Get Played in Japan + Devon Torrey Bryant Returns

This is a Head Gump podcast. Hacks is back for its fifth and final season and so is the Hacks podcast. Join the Hacks creators and showrunners Lucia and Yellow, Paul W Downs and Jen Statsky as they unpack the Emmy-winning comedy series. On each episode, here's stories from the set, what goes on in the writer's room and how these beloved characters close out their final season. Watch Hacks streaming exclusively on HBO Max and listen to the Hacks podcast on HBO Max or wherever you get your podcasts. Really excited for today's show. We have a special guest. I know, I know. A very special guest. An old friend. We haven't seen Devin, our old engineer in so long. It's going to be nice to see him. Devin Bryan, who is with us from episode one when we did our old format, How Did This Get Played, which turned into Ultimately Get Played. And he even did the thing he did on our show back in the day, he remixed the theme. He did a new remix. We don't even need to do a bit for the opening because we're just genuinely excited to have our friend back on the show. He did a new Get Played theme. That's themed to Copacopia specifically. So he did How Did This Get Played theme, which was the cadence of our old show title, but he updated it to Get Played. Exactly. And it's a real fun spin on an old favorite. I'm just excited to see the guy. I do. I do want to talk about Japan a little bit. Yeah. Why don't we spend just like a few minutes up top talking about Japan and then we can just get right into it with Devin. Yeah. Just like maybe like, I don't know, like a little breakdown of some stuff we may have forgotten about or just like a little bit. Yeah. You know, we have the what are you playing? We could maybe like just touch on that a little bit afterwards and then get right into it with Devin. We won't do that for as long as we do either because we want to get to Devin. Yeah. So we'll just do quick just touch on Japan. Yeah. We'll get right to that. Yeah. Like maybe just like, I don't know, what if we just had like five minutes, we just dedicate like five minutes like solid Japan talk. But we can't extend it if we need to, but we'll just plan on making five minutes. Honestly, we'll probably be done like 4.45. Yeah. And I'm just going to say here first and foremost, and you know, keep me honest on this, I'm not going to do any bits or any nonsense because I don't want to derail the show or like extend, you know, any sort of thing. I kind of want to just get straight to Devin. But you read my mind, we do not have time for any bits or any nonsense. Yeah. We're just going to talk straight about Japan. It may even get a little boring, but we're just going to do it and it'll be real quick. Yeah. I mean, I even think that this opening is kind of in the spirit of what we're about to do because it's like, you know, we're not doing a bit here. No, we're just going to do straight ahead. It's like straight ahead, like talking about what the show is going to be, listening to the theme that Devin made, just tiny, just tiny, just a little bit of talk about Japan. And then we'll get right into the interview with Devin. I wonder if it's, I mean, I wonder if it's even worth talking about Japan at all because we only want to talk about it for so little. Like, we might as well not even bring it up. Maybe we don't. I guess we'll just see when we get to the episode. Yeah, we'll see. We gorge on sushi and rave about toilets as we deep dive on our team trip to Japan, plus chat with our OG engineer, Devin Bryant, this week on Get Play. Be Got You! Welcome to Get Played. It's a one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to get played. I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Tiger Weigher. That's me, Nick Tiger Weigher, alongside our third host, Mr. Games Maddapadaka. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere of Video Game Podcast. This week, we're just going to talk to you guys about how much fun we had. What a hoot this will be. We have fun every week on the podcast. Nick, what is it going to say? Nick is back. Nick is back. We missed him. We missed him. You know, speaking of people being back and we missed them, of course, our producer, Rachelle Chen, ranches here, as always. This is why he's the best in the game. But sitting in with us for today's record are OG engineer from the How Did This Get Played days, Devin Bryant. Hi, Devin. Hi, Devin. Wow. Thanks so much for making time with us sitting over there behind the producer's desk. We're going to talk to you a little bit about your music, Payne Killer the Pigeon. But you did a Pacopia remix of our old How Did This Get Played theme. I sure did. You heard everyone who's listening to this in lieu of our normal theme. Yes, it was a pleasure to do. I looked at it and it says three and a half years after my previous theme. Wow. So it's 156. I delivered three and a half years ago. It's the number 157. Wow. Incredible. For people who weren't around in the How Does Get Played days, Devin was with us for the entire day that run or the book. Three and a half years, yeah. For a long time. And during that stretch, you were each week crafting a bespoke remix of the theme song. Yes, indeed. That would fit the aesthetic of whatever the game was. And given that we were mostly playing terrible games at that point, you were listening to also mostly dog shit soundtracks. So true. Here's the thing though, there would be a random shitty game with a banger soundtrack. Like always. Like Waterworld or Super Nintendo. Exactly, Waterworld. Battletoads is kind of a crazy game, but that soundtrack is so good. Your last one, I think, was the Top Gun game. And that soundtrack, not too bad either. No, it's not too bad. That was my last one. Actually, I looked, Donk Country was my last one. Oh, wow. Which is like a really pump and techno remix that I'd forgotten entirely. That's right. That was in 156, so I was like, hey, I did some good ones. Wow. Those were the days. Those were the days. We talked about this with you before, but when we were doing the pod, but you would work with different chip sets to kind of fit the era of whatever the game was. You really particularly took a liking to the Sega Genesis slash Mega Drive. Yeah, that's the chip set. Even as a kid, that was the best sounding system I thought. It sounded great. Yeah, and the chip set is awesome. I've used those in my regular records. I like those drum sounds. I like those strange organ sounds as well. They cut through everything. It's kind of awesome. The other ones aren't maybe as adaptable to everything, but the Genesis one can kind of fit in. Thank you, Devin. I'll see you outside for the $55. No, it was always cool for you to do the remix. I'm so glad it was really, really thoughtful and generous of you to offer to do it for this episode. I'm just wondering, because I know how much work it was for you, ranches that are a way we can give you even more work. Like, you could custom art each week or something. What can you do for us every week? We're here to interview ranch now like three years in. I know you guys didn't even get to choose me. That seems fine. It was better than we could have ever hoped. Everything's going great. We love ranch. Both of you both are a dream. I witnessed your meeting. I may have talked about this. That's right. We were all there at Chef Kevin, another great podcast producer, going away a party. It was like a who's who of podcast was present at this. It was a real like, there should be a designated survivor. Right. There should be someone somewhere else. I left. I wasn't there. I heard there was a designated survivor. Also, Scott Ackerman would never have come. We'll always survive. We'll always survive. Never in a million years. He would tell our story. The good news is, if that place had gone down, then Scott and I could have just agreed to end podcasting. Yeah, you'd take both halves of your key and merge them into one thing and just turn it. No, I witnessed the Devon Bryant meet Rachelle Chen. Yeah. They were doing the Spider-Man meme at each other. It was the Spider-Man meme. It was Obi-Wan Kenobi meet Anakin Skywalker in LA podcast. I think it literally was that I was talking to someone else and I just mentioned like doing themes and you go, wait, are you get played, Devon? We hold around on me. It's like, whoa, okay. I heard about this guy. Yeah, exactly. That was so fun. Then you two had a little fist fight, but then afterwards you were fast-frightened. It was sort of like a dust cloud. You'd start straight fists and legs punching out of it. We'll talk to you in depth a little bit more, Devon, but right now we should ask the question we ask every week. That question is, for our hosts. My friends, Heather and Matt, and I'll answer it too at some point, but I'm going to ask it to the whole room and we can just decide who's going to go first. Could be me. I might go last. We'll see. We talked about it before. I'm going to go last. The question is, what are you playing? Who are they to play in the audience? Me, the resident, even my junior in my segment. Where as my friends would they're playing on the video games and televisions in their lives or maybe they're on an adventure and they want to talk about the adventure. Merchant, it's great to see you. We talked about famous meetings earlier. Have you met Devon? I think so. Yeah, I met Devon. You have met Devon. Okay. I met Devon. You met Devon. Right then we met. Oh yeah. Yeah, we met a long time ago. Long time ago. Okay, got it. That was when he worked with us. I've been with you for many years. Can I ask you something? Absolutely. What am I playing? No. Wow, it's about time. I'm playing goldfish in a bowl. Oh, you're just like looking at goldfish and counting them? Yeah, I put my fingers in and I poke around. Oh, so they're not even really in there. You're just pretending your fingers are goldfish? Yeah. So they're aren't actual fish. I'm playing goldfish. You're playing the fish. You're just splashing around in a bowl. Yeah, but I got a bowl and I got my fingers in and I move them around like little fish. I just feel like I have to ask you this on the show because this article has been going around for weeks and weeks and people keep tagging us in it as if we hadn't seen it yet. It's been happening for weeks. I'm aware of the article. Can you respond to the allegations that you're $3 trillion in debt? Absolutely true. That's true. Yeah, that's why I'm in room trouble keeping an apartment. Yeah, there was an article that somebody calculated that based on the collective hours played in the amount people sell to the merchant instead of actually buying things. There's a massive trade deficit because you are spending more money than you are taking in. And I always like, what are you buying? Yeah. And they always are like, no, I'm selling. No bitch, I'm selling the golden egg. Tough. Yeah, it's tough stuff. Tough market and the interest on that loan is rough. But all this explains a lot of your history, which often involves living in borrowed residences, shall we say? Yeah, borrowed resident evils. Yeah, you didn't found it. Yeah, I know it's really hard to keep an apartment when the interest alone is $250 million a month. That's exorbitant. That's a lot of interest. Yeah, you should probably see about getting that. I do a lot of running. So you're like a reverse trillionaire really because you have these people at the upper crust, the 1% at the, you know, they get ridding richer. You can't actually get poorer because there's no such number. Yeah, I have the debt of 99% of the planet. I am the 99%. You're the 99%. And that must feel good to say it in some degree. No. No, you'd rather be... No, I would love to afford fish for the bold. You're playing, there's no fish in the bowl. You can't afford... I'll get you some goldfish. Probably a luxury at this point. Yeah. And honestly, I feel like given your situation, those fish are going to find a home in your stomach because just out of pure desperation. If I get you some goldfish, will you make a promise to me here and now that you will not eat them? Do not eat them for such a reason. Just like classic little orange goldfish. You might be thinking because the Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers. Yeah. Oh yeah, I'll get you those all day. We can get you those if you want. Don't put them in the bowl. Take some snacks from the headgum kitchen, please. Yeah, nobody here is eating them because there's nobody here. I didn't take a pop chip. You can have a pop chip. I ate that crunchy. How many forks for the pop chip? How many forks? I only use my hands. Okay. How many fingers on your hand? I got two goldfish for the pop chip. Okay. Two goldfish for the pop chip. Got it. I think I'm trying to figure it out. I think I know the ratio. Nick, Nick, two goldfish for the pop chip. Two goldfish. Because the fingers represent goldfish in the bowl. Yes, yes, yes, correct. Two goldfish up. Okay. Oh, so you're applying that to a bunch of different scales. What? Never mind. It's been the best day of my life. That makes me so incredibly sad. No, I'm happy for you. I'm glad you're enjoying yourself. Okay. Well, I'm here to ask you a question, man. Okay. And that's what you're playing. All right. So, Nick, you know, last week, Nick doesn't know this. Maybe you do because you probably saw it in the group text. Yeah. But it wasn't here last week. But you weren't here last week just to catch you up. I'm playing the Resident Evil 3 remake and at first I was kind of like, I don't like this so much. You're not in a house really. You're not in a singular location, which is sort of like what I've been used to so far. Not really the case in Resident Evil 4. A little more action packed. This one is like you're outside, you're doing stuff, you're circling back here and there and bringing items. It's Resident Evil, but it just feels a little off. It doesn't feel quite right. There's this guy Nemesis who is basically like Mr. X, but he's not dynamic. He's like in scripted areas really. So like he'll pop out and be a sort of menacing force that you have to get away from. He is scary though. At least wasn't the original. He's not so scary in this to me because he's too crazy to me. Okay. Like there's like a line, I think, where like Mr. X is scary because like obviously he's really, really big, but I think an underrated aspect of why he's scary is that he wears a little outfit. Like he made the choice to put on a little outfit. So I'm like, that's like weird that he's like this. Nemesis is just like big yucky. Ugh. What is the outfit that he wears? He wears like a trench coat and like a little fedora. He's like a little... Right, right. He went to his closet. Yeah, it's not a scary outfit, but the idea that he was like, I'm putting this shit on today. I'm rocking this today to go fucking freak some people out. It's scary. But I, so I wasn't enjoying it as much, but then I sort of turned the corner and I was like, this is actually really great because it's so far sillier than any of the ones that I've played so far. There was a moment where there was like a cut scene and then like a, you know, like a title card that said roughly 12 hours, roughly half a day later. And this was after Jill gets like spiked by Nemesis and like poisoned and then it cuts back. And it opens with Carlos, the other playable character in it, finding her in an alley. So I was like, hang on. She is laying here for 12 hours. That's so long. The town's not that big. What was he doing in these 12 hours? So I thought that was very, very funny. And some of the dialogue is ridiculous. Like at one point Nemesis like sort of like stumbles into like a body of water and like looks like he's drowning. And Jill just says, bitch, can't even swim. Love it. And I was like, this is just, this is perfect. This is so good and so fun. And then you play as Carlos and you get to go back to the Raccoon City Police Department, which I just know my way around now, like the back of my hand. Is the police department consistent through games? Yes. Wow. Well, in these remakes at least. So it's the same police department as two. And I mean, it comes back in nine. You're in there for a little bit because there's like an entire like Raccoon City section of the game. It, it's exactly, it's exactly the same stuff. So like the doors have the like the key, like the, what are those called on cards? Like the symbols on cards, like spade, diamond, heart and stuff like that. But the key shape suits. And Carlos sees these doors and he's like, what the fuck's wrong with these doors? And it's just because he's like, he's like big, dumb Leon kind of like he's like the awesome sort of like action guy, but he's stupid. He's so stupid. And I love him so much, but I'm playing that. And by the way, just quickly on the, the, the, the Raccoon City Police Department, I also, and it's been years since I played the original, remember the environments being the same. Okay. And which would make sense from an asset reuse standpoint, especially in the era of pre-rendered backgrounds, which were really labor intensive to make, but. It really makes sense in this one because I heard the common criticisms, the common criticism for this one is that it feel, it felt rushed compared to Resident Evil 2 remake and Resident Evil 4 remake. They wanted to get this one out there quick. Right. But so I'm, I'm, I'm playing that. I'm loving it. I'm going to get to more of it soon. I'm also, I'm also playing Raccoon. Raccoon? Have you mess with Raccoon yet? This is from the Bellacho Publishers. Yes. And. Bellatro. Yeah. Well, who could say? Jack Black, apparently. Jack Black. A lot, peek behind the curtain real quick. A lot of the comments on the video for that, really funny because they'll just write, it's pronounced Bellacho, but they're typing it out. Good bit. Very good bit. Really funny. Um, but it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a coin game where you're putting, you're putting coins, you know, like when you go to an arcade and there's like the coin pusher. Oh, I mean the dream of a child. Yes. More money than you've ever seen. Yeah. Just falling. What if they actually fell? Yeah. And they never do. No, but in this game they fall. Oh. So it's kind of good stuff. And yeah, there's different raccoons in there and stuff. And it's like, huh. There's raccoons in the, in the machine. There's different raccoons because they have different like sort of like abilities. And. None of what you're saying is making any sense. You said, okay, we've got a coin machine like remember at the arcades. And I'm like, yes. It's called a coin. Right. But what, where are the, they're in the machine? They're in the game. Yeah. You remember from a classic coin pusher machine, there's always some raccoons in there. With different attributes. Are they like trying to help you push coins? What is their job? They, I mean, I, what, I haven't played it that much, but like I played some of it, like I played like two hours of it yesterday. Like basically there's like different ones. They have like ranch help. They have like, they have like different bullets kind of right? They're like on the coins. Yeah. They're on the coins. They're not like real raccoons. They're not like one round inside the machine. NPCs outside of the coin pusher. Okay. But they're not raccoons in the machine. Okay. Cause it would just, that would just be too crazy. Well this tracks now, I guess. Yeah. But then there's different coins that you can get to have different like abilities. Like there's one that like, there's like a bunny coin that then like doubles up like a bunch of times, like multiplies a lot. And it's, it's good, clean fun. And you're just like watching, it's just numbers go up, but it's the exact like, it's almost like the most base version of it. Yeah, sure. Where you're sort of like, okay, I'm like literally piling fake coins and watching them fall and feeling more satisfied than I've ever felt. It's great. It's almost, you're almost at clicker game status. Yes. At 100%. But it's very enjoyable. I'm really getting a kick out of it. I'd love to hear it. Sleep is so important to me. And I did not realize how much a mattress could change how well I slept until I switched to Lisa. I got the Superior mattress, which is truly the Goldilocks of mattresses. It's a perfect mix of soft and springy. It feels so upscale that I'm always looking forward to bedtime. You know, when I'm a little kid or something, bedtime couldn't get me there. Would not want to go to sleep. Bedtime, no way. I want to stay up. I want to play. I want to see the sun come back up. But now as an adult bedtime, uh, yeah, that's my favorite time of day. Put me back to sleep, especially on my Lisa mattress. Lisa has a lineup of beautifully crafted mattresses tailored to how you sleep. Each mattress is designed with specific sleep positions and feel preferences in mind. From night one, you'll feel the difference premium materials that deliver serious comfort and full body support, no matter how you sleep. 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I don't know about you but I like keeping my money where I can see it. Otherwise, where's my money? I don't know where it went. Could be anywhere. My money's off having a good time without me. I'm alone in a half filled pool. Unfortunately, traditional big wireless carriers also seem to like keeping my money too. After years of overpaying for wireless, I can fed up with crazy high wireless bills, bogus fees and free perks that actually cost more in the long run. I switched to Mint Mobile. Look, it's a phone. If it works, that's all it does. Why would you pay more for it? It's a binary system. If you flip a light switch, it's not like, oh, there's one kind of light and then there's another kind of light. If one company's like, hey, I'm going to charge you $150 to turn on the light, and another company's like, I'll charge you 20 bucks, why would you pay $150 to throw it? It's a phone. Stop overpaying for wireless just because that's how it's always been. Mint exists purely to fix that. 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They're saying Fortnite's over. They're saying there's no such thing as a forever game. Yeah. Well, they found it's old tweets too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, cancelable tweets. Fortnite headlighting the Hollywood Bowl next year. The truth is that there are there are elements of Fortnite that are cancelable. Oh, sure. Like skins that won't come back of, you know, predators and stuff. Yeah, the Frank Underwood skin. That came out last week. Well, I don't know what I like better. Talking to Congress or barbecue. Such a build up to just a thing he might say. So Devin, so far you'll notice the show hasn't gotten better or worse. Or worse. It's kind of just the same level. So so yeah, there's been a lot of press about whether or not Fortnite is going to go away. As of today, still 400,000 people playing Battle Royale simultaneously. So it seems unlikely to me that the game is dead. But anyway, playing that. But the game that is taking up my actual attention is Pocopia. I said to my wife this morning and to our friends here in the studio before we started recording, I have, I'm sad a little bit while I'm playing it because I know that I'm in a time of my life. Like when I was playing, when I was playing Animal Crossing, I wasn't aware that I would remember Animal Crossing forever. I was more focused on the fact that we were in COVID. Yes. And it was just a thing to distract me. And now I know for the rest of my life, when I hear Animal Crossing, I'll think about washing my groceries in the sink, you know, like it's connected. But playing Pocopia, I'm like, oh, I'm going to remember this forever. This is one of the games that I will always look back on. And it made me sad because I was like, oh, this is a time that's going to come and go. And then Pocopia will be in the rear view. It's not like when we played, you know, any of the games we play for the show where it's like you dip in, you dip out. Like I don't know that I'll think about Claire Obscure for the rest of my life. I mean, I know it's a game, but I like, I'm not going to be like, oh man, the opening of Claire Obscure, why are you grinning? Just what a funny choice when people are already mad that we didn't like talk about the game. I'm going to shit. My show. It's my fucking show. I say it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stand down. But I, but yeah, I think it's a work of genius. And the longer you play it, the more details are sort of unfurled for you. For example, in one of the areas, you can find human shelters and all the human shelters are up the hills at the exact same height, meaning that there was a flood and it's environmental storytelling without, because we all know like Pocopia takes place in the middle of the world in like a post-apocalyptic Pokemon world where humans are no longer there and the Pokemon are trying to figure out what happened to them. But to find without at any point, somebody saying, oh, I remember that the shelters were up the mountains because it flooded here. But instead to find the shelters, look out over the mountain tops and be like, oh my god, all the shelters are up here, up high. Yeah. It's great. It's better than like the fucking last of us environmental storytelling where somebody writes down today the clickers got inside of our room and they killed the kids and then you find the dolls in the corner. It's just like quiet. It's silent storytelling. There's one of them comic books Ellie likes. Yeah, there you go. A storytelling of these are those comic books. Yeah, that's how you learn Ellie likes comic books. Oh, you prefer comic books. I like my PSP. Was he playing PSP or Vita? Oh, it would have been Vita actually. He was playing Vita. He's playing Vita. He liked his PSP so much he was excited about it. Vita. It's so weird. I can't wait to get my hands on a PlayStation portal, a Wifi only streaming device. Is he executed in the show? Did they kill Frank Underwood? Yeah. I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened either. He's gone from the last season. I would assume he gets killed, but I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. There is a moment in that where he just flat out murders a woman pushing her in front of a train. He's just fucking crazy. Like a major character. Yeah, who was on the posters and shit because they were like great misdirect. There are also, when you follow waterfalls to the source of where the water's coming from, there's an unnecessary amount of detail. Every water source has an origin and often it'll have a little room full of crystals or something where the spring is. It's an incredible fucking game and I love all the guys. The best a video game can do when it's in a franchise or an IP is make you want to play other games in the franchise and it is making me love Pokemon again in a way that the last few entries have not made me love Pokemon. So I really, I'm just, I'm so happy playing it. I love my hour a day in Pokopia. That's what I'm playing. Nick, what about you? What's going on with you? What are you playing? Heather, thanks so much for asking. I do want to check in real quick with Ranch because I apologize if you just said this, you shared this last week on the pod. I wasn't here. But did you talk about your reaction to Pokopia? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. My friend Jeremiah told me the storyline of what happened and I started crying because it was so sad. It is, it's pretty bleak. It seems tough. It's bleak but also there's always, there's a weird undercurrent in Pokemon, especially in the Pokedex entries where it's like in the first 150, one of the Pokemon is wearing his mother's skull. There's, and crying. There's always been darkness in Pokemon. There's like, isn't Drifloon, doesn't it take children into the air and kill them? Yeah, it's basically a Junji Ito story. Yeah, it's like a murder balloon. And that's all there. So the fact that they're just like, hey, this friendly world is in a post-apocalypse and the humans are gone is also fantastic, like consistent world building in Pokemon, which is not a great place. No, no. Like it's not a great world. As much as I want to live there and be in that world, I don't think it'd be. Like fucking Gengar is just gonna murder people. I'm gonna get licked by a lick of tongue. Yeah, it's over. Man, take me there. I see the, the Pokemon Detective Pikachu world is like such a cool aesthetic. Yeah, yeah. Like a live in that city. But remember, Mr. Mime basically like self-immolates himself like you. It's such a funny scene. It's so great. Heather, what I'm playing, well, is an experience, I guess. It's very video game related. I went to, first off, we were in Japan. That's right. Yes. And I pretty much because of the touring schedule for my other podcast, Doe Boys, went straight from Tokyo to the Orlando airport, which is like going from Night City to a prison cafeteria. Even among airports, it sucks. It's like fucking horrible. And then, but whatever, it was in Orlando, was in Tampa, had a lovely time. And after our tour dates were done, we were able to go over to Universal Epic Universe, the new Universal Park, and which has a Super Nintendo world with the Doe Boys team, we're guests of Samoa Joe and his wonderful family. It was so generous of them and such fun people to spend the day with. Hell yeah. So Epic Universe has five lands, Celestial Park, which is the central hub. And then it has these portals that are said, Matt, have you been there? I can't remember. I haven't been, no. I really want to go. You'd love this shit. Hell yeah. But the central hub world, well, yeah, that's the thing. It has like, it's like a really interesting bit of world building where it's got like these physical portals that you walk through that are supposed to take you to other lands. So the idea is, this isn't physically adjacent to it. You're going being transported out to somewhere else. It's just enough of a show that I'm sure kids especially are loving it. And it feels like, oh, it justified why you're going to someplace that's completely different in an unrelated IP. So there's Super Nintendo world, which I mentioned, Harry Potter world, how to train your dragon world, which is low key. They just represent Burke physically. It's low key like highlight of the whole park. And then my favorite was Dark Universe, which was a universal monsters world. And I'll save a deep dive on the park at large for some other time, but I will mention Monsters Unleashed in Dark Universe, one of my favorite rides of all time right away. Wow. It's so, it's so, so cool. Such a, such a great mixture of animatronics and screens. It's such an elegant. It feels like if the Indiana Jones ride was made in 2026 with all new technology and they fucking went for it. It's really, really cool. I will say, Nick, I am staggered that you were in Orlando and you didn't go to Pandora. Here's the thing. We had one day for something that was not work related. And this was what this was proposed to us and kind of couldn't turn it down. Yeah. Like Epic Universe also is just like that. It's been open what, less than a year? Yeah. Yeah. So, the animal kingdom park goes to Pandora, leaves in handcuffs. So, this is better for everybody. A death grip on the Verrong walk around character. Just screaming step on my throat. Put my head on a stake in Pandora. You're on my arm. What? Shut up. Anyway, we hit Super Mario World toward the middle of the day, so it was very warm. The exterior art direction, Matt, you've been to the LA one. Yes. Devon and Ranch, have you been to the Universal Hollywood? Yeah. Super Mario World? No, not the Super Mario World. Not the Super Mario World. You have, Rishabh. I have, yeah. So, you know, the exterior art direction is just like top notch. It's so awesome. And that's the highlight, honestly, just being in the land. And that was also true of Burke. Although Burke had some great rides, the How to Train Your Dragon world. Harry Potter, I'm just like less engaged in that IP. I saw you reading the book earlier. I was, that was more of a JK Rowling political book. Making a lot of good points for book These Things I Believe. Yeah, I was reading the men's version. Yeah, I gotta check this shit out. There's different copies for each gender. Yeah. Anyway, saw you clawing at the bathroom signs here being like, I don't want this one up. So, okay, so. She sucks. She's so bad. An absolute fucking ghoul. Just a fucking, just a worse horse. I'll leave it at that. Anyway, so, but that land is like aesthetically very impressive. And if you like Harry Potter and a lot of kids who were there did and were very excited by it. So, you know, God bless, they did a great job with it. People interpreting the art IP are not responsible for JK Rowling's politics. Super Mario Land looks incredible. The production sign Easter eggs are so great. Donkey Kong Country, which I don't believe is in the universal Hollywood. Not yet. It rules. It's so cool. There are barrels everywhere. Like it's just like, it's like, of course the trash cans are barrels, but there's also just a bunch of other barrels. There's bananas everywhere. There's the KONG scattered around that you can find. And then you have like the Nintendo watch that you can scan to get coins or whatever the fuck. I didn't do one of those, but some of the other people in the party were doing it and were having a lot of fun. And the ride, oh, there's even a Konga station, which is great. We can play the Donkey Kongas. Not the DK bongos, like full scale Kongas. And then there is the ride is Minecart Madness, which is a little underwhelming and a little short, but still a fun all ages coaster. Because some of the other coasters there, Stardust Racers in particular, amazing ride, but it almost put me in a coma. It is like a really intense coaster. This is like, this is like, ah, just fun. And you get to go up and down a little bit. And then it simulates the track jumps that you know, from Donkey Kong Country the game in a really fun way where you're coming up on a stretch of track and there's just nothing there. And then it just has an arm, I believe. I don't know exactly the technology that makes it kind of jump over it, but it's all on the same track. Awesome. It's very, very cool. It's just like, I think if you waited in line for 135 minutes, as some people do on longer days, it would be on busier park days, you'd be a little bit angry that it was like 45 seconds long. Then the Bubbly Barrel is a drink stand and the only food option in Donkey Kong Country. But what they have is the DK Crush Float Tropical Banana. And this is a banana pineapple soft serve float with pineapple soda, waffle bowl, sprinkles, toffee pieces and caramel popcorn. The soft serve. Popcorn is in the drink. Pop, well, here's the thing. It's like a float. So there's the float, the soft serve is on top of it, the pineapple soft serve. And then there is soda underneath it. It's kind of like a root beer float. Yeah, but where's the popcorn? It's like a garnish on top. It's like a popcorn on the ice cream. Which is on top of the soda. Which is on top of the soda, so if it melted long enough, then yes, you would have... Don't let it melt. What are you doing? Don't let it melt that much. And just eat it with the ice cream. I've never looked at liquid and said, put popcorn in there. It doesn't get in there. You eat the ice cream first. Popcorn on the ice cream is good. It's fun. That's fun. I've done it at home. It's a fun bit of texture. I'm saying this is a popcorn skeptic. The toffee pieces of caramel popcorn are fun. The sprinkles front. The pineapple soda is way too sweet. And I cannot finish it. You can't be mad at Heather for hypothetically drinking it wrong. Yeah, I know. What are you doing? No, I am mad. She can't say that's a negative. You haven't been there. Spurrito tastes like shit on the floor. What are you talking about? What? But if you're serving it in a restaurant where it's like if you hold onto the burrito long enough, it's going to go on the floor. Guess what? It will. At Nick's Burrito Restaurant? It all gets on the floor, baby. But the big fun of the DK Crush Float is that you get a commemorative DK mug and I got some for my pod fam. Whoa. Watch the drinks. I didn't know. So we didn't know we were doing this episode at the time. So Dev and I apologize. I don't have one for you, but I have one for Heather, Matt and Rhine. Oh man. Look at this. Wow. Look at these guys. These are so cool. Wow. I think like, I mean, if you're listening to the show, these are high quality, barrel replicas with a brilliant shining DK logo. They're plastic. Don't drink a hot liquid in here. No. Instead, put like a soda and then just dump popcorn in top of it. That's not even what it is. Apparently that's delicious and everybody wants to do it. I always fun to have a new cup. Fucking buttered popcorn in my soda. You know when you have a new cup and you're sort of like, well, this is my cup. This is my cup now. Right. So I'm always, I'm always reaching for the new cup when I have, when I have a new cup. So this is going to be in the rotation for quite a while. It's a lot of fun and also just as a display piece. Oh yeah. It's a big chunky boy. Yeah. That's going to be me drinking out of it. It's pretty nice. I really enjoyed Super Nintendo World. I didn't go on the Yoshi ride. Some of the rest of the party won the Yoshi ride and actually it looked cool and I kind of wish I had, but it's just like the seats, I guess are very, very compact. It's like the tightest ride in the park and I'm not the smallest man. And then, but it was one of the few rides because most of the rides there are pretty intense that was just kind of like a leisurely sort of, you know, thing that two and a half year olds could enjoy. What is it? Like a Dumbo type thing? Yeah. It's just like, it just goes around the periphery of the land in little Yoshi carts, which is cute. Do you? Oh, and I didn't like the, I didn't like the barricade right at all. It's just kind of, it's the interactive part is they are part of it. So I wish it was just like a little coaster or like even like that. Like the Cars ride or something. Exactly. The Cars ride is genius. Oh my God. That Red Deer Sphinx Racers is one of the best rides in that park. Nick, you keep talking about the intensity of these rides. Can I ask what your threshold is for theme park rides? Like, are you like, I don't go on the scary fast super, super coasters, but I also don't like, just where are you in terms of like, what's intense mean? So I would go to, for me, I'd go to like Six Flags Magic Mountain. I will ride everything. There's not a coaster I will not ride. I will say that things that spin you and things that drop you more from a nausea standpoint. I'm not a big fan of, but, and by drop, I don't mean like a big roller coaster drop. That's, I mean, just like a thing that you go up the top. That's just a dead drop to the ground. Not a very far supreme scream for example. Exactly. But Monozoomers Revenge at Not Spirry Farm. I'm having a blast. Yeah. Yeah. Well, different kind of Monozoomers Revenge. You're having a different kind of blast. I love the coaster. I love the spinning. I can do all the drops. I cannot ride a Ferris wheel. I have full blown panic attacks. Yeah, I don't like Ferris wheel either. I fucking scare the shit out of you. I don't like that. But fast, I like roller coasters too, but I get my bell rung so easily now and it's so arbitrary. It's not consistent ever. Like sometimes I can do it and be like completely fine and other times I'd be like, I have to go home. Is that new for you? This is new. Yeah. Yeah. Is this like a car wreck or something? No. But I do just spin around in circles all day. Okay, great. Got it. So there's a park employee, you know, I chop it up with everyone, which I will get to when I'm talking about Japan. I can't wait to talk about this. But I was talking to a park employee and she was like, Is Verrong here? Yeah, I asked if Verrong was here. She said, no, you got to go to Animal Kingdom and then that's where Pandora is and then the rest of the everyone else was like, don't leave to go to Pandora. That's like fine. But thankfully they do have Victoria Frankenstein at Dark Universe who is Babe City. She's a little wicked too. It's great. Yeah. Thinking about putting another white line in her hair. Jesus Christ. That's right of Frankenstein. Don't get him crossed. And yes. Can I ask it? Yeah. What's wrong with you? No, no, seriously. Can I? Yeah. Who is this lady Frankenstein? Is she the one with the big tall hair and the tits out? No, that's right. That's right. That's right. Victoria is an invented character for Dark Universe and she is intended because Dark Universe, which you're going into is like a representation of a historical sort of Transylvanian, you know, European village pastiche, the kind of thing that would be in a, you know, invisible man, wolf man, Frankenstein, Dracula, etc., the old universal versions. And it's really well represented. It's really cool. There's a windmill that's on fire. It's just fucking awesome. Wow. But and the two rides there, I forget the name of the other one are both really good. So they invented a new character because it's like meant to take place in contemporary time. And Victoria Frankenstein, who is like the heiress of the Frankenstein name, a Nepo Frankenstein, if you will. And I would have changed my whole family's name after what he did. They rocked with it for too long. It's like being Beatrice Hitler. Colby bin Laden? Hey, Chloe Mussolini, maybe reconsider that last name of yours. Oh, wait, your prime minister? Okay, got it. Anyway, Darwin CK? Darwin. They went classic. So Victoria Frankenstein is like this. She's like this modern goth babe. And she is a both an animatronic and a animated character in the ride. And it's a cool character design. And she's she's well voiced. And it's just like it works perfectly for the ride. But we we learned about Victoria Frankenstein before we got on the ride. And one of our double voice producers, Amelia, turned towards me and says, I feel like Victoria Frankenstein is your dream girl. Yeah, you know me all too well. To be it's one thing to be roasted by a fellow host to be roasted by an employee. I'm used to it. Amelia is the best. Yeah. What a crew. What a fun time you had in Florida. Everyone's the best. It sounds lovely. Yeah, we had a great time. And I will absolutely I think Epic Universe very, very cool park. You know, it's it's really just like kind of in the same way that if you haven't got had a new car in a while, you know, I mean, it's like you've been driving your old beater around for 12 years and then you get a new car and you're like, holy shit, look at all this new technology. Yeah. Is that like like this? I have my a fucking, you know, Apple screen in my phone like what the hell in my car, what was going on here? Have you seen any of the footage of them testing the new Fast and Furious ride that's over to get your results in Hollywood? It looks fucking crazy. It's cars on like a roller coaster track, but they go into drift mode. So like then they turn sideways on the track. Oh, wow. It's it looks like it's going to be really scary actually. And I can't wait to go on. There's a lot of that of it's just like 2025 technology. It's just like feels like an all new theme park. And that's that's really cool. And then the Super Nintendo World of BD. Now, whether you're in Orlando or Hollywood or wherever in the world, I think just as a game fan, it's it's just really well, well executed. Hell yeah. I've heard I yell too much in the ads. I've heard that people get upset because when it's advertisement time, they have to turn down the volume in their car or they get upset. And I just want you to know that I don't always have to yell to sell you something. Like for example, it's officially springtime. You know what that means? It's time to spring clean. It's getting warmer and it's time to rethink what's in my closet. I like my style and I'm trying to keep fewer things, but I still want an upgrade on the pieces I have now. That's why I keep coming back to quits. The fits are thoughtful. The price actually makes sense. Quints makes high quality, everyday essentials using premium materials like 100% European linen and their insanely soft, flow knit active wear fabric. Their linen pants and shirts are lightweight, breathable and comfortable. Basically the perfect layer for spring. The pants strike the right balance between laid back and refined. Do you look put together without trying too hard? And their flow knit active wear, moisture wicking, empty odor and soft enough that you'll actually want to wear it all day. The best part is that their prices are 50 to 60% less than similar brands. How? Quints works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen. So you're paying for quality, not a brand markup. Everything is designed to last and make getting dressed easy. You know what? When we do these ads, they'll send us stuff. And when my wife saw that we were getting quints, she said, give it to me. And I went, can I maybe? And she said, no, give it to me. I went, really? And she's like, I love quints. This is true. I'm not bullshitting here. She took all my quints and she loves it. Me? I gotta wear a bag. Refresh your wardrobe with quints. Go to quints.com slash get played for free shipping and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. Go to q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash get played for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com slash get played. Boy, I wish I knew what he was saying. But I don't speak animal crossing. Why do most of us want to learn a new language? It's probably not about memorizing grammar tables or topping a leaderboard. 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You're probably listening right now and you're probably thinking, I'm good. I don't need a VPN. I'm happy with only being able to watch content in my own territory. Let me just tell you something real quick. It does more than that. It's doing more than that actually and you're making a big mistake by not having one because guess what? Did you know you could use it to get a better deal on a flight maybe if you change the location? These things, these things we're paying for, they work algorithmically and you can get around that algorithm by using a VPN to your advantage. So why not use NordVPN? If there are TV shows, films, anime that aren't available in your region, you could switch your virtual location to a country where it is available. That's your right when you use a VPN and it should be the law of the land. You shouldn't need one, but here we are. Thanks. Thanks a lot. You know who? And if you're traveling abroad, you can access your streaming services back home and we all get a little homesick when we're out of the country. Switching your virtual location with NordVPN can also save you money. That's what I was talking about earlier by purchasing flights and hotels from other countries at a cheaper price. I'm all about saving that money, you understand? Protecting the bag as it's known. NordVPN can also act as an invisibility cloak for your IP address, protecting your privacy online and leaving no digital footprint, especially while you're traveling and use public Wi-Fi. For me, let me just tell you, using public Wi-Fi, the riskiest thing I do. I'm logging on to whatever I can do. So it's good that I have a VPN to help save my behind. NordVPN protects you wherever you are in the world. Anywhere. Could be Los Angeles, California. Could be Tokyo, Japan. Those are only two places as far as I'm concerned, but it could be anywhere else. It's super fast, no buffering while streaming, and it stops your ISP bandwidth throttling. I hate that throttling. And you can use one account on up to 10 devices. Now that's a value. Premium cybersecurity for the price of a cup of coffee per month. To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to NordVPN.com slash Get Played. Our link will also give you four extra months on the two-year plan. There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money back guarantee. The link is in the podcast episode description. Go save yourself some money. Let's talk about Get Played in Japan. Guys, first off, I want to say congratulations, Nick. Yes, congratulations, Nick. Congratulations, Nick. Yeah, this is a big trip for you. It was a big trip for me. I'd never crossed an ocean previously. And it was really, I don't know, humbling to be a part of that big trip for you. Yes. I do think about that as like a, not to be too sincere right off the bat, but like, that was something you'd said so often as it was a refrain. People quoted it back to us constantly after the fact. So like to have shepherded you across the ocean feels like a great, a big honor. So I'm glad we all got to be there for it. I've also never seen a human being actually lock in and play 12 straight hours of a video game. And you did that on the flight over with Slay the Spire. And I was like, I went to sleep and every time I would wake up because he was sitting in a row ahead of us, I was like, holy shit, he's still doing it. It was awesome. So here's what I'll say. And I was going to say the sincere stuff for the end, but I'll say it now. It was an incredible trip. I'm really grateful to both of you and Rachelle for encouraging me to go, but not pressuring me and also reassuring me it'd be okay if I opted out. I did tell you, you know, if I committed, I wouldn't bail. We had a deadline made to commit by us. I'd like, I'm going to do it. And I did want to bail multiple times, including the night before I had a full fledged panic attack in a restaurant. I had to leave and then a puke seven times walking home. But Slay the Spire got me through that flight because I just like, I locked in very early. Most of it was anticipatory as my, the anxiety was anticipatory as my, almost as my agent as my therapist was preparing me for. Hey, Ari Golda tell you, they're kind of one in the same. Amen, brother. And it was, but yes, just having something that could focus in on, especially once we were in the air. I was just like, this is working for me. I'm just going to keep it going. Can I, I don't, I mean, can I jump to like the very end, just like to the flight back just since we're on flight talk real quick was, were you nervous? Like, were you as anxious to get on the flight back? No, because you knew you were going home. Well, I already done it before. So there was that. It was also two hours shorter. Going from, we flew from LAX to SFO and then from SFO San Francisco to Kyoto. That was like 12 hours and 30 minutes. It was like 10 and a half hours from Tokyo to LA. Yeah. So that also like made me a little bit chiller and it was actually able to sleep for a couple hours on the way back, which I was, which I was surprised by. Cause I remember when we were getting ready to go, you're like, oh, this one's going to be easy. I wasn't sure if you were being brave or if you actually thought that, but it sounds like it was easier. I was being brave, but, but yes, I was fine with that one. I did play a lot of sleigh the spire. And yeah, I mean, I wouldn't have done it if you all hadn't encouraged and supported me. So thank you so much. Cause we had a great time. We had a, we had a blast. And I, we sort of mentioned this when we were in Japan, like when we were recording the episode, we all got along really good. We did like, we look, this is like, we could take trips. Yeah. It was like, I was like, we didn't fight it at once the whole time. I felt weird when I got home and you guys weren't around all the time. We had so many meals together. Yeah. We had breakfast together basically every day. Yeah. Yeah. And I only had breakfast with my wife. I mean, either. Also at the, I, I, at the, at the risk of being too sincere up top. Um, when we, when we started the show and we started how to, how did this get played? One of the old bits was I would say friends. Yeah. Like I'd be like friends. Yeah. Um, and the truth is, you know, even though I knew you guys, I, I, I didn't realize until this trip. Yeah. That you were my friends. Yeah. And it was really overwhelming. Um, and it was really nice. I don't know. It was a nice little, I mean, it felt like a, you know, we're friends. Yeah. We're, we're friends. It felt like a, a, a nominated ensemble. Yeah. Yeah. We're just not, we're not just, uh, associates. Right. No, no, no, we're, we're real friends. And I, I, I felt, I felt very bonded to you guys there. Cause we were all so far away from things that are, are natural comforts too. We all missed our wives. Right. Yeah. And, uh, we were all just like, but we all, you know, the fact that we were there together, we were not alone and that felt great. Yeah. He's, I, I, we, we all missed our wives. And usually when I'm tour traveling, which is, I said in the touring, cause that's most of the reason I'm on the road, but usually when I'm traveling, I'm missing my home toilet. Yeah. In Japan, every toilet was a Cadillac. I, 100% totos. It's unbelievable. The total representation. Unbelievable. It's a monolith. How are there totos everywhere? I got home and I missed the toilets in Japan. They're so good. They're so good. They're so good. Cause like we landed at the Osaka airport and then we drove to Kyoto and like, you know, with the, with this whole QR code system for getting through immigration, face tracking on the videos, which was all a little bit of a, a pizzazz. That versus the contrasters is coming back to the States, which was so like, you're like stunk when we got home. It smelled bad immediately. Also, there was gum on the floor inside of the airport. Yes. In LAX. And I was like, what is that? I think it was like T minus like 10 minutes from deplaning. We saw like a guy with a gun. Yeah. Right. It was crazy. Immediately. Yeah. And, but we went to, this was my first experience with Japanese public toilets. Yours as well, Matt. We go into the men's room there. You went to the, the urinal. I went in the stall. We don't need to get into details. But I sat in the urinal and you put in the toilet. You did. You, that was detailed. I don't think they're more detailed. So I get out and was giving himself a swirly. Yeah. I deserve it. The, the, the bathroom is like pristine. First of all, I've never seen an airport bathroom in this clean, maybe not a, not a public bathroom, this clean, unless and except in like a five star hotel. And yeah. The airport bathroom, just in general, in the States, you're going to just hear people fighting for their life. It's disgusting in there. A night, it's a symphony of the worst sound you've ever heard. And also for whatever reason, we designed the doors to have huge cracks in them. Yes. Like why not just make a door that closes like a normal door? Why not? Why not stalls that go all the way to the floor? Every other country has solved this. It's like us still being on the standard system instead of the metric system. I do think it's like an overcorrection to be like, we need to see people's shins to their feet and a little bit on the side so that we know somebody's in there, otherwise we're going to try to open a door and then embarrass somebody. But I'm like, you can see my whole shit, man. Like, like just suck. It sucks. Yeah. It's also like there are external indicators for this, right? Like there's a greener red. It's just like it works in places that have full fledged doors. It's just there's there's got to be some economic reason for it. It's just cheaper. It's less material. We don't have to build the whole door. Exactly. It's probably as simple as that. Yeah. Anyway, it's full in clothes. There's hooks everywhere. There's ledges. There's there's a there's a full fledged toto in the in the airport. And it's so it's so impressive. It's so staggering. Oh, the other thing they have is like they don't have the seat covers there. Instead, what they have is they have a dispenser with with the paper for it that you can use to wipe down the seat, which is like they've got a way to like sanitize the seat. It feels so much more hygienic than that weird, you know, awkward, like like paper ring you got to sit on. Yeah. And then it was so impressive that when I'm washing my hands, Matt kind of timed out where we saw each other at the same time. And I was like, you got to check out the stall. Yeah. That's what I knew that we were like just they were eating our lunch here, like from minute one, basically, I knew we had landed in heaven. But then it like even just like crowd management and just like the way people are like, courteous, courteous and but also minding their own business, but also ready to help at any time. Yeah. And if you talk to them, they'll light right up and talk. I talked to you a little bit. So we would but we'll get to that minute where we got a universal, you know, there we know what this is. They're trying to they're trying to wow us. And you know what, it worked. But they're all of it work. They sent a car to pick us up at the at the Osaka Airport and drive us to Kyoto, which is what, like 45 minutes an hour away. Yes, I was hoping I was hoping to take the train. So I was a little disappointed, but it ended up being a lovely drive because I the Japanese highways are incredible. And also just the airport pickup zone. I did not hear a single honk. No, how are people not constantly honking? What the fuck is going on here? I didn't see anybody mad. If anything, we were the maddest people there because nobody was mad. We were like, what the fuck is wrong with everybody here? And also there was just no friction whatsoever from leaving the airport because of the the entry system. And I'll just like describe it very briefly. You do this like this customs form online before you go and then you get by the way, Heather or Able guide helped us out with. I would not know what the fuck to do if not for her. Well, Heather Heather's nickname, the trip was clutch, because Heather was so clutch. And like it felt like one of those things where we were like, you could go anywhere, right? And you can like, you know, if let's say you weren't there for some reason, if it was just me or if it was like just Nick or it was just us, for some reason, you weren't there. We'd figure stuff out. Yeah, it would have been fine. It would have been completely fine. Having somebody who had been there before knew all the best shit to go to and like just like had a comfortability in the in this in the country was paramount to the enjoyment of the entire trip. And like it was that was just unbelievable. Absolutely. But yes, we did the the the entry scan thing. Like you go to these machines, these kiosks. There's a little bit of a queue. But there's like 10 machines. So there are people are moving through it pretty quickly. It's really orderly. There's there's multiple workers that are organizing the line. Nobody is threatening you as you're approaching the machines. No, they're like they want to help you in case you haven't figured out how to do it yet. You put your passport on the thing, it scans it. You put your two index fingers on the thing. They scan that they take a photo of you. Is it all like a little invasive? Yes. But from that point on, you just know exactly where you're going because then there are screens after the air train to the like main part of the airport where there are screens that are displaying a letter on you. And based on that letter, you know where you're supposed to be going. Yeah, it's a video screen projecting like camera footage of you in in a line. Yeah. And superimposed over over yourself is a digital letter that tells you which line to go to in the next section. So we're all, you know, foreign foreign visas, foreign travelers. So we've got the superimposed A and then that same A in the same font with arrows is, you know, in front of us in the terminal. It's fantastic. At least because we have the same surveillance state stuff here. Yes. But at least there it felt efficient and convenient. Here it just feels like, wait, this is adding hours to my day. Yeah. I have to do even more stuff and then surrender more. Well, it's the difference between being treated like somebody suspicious from the drop versus somebody who needs assistance. That's the only psychological difference between the two experiences. When you go through customs in the United States, if you don't know where you're going, the attitude towards you is, what are you hiding? Yeah. Like, why don't you know where you're going? Yeah. Yeah. Whereas there it's like, do you need a little help? Yeah. And all the signs too were in Japanese, but then also English, which I like, and that was like the case pretty much everywhere. And I was like, I can't even imagine like the accommodations are just so unbelievable to me. Yeah. You put it. I mean, there's so many Spanish speakers in the US, but you put a sign with both English and Spanish. It's like a Fox News statement. Yes. Yeah. Just the idea of accommodating somebody. There's a small protest outside. Exactly. So we go to Osaka. We're at the Osaka Airport. We get this cardicoto. I will say a great, great ride. Beautiful highway, beautiful landscape. Our driver, Heather, we all noticed was maybe doing everything he could to stay awake, which is really a nerve. We were talking in the car, boring his ass off. Don't want to get him in any trouble. Yeah. I don't think he spoke really much, much of any English. And I also say this, this is, I'm sure, a cultural thing. You know, we try to engage with the drivers at times and they were always very like reticent to talk back almost as if like, are you testing me? Right. Because I'm supposed to be seen, not heard. Like Heather asked this guy, this very nice man who I don't want to get in trouble, his name, and he reacted like, I like she was a cop. Yeah. But anyway, my dad, yeah. No, it was fine. He didn't have him pinned against the van. Yeah. Yeah. We went to Kyoto. The hotel universal put us up and was the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in my life until we got to the hotel in Tokyo. Yeah. This is insane. The tattoo policy immediately hitting us, Matt, yeah, and Heather, not allowed in the health spa at all with a tattoo in Japan. And this I knew going in that this was going to be an issue. Being communicated this was the biggest gut punch in my fucking life. And I knew the rules. Yeah. The rules going in, but just like hearing that almost like bullet point number one, like if you have any tattoos, you cannot go in the health spa. And you guys didn't see my eyes watered. I was like, oh, no, yeah, you're right. I'm sorry. And I started to curse my skin. And if you go in the gym, you have to cover yourself up. Yeah. You can't have visible tattoos there. And they like basically, I don't know, I just just great great accommodations. Hotel brunch buffet was the best buffet of my life until we got to the Tokyo hotel, which we'll talk about a second. Yeah. Heather, I know your Japanese is better than mine, but we both speak some Japanese. I would characterize mine as my language skills is pretty good for a first grader. A better at speaking and listening, reading, you know, I can do Hiragana and Katakana. My Kanji characters, I know, are very limited. But but like. I was told in advance by my Japanese teacher that Japanese people love talking to Westerners and they love any sort of effort. And it was incredible how true that was immediately. Yeah. Like the person, again, this is like such a nice hotel, five star hotel. There were there were people showing us like like individual bell people who are showing us to our rooms, like walking us all the way up to our room, taking our stuff inside and then showing us the features of the room. And I'm talking to this this very nice woman who spoke English fluently, had lived in America for a time, but I'm speaking some Japanese to her. So eager to talk, so eager to give me Japanese phrases I could use Japanese vocabulary could use just so friendly. And I know she's paid to to do that. But like, even if you were talking to people on the street, like everyone would be would be down to chat. Yes, every. Well, Nick, you were really you did such a great job because you had just taken the lessons. I was the worst person on this trip. Not at all. Well, in this in this particular way, because I came with no phrases. I came up so unprepared. I like got phrases from you guys that were very helpful. But I got I I got to do this, though, because you guys would get to do your Japanese and then I they would get to me and be like, what about this guy? Is he speaking? I would just say I'm bad and everybody like that. That was that was a good bit. But just the even amount that like even just the effort of you trying got people so hyped everywhere we went. It was like you were like you were like a movie star. Well, you also you said hello to everybody in the hallways. Yeah, like every single person. You also were like keeping track of what time of day it was so that you knew which like greeting to you. Right. Oh, I guess I'm us for the morning. Yeah. 22 for the afternoon and Konbanwa for the evening. Yeah. And you would be like, oh, it's time to switch to Konbanwa. And at times you would say Konnichiwa and then you'd be like to the person, wait, I'm sorry, Konbanwa. And they would look at you like you were insane. At one point, though, Heather was speaking Japanese to a somebody who worked at a store and got the compliment of the trip, I think. All right. I don't know. I don't know. They said they asked you if you lived there. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, I think I have the Japanese of somebody who lived there at this point, lived there for a year, teaching English and didn't have any Japanese friends. Sure. Like that's my level. It's like I've got enough to like operate and make phone calls and like work my way through the city. But I don't like it's clearly not the Japanese of somebody who has gone to a club with a Japanese person. Sure. Sure. I think the compliment of the trip came of Kojima Productions, but we'll get to that. Oh, yes. Anyway, I would encourage any tourist to learn even the smallest amount of Japanese busted out at every opportunity. Also, just like don't be intimidated by the, you know, because you learn when you take these classes, when you learn anything, you learn like how to say full sentences. And that's just not how people communicate. Like like you can say, you know, where do I like to ask where the the bathroom is in a full sentence. But you can also say like, where's the toilet? Yeah. Ask a single word with a question mark and say, well, you'd be like toilet bathroom in English and people will get it. Yeah. And I would hear other. I knew that because I would hear Japanese people doing that to us. There was a time when we were trying to find the lobby of the hotel and the guy just came up to us and said, lobby question mark. Yeah. And then show in Japanese and then just showed us the way. Yeah. That guy, that guy ruled. That's a georguard who walked like a half mile to show us where the lobby is. He asked us where it was. If that's where we're going, we're like, yeah. And he like, he walked with us for like four minutes. We like went up an escalator, like through two doors and then down a different elevator. We're sort of like, you're supposed to be kind of over there. You went so far away. It was great. But we did. On Monday, we had a little bit of time to talk about Kyoto in the morning before we had all of the first half of our media stuff. Beautiful city, historic shrines and neighborhoods. My first experience with the majesty of Japanese coffee, which fucking so good. So delicious. Again, every cup of Cadillac. And we also saw in Kyoto this, you know, these historic shrines, these neighborhoods. Heather, you took us to, was it the Usagi shrine? Yeah, we went to the like a rabbit temple in Kyoto. We went to the Gyan district, hoping to catch like a glimpse of a geisha, which we were not lucky enough to do. One of my favorite things in that area is that there are streets that you will be fined if you walk down and you don't live there. And I'm so fucking. I'm like, that's fine. That's fine. Yeah. Keep us out of those neighborhoods. That's not for us. Yeah, that's fine. Because I was a little surprised. And I guess because it was cherry blossom season, there by how many tourists were in Kyoto in particular. Like I'd say it seemed like there were more tourists in Kyoto than Tokyo in terms of percentage of the population. I think that there has been reports of Kyoto having a bit of a over tourism problem. And they're increasing sort of the fees for tourism, the taxes at your hotels. They're trying to like put a slight damper on how many people go to Kyoto because it's becoming over crushed. There is also, you know, for as much as we're talking about the sort of like humanitarian experience that we had in Japan, there's also been a pretty hard right turn in the country. And part of that is just the sort of over tourism. I think that it's been emboldened by TikTok. Like TikTok and Instagram have really made it a country that like everybody sees and wants to go to. Like there's a, I think a Twitter or a blue sky meme about like there comes a time in your life when you must go to Japan. The the the meme of the fascist Japanese prime minister who loves Trump. Yeah. And turning into the cart Titan. So funny. That was insane. I love making fun of these losers. Anyway, Makari is the only the only real weapon you have. Yeah. But yeah, we went to that day. We went to the the rabbit temple, the Gyoan district. We went to your first Mandarake store. Yes. Very cool. You saw your coveted controller. Yeah. There was a a bio hazard. Do we do have a context for what a Mandarake store was in last week? I guess I'll tell the listeners. Mandarake is a chain of stores that sells used used anime, video game, manga goods. And they get pretty hyper specific specifically in Tokyo. Like you'll go to a Mandarake store that specializes in 1950s Showa era tin toys. Yeah. But at the larger stores, like the one we went to in Kyoto, it's sort of a mishmash. You've got your manga section, your video game section and your anime and figurine section. Yes. And so one of the things I saw there was a Resident Evil Requiem switch to controller. But of course, in Japan, Resident Evil is still called bio hazard. And so instead of saying Resident Evil Requiem on it, it said bio hazard Requiem. And I was like, well, I don't need that. I have a switch to controller. I don't need it left. Felt the most immediate regret of my life. And then like was then on a from that point on on the hunt to find one, which then we did procure in Tokyo. Yeah. And now that I have it, I will say I didn't need it. But it is cool that I have it. I do love it. That's the whole thing I my experience with the Mandarakes and the other stores of their ilk that we visited a lot of. Yeah. There's constantly stuff where you're just like, well, shit, I could I could own a Super Famicom copy of Final Fantasy Five for not too much money. And now what I'm going to do with it? I don't know. But I have one. There was also like they have things like like, wait, the Japanese version of twins on beta. Maybe I do want that. I mean, if I had succumbed to every whim I had over there, I would have need to get a shipping container to bring all the stuff back. I wanted it. It's a great place to go if you want to buy stuff. The thing I got at that Mandarake was the Game Gear micro or the Game Gear mini. And boy, oh boy, what a lovely device. And I do not know the use case for it. Like it's got the full games. It's the full games are embedded in a key chain sized game gear. And I'm like, what am I doing? I think it's probably for people that want to practice squinting. I guess so. I don't remember if we said this on the episode recorded in Kyoto, but the worker was thrilled that you pick that out. Absolutely made her day. I'm so excited. I'm tired of dusting this thing. We saw the Super Mario Galaxy movie that night. It was a press screening that took us out to dinner beforehand. And it was amazing how quickly the Americans and I'm including myself in this fucked up everything for the Japanese. It was truly. Yeah, we were being so bad. So they had prescribed seating arrangements. It was super organized, but we were there and I wasn't sitting at the same table with Matt and Heather. So I was like, I don't move my seat. So I just moved my name tag over there and the universal reps again, super ever was super nice was we're like, yeah, that's fine. Sit wherever. And so other people kind of followed by lead were moving were moving everywhere. And it's sort of five alarm fire in the kitchen. We're like, hands on head. Like what is going on? Because they don't know who we are. They just have our orders going to a specific seat. And I didn't even think about. Yeah. But anyway, I fucked that up for everybody. But part of that was we were seated a table with Jake, who was part of the media party and does Chicago Morning TV. Yeah. Jake Hamilton. Yes. Yeah. Jake Hamilton. He's he's online under the handle. Jake's takes. We hung out with Jake for basically like several hours. And we were like, Jake's our fucking guy. We would like to take awesome because I cool guy and I understand like everyone's there as a pro. They were all kind of there in their own world. Like we were the ones who were just kind of like, hey, how's it going? We're chopping it up with everybody, making a party, talking to everybody. I was talking to the translators. Yeah. People people also looking at us like, who are these guys? It's like you would talk to like a media outlet and you'd be like, where are you from? And I'm going to use a media outlet that wasn't there specifically so that I can use this as an example without calling anybody out. You'd be like, where are you from? And they'd be like, CNN Atlanta. And then they'd stop talking to you and you'd be like, no, no, no, like what? Is this your first time in Kyoto? Like, are you are you happy? Like, are you like having a good time? And everybody almost universally would be like, uh-huh. Yeah. It was it was alarming that out of everybody there, we were the most social people there. It was so crazy. It was like so not what I thought at all. Yeah. But Jake is an absolute king. We had a great time talking with us. We had a great time talking with him rather. What a great hang. We chopped him up for basically the rest of their time in Kyoto the rest of this the rest of this night and then also got to see him a little bit during the the big day we're interviewing everybody. And we're all staying at the same hotel too. So then you see, you know, somebody you were talking to at the hotel and you be like, oh, hey, and that's fun. That was good stuff. Look, I met I met the translators. They were they were three Japanese translators who were based there and it can spoke fluent Japanese and English, which was a running theme, which was so amazing how many people had just English fluency over there. And you got to meet the track. You too got to meet the translators because we got separated at one point leaving the restaurant because I had to. There was not enough space in the vans and we just kind of didn't work out. So I got in a different van with different people who were all very nice. But then you when we got to the location, which was at the movie theater. I feel like two or three times before going into the theater, it was like, you have to meet the trans. They were great. They're really sweet. They were super nice. They were really fun. Yeah. Well, I just asked them if they were Japanese in Japanese and they like lit right up and then, you know, I said it was American and Japanese and it was great. We had a little bit of Japanese, but then just like also a lot of English and just, you know, you just you ask people about themselves. They they they crack open like a like a fucking soup can. What? They crack them open like a soup can. You know, I'm talking about. Nope. That's not a thing you do to a soup can. That wasn't all that was an all in outcast. Hey, but they had to switch it to shake it like a Polaroid. But a pop top of imagining like a pop top soup can. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, one that you'd heat up on the radiator of your car. Yeah. I think at this point, we need to talk about the second, the second debacle of this whole trip. So so we had as part of it, we're at this private screening, we're at this movie theater, they have concessions like like cordoned off for us and they've all gotten us like, you know, a popcorn. But that might have been the only second I remember they got us. It was like a pretty big popcorn for one person. A big popcorn in soda. Yeah. Popcorn in soda. They got us a soda. Heather doesn't drink. You don't drink sugar. Right. And I don't drink caffeine at night. Right. So I can't do a diet soda. So I went up to the counter like a normal person who would go to the counter at a movie theater and it was a functioning movie theater. And I asked if I could buy a water and it stopped business. Because they had already decided that that we that they had given all of the press pool, the snacks and their drinks. So the fact that I was going up to the counter and trying to pay money for water was like, it was an impossible problem. And I think because the theater was closed to the public, I think I didn't see any other people. Were there other people there? I think there were real people in another part of the theater. Where we were, though, like I just saw us. Once the, yeah, once Heather asked for a water, it was like seeing the gears of bureaucracy of Shin Godzilla. Ten people got involved somehow. Like left the room to bring someone else in to see if this was ever even possible. A literal huddle of people talking about, can we get this lady water? And me going, I'm just going to pay for it. Like not understanding what the problem was that I caused and just being like, I have cash, I have card, I have any kind of money. And that was you thought that was helping and it was actually making it way worse. They're like, she wants to pay for it. But then I think you did. Yeah. And then somebody came in later with like six water bottles. Like does anybody else want water? Like a psycho? Once we're once we're seated, the universe, one of the universal people came in with their arms full of water. Just give out to people. Any other thirsty fools here? And also that was our second our second night there. And I hadn't quite adjusted to the time yet. And I was being a big baby. I was telling everybody how tired I was. And I was so tired that I felt physical pain. I was so I was like, I don't know what's going to happen when they turn these lights off and I were having to like, you know, clockwork orange this movie into my eye. Luckily a million things are happening constantly in the movie that there was no way I could fall asleep during it. Nonstop a barrage of sight and sound, which, you know, a lot of our listeners have seen at this point. And we talked about the movie previously, but I will say the private press screening. Matt and I consistently throughout the throughout the trip, but especially here with the loudest people in the theater by country. My laughing so loud at the jokes while other people were just these these media people were just sitting through stone faced. Not everybody. No, you know, we were we were we were enjoying ourselves. A lot of people were like, I'm on the job. We were the loudest, dumbest guys. Like two idiots hitting each other on the head with hammers. The next day we had the Nintendo Museum and our all of our interviews with the cast, which you talked about in depth on our Mario Galaxy episodes, episode rather. Yeah. One thing I will say, I'm not going to dox who this was. There were multiple crews there working there. And we were interacting with multiple people in different contexts. One of the crew members on one of the shoots was the sickest person I've ever seen. So sick, almost in like a completely new way. Yeah, we were like, we were going to see a new color come out of this guy. Yeah, he was a nightmare. He was wearing a mask sometimes. But but I was like, watching this person, I was like, am I going to be seriously ill for the rest of the trip? Like, is this is this going to be the sort of thing where I have to go to a Japanese hospital if I catch whatever this guy has? This guy, patient zero for covid 26. Yeah. Yeah. And then I was sort of like, hey, if I do get to go to a hospital, maybe I can get to fix a couple of other things. It might be better here. But I also do have to then say, we didn't talk about this on the show. I told Ranch of Funny Live via text that she believed for half a second. And it was because I did see Shigeru Miyamoto. We mentioned it when we saw him on the show. Yeah, it happened in the moment. He happened to know that I had seen him before that I passed him in the hall. He was just kind of there, which was insane. Yeah, I I walked past him and he was walking by himself. I could have tackled this man. Why is that your thought? Oh, I just like fuck. I remember one time other times when I met other like people. Famous developers. Famous developers of that. It look there was like somebody else around that was like maybe a covert security guard. Yeah, for sure. I was just like, I can get to the shit or by myself or whatever. Well, yeah, I think part of the thing was he was in Japan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Not everyone has a gun. That's true. That's true. But I passed him in the hallway, immediately clocked him to almost burst into tears seeing him, then came and told you guys. And then later I had said it in the text that I had seen him to finish and I was like, I passed in the bathroom. He was running and holding his ass like he was about to shit. Show you believe that. I believed it for a second. I believe that I could see it. When holding his ass. I'm getting a text. We are uninvited to all future movies. I was like, no, that's an obvious lie. But to be fair, it was, I think four in the morning, your time when you were responding to these texts for some reason. So after around this big time, Sicki, I lost my voice partly just because we're talking. I was talking so much and so loudly for so much of the day. Yeah. And I started feeling sick. Yeah. And partly because I was so fatigued. I was so bummed. It turned out to just just be fatigued and I rested well. It was great by Thursday, but Wednesday I was basically fucking out. And yeah. That being said, you did have your first 7-Eleven eggs sandwich. Wednesday, I did that. I had my first ride in the Shinkansen, the bullet train to Tokyo, which I was excited, I think pretty much the thing I was most excited for. And there was luckily no funny business on the bullet train. There was no funny business on the bullet train. There was not a cattlecade of assassins after us. No. It was about as normal of a train as you could possibly want. We were in comfortable seats and we were, you know, like every every car is a quiet car. Yeah. And. Seven-one we're in it. Seven-one we're in it. And you can bring food and drinks, including alcohol on the Shinkansen. So we went to 7-Eleven ahead of time. We got 7-Eleven, the egg sandwiches, which is what it's called. Yes. The big egg sandwich. And then Matt and I, we also got some Yuzu beers that Heather recommended. You got yourself a beverage too. Yeah. But I'm going to say before, like, I know there's just an assumption with social media that everybody knows that the convenience stores in Japan are in fancy, but in case you're listening and you didn't know that the convenience stores in Japan are very, very high quality, clean experiences with fantastic food. Yes. And there is a viral egg salad sandwich available at the 7-Eleven's there. You can also buy clothing. You can also buy dress shirts. You can also buy suits at a 7-Eleven. You can buy Muji goods, I think at Lawson, but there's like three or four different chains. But yeah, we went to 7-Eleven, got you guys and myself an egg sandwich, and you guys got Kyoto Yuzu highballs. Highballs, sorry. Yes. Highballs are very popular. From the convenience store inside of the train station. Fantastic drink. I think I got myself a fake beer, but I don't remember. The highball is a classic cocktail that's just whiskey and soda water, but it is omnipresent in Japan. Every place has at least beer and highballs. I got a smoothie from the 7-Eleven. Oh yeah. For this train. And it was just like a great smoothie from a smoothie place, but there was a machine that I had never seen before that you peel off the top, you put it in there, and then it mixes it yourself. It mixes it for you, and then you pull it out, and then you can start sipping from this bad boy. And it was really, really good. Yeah. The level of quality of produce there is wild, because I got an apple from 7-Eleven. It knocked me on my ass. And I also got a banana that I had later, a banana. But also the thing that's staggering in Japan, overall a much less wasteful country than the US, but is the amount of single-use plastic. Yes. Like that banana came individually wrapped in plastic. The apple was in its own plastic bag. It's just like, it's just how everything is presented. And no trash cans in public, typically. This is another thing that's a huge adaptation, is that, yes, you have a coffee cup you finished that you got to go, you're carrying that coffee cup the rest of the day. I was so glad I had my purse with me. With a little trash section, because I was like, you know, I was constantly, consistently carrying trash. Thankfully, for living in a, for being in an extremely clean environment, a very hospitable environment, it's such a fine trade-off. Yes. And I wonder if it's like paradoxically one of those things where having, not having trash cans in public makes littering less common, because people are just not used to throwing trash away. Yeah, there's like a social responsibility to keep it clean. It was, I thought that was one of my favorite parts of the whole trip, was just how clean it was. What do we think of the egg sandwich? I loved it. I thought it was fantastic. It was so good. I did have a better egg sandwich later, at a restaurant that we'll talk about later, but it was just such a shock to eat edible food from a 7-Eleven. It was like insane, because also we got like salmon onigiris from there too. And just the idea of getting fish from a 7-Eleven, I would do that if I was trying to die. I would never do it here. Look, I'm a fan of the big bite hot dogs and the go-go to Keto's. And you know, I can, I can fuck with their wings and their pizza. I guess I like all of their food. They didn't have slurpees. Of course, they didn't have slurpees there. So that was a dock against it. But the, but yes, the quality of food was so much higher. And yeah, an egg salad sandwich from the American one, I would not trust. The soft, the soft, soft bread. Oh my God, it was so, so yummy. Heather, you'd had those before. Yes, I had them before. And they, they, I went to what, like Japanese opera one, one time when I was there with my wife. Don't tell Timothy Chalamet. After we saw, don't say what? I said, don't tell Timothy Chalamet. Oh, right. Because he doesn't. He hates that shit. He doesn't like it. I'll handle this one. What is wrong with you? I almost said, don't tell Japanese Timothy Chalamet. But after we, like we got all dressed up, we saw, it was an opera. It was, it was a Kabuki theater. Like we went to like a full Kabuki like performance in the Japanese opera house. It was so magical. And then afterwards we went outside, crossed the street, went to 7-Eleven, got egg sandwiches and ate like our meal after going to the theater. Yeah. This fucking egg sandwich. Like they're fantastic. They're really, really good. Really, really yummy. Had a great time. We got to our hotel in Tokyo, which I don't need to dock specifically, unless y'all want to, but it was a super nice hotel. Yeah, really nice. And we were really, really cozy and comfortable there. I took a, I was like, I guys, I might be done. I took a three hour nap while y'all want to get ramen nearby. I took a three hour nap at like 6 p.m. Well, we went to the Pokemon store first. We didn't go to the Pokemon store. Yes. We went to Pokemon store. Wait, wait, I didn't go. No, yeah. The two of us went there and. I'd say we walked in and I got immediately overwhelmed. Right. I got nervous because they had a lot of stuff, but it wasn't even the big one. No. It wasn't even, it wasn't even the biggest one we went to. It wasn't the biggest one we went to. And also when we walked in, I was like, oh, it's not that crowded. Yeah. Even though it's pretty crowded. It was still crazy. Yeah. Because then there's like a section of the thing that has like, it's like a wall of plushes. And I, I was just about to say, I don't think I'm like, oh, plushes guy, but I have a lot of plushes because I'll just get them when I see a cute one. And then it's just a problem I have for later wondering where I'm going to put this damn thing. And of course I bought, I think, more plushes in Japan when I was there. But I got, I got nervous there because they had a bunch of different ones and they had ones I had never seen before. And like there's so many Pokemon that they had so many different ones. They didn't just have like the more popular, they didn't have like just like Charizard or Pikachu or Jigglypuff or stuff. They had like Ekans. Yeah. Wow. They had like Fero. They had like, they had like this, they had like deep like evolutions and like variants from other regions and stuff. And it was like so crazy to me that I couldn't decide. So I got a Tododile keychain. Yeah. They had like Alolan Meowth. Yeah. Yeah. I was just like, what? I can't, I can't do this. I can't do it. But I got a, yeah, a Tododile keychain and a couple of pins and stuff. I always buy pins when I go places and then just like, why did I get this? Like I, I just, I have like a million pins of things that I'm like, I can't put. You gotta, you gotta find a jacket where you put your pin. Yeah. And then every time you get that jacket out, you'll see a pin on it and you'll be like, oh, you know what, maybe I'll put on a different pin. Okay. Yeah. But like make a, make a place where you put a pin. Yeah. And then you'll start rotating pins. I thought you were gonna say put them all on this one jacket and make a really noisy jacket. But we went there and then I think we went somewhere. And after that, we started walking around thinking about where we were going to eat because anywhere we were going to go was going to be good. Yeah. But then we landed at. Yeah. Ippudo ramen, which is a chain, but was so fucking fantastic. I gotta say, I don't know about you because I know you went after. I liked it more than the fancy ramen that we went to. I loved this place. I agree. I liked it more than the fancy ramen. I actually ended up going to Ippudo. So I took the three hour nap. I did a solo mission afterwards because you said you went there and it was open light. It was like, I'll just walk over there. Had a lovely walk, got a little lost on the way back, but was fine. And it was just like, you know, like this, these, these, a ramen place in particular is set up for solo dining, but just like you kind of get your own individual booth. It's great. They were super nice there. They were fairly prepared to speak English, but you know, I, because they had enough Westerners there, but I spoke enough Japanese goodbye. And yeah, had a great meal. It's Ippudo ramen, which they have in the U.S. They have some outlets and it's pretty good. The Japanese one was like, this is like top, this will be top tier ramen in America. It was insane. I thought it was so, so good. We didn't talk about how on Tuesday night after we had kind of like our, so we, we, we got back pretty late because it was like a long, a super long day. We interviewed the cast. We had stuff to do afterwards. We finally got out of there and you know, it was a bit of a, it was a bit of a halt from the Nintendo museum, Crosstown to where we were staying. It was pretty late when we got back and we were trying to weigh what to do. We maybe even showered. I don't remember what it was, but we like, we're like, I actually don't know if we did. I think we just kind of like took our stuff upstairs and we reconvened. We took, yeah, we took some of the, the, the goodie bags they gave us to bribe us, which worked up to our rooms. And then we were like, basically let's go. And the, the options were so limited at that point that we were just like, we're fucking tired. Let's just eat in the hotel. So we just went to the hotel bar and we sat down and Matt, you and I, like a couple of real pieces of shit were like, let's order steaks. And we got T-bone steaks. T-bone steaks, like fucking animals. And they weren't even that good. They weren't that good. It's maybe the worst meal I had on the trip. There's a later meal. I think that was actually worse. Sure. Yeah. But the experience was good. But it was still fun to do. It was fun to do. Yeah. But that, like we all drinks together. We had a good time. Getting the, getting the steaks was fun. And yeah, like, you know, you get a celebratory T-bone. Why not? Yeah. Why not? So I, you know, I napped three hours. I slept 10 hours that night. I felt rested for the rest of the time on Thursday. And I didn't, I actually, I didn't feel sick, which was great. Because I got to, we had a lot to do on Thursday, including the brunch at the hotel, which unreal. I mean, the omelettes, the yogurt, which is, it comes from a Hokkaido farm. Yeah. A fresh baked bread, baked, baked in-house. There's a real honeycomb. They just have a fucking honeycomb there that's, you're drizzling honey off of. And then every day I was hitting Nick with this, me want honeycomb. Yeah. And I was loving it. I'm so glad I wasn't there for that. So, and everyone, ever all the servers there are so kind. Yeah. There was a sign near the coffee that basically became the mantra for the rest of the trip. Yeah. The sign said, so there, there are a bunch of mugs, but they're also to-go cups. Yeah. And it was the most polite sign I've ever seen. It says it's both Japanese and English and perhaps some other languages. You can take coffee to your room. You could. You could take coffee to your room. Sorry, you could take coffee to your room. And the reason I think this is so good is because I did a, by in-laws I always want to see all the photos. When you go to the side, I end up air playing like a little slideshow to the TV. I got to that slideshow. My father-in-law, 87 years old, goes, huh, that's funny. You could take coffee to your room. But he also got it. I was like, he was funny. He was going crazy over it. Yeah. It's like, it doesn't, you don't have to. You don't have to. You could. You could. Well, it's also- But you also can have it a year. There's also a sort of implication that's like, hey, you could do it, but like maybe don't do that. But you could. You could, but you could do it. But the equivalent like, you know, like a fucking Radisson in the US would be just like, maybe a sign that said to go coffee if there was even a sign. And then it might have like a handwritten note next to it, like only one cup per guest. You know what I mean? Like- And it'll be like sticky and empty. Right, right, right. And I like, but anyway, we're saying you could talk coffee, you could take coffee to your room the whole, the whole rest of the trip. Yeah, yeah. Thursday, we also had our Kojima Productions Day, where we met, Kojima and his two translators, Aki and Mickey, who were both, you met before, Heather spent some time with both wonderful people. So kind, so generous with their time. We kind of thought they wanted to keep hanging out with us. I mean, like, I kind of get that vibe too. I was kind of like, should we invite them to like our next thing? They were so nice to us that I was like, I would hang out with people all day. They were so, so such, such, such incredible hosts. Heather, you mentioned earlier Family Mart in addition to Lawson's and 7-Eleven, it's kind of the big three of convenience, convenient stores. There was a Family Mart in the, in the building where Kojima Productions is. And Mickey was just like, I'll just take you down there. He just went down there with us. Like, I just want to keep hanging out. Yeah, that's awesome. Our new friends here. But that was such a surreal experience. And it was, it was just like, yeah. We met Hideo Kojima. Yes. Which was, I, we, I, like, you'd both been, you'd both met him before. But I don't know if you'd have a conversation with him. We got, we got to talk to him for a bit. Yes. He was so funny and so cool. Like, you guys are just like, fuck, this guy's cool as hell. Yeah. He's like even cooler in person. He had the biggest laugh of the trip. He did. Because, because you- Yeah, it certainly didn't happen on our podcast. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because you said to him, you know, after we chatted for a few minutes, you said, I feel like I'm meeting the Pope. Yes. Which- Which it did get a laugh. Huge laugh from him and his group. And then he said in return, tell, tell Nintendo. Yeah. Which was so fucking funny. Such a funny comeback. Like, right away. So funny. Yeah. Because he knew why we were in town. Yes, exactly. So funny. He also, I was really impressed by, because we can't talk in depth about Kojima's offices, but I can say that there's a celebrity wall and Guillermo de Toro's on there, Ari Oster, Elle Fanning, you know, and Heather Ann Campbell. Yeah. It's pretty cool. Really, really cool. And then that was like, I mean, there was a whole part of the office that we couldn't go into. Yes, yeah. Because people were working. Because they're developing an announced title. But in our conversation with Kojima, I spoke a little bit Japanese to him to introduce myself. So I sort of like, you know, whatever. Just to sort of just make small talk. And he said, how was your Japanese so good? That was the compliment of the trip. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, that was a compliment of my lifetime. I think I also said, I'm bad to him. He liked that. Yeah. But yeah, that was like so cool. And like, you know, and they're fucking, their offices are so amazing. There's so much like thought into the aesthetics of it, into the interior design. There's there's there's elements of like, this isn't this is a creative space for this reason. Every room has a justification. And then the actual production facilities are just like so top notch. You two, Devin and Ranch, actually think this is interesting. They took us into like the recording booth, like where they record the voice actors and stuff. And I said to them, I was like, I, you know, work in podcasting. I've been a lot of recording rooms. I think this is the only well designed one I've ever been in. It was like the quietest room I've ever been in. It was crazy. Really impressive. Yeah, it was awesome. And that was really great. And then, yeah, it was just it was just cool to see him. But it was also like, obviously, like he's come up so much on the show. And we, you know, dedicated months to him in the past. It was, and then he's just a guy. And he's just like, oh, yeah, you're a guy. But it was like so cool that all three of us got to be there. And then he posted the photo of us and nobody believed we were in Japan. People were like, oh, he's in LA. Again, because I said they'd never cross a note. That's right. Yeah. He's also, I've seen a lot of the photos they've been posting lately. And they've been taking more photos outside of the white room, I think in part, because it's like, oh, it's those maybe it's just to showcase different parts of the offices. I think so. And also, he seems really busy. And yeah, I mean, the white room is not exactly close to where he's working. He's kind of like I'm right here. Yeah. He left a meeting to talk to us. It was insane. What is happening? We wasted his time. It was having fun, but still I was just like, dude, what are you doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He handed us bags of stuff, which was really cool. So we took a photo with him and he was just like standing there very cool and we're all trying to do kind of a cool nonchalant pose. And then they were like, oh, we'll take another one. And I did a thumbs up and you both did the thumbs up. And then could you take a second and give the thumbs up? It was so good. It was like, that was it. That was perfect. That was like the cherry on top. Absolutely. So we went to after that was that was that our Akihabara day? Yeah, we went to Akihabara that day because we just like the otaku like sort of nerd section. A lot of a lot of our trip, we would go from incredibly nice experience to incredibly trashy experience. So like we went from Kojima Productions to Glitch Coffee, which is I think the best cup of coffee in all of Tokyo. Incredible cup of coffee. It was so, so good. It was one of the best cups of coffee in my life. I did spill. It wasn't that bad. Well, I was going to actually going to mention too, you spilled on the plane on the way over. I did spill on the plane the way over. And then you had an unlit cup of coffee that I saw you hit with your iPad. And I was like, I don't know if I can do this. But you did. But somebody spilled on the train and you were very quick to point out that it wasn't you. Yeah. And I was like, it might as well have been you. By proximity, you sort of infected her with your spilling. This person was super embarrassed, which I get, which I can relate to, and immediately two train employees helped out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you spill on a train in America, they might shoot you. They apologized to her. We're sorry. We went from Glitch to McDonald's so that we can have some McDonald's in Japan. I was so happy you took us to McDonald's. Yeah. Loved it. And then we went to Shibuya to see the Shibuya Scramble and also go to a department store. Shibuya Scramble for, can you describe that for people who maybe don't know what it is? Busiest intersection in the entire world. I don't know how many people cross that intersection every day, but you can look it up on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, et cetera. And you'll just see like an enormous mass of people crossing in six directions all simultaneously. And then all of the traffic is allowed to go. What was a bit I was doing? I think it was just being a big obnoxious American going, y'all got that scramble? Yeah, where's the crossing? Yeah. I'm trying to cross. Y'all got that crossing? Yeah. Then I would walk faster and away from you. And I'd be gasping for air laughing. Keeping my head down. But yeah, we went shopping and then we went to Akihabara and to Yodobashi Camera, which, if you've listened to, I believe, our DLC, which previously was GetAnimate, I did an entire speech about Yodobashi Camera. I think I did that on GetAnimate, not on Yodobashi Camera. In Akihabara is a, I don't know, a nine-story building that's like Walmart stacked on top of one another, except instead of just like a bunch of shit you don't need, it's everything you could ever think of that you might need. And there is a dedicated section to each of those things for that thing. So if you went and you were like, I need a toaster and you went to Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara, you'd go to their toaster section and every toaster on earth would be in the toaster section. Yeah, it'd be like, here's every single kind they make. All of them. And as I was demonstrating this as we're like sort of going up the escalators, I'm like, guys, literally, if you need a wallet, if you need a pen, and then I looked over and they had my wife's favorite fountain pen was directly beside me. Yes. Like a pen that she's been looking for for, I think, the last year. And I was like, oh my god, they have like literally, I was like, they have pens. Oh my god, they have Mary's pen. And like, I was, go get her pen. They have an enormous video game section, an enormous toy section. Yeah. So I got my biohazard controller. They have an enormous watch section. They have an like, it is, it is a, you think about a store like this and you're like, I feel like it would feel gross if it was here. And instead there, it felt like the most pragmatic space you've ever attended. Yeah. Like if you need to get a few things and they all happen to be at this store, you're going to one place, baby. You don't got to go to a bunch of different stores. Basically, half a floor was just dedicated to gotcha machines. Yeah. You mentioned the watch section. Yeah. I didn't know there was a watch section. I watched the watch section. Look, I'm becoming a watch guy. Yeah. Yes, this was essentially a free trip to Japan. And so maybe that made my spending budget a little bit higher than it could have when it came to making purchases. They had a Shohei Otani watch. Yes. I think I'm going to get that watch. Yeah. Yeah. You did get it. And I first started to talk to you and to get in the watch. You tried to talk me into it, which you failed to do. And then you got it. And then I was kind of like, I should have fucking bought it. I should have got it because it was really, really sick. But somebody had to get it and you got it. Yeah. It's a fucking incredible watch. What I didn't know is that if you were playing Pokemon Go, just found this out today. If you're playing Pokemon Go while we were in Tokyo, they had a Shohei Otani Pikachu. Oh, wow. That's sick. I want to say about the watch real quick, actually. It has sort of like like mic powers. Or in the movie like Mike, they find Lil Bow Wow and Jesse Plemons. They find Michael Jordan's shoes and they put the shoes on and give them basketball powers. OK. So now I think Nick can hit a grand slam, I think. You haven't hit some dingers. It's been a lot of fun. It was worth it to say. I'm glad you said it. Yeah. Because it's true. It's true. Why would you say, why would you lie on the podcast? I'm just giving details about what the watch does. In addition to telling time, it gives you like mic powers turning you into a Shohei Otani superstar. We went from Yodobashi. I'm just going to keep bulldozing. It's just the truth. We went from Yodobashi to a couple of retro video game stores, specifically Super Potato in Akihabara, overpriced, but still fucking sick shit. So cool. Yes. And they had cabinets up there too. Yeah, they had Astro Cities on the top floor. Amazing. And then we went to a maid cafe. We sure did. We sure did. Nick just smiled like the Grinch. Look, I picked up a couple of new sister wives in Japan. No, they were very young there, to wait too young for me. But I will say that one of our servers, or one of our maids, because you go in there and you're basically assigned a maid who's going to help you out. Ours introduced herself as Meow Meow. Later on, we were like, we asked one of the other maids, like, hey, we want to take a picture with Meow Meow, because as part of the package, we got to have one picture. And they were like, who's that? And we'll never have clarity about what the confusion was. So I believe, here's the confusion. I believe that when we needed her attention, we were supposed to say Meow Meow, and then she would come over and help us. So she was saying, when you need to call me, call Meow Meow. But it wasn't actually her name. But it wasn't her name. So when you said... We were her little kittens. Yes, yeah. I can track that. So I'd heard about maid cafes. I did not realize that the interior would kind of look like a, you know, hollowed out radio shack that had been decorated to the best of their ability with things from a party supply store. Yeah, it seems like 7-Eleven's here. Yeah. And also, this was like the flagship of this chain of maid cafes. Heather kept saying, this is the nice one. Because I was like, oh, is this a pop-up? It's like, no, it's been there for 18 years. Yeah. This is just what it looks like. Still an incredible bathroom with a todo. It's like, just every fucking toilet was galactic. I have gone to multiple maid cafes over the years. And one year, I was like, you know what? I'm going to go to one that's off the beat. I'm going to look for a specific kind of maid and go to a different maid cafe. And so I found like a Victorian-era maid. And I was like, this will be the maid cafe I try this time. And I went upstairs. And it was like, as much as you're saying, this is a party supply store that has been, that decorated a radio shack. Yeah. The other one was folding chairs and folding tables. The one that I went to on a different trip. The ceiling was the sort of square-paneled office tiles that like sit in the ceiling, stained in the corners. And just like, screw in like, pointing in different directions. And I was like, oh, oh, I've been at the nice one. So that's why I was like, we got to go to the nice one. I'm glad we went there. We did end up, our plans were to get dinner afterwards. And we were there long enough, we ended up eating dinner at the maid cafe, which was, you know, not one of the highlight meals, but it was actually not terrible. Wasn't terrible. I got a hamburger steak. You all got some curry. I got the hamburger steak also. Oh, you got the hamburger steak also. Yeah. And the vegetables were frozen. I will say, I think I liked the bad T-bone steak more than the hamburger steak from the maid cafe. That's just me. I think that's fair. I think there was just maybe something about the environment of the maid cafe where I was just kind of like, you know what, this is perfect for right here. You know what I mean? It's like the food at medieval times. It's like this context kind of works. Yeah. Because it had like some some kawaii elements to it. There was a little, they put a little face on my hamburger steak and that was fun. And for those of you who are like, again, there's an assumption here that there's like an education level of our listeners that maybe we're leaping over. What is a maid cafe? Okay, imagine a space described by Nick where all the servers are dressed in cartoonish maid costumes that are not quite sexualized but definitely not innocent. There is a small stage in the corner where every five minutes or so, two or three maids will get up on that stage and sing a song that is the loudest song you've ever heard. Yeah. Your watch, if you're wearing an Apple watch, will say extended time at this volume level is damaging for your hearing. Yes. And if you have hearing ears, they'll hurt while you're there. The maids will come up and in squeaky voices, which are cute, you know, cute personas. Moe is the sort of term for it. They'll come up and they'll squeak and fall on over you while taking your orders or serving you drinks then you can order them. It's like akin to a Hooters but not akin to a Hooters just in terms of what kind of genre restaurant we're talking about. Yeah, well, I'll just stop right there. It's nothing like Hooters. Well, I guess Hooters is more of a rest... It's not like that at all. I don't know what it's like. Hooters is, I don't know if you've been to Hooters. I have. Okay, yeah. Hooters is a little bit, I mean, it's just like an American versus a Japanese aesthetic. Yeah, it's kind of basically... Hooters is more, you know, overtly horny and sexualized. Like you're here to party and this is more like, oh, hee hee, we're silly girls here to take care of you. You're here to party, hee hee. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, but yeah, you can pay money to have them sing songs that you choose and then at the end of the day, you take a photo with them depending on the package of food and drinks that you order. Right. I gave our very coveted photo to Ranch when we got back as a gift. Wait, Ranch, what was your joke? My joke? Wait, didn't you, you said you commented on the photo. Oh, I said that. I have the same hair as the maid in the photo, so. It's basically me. But also we pointed out that Ranch is significantly taller than our maid was. Yeah, yeah, and Ranch not the tallest person. No. Five feet. Yeah, and they're doing dance routines too. There's some coordinated stuff that will happen. I, of course... These girls were busy. They were busy. I was like, I was like, they're working their asses off, they're performing the whole time. I, of course, being like a man in his 40s who looks like me, I'm worried about being a creep. And we were the only Westerners in this particular maid cafe, which was interesting. But to my relief, there were, well, kind of to my relief, there were multiple men 20 plus years older than me by themselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Luckily, some other creeps showed up. We had one more thing that we did that night that I just want to shout out on the podcast because it's my favorite bar. Wait, do we go to the porno? This is not, we went to the porno store too, right? We, you went to the porno store. Hold on. We were walking by the porno store in Akihabara. Yeah, then we saw a dust cloud of Nick and couldn't find him. So Heather, I was on a, you know, a Fool's errand all trip long to find some porno. And the thing was like, it was all either like too scuzzy or like too nice, you know what I mean? That doesn't appeal. Yeah. Yeah, so here's the thing. He quote, couldn't find pornography in Japan. Yeah, I can't jack off to this. Don't worry about that second suitcase, I think. Anyway, this place, this place was really dingy and it was, but Heather, you told me about this place in advance and we walked by it and give us some context. So there's a, you know, having gone to Japan and Akihabara a bunch, there's a pornography store on the main strip that has two floors where women are not allowed. And I always was like, huh, I wonder what's up there. But that was about as far as I clocked it. Like I wasn't like, how do I sneak onto the women, the no women's floors? Yeah. So we sent investigative journalist Nick White. Yeah. In an act of charity and self-sacrifice, I went up to the men's only stores in the porno floor, men's only floors in the porno store. The first floor is very like conventional porno. The second floor is kind of more couples oriented, you know. The third floor is the first male only floor. And there's a guy, there's, I mean, there's a lot of men in there. But one of the guys was by there and I got there and said to myself at the staircase, like, oh, that's the men's only floor. And I had this other guy says to me in English, that's where all the good stuff is. So I walk up to the third floor and again, there's two floors. So the third floor, this one is oops, all flesh lights. Like it's like every single kind of flashlight, flashlight, varietal you could imagine. All these different sort of, sort of marital aids that are like, like, like attuned to different JV stars or, you know, anime characters or what have you, different orifices, they're all there, as well as some blow up dolls and a few other sort of sex toys, but the, but the flesh lights of the headline. I get up to the fourth floor, the top floor and this is just straight up real dolls, just, just full on women that are just silicon women, some of whom are in cages. I assume so. Men don't just grab them. It's unnerving though. And, and, you know, protect you. They're in different costumes. There's some porn out there too, but it's like real, like it's mostly real dolls, like full bodies. They've also got, you know, you can buy just a torso. If you want that, you can buy just a, you know, pelvic area or just a foot. And the feet have holes, as feet tend to do. So it's, it was really. Not for me to weigh in on. I can't speak to it. It's hard to unsettle me, but. But holes where they don't belong is the line. And also just like a bunch of guys up there, like looking from real doll to real doll, like they're trying to buy a used car. Just like, kicking the tires a little bit. The other thing is all of the staff on the men, men only, men only floors, the floors were, my women are not allowed, were women. And I was, I still cannot figure out why that was. I have my theories. I think it's because you don't want to, if, if I'm projecting, it's because you don't want to buy porno from a dude. Like if you have your option to buy porno, if you, if you could choose to buy porno from a woman or from a man and you're a man, I would assume you'd rather buy it from a chick. I think the experience either ways humiliating. It's mortifying. And I think the kind of people who go to the store or maybe not be as embarrassed, but I think that's, it's a fair theory because I have no idea. Yeah. I, the, the, my theory is there's some maybe a cultural, psychological element that if women are present, guys are going to be less creepy. Because you could see guys behaving very badly in this space, particularly around the dolls. Maybe that's why they're caged. You know what I mean? Like openly groping them or fondling them or whatever or humping them. You know, like, it's just like, so, so maybe that's it. But honestly, it could also be a sales thing. It could also be like actually guys buy more porno when women are there because, you know, they're whatever they're like, whoa, this real woman thinks it's okay. Kind of, just kind of like Heather's theory. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's possible. I don't know. But while Nick was in there for three hours, Matt and I had our. Yeah. We also walked by a full PC store, a gaming PC store, but we didn't have time for it. But I was like, holy shit, this is like a nine story floor with PC components. Like you could not be like, and given the Japan exchange rate there, I was like, can I go in there and get a fucking new video card or something? Yeah. I don't know. It was, it was awesome. Each floor had a, had a, like a, a certain like component. Yeah. Yeah. Which was really, really cool. But from there, we went to Lone Non Bar, which is a bar that serves both non-alcoholic and all alcoholic drinks in equality, which is what, it was such a fantastic experience for me as a sober person. Because you can order, like I can order a martini, which is not at all a martini, but also approximates a martini and gives, and they, and they make it with the same attention and care and like, like detail. Yeah. As you would if you were making a high end cocktail. And then you guys were having your cocktails and you were like, these are fucking phenomenal. They were really, really great. There were, there were some of the best drinks I, I, I best cocktails I've had in terms of craft cocktails. It's also just the vibes of this bar were impeccable. Yeah. And it wasn't a huge bar. No. Like a, like, like what? Like 12 seats, 14 seats, a few tables. It's underneath the old railway that was, I think, destroyed in World War II and then became like a, sort of like, they took the underground space and turned each of those underground spaces into a, a shop or a restaurant. Yeah. Restroom was, was down the, like outside, down in the alley. By the way, another thing that I didn't even realize I wasn't encountering until I got back to America was restroom keys or restroom codes. Yeah. Just like restroom, public restrooms were just open there. Yes. Drinks were great. The bartenders were great. We were talking with them. We were talking to each other. They were super cool. It was, it was just like, that was a great experience, Heather. That was another thing where I'm just, I'm so grateful to be with you on this trip because you took me to this, this space I never would have known about. Yes. Absolutely. That was like, that was, yeah, an all time bar. It was incredible. So Friday, we had Heather's big dog moment, which is, Oath. She had reserved Oath. Oath. A party of three at a six seat sushi restaurant, Omakase restaurant. Yeah. For lunch, which was the right move in, in hindsight, going to get, because let's just, let's just talk about it. Sushi show, Shaitou is the restaurant. Yeah. Sushi show, Saitou. Not sushi, Saitou, different restaurants. Sushi show, Saitou was where we had our lunch. Now, I've reserved lunches in, in Tokyo before. Mary and I got to go to Jiro and by that, I mean not Jiro from Jiro Dreams of Sushi, but Jiro's son, who's also in the documentary, has his own restaurant. We went to Jiro and it's like a hour long event, you know, maybe 10, maybe 12 bites of sushi, very measured, very coursed out. You leave feeling full, but you don't leave feeling like overwhelmed. So I assumed this would be a similar experience. It was two straight hours of nonstop sushi for you guys. I tapped out. Yes. Midway through the, I tapped out at what I thought was two courses before dessert. I was like, I'm done. I can't have anymore. So, you know, I'm just going to politely decline the rest of the courses, which I felt so fucking horrible about because I was like, I love this sushi. It is an emotional experience. I physically can't fit anymore in my body. And the guy wouldn't stop making fun of you. Yeah, he was so mad. But he was also like a little, no, he understood, but he's a little disappointed. Yeah. He's like clearly like, oh, I was enjoying cooking for you guys, but he loved us. Because it was us, we were a party of three and, you know, we're Westerners, but we're speaking some Japanese. We're trying to like, you know, and he speaks great English. I had a Dodgers cap on. It was opening day. Matt, we'll talk about this, but being a Dodgers fan, a Doje-su fan in Japan is like everyone. You're the most popular guy. No, no, no, no. We all took turns being popular. It was very fun. Very different for us. Yeah. But they, people love that. Yes. Because Otani in particular is so popular. Yeah. Everyone's asking if I know him. Just kidding. We said yes. So it was, we were the party of three and then there was a party of two and one empty seat. And the party of two, this is a place where they were like, you know, not Dr. Nare about it, but we're serious in the like, like, please, like you have to be on time. Do not wear fragrances. There's a dress code. So we're all dressed nice. We're not, you know, a cologne dup, which I usually am. And then we are... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You left the Dracar noir at a back-of-the-hotel. Guess I'll put this axe body spray in the fucking bathroom trash can. You brought it in your bag so you can spray up after. Right, right. So, pull all these honeys off of you. The other couple was, they were, the woman was very nice. They were from China. They showed up late. So immediately they're like, that's starting the best impression. And then the guy was just on his phone the entire time. And I seemed like he did not want to be there. Well, I was going to say he seemed pissed off. He seemed like he was like, it was like, like the old ball and chain dragged me here. This is sort of because she was having fun and I had some fun talking to her. She was great. He was like, I can't believe I got to eat the best food I've ever had in my fucking life. It was the best sushi I've ever had. It was like Heather was saying it was like 20 courses. We had so much food. Yeah. I said that we were like Homer when he goes to hell and he keeps getting fed donuts. We were that happy. We were like, this rocks. Yeah. It was, it's like the kind of, like I had this multiple times in Japan where you have, you have bites of food and like you get emotional. Yeah. Like, how is this so good? Yeah. Yeah. How am I, how am I experiencing this moment right now? How will I remember this bite? Yes. You know what I mean? Yes. But it just, it just kind of feels like that. Just, just knocks you off your feet. There were times like, you know, in the, like the presentations were all like very different. And I thought it was cool. Like sometimes they'd bring you something on a little plate. Sometimes they put it on like the, like the wooden counter in front of you and tell you how to prepare it, how to prepare your bite with like salt or like the little sauce or whatever. Sometimes they just straight up put it in your hand and tell you to eat it. And I was like, this rule. Yeah. They'd ask you, hold out your hand and they'd put the food in your hand. Yes. Yeah. I love that. I love being encouraged to eat with our hands. I love how they would just tell you whether or not to sauce something. Yeah. And eat, and eat, you're making more decisions for me. Great. Yeah. Cause I don't, I'm going to mess it up. Right. I was asking where the, I asked, I did a joke before we went in or I asked Heather if she thought that they would have Philadelphia rolls there. Yeah. Pretty good. Heather was about just as mad as she is now. I'm never mad at you guys. I feel nothing when you say those words. You're just visualizing my death in the grandest way. We had, we had, it was such a fantastic meal. They brought out what I thought was a dessert course, but it was a savory course and there's still like 40% of the meal. It was a savory like, like, it was like baby eel. What was it? Yeah. Yeah. It was like a custard. Like it was like an eel custard basically. It was an eel custard. And the, that was delicious. And then there was like 40% of the meal left. You get to the dessert course and they have like ice creams or sorbets you can get. Matt, you picked a sorbet. They brought you all of them. They brought me all three sorbets they had and they were all so good, but I was glad I got that because I'll just tell you, if I had ice cream, I would have been a hold of my bathroom, my butt. Like I'd said, chigirubu hotos. And here's the other thing. That wasn't the end. No. He was like, I got more sushi if you want any. And then he brought out is, he brought out eight more options. Yes. And I was just like, we're so full, but I gotta get something. You got more. So I got like two kinds of mackerel and a sweet shrimp and they were all delicious. They were all so yummy. I had to get up and stretch my back because the chairs were very nice, but I was hurt from sitting at the chair and eating for so long. They were what chairs? They were beautiful, but disco Elysium chairs. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of ergonomically, you know, not ideal. I had to like go and like touch my toes and stuff. Like I was like in pain. But it was, it was incredible. That was no the best food. Well, best food to the trip, best sushi in my life. Well, this day was a crazy food day. This day was a crazy food day. And I think these two meals, two best meals I've ever had in my life. Wow. We should have spaced them out. Yeah. But yes, I think they were, they were definitely like, like both up there for sure. I thought there was a, there was a higher percentage than normal that after our second meal that I would go home and go to sleep and not wake up. Yeah. I was like concerned that I was going to die in my sleep. It felt like when Homer, so we, that night we went to, my, my attempt at a big dog moment was a, uh, uh, was this, uh, this restaurant, Rika, which is in the Roppongi neighborhood, I believe. And this was a, this is a Wagyu steak place. So we were like, Heather's like, we're doing sushi for lunch. Let's do steak for dinner. And, but Heather, you, you were still so full. Yeah. I was so full that I was like, guys, I'm going to stay in. And I, I stayed in the hotel room eight, zero dinner. Yeah. Because I was still so full from lunch, played polkopia and went to sleep. So you were so kind. You were privately texting me, let me reimburse you because this place was like paying advance prefix. I was like, let me reimburse you for the cost of it. I just, I just called the restaurant and just explained the situation and they were, they were like, yeah, it's fine. Well, just for, just for bringing, just bringing the two of you. And so we went there. It's all private room dining. So every party gets their own room. Yeah. We had, Nick and I just basically had a romantic dinner. We had a great time. Yeah. We've, we've finished a bottle of wine and ate maybe the most steak we've ever eaten at once. Yeah. There was a, we had a bit that would have driven Heather crazy, which is that they had like a, they had an empty frame and we're like, do you think a TV goes there on the wall? And then we just keep talking about them playing family guy on it. It was like, can we ask them to put on family guy? If we had family guy, we'd have been there all night. Cause like the staff there was also really awesome and fun. And the food was so good. There was two different cuts of steak. There was like a, you know, there was the Wagyu cut. Wait, wait, Wagyu and Kobe. Yeah. You got two different cuts of each. Yes. Now like each of these was like the size of a deck of cards, which it doesn't sound like the most steak, but this is the richest meat you'll ever eat in your life. Yes. And I was like physically ill. But I was determined to eat all. We were like both like quietly sweating. But also we arrived full. Like we were, we were still full when we got there. And what's crazy is like, they know that like that, like there's like a really good chef there. Like he has a, you know, you know, you risk credentials, whatever. He's like French educated. And, and it was like, it's a French, it's a French concept. Tray bian. Tray bian. Really your whole meal is like, there's one appetizer and some bread. And the appetizer is like a beet soup. So it's like, it's like very, very light and basically just kind of like wetting your appetite. Yeah. And the soup was, the soup was good. The soup was great. The, the steak doesn't come with potatoes or anything. It's just like a little bit of greens, which is more than enough. And this, it's just so rich that it's just like impossible. I don't, like, I don't know how I would myself to finish it, but I did. That was, yeah, no, it was, I was scared. Yeah. It was, it was, it was crazy. It was a crazy meal. They were, they, we had two servers attending to us. They were so nice. Yes. The guy kept. They did not have family guy. They did not have family guy on. But we felt like family there. I was like, what am I, the freaking Olive Garden? Anyway, the guy, there was a man and a woman. They did ask us if we had noticed a particular trend that had arised. Yeah. And it was that there was all this violence in movies and sex on TV. Right, right, right. That was a whole thing. And then we had an unlimited salad and breadsticks. But we, which we barely touched. So. What the fuck is happening? Men are doing different bits. We're both committed to each of them. The major D was quagmire. Giggity, giggy. Actually, the guy who was helping us out was kept saying to me, when I'd say, I'd kept saying, I had talked to him Japanese a little bit. And I kept saying, you know, whatever, like thank you and, and please and whatever in Japanese. And he kept coming, cool Japanese. He did do that. And it was fucking awesome. It was great. If you, it's the best place to go if you want to feel like a million bucks for doing the littlest amount. Yeah, it's so great. In between those two meals, we did go to Nakano Broadway. That's right. Yeah. Which is a mall that is, you know, super Showa era, like 70s or 80s looking mall, that is just stuffed to the gills with retro anime, like vintage toys, but also modern stuff. And it's not just Japanese stuff. It's also like there are stores in that mall that have like all of the Star Wars figures. And you're just like, at some point you're so overwhelmed by how much you could buy. Yes. That I almost always walk out of there buying almost nothing. Yes. I didn't really buy anything, even though they were like, by sheer coincidence, when we were, when we were on our way to Japan, I talked to a guy at the airport, an airport worker who said that if I like, like he was, noticed my watch was a watch enthusiast and said, I'm wearing this Tudor watch, which is the, you know, the one new watch I got other than my old Tony watch. And he's a watch enthusiast and said it was nice. And then was like, if you go, if you're going to Japan, you got to go to Nakano Broadway to look for watches. And Heather had already mentioned it. So I was like, that's crazy. We're going exactly there already. He's like, all right, you know, it's up. I had no idea. There were so many watch stores. There were like 20 watch stores. Yes. I hit them all up. And I just had analysis paralysis. Like there's so many like vintage timepieces, new timepieces. I already got my old Tony watch at this point. I don't need something else, but it was like really cool to look at all of them. Yeah. Yeah. There's all, there's a two stores that sell vintage anime sell art because they don't make it on actual cells anymore. It's all in computers. So all of the anime that you can purchase basically ends in the year 2000. Right. Like everything post 2000 is all digital creation. And you can just go and rifle through thousands of cells from shows that are recognizable. It's not like, oh, you know, some, I never heard of this show and never even made it over here and it didn't have much of a footprint. Like there are folders and folders of Gundam cells. There's, there's a, in one of the stores we went, there was a full pristine cell of Masato that was for like, I think $20,000 or something. Yeah. Yes. It's, it's, it's a really remarkable mall, but very dark. Very dark, very grimy, kind of the opposite of where we were earlier, Shibuya and where we'd go later, Harajuku. But, but there's also like restaurants and, and you know, and that's the other thing. We can't talk about every single meal we've had, but there were times we like pop in like an odd tempura place and just have like a fantastic tempura meal on the street. Yeah. The, there was a coffee place inside there, which I went in and at first, you know, I'm, I'm chopping up in Japanese with me there with them. They're loving me. Yeah. I was wearing a new wardrobe I bought the previous day. The guy's like complimenting my fashion. I was like, feeling like a million bucks. Got myself a coffee. I spilled. And it was like a whole fucking thing. Yeah. It was like, spilled it upon delivery. I spilled it as soon as they gave it to me. You somehow overturned the cup. Like a full, and it was a beautiful like porcelain, like almost like a tea set style coffee cup that they gave it to you in. And somehow that you got that whole fucking thing fully 360. Because there was still coffee in it at the bottom, but I know it had been upside down in what I watched. Yeah. It was so fucking embarrassing. And they like brought, the guy came over with bar towels like, don't worry about it, whatever. The woman brought me another replacement coffee. Yeah. And she was like, ah, fucking. And then we immediately left. Then we left right away. The, and we were talking about our steak dinner on Saturday. We had our day where we went to Tahada Chuku, which is like the super fashionable neighborhood. We first went to the Unicorn Gundam. That's right. We saw the Life Size Gundam. That was awesome. That was so cool. That was fucking incredible. It was like seeing awesome. A real Gundam. Yeah. It was great. It's so big. It's so big. You see like where the pilot sits and you're like, oh, that, in this actual scale. Yeah. That's where, that's, that would fit a human being. Yeah. That's crazy. This thing is massive. Yeah. And an absolute unit. And we happen to walk up at basically the time when it does, it's every three hours, lights and sound and slight movement show. Which gave us just enough time to go to the top floor and shop at the Gundam specialty store where like you got a new jacket, I got a new jacket. And we, and then we, we ran out. And then we, we sprinted the fuck out of there. It was great. This, this is watching this thing move was like, I like, I was saluted. I couldn't do it. You, you held a crisp salute. It was very, very fun. I was like getting a video of the thing and I was like thinking about it. I was like, I'll shoot. I should get Nick saluting. But I was like, but I don't want to miss any of the movement of the robot. You made the right call. But it was, that was really, really fun. And we were there for peak cherry blossom season. So if you take photos of the Gundam from certain angles, it was just haloed with cherry blossoms. Yeah. It was a fucking crazy. It was gorgeous. I wish you guys had seen before it closed in Yokohama, they had a fully moving Gundam. And it was, I think I've talked about it on the show before, a religious experience for me. Seeing a building fucking moving also triggered something in my lizard brain where I was like, I have to go. This thing could hurt me. Yeah. I was also like so struck by like, because, you know, I think seeing that would be cool either way. Yeah. But because you showed it to us, it felt extra special. You know what I mean? I was like, I wouldn't have given a shit about this like two years ago. And now that we're here and we're seeing this thing and we're all so excited about it. It was so fun to see it. Yeah, it was pretty neat. Then we went to hard joker. That's right. Yes. And this is just like, it's man, it felt like you get to a new area in an RPG. And then we've explored like 10% of it. It's so huge. But we looked around, we did shop for some clothes, like wet some things. If you're ever in hard juku, don't go down the main strip. Like you can exit the train station and you can go straight down the street into hard juker. I don't even know the name of that street. It's a fucking nightmare. It's so crowded. All of the stores have been replaced with like, chatsky's? Chatsky's? Chatsky's? Yeah. Yeah. Like it's not like an actual shopping street anymore. All of the actual shopping is like sort of orbital to that street. So just avoid that fucking street, man, which is what we did. We went to a bunch of cool stores, a bunch of like, you know, some Japanese brands, chains, some independent stores, some vintage stores. Yeah. You got a little bit of everything. And I love shopping. Yes. I love trying on clothes. I love getting a new wardrobe. And I got a bunch of great shit there. And I like, I had a great time. We had a, oh, we went to the cutlet place for lunch. Yeah. Or not the cutlet, the, um... Yeah, the pork cutlet place. Pork cutlet place. Yeah, we went to Tonkatsu Maizen, which is, uh, I think the best cutlet in the city. It's so fucking delicious, really crispy, and an enormous selection of cutlets to choose from. Like it's not just like you go in and get the cutlet, you can choose like, this kind of pork, that kind of pork. Here's the pork from this farm. Yeah. Yeah. And I was still full from the night before, so I ate like one bite of food there. Yeah. It was crazy. So I've been on the road so much, and this Japanese trip was, this Japan trip was sandwiched in the middle of me taking two domestic trips. So I've slept in my bed two nights out of the past 20 days. Wow. And with the ready availability of alcohol in Japan, plus just all the stress of travel, I was basically on a three-week bender. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we got a little after it. We go to this pork place, we go to this pork, and I don't normally eat pork, but this is one of those things where it's just like, you know what, this is supposedly the best one in the city, and I will do it for this. In the same way that I don't normally eat cephalopods, squid and octopus, but they were just giving this some of that. And the okamakase, I'm just like, this is part of the experience, I'm just going to do it. And the pork cut was delicious, it was really, really yummy. And also, I'm there, I'm just like, yeah, well, fucking highball for lunch. Why not? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was, no, I would basically had a beer at like every meal at least. And then came back and still drinking, I got to cool it. I got to look at it a little nuts. We went to the Square Enix store, which was fantastic. Awesome. So cool. And that was hard to find. It was like a quest to find the Square Enix store, which I think was part of the experience. And then when we got in there, I got overwhelmed again and like didn't even buy like that much stuff. Yeah. I couldn't pick. I got a Chrono Trigger t-shirt, which is like a really high quality shirt. Not some janky piece of shit. And I got the soundtrack on LP. I got an album of it. The Chrono Trigger, yeah. And then I also got a like a slime. Yeah. Oh, I got a Cactore. And I got a slime, a little metal slime, which was really cool. I got a slime plush. And I got a little polygonal figure of Sephiroth. Oh, yeah, that was sick. Which I was really fond of. And I think I got something else and it's like escaping me. But I those are the two things I remember getting there. After that, we had tacos. This was an impulse. This was an impulse. We had to eat in the food that we had wanted to eat on the trip. We sort of checked all our boxes. Yeah. And we had this, we were hungry. We're in a random place. We're in a random place. We're in a mall. This taco place was buzzing. People were buzzing. People were in there having a great time. But notably not with Westerners. Those were all locals there. All Japanese people were in there and maybe experiencing the novelty of Mexican food, which I don't know how present it's been in Japan. But so it was cool. It was cool. We're like, hey, you know what? Let's just see what they got. Because they had individual things. It was like, if this wasn't it, there's other food we can try it out. Yeah. Pretty much all the food here has been fantastic. We can get like margaritas and mojitos. So it's like, all right, let's sit at the bar and let's just hang out for a little bit. I would say all they need to do is figure out tortillas. The tortillas were not quite right. Yeah. But the taco, the components within the tacos were quite good. Yeah. The carnitas were excellent. The tortilla was indescribably strange. It was skin-like, like human skin. Yes. And it didn't have any of the sort of like, any of the texture of a corn tortilla, like the sort of graininess of a corn tortilla. It felt like a sort of not all the way cooked tortilla kind of, like a sort of not wet. But do you know what I mean? Yeah. I don't know if they made their own tortillas in a house or if they source them. And that's just what's available in Japan. Or if they were like, actually this is some sort of like rice paper that has some other purpose. Oh yeah. But we think it works as a tortilla in this context. I don't know. It was a little strange. And but the meats were good. The meats were really well cooked. The proteins were really well cooked. And I will say that the other thing that maybe, it seems like a fusion place unintentionally because the spices, if anything, seem like kind of almost Indian as opposed to Mexican, but they were still yummy. And they also served with a regular quesadilla sweet and sour sauce. So there was like a bunch of things where I was like, ah, that's interesting. Never bad. The drinks were awesome. The drinks were great. And the service was great. And the manager came over there, came over to us and I stopped him. And I said to him in Japanese. Nick who's been drinking since lunch. I'm like, man, when in Rome? So I'm shit-faced. I'm confident. I'm speaking Japanese. I tell this guy, listen, man, we're American. This guy, I checked in with you first. And you're like, yeah, it's fine. I gave you permission to do this. We're American. In fact, this guy's Mexican. Yeah. We're from California. We live in Los Angeles. We talk those all the time. These tacos are great. And you know what? He loved me. He was the happiest man I've ever seen. He was so happy. It was great. He was just like, he put both of his hands together like, oh, thank you. It was wonderful. So funny. But I do think there is, I wanted to do that moment, not for my own self-gratification only, but partly because I was like, I don't know. I don't know. But this guy probably wants to know from like, what do people who have, leap Mexicans think of our interpretation of it? Or maybe doesn't. It was a pleasant surprise. I have no fucking idea. Luckily it didn't go how it usually goes when I tell people I'm Mexican here. This guy was actually pretty excited. I get a mix of things. No, you're not. Or you are. He was thrilled. That was great. And it was good. Yeah, it was. I was happy we ate it. I loved it. At a great time. This also is also not quite right. It was highly tomato-y. Everything was a little off, but yummy. Yeah. Yes. It was like sort of like if you had described Mexican food from a dream you had. You're like, oh yeah, kind of. Like, yeah, I've gotten a shrimp taco before. I guess I've never had a whole shrimp shell and all inside of a taco before. Yeah, sure. Why is there a single marshmallow? Or the guacamole was just crushed avocado. That was it. Like nothing else happening in the guacamole. I do think there was a mayo situation in there. Oh, in the guacamole? Like a perhaps like a cupy mayo. Because there was like a flavor I wasn't able to detect the right way. And it was a little too smooth. It was a little smoother than I would have prepared it. Yeah, it could use some citrus. Could have used some onion, you know. But I mean, still, like I thought everything was good. And it was just like such a pleasant surprise. Such a fun. We had a great time there. We had a blast. We finished out the night by going to an area that I feel has changed significantly in the time that I have been going to Japan. And that's the Golden Guy. Now it's always been tourist-ish. But going there now was like, oh no. Like it is like it is no longer a good place, I think. A good experience in the way that it was, say 20 years ago when I went for the first time. I'm sure it used to be cooler back in the day. And my brother who'd been the Golden Guy, I made the same comment. I'll talk about that in a second about how it had changed over the years. I do wish we'd had that experience. I still, as a first-timer, enjoyed myself. But it did remind me in a bad way of like Bourbon Street, New Orleans. Where it's just like, oh, OK, there's a bunch of drunk tourists staggering around. Really, it was really a full-blown bummer for me. Because I hadn't been, the last time I went was three years ago. And even in those three years, it had changed pretty significantly. It's also the only place in the whole city I experienced any street hustling. Which is like, there were a bunch of guys who were again there who were saying in English, hey, we have the cool bar right over here. Come to the cool bar. Come over here. And we were trying to figure out, I knew it was a scam, but I was like, what is the scam here? You eventually looked it up. Oh, well, I was fed it on my TikTok algorithm. Oh, wow. The scam is they're speaking English to Westerners. And they're trying to get you to come to their bar. So it's like, hey, this is like an English bar. You don't have to do any of the, you don't have to figure out how to say certain things. You know, whatever they want. You can speak English in here is basically the ruse. Which was not a concern anywhere. No, nobody had this worry at all. But whatever, maybe it was like your first or second night there. You'd be like, oh, OK, sure. Yeah. And then the scam is they're telling you that it's going to be a low entry fee. Because some of these bars do have a cover charge. And then the drinks are cheap too. And then they get you in there and you start drinking some. And then they hand you the bill and it's like way more than what they said it would be. And they're like blocking the door until you pay basically. Yeah. It's a good scam. It's a good scam. God bless them. God bless them. Hey, I hope it works out for you. Everyone's going to make a living. Yeah. That being said, we did find a nice experience in the Golden Guide despite like the sort of, I don't know, overall grossness of the entire thing. Can you, again, for people who, because this was new to me, can you describe what this is generally with this area? So Golden Guide is, I think, the district in Tokyo with the most bars per capita on planet Earth. Each of the bars is six seats max. They're stacked on top of each other. It is a neighborhood which is like fully in rot. Like the walls are weak. The air conditioners are rusted. It feels like if you've ever seen pictures of Kallunwald City, it is dense and it is very narrow alleyways. And each bar has kind of a mild theme. There was a bar I was particularly looking for called Bar Mickey where the bartender plays trumpet. And he plays jazz trumpet while he serves drinks. And I was like, that's the one I want to go to, but I couldn't find it this time. We did go, so we went to a few places. We did go to one place. The first place we went to, and I'm someone who gets very claustrophobic. It's part of the reason the flight was a challenge for me. These places are tiny and they're packed with human beings and these structures are old and decaying. And so it does not feel particularly safe to be in there, but I was still having the vibes were so great that I was still having fun. The first place we went into, there was a bunch of Westerners in there. There was standing room only for us. And we each got some drinks. A lot of these places did have non-alcoholic beer, which was great. Some places only had soda water, which is not fun for you. Yeah, the first place we went had soda water only. And I was like, okay. Yeah. But there were a bunch of handwritten signs on the walls. One of them written in English said, if you spill your fucking drink by everyone a shot. And I hubris that I was experiencing. Yes, Nick came to us sweating. We got to get out of here. No, I pose next to it. I pose next to the photo, like check this sign out. Yeah. We hit up a few places. We ended up landing at this bar called, I believe, Adam Hart Mother. Yeah, Adam Hart Mother, Pink Floyd reference. There were just a sort of a quintuplet of Japanese people in there and a fantastic bartender. Yes, this place did have a cover charge. And we honestly were like, you know what, this is probably worth the 1000 yen because so many other places are so packed. This place actually has open seats. Let's just pay the cover charge and worst case, we get around and we're out a little bit extra extra yen. But we ended up staying there the rest of the night. It was fucking awesome. Yeah, there are two people in the corner who were smoking cigarettes the whole time we were there. Love that. As was our bartender. As was our bartender who also had a full bottle of wine she was working on. Drinking an entire bottle of wine herself while we were there. And she loved us. She loved us. She wanted to take a picture with us. She wanted to take a picture with us, which was awesome. She was so friendly. Heather was just like, you know, we're talking to these people. We're talking to the other patrons. We're talking to Misako was the bartender there. Misako. She's recently celebrated her 50th birthday. Happy birthday Misako. And she had a party favor she'd made that she gave to us as Memento. And I wish I'd brought it here today. But it's a custom pack of Kleenex with an anime caricature of her. Like a chibi version of Misako with a big red face and half shut eyes holding a bottle of red wine. Yeah. And she's half horse. And she's half horse. Because it's the Year of the Horse. Because the Year of the Horse. I have those. I have that tissue packet like prominently displayed in my home. It's so funny. It's so funny. And it's so specific. She was so nice. Heather was just like talking about Japanese music to these people. And they were like loved her so much. We're so excited. We had a blast. We posed for this photo. And this photo exists of us with two Japanese women who were at the bar and we were talking to. It was taken by the third person in their party who was a professional photographer. Yeah. And Misako's in it as well. So three of us. And it's taken moments before disaster. It's like that photo if you've ever seen it of the guy standing posing on the World Trade Center with a plane behind him. Because almost immediately after that I was like I'm buying the whole bar around. I do this. As I'm doing this I knock my drink over and shatter it. Yes. It was so fucking embarrassing. We were like so close to leaving. But it was like it was I think I can safely say so far the biggest spill we've ever been around with you. It was the worst spill of the trip. And I definitely definitely very embarrassing. I was like I was apologizing. I was like so embarrassed. And then the like women next to us being very kind or comforting me. Misako was like it's no big deal. I break glasses all the time. Yeah. But it was just like everything. Which we have to believe. Everything was I mean yeah. Everything was going great until that moment. Also they had they served food. Still we went out there on a high note. Yes. They serve food. But because these places are so small the food was kept in like a cooler like an ice box that she had. And these like meticulously prepared bites of food like like individual like wing plates that she was bringing out of there and then reheating. But it was just like I can't believe how they're making this make do with so little equipment. If I had one regret it was not getting one of the wings from her Ziploc bag. We should have gotten some wings. I would have liked to see because she maybe made it at home. Probably. They look like they were hitting too. Yeah. Everybody was getting them. They seemed good. But the bringing glass not a big deal at all. It truly happens all the time. Had a great time. It was great. And you still got everybody a shot at it. They still bought everyone around. Yeah. That was a lot of fun. And then we got the hell out of there. We got the fuck out of there. Yeah. Sunday was our last day. Yes. And it was we had but we had like a late afternoon flight by sheer coincidence. My alpha brother Nate was starting a family vacation in Japan that it was long planned. Yes. Versus like we we found out we were going to Japan basically like less than a week before. Yeah. It was like it was such a whirlwind. It happened really quick. So but that just happened to line up where we had one day of overlap and that was the Sunday. So I went off on a side quest to see my brother. We went back to Harajuku. I saw my niece and nephew and my sister-in-law. We had a great time and y'all were doing your own thing. Matt and I went to Ginza to buy some gifts. We went to a restaurant that I love there called Senator the Bakery which has sandwiches. And if you buy the bread you get to choose a toaster for your table. This was the site of Matt's favorite egg sandwich of the trip. Yes. It was so good. It was like we had a lot of fresh bread. Yeah. This was I think the softest food I've ever had. Fucking perfect bread. It was so like you basically didn't even have to I could have gummed this sandwich down. It was like there was there was no chewing required really. It was so soft. But the egg was just perfect too. And then you get they cut off the crusts and they give you the crusts like they're fries and a little cup and then you can take the little cup over to the toaster oven and put your your crusts in the toaster oven and toast them up and take them back to your plate and eat them like fries. I loved that. That was really great. That was really fun. Also it was just like it was just a cool like the the vibe of the restaurant was really really cool. It's super nice. Very bread forward. My coaster for my the coke that I got was shaped like a little piece of bread. I love that. Then we finished out Matt's side quest of finding the Game Boy Micro which we talked about last week. Yes got that. That was like one of the last things I got and I was so excited about it. Yep. And so far my experience with the Game Boy Micro is that I pull it out of my pocket. I have it on me right now. Turn it on. Go through my my Everdrive cartridge my Game Boy Advance cartridge pick a game turn it on be like I got to I got to go I don't have time to start sort of manna right now. I would love to start sort of manna but I but I will it's it's just on my person at all time. It's a gorgeous piece of hardware. It's really and I'm really glad you got that. I'm really glad you got the Game Gear Micro and also that Heather got me a gift I was not expecting. Oh yeah. That she gave me the hotel lobby and I was so moved it was the closest I came to tears. Yeah. In on the whole trip. Heather got me a copy of Chrono Trigger one of my favorite games of all time for Super Famicom. Yeah. I was like this is really really cool. I know how much this this costs in if we're like just the American version. Yeah. I was like this is what what a what a fucking fine. You also were a little initially so emotional that you were a little mad because you went I thought this was going to be a joke. You said you had a gift for me as like OK Heather's got a funny bit and then she gets the most thoughtful sincere gift. We did contemplate sourcing porno for you. You were so afraid. Well manna we're walking around on final day we're like do we get him porno because he's so he's fixated on trying to find it and it's literally fucking everywhere. I don't know if I want to buy him something that he will jack off. But you also got me a great gift that I was I should have worn today. It was a sweatshirt that on the on the front just said skateboard which is really a pink sweatshirt really cool. And then you turn it around. There's a cat like on a skateboard wearing basically my outfit and there's a bunch of straight words that says like cat skateboard on glasses instead of sunglasses. And it's it's really really great. And it was the thing that my wife was the most jealous of when I got at home and I was like you can't have it it's mine. It's cool. And that was a cool sweatshirt. I'm glad you I was like this is Matt's vibe from from top to bottom. It's been perfect. I've been wearing it a lot. Even if it just said skateboard on the front it would have been like that. I was happy on that alone. I was like that is really really good. Extremely funny. So we went to the the Tokyo airport and I will say that I had my coming back from visiting my brother and his family and barely making a hotel check out in time. I did take the train by myself for the first time which was like I was like we'd be taking the train a number of times and we all did you know put the subway inside Kyoto and Tokyo and also the Shinkansen which we mentioned. But I was like feeling confident enough where it's like I know how to do this and I have the what's the card you had us get on our phone. Sleeka. I had the Sleeka card. I know how to pay this thing and and yeah I don't know felt felt felt cool. Yeah I love the trains. I got to be on Heather's favorite train with Heather the Green Line. Which is the Yamunote Line. The Yamunote Line and each stop has its own little song. Yeah. Which is they're perfect. Fucking good. They're perfect little like they're actually just like good. They're not like you know in New York it's like the little like jingle that they play at every single one. They're bespoke. They're all unique so you know where you are auditorily which is really really great. Really awesome. And it was cool to be on that train with you because I know you like it so much. I love that train. There's also not just a puddle on the floor in the train. I was like what's going on here. Yeah there's no stray human shit or piss anywhere. Where's the guy conked out on Fentanyl. Yeah. Yeah. Where's the fucking broken bottle. Where's the man shouting. I'm going to shoot everybody in the face with a shotgun. Which I experienced on the train once in LA. I told you my train story where I was on a train with my brothers. We were going from Long Beach to Hollywood Boulevard with my uncle and this guy came over to us like older guy was like do you guys want to see something cool. We said yeah not knowing that that's actually a scary question to answer. With your children. He pulled his eye out and showed it to us. He had a glass eye. We all still talk about it because it was as cool as he described. We loved it but it was very very crazy. But the trains yeah the trains were great. Trains are great. Trains are amazing and also we were trying so hard to be the good tourists that like when we were sitting as soon as like people got on with like kids or an old person. The three of us would shoot up out of our chairs and like gesture to give our seats away. Yeah yeah it was great and then it was also just like. I did that in America once I did it in LA. I stood up for like a woman and her kid or I was a pregnant woman and her kid and this old guy says they don't make them like that anymore. That's really great. No but yeah it was just like even just getting to the airport was great and then like being at the airport there so easy. Yeah it somehow wasn't crowded at all. Yeah I went up there. Just like the places you don't have to like sit down in like a Chili's Tour or whatever the fuck or Rockin' Bros. You can just go up to like a stand like essentially a Starbucks and you can just buy a glass of beer. Yeah they just bought a glass of beer and carried it over and was just like I'm just sipping this like whatever this is great I'm having fun. And the trippiest part was that they had like you know when you're coming in you're like checking your bags and stuff they have this like machine that you put the bag on a scale and it weighs it and it like tells you like it's fine to check basically and then you have already put you put the tag on it yourself and then it takes it away and like underground you just never see it again. I was like pretty scared the whole flight that I fucked something up because I did put this sticker on like a bad way and I was like this is how I'm gonna like lose all the shit that I bought that I was so excited about but everything came back completely fine. It's a place where you feel like you can trust things to just work. Yeah. Which is the complete opposite of America where you feel like everything is bound to break and you're going to be punished for it. Heather you did have an experience taking your your bag there which was that they told you it was overweight. Yeah they told me it was overweight right so I go and they're like you can't check it in and and the clock's ticking we got to get to our flight we didn't have a ton of time. Right. Does that LAX to be clear? Obviously everybody knows that the travel in the United States has been sketchy and we the TSA is underfunded etc etc. Ice is gonna fix it. It's fine. Ice is gonna fix it. So I had not yet seen security and I was like oh my god so I go back over to the other section. I pay for my overweight bag which was a staggering 400 fucking dollars and I was like oh my god but again clock's ticking clock's ticking gotta get into the security line can't miss this flight. Go back over to the original counter where the guy told me the bag was overweight and he's says you paid too much and I went there were no other options you said I had to pay for 70 pounds and over and he's like no it's 51 pounds you were one pound over and I was like what do I do and he's like well you gotta go back and stand in the other line in order to talk to somebody and get a refund I'm like I don't have fucking I don't have time you just please just take it and he's like all right and like gave me an attitude about the attitude he had already given me. Yeah why didn't he just tell you it was one pound overweight to begin with? It was a nightmare and on the way back you know same thing my bag's one pound overweight I go up to the guy and he's like yeah that'll be 10 dollars and I was like fucking god it was great. Yeah leaving Japan the last thing we encountered at SFO we went from LA to SFO to Joe Asaka as I mentioned earlier was armed ice agents asking to see our passports at the gate which was like this is a new hell this didn't used to exist right so like that was the last thing we experienced and the first thing we experienced arriving in Japan is the best toilets we've ever sat on in our lives. Yeah the ice agents were hiding in the hallway of the actual boarding like it was you got through the gate with your you know your passport bing and you go through you think you're in the clear and you walk into the tunnel that goes into the plane and hiding around the corner our ice agents and they're like passports passports let's go come on with fucking guns. My big takeaways were you know it took me too long to take a trip like this but I'm really glad I did and I'm again very thankful to both of you for encouraging me and I also just had such a great time with both of you and I wish Ranch was there because I was the big. We did we said a million times we were like we needed to bring Ranch. We should have just brought Ranch we should have figured out how to bring Ranch because doing the podcast without her is not the same the same way like things completely changed once Devin was no longer with us it's just like it's the the the the entry they're producers like such a huge part of the show you know what I mean and and so it was like weird to do it there with a different crew and then also just like as far as hanging hanging out and having stuff to talk about it it would be really fun but maybe maybe someday in the future yeah um but but you could have got sick from that guy. You could have got sick from that guy. I want to take it in. But here's the main thing you could take a coffee to your room. You could. That's sort of the crazy thing I haven't been I haven't tried here. Yeah I don't know how it works. I know in Japan you could take a coffee to your room. Could take a coffee to your room. Yeah I don't know the rules I don't know if it's against the law here but I know there you could do it. We we had a wonderful time we've probably been talking for more than two hours now about it. Should we have our guest on the show? Yeah. We have a special treat as a segment today back in 2019 as I mentioned we started how this get played our ancestral show Matt Apodaka you were our producer not the third host and our engineer was Devin Bryant the great Devin Bryant he has a new album as painkiller the pigeon and we're gonna have Devin in to talk about it. Hi Devin. Hi Devin. I will say yes in talking with Devin before I was explaining like what the what we were going to be doing and you know gave an option to do this part before so that we can go on and on and Devin said hey I'm down to hang. I absolutely did say that you enjoyed it. You also you very sweet said hey I kind of want to hear about this trip. I literally said I've been wanting to hear about this trip because I sort of I experienced I had no idea you were going to do this right so I saw it the other way which is I saw just you guys hanging out with Kojima first. The fuck is this and then a week later is the Super Mario stuff I'm like what is okay that is a confusing sequence what is happening to this show so I was very excited to hear about the whole trip it's awesome. It was truly wild and I guess if you're gonna you know I mean you've heard us talking for hundreds of hours anyway. I certainly have. A nice throwback to have you in the room. Yeah so you have you have a couple new albums the one in 2026 is Civil Temperatures Zodiac B-Sides which is a follow-up to Blame It on My Zodiac which was 2005. Yes exactly so this is the album I put out all the cameras hello this is Blame It on My Zodiac this is the record I put out last came out in December this is a double album this is like the statement this is like the thing I worked on for 18 months I play every single thing on it there's two covers on it but they're telling the story so you know it's like this is a an auteur piece that I made that I poured absolutely every piece of intelligence and wit and skill that I have into it everything I've gleaned making music over the last 20-something years that's that's everything I felt about a best friend who died and various other things that are kind of falling by the wayside in our world you know people being nice to each other that sort of thing the social contract. This is a two CD set. It's a double album in the like in the by length so like it's vinyl era double album so it's 80 minutes but I then in making that record made like 20 other songs that were good and that were that I liked I had to make enough to get to that you know I had to kind of make enough songs to boil it down to where I was like this is saying the statement that I needed to say but I liked so much of the other stuff that I ended up putting out civil temperatures which is kind of all the b-sides that went along with that record. The reason I put this one on CD is because a couple of these songs started to get streamed more than some of the album tracks people really like a lot of these b-sides so I was like I'll put them on a CD also and this has kind of got its own fans which is kind of awesome and very exciting yeah. So when you're making like music and I feel like I hear stuff like this right where like people like there's like this mythic vault of unreleased Prince songs that has like thousands of songs in it or whatever. Definitely. So like when you're making an album when you're constructing an album is that like typically the case you're just gonna you're gonna always have like more than you need like just or like what's like how do you piece it together? I remember reading uh I think it was REM yes it was Mike Mills in an interview the bass player saying that for them they had to write three times as much material as they needed for a record so you want it to be 12 songs you got to write whatever 36 or whatever so they're like you have to get that many more so that you can throw away all the ones that were kind of good so that you know for a fact that the 12 that you're left with are literally the best things that you wrote that year so it's the best you could do so I've kind of I don't want to say I always work that way it's I'm not a person who starts out with lyrics and then goes here's my beautiful poem now to write some music to it I come at it by almost like it's sculpture you know where it's one sound suggests what goes with it and then I just follow that down the path yeah so I just have to kind of do that enough times to where I end up with things that really do go together but yeah with this record it ended up getting to the point where I could actually hear what was missing from it right the first time where I was like this side needs to end with a slow song or it needs to have a this to pick up the next start of the next side and it's the first time I've ever really written to order in that way where I've gone I need a down song at the end of side two you know and I need a really up song and I need a very long one and a short one and a noisy one and a really pretty one so that there's enough variety on it right you know so yeah it was a it's a different kind of process making it than anything I've ever done before so I guess then in relation to you making the bespoke themes uh on our show yes what was there like uh did you have like a like a specific process like or a workflow that you would like implement when you were making those and oh yeah well yeah I mean I did it today oh no I did the first one in in three and a half years and it was uh I remembered exactly how I did it yeah it's always the same way which is you find the one piece of music you're gonna anchor on and and that usually requires me listening to a lot of the uh original soundtrack for most of these games which I love I'm not a gamer I'm not a gamer but I love video game music and I always have you know I was happy that I pointed you towards pokopia because I'm using that game it's really good it's coming to alarm oh you need to there's a lot on alarm oh so badly so devin knows alarm is a um a clock toy that heather has that alarm oh it's by nintendo and it has like a little screen and it plays nintendo music to wake you up or put you to sleep wow yeah there's a user base of one person heather any camera well at night they'll play like a night song from one of the games that you've selected so my nighttime song is from Animal Crossing and it's like the nighttime or the museum theme I'm not sure and it's great but they also update it so they bring out new songs to the alarm oh yeah that's so cool yeah I want fucking pokopia and that fucking clock so freaking cool I'm sure it's only a matter of time you mentioned your fondness for video game music yes very were there any soundtracks that you either encountered when we were doing the show together or that you have just like known historically and enjoyed that you found particularly engaging for whatever reason um well I mean like my era actually playing games is like 80s 90s sure so you know it's I kind of stop I guess at like the n64 is like the last system I ever personally owned it's a good system I think we're good I think we're good with video games I'm just gonna sort of have it figured out by then I think they kind of did it but so I don't know I uh I all my favorites were kind of like Mega Man 2 is like the most incredible soundtrack of all time fantastic sound score great score good answer I played I got to the point where I could just beat Mega Man 2 you know when I was like eight like I'm just gonna go beat Mega Man 2 like I got to that point where it's like just to get through all the music and just like doing all the stuff I was like I enjoyed it um such an incredible feeling when you have Metroid great score such an incredible feeling especially as a kid yeah when you have that muscle memory and just get the flow state of just like I just know how to beat this game consistently Bonk's Adventure I could do in under like 45 minutes I could beat that like I was so good at Bonk's Adventure Bonk's Adventure for the TurboGrafx 16 there's the PC Engine overseas the TurboGrafx 16 I was like the last I bought that when I was like 12 I love that system I swapped I think I gave away my Nintendo to somebody for their TurboGrafx 16 kind of a weird swap but I sort of am glad I had it there was really weird games for the TurboGrafx it was awesome there really were I was I was fascinated by it and I was fixated on it as a kid who was not allowed to have one because we already had a console in the home and we're gonna have more than one console totally um but it it was like a like like like I just like the little the little cards that the games came on which obviously like like it's just like switch cards these days but like back in the day is like we're used to these big chunky cards and they have these little little dits so cool um what was the Silent Debuggers was the game that I was obsessed with if anyone has ever heard of that game or remembers it never heard of it it was it was TurboGrafx game where you're on a space station and I think you you like the beginning you were arriving you don't know what's going on and there's some invisible creatures and it was a game that you had to play with headphones on because you can hear them coming like you could echo locate where they're coming from like behind you or in front of you or in something which was awesome but you get up to the top of it and then you set a self-destruct and I think have to get back out so it's like a timed game with invisible monsters trying to kill you and you have to like work your way up and then back down and I love a up and back down picture it's like my favorite thing in the world one TurboGrafx game that like you know when you finally got to experience them later in life on emulators and that I like I enjoyed quite a bit was Devil's Crush pinball which was yeah and it was like a it was basically like a pinball sim but it was it could only have been a video game right where it was just like there were like characters walking around that you could like hit with your the ball or whatever it was it was like really cool yeah that's really cool great sort of a satanic aesthetic too yes oh that's good you um satanic pinball uh I actually don't approve of that I actually don't think that's okay okay fair enough the devil shouldn't get to play games um he challenged me to a uh he said if I beat him in a fiddle contest no nick was that down in Georgia it was down in Georgia yeah you can't do that oh man there's no way you can win I know he stole my soul um when you were when you would make the themes was there do you have a particular memory of any of them giving you like a particularly hard time you're like I actually don't know like how to crack this one wow that I'll tell you it's interesting because uh well I don't know uh you well I don't know you can tell me if you don't want to say this but initially you guys were going to be talking Silent Hill yes and I went back doing it in the DLC yeah it'll be this week but I went back to because I was like I think I did because I know the new movies based on Silent Hill 2 right so like I was like I think I did a Silent Hill 2 theme because I think you guys did that one yeah so I went back to it and I listened to it and I was like yeah the hardest ones were ones where it's just abstract where it's just tones because like how much what am I supposed to do with that you know that's so not there's nothing for me to like hook on to so I just had to kind of like any one of those I'm like this is just gonna be a pretty one I guess you know and and and and it you know or a scary one yeah which I did a couple that were just like creepy tones but it's not very satisfying you know it's not quite the same as like Super Mario 2 right where you can really put you know and or anything like that where they slave anyone listening is gonna like who is familiar with the game is gonna understand what you're referencing or like Metal Gear or anything like that I felt like the most excited I would get would be handing you something like Disco Elysium oh yeah and being like here you go off king oh yeah you let him cook well that's the other thing too the more modern games like actually Pocopia is one that I didn't use too much like um chipset stuff because it's a modern game and that nobody it doesn't really sound like that anymore everything sounds pretty much like like mostly real instruments they sound it's interesting how that works like when you listen to the Pocopia stuff like critically it it's not like they're acoustic instruments they're there but they sound so they do sound more real I don't know it's it's strange what they've kind of landed on but I like that vibe especially for a Pokemon it's amazing like they've created a language of what a video game sounds like but now they're capable of synthesizing all the way up until a point of like indistinguishing but they can't go all the way there so they pull it back to being like slightly video gaming that's it yeah exactly it's it's hard to describe the way in which it feels uncanny but like it's so but it's still an acoustic guitar yeah you know and obviously there are games that use like just studio recorded music or definitely full orchestras or whatever okay can we take a step back to Painkiller the pigeon sure and like please tell us about uh the the band tell us about your your work behind it and then I'm just curious like for someone who's maybe would be new to your catalog as imagine some of our listenership would be what would kind of your primary influences as a musician yes um well okay so um I've been making songs under this moniker since 2003 so a very long time wow however I didn't really start putting any of them out officially until about 2020 because uh I was always in other bands I was always in other bands and Painkiller was always my thing for myself and I would use it as like these records that I say exist I've got 10 unreleased albums then that's what I'm currently working on is that's a problem that should not that's a problem that has got to be fixed yeah so I've just finished the first three like rejuvenating them and sent them off to mastering so I'm really pleased about that but I always intended them to be less like it was like a business card almost like I want to produce your band here's songs that I've made um I'm in bands with these people they were playing their songs here's the stuff I do and they're like oh these are good we should do you know this that or this or that I like what you did here we should steal that for the other song it's like proof of concept diary therapy like sketchbook you know that's always what it was for but you come it comes to a certain point when you kind of realize it is your life's work it's like the main thing that is only mine that I've written that I've made that is totally my my own thing and I like it and it is good I'm like certain that it's good um whether or not anyone likes it is is a different matter but it is well made you're satisfied with the product 100% yeah like it's it's um it's uh and it is substantial it's it's had work put into it I know that the due diligence has been done it's nothing it's not under my control whether people like it or not that it's not even anything that I worry about I can't be um I just have to make it for itself and and dial it into where it's at so yeah it's kind of I've got three of these albums out now and in terms of what it sounds like the the ones from the like the Chicago Pass the 2004 through six records that I'm working on a really you know indie rock of that time um a little bit I would have been listening to Future Heads and Franz Ferdinand and Sondre Lerke and all these kinds of people you know and uh the Fratellis you know this kind of stuff um but the we all like we like a lot of the same stuff I know that was one of my favorite parts of working in the office with you would be like oh yeah like I remember there was a day we were like actually Franz Ferdinand and we were like yeah absolutely the self-title Franz Ferdinand record is a monster it's perfect my first exposure to Franz Ferdinand was anime oh really yes that's right uh because um it's uh used as I think the I think the show is called Paradise Kiss it's the opening theme to uh like a like a mid 2010 like Take Me Out is yeah uh oh no no no it's maybe it's not Take Me Out I don't remember which song it was but I was like oh wow this band's in English and then looked them up and it's like oh they're a big band they're like a major band and this was just my only entry into the music that's awesome though they're great that's so good I think uh naming themselves after the assassinated Archduke was in poor taste I think that's about as bad as the devil playing games yeah I agree shouldn't do it but uh on this one I actually have a recommended listening oh that's awesome great in answer to your question this the this record Blamin on my zodiac is really like kind of 60s and 70s inspired oh cool that's what I was listening to at the time and so like the recommended listening here is like you're gonna want to listen to some ccr okay people understand the credence clearwater revival are a good band people do not understand that they are the best american rock band the grooves are insane whatever anyway ccr bg's especially if you're making the soundtrack for a vietnam movie you have some ccr on there but see this is my point that's all anyone fixtures is fortunate son and i'm like but okay but like the like the under like sinister purpose covered on this record by your boy sinister purpose is a jam i'm weirdly familiar with credence clearwater revival not because i got into them as much but because my dad was a big fan and was always playing the records oh absolutely um early bg's 60s bg's that's huge before they went disco when they were sad when they wrote songs about shipwrecks that's good stuff uh harry nielsen x tc king crimson bonzo dog band the kinks kate bush skate scott walker joni michael the go-betweens this is what i'm listening to this is where i'm coming from that's awesome not that i should be so audacious as to make a music recommendation to you please do because god forbid that somebody came on this show but we know we like hearing what video never mind yeah i'm just gonna stop censoring myself i've been recently listening to uh i don't know if you have apple music or spotify i have apple music japan hits of the 1970s is its own playlist oh and it's like getting to hear new 70s music oh yeah and it fucking rules that's awesome and it's like it's it is both sometimes a familiar vibe but then also is sometimes a new vibe yeah but it's all old that's so cool really really good it's a great playlist highly recommend that's amazing yes again brings me back to the adam heart mother the bar in um golden guy and heather just rattling off a list of japanese bands to increasingly impressed locals was just really cool yeah and i was trying i was scared i look i'm trying to answer your own power i'm trying to insert myself in there i'm i'm naming like japanese jazz artists and they're just like okay whatever yeah that's so funny i'm like do you like weezer that's so cool uh yeah it's it's it's it's i think it's it's rad that you're that you're doing this i mean i'm really excited not listening to civil temperatures yet when it came out in march of this year i'm excited to give it a listen but um it's it's really awesome what you're doing can you talk about civil temperatures succeed like specifically a little bit like you talked about being b sides of the zodiac that's part of the blame it on my zodiac but i know that's part of the title but like like how does it differentiate itself from the album the other previous it is different yeah blame it on my zodiac is much more of i mean like i said i kind of call it sadier candy it's not i i guess i'm making it sound more depressing than it is there's lots of jokes on the record i can't write songs without my kind of jokes they're all over the place and sonic jokes as well but um but it's a record that was dealing with actual trauma and like if my best friend died you know and i i like took me five or six years to really kind of put it into here and it's not only about that but that's what inspired it and started me down the road civil temperatures on the other hand it's just fun this is this is just a kind of a fun collection of songs these are all the songs that didn't really suit the story exactly that were just things i enjoyed writing around then or sort of similar there's there's kind of more there's a lot more covers on here there's uh uh yeah what am i looking at billy jill harry nelson uh the ramones tom lair and juliana hatfield and cheap trick together as they always should have been hell yes in one place um as well as uh as well as all the songs that didn't make this record and were on eps that were kind of available so i don't know it's it's kind of i was thinking of hat full of hollow the smith's record that's kind of all the b sides and peel sessions kind of turned into a sequence that plays like a record and i kind of thought i wanted to do something like that i wanted to see if i could take those bits and re-sequence them in a way that played as its own thing from from front to back and was and was fun and was a little lighter and it is i think that's what i achieved i'm not i'm not sure if you're a carly ray jeppson fan but yeah but yeah exactly she yeah she did she did an album and followed up with the b sides of that album and they're both really couple times yeah they're both really fun absolutely that's yeah that was certainly in my mind yeah with emotion in particular yeah emotion yeah the emotion of the b sides is is is rad and like so good i'm i love i also don't really like listen to all that much pop music beyond like you know maybe maybe some 80s pop and so but like something about carly ray jeppson i was like this is fucking these are bangers completely agree she rules yeah she and robin are kind of my favorite and in kind of dance vain and that's the next thing i'm working on is the up hole is like a dance record tell me which is very different to all these but i've been accumulating beats and pieces for that for the last kind of like six months and just sticking them off to the side while i finish kind of my my old remixes so as soon as i'm ready to get back to that it is going to be sort of robin madonna time that's where i'm heading next that's rad yeah so which of the 10 albums are you going to cover next i know right i'm i'm trying to have like i say three are out being mastered now and i think they'll be streaming by the summer that's my goal that's amazing yeah my first three albums a harmless buzzing crashing the creep seed and the quip celebs will be out at some point wow and you have a band camp it's painkillerthepigeon.bandcamp.com yes please please go to painkillerthepigeon.bandcamp.com they do the band camp fridays kind of every two months these days where everyone who's selling stuff there the band camp don't take any cut so everything goes to the creators i would love it if you buy stuff then or any other time or buy stuff from other people i would really like it if people could wean themselves away from Spotify not to get on a soapbox but it's not cool it's not cool it's not cool all the ai like military funding that they're doing by stealing money from songwriters is kind of bullshit so people want to get on to like the band camp train it has its own streaming app and if you buy stuff on there it's still yours and you can stream from there all the time so i don't know i'm i'm going to a concert tomorrow of an artist that i discovered through tiktok and then exclusively listened to on band band camp hell yeah who uh his name is victor jones i fucking love him he's from new york um but uh but also when you subscribe to an artist on band camp you also get exclusive stuff yes like singles that may or may not ever be released on streaming in larger formats you'll get messages from the band or from the artist um it's often where the like all of their merch is also it's a it's a really it's a great system i'm i'm also listen to victor jones he's great i'm a band camp user and myself and i'd like a lot of i'm sure a lot of our our listeners have been camped just for video game soundtracks i was gonna say it's kind of popular on the yeah yeah exactly and especially if there's like a like an album for or a soundtrack for an indie game that i really like it's like the best way to directly support that company exactly exactly so unless you're listening to the nintendo music app the most baffling piece of technology that exists an app that you can only have with an active subscription to the nintendo switch online and it's a separate app from the nintendo switch online app somehow makes less sense than the talking flower itself uh debon i know i know some of our listeners are certainly like wondering what you're up to in the podcast space can you update on that yeah um i guess the main show i'm working on these days is palli and gabrysa show staying alive um that's them talking about being best friends being middle age trying to you know offset some of the partying that they've done in the past and trying to you know kind of bolster the brain and the body for the the decades to come uh i really like working on that show it's really fun um i just spent the weekend with gabrys yes um the partying is not in the past i know i know i well yes exactly um i i know we have a meeting on wednesday to set goals for season two literally um yeah but i'm some working on that and then uh i don't work on it as directly but for the last couple years i was working on bad dates with joel kim booster which is great i love joel he's just hilarious um and we've got a couple new shows coming but i don't know if i'm like able to really talk about them exactly we have like one that i'm really excited about but um i don't know if it'll be real for like a week or two so we'll find out it's a show where three idiots play bad video games okay now this is funny this is i i texted matt this like last year this is great so at my company the one where this isn't happening anymore but last year they're kind of like oh we're thinking about doing a um show about video games i was like okay yeah and they're like we thought we might cover you know kind of like bad or weird video games and like yes okay great and they're like we thought could cover games like maybe c-man or you know like and they just like we could maybe start with sonico's you know like it's oh six right yeah yeah they like listed the first 10 episodes that played and as they're in the middle of saying this i'm unbuttoning my dress shirt oh on zoom and i'm just like guys i'm so pleased i get to be able to say this i have been there and i did get a t-shirt and i was wearing the how did this complain t-shirt that's so funny during this meeting and i was just like i have the shirt i have done all those themes i can't do them again we've done this c-man theme it's not possible that's so funny we've done this type of podcast what if we what if we do a celebrity talking to another celebrity that was a great moment painkiller the pigeon blame it on my zodiac civil temperatures which is zodiac b sides please please please plug one more time and and plug your bandcamp yes absolutely painkillerthepigeon.bandcamp.com it is blame it on my zodiac this is sad ear candy this is civil temperatures it's a little bit more fun it's a little bit lighter they're both they're both labors of love you know it's it's a person making this art completely on their own and uh and i you know i think that's cool i think you should support not just me doing that but anyone that you find who's like this is this is my thing i make it myself you know that's it's so anti-ai it's so anti everything the way things are going this is handmade and it's physical that's the good stuff well also i feel like i do i remember conversations when we used to work together like of just the the idea of even having the energy to make something creative for yourself exactly is like so non-existent sometimes like the fact that you are doing this and that you have three other things like in various stages of production is really really cool so i hope you do feel that that's that you're proud of that because it is amazing and it's very cool that you did it so thanks for coming and talking to me with us i mean it's just a pleasure thanks for having me yeah congrats buddy and so great to have you back yeah and hey that's this we skip play yeah we miss you we like ranch though yeah we like ranch i'm not saying we i'm not saying that ranch understood it ranch don't listen to her that's this we skip played our producers are shell chen ranch twitch.tv slash yard underscore underscore sorry you stream anything lately ranch i still work in a resident evil night wow check out that stream for for more of that our music is by ben printy our regular theme ben printy music dot com our artist by decorgay design decorgay dot com we got merchant kinship goods dot com and there's a bonus episode every wednesday on our patreon get played dlc matt what's up this week this week we're going back baby we're going back because we got a letter and it's reminiscent of our our restless dreams we're going back we're returning to silent hill we're watching the film return to silent hill that's over at patreon.com slash get played and hey devin brian once once more you got played it was me that was a hit gun podcast hi i am mandy more sterling k brown and i'm chris sullivan and we host the podcast that was us now on head gum each episode we're going to go into a deep dive yeah from our show this is us that's right we're going to go episode by episode we're also going to pepper in episodes with different guest stars and writers and casting directors yeah are we going to cry yes a little bit are we going to laugh a lot a whole lot that's what i'm hoping man listen to that was us on your favorite podcast app or watch full video episodes on youtube or spotify new episodes every tuesday