Tokyo They're Blooming Cherry Blossoms Kawazu zakura

00:00:01 John Daub: You don't expect to see cherry blossoms in February, right? You're looking at it in March, April. You're thinking, that's when spring happens. And then you see this just walking around the streets going, what the heck? I thought that the cherry blossoms are coming out in March. How am I supposed to plan my trip around Mother Nature? The thing is, there are hundreds of varieties of cherry blossoms.

00:00:31 John Daub: This is my favorite, actually. This is the one that is the emoji for the cherry blossoms that you have on all your iPhones. This one, it's called the Kawazu zakura. It is blooming right now all throughout Tokyo. And where it comes from, Kawazu City in Shizuoka Prefecture, which has a massive festival. If you don't already know about it, this is extraordinary. Check it out. It's pretty warm day. We're just at the beginning of it. These are the pink ones. These are the ones that are just so stunning. Look at the way it. The contrast off of the darker bark of the Kawazu zakura right there. I can't believe we're at cherry blossom season. I can't believe it's, well, Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day to everybody. This is the day where the boys receive the chocolate in Japan and the girls give the chocolate to the boys that they like.

00:01:39 John Daub: Takes the pressure off the guys kind of. But we must reciprocate on March 14, which is called White's Day. But today is about pink, the Kawazu zakura. Focus. Stand back in focus. There you go. It really is beautiful. And we're going to look at a couple of other trees. This one just happens to be in the sunshine here. This is going to be amazing in about 36 hours. The Somei Yoshino is a variety that everybody knows.

00:02:12 John Daub: Let's go over this really quickly. So this is the tree right here. Tokyo. Tokyo. The city of Tokyo. The metropolitan area puts out these signs in here. This is explaining. This is the Kawazu zakura. It's on the bottom of your screen right there. In Japanese, it's written up on the top. From Kawazu City and Shizuoka talks about some of the history. That's what this one is. So you know what variety it is because of the sign. You can see the sign right there. It's on the base of the tree. A lot of them will have, and not all of them will have these, but a lot of them will. Let's walk around, get a better view. There's a couple, a couple more over in this direction. We're at the beginning of it. So if you are in Tokyo, you watch this today, tomorrow, the next day, you're right on time. Then you're right on time. These trees are all planted all along the neighborhoods in the regional area.

00:03:22 John Daub: There's some, there's a couple of Somei Yoshino over there which will be blooming in about a month time from now. But let me just show you the difference really quickly. This is the Kawazu zakura. That's the one we're looking at right now. They're pinkish, pink, pinkish violet. You see one, there's a blossom right there, really beautiful. And then this is the Somei Yoshino. This is the one that everybody knows from Japan. It's a white one. It's pink in the middle, a little bit of pink, but they're pretty much white. And when you see the Somei Yoshino, it looks like it has snowed. It is really incredible. And those are planted everywhere that came, I guess pretty much after the Meiji Restoration, around post war Japan, a lot of them just started coming in and they're really mature now. So you see a lot of the bigger ones.

00:04:27 John Daub: But the Somei Yoshino again, the most famous of them all. The schedule for the Somei Yoshino, let's take a look at it really quickly. The latest schedule we have comes from just last week. I talked about this before. This is Tokyo. Looks like it's going to be around March 22, March 23. It's still kind of early to tell. That means it's. If this were the case, it'd be a little bit later than in years past. But we had it in April about two, three years ago. So it's really hard to predict Mother nature. This is the most recent schedule. And you can see up in Hokkaido, they don't start to bloom in the north until May. So when you ask me when the cherry blossoms are going to bloom, my answer is right now. Look, there's a cherry blossom. Depends on what variety you're talking about. And also it depends on where you're going to go.

00:05:30 John Daub: Geographically speaking, Tokyo is not the best place for the cherry blossoms, although you will see them here. The best place is out on the countryside. The best place is actually where you have peace and quiet, where you can sit on a bench, have a sip of coffee or whatever you're drinking, eat your bento and you have that above you and. And the birds are chirping. The water is glistening. The light is glistening off of the water. This is what being alive is all about. It really is. Spring has sprung. You know how also I know I have. I, I wasn't susceptible to allergies before, but after I got into my 40s a little bit, I started to notice it a little bit more. And yeah, Ramsay said there's a coffee shop like right back there too. This is a really nice, nice place. There is a coffee shop like literally right there. To go is okay. I like that. That's a very nice. That's a local business there.

00:06:34 John Daub: This is Hachobori. This is about a 20 minute walk from Tokyo Station. It's really close. What I love about this area is it's residential. It's away from a lot of the hustle and bustle of the tourists. Not a lot of tourists are in Hachoburi. Actually. It's kind of nice to be just a little bit away. There is a hotel right across the street, the Dorm Me Inn. They have an onsen inside of there which is. This is kind of a nice, I don't know, mid range hotel, perhaps a little bit more than, I don't know, it's like about the same as the Apa, I would say. It's a, it's a great location though because look, you're on the on Tokyo Bay. There's a Sumida river over there across the that bridge in the distance. I run across that bridge quite a lot as well, doing some renovation work. That one was built I think during the Japan Russian War of the. Was it 1910, 1911 or something like that. Ramsey Salin, have you been a traveler for 68 months? That is crazy. All right, let's take a look at some of these others here and I'll talk a little bit more about the cherry blossoms. This is going to be stunning in about 36 hours. Japan has cherry blossom fever. It is truly infectious.

00:08:09 John Daub: It actually starts in January. You start to see in like the products, the confections. You'll start to smell it. Sakura mochi. That's actually yaezakura. That's another variety of cherry blossom. The yaizakura are the ones that are pickled. They're pickled in salt and that's the one you'll see in the confections. Those actually don't bloom until after the Somei Yoshino and then they harvest it.

00:08:39 John Daub: Japan is no longer the greatest. The biggest harvester of the yaezakura for pickling. It's now actually moved to China. But there are some families in that are still doing it. The problem is the families have shrunk. Population decline. Nobody is really picking up the mantle. And those families have been getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And those towns where they picked the cherry blossoms have gotten smaller, smaller, smaller. So the population that can actually harvest the cherry blossoms has gotten smaller. So they don't have enough people. And the trees are still there. They used to have, what is it, like 400 metric tons of cherry blossoms that they would harvest. They don't. They just can't keep up with it. And I think it's down to like 80. But the worldwide demand for these has increased so much because of the cherry blossoms in Japan. You should buy cherry blossom donuts. A lot of the flavor for those comes from China. These days it's not quite as nice unless you have the sun. Right? You gotta have the sun. There you go. Kind of pale until the sun hits it. This one starts to warm up a little bit in the daytime, a little bit more. But you can see here, there's an apartment complex in the background. And you see the buds just about getting ready to blow.

00:10:16 John Daub: Oh, this is awesome. Seriously, spring is the best time. I used to like summer. I didn't mind the heat. Now I mind the heat. There's another one over there. You have to know exactly where the Kawazu zakura are. Let's go back to the sunshine in order to find them. So usually on your first visit, you can scout them out. You see the sign board for it, you'll see the Kawazu zakura right there. You can note it on the map that if you do come here in February, go back to that tree and you'll see her in all of her glory. Like right now. Well, she's getting there. Actually. I like this time because I'm very optimistic. There's still more to go and I'll come back and visit trees several times this week. I'll probably be back here four or five times just to see. Oh, look, that blossom's open.

00:11:17 John Daub: Oh, look at this. It is. This is. I'm gonna be completely honest with you. The more you guys watch the news, all this stuff that's going on, a lot of it is so negative. Turn that off. This is what really makes me happy to see this stuff out here. I am live streaming it, but I usually would like to put my phone away deep in my pocket. Deep, deep in my pocket so I don't have to. Let's walk around here. One thing you don't want to do is to go into the curb and start walking on the flowers and stuff to get a shot. I'm gonna be talking more about that in a couple of. Maybe tomorrow. Actually, they said that Japan canceled the Mount Fuji Cherry Blossom Festival.

00:12:20 John Daub: Number one, it wasn't Japan, it was Fuji Yoshida. Number two, the festival has only been going on for 10 years. Ten years is not really a festival. It's kind of like. And half those times were during the pandemic where there was like nobody was really there. So yeah, that place is the Pagoda. And that pagoda was built in 1964. It's got no tradition. It's just a place because it was on the COVID of the Lonely Planet. And so all the tourists like to go there and try to get a picture with the pagoda that was on the Lonely Planet with Mount Fuji in the background and there's some cherry blossoms around there.

00:12:55 John Daub: The problem is it's just not. Wasn't it was. It's like Harajuku Station in 1912. It was made for the population in 1912. It was not made for 40 million tourists that are going to be coming to Japan this year. Just the population increase in that area just made it impossible because the buses can't. There are too many buses coming in there. Too many cars, too many taxis dropping off people. And then the tourists. Everyone was trying to get these cherry blossom pictures. There's fighting too many selfie sticks. People were coming with their suitcases, wheeling them up the stairs. There's about a thousand steps you got to go up. So I can understand why they just said, you know what? Don't come. We don't need you. We already have a bunch of other problems. People are going to stay here anyways. Just don't go to that pagoda. We're just going to close it down for the week, let the locals have some time with it. Right. I'll talk about this more in a live stream, but I've been to Fujiyoshida and I talk with the local officials about the over tourism issues, how they're dealing with it. Fuji Yoshida actually is the one, one of the cities that is doing better with over tourism than its neighborhood, which is Kawaguchiko. Fuji Kawaguchiko is not doing so well with it with that Lawson's. But Fuji Yoshida's had a little bit more time because of the Instagram boom on that retro street. We'll talk about it. I think it's a pretty good pro. It's a pretty good issue. But I have to highlight how bad, not just the media, but how bad other YouTubers are doing the. Japan has changed all. All this. If I see the title Japan has changed, I automatically just click off and unsubscribe.

00:15:05 John Daub: I, I had that in the title like during the pandemic and I moved off of that. That's just. I don't know, FOMO. Fear of missing out. That's how they hook viewers. And it's just the information is garbage. Japan is not Fuji Yoshida. You can see cherry blossoms all over Mount Fuji. You don't have to go to Fuji Yoshida and that pagoda, it's just crazy. So trying to make people angry. They don't want you. Don't go to Japan. That's not the case at all. All right, we'll talk about that. Let's keep it positive because this is a. This is so beautiful. It's a lot to talk about. There's a Sagawa guy going by there. You can get some pretty good depth of field with the iPhone. Pretty good depth of field. That's a good bunch. The birds are all over the place here. If I pan up real slowly, you can see one guy.

00:16:06 John Daub: There he is. Where is he? There he is. He was doing. Oh, he moved. He's doing some, some matrix types of dancing there. Going from tree to tree to suck out the stuff. Let's see if we can corner him in a nice way. There he is. Stand still, please. There he is. And there he goes. You see him? It's cool. So a lot of activity going around the cherry blossoms as well. You'll see the bees coming in here. Don't worry. The bees. If you're not afraid of the bees, the bees aren't afraid of you. They can sense fear. It's like, you know, when I was in my 20s and 30s, if I went out clubbing to a bar or something and there was a really nice looking girl at the bar and I went up to her, she could sense fear. And. What's the word? A cringe. She could sense my fear and the cringe that was about to happen and walk away.

00:17:08 John Daub: Bees are the same. They can sense fear from you. And that's when they'll just say, oh, this person's scared of me. I'm going to bite them. Yeah. It's a true story. Women can sense fear. So I think it's 60% of the audience is male. So you guys should know that women can sense fear in men. At least they can at clubs and stuff, in bars. I can't think I've ever had any kind of success asking people out at clubs and bars. I can't ever. No, none. Zero. I'm like someone that you have to get to know. You have to get to know. Don't take me to Roppongi. I am not a good wingman. Look at that. We're pretty close here. Do you miss the good old days? You could put quotes around them. No. I'm probably that type of guy who, once I got married, I was like, thank God it's over. Dating is not good. It's not fun. And you know what? Something happened, like, maybe 20 years ago, 15 years ago. People changed. Everybody. Everybody thinks more about themselves. I guess it was like that in the past, but even more so, I didn't do that much dating. It's painful. Remember, I did good. I remember. I think one of the last dates was like 20 some years ago, I think 15 years ago. And it was with a girl from from Russia and took her out to lunch.

00:18:42 John Daub: This is a long time ago. I remember she couldn't get off of her smartphone. I was. I'm an interesting conversationalist, okay? I know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff. I wasn't. And I was asking more questions because I know how you're supposed to date and stuff. You ask questions, you know, just not even interested. So I have a very low tolerance for that kind of stuff. So I said I had to go to the bathroom. This is like 20 minutes in. I had to go to the bathroom. We hadn't. I don't even know if we even ordered food. I think we had an appetizer or something. We're still kind of deciding. And I just told them, and I said, I'm leaving. Here's some money for the appetizer, and she'll take care of the rest. I just never came back. Is that rude? Because I thought she was rude. I just. Just didn't. It's not for me. And then I gave up on it. I just couldn't do it. That's how you do it. If someone's gonna totally disrespect you, don't call them out. Don't make them feel bad. Just leave. Just freaking leave. You want to see? That is the ultimate statement, though, isn't it? That's sus. Yeah. You weren't there. That is the ultimate statement. I'm telling you right now. If someone is going to say, like two words.

00:20:15 John Daub: Two word answers. One word answers and zero interest in you. But more in the smartphone. This is. And the smartphones. You just come out. It was like an iPhone 6.5 or something. No, it was an iPhone 4. Jeez. It's an iPhone 4, all right. Just sitting there going like this. I'm trying to make. I don't have my phone out, you know, it's not gonna go well. She was just looking just for a free lunch or something, I guess. I don't know. It was a nice place at the Maru building, I believe in. Next to Tokyo Station. I don't. Do you really think she was devastated? Devastated? Yeah. No. I could tell you her name, but I'm not gonna do it. I remember. I remember. Okay. Oh, my goodness. I saved myself from a lot of harm. Just be careful, guys and girls actually walking out is is not a bad thing in Japan. Avoid conflict.

00:21:48 John Daub: She probably never dated again. No, that's not true. She ended up getting married another Russian guy. So. I don't know. I don't think I could go through that again. I'm done. I'm like, so done. Boris and Natasha. That's neither one of those names. You want to play the guessing game? Just start throwing random names out there. That was a really bad. That was a bad one. There were a couple of other bad ones. I don't know. Avoid conflict. Just walk out. Don't. Don't get argumentative. Say why you're not talking to me, why you don't like me. No, no, no, no, no, no. You already know what the answer is. Do you think talking about it's going to help? Just leave. Kanae would never do that. Never. She would talk. It's not about nationality either. Could be. I don't know. This is. This is where this variety comes from.

00:22:19 John Daub: Enough on me. The Kawazu sakura comes from Kawazu City in Shizoka. You can see the JR line not too far away. The trees are blooming right now. They started a couple of weeks ago in some of the areas along the river where it's a little bit warmer, but they're not until at full bloom until like around now. So it looks like. I think this weekend is going to be extraordinary there. I was gonna go next week, but looks like this weekend is the big weekend here. It's really incredible. Sorry to bore you with that. Relationship stuff is not. People ask me advice. Yeah, I'm not the one to ask advice about. If you're asking me, then you've already lost. You know, if you're asking me? Then there is no hope for you. You should ask. Ask Peter. He knows a lot better. I don't know. Ask somebody else. You know. I don't. My advice is don't ask. Just feel. You know.

00:23:58 John Daub: I'm like Luke Skywalker in a way, you know? Luke kissed his sister, crying out loud. He didn't know what he was doing. Then he got all jealous when Han Solo started kissing his sister. He didn't even know it was his sister, for crying out loud. Obviously it was his sister. They looked so alike. I don't know. I don't know how Peter's doing. I guess he's quite busy. I haven't heard from him. He's got family stuff, I guess, and a lot of work. Hope he's doing well. Respect is important, Sullen Morales. It is very important. Luke didn't have the pigtails. Enrolled. Do you mean Luke's lobsters? I saw them in Harajuku the other day. Did you guys like the picture in picture yesterday? It wasn't a live stream per se, but I was able to film the picture in picture using the iPhone app. I thought it looked pretty good. Yesterday's episode looked pretty good.

00:25:01 John Daub: Taking you from Omotesando Station to Harajuku. Looking at the stuff I saw. Luke lobster. They move position. Now they're next to that Ralph Lauren. But I'm not paying $20 for some lobster roll. I went to the one in Maine and I wasn't that impressed, unfortunately. Just get main Maine lobsters. From where? Where did we go? Was it in. Was it Portland? I forget. But it was really touristy, really expensive and. And it wasn't. I wasn't really that happy. I guess you have to go out to the countryside of Maine. I don't know. We traveled there from Vermont. Love that part of the US though. It's just an amazing place. Got travel more in the U.S. Maine's a beautiful state. I was at Ueno Park on February 3rd too. Yeah, there's some cherry blossoms that are blooming. The Jūgatsu zakura was blooming in January.

00:25:31 John Daub: I got pictures of that. So it's not just at the same time. They're coming at all different times. Heather. Heath. Sorry. Thank you, Heath, for that. Sometimes Heather. Heather's here. Sometimes Heather's here too. Heath is here. Thank you, Heath. Beautiful. So we got blue skies today. You can see that I did a pretty good run. The marathon training is going very good. A little bit embarrassed, but it's so cool.

00:26:02 John Daub: I'll be running the Tokyo Marathon for Pocari Sweat, which is the drink that everybody knows. It's an incredible drink. The shirt I'm running in though is Come over here. I like it, I like it, but it's Smurf Blue. And when I got the package yesterday with the shirt I'm running in, all I could sing, all I could say in my say when think when I saw the shirt was if I had white shorts and this blue shirt. I swear, when I run the streets, people are going to be singing the Smurf song. It's a cool shirt, though. But it is so blue you can see me from. I don't know. I'll look great on a on a cloudy day. But if it's a blue sky, I might even be lost in the sky. Is so. Is so smurfy. That shirt is very smurfy. Avatar Blue. That's another way to look at it. Avatar Blue. Yeah. It could be Avatar Blue or Smurf Blue.

00:27:04 John Daub: I don't know. I just. First thing I thought was Smurf blue, not this, not the Smurfberry Crunch, but that could be a color that complements it. You ever eat the Smurfberry Crunch? Kind of a like a pink red with it? I don't know. And they sent me a hat. I got a small. I have a really small head, but the hat's too big. I think it's made. I have a hard problem finding sunglasses and hats and helmets because the Japanese head shape is different, which is a fact, actually.

00:27:40 John Daub: Hey, I see punkotsuben is here. Let me thank you. Thank you properly. In a second here. Hold on a second. I have a screenshot. So I'm trying to buy these sunglasses here. I was buying sunglasses. Okay. And you can see like they actually had this screenshot here. On the left side is a Japanese head, and on the right side is a foreign head. And so the glasses and the hats are made differently based on the Japanese and the foreign head.

00:28:13 John Daub: I'm not joking. This is a real thing. Asian sized heads and western size heads. Elizabeth Walters writes in here. All you're missing is the white hat. I know, right? That would be. Actually, I was thinking of wearing my T-Nu-Gui, the wax on, wax off scarf. So everybody knows I'm coming. That would be the way to go, right? Elizabeth, Walters is here. The white shorts are diabolical. That would be. You have no idea. I'm gonna send you a picture of it. I love it, though. I. Don't get me wrong, this is what I look like. I usually would wear a white shirt. Okay. This is what I look like normally with it. Let me see if I can pull up the shirt. The gear I got from it. Hold on a second. Oh, no, that's not it. Oops. Oops. Hold on. I don't know if I'm allowed to show it. Actually, I don't know if I'm allowed to show it. You know what? We'll just wait. I don't know if I want to ruin it. We'll figure it out. I'll do a live stream with it soon. You are the best. Take family out for dinner tonight. Very, very, very appreciated. I will absolutely do that. Kanae's teaching. Leo went with him. I've already. I think I told you guys. We've had a pretty tough end of the year last year and a very tough beginning to it.

00:29:48 John Daub: There's a, like, I don't know. Kanae doesn't want to talk about it too much, but we. Cancer has taken too many of my friends too quickly. So this cherry blossom season is dedicated to. I don't know. I just lost another friend in January. The co founder of TokyoChipo.com his name is Greg Lane. One of the best friends I had here in Japan. An incredible person. I've known him since about 2007, 2008, so going on almost 20 years it was.

00:30:21 John Daub: And he passed away from brain cancer. I thought he was doing well. You know how things go. I was checking in every couple of months. Last year I was sharing cherry blossom photos because he was in the hospital with him. And I found out in January that he had passed from a Facebook post from his daughter. And I was devastated all through January. But we also have a family member that has cancer too, stage four. And we're dealing with that. And it's. I could say someone close to Kanae. And it's really been hard. So when you come out. So I had a drink with a daimyo supporter from Patreon at one of the hotels for 90 minutes. And it was the best thing that could have happened. Just to get out and to hang out for like an hour and a half. Looking at the view and talking about anything else but that, just talking about Japan and movies and stuff.

00:31:25 John Daub: That was great. Thank you. Richard, if you're watching, thank you too. Because, you know, going out and eating dinner together as a family, that's such an important thing. And I don't forget about that because, you know, gosh, it's just been a really, really rough year behind the scenes. And I don't talk about it a lot, but when you have somebody who's close to you that you lose from cancer and then somebody else gets it, you know, you have other people that are really sick. I guess that happens when you're in your 50s, maybe. But Greg was just too young. He's in his 50s too. I think he was like 55, just a couple of years older. Older than me. He. He was one of the people who encouraged me when I was doing Only in Japan in 2013. He is in. He's been in a few episodes too. Greg, he was in. If you look on my old channel, there's a Tsukiji episode where I went to the tuna auction.

00:32:33 John Daub: This is when he was just thinking to start tokyochipo.com I don't think he'd done it yet or he just did it that year and he was the main writer. It was a startup. He joined me for that. We were up at 2am at the Jonathan's across the street from Tsukiji. Filmed it pretty good. It was a great episode. They had like 2 million views or something. But Greg is going to be sorely, sorely missed. I gave up drinking the beer, so I don't get to go out as much. But we would go out and get a craft beer every now and then. And if you don't know tokyochipo.com it's one of the great websites that he's the co founder of and it's just taken off. And I'm so proud of his success. He was a. Used to work at IBM originally. Then he started a business with three friends called Fusion Bureau. And it was at Fusion Bureau that I met him because back in 2008 there was this kind of like weird technological boom.

00:34:13 John Daub: An incredible man named Andrew Shuttleworth who now works at Apple. At the time he was just an entrepreneur himself. Had set up a forum where people in the tech business could just talk, kind of like Petra Kucha. But it's called Tokyo 2.0 and I got to speak there and I was doing podcasting all by myself. I didn't have a lot of friends in this business until, you know, people would reach out to me because I was number one on.

00:34:45 John Daub: It's unbelievable. In 2007, 6, 7 and 8 and 9, I was number one on iTunes in Japan before YouTube really. And everybody who was an expat there kind of knew who I was because I was the guy who was number one on the video. Video podcast, not audio. I was giving away more bandwidth than Sony Music at the time. It was incredible. And I was paying for it myself. Got into some big debt with my credit card as a result. But going to talk at the Tokyo 2.0 and Roppongi and other forums. I got to talk at the new Apple store in Ginza when that first opened through Andrew Shuttleworth. But I got to meet a lot of people who helped me with the bandwidth problem. One of them was a nice man at a place called Bright Cove, which offered free bandwidth to me if I would promote Bright Cove. And I said, you better believe it.

00:35:49 John Daub: And that saved me thousands of dollars. YouTube, you don't have to pay for the bandwidth. So I was so grateful for what YouTube does. But I met Greg through Tokyo 2.0. Everybody did. We used to go out to these events. That's when I started my Yakiniku events, where I would get everybody together once a month. Greg and his friend and co partner Johan had something called Tokyo Garden Party, where on Facebook groups, we would all get together. Usually it was about 30, 40 people, entrepreneurs, expats who lived in Japan, some Japanese residents who knew about it, friends of friends, networking stuff. You would bring your customers and your clients to this. I brought a lot of my students because I was teaching at GABA at the time. So I would take my students. A lot of them were executives at ad agencies. So that helped solidify because I was like, you guys want to talk English? We're going to talk English. We're going to be going to, you know, Greg and Johan's Tokyo Garden Party. And these ad executives got to network with other foreigners who were also in the same space, incubators here. And that was incredible. And I met Greg, who was in the technology field doing web design, programming, coding, and he helped me develop an app for my company at the time. It was really some fun stuff, some amazing times.

00:37:28 John Daub: We were all losing money, though. We weren't making a lot of money. There just wasn't enough money because the big corporations were taking it all. But we really, really fought hard, made a lot of connections. And then when the time was right, I changed. I pivoted from teaching English, teaching of having Japanese as my customer base, to reaching out to the rest of the world because the population was increasing out there. And after the earthquake and the tsunami, I pivoted from making my videos about English language to Japanese to about Japanese culture to the rest of the world. And that, of course, is how my story was written. So Greg goes back to before I was a YouTuber, before I was doing everything to the start of my own business. And it's incredible to see the breadth of our friendship and then to see that he was gone last month was really, really hard.

00:38:02 John Daub: It's hard now. I just can't believe it. He's in a lot of pictures. He's in a lot of stories that I have. And, you know, cancer took him. So please take care of yourself. And Ben, thank you for that. That just reminds me to take care of myself and take care of my family, take care of you guys. So if I do mention stuff, you know, about health, I'm just worried about all of you too, because you gotta.

00:38:32 John Daub: These are tough times. It's easy to get a little bit, you know, watching the news and stuff, but to take a step back from that and come out and get some sunshine and go out and see stuff like this, it's really important. Illuminad's, my deepest condolences and warm greetings from the cold, snowy Sapporo. You're here. Wow. From Switzerland to Japan. I see the Yen. That might be the giveaway. Maybe I see you somewhere in Tokyo in a couple of weeks. Let me know. I would love to just say hi to you. You don't have to be in a live stream. I'd love to have you on the live stream, but please, please write me. I would love to see you. I actually saw our other Swiss friend Scott years ago. I believe he was with Google. Right. Scott, I found your card. I don't know if you're watching, but I send him daimyo packages as well, but Ilumon ads. It's really nice to see you here and I'm glad for the for the message here. Absolutely. Write me a message. Okay. I don't know if you can reach me. Reach me through Patreon, because I checked that quite a bit. But I'm happy to see that. That's nice.

00:39:40 John Daub: All right, guys, this is also a good time, you know, the cherry blossoms, to reflect and remember what's really important in your lives. Because it's short. You know, you see the blossoms right here, but these cherry blossoms are here today and they're gone tomorrow. That's a microcosm of our generation. We're all here together now, and we're all gone pretty much tomorrow. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We're all on the same spaceship right now because we're. This is our generation. This is our class, right? We're all in the same class right now, watching this episode, sharing it together. That's. Look at the. Look at that. It's so beautiful. Robin Harpine. Thank you. That's very nice. Wow. I think it's. You know, we're all on the same spaceship going in this. This era of time, and we have to stop and remember what's most important. And it's today, the weather. And then the beautiful blossoms. Yeah, right there. Look at that. Oh, man. All right. I think some of them have just been blossoming as we're talking. Stunning focus. There you go. There we go. There we don't go. They look good out of focus, too, don't they? Don't they? Heather's here. Hey, Heather. Nice to see you. Happy Valentine's Day, everybody. Much love to you and your family and your loved one. Make sure if you're in the U.S. you get that chocolate. Just a little bit is real nice. And in Japan, it's the girls to give the boys a chocolate, and the boys must reciprocate on March 14th, which is Leo's birthday.

00:42:17 John Daub: It's crazy, but. Yeah, These are the Kawazuzakura. They're blooming in Tokyo right now. So if you're around the city, look for these. And if you travel to Shizuoka, you're gonna have an amazing festival. That place is so much so beautiful. So beautiful. I came here by bicycle. See, there's my bike right there. It's amazing. I'm in central Tokyo and look how quiet it is, right? Look how quiet it is. Sweet ride. Look at that bell. It's really nice. These are in Hachobori. Hachobori Station. This is the bridge here. It's across from the Dormy Inn. If you wanted to check it out, there's a coffee shop over there. The owner is really nice. It's a local place. And you can eat your bento here. Check it out. You have some boats that go by here. You can eat your bento. It's really nice. At lunchtime, the sun starts coming this direction and you'll get a chance to take a look at the blossoms coming out. It's going to be great. In 36 hours, it's gonna be incredible. Maybe I'll come back, but I'm planning to go to the to Kawazu and I got a lot of other stuff to do. So until then, I'll see in another episode real soon. Thanks, guys, for tuning in and supporting the channel.

00:43:18 John Daub: I'm really happy. Oh, one last thing. I still got some. Got some of these left here. This is the postcard. I'm actually going back to Gifu next week. To see my friend. This is Okuda san. He has the Bijin Hime. These are the largest, maybe the most delicious strawberry in all of Japan. It's debatable, but he created this variety all by himself, which is crazy. It took him 13 years to develop a cultivar of strawberry that met his satisfaction. And it is so sweet. And this postcard is really so Japan, in a way. He has created a massively large strawberry that retains the. It's sweet like jam, and the taste of it, but it's not that doesn't have, like a sugar taste to it. It's like a fusion jam. You never had anything like it. The aroma of it is incredible. But when you take a bite of it, that taste lingers on your palate. After you eat it, it still remains.

00:44:56 John Daub: And that is like. They call it the. Like the princess strawberry, right? The beautiful princess. It's like a kiss that. That remains with you for like, a long time. So that's why you maybe pay a little bit more for it. But this is the most luxury of the strawberries, I think that is out there. So I'm happy to. I'm happy to go back next week to see my friend. He says he might have some gargantuan ones for me to film. So I thought I would just go and take the Shinkansen and check it out. But this is this month's postcard. I'll send it to you. It's on Patreon. I really appreciate the support, guys. And back to training for me in my Smurf blue Pocah sweat blue T-shirt, which I love. All right, guys, take care. See you in the next episode. Take you around another area tomorrow. They are big, Joy. They are so big.