Olympic Stadium. You're going to see right there. There's the Imperial Palace in the center of the screen. You can see Shibuya was on the left side. This is the Meiji Jingu Gaien-mae. The start of this avenue. And you can see even the ginkgo trees are in the Google Earth rendition here. Very center of Tokyo. But a very unique avenue.

02:33 John Daub: They wanted the presentation coming into the government building to look regal. And it certainly does. Now these trees were planted in the 1920s. They've been 100 years old. These ginkgo trees can live up to a thousand years. Which is pretty incredible. Ginkgo trees coming from China. But actually, the ginkgo—let's get into this right now. In the late 1600s, a German botanist named Engelbert Kaempfer was stationed in Dejima in Nagasaki studying Japanese plants. He recorded the Japanese name for the ginkgo tree, ginkyo in Japanese. But when he wrote it down in Roman letters, he misspelled it as ginkgo.

03:39 John Daub: That typo was printed in his 1712 book, copied by later scientists, and eventually adopted by everybody. So today the whole world uses the 300-year-old spelling mistake for Japan's famous golden tree, which actually comes from China. That's such a funny story. I heard this years ago, but I thought I would share it with you today. We'll talk a little bit more if you want. So this avenue here, even in the spring when there's cherry blossoms around, this is very famous for its yellow color. The trees lining the street here—ginkgo line street. It's also known as Icho Namiki Dori (銀杏並木通り, ginkgo tree-lined street).

04:42 John Daub: You can see there's a Shake Shack. Take a right, you get a little bit more of those trees there. And leads all the way past the tennis courts. Again this is a sporting area, to the rubber ball baseball grounds, indoor playing field, and eventually to the Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery. A testament, a tribute to the Meiji Restoration and the change in government. There you go. There's the Meiji Jingu Baseball Stadium. I think they're tearing that down to put in something new. I'm not quite sure. I haven't been here in a long time. That's where the Olympic Stadium is. Which is crazy. This is quite an old sign.

05:15 John Daub: The more appropriate angle is down here, looking at the leaves. If you want to get pictures at this time, probably want to get down low. It's hard to do it with the gimbal. And you can see people like to get pictures throwing the leaves up here. Now I gotta wash my hands. Look at the tour bus going on the right side. Japanese media was here yesterday. And reminded me, oh I haven't live streamed on the street in a while. They didn't come here just for the colors. They came here for the tourists. There were so many tourists like this guy. He's just crossing the street. And it's really dangerous to do something like that.

06:27 John Daub: There were people trying to get pictures of the ginkgo trees by standing in the middle of the street. And the cars were coming. And it created a massive problem. There's a lot of places around Tokyo right now, and not just Tokyo, Japan with people that are taking pictures and they're putting their tripods in the street. Right now Roppongi is the big place with the Christmas lights. They just turned them on December 1st I think. And now you have a crossing where everybody stops at the crossing to take the pictures. Some of the people are putting tripods up in the middle of the street at the crossing. And even though the light is now red, they're still trying to take a picture. It's super dangerous. And it creates havoc.

07:10 John Daub: Not everybody is a Japanese driver here. A lot of people could be renting cars and not know the traffic laws. And boom, somebody gets hit. So it's a disaster waiting to happen. And they're trying to find ways to fix that. This area was under great scrutiny by the Japanese media for the last couple of weeks, in particular just recently. But if you look up, a lot of the ginkgo trees on the inside have lost their leaves. And a lot of them on the outside now are starting to as well. Most of them are on the ground. But it still presents that autumn feel. Now the yellow is all down below. It reminds me of getting older. Sometimes that hair ends up in the sink. It's part of life.

08:00 John Daub: They'll be back these leaves. But the hairs that I've lost in my head won't. I'm still doing okay. Anyways, there's the Shake Shack over there. There's a couple of really beautiful places to go for the autumn foliage. One of them is not here. The other one is Aoyama Gakuin (青山学院, Aoyama Gakuin University). If you guys know where Aoyama Gakuin is, it's about a 5-10 minute walk from here towards Shibuya. So you can get off at Aoyama-itchome Station, go through here and walk to Shibuya. And you're going to see most of Tokyo's beautiful autumn foliage just in this walk going there.

08:42 John Daub: You'll see some more autumn foliage over there. Aoyama Gakuin is not quite as stunning. Even in the cherry blossom season, you go to Aoyama Gakuin because it's kind of fun. There's the other street with the ginkgo trees. They've kind of left over there as well. But I thought it was just really funny. So the urban planners chose the ginkyo trees because they grow into a perfect cathedral-like tunnel. Which is true. Check it out. You can see it with the branches here. Do you see that? That's why they picked it. They tolerate Tokyo's pollution and summer heat. During the 1980s it was certainly a lot hotter, a lot more polluted than it is today.

09:31 John Daub: These days Tokyo's pollution is not so bad. A lot of the pollution is coming from the trees across the other side of the Sea of Japan, so to speak. These trees will last quite a long time. Japanese call the ginkyo tree icho (イチョウ). Icho tree, which is ginkgo in English. Or ginkyo in Chinese I suppose. It's a beautiful tree. But they do last for quite a long time. There's four rows that flank the wide boulevard, again to make the walkways look cathedral-like going towards Meiji Memorial. And it's designed by notable landscape architects of the early Showa era when they were planted around 1923, 1926. This was cutting edge urban design.

10:36 John Daub: Babe Ruth when he visited would have come through here as well, probably admiring the beautiful ginkgo trees. Baseball season would have been over, but he came down here during the off season I believe. So he might have seen this. I love the story of Babe Ruth coming in 1934 [?]. So there you go, a little bit of the history behind this so you guys can understand why this avenue is called Icho Namiki Avenue. Icho meaning the ginkgo trees, namiki (並木) means lined-up trees. Leading to Meiji Jingu Gaien, which is one of Japan's first planned scenic boulevards back in the early Showa. Out of respect for the Emperor Meiji. Designed in the 1920s. It's a western capital influence.

11:31 John Daub: They kind of wanted to give you a feel of what the west was like. Japan starting to try to appeal to the west, so to speak. Or trying to increase their trade and wealth by adjusting its eastern styles to the west. It is really beautiful. It's hard to find pictures right now, but you'll see some if you kind of look around. You can see just patches of the green ginkgo leaves there. It's just so beautiful with that blue sky. You don't see it too much. And today I wanted to get you outside. And I needed to get outside for a little bit to admire some of the beauty of the Japanese autumn here. Impressive. It does smell like Ginkgo Avenue.

12:48 John Daub: The closest traffic light is at the end of the street. And if I'm not mistaken, is that the Christmas market? Has it opened? I went to the Christmas market. If so maybe I'll have to come back here and bring Kanae Daub and Leo. Yeah I think it is. Should we go check that out? Alright we're going to go check out, see if the Christmas market is up here. I'll have to come back for another live stream to cover it. But it feels like we're talking about Christmas markets now. And they're all open because it's the end of November [?]. But it's still feeling right? Some of these ginkgo tree leaves are yellow. We move pretty fast these days with the marketing to try to get people into the spirit.

13:40 John Daub: See Japan, the weather here is actually quite warm. Right now I would say it's about 15 degrees. It felt like low 60s two days ago, which is not autumn-like at all. And right now I suppose it's around 10-12 degrees with the sun, which is about 50-53 degrees. Which is very fair. I still have a jacket on, but I could probably go without the jacket here. I'm just smart about it because I know there's a breeze. And I know if a cloud comes it's going to chill out really fast. But you can see the blanket of the yellow leaves behind me. So it's hard to get the perfect angle. Sometimes the best angle is the angle looking down. There we go. Yellow all around. Very beautiful.

14:38 John Daub: See here we get the chat to give you guys. See Toby is here. I always love these colorful trees. It's very nice. But it's funny though, the color is no longer on the trees. It's now on the ground. They do a pretty good job of cleaning up the leaves. So probably tomorrow all the yellow leaves are going to be gone by the weekend. Which is kind of a shame. Alright the signal is probably going to go out just because we're getting closer to that Christmas market and a lot of people. But we'll see. The end of the street we might pick up a little bit more. It is still early in the day. If the signal cuts, really can't be helped. It's just sort of part of the experience of live streaming.

15:37 John Daub: Tokyo having really fast internet, except the upload speeds are not good enough comparatively to the download speeds, which are ten times faster. Because they want you to get content than the upload speeds of stuff here. It's a beautiful walk here. We're at the end of the street. And we'll see if the signal will come back up here. Alright we're at the end of the street. I think possibly the signal is going to be coming back again. I see Santa Claus. Yeah there we go. We're at the end of the street. So the signal should be back here. I apologize.

16:33 John Daub: This is the Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery. Here you can see it's 500 yen entry. And that's that old looking building at the end of the street. It's really pretty. And it looks like the Christmas market isn't quite open yet. That Meiji Memorial is under construction or renovation right now. Sorry the signal kind of was going in and out a little bit there as we're walking down the street here. But you can see it's really pretty street isn't it? That could be the thumbnail. Christmas market doesn't look like it's all there yet. Let's go have a look see. Because if you're in Tokyo or you're going to be in Tokyo in the next week, this is one of the places to go.

17:20 John Daub: I came here last year. I don't like this Christmas market. You want to know why? There's no trees in there. It's just this flat area. There's no fountains. It feels like they put it in the most boring spot possible. Yeah here it is. The Tokyo Christmas market is going to be taking place right here. We're early. I get the thumbnail here. There you go. With that guy walking across the side. I don't know what he's doing. It's kind of a boring area. Gotta be honest. The fountains off. If there was snow it would be good. Is it open? It seems really early if it's open.

18:31 John Daub: They have these days and rightfully so. I think you might need a permit to film in there. But the signal has cut out quite a bit. The Christmas markets in Tokyo are all based on the German model. So it feels like you're in another land. I guess you could say Austria and Prague. But basically the European Christmas model. And they're nice. The prices are kind of high, which you expect. Probably the same as in Europe. But I like the fact that they have these Christmas markets. There's another one at the Tokyo Skytree. And the reason why is because you want to feel that Christmas spirit. I like getting together with other people that also really love that Christmas spirit. Which is not about receiving presents by the way. It's a lot deeper than that. And you can feel it at places like this just a little bit. Because sometimes in Japan it's all about the marketing.

19:44 John Daub: Here I'll get a flyer for it. The signal is cutting in and out. Oh wow. Oh my goodness. It started really early. This market started in November. No wonder. Okay I'm going to have to come here with Leo and Kanae Daub. I think one night. How's the signal? Looks like we're cutting out again. Just the way it is sometimes. Let me show you the flyer. The signal comes back a little bit here. Here's the flyer. The Tokyo Christmas market flyer here. You can see it's a little windy. So it's entry until the 25th [?]. It's about 1000 yen on weekdays, 1500 yen on weekends. And Christmas time it jumps up to 2000 [?]. Kids are half price. And you get that really nice Christmas mug. Look at that. That's not too bad.

21:07 John Daub: I can't believe it started November 21st. That's before Thanksgiving. That's insanely Christmasy. Good way. I'm gonna be really honest with you always. One of the problems I have with these Christmas markets, they bring in these Japanese idol bands here. And it just loses all that Christmas spirit when you have a Japanese idol band singing in the background. But that gets a lot of people to come in here. Just not, they're not coming for Christmas though. You know what I mean? They're coming for the idols. My new Christmas pyramid they have here. It's interesting. I'm gonna show you the Christmas market. Here's the history of it. It's based on the European model. Basically German. But I'm sure it borrows from a bunch of other places. Brussels. Oh Nuremberg.

22:19 John Daub: I went there for a live stream guys on this channel. I think it was before the pandemic. Kanae Daub and I went to Nuremberg and we had a nice meet up. A lot of viewers. We got a lot of really wonderful viewers from Germany and Belgium and the Czech Republic. I couldn't believe how many people showed up. That was wonderful. Alright this is the most important part. The food. A lot of this stuff looks very familiar. They don't write the prices in here. But it tells you some of the history and the reasoning behind it. It's a little bit more varied than last year apparently. Last year or two years ago when I came here it was really repetitive. I don't seem to sell two or three of the same stuff. But maybe things are a little bit better now.

23:12 John Daub: I think the pandemic had just sort of ended here. There's a Christmas market at Shiba Park as well that opens tomorrow. I like this one better because Tokyo Tower is there. That's interesting. I didn't know that there's one at Shiba Park too. Wow you can collect them. You get the green cup at Shiba Park and the red cup here. So you gotta go to both now. I gotta give them some credit here. So Tokyo's Christmas market, they have one at Shiba Park as well. I gotta get Eric to serve six. He contacted me the other day. Love Eric. He's a good friend. I haven't seen him in ages as well. We should get him here. Do a Christmas Tokyo street food episode.

24:04 John Daub: Nobody does vending machines and street foods better than... well maybe I do. I just did. But when it comes to food and vending machines, he's a beacon of positivity. That's why we love him. Why don't we go down this street on this side here. Because we haven't. I gotta go back to the station here. I told a couple of viewers where I was. Jay is visiting from the Philippines I believe. Jay are you here? Or are you watching from back home? I wasn't clear. That's a really nice shot. Check this out. But if you are here Jay, it's gonna be fun to catch ya. There's a bunch of people that are here. There's the Jingu Stadium. And if you keep going around here you'll get to the Olympic Stadium and eventually to Shinjuku to keep on going.

25:19 John Daub: Lamborghini Omar is back. Here I went to the no-staff vending machine. Did you really? That's not easy to get to. That's in Gunma. Good on ya mate. That's really cool. It's so clean. It's such a nice view here. A lot of people are catching that photo. I'm gonna turn off the live chat on the side here. I'm gonna see if I can get a better view for ya. Hold on a second. You gotta go up above the crowd. How's that? I'm holding it up. We're about 8 feet high now. My arm is hurting. I was holding you up like this high. I'm here because you're not. Or some of you are here. Many of you might make that walk now that I'm showing you that this place is pretty nice.

26:40 John Daub: The other place I would go, there's a park that they illuminate at night. Do you guys know which one I'm talking about? It's up in the north part of Tokyo, a little bit past Ueno. That park is really nice. We're probably gonna lose signal again. This is the dead zone. Stick around. Walk with me until we get to the other side here. Look at the shadows of the trees. I love that. Without the leaves reflecting onto the yellow pavement. Really nice. Again, there's more leaves on the ground than there are on the trees. Look at that. It's really pretty. I've never seen a tree trunk that was just so beautiful. Like Christmas morning with presents under it.

28:08 John Daub: I'm gonna go back to the park. Wow. It's still pretty loaded up there. I was just saying this earlier when the signal was weak that the shadows of the trees are on the pavement here, which adds another element to the beauty of this. It'd be pretty nice to see. Look at that. The tree shadow. The way the light is coming right now. The sun does not go up very high in this time of year. Of course after the 21st of December when winter solstice hits, the days start getting longer again. Thankfully. I'm not someone who likes winter because mostly the days are too short. And the sun comes up later and it goes down at 4:30. By 4:30 it gets pretty dark in the middle of December.

29:41 John Daub: Really nice tourists visiting from all over the place. It's already peaked here. I'd say maybe last week was the best time to be here. But last week there were a lot of issues with tourists crossing the street illegally, blocking traffic or almost getting hit by cars. They have these like people would be jumping in here to get pictures. But they properly put the keep out sign, which also is in English and in Korean as well and other languages. So people can understand. But I don't think that really prevented a lot of people from not breaking the rules. It doesn't seem to have much impact. You have like this, it's like a moth to a light. You know you're like a bug zapper. You know you're going to get zapped but you're just mesmerized by the light. Or that desire to get this picture for social media that's already been taken a thousand times.

30:37 John Daub: But we all want to be in that spot. We all want to feel like we were there. That's our souvenir. It's not something that people buy that often. But we'll take a selfie in a place that is really beautiful. And that'll be how we remember we were there I suppose. But I'll tell you this folks, I would take more video than photos. Photos are nice. But if you take like 5 to 10 second video clips in each spot, it's very easy to edit it. In fact the AI on your iPhone could probably put that into a really nice video. When you see the movement and the sounds and everything, that has more value than photos these days. Let's be honest. Does anybody print out their photos and put them into photo albums anymore? Not really.

31:46 John Daub: I've been finding a lot more when I go on trips taking these 5 to 10 second video clips and putting together a really nice 3 minute video that you can rewatch again. Which is like a photo album but it's moving. And that's really cool. And to be honest, 90% of the photos on my phone probably are garbage. Just like snapshots and stuff. I come from the age of film in cameras where you didn't want to waste your film. Look at that. I like a little bridge to get in here. Nice. So if you take too many, I'm a little more conservative with clicking away I think. I've got 1 terabyte of memory space on my iPhone and it fills up real quick. I had a terabyte on my iPhone 14 as well and I'd have to clear that out once every few months. Most of those photos just wasted space.

33:00 John Daub: But taking these 5 to 10 second video clips of the places that you would normally take a picture, you can do both. Put a little heart mark there to put it into important or keepsakes. And then when you're on the airplane going home, just edit that all together real quickly on iMovie or something. There's a lot of free other software. Android phones have it. And you'll have something that you can show everybody that's more valuable than the photos. Just something special about posting a video. Look at this. There's a QR code. You guys can put your smartphones and click it if you want. You can see what this is all about. That's really nice. Look at the cathedral-like tunnel.

34:11 John Daub: I've been in this restaurant a few times. Kihachi. I just remember I always was meeting friends here. So I don't even remember if the food was good. But I've been here a few times. It's a little pricey. The desserts look good. Oh my, chestnut pie. It wasn't very memorable. There's the Kihachi. And then there's the other place here. Eating lunch underneath the ginkgo trees. There are two different restaurants here. I've eaten at both of them. I guess inspiring food. Royal Garden Cafe. I was just always focused on talking with my friends. I didn't really think about the food. It wasn't the reason why I came to eat here. There you go everybody.

35:39 John Daub: Tokyo's autumn has peaked. And we have a very beautiful street lined with yellow ginkgo leaves. Some of them are still on. Most of them are on the ground. You know what that means? That means that winter is coming. But the good part about winter is the next season is spring. That means cherry blossoms. That means warmer weather. That means longer days. That means hope. And that's all I can hope for. If you haven't already seen this episode, there's a new episode drop from the countryside. I know you're going to love it. Leave me a comment on the video if you like it. It's taking you out to the countryside to the nature. It's on my main channel. Right there. Boom. I came prepared a little bit.

36:43 John Daub: A lot of people watching this on their TVs. I'm really big in the living rooms right now. 60% of people watch this on their TVs. That's amazing to me. So you might have your smart phone out. You can go and check out that video on the main channel. How do you get the QR codes? Get your regular phone app for the iPhone or whatever you have. And you can go and check out the QR code. And if you just use your phone app and go onto the screen, it automatically picks up the link. It's really cool. But QR codes, the reason why I'm showing it to you because QR codes are now everywhere in Tokyo. Everywhere.

37:56 John Daub: There's the avenue here. This is Aoyama. Again if you take a right you're going to head into Shibuya. And if you take a left you get to Aoyama-itchome Station, which is on the Oedo Line and the Hanzomon Line. Which is a loop line. It's a one stop. You can walk here from Roppongi very easily. This will take you towards Shibuya and Omotesando first. You'll hit Omotesando and then Shibuya. And Aoyama Gakuin University is about 10 minutes in that direction. But I'm going this way. You guys want to walk with me? I'm going back to Aoyama-itchome Station. Walk with me. Extended live stream.

39:14 John Daub: The thing I like about this traffic light, it's really long. So you can get a quick shot. Grab a quick shot there. But don't linger. Once that light starts blinking you better start running. Get to that other side. Don't be one of those people. I'm trying my best not to be one of those people. You can see there's a guy in my station going to the right. And I'm going to the left. Oh the Ginza Line stops at Aoyama-itchome as well. See there's the Hanzomon, the Oedo Line, and the Ginza Line. It's a nice walk here. I don't come out here that often. But look at the leaves going. That reminds me of American Beauty. Remember that movie?

40:24 John Daub: The Honda building which is on the corner is gone. That's where ASIMO used to be. And I found out they ended the ASIMO program. No more ASIMO. That was my friend. We played soccer together. We raced one another. I shook hands with ASIMO. And then Honda ended him. ASIMO is like going to the moon for NASA. From that project by doing it they learned so much about engineering that they used in their cars and in other mobility and technology that is actually more useful. But ASIMO didn't have AI or anything like that in him or her or it. So they ended the program. But I think perhaps ASIMO might be back.

41:20 John Daub: The creepiest thing, right now the flavor of the month is rum raisin. Inside the Family Mart they've got rum raisin everything in there. Rum raisin melon pan. But ASIMO came—this is a true story. I filmed it but I didn't release it. He came in like a coffin. He looked like Dracula. ASIMO. So I got a permit. This is way back, 2013 or 2014. And ASIMO, they brought him in from Tochigi from the factory I think. And they came in like this coffin, open it up and there's ASIMO inside like Dracula. It was really amazing.

42:18 John Daub: What kind of car is that? Mama mia I want this one. Wow what is that? Does anybody know what is that? This area has a ton of dealerships for Ferrari, Lamborghini, all those big ones. You saw the Mercedes ones over there. A McLaren. Really I only drive that in the video games. That's pretty cool. Should I get another? You can look at look at look at the McLaren. Really you don't see McLarens very often do you? Hold on a second there's some people walking. Look at that. That's really, that feels like a video game to me. Just like look at that building right there it's got a spoon on the side of it or a shoehorn I don't know.

43:24 John Daub: Here's what was once the Honda building is now being dismantled. And nobody's inside there I don't think they're renovating it I think they're gonna tear it down. This is Honda's exhibition and offices in Tokyo. It's a great spot on this intersection, prime real estate. I have one more story I'm going to tell you since I'm taking you here to Aoyama. I got to tell you the stories that I haven't told anyone before. Because I've been living here for almost three decades you know some of doing media stuff so some of the stories I have will shock you.

44:05 John Daub: Alright so in that tower between the Honda building and this one right in the middle of this tower, I met—I don't even know how I met her. Oh okay I knew her assistant. Her assistant was in one of the Honda buildings in Tokyo. I was one of the groups I was doing on Facebook but she was the queen of Amway I believe. I can't remember her name but she invited me up to her apartment which is the top floor. And she had knocked out all the walls around the top floor and made the top floor into one big room that went around with the elevators in the center. And I was blown away. She had pictures of the English royalty, Monaco, the royal family of Monaco. She just had so much money I guess it's like that pyramid scheme. I don't know what Amway is um I don't want to talk bad about it.

45:21 John Daub: But because I've had a lot of my friends do Amway and it's an interesting way to get alternative products too. They make some good products. But she made her fortune with that and she passed away about 10 years ago which is a shame. Her and her assistant took over and I believe they no longer live on that top floor. But it's an amazing story. She had a Lamborghini or a Ferrari and she said I could take a ride with her. I make friends with some amazing people. And now that she's gone I guess I could talk a little bit about it. But yeah Amway still exists. That was an awful loss when she passed away. She was really a petite person too but she had a huge heart I guess. At least that's what I saw of her. I didn't know her too well but she had a really big heart and her assistant was super nice.

46:25 John Daub: I don't even know how I knew her. Maybe she was in my yakiniku group but I often did yakiniku events and I had about four or five hundred people who were doing networking stuff. Maybe it was through a friend of mine. I knew a lot of people in TV stuff. But quite an interesting story. But every time I walk through Aoyama I'm reminded because I see that building and I remember I was up there at that penthouse one day with a really nice lady who was showing me pictures and heirlooms and stuff from royalty from all over the world. It was incredible. Self-made woman really amazing. And I don't know too much about her story because she passed before I could do it for the channel.

47:17 John Daub: But there you go it's one of the many many stories that I have. I've met a ton of famous people a lot of them I just don't talk about. It's just chance you know. You leave your house you get out there you don't know what's going to happen. Something bad could happen but something really great could happen too. And I like to lean that possibly is going to happen like that. And if you have positive thinking about stuff positive stuff seems to happen. Negative stuff will happen too but more positive than negative and that's just the way you guys kind of look at it.

47:52 John Daub: Alright guys there you go we're getting closer and closer to Christmas. I'll take you around to these Christmas markets. I won't be here for two weeks uh from the middle of the month but I'll still live stream from the US and try to bring you some stories. I'll be telling you some stories but I'm not going to stop streaming in the US this time. I usually will we'll turn it off but we'll keep on going maybe every other day or something uh especially doing Q&A because 2026 is a very pivotal time for Christmas and I'm not going to stop doing that for the year for Japan. I really do believe that um it might be one of the last easy years to travel for a bit. I don't know what's going to happen in 2027 but everyone's looking at the stock market crashing and the economy going bad. We don't feel that yet so I'm really optimistic on 2026 because I'm a hopeful, I'm a hopeless optimist I guess.

49:02 John Daub: And many things which is also a weak spot of mine but um oh roly-poly rabbit to you. Right in here we need more story time. Alright I got a lot of these stories I could share some of them. I might have to change the names but um I'll share some of them maybe at the end of this year as we close out 2025 [?]. And I'm kind of sad because I'm not going to be here for the New Year's. I always would go to a nice popular spot. Last year we had 50,000 people watching the live stream as the New Year's popped into Tokyo. At the time it was crazy because all of us were going to the live stream and I was like oh my god I'm going to be here for the New Year's and then all of a sudden I went from like 200-300 and then it said 10,000 50,000 and then things started going crazy. The stream was flying by. Stuff like that happens.

49:33 John Daub: I don't know what's going to happen this year. I'll be taking it easy for this New Year's um and then 2026 we're going to start off with a bang. We got a lot of big episodes coming. So take care everybody. I'll see you on the other side. See you tomorrow as I take you to another place uh maybe around Tokyo. Um stay warm. I told you that's why I need the jacket. It might be 12 degrees in the sun it feels like it's about eight degrees in with the breeze right now. So bundle up. I love how they have purple cement mixers blue cement mixers pink cement mixers. They got to make this one into a Matchbox or a Tonka car. Alright thanks everybody.